Thomas Jefferson Survives

Chutzpah on the Streets of Washington

2008-05-22T08:04:00.002-05:00

The classic definition of chutzpah is the man who murders his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court, claiming that he is an orphan. A similar thing happened yesterday in the United States Senate when the executives of Shell, BP, ConocoPhilips, Chevron, and ExxonMobile went before the Senate Judiciary Committee and demanded that the government provide them with some relief for their skyrocketing costs related to higher fuel prices. They claimed that lack of worldwide production was the cause of the price increase and that the senators could help the problem by opening up more U.S. controlled areas for greater oil drilling.

That they seemed slightly shocked that their “poor little rich girl” approach didn’t dampen the eyes of more elected officials should only be one iota of brazenness of their behavior. All this is, of course, after they’ve all posted the highest record profits ever in the history of the United States in the last two quarters. The chief executive of ExxonMobile, Rex Tillerson, earns an annual salary of $21.7 million and yet apparently believes the government that he and his political party deride owes him assistance because it costs more to fuel his (fueling) companies and his personal cars.

Meanwhile crude oil traded at over $135 per barrel last night on the Asian markets and the cost of a gallon of gasoline at the gas station outside my office was $4.19 for regular.

The one thing to make you feel better? Our friends in England have it worse. Gas prices in England are at around £1.12 per liter. Convert that to dollars per gallon and it ends up being about $8.81. Thanks, plummeting US Dollar!

Ronald Reagan Is A Better American Than You Are

2007-08-17T13:38:00.001-05:00

Death can't keep a good man down. From our friends today at the Washington Times:

Look for Ronald Reagan to be keeping permanent watch over the U.S. Congress.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told former first lady Nancy Reagan during a visit to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California this week that he is working with other senators who want to erect a statue of President Reagan in the U.S. Capitol.

"There could be no more fitting recognition than to welcome his likeness to the halls of Congress," Mr. McConnell told Mrs. Reagan.

Funny, that's what they said when they made the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Ronald Reagan Square in Krakow, Poland, Ronald Reagan National Airport, the Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway, Ronald Reagan snack cakes, Ronald Reagan Intravenous Needle Kits, and Ronald Reagan the comic book. How many more fitting recognitions are we going to have? Also? Reagan? Never a member of Congress. But then, he was never big on trade either, so there we are.

Other things that have been suggested to be named after Ronald Reagan:

The Pentagon
The 10 Dollar Bill
The International Space Station (Eat it, Russia!)
16th Street in Washington, DC
Post-it notes
Your mom

Seriously, if you're going to memorialize the man, why not consider something actually useful. Like, I don't know, maybe voting for stem-cell funding to help cure the very disease that eventually undid the man? Nope. Clearly a marble statue put into a place that the man was legally barred from even entering while he did his job.

But wait, there's more! McConnell apparently also is sponsoring legislation to establish the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission to prepare the world for Reagan's 100th birthday in 2011. That's right, bitches. You will worship at the altar of Reagan and you will love it! Despite the fact that the man was trying to eliminate government, the Minority Leader clearly has no problem with sponsoring federal legislation to accomplish a social goal.

McConnell also reportedly told Nancy, "you can be sure that there are a lot of us in Washington who will be working hard to make sure this celebration is commensurate with your husband's achievements."

You mean, like, firing air traffic controllers and forgetting about selling arms for hostages? Man, I cannot wait to see what that parade is going to look like!

Gonzo's Got A Gun

2007-08-15T07:47:00.001-05:00

Just when you thought life couldn't get any funnier, this happened.

When reached for comment, Alberto Gonzales is reported to have said, "I have not yet begun to kill!"

Ave Atque Vale

2007-08-13T14:32:00.000-05:00

It had to happen eventually. One of the most significant political architects of our time announced today that he’s quitting. He’s throwing in the towel and heading out to the happy polling-grounds, never to be heard from again. And he’s doing it to “spend more time with his family.”

What are we going to do without Tommy Thompson?

What? Who were you thinking of?

Well, It Had To Happen Eventually

2007-07-18T08:24:00.000-05:00

I’m not normally one to agree with Trent Lott, give the devil his due – the man actually said something that I think is accurate. When speaking to CongressDaily on the immigration fight that left bullet holes all over the legislative agenda in the Senate last month, he opined thusly:

Lott characterized the behavior of those who opposed to the measure, including many in his own party, as "grown men and women running from an issue they knew we needed to do. And they knew this could have been a major improvement in current law."

It ain’t a long-distance spinal fluid diagnosis via video, but the man’s at least not sounding like an idiot. Congress should be hanging its collective head in shame that they got one-upped by this guy.

