The friggin election

You may well ask, gee, uh, Bruce, what's with the fashionable cynicism regarding the election? The answer is well put by Scott Ritter in his report "Iraq's Tragic Future":

The continued ambivalence of the American population as a whole toward the war in Iraq, perhaps best manifested by the superficiality of the slogan “Support the Troops,” all the while remaining ignorant of what the troops are actually doing, has led to a similar amnesia among politicians all too willing to allow themselves to seek political advantage at the expense of American life and treasure. January 2008 cost the United States nearly 40 lives in Iraq. The current military budget is unprecedented in its size, and doesn’t even come close to paying for ongoing military operations in Iraq. The war in Iraq has bankrupted Americans morally and fiscally, and yet the American public continues to shake the hands of aspiring politicians who ignore Iraq, pretending that the blood which soaks the hands of these political aspirants hasn’t stained their own. In the sick kabuki dance that is American politics, this refusal to call a spade a spade is deserving of little more than disdain and sorrow.

Nothing has changed since the 2004 election, which centered on a farcial debate on "mistakes" and mismanagement of our ongoing war crime.

The people who don't participate in the sick kabuki dance -- Gravel, Paul, and Kucinich come to mind -- are marginalized and ridiculed. The rest on the so-called left are either kidding themselves, or are ten times more cynical than I am. If you know the war is a lie and that AIPAC controls our politicians, and you say nothing and participate in the charade anyway, as does the supposed leading light left standing, Barack Obama, you are no better than Bush and Cheney. Or you are a fool who thinks you can change things by playing on their court. It may be a bit of both. It's a sad spectacle, either way.