Absent Without Leave of Senses

I haven't written anything for a while. as you may have noticed. Since the aftermath of that calamitous election, the road to sanity has been to not read the usual online barrage of progressive angst. On one hand, seems like writing might have been a productive way to vent some of that angst, but I needed to take a break. Ohio, count me out.

I've certainly been keeping up with the news, and the daily outrages of this administration and it's reactionary impact on the socio-cultural American gestalt continue unabashed, unaplogetic and unabated. The attacks on our 200 year old yet fledgling democacy have been executed with ever more arrogance from Capital Hill as well as the White House--no surprise there, of course. They do believe they have a mandate, to go along with all the power they've usurped or stolen over the last 30 years. Never ones to let facts stand in the way of a good opinion, they have upped the pace and will continue to dismantle 60 years of progressive social advancement on every front as fast as their two right feet can carry them. It's just too enervating. I need a nap and a great big bag of Valium.

And except for Ted Kennedy's urging today for the party to return to its progressive roots and Barbara Boxer's courageous stand against certifying the Ohio electoral vote, pretty much the rest of the Democrats seem to be stuck in some wimp timebandits wormhole of centrism. Even Howard Dean, though never a flaming prog regardless of reputation, acknowledged acceptance of anti-choice leadership on his side of the aisle. Something about a big tent. Familiar phrase, that. It was nauseating when the neocons used it pre-convention, but somehow the Democratic party trying to win a broader appeal by courting anti-choice ignocrats is, well, unseemly. And, may I say, yucky. Remember moderate or liberal Republicans? Now pretty much extinct, their legacy remains in the DLC. Ol' Ralphie Boy was right. He was an asshole and megalomaniac, of course, but it's hard to argue with his main premises--except that one about no difference between Bush and Gore, oh that was really dumb.

So I've been quiescently frozen of late, but like one of those succulent orange treats on a stick away from its freon nest, I'm melting too.

So fie on the valium, and bring on the crank. It's time to get this horse back in the race. I'm going to cram in as many angry sarcastic diatribes as ever, along with every cliche ever written and some of the most godawful puns my evershrinking frontal lobes can pustulate--er, postulate

It's my job, after all. If I have to have one.