We Beat Fox News At Their Own Hot-Winded Game

2006-11-21T13:23:00.000-05:00

I was going to write one of these myself, but to be honest this is just too perfect to be tampered with:

Democrats' New 25-Point Manifesto for Congress.

Congress Is Dead. Long Live Congress.

2006-11-09T18:39:00.000-05:00

The Dems took the house. Then they took the Governorships. Then Rick Santorum's kid flipped us all off. Then Rumsfeld resigned and the Dems took Montana. Like, at the same time. It was, like, the best minute EVER! Now Senator Macaca has bowed out as well and the Dems have control of all of congress. Man, we're in charge of one entire branch of government. That means we have, like, a mandate or something. That means we can do what we want. Yup, no way that this could possibly go wrong.

Thank God this whole messy midterm business is finally over. Now all of us politicos can stop making impassioned speeches about how important local politics are and that you should go out and vote in a midterm election that is so much less glamorous because instead of 2 candidates we have literally almost 1,000 and get back to asking the burning question that we all really want to ask: Who is going to fuck up the country from the oval office next?

Not wanting to keep us idle for long, here comes the first oval office fucker out the gate:

Tom Vilsack, Democratic governor of Iowa, has announced that he is running for president. He's doing this presumably to take advantage of some of the national spotlight and while apparently ignorant of the fact that his last name is Vilsack.

You go, Tommy! Don't let all that pro-Democrat ink dry just yet. There's a corn caucus out there somewhere and you're going to be in it.

Tony Snow Tries To Slip One In

2006-11-08T10:47:00.000-05:00

Tony Snow was on-message this morning, although I'm not sure which message he was on. When asked about the events of what is sure to be known as Black Tuesday for the Rs for at least the next couple of years, he made this not-so-subtle reply:

Bush will deliver the message that "the problems we faced this morning are the same problems we'll face tomorrow: winning the war in Iraq, keeping the economy together, working on renewing No Child Left Behind," said White House Press Secretary Tony Snow.

'Cause, you know, No Child Left Behind was such a major campaign issue in this election cycle. Anyone want to take bets on what the administration's second game of legislative tag is going to look like?

Kitty Harris Gets Cockblocked By Karl Rove

2006-11-06T22:05:00.000-05:00

From WaPo today, the president got a little embarrassed by himself getting stood up by the Republican candidate for Governor of the state of Florida. Turns out the candidate didn't want to be seen with Bush in light of his election race being so close. The president had to give his stump speech sans candidate. But, our favorite delusional member of congress tried her hardest to get in. If only the president's staff wasn't so...well, literate and aware.

Here you go:

With Crist as a no-show, Bush was joined on stage by a host of Florida Republicans _ but not by Republican Rep. Katherine Harris. She has run a much-panned Senate race that has had her Republican elders cringing and both the president and his brother keeping their distance. After appearing as a warmup speaker before Bush arrived, Harris was given a spot in the audience well out of any camera shot of the stage.

Damn, I love politics.

This Just In: Greta Van Susteren Endorses Waterboarding

2006-11-06T18:46:00.000-05:00

Hard to believe that this never made it onto America's Funniest Home Videos.

http://www.wonkette.com/politics/fox/fox-news-correspondent-gets-waterboarded-212761.php

So This Is What It Feels Like To Be Given A Washington Surprise...

2006-10-26T22:21:00.000-05:00

Okay, I consider myself to be about as politically astute as the next person, not to mention at least as jaded as the average twentysomething is supposed to be in this day and age. (Must have been all those teenage years listening to Pearl Jam and Nirvana...) But I'm just going to say for the record that after reading the Rolling Stone report on Congress, even I am left a bit white-faced and reaching to steady myself on the furniture.

For those who have not yet had the pleasure, read it all here. Although, be forwarned, you might want to have some smelling salts and defibrilator handy.

Also, can I just say, WTF?! Rolling Stone? When did we turn to the newsmag that was once the symbol of corruption to point out for us the deficits in the United States government? This was the place that thought progress was making it so that all their office walls would be made of glass so that no star reporter could be secretly doing a line of coke in his office while Grace Jones and Mick Jagger had sex in the corner. That this was the magazine to make congressional corruption a front-page story should be reason enough to be concerned.

Today's Burning Question: How Will Democrats Destroy America Next?

2006-09-22T22:14:00.000-05:00

This just in: the party of Abe Lincoln would you like to know that Democrats founded the KKK. They also were tacitly responsible for the murder of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who, by the by, the same party would like you to know was a staunch Republican. In other news, the Dems have also been implicated by the Rs in the annual flooding of the Nile delta, the failure of the Apollo 13 mission, and the abduction and murder of the Lindberg baby.

I'm actually only kidding about some of those. The others are, sadly, actual charges being levied right now in the great state of Maryland. Read here for more foolishness.

