Preface to a series of posts on US political issues

I have revived ABAN because readers who come to Executioners Thong looking for mild mannered aphorisms of vaguely humanist bent should not have to endure many long posts in the bile-scented tone of my political exposition that won't let up until November. What energizes me at the moment, beside the predictable bad news the bush league policies are accruing, is two copies of Time magazine, the issues just before and just after Nov 2, 2004. This miscarriage of democracy must not repeated. Except for the picture of Kerry, exhausted and alone for a minute late on the election day, the entire magazine lacks reality and flows with the glib empty talk of "values" and the baseless optimism of Republican party merchants of mendacious mediocrity and the masses they had just duped. The picture of the young faces transported in gleeful roars at the Republican headquarters as the victory emerged from the numbers that evening is truly sobering...how could so many be fooled? How could such clearly damaging policies and empty promises be embraced so enthusiastically? Are they still roaring? Has their unit been called up yet?

I plan to write up my own series of "resource kit" posts on issues I really care about. I am not better informed and certainly not a better writer than you will encounter in the extensive top tier of blogs that have been calling bullsh*t on Bush/Cheney/Rove for years. My own reading barely gets to my personal top 10: myDD, TPM, Atrios, Daily Kos, Pandagon, Shakespeare's Sister, FireDogLake, Agonist, Scienceblogs. If you read here, you may already be reading those: tell a friend who has not discovered the reality-based alternative to the money+media machine politics. The flag ship blogs are already outflanking the MSM and their "all the news that fits our owners and advertiser's mindset" product.

Why would I do such a superfluous thing? Surely there will be many well crafted bulleted lists of what to say , what facts to cite, which names to name. Surely. But I want my own lists and I want to be fluent in the background.

Before you moan to yourself that you don't need yet another amateur op-ed liberal bleating to other liberals, consider what ice berg must lie before the titanically funded Republican campaign if the hundred or 50 blogroll links found on the side column of most liberal blogs are just the tip. The significance of the thousands like me is that there is an iceberg ahead for government by stupidity, of stupidity for cupidity. I will spot light a few of my favorites among these blueblogging masses with each of my "issues" posts. I will list the best go-to blogs I know of on particular issues as I deal with each issue. As issue-specific bundles, with a set of links on the template to keep them handily collected, they may come in handy. I mean to stick to a format:

1. link to news, and other's opinion pieces that have informed my views.
   
2. list of expert sources
3. list of worthy amateur political commenters: we are so very many, I tell you.
   
4. what I see as the basic mistake [if any] in current policy
5. what policy I would personally like to see
6. what heads should roll , who currently is saying the smartest things, my favorite candidate.
7. optionally, what the issue's effect is on me or my family, something narrative perhaps.
8. I will revise these posts if anyone enlarges my understanding of the issue and I will rank them based on hits+comment count.

Granted, the opinions will be personal and the facts are a labor to present fairly. I only hope you can use them to arm yourself in your own debates with the forces of darkness. If all I do is show there is yet one more voice to be heard demanding progress, fairness, rationality and representation from our government, then most concretely I have supported the contention that we are many. If all I do, as a formerly apolitical engineer concocting my own set of talking points, is show that any ordinary citizen can come up with a list of dangerously cockeyed and selfish motives and misunderstandings in power similar to the lists from the likes of Josh Marshal or Jane Hamsher, then I ratify the punditry: we ought not take anyone's word if we can't independently reach the same conclusions and we demonstrate thinking for yourself is not just good practice, its inherently liberal. This is how I live in a democracy and why Dubya is afraid of the internets [someone tell him how many internets there are...after the election]. (Well, assuming I don't conclude the party of King George has got it right;?)

Yee Haaw! We're about to find out just how dangerous lame-brained + lame duck really is!