President Obama has achieved the near-impossible - bringing sensible (and humane) health care to most Americans. A knife-edge and teeth-chattering down-to-the-wire House vote saw the Democrats just managing to do the right thing. Like in a wrestling match, the Republicans wore the ludicrous villain's mask and threw their bluster around like cheap seats. November may either see the good or bad guys thrown out like bums. For now, Obama has secured his place in history for a second time, and redeemed his first term. It's been 50 years coming, but this was worth the wait.
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
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I myself have come to lean more towards conservative tendencies. Not expected of someone like me, but what can I say, I came to my understanding honestly, slowly, carefully, methodically, and not merely as a knee-jerk reaction (not implying anything about your politics, whatever they may be by that statement, Todd).
Characterizing people's viewpoints, and by extension, politicians and the way they voted as evil or bad...this is ridiculous. I might even say I have more sympathy for people who characterize the people who voted yes to the bill as that. Why? Because there's a lot ordinary people who have not read the bill don't know about. Like the incredible lack of privacy that ordinary citizens now have because of the bill.
And the worst, in my point of view - and this is a pet issue of mine...it really is very, very important - is the how much the U.S. is now beholden to China with such incredibly expensive projects. The U.S. ought to have the power and the backup to be able to confront China, challenge China, or even attack China, if necessary. China is becoming a danger to the world. First Taiwan. And what next? California? I wonder if Dick Cheney was right about a lot of things (am I kidding? I wish I could answer that question affirmatively and promptly, but I can't!)
Wake up, people!