To whit, the Democrats were the dominant party in the south during and after the civil war and Lincoln was, at least at the time, a Republican. The reason there were no Republicans in the south? They didn't exist before Lincoln became president. Lincoln helped to found the party under the notion that the federal government had more control over the country than individual states did. If you believe that is the current Republican party platform, I wouldn't be surprised given their behavior in the past six years. If you look at the traditional Republican standard, however, you'll see that in the past fifty years or so, the party has most definately been advocates of states' rights over federal control. Our good friend Ronald Reagan certainly saw to that.

I chose to read this as a sign of how desperate the Rs are getting. Clearly they can't win the election on their own merit any longer, so they have to resort to distorting history to try to convince black voters not to vote. What this really should show black voters is how little the Republicans think of them to believe that they are so unintelligent that they will fall for such a silly claim.

Speaking of silly claims, it is day 7 in the Pandering Watch and we've got more from everybody's favorite born-again Jew, George Allen. On a CNN interview the other night, the Distinguished Gentleman got up close and personal, Barbara Walters-style, to talk about his heritage. My favorite moment was when he got tearful over it all and announced that from here on out, the fight against intolerance and anti-semitism is "personal." As opposed to before, when in Allen's mind intolerance had a free ride because it didn't effect him or his family. Read WaPo's take on the whole deal here.

College Republicans: Where Would My Focus Be Without You?

2006-09-21T20:48:00.000-05:00

Proving once again that the College Republicans are the collegiate group to join if you want to perfect your skills at hysterical invective and fallacious non sequiturs, I offer this dispatch from Penn State.

Apparently the CRs ran a 9/11 Memorial last week commemorating the fifth anniversary of the attacks and are now facing possible disciplinary action because they used "amplified sound" in their memorial. Not normally a problem, it would seem, except that such dazzling displays are prohibited between 8:00am and 5:00pm in order not to disrupt the surrounding classrooms. The memorial presentation (please please please tell me that there were lasers somewhere) started at 8:00 and lasted for just over an hour, taking the audience through the exact time of the event in 2001.

Now, I'll grant you - this would seem like a petty little thing to get worked up over, but that was before I found the tiniest little epic of a passage describing the university's reprimand and the president of the CR's response, provided here:

Stan Latta, director of unions and student activities, wrote a letter to College Republicans President Seth Bender last week to alert him of the administration's displeasure over the situation.

"I am very disappointed that you and the other members of the College Republicans chose to ignore the prohibition on amplified sound, even after discussions with the Vice President for Student Affairs, the Office of University Relations and me," Latta wrote.

Bender said the memorial was successful. "When this is all said and done, everyone will realize that the College Republicans did not break any university policy," he said. "The real focus of all this needs to be the fact that 3,000 men, women and children died five years ago. We need to still remember that."

Yes. The focus obviously needs to be shifted off of a pandering memorial on a college campus that broke a penny-ante rule put out by the university and onto the standard Republican talking point of the decade. Is there no shame left in these guys that they're going to use dead people to justify why they should be able to break silly rules on college campuses now?

Also, clearly a memorial of taste and class needed to have amplified sound. Yup. Sounds dignified to me.

Oh, Well Nevermind Then...

2006-09-19T21:12:00.000-05:00

This just in: George Allen clearly cannot be racist. How is this? Because he's recently learned that he's Jewish. Or so he says. As if his newfound semitism wasn't enough, he's also learned that his grandfather was a Nazi resistance fighter! The best part? He learned about it all from a magazine. Who knew that Modern Pandering was delivering in NoVa?

The Distinguished Gentleman from Virginia has proclaimed that he was raised a Christian and that the sum total of his life was under such guidance. Curiously, his Jewish heritage has just now asserted itself in response to the pressures that he's been under recently viz a viz "macaca".

When asked about his nacent Judaism, he reminded his audience that people should not make "aspersions about people because of their religious beliefs." No word yet from the Allen campaign as to whether or not aspersions about people's racial and ethnic background are still fair game. Or if he believes that using a $4.00 word like "aspersions" is going to help him win votes in rural Virginia.

Take That, Shiloh!

2006-09-06T13:50:00.000-05:00

Amazing. You mean two white people can collectively give birth to an asian girl and there's absolutely no way that it isn't a hoax? Wow, Scientology is the best religion EVER!

Information, White House Style

2006-09-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

"Fact sheet" from the White House detailing everything that it has done to you keep you, Average American Citizen, safe from the evolving threat of terrorism.

Let us not forget that if we don't fight them over there, we'll have to fight them here. But wait, Dick Cheney told me that they're already here and that's why his CIA friends needed to listen in on all my phone calls. So, we have to fight them over there or else they'll come here, but we have to fight them here as well because otherwise they'll... go over there? no, wait, that can't be right... hold on, I'll get it eventually... ouch... brain hurts...

