The range of illumination:

From here, " Now, Can We Prosecute Saddam's Unindicted Co-Conspirators?", thanks to the always provoking daiostraver:

Of the myriad crimes he committed against his subjects, international peace, and God's law, Saddam will swing for a 1982 massacre of 148 people in a Shi'ite community.

It was over a year after that atrocity that the incumbent Minister for Aggression Against Small Countries Donald Rumsfeld met with Saddam as an emissary of President Ronald Reagan.

It was after the crime for which Saddam faces the death penalty that the Reagan and Bush administrations, working in collaboration with Kissinger Associates and a shadowy network of financial cut-outs, aided Saddam's war effort against Iran, in which Iraq was the aggressor.

I know not all believe in voting as their engine of change. This is not an argument for you.


For those that do, even in the slightest manner, this vote today is crucial.
Oddly, I don't think it is so for the sake of a Democrat-controlled government.
It will be to tie a slight knot in the system as the hands will have to fight each other, thereby letting less get done by the government.
Which means less interference.

Markets tend to favor a divided government. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aDYCdrF2U2dc&refer=us |
http://usmarket.seekingalpha.com/article/18545 | http://henwood.blogspace.com/?p=4105
With the overwhelming reason being - less regulation is passed in general.

There will be a push for a careful re-examination of the Iraq debacle. As with my view on many things (e.g. welfare, the drug war, health care), my long term desired solution is not always an instant fix, but requires a process to get to that point, and this is no different. But in short, this has gone on for long enough, and I don't think there's a plan to fix it. The Democrats may not have a better idea, but a huge portion of this impetus for change has been the war...so they know something will have to change. This isn't going to be a landslide in any way. Let's stop fucking killing people, eh?

It will also require the so-called representatives of the people to take notice: some were sure of their positions for life, and now aren't so sure. Isn't that grand? They can see the torchlight through their windows, and your vote is a potential pike for their head.

Quite frankly, with all the sins of the Democrats (cowardice being closer to the top of the list, but including the panapplicable points of greed, corruption, and they probably sexually harrassed some pageboys, too) it comes down to - until something huge happens, one or the other will be in charge, and it is solidly a lesser of two evils. It means an opportunity to get the breathing room to enact change. It means that the points some find disagreeable: health care, welfare, education, culture, whatever... is largely (ostensibly) geared towards actually helping people. To paraphrase the ever-smart renwick, Since my tax money is going to be wasted for the time being, I'd much rather it go to helping people than killing them.

So, no, I don't believe any Democrat will be the change I want to see in the world.
But I do think that this presents an opportunity to wedge out the fundamentalist stranglehold that has turned all political dialogue into a false binarism, all questioning into treason and divided the pasture into sheep and goats.

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