On Presidents, Honesty and Released Tax Returns

Check out the list.

And clearly Republicans are, to date, okay with this.

To quote another Republican:

"People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook." 

--President Richard Milhouse "Tricky Dick" Nixon. Also famously--or infamously--a Republican it should be remembered.

Another Historical Presidential Election

Just think of it.

Our last President, meaning our current one, the first black President of the United States.

Fantastic.

I wish I'd had the presence of mind a friend of mine had when he was first elected. He and his wife knew they wanted to be on hand for the acceptance speech in Chicago that November.

Now?

Now we're on the cusp of electing either the first woman President or the first Jewish, Democratic Socialist.

And some people say our best days are behind us. 

Bah.

On 2016 and President Hillary Rodham Clinton

Much as I would love, love, love to have a woman, specifically Hillary Clinton, as next president of these United States and as good as that would be, in at least some, if not a lot of ways, I've come to the conclusion that, even though it should be inconsequential--a woman as president--it will, quite likely, tear the nation apart.

I was speaking with an older, white friend last evening--and I mention his color because it does, in fact, matter--and mind you, he's beyond Right Wing, he's that far out there, and the anger and invective that came from his mouth at the mention of Hillary Clinton as next president of the nation was extremely strong and swift.

I think, for these people, quite likely a great deal of them, they feel or have felt that the election of the first black as president, Barack Obama, of course, was an aberration, whether they think the election was stolen or that he was put in there by some Left Wing cabal or the "Illuminati" or whatever. They'd like to get away from that aberration, naturally, in this line of thought, and getting back to some man--nearly any man but preferably, again, of course, a Republican, first but just ANY man would be accepted and an improvement, even if he's a Librul, God forbid.

Going from, first, a black man--a Kenyan, at that, they think--to a woman, THAT woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton--will just be continuing the nightmare for these people. Sure, it would do wonders for Fox "News" and Rush "Porkulus" Limbaugh and Bill O'Really and Glen Beck and Mike "Huckster" Huckabee and all the haters but with both their hate and anger, I believe they may well come to the conclusion, for all their hysterical but deeply held beliefs and "reasons", that we, America and Americans, really are "going to hell" and Hillary Clinton as president, if even for only 4 years would be beyond the pale.  It would be too far. It would be too much. For them, anyway.

Forget that, as I said above, you'd think and hope that it's inconsequential that she happens to be female. Forget the historic factor of, not just finally, finally, as a nation, having our first female elected president or that she would be, in fact, also following the first elected black president and forget that there would also, at the same time, be a former president as sitting "First Man" in the White House. Forget all that, sweep that aside, monumental as it would all be.

The fact is, Ms. Clinton has a good to great shot at being the next president of this country.  Naturally, it's a long, long way from November, 2016 politically but it is coming up on the time horizon very quickly, nonetheless. The race has clearly already begun, for that matter. The positioning for the job began at least months ago.

The possibilities and likelihoods of all this for the nation is both exciting and scary, all at once.

These are fascinating times in which we live.

I could go for a bit less "fascinating", however.

Other nations can have a female leader for their countries.

We Americans just don't seem to be that intelligent, mature or open-minded to it yet.  We aren't ready.

I'd love to be wrong about that.

Quote of the day

Whither now?

I've thought for a long time that the "turning point" for us, the United States of America, was John F. Kennedy's assassination. A long time.

It's not that it has anything to do with me, of course, and my generation at all. I've thought that, in a much larger sense, a historical sense, that it was at that point that we were no longer the naive, well-intentioned people we were, up to that point. I don't think I'm being naive here, either.

And ever since then, through the 70's, 80's, 90's up to today, it seems we've been going downhill, as a nation.

It was after that that Jack's brother was also killed, then Martin Luther King, and they were both intelligent, strong people who wanted us all to be better--to be a better people--to be the people we could be.

Then there was Milhouse (the lying scumbag), and a brief window of time with a weak follow-up President. After that, a weak one-termer who, again, wanted us to be better people but he got caught up in minutiea of his Presidency (carrying his own bags, for God's sake) that he didn't get to the important matter of his own work. Besides, we didn't want to save energy, anyway.

Then 8 long years of an affable idiot whom way too many people loved--and who almost wrecked us.

A dolt to follow him but who, unlike his son, kept us out of Iraq.

Then 8 important, good years by a man who couldn't keep himself in his pants.

That brings us to now to this nearly fatal time with a self-absorbed man of small imagination, organization and strength who, along with his friends, is also long on greed.

So we come to a point in time where the dollar is at record lows, energy at record highs and we've seemingly lost nearly all control we ever might have had.

And the issue, now, comes to this: if a barrel of oil is pegged to the euro soon--again, God forbid--you may mark it down in any history book to come, that it was at that exact point in time at which the United States became the Britain of a new world order. In short, a second-rate power.

May this not happen anytime soon, if ever.

(Be sure to look below at a great "Zippy the Pinhead" comic from yesterday and some new pictures).