Amish Launch New Line of Swimwear

2006-08-29T21:19:00.000-05:00

GAHHH!!!!!

And here I was just worried about fashions from the 80s coming back into style. Also, who in the world thinks that a hot pink spandex undergarment is going to draw attention to anyone's face?

The really scary thing is I think I know the woman on the far right.

Clovis Explains It All For You

2006-08-28T21:00:00.000-05:00

You didn’t really ask for it, but I’m giving it to you anyway! For the first time, I will answer the exact same questionnaire that Katherine Harris answered recently where she voiced her opinion that any elected official who isn’t Christian is just going to “legislate sin.” See later link on hookers for more about the moral rectitude that is Krazy Kat.

To the questions!

Why do you want to be United States Senator for Florida?

Wait a minute; this is the line for Senator? I totally thought this was for the aromatherapy sessions.

Why are you the best qualified candidate?

Truth to be told, I’m probably not.

What is your personal religious faith?

Hedonism.

Are you involved in a local place of worship? If so, in what way?

There were those couple of months that I spent in Haight-Ashbury, but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking.

Some day all of us have to give an account before God for what we have done. Are you certain in your heart that when you come to that point of accounting that you’ll spend eternity with God in Heaven?

Just a point of interest on this one, isn’t God still omnipotent? I mean, he didn't lose that ability when I wasn't looking, did he? Isn’t He going to know why it is that I’ve done the wrong things that I’ve done? Seems kind of off that He is going to have to ask me what my sins are. If He doesn’t know, doesn’t that give me an incentive to lie? I’m just saying. Something tells me that this isn’t going to be like when your parents sat you down and told you that you couldn’t leave the chair until you admitted breaking the vacuum cleaner when really it was your sister who did it.

One day when you stand before God, if He says to you, “Why should I let you into my Heaven?” What would you say in response?

Well, this is a little better. At least this implies that He knows what’s going on and just wants me to answer for my punk self. But if He doesn’t want me in his Heaven, does that imply that there’s another one down the street?

How does your faith impact the way you view your responsibilities as a public official?

If you’re asking me if I pray for people that I encounter in public, the answer is a resounding “yes”.

What role do you think people of faith should play in politics and government?

I think people of actual faith are not the issue here, since they tend to carry their faith in their hearts and not scream about it on CNN or the Sunday morning talkies. As for the other kind, I think they should play the roles that are most traditional in politics and government: lion bait. Remember in ancient Rome (or at least Gladiator) when they used to throw people to the lions for amusement? Aren’t you asking yourself at least a little bit why it is that we don’t revive that particular political custom?

Do you support civil rights protections on the basis of sexual preference?

Hrmm… let’s see here… “all men created equal”… “certain unalienable Rights”… “life, liberty, pursuit of happiness”… man, there’s just not a “no Streisand-ticket holding friends of Dorothy limp-wrists allowed” rule here anywhere!

Do you support a federal constitutional amendment to define marriage as being only between one man and one woman? Why or why not?

I actually support a federal constitutional amendment to define marriage as being only between several men and one woman. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and come to the conclusion that frankly, women are the more capable gender and should be allowed to have several husbands to attend to them. Kinda like a harem, only with guys. Or, wait, does that sound too much like what that previous question was asking?

Do you support the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment?

Will it stop MTV Spring Break from ever being aired again?

Setting aside for a moment the public policy questions related to abortion, is abortion a moral evil? Why or why not?

Clearly we’ve set aside those public policy questions to answer this one. Nope, couldn’t see how this line of questioning could go anywhere near public policy.

What public policy limits on abortion have you supported or will you support in order to decrease the number of abortions in our nation?

Ah, dammit.

What is your view of Gov. Bush’s efforts on behalf of Terri Schiavo?

I don’t know about the governor, but let me tell you I’ve always been curious as to whether or not the president really signed the legislation into effect in his jammies or if he at least had the courtesy to put on some clothes before heading into the Oval at 2:00am.

Is there something wrong with Florida and federal statutes when a severely brain-damaged woman who’s not in the process of dying can be starved and dehydrated to death by her husband with the assistance of the courts?

Tonight on Larry King Live, how to formulate a completely neutral question so as not to introduce bias in your interview! Then later, the Supreme Court Assassin Squad takes out their next hit! We’ll have all the entertainment as we take you behind the scenes to watch what happens when the judges trade in their robes and gavels for ninja suits and shuriken! Also, Greta van Susteren.

Should food and water be defined as extraordinary care, thus permitting such care to be denied to persons like Terri Schiavo?

Man, Florida! It’s like you’ve only got two political issues to talk about down there! Go screw up another election or something so we can change the subject.

Why should Florida Baptists care about this primary election?

