The New Yorker has an excellent portrait of MSNBC’s Keith Olberman. Olberman’s show “Countdown” has developed as a reality based news show that counters the bloviation emanating from Fox News’ biggest gasbag Bill O’Reilly. Agree or disagree with him, Olberman will tell you what he thinks, and his leftward perspective just really pisses off BillO, Rush, Hannity, Coulter, Ingraham (whom he dated at one point), Coulter, Malkin, and all the rest of the far right yakkers. I don’t think anyone scares him, and his Special Comments are becoming one of my favorite collections.

Singin: dont worry bout a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin: dont worry (dont worry) bout a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right!

“Three Little Birds” – Bob Marley

Long before everyone heard this in “I am Legend“, Bob Marley was preaching revolution and peace through music. I’ve owned this song, and the landmark album it comes on – “Exodus“ - on vinyl, eight track, cassette, CD, and MP3. You really should have a copy.

First of all, I’m neither democrat nor republican. I actually lean Libertarian, but they’ve got to clean out the whacko (Bob Barr? Really?) wing first. Second, I’m a veteran of the US Navy submarine service, sailing 7 ballistic missile deterrent patrols during the height of the cold war. Third, I’ve been accused by some of being politically naive because I tend to be an idealist. But if you don’t aim high you can’t expect anything to ever get better. This short and very incomplete description brings me to my topic – who I think should be our next president, and why.

Wait – first some news from the past week:

Rachael Ray wears a terrorist scarf.

Barack and Michele Obama give each other a secret terrorist fist bump on the night he wins the democratic nomination for president.

Fox News smears Michele Obama - goes racist already, or are they just showing their incredible stupidity already? It is Michelle Malkin after all.

John McCain says it’s “not too important” when the troops in Iraq come home.

This is “politics” in America today – this is how we choose the leader of the free world. This is what the greatest experiment in government in the history of the world has become:

We as a country have spent the last 7.5 years living in fear of the “terrorists.” Fight them over there or we’ll have to fight them over here. Code orange security alerts, strip searches in airports, loss of civil liberties, warrantless domestic spying and monitoring, an endless war started through macho bullshit posturing and narcissism on a collosal scale, lies at the highest levels of government, economic chaos, the near loss of one of the great cities of this country, and blatant disregard for the Constitution and for the will of the citizens of the United States.

This is not the country I grew up in, and not the country I volunteered to protect and not the country I served with pride. The power of government and the laws of the land have been twisted and perverted to be almost unrecognizable. We’ve lost the respect of the world for ego and for oil. The ego was served and we now pay 8 times more for oil than we did only 5 years ago. Our neighbors have to choose between paying for their food and paying for their medicine, between food for their kids and gas for their car so they can go to work to pay the rent. The soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and guardsmen who protect us need foodstamps to support their family they don’t get to see because we keep them in Iraq for  – well we don’t really know why do we. Over 4000 of them will never come home, except in a box. And when those that can do come home wounded, maimed, or emotionally damaged we cast them aside, we can always get more.

This is not the world I grew up in. Our children will be the first generation of Americans whose standard of living will be lower than their parents, no matter what they do. Our schools teach dogma and tests instead of developing skills. The air we breathe is increasinglytoxic, the sun which provides for life is increasingly deadly to people, there are chemicals in our food that do god knows what to our bodies. Hundreds of species of animals and insects and plants disappear forever every day. Trees and greenfields disappear, concrete and steel buildings take their place. People are homeless in cities that are building condominiums that sell for 5 million dollars! And our government watches it all, encourages it all – at what price, at what price?

It has to stop, it has to change. We all know what’s wrong, but our governement has thrown so much shit up in the air to confuse us and scare us that we can’t see the way through to solve the problems. None of it is easy, it requires honesty, sacrifice, and willingness to compromise. The way our country is run has to change. That by itself is a huge problem, and not one regular citizens can do anything about right? WRONG – we can solve that problem by selecting the right person to lead our country in November.

The choices couldn’t be clearer – An older man who’s been inside the government that got us here for the last 30 years, or the relatively inexperienced newcomer who somehow has inspired millions of people to hope first, and work to make things better second. Millions of words will be written and spoken about why one is better than the other. You can watch tv, listen to the radio, read the paper or surf the net and find any reason you want to vote for one or the other, or against one or the other.  

But it’s really not more complicated than this in my mind – the old way with the old guy, or a new way with a new guy.

Given where we are, I’ll take my chances with the new guy.

“One voice can change a room. And if one voice can change a room it can change a city. And if it can change a city it can change a state. And if it can change a state it can change a nation. And if it can change a nation it can change the world. One voice can change the world”

From Barack Obama’s speech at the Corn Palace in South Dakota June 3, 2008. If you’re impatient fast forward to the 8:00 mark and watch/listen to the last 3 minutes.