Introduction

Hi, I'm Rufus. Or at least, I'm someone who is now blogging as Rufus.

I'm a middle-aged number-cruncher, a longtime political junkie, a born-again Christian, a fan of the Marx Brothers (of course) and off-the-wall humor of many sorts, and a proud liberal. I'm a Democrat, but more important, I'm a small-d democrat. I believe there's a constant tug-of-war, in American society (and probably everywhere else too), between political power residing with the people, and political power residing with the money.

Right now, the money's beating the people almost every which way. George W. Bush is the moneyed interests' man, and whatever one thinks of GWB's mental capabilities, he's won an impressive number of victories over the past five-plus years - for big corporations and for super-rich individuals alike. And these victories have usually been at the expense of some or all of the rest of us.

I'll be talking more about Bush in here. A lot more. That's inevitable: he's President, and he's a very effective one, measured in terms of progress towards what I see as his goals. He's about as easy to ignore as a Metallica concert in your next-door neighbor's backyard.

I'll also be talking about the Democrats, the 'Christian' Right, the media, the blogsphere, and the usual run of issues. I won't have an opinion on everything, because life's too short, and the day job which pays the bills means there's a limit to how much I can say anyway. Besides, there's a million blogs out there already, cranking out opinions on everything, and if I can, I'd like to try to add things to the discussion that aren't already being said on the front page of DailyKos or FireDogLake or AmericaBlog.

And I'd like to try to have some fun doing it. To paraphrase Groucho, "If you think the blogsphere's bad off now, just wait 'til I get through with it."