Because If I won, I would offer free hookers to all interested Baptists. (Hey, it’s good enough for Kitty Harris and Mitchell Wade!)

The Passion of John McCain or How I Learned How to Stop Worrying and Love Liberty University

2006-08-26T19:41:00.000-05:00

This past May, John McCain delivered the commencement speech at Liberty University, the (unacredited) Virginia school founded by, designed by, and probably wet-dreamed over by none other than Jerry Falwell himself. (For an amusing game regarding Lib U, go to this picture here and see how many non-whites you can find.)

Now, I've long thought that Liberty was something of a strange place to consider for higher educational choice, but I understand that some folks want something different out of their college experience. They want the safety of a school that fosters their faith and their system of beliefs, where I was more persuaded by the keggers and the co-eds. Whatever. To each his own. In any case, however, it gives pause to imagine what a student at Liberty would do if confronted with one not of his or her ilk. Liberty offers a wide variety of courses of study, almost all of them similar at least in name to what you would find anywhere else. I personally marvel a little bit at the type of arguments that a Liberty U polysci student would make, but what the hell.

Given it's strict background and ideological foundations, it is understandable that McCain's choice of a commencement speech there would possibly frighten some of us who see him as a viable candidate for the Republican nomination, especially in light of his White Knight characterization from the 2000 election. We lefties like to think that he is at least the one righty who actually understands how terrible the Bush years have been, so when we see him (as we often have of late) cozying up to said president, we get a little nervous.

I would love to see McCain as a candidate, provided that he doesn't jump headfirst into the bushes and start drinking the kool-aid. And so, I understand how freaky it looks to see the once centrist candidate making a bee-line to speak at the University of Intolerance. But look over his speech and I think you'll see something interesting: He's talking about change. Civility was the order of his speech, not culture wars. It was an out-of-season call for peace on earth and goodwill towards men, and hopefully, women.

We as liberals cannot afford to throw our hands up in the air whenever McCain talks to the people we believe to be wackos. Why not? Because they're certainly not going to let us in there to talk to them, so why not choose the guy who will and will do it correctly? It does no good to preach to the choir. The congregation are the ones in need. McCain isn't selling out his convictions just because he chose to speak to the ultra-right. He's telling them the lessons that, frankly, they need to hear.

So what do we take out of this? Lesson #1) Don't freak out. McCain isn't crazy and if anything he's doing some good talking sense to a crowd that probably won't hear it from us. Lesson #2) We are just as crazy if we as liberals believe that we aren't in need of similar intervention from time to time.

I'm not saying that I endorse John McCain for president. It will still take some work for him to convince me that just because he would be in office, the Republican machine that has done such a bang-up job running the world these past six years won't be. I am saying that I am no longer as worried about him finding his way to the Dark Side as I used to be.

Vox Populi Speaks. I Shudder.

2006-08-24T18:05:00.000-05:00

Two letters to the editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today I think illustrate the political divide in America nowadays quite nicely. I'll let you, dear reader, decide which argument you think has more weight to it. (Hey, check me out. I report, you decide. Just like Fox News. Only, less with the cartoon-y graphics and rampant fearmongering, and more with the sensible argument.)

First up, Letter #1:

Lieberman reached out and GOP didn't
If the recent Democratic primary in Connecticut was simply about a long-standing senator becoming so caught up in national politics that he lost touch with his constituents, that would be a tragedy.
If it was simply that a man was too proud to admit defeat and now risks splitting his party's vote and handing his seat over to his political opponents, that would truly be regrettable. But the real tragedy lies even deeper than all of that.
True, Sen. Lieberman embraced an unfavorable position. And, yes, in the eyes of many, his actions and attitudes became more like those of the current administration than of the loyal opposition.
However, the real tragedy in all of this is the betrayal of the American people and our system of government by this administration. After all, it came into office six years ago with talk of uniting the political landscape. But it was Sen. Lieberman who reached out in support of the Iraq war. The Republican Party has failed to reach back.
Many Democrats expressed support of national security issues and the Iraq war and received nothing in return. How can true bipartisan government become a reality if only one side reaches across the aisle?
Theirs is not a recipe for unity, but one for assimilation. Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Melhman talks of adapting to win. But what of adapting to lead? The current administration has betrayed the trust of the American people and that is the greatest tragedy of the Connecticut primary.

