Haven't been posting much

Spring is here, and my thoughts have wandered pretty far from politics. Honestly, this country is, in my opinion, in the midst of a pretty bad period, and it seems to me as if no one cares. Let's take a journey of the mind. It's 1998, and Bill Clinton is President. - Gas prices are routinely at $2.13/gal for regular. - We are engaged in an urban guerrilla war that we chose to fight as an aggressor. - Over 800 US servicemen and women have died in that war. - Although the war itself went swimmingly well, the postwar occupation has been a tactical disaster. It was poorly planned and executed with a blind, arrogant bravado. -- We have successfully alienated a great portion of the local population with our incompetence. - The deficit has returned with a vengeance. - There is a prison scandal in the occupied nation, which has brought great shame on the US. - The government justifies its shameful prison scandal by arguing that at least it isn't as bad as it was under Saddam; thus lowering the bar of decency and humanity to "better than a murderous dictator". I could go on, but why bother? Could you imagine the cacophonous clammer from the right if any one of those items had happened under Clinton? Amazingly, many on the right blame the whole thing on Clinton and the Democrats anyway, so their credibility is in the toilet. In any event, New York is pretty solidly in Kerry's corner, so all that's really left to do is raise some money and get out the vote. That doesn't really matter until the fall, the way I see it, so I think I can take a well-deserved break from campaign matters until then. I'll post when time and news permits.