So Here's the Deal

I am not generally into weblogs/blogs/livejournals/etc. as a form of interpersonal communication. I've found that they encourage a lot of passive-aggressive interaction and other things I'm not into. But I have always read my friends' with devotion and interest, and recently, in anticipation of the election, my friend Connor opened his blog (blueskiesfalling.blogspot.com) to the rantings and ravings of his friends to represent a broader spectrum of political opinion, and I posted.

I really enjoyed it.

This led me to decide that I need a public forum for my political thoughts. Since the personal is political, it will occasionally veer in that direction, but everything I post here will be about and based in politics. If you want to know what I had for dinner, call me. But these are thoughts I need to straighten out, particularly in the wake of this here now election, and I find I am much more likely to write things that I am confident others will be reading. So here we are.

And if you're wondering about the title and url, they come from a 1950s comic book called POGO, by Walt Kelly. It's way out of print, but you should do your best to get a hold of it. The characters are swamp critturs living in the backwoods of Georgia (Pogo is a possum) who continually find themselves in political situtations on a compellingly absurd level. I will post the actual Third Rail Theme in its entirety at a later date, but below is the first campaign song that the resident turtle, Churchy La Femme, composes for Pogo's inadvertent presidential campaign (see I GO POGO, 1951):

Oh, once the opposition
Was completAlly opposed
To all the suppositions
That was GEN'rally supposed;
An' NOW the superstitions
That were tho't to be imposed
Are seen by composition
To be slightly decomposed!

It all fits with the current political situation rather well, I think.