Next up, Letter #2:

Democrats at fault
I strongly disagree with Jim Burn's Aug. 17 letter. Mr. Burn criticized Bush administration officials for commenting on Ned Lamont's win over Joe Lieberman for the U.S. Senate nomination in the Connecticut Democrat Primary.
Yet Democrats viciously ridicule Republicans and President Bush every day, often implying that the president is stupid. But when Republicans mildly criticize Democrats, it's a federal offense. Well, I got news for Mr. Burn, freedom of speech is for everyone, not just for Democrats!
Mr. Burn also wrongly accused Republicans of politicizing the war when it is really the Democrats who are playing politics and undermining the president's courageous efforts to fight the War on Terror.
Politically motivated nagging by blowhards like Ted Kennedy and John Murtha to cut and run from Iraq is encouraging the insurgents in Iraq to hang on and wait for U.S. public opinion to change.
If it were not for the Democrats' constant politicization of the war, terrorist activity in Iraq would have subsided by now and many of our troops would be home. Shamefully, the Democrats are putting the lives of our troops at risk.
As local chairman of the party that has controlled this county for over 50 years with policies that have resulted in bankrupting the city and causing several hundred thousand people to leave this area in search of jobs due to that party's anti-business policies, Mr. Burn has little reason to criticize President Bush.

You go, you Brave Little Toaster. You exercise those first amendment rights, you! And what's the best way to make your point about them? Clearly, by saying that if you think the President isn't functioning on all cylinders, you shouldn't be allowed to say it in public. For the record, very few of us are implying that President Bush is stupid. We are almost all unilaterally saying it flat out.

Also, the word "politicization" is the act of engaging in or discussing politics. According to this member of the political Greek chorus, by even talking about politics, I have clearly awarded a decisive victory to the terrorists. At least this gentleman and I are on the same page that terrorism has increased in Iraq since the United States got involved there. But still, silly me for wanting my elected officials to talk about or engage in politics, since that's what I pay them to do.

In the interest of full disclosure (another thing, by the way, you won't see on Fox News), I will admit that the author of Letter #1 is a buddy of mine who not only has a keen mind, but can also dig you a retaining wall that even Michael Brown at his FEMAyist would have taken note of. Check out the link to What Would You Say for more.

Tucker Carlson Accuses Dems of Being Wimps Then Films Self Ballroom Dancing

2006-08-23T19:33:00.000-05:00

I so wish that I could make this stuff up, but I swear to God that it's real. Tucker Carlson accused Democrats of having too many women running the show for them and for being "wussies" on his show yesterday. He sounded off for several minutes on how wimpy the men in the Democratic Party were and how "grouchy feminists with mustaches" run the party.

Then, to showcase how manly he and the Republicans are by comparison, he accepted a part on the upcoming ABC television show, Dancing with the Stars. I'm totally not kidding about that part.

The thing is, Tucker Carlson actually sounds concerned for us poor male Democrats. He sounds genuinely worried for us that we're going to let Hillary Clinton "bulldoze" her way into our nominating hearts. Why in the world would he be so worked up? It's not like she's got a major campaign war chest despite running practically unopposed in her current senate race, or massive backing to launch a nation-wide race. Sheesh, Tucker. Go put your bow-tie back on.

"News" Flash: Southern Senator Possibly Racist, Certainly Slimy

2006-08-16T10:10:00.000-05:00

In the growing battle for the race to become the next Distinguished Gentleman from the great state of Virginia, George Allen is ahead at least in terms of being distinguished. The incumbent senator is fighting off Democratic challenger Jim Webb in one of the many hotly watched elections this cycle.

Allen, while generally running a good campaign thus far, stepped in it big time this week when he referred to a young man of Indian decent as a "Macaca". I'll be honest with you, I don't know what a Macaca is, but the vox populi has apparently found it to be gasp-worthy, so who am I to go against a scandal?

WaPo reports the story here of what Allen is doing in the way of damage control. My personal favorite so far is his insistence that he actually meant to say "Mohawk" and that irrespective of any possible racism, he loves the Indian community "in his heart". All this despite being a senator who used to like to wax poetic on the subject of the Confederate flag and prominently displayed a noose in his office. In Virginia, it would seem, Robert E. Lee may have surrendered but George Allen never did.

ATTENTION INDIAN COMMUNITY OF VIRGINIA: This may be your only warning. Please don't screw it up for the rest of the state.

Cynthia, We Hardly Knew Ye

2006-08-09T09:18:00.000-05:00

Ave atque Vale, Cynthia.

Cynthia McKinney, the boisterous Democratic representative from Atlanta has been defeated in the Georgia primary, meaning that she will not be able to even run again for her currently held position in the United States House of Representatives. Thus passes one of the more interesting characters ever to walk the halls of the US congress.

How do you sum up Cynthia McKinney? It's a lot like asking, "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" I suppose. Do you talk about her penchant for punching security guards? Do you reminisce about her throwing her cell phone at someone? Do you talk about her hair? Or do you just leave with this tidbit about her concession speech:

"Before she began her remarks, she played the song 'Dear Mr. President,' an anti-Bush anthem by Pink, and sang along, somewhat out of tune, with its critical lyrics."

