The first was the all-purpose sarcastic, “Har de har har har” (already discussed in this post and the comments section following).

The second was “Bounces off me and sticks to you,” a nifty way of deflecting all insults.

And the third was “It’s a free country!,” handy for simultaneously declaring patriotism while defending any questionable acts of the speaker.

The following tape, brought to us by Boston WTKK radio personality Michael Graham, features Massachusetts Governor (and Obama buddy) Deval Patrick, with an interesting variant on that third theme:

So, what did Patrick mean? Was he joking? Was he referring to something else, as Graham seems to think? Or was he revealing the anti-libertarian heart of the liberal mind, as in “Ah, if only we could shut people like Glenn Beck up, imprison them, and throw away the key?”

The reasons the Republicans rolled over is that they found out that they could fleece the public and get away with it. Democrats controlled most of the institutions in this country, so all they had to do was wave a little money in Republicans’ direction and say “you wanna’ get rich”?

Become a Washington insider and make yourself rich, be above the law. Insider trading, zoning code manipulation, voter fraud - hell anything you want to fill your pockets with cash - never having to worry about consequences.

Democrats will run the country into a brick wall at 200 mph.
Republicans will run the country into a brick wall at 150 mph.

Slight difference, same result.

Commenter “mike Mc.” replies:

The difference between R and D is between 150 and 200mph collisions. Very clever. Not. That’s cute. Sophomoric truly.

And wildly wrong.

And fundamentally its own disaster from about 5 different directions.

I’ve heard “ghost’s” comment, or something very much like it, many times before, on this and many other blogs. It says that essentially “there’s no difference, they’re all bums, choose your poison.”

It’s a sentiment that often fuels voter apathy. It’s a sentiment that can also fuel third-party enthusiasm. It’s a sentiment that lurks around the edges of the Tea Party movement. And it’s similar to the sentiment that—in another place and time—ended up leading to this dreadful result.

It’s the sentiment that was responsible for Ross Perot’s respectable showing in 1992, and therefore at least indirectly for Bill Clinton’s victory despite his getting less than 50% of the total. And therein lies the problem. If you really think there’s no difference between the two parties, or that it’s merely the difference between two different types of fatalities (as ghost indicates), then go right ahead and stay home, or vote for a fringe candidate. Because the most likely result of your actions will be to favor a candidate you despise.

And yes, if more people did those things, we’d probably have a chance of a third-party nominee actually winning an election (by plurality, not majority). But then we’d have had President Perot; does anyone really think that would have been a good thing? Not I, although it certainly would have been an interesting thing.

I believe that ghost’s real complaint is that power corrupts, and that government is an invitation to it. I agree. But I believe that a better way to attempt to counteract that phenomenon is to pay attention to the checks, balances, and limitations wisely written into our form of government by our founders, who were well aware (perhaps even more so than we) of the problem and its potential dimensions, and to work hard for the election of people who promise to do just that. And most of those people appear to be Republicans, although unfortunately not all Republicans (or even most of them) fit into that camp.

That leaves the question: are Republicans in general really all that different from Democrats in general? I agree with mike Mc. that the answer is, “Of course they are, and it matters.” But I’m with ghost707 in saying “but it hasn’t mattered enough, especially fiscally.”

Republicans have acted like Democrats-lite in recent years. But lite and heavy are two very different things, and right now we’re getting the full bore heavy Democrat treatment. I think the differences are readily apparent, part of which is the speed of the fiscal unraveling during the present administration. Another important difference involves foreign policy and the acceleration of the world’s perception of our weakness.

As I see it, what the Republicans did wrong in the early years of the twenty-first century involved the flaws and frustrations inherent in government itself, a slow bleed of integrity and an accretion of power and of corruption by money. Such imperfections seem to be part and parcel of all government—except for some ideal, Platonic one that exists only in our imaginations or legends. The remedy is not to opt out, it is to work for those who seem to be most resistant to such temptations, and to hope they continue to avoid them as long as possible, and then to toss them out as soon as they succumb.

[NOTE: for a graphic example, take HCR (please!). Does anyone think that were Republicans in charge they would have enacted something as dreadful as the current bill? Not even close. But we did get Bush’s much-criticized prescription drug bill in 2003 when they were (slightly, anyway), although I doubt very much that such a bill would have ever been passed by a Republican Congress in the teeth of an economy like the one we face today. Another problem is that when Republicans were in charge they accomplished little to fix the very real defects of our health insurance system, although they probably could have imposed some conservative solutions such as portability, which might indeed have improved the situation, both for us and for them.]

Although not the official beginning of fall—that doesn’t happen for about three weeks—it’s the real beginning of autumn in my book. And this despite the fact that it’s well into the nineties today where I live.

But when this time of year comes, my hands itch to clean up. Not the yard, but my closets and drawers and cupboards. Despite my best efforts, over time the stuff accrues, and I see that the metaphorical weeding must begin. And although I’m no hoarder, it still can be a wrench to make those decisions and toss things forever.

But how deeply satisfying, to roll out that drawer and actually be able to find what I’m looking for! To cart the detritus to Goodwill (I’ve given up on consignment stores; it’s never been worth the effort for the few piddling coins my goods seem to fetch.)

It’s a task which—unlike so many others, whose rewards remain more abstract and amorphous—offers instant and graphic gratification. And if it’s somewhat Sisyphean (not to mention Augean)—well then, it always feels so good to stand momentarily at the peak of that hill, with the illusion of a finished task.

