For reasons lost to the dream I'm having dinner at the White House. It's not really the White House of course, and the part of George W. Bush is (natch) played by my father, but for the purposes of the dream it is the White House and he is the President.

I'm sitting in the dining room alone at a bare eight-person table, shortly joined by a kind of schlubby companion, known to be an obsequious courtier and who I also somehow know is named Josh. Annoyingly, he takes the seat next to mine out of all the other seven . This will be awkward because I won't know if people are speaking to him or to me at dinner.

The Bush daughters arrive, played by somewhat more vampy versions of themselves. Dumb-blond Jenna briefly flashes us two Joshes in the style of girls gone wild followed by Barbara (the more intelligent and ergo more attractive), who crawls across the wooden table to the far corner seat with the exaggerated, cat-in-heat style hips of a stripper working the rail.

The table is set, and various "grown ups" filter in. Laura Bush is Laura Bush. For some reason there isn't enough wine or wine glasses to go around, and Dubya/My Father rations out tiny quarter-glasses into various mugs and short cups from the dregs of a magnum bottle. For reasons lost to the dream I know we will still all become drunk, although I also find it improbable in the moment that there isn't more wine, a functionally unlimited supply, to be had in the White House, and that what we do have to drink is rotgut.

Conversation is indistinct. There is discussion of a legal brief -- schlubby courtier Josh is some sort of lawyer -- which will have to be approved by Cheney. He is never seen but rather felt as a presence, perhaps just in the other room. George makes a comment about how "we don't like being disturbed in the mornings around here," and -- scene missing? -- the next thing I know I'm waking up on a couch with a hangover.

It's opening day of the political season folks, and this ones going to be wild with the fightin' 110th Congress set to take center stage for the year. In fact, the media/horserace primary for Edwards, Hillary, Obama et al will largely be about who can be the best spokesperson for the real action going on inside the Dome. That's good. Real things are happening.

Two quick examples:

Apropops what I said the other day, Rep. Murtha is set to deny Bush funding for escalation in Iraq (an excellent first step).

On a more rhetorical note (talk matters), Rep. Frank says Katrina is "ethnic cleansing by inaction." Damn. He also wants to let shareholders vote on CEO pay. Double-damn.

These are good signs. Have a little hope today.

I'm going to be moving my politics blogging to Future Majority (just as most of my tech is going to the work blog). The OJ is going to keep driving on that wild bohemian values kick, maybe with some kind of fancy-ass aggregator page for the real stalkers out there.

67% oppose the war in Iraq and 70% disapprove of Bush's handling, but nobody is talking about taking a hard stance against the Bush/McCain/Lieberman tactic of escalation.

Likewise, everyone knows the health care system doesn't work and understands that the only entity which has a shot at fixing it is the federal government, but we've yet to hear anyone step up and catch that 70% of public opinion in their sails.

Finally, clear majorities want to invest in efficiency and alternative energy sources, and yet our leaders are stuck dicking around with ANWAR and a few underfunded pilot/mostly-for-show projects.

My point is, the Public is actually not that fucking stupid. Our leadership is just timid and out of touch -- if not outrightly corrupt -- and our organs for articulating Public Opinion have fallen so far from the Jefferson/Franklin ideals that they're closer to the state propaganda machines in the USSR than a legitimate Free Press.

People in this country are a little out of shape and kind of materialistic, but "big dumb America" actually has much a better grasp of what the fuck is going on than the elite leadership.

We're going to see some serious realignment over the next decade, with either a major shift in "national prorities" from the power-elite, or the rise of localism as cities, counties, states and regions begin to abandon the ossified and ineffective federal system in favor of their own problem-solving.

Hopefully we get both. ;)

This is exceedingly clever work:

Barak Obama is an excellent performer, on par with Reagan and Clinton before him. He's got a lot of people who are quite excited about him running for the White House in 2008, and he would most likely make a great and interesting candidate. However, I find that I distrust him.

Why? Because he's a cypher, in his own words "a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." What leads to my distrust is not that he's unwilling to take a stand on any issue of substance, or that he has a habit of reiterating right-wing stereotypes about Democrats -- although those are annoying -- it's that he's deliberately and consciously crafting himself as a vessel for unfulfilled political desire, a non-reciprocating repository for the Public's most heartfelt hopes. I find it impossible to believe that this is not a matter of calculation, and I find it to be quite a turn-off.

In essence, his position amounts to "I'm Barak Obama, and I endorse my popularity, and want to support your belief in me to do Good Things." It's a smart, risk-averse tactic to take for now, and he's perhaps a convincing enough player to pull it off through most of the pre-primary heat. As I said, an Obama for President campaign would be a sure hummdinger, but I find this makes me nervous and pessimistic about his potential as a leader. I don't want yet another actor president.