THE TROUT AND THE FLOUNDER

YES, LIKE MILLIONS OF OTHERS, I watched the debate last night between the two "major party" nominees for the US presidency last night. The entire event was a Nashville snoozer. Enter Obama, McCain, Brokaw. Exit. An embarrassing snoooozer. Just plain awful political theatre. But this morning, just before opening my eyes with full awareness, my brain did its own version of the shuck and jive by churning out a quick metaphor consisting of a rather short string of bizarre images, tossed together with no particular connection to my own political surface sensibilities, but indeed rich with Jungian and Freudian innuendo and provocation.

First scene. I was standing on a balcony overlooking a rather frisky river. I seemed to pose no particular function in my presence there on the balcony for the first few dreamscape frames, but was statically admiring the choppy waters and the lush green forests hemming the river's edge on all sides. Only then did I notice the fish. Whole schools of fish, shiny silvery flounder in fact, the river thick with these oddly shaped flat fish. Subsequently I noticed, standing to my right just a few feet away from me, was none other than Senator Barack Obama, his white shirt rolled up to his elbows holding a long cast reel, and not being a fisherman myself, the reel was of no special distinction to me. Out the corner of my eye, I could see that Michelle Obama stood a few feet further away at the far edge of this deck balcony. She was encouraging her husband, cheering up his fishing skills, but neither of them seemed to notice me standing just three or four feet away, a stranger in the mist. Suddenly I became aware that I was clutching a long stick in my hand, not quite but nearly as formidable in length as Mr. Obama's shiny reel. Remember, this is that sort of dream, where quick non-sensical edits are the norm, so without linear thought I find myself probing my branch stick into the water just at the point where a large baited flounder and the Senator's hook were converging. In a flash, the end of my stick was tangled in his rod line. Both Obamas immediately sensed alarm, and turning toward me, glare solemnly at the culprit. I was mum with embarrassment, of course, but quickly gained enough composure to begin an apology just at the moment the scene shifts.

Scene Two. I am standing in the main room in a cabin, perhaps the same cabin owning the balcony I'd just been intruding upon. There is a fiercely glowing log fire in the aged brick fireplace off to my right. Directly to my left on a stand is a large basket of fish. I first intuit that these fish are not flounder but are trout, fattened rainbow trout perhaps. As I gaze around the room, noticing the kitchen is off to my far left, Just beneath a window along the wall is a larger table attended by two shadowy figures fussing over another large basket, but no, this time it is a large kettle of fish. Suddenly one of the shadowy figures turns around, and I see a woman. It is Cindy McCain. It is then that I recognize her husband just as he whips around, rushing the basket of trout near me, and leaning in, flashes that grin, that infamous bearish grin of his, while grabbing the basket of rainbow trout and hurling the entire undressed lot into the flames.

Senator McCain then returns to the large black kettle still on the table and begins gutting and dressing each fish, also rainbow trout, with an unseen knife, one at a time until I begin to notice a strong fishy odor which seems to be emanating from the fireplace. Of course the odor is probably the overpowering stench of guts that McCain is now disembowelling, but before I can make the distinction, I awaken. To my amazement I detect a strong odor of fish rot as I immediately begin to ponder this dream, and continue to suck air into my nostrils until I am positive no real fish odor exists in the room. It was all in my head.

Very odd dream. But believe me, this story, while part of a sleeping dream state, was a very real event. I have recreated the arrangement of images and impulses as I experienced them to the best of my abilities.

To even attempt a rational interpretation of this very vivid experience today would be too exhausting. I shall return. Perhaps after the election.

MCCAIN-OBAMA DEBATE AGREEMENT

THE TWO CAMPAIGNS AGREED on a framework for four General Election debates, to be sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. Key elements of the agreement are:

First Presidential Debate
Date: September 26
Site: University of Mississippi
Topic: Foreign Policy & National Security
Moderator: Jim Lehrer
Staging: Podium debate
Answer Format: The debate will be broken into nine, 9-minute segments. The moderator will introduce a topic and allow each candidate 2 minutes to comment. After these initial answers, the moderator will facilitate an open discussion of the topic for the remaining 5 minutes, ensuring that both candidates receive an equal amount of time to comment.

