It's not the State of the Union -- it's the state of the deal. Meaning, the deal with respect to Obama, blogging, progressivism, activism, and the media. Who am I to do this, to sum this all up in a blog post, of all things?
I am not really anybody. I observe a lot -- about a lot of different things, not just politics and government, but that stuff, too.
I like writing. But that's pretty obvious.
I am a father, and that one is important. Indicators continue to show that we're going to leave a country for Emeline that's worse that the one I was born in to. I find this to be unacceptable. My daughter deserves better, and frankly, so do I. So do most of us.
I like Florida. I like living here. I think it is a place of natural beauty and wonder. I have done well for myself and my family here. Florida deserves better, too.
I do have experience in politics and government, and that helps inform my thinking, helps motivate me. But it's clearly not everything, it's not the only thing.
I say all of this because before I launch into this post, I want you to know where I'm coming from. I am trying to present the platform for a conversation as well as ideas because the truth is, I'm kind of desperate. This country and our world is heading to a place I don't like. I'd like to change that, or help change that, and I think our last, best shot rests with our current president, a capable progressive movement, and not just blogging, but the embrace of technology to do good across the globe.
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Politics in America is dying a bloody, gruesome death, for it has been mercilessly stabbed. Repeatedly.
This is a brazen crime, for everyone knows who the perpetrators are. They are among us, bold, cavalier.
They are the giant corporations of America, abetted by an almost criminally irresponsible Supreme Court.
And the murder weapon was money.
With the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court unsheathed the money blade and handed it right over to your newest friends and neighbors, maybe the dumbest interpretation of a "person" ever conceived by man: corporations.
You and General Electric -- one of the largest corporations in the world; a corporation whose CEO is a top White House advisor on job creation; a corporation which made billions in profit and paid exactly zero in taxes this past year (more on this in a minute) -- are exactly the same. Don't you feel on even footing?
This single Supreme Court ruling has at best changed politics in America, maybe forever.
Which leads me to my first ridiculously big idea to counter this horrible injustice: re-ignite our sense of civic engagement, the very thing which built this country to begin with.
I know. How? I've thought about this one a lot, and here's my really deep answer: I don't have a clue.
Nope, no clue. Just an anecdote, which perhaps serves as a hint. The common theme here is a growing division between the very wealthy and everyone else. The thing about everyone else is, that's most of us, and we cover a wide spectrum of folks.
I talk to a lot of different people. They come from all walks of life, different backgrounds, different belief systems, different ideas about their lives and our lives together in a community. They're on the left side of the political spectrum as well as the right. Sometimes they're barely there at all.
In fact, that's the thing: I notice that the more I talk to people, the more I note a general sense of civic dis-engagement. Why care about your politics if it is openly corrupt? Why care about making your state, your county, your town any better if a single class of individuals has a permanent lock on it? Why try?
When enough people give up, the result is what we have in Tallahassee, for example: an entrenched political class of Republicans who now have a veto-proof legislature and a guy in the governor's mansion who seems determined to wipe away the last vestiges of not just government, but community as well.
We need to re-engage folks, and I'm not talking about people like me. I'm talking about the people all around you. Theirs is the collective voice that matters, though it needs to learn to speak again. Corporations may have all the money, but our friends and neighbors -- you know, actual living, breathing human beings, actual people -- have the voice to change America. For now.
A broken national media apparatus may inform you that money is the Alpha and Omega of politics in America, but the truth is everyday Americans still hold the bulk of the power driving our politcal machinery.
Speaking of a broke-down national media, I am reminded of my second deal...
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No reasonable person even casually observing politics today thinks that the media we have now is doing what it is supposed to be doing. And I include Republicans in that analysis (feel free to make all the "reasonable person" cracks you want...). Talk to a Republican. They'll tell you that all that is out there for them is FOX News.
Disturbing, I know. But think about it -- liberals and conservatives are thinking the same thing, just coming to different conclusions.
There is good news here, though: media, like politics, is dying, and may actually be further along in that process that you think. Media as we know it is in its death throes.
This is a good thing. Pretty much.
And so the idea here is not so much an idea as an admonition to America: let's move this mercy killing along by cutting the crap. End the nonsense. Stop the bullshit.
How long was the Charlie Sheen deal? I don't really know, because I don't watch TV, and I managed to successfully avoid the whole spectacle on the Internet. It took the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to avert our attention.
That is shameful.
I have every belief that Emeline will consume news differently than I did, and still do. In fact, I'm counting on it. If not, our media experiment will truly have failed.
The trick is, bloggers and new media experts must stay vigilant. We must constantly innovate, drive ahead. I wrote a little bit about Katie Couric and the Today Show on Friday. Katie is not the face of news delivery in the future.
I suspect this is commonly known in the world of what they call mainstream media, the old world of TV news and newspapers. It's why the media consolidation is what it is today, which just a small handful of companies owning most of the media outlets. It'd be a lot more frightening if there weren't a more reasonable alternative.
That reasonable alternative needs to stay fresh, exciting, and accurate in order to us to move forward, not back (the HuffingtonPost, for example, has failed in this regard, at least in my view).
Speaking of the HuffingtonPost, it's deal number three...
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True story: I literally went from a fawning piece in the HuffingtonPost in which the writer unforgivably shamed herself by verbally drooling all over Obama, to a blog that wants me to sign a petition to "stop the inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning" in a box near the top of the page, because, you know, Barack Obama is personally holding an acetylene torch under Manning's scrotum.
Yes, I deliberately went from one to the other so I could write that sentence. Yes, I don't much care for Firedoglake (never have; sorry, I just don't). Yes, I'm down on HuffingtonPost these days. Yes, I was insistent on presenting you the image of a torch and scrotum.
