Second Presidential Debate

Visually, the candidates presented an interesting scenario. Obama, his lanky limbs casually and confidently splayed out from his tall debatin' chair, head cocked and ready to blare a pair of big, vigilant eyes or an assured smirk, looked the part of a watchful, sarcastic eagle.
McCain, on the other hand, had the stiffly eager movements of a friendly penguin using every waddle and woefully limited flipper movement possible to try, with the utmost sincerity, and sell you something.

Eagle vs. Penguin: who wins? The Eagle possesses obvious advantages of strength, speed, and savvy: his screeching triumph is all but assured when the penguin has no hope but to burrow underwater or hide amongst hundreds of his indistinguishable fellows.
But unfortunately for the Eagle, it's not the Law of the Arctic which decides this battle, but the viewing public, whose sympathies will rarely lie with the bird of prey prepared to rip apart the penguin's lovable tuxedo tufts like so many cheap Christmas presents.

As for the town-hall forum or "debate" itself (and please, let's not abuse our words - it has been, and will be, a long time before any pair of presidential candidates actually engage one another in a true debate), a few clear differences emerged from the malaise of side-stepped questions and litanously repeated talking points: Obama favors undefined market regulation, McCain favors undefined market de-regulation. McCain favors government buy-ups of bad mortages to immediately get at the current economic crisis (I'll see your federal deficit, Mr. Bush, and raise you...); Obama favors tax cuts (dipping further into the dictionary, "tax cuts" never mean actual reductions, but merely a restraint in levying newer taxes) for the middle class (although wealth, as he says, does not "trickle downwards", it apparently oozes from the middle?). Absorbing "sissy diplomacy" blasts from McCain, Obama maintained a dedication towards a foreign policy built on open negotiations and discussions with America's antagonists; McCain resolutely stuck to a mantra of God-Military-Intervention-and-David-Petraeus that left no room for an admission of any errors or standing problems in the prosecution of the War on Terror.

Consistent from past debates and stretching back to the Saddleback discussion, both candidates steadfastly refused to state a doctrine for America's forceful involvement in international crises (say, genocides) which don't pose immediate threats to national security. And the day when a major candidate actually criticizes the ubiquitous "average American"...well, to quote Buddy Holly, "that'll be the day."

Obama's Belle of the Ball moment:
Declaring, with clarity and intensity, "We will kill Bin Laden and crush al-Qaeda" - unexpectedly confident and winning words for a candidate whose party is used to ceding patriotism and national security across the aisle.

Lowlights: After forcefully declaring America's moral interests for intervening in cases of genocide, "If we were able to respond to a Rwanda again...we would...have to strongly consider our involvement." (to his credit, he added the feeble coda of "...and then act!"); after acknowledging the economic toll of the War in Iraq and the constraints the economic crisis would impose on America's global presence, proceeding to chide McCain for offering Ukraine and Georgia only "moral support," and insist that America offer "financial and material support" to these struggling nations.

McCain's Belle of the Ball Moment:
His forceful final words, offering up himself as a man who "knows dark times" and burns with a desire to serve America, did far more than the previous hour's trumpeting of "experience" and "records" to evince a capacity for wisdom and leadership.

Lowlights: Repetitive self-identifications as a maverick bi-partisan reformer; blind assurances in, and dubious similes illustrating, America's infinite power and capacity ("We're not a rifle shot! We're Americans!")

Discuss: Both candidates agree, "America has been the greatest force for good in the history of the world." ?

From the New Yorker online:

Spring Haiku for Late Summer

Nightfall –
I light one candle, then two,
when you come.

The cat slinks
From milk
To making love.

The meadow-larks build
Their nests, and girls
Buy their bikinis.

Spring-noon:
Even mosquitos and your mother
Are beautiful today.

Grass blooms,
And your eyes brighten
Beneath a kiss.

http://www.runofplay.com/2008/06/17/the-tuesday-portrait-michael-ballack/

Fine commentary on Michael Ballack's bone structure and the Deep Magic of life.

This Is Just to Say

This Is Just to Say (after WCW)

It was I who sent a spent cigarette
into the wind along that stretch of the
Indian Territories where you,
Lone Tear Trickling Down Cheeks,
earned your name.

Perhaps it skittered
and flamed out
at that same spot where
your ancestors,
marching west,
lost a beaver pelt,
a moccasin,
or a smallpoxed child.

Forgive me,
but the Marlboro's smoldering heart,
like your cracked face,
was red, red, red.

Some Bests

A pair of Bests I've been thinking of recently:

Contenders for Best Book Title:
"Let Us Now Praise Famous Men", by James Agee and that photographer
"Ladies Whose Bright Eyes", by Ford Maddox Ford

Contender for Best Two Lines to Open a Song:
"In the summer of my wedding / As the corn burned in the field..." from Hem's song, "Strays"

An occasional poem, written in farewell to The Ranch:

In farms and ranches
men have labored,
long hands passing through grimy sun
and breeze-brushed twilight.
Day or night
does not matter,
only the labor
of strip-mined
hearts
and cracked
hands
and exhausted,
un-rotated minds.
Some mornings:
oranges
straining to burst
against damming
peels.
Some mornings:
tanned
and tender
from moon
and her shine.
Each morning:
horseshit
and daybreak prayers.
In farms and ranches
men have dreamed
of vineyards in
cities and deep glassy
seas. But today
the almond tree
blossoms and the grasshopper
drag himself along,
so for uncertain wages,
today we will labor.

Revelation

Revelation 2:17
"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it."
Revelation 3:5
"The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels."

All Saints' Day

At the All Saints’ Day Parade,
A host of the blessed
March down the boulevard, a creek
Of meek, forthright faces
And simple tunics. Here
And there, the brown-gray array
Is augmented by a buckler, a milk-pail,
A purple robe.
Fishermen, bishops, and midwives
All pass, pleasantly enough,
Until the crush of martyrs
Comes crowding the procession’s end.
There is hollow-cheeked
Stephen, hauling
A quarry-full of stones. Clement is dragging
His anchor, and Vitus is wheeled
In a cauldron. Agatha steps gingerly,
Balancing her sliced breasts like dinner rolls
On a platter. Saint Lucy is fishing
Eyeballs out of her pocket, and I
Too find my hands digging into my slacks,
Feeling sheepishly a pen, wallet, lip balm.

"Old West Outlaws"

Old West Outlaws

Though wasteful with the buffalo, the Old Westerners
Knew to use every last part of a good outlaw, every inch
Of their spangled names and bullet-burnished skin. Two-
Bit boys from Independence vaunted over the callow hands
Which, they said, blazed down this devil from Cochise or that snake,
from Durango, their stampede of competing claims
Bleeding each fearful syllable dry from names like “Black Jack Ketchum.”

Nor, once dead, were those bodies inviolate. A Philadelphia banker
Might slip from his pocket a wallet tanned from William
H. Bonney’s stomach, oblivious to George Washington’s green,
papery face caressing that spot once marked by the lay of
a lover’s fingers, or the slice of a hot knife in El Paso.
Supply and demand, of course, meant that there are
Only so many wallets to go around, but those names
Take a long time to dry out. They slipped off wagon-wheels
Into the plains, slipped from mumbling mouths into cracked alley-ways,
Bleaching slowly in the broad Western sun.