The real problem, of course, is that Rep. McKinney is not nearly as insane as she appears to be. The woman has done a good job of bringing some actual honest-to-God issues to the table that need discussing in this country. Now if only she had done it in a manner that didn't so much call to mind a junior high school cafeteria food fight, some actual debate could have come out of her efforts.

Thank God there's still Joe Liebermann.*

*Actually, there isn't. Leibermann also lost his reelection bid in the Connecticut primary last night. But rest assured, all you suburbanites from the nutmeg state, Joementum is a fire that cannot be quenched.

I Love Mitt Romney

2006-08-02T18:45:00.000-05:00

Ah, Mitt. You never cease to bring me amusement. All I can say is, if this is the birth cry of the next presidential race, boy am I excited for 2008.

But What About the Escalators?

2006-08-02T16:32:00.000-05:00

Looks like Rick Santorum's upset again, although in the litany of thing that he could be upset about (his campaign possibly illegally fixing the fall races to steal votes from his challenger, falsely declaring that the United States had found WMDs in Iraq when really it was just the leftovers from 1990, that he's perennially somewhere between 10 and 20 points behind Bob Casey, Jr.) what he's not happy about is that too many tourists and reporters are using the Senator-Only elevators at the Capitol.

In the building recently, he apparently managed to "squeeze in" to the elevator after berating a bunch of tourists and media types, complaining,"some of the rest of us need to get on board, too".

Rick Santorum. Keeping the Capitol elevators safe from riff-raff with press passes.

Apocalypse Nowish

2006-07-28T12:50:00.000-05:00

Boy, would I love to know which administration staffer thought that meeting with this guy was a good idea.

Christian author Joel C. Rosenberg was on CNN last night talking about the End Times, an appropriate topic given that he writes fiction novels on the subject. What grabbed me though was not that he was on CNN, but this little gem of a quote:

“I've been invited to the White House, Capitol Hill. Members of Congress, Israelis, Arab leaders all want to understand the Middle East through the lens of biblical prophecies. I'm writing these novels that keep seeming to come true. But we're seeing Bible prophecy, bit by bit, unfold in the Middle East right now.”

I’m all for a good religious thriller. I admit it – I enjoyed The DaVinci Code. Although the book was better than the movie if for no other reason than in the book I didn’t have to be wierded out by Tom Hanks’ hair. But the White House calling for a blue ribbon commission to investigate what equine breed the Four Horsemen are going to choose to ride seems a mite out of control to me.

I’ll grant you, Israel is being a little creepy right at the moment, Lebanon is being more than a little steam-rolled, and Ahmadinejad has just a little too much twinkle in his eyes for my liking, but THIS IS NOT THE END TIMES!!!! Please, Mr. Bush… back away from the King James… That’s it… slowly now…

Read more here for all the further zaniness, including an Irish book of psalms that actually looks pretty cool and an author coming just this side short of telling us all to strip naked and head for the prayer bunker to prepare for the rapture. Plus, video!

Ann Coulter - Colon-Happy or Just Really Missing High School?

2006-07-26T17:27:00.000-05:00

Is it just me or is Ann Coulter slipping?

I’m used to her making proclamations that have no basis in fact. Her greatest hits include only the finest screeching hyperbole from the conservative sphere - All liberals are trying to destroy America; The only way out of crisis in the Middle East is to destroy the countries and convert everyone to Christianity because it worked so well when we tried it during the crusades; things would have been better if Timothy McVeigh had just blown up the New York Times. In fact, it’s hard not to use Coulter’s name in a sentence and not include the word “vitriol” at least once. I’m pretty sure that it’s a requirement, actually.

So I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised at her latest attempt to smear the American opinion against a liberal, but this time, it just seems like she struck a bit low. Coulter went on CNBC’s The Big Idea yesterday and said that Bill Clinton is gay. Her evidence? Her self-reported memorization of the Starr Report and his “rampant promiscuity.”

Coulter always goes for a below the belt hit, but this is different. For the first time, she doesn’t sound like a harpy. She sounds like a 10th grader. Add that to her statements about the widows of September 11th enjoying their husbands’ deaths and it all just seems to me to paint a picture of that poor girl in geography class who couldn’t get anyone to like her.

It goes without saying that I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with anything Ann Coulter has said. I might be persuaded to side with her if she offered a particularly well-prepared argument that the sky is blue, but it would take some doing. And while I’ve often thought she was off base, hysterical, and frankly a piss-poor writer, I’ve never really thought that she wasn’t a player in the political field. Now, I’m beginning to second-guess myself. When one of the major voices of your movement resorts to the name-calling antics of an elementary school playground, you have to wonder how much shelf life your movement has left.

