Son of a Gun

--Falling Ifs, Matthew Heller

"You're a business owner, maybe,
and you're kind of pissed about Obama?
Take the bumper stickers off your car,
and no more sharing in the employee break room.
And no goddamn talking about the Rapture
ever, ever again.

"Are we clear? Because if you don't listen to me,
the only places we'll be competitive
are districts composed solely of people
who plan to shoot someone within the next 30 minutes
and actual Confederate veterans.   
Mostly northern Florida I guess."
--Karl Rove to the GOP: "Please, Please Stop Talking,
Goblinbooks 

 What [the Arab Spring] really means is
the empowerment of the Muslim Brotherhood
across the region
--Gerard de Villiers
 _________________________

Mr. Goblinbooks has a good sense of things in this neck o' the woods.

Let us talk about gun control here in the good ole Homeland.

So we're gonna do it: No more high-capacity magazines for civilians and ban assault rifles (even though they are not assault rifles).  The manufacturers will eliminate the flash suppressors, the bayonet lugs and the extendible stocks, and everything will be copacetic.  However, you will have the very same rifle, minus the bells and whistles -- what is euphemistically called a "Post-ban rifle".  Now we will all be much safer ... don't you feel better?

Meanwhile, after the love-fest, the United States still lurks near the bottom of the life expectancy scale among industrial nations, despite the fact we spend more for personal health care.  Removing bayonet lugs will not solve that problem.

We suffer tobacco-related death, aggressive and oblivious drivers, alcohol-related death and the myriad of death by stupidity but what do we do?  We focus on 10-round magazines and military look-alike rifles.  Perhaps this is because eliminating the stupid is a lot harder than regulating weapons.

And this is what passes for leadership in America.

Inconvenient Truth

Mr. Bush has turned a small number of radical groups
that hate America into a 10-foot tall existential monster
that dictates every move we make.
--"Republicans and our Enemies," Joe Biden

I learned our government must be strong
It's always right and never wrong!
Our leaders are the finest men
And we elect them again and again
--What Did you Learn in School Today? Tom Paxton

No people ever recognize their dictator
in advance. He never stands for election
on the platform of dictatorship.
He always represents himself as the instrument
[of] the Incorporated National Will
--Dorothy Thompson

For now we see through a glass, darkly
--1 Corinthians 13:12
_______________

While shop talk at Ranger usually involves counterinsurgency thinking and does not politick on behalf of any of the candidates, still Ranger is concerned with the '08 Presidential candidates and spends time pondering the vagaries of the campaign.

We have been impressed with the mediocrity of the pool of candidates, which has caused consternation about America's course. After some thought, Ranger concludes that the U.S. is going where it always goes -- the great middlin' course, as we embrace mediocrity in our political leaders.

When thinking of historical examples of Presidential greatness, one is brought to mind of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, and FDR. Honorable mentions go to Polk, Truman and perhaps LBJ. But there it is: six names jump out of the history books as great presidential exemplars.

So what does that leave us? That's right, 36 mediocre-to-middling and One Absolute Disaster (OAD) who have served as chief executives of this nation. One could take the scientific view and argue that like a supernova, we are now entering our contraction phase, with the OAD hastening the whittling down to size.

The law of averages and our profound middling tendencies say that our history will be fair-to-middling, all things considered. Pragmatically, we have had quite a few "up times," so we need some down to balance things out; regression towards the mean. We just wish it hadn't happened on our watch.

Obviously America gets the leaders it deserves, and Obama and McCain are what it boils down to in this critical election. Last week proves an example of this apothegm: lame duck George Bush is running around Europe on a farewell tour to cement his reputation, and all he can focus on is Iran.

Here is a news flash: America faces myriad issues of concern to our citizenry, and Iran is on the bottom of the list. We all know President Bush's weaknesses, and they are all overcome by events unless he bombs Iran before leaving office.

The real question Americans should be asking is: Will Obama or McCain address the real issues facing the U.S. citizen daily?