Beautiful Day

I've needed a good week to digest what happened last Tuesday. For my family, Election Day was confirmation that my father's political career and campaign were what the people of our city want. My dad's been terribly gracious and exicted about the forthcoming changes to his life and the opportunities to make an impact on Brentwood, even if it's only for the length of a single two-year term.
On the national level, it truly was a great night. The American people, not just the "Bay Area liberals" in soon-to-be-gone Richard Pombo's words, spoke loudly and clearly that the status quo was sending the country in the wrong direction. "Throw the bums out" wasn't necessarily the mantra of the election but there was certainly the "enough of the bullshit" aura in the air for both sides of the aisle to realize that the electorate just didn't switch sides for the heck of it. The Democratic Party will find itself thrown the to curb just as fast as the GOP in two years if nothing happens on many levels. Iraq is not the only issue; the environment is critical as well. If one doesn't believe this statement, look to see who will be representing California's 11th district. I don't know anything about Jerry McNerney and yet people, by a 10,000 vote margin, screamed "ENOUGH" of one of the 13 most corrupt representatives. "Values voting" was a straw man label that meant nothing as well last week. That is, unless one thinks that favoritism for the wealthy, stay-the-course-to-failure in Iraq, burning through the deficit and ignoring the social ills like health care and the victims of Katrina mean nothing. What does it mean to vote values? Social justice, environmental protection, economic sustainability, international cooperation and national concensus-building are values moreso than those espoused by the current regime that has done nothing but splinter and shred every ounce of credibility in claiming to be uniting and not dividing.

Rumsfeld, Santorum, Burns, Pombo, Foley (you didn't lose, you got the boot) and the rest of the holier-than-thou Grand Ol' Party, good riddance. And to think that Bush screwed up yet again by not firing Rummy a week before! The GOP's angry and now blaming the president for costing them the election by not canning the one man who even Richard Nixon said to not give the Defense Secretary position to in the 70s and yet it allowed the president to carry out a failed policy based on chosen but poorly executed ideals. Where was the GOP when Halliburton subsidiary KBR jumped into Iraq without a competitive bid and double-billed the American taxpayers at the expense of hundreds of thousands of deaths? Where was the GOP when '08 candidate Duncan Hunter cancelled the oversight committee on Iraq contracts? Where was the GOP in stopping the president's wiretapping and torturing? Where was the GOP when the international community screamed that what's been happening in Darfur is genocide? What about global warming? Our own rural and urban poor? What about the 79,000 victims of Katrina who filed monetary claims when only 22 people have received financial payouts? What about . How many more blanks and blanket statements need to be made before people of conscience really get angry? George W. Bush is not the only failure in this picture. When the ruling party's top priority was power consolidation at the expense of the country, what other choice did voters have last week but to change course?

Chris Lefty Brown, you're right. And when you're right, you're right. Paul Hewson has become a greater hero to me more than he's ever been. The first man to show a little adolescent boy the power of music and vision and faith and conscience has raised the bar even higher for me. If I'm to keep a single label I apply to myself, I need to be more like that Dublinite than I've ever been before. It's pretty sad that a rock star and not a politician or religious leader's going to win the next Nobel Prize for trying to stop the spread of AIDS, Third World Debt, environmental destruction, and modern-day imperialism. God speed, Bono.