Breaking the Mold

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We've seen a lot of breaking the mold of late...Dara Torres, Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, the Japanese women's softball team....

So it was a head-scratching moment for me when a CNN newsreader expressed bewilderment to Jessica Yellin, on location in Chicago, about why Obama has not yet announced his veep choice. Why on a Saturday...that's just not doooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnne.

Yes, I know she was probably just reciting in her best dumbed-down persona what some idiot producer thought would be a clever script-take, but come on...

Maybe it's, you know, part of a well-thought-out plan...kind of like the campaign we've been seeing from the Obama folks. Not a half-cocked, half-baked, knee-jerk, hair-trigger overreaction to some external event. Ya think?

So will it be Biden? Earlier this week in Fargo, that was Senator Dorgan's prediction. The media buzz is certainly building in that direction. The video of his family joining him at his home in Delaware points that way.

Hey guys, ever think it's just a fare-well gathering for Biden's son before he ships out to Iraq?
jes kiddin'....

Maybe it's time to start searchin' out those Irish tartan patterns. I'm thinkin' it'll be Biden.

But Barack can take whatever time he wants, in whatever order he wants to take it, because the buildup of the veepstakes is just one more example of how Obama is breaking the mold.

And that's what champions do.
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Psssst, Pentagon: how 'bout you guys doin' a little mold breakin', too, and clean up those barracks our troops are recuperating in at Fort Sill and elsewhere. That would be real military honor.

And we've seen enough of the Faux.
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Dog Tired

There’s a hurry-up sense of urgency to living these days. And yet, we are dog tired. Imagine how tired the political candidates and their teams must be. Not the ones that moved to New Hampshire, but the ones who left Iowa…and headed home.

We tip our hat this morning for the candidates who withdrew from the campaign after the Iowa caucuses. Senator Dodd, Senator Biden, especially, we salute and honor your effort.

We’ve started this campaign season way early, like trying to plant seed corn and tomato plants while there’s still snow on the ground. What will come of this year’s crop? That’s still to play out. A good crop’s going to take tending, by all of us.

But for now, we have this pair of WOGs—wise ol’ guys—who’ve ended their campaigns.

When Mr. Sunshine and his partner started up an independent business some years ago, they brought four decades between ’em of experience…and yet, because they were in new territory, they recognized they had much to learn and they found their own WOGs to help grow their business, to provide an institutional memory to draw on—like a sweet spring of endless water.

The current White House promised it would have its team of WOGs, too.

But just because you’re old, or just because you’re experienced, doesn’t mean you have the right kind of experience or agenda to offer.

COGs, not WOGs, have been rulin’ the land for the past seven years, and we must demand better. And we can’t just be better ourselves so we are not hypocrites demanding of others what we protest, oh, we’re too tired, or too busy, or it’s just one o’me, or…. We must do better.

Yesterday I dropped by a League of Women Voters event here in Prairie Country, invited, testing the waters. The professor emeritus spoke about a dry subject. Initiatives, referendums, recall. Out here we take ’em for granted, most every state has ’em. Pluses and minuses have they. And unintended consequences, sometimes. But they are the last line of defense for the common good. Born of an earlier time when wretched excess and corruption reigned and needed reining-in.

This WOG professor also spoke of democracy. More than voting, says he. And that’s the sum of it. Democracy is not for the faint of heart or shirker. It’s for the worker, if we’ll do it.

He shared a reminiscence of teaching in Texas and getting in a wee bit o’trouble for using a textbook that included an explanation of the American Economic System as capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.

The more things change…the more they stay the same? Only if we let them. Only if we say we’re too dog-tired, let someone else do it. But we tried that. And we got COGs, not WOGs. Cheerleaders and wordspinners, not players, not quarterbacks. Not workers.

We’re starting to put things to rights again. Paulose out in Minnesota, Magill in…hurray for a son of Fargo. Rummy’s gone, Greenbucks, too…but the wreckage of their hand still weighs on the military, on the economy that leaves far too many have-not’s and once-had’s behind so the have-more’s can grab more and dance while wounded soldiers languish in their pain.

There’s much to be done for a new president, yes. But there’s much to be done right now. In the meantime. And so we call out to Senators Dodd and Biden…serve us well as only you are in a place to do. We need your wisdom, your institutional memory, your vigor that led you to seek the highest office. We are all dog-tired of the last seven years, but there’s still a year to go, and we can’t afford to stand by and let things get worse.

WOGs, lead on…and we will have your backs, because democracy is more than just voting. It is discussion, deliberation, interacting, reflecting, said Plato…every thing this administration has disdained is the best of what democracy must be.

This president said early on he didn’t have a problem with dictatorship as long as he got to be dictator. And he did.

Now, dog-tired as we are, we must re-establish the democracy we so sorely need, and we need every WOG we’ve got to do it.