Puffin’s Place

Next to having a terrific new president, one of the nicest things is to find a cell phone salesman from Wales who has a gorgeous voice and is appreciated by the Britain’s Got Talent audience and judges.

Check this out. Paul Potts.

What do you think?

Follow his career here.

• Some of those “failed” firms to which we taxpayers have given billions are, in turn, handing millions over as bonuses to departing administrators? I guess the appropriate mantra is: where Congress lacks the foresight to impose restraint, shame is inoperative.

• The media is treating Sarah Palin as if she is the oracle at Delphi! Brewing moose chili or centering chagrined Republican govs, she is holding forth in her typical regressive and incoherent manner. Her thoughts on current issues are being breathlessly reported. What on earth gives?

• The auto industry makes environmentally unfriendly cars and loses to the Asian manufacturers. And then they ask us to give them money for the cars we refused to buy.

• The Bush Administration seems disinterested in letting us know where this money is going. I darkly suspect that Brown & Root will soon purchase an entire country. If it has not already.

• Obama’s ethics rules (see change.gov) actually preclude lobby folk from working on the transition and lobbying simultaneously. annus mirabilis.

• Weird civility or some political machination keeps silly Joe Lieberman a committee chair and a member of the Democrat party. Personally, I would like to see him kicked down the Capital steps. Yet another reason my name was on no ballots.

There were days in the past two years that I thought never to be able to write that header.

I expect to know every day and every week that Obama is telling us as much as it is legitimate for us to know. I expect to never wonder what theft-of-freedom is going on at the Naval Observatory or in the Oval Office or anywhere. I expect to continue to be proud to be part of a country that sorted out the slime from the substance and elected the most thoughtful and best person. I expect to often read the change.gov site and continue to make comments there. And I expect I will continue to smile a lot.

Policy, speed, success, and all those others hostages to fortune I entrust to the Pres and his administration. It is now safe to do so.

If you’ve not yet visited our President-elect’s new website, change.gov, take a look.

How astonishing is it that we have an incoming pres that has an actual interest in keeping the public informed! There is a place to tell your story in relation to the new administration, apply for a job, read a blog about events, and tons more. Hard for this old toad to comprehend that it has actually happened—we have a leader in the White House. Well, we will have on 1/20.

And, as you might guess, I am awash in regret that the media is now giving air to some movements asking the absurd question of whether whites need to fear an Obama administration. Good grief. Such questions and furor need mostly to be ignored. The paranoid will always be with us, but I lack understanding of why they also warrant national exposure. I can imagine the hell that would be raised with the past 40+ presidents, if malcontents had been whipping about wondering if African-Americans should be afraid. As the incoming president once said, “We are in the silly season.”

Fabo news from the election, One of the many admirable things about Obama’s campaign is that he ran as a man with a vision, not a Black man or Straight man or whatever. The media is busily undoing this leap forward with its endless self-congratulation that we have an African-American president.

If ever the “news” was designed to create an adversarial and racist climate, this is it. And all in  search of news, the sort that CNN et al confused with Anna Nicole Smith and such ilk.

The country has done a wonderful thing. More importantlyh, it has done a wise thing, Can we not individually be wise and treat the election for what it was—the selection of the best possible leader?

Remember the old story about the eager boy scout who drags the old lady across the street in his frenzy to do a good deed?

I’m thinking these days that the US might want to be a better friend to other countries than insisting on being the leader of the free world.”

The thought came to me today reading Robert Kagan’s column in the Washington Post, a lament which includes this:

Sober analysts such as Richard Haass acknowledge that the United States remains “the single most powerful entity in the world.” But he warns, “The United States cannot dominate, much less dictate, and expect that others will follow.” That is true. But when was it not? Was there ever a time when the United States could dominate, dictate and always have its way?

Kagan’s column laments the current allusions to America’s decline and solaces himself with the certainty that the American people will demand, even of a defeatist president, that the country remain the most important etc. etc.

i have never understood why this country must be “first” in all things. I fail to endorse the notion that because we enjoy a democracy—or did, before Bush, Cheyney, Rumsfeld, et. al—we must insist that every country in the world duplicate our government. When will we once again attempt just to be friends with other countries. Leadership, if it is to come at all, will come when we simply ARE what some other country aspires to be/have/represent.

Palin and McCain will be certain I am not patriotic. So be it. I would love us more if we were not bullies.

Just heard Elizabeth Dole’s ad calling her competition “godless.” I am a North Carolinian, and Elizabeth Dole is beyond a cipher. She is something like 93rd on the list of competent senators. She is the most empty of the “southern woman” stereotypes, and except for the raised brake light in cars from long ago during her stint as Transportation Secretary, she has done nothing at all to advance to country or its people.

For her to suddenly appear with a series of ads–one of which takes Kay Hagen’s comments badly out of context and the recent one which prattles about the godless–is grotesque.

And my question is, why are we not impeaching public figures who play the god card? Have they not read the Constitution? Is it now coin of the republic to cast aspersions on another’s religion, or disinterest in same?

These are interesting times. If we do not soon put some folks capable of thought into positions of power, consider how attractive Canada will become. And consider how diminished will become this country, once the world’s ideal. We do not need to be the world’s ideal, but, by god, we do need to become again a country where one can breathe, think, dream, and realize something more than power and money.

These days, I am so hyper about the election and fear that Obama will not win thanks to last-minute voter maneuvers by the Repubs–skilled after 8 years of it. Can not really gather a complete thought that is fresh. But must give a nod of regard and thanks to the Clintons for their support of Obama. It is nice to see the C’s and the O’s pull the party together and exhibit the human grace necessary to give up grudges.

McCain in selecting Palin as a running mate has created a horrific frankenstein. This mindless clothes hanger actually thinks she has the qualifications to be president. God help us, she may birth generations of droids who think $150,000 worth of clothes, a few speechwriters, and the troops of god can create a statesperson from an empty bra.

I’ve never been a believer or one interested in god or gods, but I do wonder why those who are assume that a supreme being is incapable of or disinterested in thought. and who would settle for such a divinity! eek.

Go vote.

(With thanks to Beth Morgan for the heads-up.)