Vice Presidential Debate
Date: October 2nd Site: Washington University (St. Louis)
Moderator: Gwen Ifill
Staging/Answer Format: To be announced.

Second Presidential Debate
Date: October 7
Site: Belmont University
Moderator: Tom Brokaw
Staging: Town Hall debate
Format: The moderator will call on members of the audience (and draw questions from the internet). Each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond to each question. Following those initial answers, the moderator will invite the candidates to respond to the previous answers, for a total of 1 minute, ensuring that both candidates receive an equal amount of time to comment. In the spirit of the Town Hall, all questions will come from the audience (or internet), and not the moderator.

Third Presidential Debate
Date: October 15
Site: Hofstra University
Topic: Domestic and Economic policy
Moderator: Bob Schieffer
Staging: Candidates will be seated at a table Answer
Format: Same as First Presidential Debate
Closing Statements: At the end of this debate (only) each candidate shall have the opportunity for a 90 second closing statement.

All four debates will begin at 9pm ET, and last for 90 minutes. Both campaigns also agreed to accept the CPD’s participation rules for third-party candidate participation.

My only question is this. We all know John McCain is somewhat short in stature, and Barack Obama appears to be a tall man, but how short does that make Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd? Huh? Compare the photo at the top of this entry with the one just above it.

MCCAIN ALSO WRONG ABOUT KOSOVO

PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFUL JOHN MCCAIN, in a March, 2008 speech, seemed to go out of his way to offend the Russian government, making it clear that he doesn't regard the regime there as a democracy.

If the media are on the lookout for gaffes by the presidential campaigns, they missed a big one in March, when Cindy McCain met with Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci in Kosovo's capital Pristina, while her husband was giving a major foreign policy speech calling for new foundations for a stable and enduring peace. Kosovo's declaration of independence, which McCain accepts and was implicitly recognized by Cindy McCain's visit to Pristina, is a major threat to global peace and security. It could spark a U.S. war with Russia.

It may be asking too much, however, for the media to cover a gaffe like this. The Kosovo policy is a bipartisan blunder. For the liberal media, Iraq, where McCain differs with Hillary and Obama about the length of stay of the U.S. military, seems to be the only foreign policy issue worth talking about. But the U.S. faces other major problems.

We need to recall that the war against the former Yugoslavia was depicted by the liberal media as a worthwhile humanitarian intervention. But it was waged on the basis of Clinton Administration lies of a genocide being waged against Albanian Muslims in Kosovo, a province of Serbia. In fact, the Clinton Administrations NATO war against Yugoslavia probably cost more lives than were lost in the civil war in Kosovo.

Serbian troops were forced to withdraw in exchange for an international guarantee that Serbia would retain sovereignty over Kosovo but the province would get substantial autonomy. The U.S. agreed to that, but that agreement was violated when the Bush Administration, with backing from McCain and Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, recently recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia.

Sending his wife to Kosovo confirms that McCain accepts Clinton's fraudulent version of what happened there and that he agrees with Bush's solution, which can only make the situation worse.

Conservatives should contemplate what is happening here. McCain, who says he wants to wage a vigorous war against Islamic radicals worldwide, is prepared to let Muslim extremists come to power in Kosovo and even have their own sovereign state. This is itself a major gaffe. But McCain compounded it when he gave a speech urging the building of international structures for a durable peace, including strengthening NATO.

This sounds good, except that McCain has to know that recognizing Kosovo's independence has split Western nations and even NATO itself. It is a major foreign policy blunder that the next administration, Democrat or Republican, may never recover from. It represents a direct threat to the international order of nation-states. That is why many nations have not recognized this new state of Kosovo. They realize that Kosovo's independence could spark other groups to wage wars against established regimes around the world.

Read it all.