Good Mornin' America, How Are Ya?

Well here we go. You buys your ticket and you takes your chances. A musical-themed carnival on the night before one of what I perceive as the most important elections my life has intersected. I hope you are as pumped and tuned-in as I am.

Well I'm out here on my own
Followin' a star
Askin' on my knees, for some direction, please
And God, you know that's hard

Cause I'm such a stubborn man
Stubborn as a mule
Even though I struggle some, I believe a change will come
And I hear you love a fool
(John Hiatt: Is Anybody There?)

I'm wired into Hiatt's "Pirate Radio" while contemplating Dar Williams' "Are You Out There":

Are you out there can you hear this
Jimmy Olson, Johnny Memphis
I was out there listening all the time
And though the static walls surround me
You were out there and you found me
I was out there listening all the time

What's the future, who will choose it
Politics of love and music
Underdogs who turn the table
Indie versus major labels
There's so much to see through
Like our parents do more drugs than we do

The reality is we are all "Sitting Here in Limbo." They're certainly putting up resistance but I know our faith will lead us on (that's Jimmy Cliff I've put in your ear there - from The Harder They Come soundtrack of course). "Like a bird without a song"? - no way! I'm "Waiting for the tide to flow"!!

While I find the image of Pete Townshend on his knees to pray (sounds familiar, ehh?) a bit jarring, it's worth a grapple. I prefer to envision a classic windmill or a wild Mods versus Rockers conflict, but what the hey. (In the spirit of whatever it takes.) And Mr. Lightfoot tells us We Are Beautiful, just to put a bow on it.

God is great, God is good
He guards your neighborhood
Though it's generally understood
Not quite the way you would
You try to take the slack
Stay away and watch his back
But something happens every now and then
And someone breaks into the promised land

Ah boy boy
This world is not your toy
This world is long on hunger
This world is short on joy
(J. Browne: Soldier of Plenty)

As for me, I knew I would not be a decent value-added consultant to my clients tomorrow. I may not be an ace at GOTV calls either, based on chronic "phone-phobia" and insights from some hours of volunteer time with MoveOn in the past few weeks. But we'll see about that. Out Here in the Fields, as they say. It's Only Teenage Wasteland.

Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don't steal, don't lift
Twenty years of schoolin'
And they put you on the day shift
(Dylan: Subterranean Homesick Blues)

But I am filled with hope. I was moved by the YouTube link I found at FireDog a while back to Kermit's endearing "Rainbow Connection." That tune gets me misty every time, much like "Over the Rainbow." Maybe there's a pattern here?

"Oh they tell me of an uncloudy day!" That's Willie stopping by. But then where would we find a rainbow? No problemo - he does that number too.

I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war
(J. Browne: Lives in the Balance)

I know you are all conscientious voters and doubtless the sort to assure that the community around you are likewise. I.e. the sorts of folks who have the consternation meter pegged by this time, wondering how in the hell we got here. When did we get to as Steve Earle calls it talking about "ashes to ashes and dust to dust"? On the same disk he does get around to this:

I woke up this mornin' and none of the news was good
Death machines were rumblin' 'cross the ground where Jesus stood
And the man on my TV told me that it had always been that way
And there was nothin' anyone could do or say

And I almost listened to him
Yeah I almost lost my mind
Then I regained my senses again
And looked into my heart to find

That I believe that one fine day all the children of Abraham
Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem.
(S. Earle: Jerusalem)

It was bittersweet today to find that the New York Times has for a week relaxed their "select" barbwire around the most interesting of their editorial writers and hence be reminded what we have been (mostly) missing. Courtesy of that wire-clipping, here's Mr. Krugman:

President Bush isn’t on the ballot tomorrow. But this election is, nonetheless, all about him. The question is whether voters will pry his fingers loose from at least some of the levers of power, thereby limiting the damage he can inflict in his two remaining years in office.

There are still some people urging Mr. Bush to change course. For example, a scathing editorial published today by The Military Times, which calls on Mr. Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld, declares that “this is not about the midterm elections.” But the editorial’s authors surely know better than that. Mr. Bush won’t fire Mr. Rumsfeld; he won’t change strategy in Iraq; he won’t change course at all, unless Congress forces him to.

At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush’s character. To put it bluntly, he’s an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood — and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all of his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself “pleased with the progress we’re making” in Iraq.

In other words, he’s the sort of man who should never have been put in a position of authority, let alone been given the kind of unquestioned power, free from normal checks and balances, that he was granted after 9/11. But he was, alas, given that power, as well as a prolonged free ride from much of the news media.

The results have been predictably disastrous. The nightmare in Iraq is only part of the story. In time, the degradation of the federal government by rampant cronyism — almost every part of the executive branch I know anything about, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been FEMAfied — may come to be seen as an equally serious blow to America’s future.

And it should be a matter of intense national shame that Mr. Bush has quietly abandoned his fine promises to New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast.

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Just imagine, then, what he’ll do if faced with demands for information from, say, Congressional Democrats investigating war profiteering, which seems to have been rampant. Actually, we don’t have to imagine: a White House strategist has already told Time magazine that the administration plans a “cataclysmic fight to the death” if Democrats in Congress try to exercise their right to issue subpoenas — which is one heck of a metaphor, given Mr. Bush’s history of getting American service members trapped in cataclysmic fights where the deaths are anything but metaphors.

But here’s the thing: no matter how hard the Bush administration may try to ignore the constitutional division of power, Mr. Bush’s ability to make deadly mistakes has rested in part on G.O.P. control of Congress. That’s why many Americans, myself included, will breathe a lot easier if one-party rule ends tomorrow.

Just remember: you can get it if you really want. And let's get together before we get much older.

We don't get fooled again.