19-0

That was the score of the response to the October 5 post asking which option you prefer between supporting the current national parties and a new independent party. The total number of unduplicated votes for the Indy party on both the Daily Blank and Facebook was 19. No one voted for the Redemlicrats; a few people voted for “none of the above” which is how I plan to vote next month.

What does this tell us? I think it tells us we are in the last decade of the dominance of the two big parties. Things are broken. They are fixing nothing. There are more registered Independents than R’s or D’s according to a recent Pew survey. The Tea Party is rising and this relatively liberal audience is just as fed up.

Bring it on I say. Then maybe we’ll address the real problems. We now spend far more time discussing “don’t ask/don’t tell” than we do with the wars themselves. I don’t mean to minimize the importance of that issue, but each day the New York Times lists the names, ranks, ages and home towns of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. There were seven yesterday. The oldest was 22; there were two 19-year-olds.

We all know they died for access to oil, and yet Congress has no energy to address energy. Did you read Tom Friedman’s recent column on Congress’ unwillingness to commit one billion dollars over five years to speed development of cutting edge energy research? That’s $200 million dollars per year. What does that buy? I believe that pays for 200 foot soldiers in Afghanistan for one year. At the current pace we will have another few hundred dead teenagers in that perpetual Western death-trap of a country over the next year.

But I’m sure the Democrats and Republican have a secret plan to make this all make sense, right?

The Three Stooges of the Senate

If you want to understand why our political system is so completely impotent when it comes to solving the major problems of the day, I strongly recommend and article from last week’s New Yorker, "As the World Burns" by Ryan Lizza. It is a non-partisan, clinical, dissection of the inner workings of the Senate as it contemplated energy policy legislation this past year. It looks in particular at the unlikely team of John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham as they attempted, in classic Three Stooges style, to draft bipartisan legislation.

I was moved to read it by a recent Tom Friedman piece, "An X-Ray of Dysfunction," which is the Cliff Notes version, but you must read the New Yorker article to get the full sense of how inept and morally corrupt the legislative process has become in the hands of the Republicratic party – or Demoplican if you prefer.

Pledge to America

I was listening to a bunch of Republican policy wonks on NPR the other day, mostly discussing the upcoming elections and the Republican party's new "Pledge to America." One of them, a policy guy from one of the Washington conservative think tanks said, "No one can read the Pledge to America and still say that the Republican party has no ideas!"

So I decided to read it. All I can say is that, "I think I'll scratch my ass now" is also an idea, and it offers just about as much insight into how the GOP plans to balance the budget as their pledge does.

You can read it here, but a better use of your time would be to read Tom Friedman's column from this past Tuesday, which talks about the kind of leadership this county really needs, but will probably never get. (I'm starting to feel about the nation's future they way I feel about pro football; i.e., like a Brown's fan. We haven't won anything since '64 -- so long it's hard to remember what victory feels like.)

We’re #3! (Or is it #4?)

Japan won the World Baseball Classic for the second consecutive time this week, and despite having the most major leaguers of any team in the tournament, the U.S. was eliminated by Japan and came in either third or fourth overall (no one seems to be able to say for sure which it was). How could this have happened? After all, we introduced baseball to the Japanese in the 1930s after we’d been playing it nearly 100 years.

According to the American players, Japan did the little things, and played with basic fundamentals; the United States did not. Players repeatedly referred to the Japanese team’s attention to detail as if it were a foreign concept or a long-lost art.

Brian Roberts, the team’s second baseman, said: “When you play Japan, when you play Korea and those countries, they’re going to play fundamentally sound baseball. They’re going to do all the little things. You have to focus on the fundamentals. Americans, we probably don’t do as good a job of that as they do at times.”

Shortstop Jimmy Rollins added: “They don’t worry about the big things. They didn’t worry about trying to drive the ball out of the ballpark. When you put the ball in play, you can find holes. And they play with passion.”

Derek Jeter said, “They don’t strike out. “Everybody puts the ball in play. They all run. If I could do it or teach it, I would.”

After winning the championship game and celebrating for an hour or more, the Japanese players showered, and then put on a clean Japanese team uniform. They were still representing Japan, and the team comes first.

Who said sports aren’t an apt metaphor for life in America today?

ALSO: Tom Friedman makes my point better than I could in his column today urging President Obama to be bold.

Another good read courtesy of AY: "The Big Takeover" from the current Rolling Stone. Excerpt: "People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations."

And as reminder that there is always another side to the story, read the resignation letter from an AIG employee that was reprinted today in the Times.

Where's my money bitch?

I'm sure there are layers upon layers of political motives at work here, but don't you find it really disconcerting to have the Chinese openly warning us that they expect their money back? It's only a trillion or so -- I guess that's still big money in China.

How about a little good news? Read Tom Friedman's column in today's New York Times. Maybe good old American ingenuity will get us out of this mess eventually.

The tide is turning

The tide seems to be turning a little as the media starts to realize just how badly we have all been abused by the robber barons of Wall Street. It takes a bit of a commitment to read Michael Lewis’ article (link at right) but just few minutes to read what Tom Friedman wrote today about it. These people need to be held accountable; these were not mistakes, these were premeditated acts of larceny that are now costing regular, taxpaying citizens billions.

I’ll probably take a few days off for Thanksgiving. I wish you all a happy holiday. We still have much to be thankful for. I’ll close with this quote from Lincoln’s second annual message to Congress, in December 1862:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”