I'm moving over the next few days & it seems as good a time as any to have a sort of final reckoning with the Democratic Party.

I'm leaving a big tray of strawberry pie with real whipped cream & fresh squeezed lemonade. The lemondade isn't bitter, just a hint of sweet, the way I like it, but lots of pulp & so frosty that you can blow a little fog off the top.

I'm going to be using my voice, my creativity, my critical thinking skills, my time & what little influence I have on events around me to serve me, instead of frittering & squandering it away on the Democratic Party & maximizing my stress level. I came into the Democratic party as an indie in 2000, and I will shortly return to same. I came in because of a coup & failure to count votes, sadly, I leave for the same reasons. I came because the Presidency was handed to a puppet/prime minister "movement" type of Reagan/Blair "charismatic" propped up pretentious corporate (but positioned as anti-corporate) candidate, I leave for the same reasons. I came because of rightwing radio hoppped up hate & continuous non-stop propganda, I leave because of leftwing blogosphere hopped up hate & continuous propaganda. Well, and a little rightwing for good measure. And I say that as a jerk who went to both of the yearly kos conferences, etc. For what? I now ask myself. What was all of this for? To see a person installed in office by gaming the system & being the beneficiary of some kind of scorched earth media attack that was so pervasive, so accepted, so every day normal so endemic so unquestioned so blatant... A person who has ties to extremely questionable entities- and honestly, I don't even have the heart to type out the list one last time.

Bitter-Sweet

Ah, my dear angry Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve;
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament and love.

George Herbert (1593-1633)

In one fell swoop last week, Mayhill Fowler burst through the velvet rope line which protects the rarefied world inhabited by Senator Barack Obama. In other venues, Obama has said:

"Words matter. What our leaders say matters, because the American people need to know we're saying what we mean and we mean what we say."

Our Long Dark Int'l Migrane: Maddy Albright on the Road for Hillary

Madeleine Albright was here in Kutztown, PA to speak at Kutztown University on behalf of Hillary this morning on what seems like it was short notice.

Gorgeous spring day with the first flash of beaming yellow daffodils showing their pretty faces & flirty breezes with a hint of warmth. Pale blue sky tangled with clouds - almost a sense of Hope® or Change © in the air by the artist formerly known as spring ^TM... Plenty of news media about interviewing students before & after.

A very fractious, talkative crowd of about 200 housed in the nice, modern student union building with a good PA system. A nice mix of students and people from the wider community & looked fairly representative of the area & the students, started about a half hour later than stated.