I'm painting something of a picture which has relevance to another idea down-post, but for now, go with me on this idea: if we want to make any progress at all in this country, if we want to at least tread water, we ought to at least agree that President Obama needs to be re-elected in 2012.
And Democrats should really take back the House of Representatives.
Before I get to the Big Idea on how that's done, let me say that I think at this early stage that his re-election looks pretty good. The Republicans are surprisingly sloppy, disorganized, and there seems to be no clear front-runner. Rather, they seem to be making do with a handful of sort of sub-par front-runners, intermingled with whacktivists and weirdos. The road to a White House victory for them is muddy and overgrown, at best.
I do believe that Obama has done more in his first two years than anyone expected, and his charge over the next year-plus is largely to package it in such a way that the American people understand it, feel good about it, and want more of it.
That said, it's very early and a lot can change -- fast. The economy has been slow to recover. There's this deal in Libya that is anything but clear. Obama has faced challenges in Afghanistan, as well as Iraq -- as well as across the globe, for that matter. The BP oil spill has left lasting scars which, deserved or not, may never heal.
And so the best any smart political person could say right now is the guy has a pretty good shot, but nothing is a lock.
So here's the big idea: lock up the victory, right now. I'm talking landslide, too. This is, like, Reagan '84 (with due respect to the late Geraldine Ferraro, who was a hero and a pioneer).
How? Punish the goddam crooks who fleeced the American public and caused the global financial meltdown.
I am convinced that this is the single thing Obama could do to win re-election.
Let me be very clear: there is almost never any one thing a candidate for any office can do to win that office (conversely, there are a ton of singular things you can do to lose). Maybe -- maybe -- if you save a drowning puppy while thwarting a bank robbery during a Mom's Apple Pie tasting on the Fourth of July. Even then, the cat people will probably be pissed at you.
Matt Taibbi has really been a voice of reason and a kind of American conscience on this issue.
Whether you think Obama is fantastic, or whether you think he's a war criminal, this one has confounded everyone. I challenge you to find a person who has not in some way been adversely affected by the housing market bust and recession. Once again, it does not matter the political stripe -- people across the board have been hurt terribly. And like the Supreme Court and the corporations in our earlier deal, this one has very clear perpetrators as well: the bastards of Wall Street.
I have to tell you, I've read quite a bit of Taibbi's work on this issue, as well as a lot of other stuff, and I just don't get it: why did Obama let these guys off the hook? I am not a lawyer, but from the point of view of crime and punishment, of justice, I really, really don't understand it.
And forgetting the justice angle (which should come first, of course), why wouldn't you pursue the prosecution of these crooks for political gain? I haven't seen any polling data, but I'd be willing to bet you the price of lunch that Wall Street traders are the least popular people in America, second only behind Congress, maybe.
All I can really do here is ask progressives and liberals to take up this cause, though I strongly suspect it will be as futile as prosecuting Bush-era advisors for war crimes.
It's a real shame, too, because having some of these billionaire bozos do a perp walk to the courthouse would make for good campaign material. Who'd run against that?
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My last big deal is going to seem like a non sequitur.
Here's the deal. We need to rebuild America. Roads are crumbling. Bridges are in the danger zone. Our buildings need to be made LEED compliant, need to go green. We need innovators to think about rebuilding an already aging electric grid to accomodate electric cars.
Sure, that's all fraught with dangerous politics. Florida's governor just turned away high-speed rail, as did other states, for no other reason than to make a political point. I undertsand there will be politics when you talk about spending money at home -- but that is exactly my point.
And so how do I propose to get started on this deal? Where is that money for fixing roads and bridges and building the new kinds of buildings and trains and places we need to make America great -- and safe -- for my daughter?
We need to stop the endless war. 
Now.
Although I am an advocate for force in the name of humanitarian aid, and though I believe Libya may meet this early (and very general) criteria, I have serious questions going forward.
I learned my lesson with Afghanistan, and certainly with Iraq -- as should we all.
We are stretched too thin abroad, at least militarily. You don't need to be a military strategist to see this. It is as plain as day.
When we have ostensibly serious conversations ignited by the likes of the tea partiers about cutting NPR funding in order to save money, I cringe. NPR? Honestly?
This is nonsense. Not one single person -- from President Obama to General Petraeus to the very last private to a tea partier to the hippie peace activist I know from college -- can tell me what business we have keeping one single soldier in Iraq. I credit Obama with drawing down troops there.
Draw them all down.
Then have them work on bridges and secure ports here in America (metaphorically, anyway).
A lot of my more liberal friends may be taken by my new position on war. I want to be clear: I want it all done.
All of it. If for no other reason than I'm over it. Iraq: done. Afghanistan: done. Libya: seriously, you've got like this week, and then done.
We have been at war since 2001. I'm tired of war. I don't want war. I don't even know why we're at war, and I don't think most people do, either.
What I do know is there's a jobs crisis here in America, and the billions we're flushing into the toilet by way of the Middle East and North Africa could go towards a real stimulus that'd put people to work within a year -- maybe six months.
Restart the Civilian Conservation Corps. Get people working again building America. We've killed enough people on the other side of the world, and that didn't turn out to be much of a jobs program.
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I woke up the other day, stumbled out of bed, and took a look at my daughter, eating her breakfast. She's nearly 14 months old, now, not at all a baby anymore. The time is going by quickly, and I feel a sense of urgency with respect to making the world a better place for her.
We have a lot of work to do, and there's no time to lose. For the sake of all of us.
