Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot...
--Wm. Shakespeare

Today's journal writing is longer than usual. I started it mid-morning and couldn't seem to stop. Some of you may see it as an angry rant, but I assure you that I am more sad than angry. Late in the afternoon again, I went out to our hillside to get my picture for today, and I found myself... stretched out by the setting sun into a shadow that reminded me of Macbeth's lament (Act 5, scene 5 19-28).

A COUPLE OF THINGS NEED TO BE SAID TO THE FOLKS WHO GET UP EVERY MORNING AND GET READY FOR WORK, THE FOLKS WHO INVEST THEIR LIVES IN THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS... THE SYSTEMS ARE NOT THE SAME. Despite the proliferation of cardboard-carrying solicitors at major intersections of streets in San Diego, the American economic engine continues to work well for the people who have jobs and for people who want jobs badly enough to start the old fashioned way at the bottom of an industry and work their way up. It may not be what the person behind the counter in Macdonald’s prefers, but the job taking fast-food orders is a job; and the person doing it must be commended for preferring any job to standing on the street corner begging for handouts.

First, I should acknowledge to myself and to anybody who happens to read my BLOG that I am editorializing, not writing from research. I am doing what most of us do: expressing opinion based on information and insights picked up going through life doing the things that, in my case now, retired people do. With that disclaimer stated, I can also say that I read and listen. I am thoughtful and reasonable. When somebody else’s idea is presented to me, I think about it if it seems worth considering. When I read something, I don’t assume it to be true just because it appears in print.

Lately, I have been paying too much attention to daily pronouncements by both Republicans and Democrats that what is needed in our political system is a greater degree of bipartisanship. I was buying into the idea because it seems on the surface to be a reasonable approach to problem solving. When people involved in decision-making listen to each other, it seems reasonable to believe they will actually hear and consider what “the other people” are saying. For whatever reasons that I am not going to explore in this writing, we Democrats tend to wither with guilt when someone hurls the partisan bullet at us. We begin our apology almost immediately by begging to be given another chance to cooperate, to get it right. In the present national economic crisis and the persistent political stalemate, lack of bipartisanship is not the problem.

The Republican intelligentsia get it. They know exactly how to make partisanship and bipartisanship work for them. They know what they want, and they stand firm on their flawed and misguided principals. The Tea Party people don’t bother one way or the other with bipartisanship. For them it’s always “full steam ahead” and “man the torpedoes.” The Democrats become paralyzed with fear when they think they may be accused of not considering the other side carefully enough. Nancy Pelosi gets it. She rejects the idea that Democrats must “meet the other side halfway.” If the program her party proposes is the right program, she rejects the nonsense that she should play nice and compromise. During the election cycle leading up to November elections, many Democrats scurried around and looked for ways to “compromise.” Pelosi stood on principle. She was public enemy number one to Republicans standing for election... Barack Obama was then public enemy number two. Now that she has been bumped from her position of leadership in the House of Representatives, the President has become Republican public enemy number one.

The strategy now for Republicans preparing for the next major election cycle is to dig in their heels and refuse to compromise on any program the President suggests. If the President suggests that scientists are right about climate change and that we should regulate business to address the problem, Republican leaders, in the face of scientific evidence, declare the scientists are wrong. I want the President to pull himself up to his full presidential height and do the right thing for the country when addressing all the issues that divide the country into two parties.

In his campaign the 2008 election Senator Obama declared that he would end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” if he was elected. He has been patiently listening and waiting apparently until every last soldier in the military has been asked to give an opinion on the matter. I want President Obama to do the right thing and declare the policy to be history the way not allowing women to vote and not allowing black men and white women to marry each other is history.

With devastating consequences both in unbridled financial costs and cost of lives, the Bush administration marched the country into two wars. Regardless of what Senator McCain and other hawks claim to know about war, I want the President to get our country out of Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan as expediently as possible, with as little cost of money and cost of lives as possible.

In the last full year of President Bill Clinton’s presidency, the Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus. The Bush administration came into power with zero deficit. By starting two wars while cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and taking away regulations, which subsequently allowed the wealthiest Americans to become even richer, the Bush administration erased the budget surplus and left the country mortgaged to the hilt. After two terms in the White House, George Bush, with his party’s majority in both the House and the Senate, left our country with the largest debt in its history and with its economy in shambles. I want President Obama to stop cow-towing to Wall Street and put an end to the Bush tax breaks for the top two percent of wealthiest Americans.

Four decades ago America settled the question about whether the Constitution guarantees civil rights to all citizens. President Barack Obama is a lawyer trained in Constitutional law. Regardless of the religious preferences and biases of his family or anybody else’s family, of any religious group in America or anywhere else in the world, or of any group within any political party in America, The Constitution clearly in its language does not declare or imply that sexual orientation is a criterion for deciding whether or not full rights of citizenship should be extended or withheld. I want President Obama to acknowledge the rightness of extending full civil rights, including the right to marry, to gay and lesbian Americans.

I want the President to stop apologizing in trepidation for Social Security because the word “social” is part of its name. Isn’t anyone ever going to point out to the conservative, fundamentalist religious community that Jesus Christ was the most radical socialist of any of the founders of great religions? The President is a Christian... and he is very intelligent and very well-educated, so he knows it’s true. I want to hear him say it boldly and clearly.

I want the President to declare what he knows to be the truth about the economy. Compromise will not erase the debt and balance the budget. Mitch McConnell’s ideas will not erase the debt and balance the budget. The economy can be brought right again with the same strategies that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt put in place, strategies that were continued by Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. Public investment worked then, and it will work now. If President Obama, in a great demonstration of bipartisanship, announces that he will cut public investment because Republicans in the House and Senate are crying for it to be done, he will only make the economic situation worse. We have all kinds of infrastructure projects that need to be done which could put thousands of people to work. I want to hear our President affirm the importance of government putting citizens to work doing work that needs to be done.

More progressive taxation is necessary if we are to solve the country’s economic problems. Democrats running for office have got to stop saying they will not raise taxes. That’s the Republican line. It’s what gets them elected to governorships, to the House of Representatives, and to the Senate; but it’s not worth lying to the American people just to get elected. It may be expedient, but it’s not honorable. Democrats must find a way to give the American people the history lessons they have forgotten. Republican legislators should be pushed to acknowledge the effectiveness of a progressive tax structure under the Eisenhower administration that built America’s great interstate highway system and moved the American economy toward some of the country’s best years.

Then there is the matter of regulation. Whether it’s regulation of gun sales and ownership or regulation of the loaning and investment practices of financial institutions, Republicans want the government to keep hands off. I want to hear the President declare that regulations which protect all Americans must be kept in place in industry, on Wall Street, and on Main Street. I want to hear him say that if a traveler doesn't want to be screened in order to travel on a commercial airplane with other Americans, other options, like driving or taking the train, are available.

Government is necessary. Good government, appropriate government, will not be established by the Bipartisan Panel on Fiscal Reform and Responsibility which President Obama established in his continuing attempt to be bipartisan. The commission was stacked against progress when the President required a supermajority of 14 out of 18 members for its recommendations to be official. The panel is made up mostly of far-right Republicans and conservative Democrats. Good luck getting a supermajority on any issue out of that bunch.