Note from the Left

This just in from one of my lefty circle of friends:

ah, obama is my guy. yes, indeed. he just said he's open to retracting his timeline for iraq withdrawal. ahhhh, what a mensch. why pull out sooner when you can earn more votes by staying there?

There you have it friends, the secret weapon of the McCain campaign—the far left!

Go here to see an update on this story. Click here.

A Perfect Day in Santa Fe

What a perfect Santa Fe day it was. Dinner with friends in their beautiful home near the Santa Fe Opera. Then we watched the sun set from the vantage point of the Crosby Theater while waiting for the performance of Verdi’s Falstaff to begin. It was a first-class performance as are all the productions of the SFO. We walked out of the opera house to a sky filled with stars. As we looked for the few constellations we know we were saying, “Why do we want to leave this place? It’s perfect.” Our conclusion is that everyone we’ve told about our impending move to Europe has thought it was an exciting idea, so now we have to do it so our friends won’t be disappointed. So, we’re just doing this for you guys.

I’m sure the sky will be filled with stars in our little rural Spanish village and there will be many opportunities for dinner with our Spanish friends. We won’t have a world-class opera company on our doorstep, but we can travel to all the rest of Europe without the huge expense of ever-increasing air fares. I’m sure there will be many perfect days there, but we may find ourselves homesick for the magic of Santa Fe.

Obama Disappointment

All around me I’m hearing everything from disappointment to outrage at the positions that Senator Obama has recently taken. Perhaps you can get some idea of the left-leaning circles I travel in. Yes, I am not liking much of what I’m hearing about letting the telecoms off, voting for war funding, faith-based initiatives, etc., and I’m sure I’m going to hear more things that don’t exactly reflect my own thinking. Am I going to stop supporting Obama for president? Not likely unless I see some better alternative.

It is very easy to hear only what we want to hear from politicians and they obfuscate enough to make that easy. When they get around to specific proposals is when the shit hits the fan, as with telecom, faith based initiatives, and war funding. For example, it was easy to overlook all his statements about bringing the left and right together in this country. Well, you can't do that and please us lefties (or the right either). He is consensus building and he is very nuanced. I would invite you to watch his actual speech on faith based initiatives on YouTube: Click Here. I also would recommend a piece in the Huffington Post on the subject. Click Here.

Yes, Obama is a politician and, as Harry Truman said, he had a choice of jobs as a young person—either be a politician or play piano in a whorehouse, and he didn’t see too much difference between those two. If Obama wasn’t a politician he wouldn’t stand a chance and wouldn’t have gotten where he is. What do we expect? I’m still feeling that he is better than the alternatives I see—a continuation of criminals running the White House.

So yes, I’m going to continue to support Obama and try to get as many people registered to vote and going to the polls here in New Mexico as I can. It is the only system of government we have and we’ve got to try to make it better or it will just continue to get worse.

Paying to Leave

Did you know that there is a new tax on leaving the country if you give up your US citizenship? I thought it was just another urban legend, but here it is in black and white: Click Here.

Are the current crop of criminals in Washington afraid that we'll all leave if they get in again? I had a vision yesterday. The religious right likes to talk about the "rapture" when all good fundamentalists will be called up to heaven, leaving us poor slobs to try to figure out the mess they leave behind. Well, maybe it will be us that will leave the US, leaving this place for the "born agains" to try to live with.

Maybe that is the plan. The new tax will essentially strip us of a lot of our assets if we want to participate in the secular "rapture." Then they will have assets to work with after we are gone. Land of the free and home of the brave.