Apparently, many of them believed their leaders when they said that the American public would learn to love HCR if it were passed—although why anyone would credit such as idea is beyond me. You can’t say the signs of voter anger and discontent weren’t obvious from the start, long before the bill was passed by a perverted legislative process that sickened the American people even more than the bill itself (which is saying something).

In fact, it was a little over a year ago, during the town hall meetings of summer, that the Congressional Democrats learned just how little the public thought of their HCR proposals. The anger of the energized crowds was visible and powerful, and it came from groups not usually given to public displays of rebellion. But most Democrats in Congress reacted by either ignoring or insulting their constituents, a course of action that is not usually considered the path to electoral victory.

So why should they be surprised now at the dismal polls? Maybe they’re just surprised at the extent of the gap that appears to have opened up. At least for now, the Republicans have sprinted to an “unprecedented” double-digit (51% vs. 41%) lead in the Gallup generic poll, for the first time since such polls were first taken in 1942.

[NOTE: See my previous post on the subject of the super-short haircut for women.]

I don’t know if I will. I’ve had a long and exhausting day already (over an hour of which I spent cooling my heels in the Motor Vehicle Bureau). Watching Obama orate is not my idea of relaxation.

I wonder why Obama is bothering to give this speech at all. I assume it’s a way to show support for the troops, and to underline the fact we’re on our way to getting out of Iraq more or less on schedule, a consummation devoutly to be wished for most Americans.

One thing we probably should not look for Obama to do: give credit to his predecessor, George Bush, whose support for the surge prevented the current president from having to oversee an ignominious helicopters-on-the-roof withdrawal a la Vietnam. Nor is Obama likely to acknowledge his own tenacious opposition to the surge policy from which he (and Iraq) now benefit.

Of course, what will happen over time to Iraq is anybody’s guess: functioning democracy, or the descent into chaos and tyranny?

But back to the speech. Much of the preview coverage tonight seems to feature the fact that the Oval Office has been redecorated (not at taxpayer expense, fortunately), and will have its television debut:

How stunningly drab and neutral. Ugh. His office is voting “present.”

The shortage of skilled workers is the No. 1 or No. 2 hiring challenge in six of the 10 biggest economies…Skilled trades were the top area of shortage in 10 of 17 European countries, according to the survey.

The short-term suggestion: importing workers from other countries. Long-term: encourage more people to go into the fields.

I’ve never understood this business of looking down on skilled laborers. I envied them, in a way. They comprehended the workings of mechanical objects, something I’m bad at. They never sat staring at an item like a camera, wondering how to open the little door in order to change the batteries, nor did they stand in frustrated puzzlement in some hotel bathroom at 3 in the morning, pushing the thingamagig that controlled the shower this way and that in a futile effort to find the magic combination of movements that would send the water coursing from the shower head.

What’s more, I had always heard that trades were survival skills, especially good in a situation such as the Depression (my parents had lived through that), in which such services might be traded for goods, and the ability to repair things and keep old machinery going was especially vital. Knowledge of skilled trades was also particularly valuable (and movable) during wartime, when refugeeing from conflict or persecution could become necessary. Those who survived World War II often did so by having such skills, instantly transferable and not requiring the acquisition of a new language.

Now, nearly everybody seems to want to go to college, although not everyone is suited for it. I’m saying that as someone who was suited for it, but never valued the ability overmuch, nor thought it made me better than someone who dealt in more concrete pursuits (such as, for example, concrete). Perhaps that’s because I grew up in a mostly blue collar community, and observed quite early on that the intelligentsia had no corner on intelligence or common sense.

As a migraineur myself, I have a bit of a personal interest. My migraines (like my mother’s before me, alas) are usually triggered by foods, especially my beloved chocolate, and peanuts; slip me a Reese’s peanut butter cup and you’d just about do me in.

My first migraine occurred at the age of ten, at summer camp. I didn’t know what it was, and I suffered mostly in silence. Shortly afterward my migraines went into hiding, only to return with a vengeance in my mid-forties. They featured zigzag lights and other seemingly groovy but ultimately unpleasant visual distortions, although fortunately the headache/nausea part tended to be mild for me—at least, as migraines go—upsetting and debilitating, but not completely disabling.

Not only do my mother and I have migraines, but they turn out to be triggered by the very same foods. And since neither of us knew about the others’ triggers until ours were already established, the power of suggestion was not a factor. Heredity almost certainly was, and I would bet almost anything that, if you were to study our DNA, that pesky rs1835740 the migraine researchers identified would be right there on the string.

But Obama and his party are also in a hole because the president has chosen not to engage the nation in an extended dialogue about what holds all his achievements together, or why his attitude toward government makes more sense than the scattershot conservative attacks on everything Washington might do to improve the nation’s lot.

I thought the best way to prove this would be to show, not tell. And I have another question for Dionne: wouldn’t any such telling by Obama be an extended monologue with the nation, not a dialogue? I mean, isn’t a dialogue a back-and-forth between at least two people? How can the nation answer back?

Although I suppose it’s already sort of answered back through the mechanism of the falling polls.

For Churchill always thought in terms not of national interest but of a national character that could trump interest. The Germans “combine in the most deadly manner the qualities of the warrior and the slave,” he said firmly. “They do not value freedom themselves and the spectacle of it in others is hateful to them.” Or, as he put it more succinctly, “They are carnivorous sheep.” We do not think this way anymore.

Not about the Germans, we don’t. But doesn’t it strike you as a rather apt description of much of the Arab world?

Not all people in a culture conform to the description of the group of which they are members, of course. But cultures do have basic characteristics that can be generalized about, and PC-thinking blinds us to certain truths that we ignore at our peril.