corrente

My, my, a potent Achilles heel uncovered, and while I was gone and Xan and Lambert already hit on the topic. Synchronicity. The ditches here got filled with brush and rocks and muck with the recent rain, and it was backing up onto the road, so one of the neighbors called and asked if I would help clear it out. Now, this guy is not one I have much truck with, because he’s a straight Republican ticket voter and usually we confine our brief and very sporadic conversations to a simple request for help or loan of a tool, how’s the family, or something. Try to avoid politics and religion to maintain the peace, not always successfully. 2000 was especially ugly. So I figured that would be the pattern today, too. And so it was, talk of the weather, until he mentioned his mother, who is a 75-year-old diabetic, and I asked if she’d had her flu shot. That’s when it got interesting. He said no, the clinic in town had said there wasn’t any. I said, well, that’s bad, huh? A couple of years ago the flu had almost killed her. He’s diabetic, too, and so is one of his children. He said, yeah, it was bad, and he couldn’t understand how the USA, such a great country, could run out of flu vaccine. I noted that Bush had told everyone not to worry; he hadn’t gotten a flu shot, either. And I couldn’t resist. I also noted that stem cell research that might one day stop diabetes was also off the table. He got a pissed off look on his face, and I figured he was about to unload a vigorous defense of Glorious Leader. But, no. He looked at the sky instead of me and said, “I know that. And I don’t like it. I’ve been thinking about it for awhile, and now this flu thing’s really pissed me off. It happened on his watch, and he doesn’t seem to care. I’m thinking real hard about voting for someone else this time.” I almost lost my teeth, but didn’t say anything (Don’t gloat! don’t gloat! He didn’t say Kerry, but he didn’t NOT say it, either). I just said, “Yeah.” And we left it there and finished clearing out the ditch.

Y’know, I had noticed that he didn’t have a poster or yard sign up this year. No bumper sticker, either. Figured it was just an oversight.

Of course, all of this might not make any difference, at least in Florida: Fla. sets new rule on touch-screen recounts

For the last few months, me and a friend have been snail-mailing quotes to each other, the only rule being that each one should be more than 100 years old and be applicable to current politics. Here’s the cream of the crop so far:

Plutarch’s Fabius says that “It is not an inglorious thing to have fear for the safety of our country, but to be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation, shows a man unfit to hold such an office, which, by such conduct, he makes the slave of those whose errors it is his business to control.”

Sounds like someone in power now, making the office of the president the slave of corporate greed.

Or J.J. Rousseau in Political Economy: “A fool, if he be obeyed, may punish crimes as well as another, but the true statesman is he who knows how to prevent them.”

Prevention, not preemptive punishment.

Ralph Waldo: “Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days.”

Or that He and His cronies can live in comfort until the Rapture, at least.

Me, I just finished the last of my followup calls, and I’m off for a taste of whiskey to wash the taste of the “news” from the SCLM out of my mouth. Anybody got any better quotes or other news from the streets (and unpaved roads)?