Could she really not think of a better insult to Clinton? He’s a philanderer, sure. A narcissist, definitely. Arguably, something of a socio-path in the clinical definition of the term. But resorting to questioning his sexual orientation just seems beyond the pale for me. Its something that children do, and while politicians often act like children, they at least do so from behind the veneer of adulthood. They come off as adults being childish, whereas Coulter just came off as a child trying her hardest to stay that way.

Modern right-wingers have no problem laying any blame they can find on Clinton. He’s been blamed for as much that’s gone wrong with the country after he left office as he was while he still resided in it. President Bush has insinuated that it was Clinton’s fault that 9/11 even happened because if only he had gone after Osama bin Laden (which, in point of fact, he did and the Republican-controlled congress called it “wagging the dog”) none of this would have happened. Clinton himself made his sex life fair game for the public debate, but this sort of insult is frankly beneath even Coulter herself.

Which all makes me wonder why it is that she said it. She can manage a better insult. She’s done it a thousand times over. In an interview with Time magazine last year, she said herself that she will keep an error in her book that’s funny over a truth that isn’t because she believes that this tactic does more to bring people around to her way of thinking. And while I agree her books and articles are far more entertainment than they are serious tomes, they still manage to at least take aim at those who are a serious threat to her and her party. Clinton can do nothing to the Republican Party that Ann Coulter will be able to address. Her venue is the public eye, not the cloistered halls of Washington movers and shakers.

My only solution is that Coulter is dried up. Even as new events emerge and Democrats continue to make fools of themselves trying to discuss those events on the world stage, she can’t manage a verbal barb that bests what you’d find in the girls’ bathroom at a high school prom. I’d say that’s too bad, but when your book titles include Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, and Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, I’d paraphrase and say the fault, dear Ann, lies not in the stars but in ourselves. Also? Consider a different editor. There are just too many colons up there in those titles.

MySpace Sued. Thanks For the Add, Say Lawyers

2006-06-29T15:10:00.000-05:00

So, this guy and this girl walk into a bar. Well, okay, not so much a bar as a restaurant. They order burgers, they chat, they flirt. Later on, they decide to catch a movie. For reasons not yet known to experts, they pick Mission Impossible III. (Don’t leave our heroes yet! Remember, anyone can make a mistake.) Not long after the movie is over, they head back to the car and, well, you can probably guess what happens next.

Here’s the kicker: what happens after the what-happens-next part of our story is the real thing. He gets arrested. Why? Turns out that he’s 19 and she’s 14. The two of them met online through MySpace and surprise of surprises, were not honest about their ages. This isn’t a false scenario. Pete Solis of Texas is currently awaiting trail for being the young man in this story. After his amorous relations with a 14-year-old girl became known, he was arrested for having sex with a minor. And while we could discuss all day the merits and pitfalls of such a law, what I find most interesting is not what happened to him, but what is happening to her. Namely, she stands to become, before she can legally drive a car, a very wealthy young woman.

The young woman and her family are suing MySpace for $30 million in damages. They contest that the website did not do enough to protect minors against sexual predators and that they are the victims of said crime. Not since the days of yore was a young woman’s virtue so highly prized. $30 million will net quite the dowry.

I am wary of jumping headlong into any debate that uses either of the phrases “think about the children” or “where were the parents in all this” as its cause celebre, but there’s something about this situation that goes deeper than just childhood behavior and is more far-reaching than tort reform and establishing damage caps.

The family claims that the website didn’t do enough to keep their daughter from being assaulted by a predator. I understand that by legal standards, consent for sex cannot be given if a party is under the proper age, usually 16 in most states. If that happens, even if both parties were of sound mind when the act occurred, a law has still been broken and punishment is still deserved. But, baring any evidence of her unwillingness to go forward with anything and/or his insistence that such a thing happen, this is a case of not understanding the law, not one of active predatory action.

So how, then, can the family honestly bring suit against MySpace? The website itself is a slithering example of how out of control the establishment of an online persona can be. Look at a MySpace page for any given high school student and I challenge you not to walk away from it either needing a fair scrubbing or at least a good anticonvulsant. It’s like staring into a visual map of the brain of an adolescent and, let me tell you, the adolescent brain is a scary place to be. There are no controls that can feasibly work on such a website, at least not without the website itself making some serious changes to the level of ease by which it operates. Such an action, by the way, would no doubt limit its success, making it more clunky to use and thus less popular. This is a serious concern for the website that is the fourth most popular English language page and the fifth most popular in the world, according to Alexa Internet.

I’m not going to assume that the parents of this young woman are negligent. My guess is that they probably believe themselves to be quite active in their daughter’s life. It seems to be that a $30 million lawsuit, aside from being about the chance to make some pain-and-suffering hay out of a nonissue, is more about wanting to control the uncontrollable than anything else. It must be a shock to parents to find out that their child has had sex. Especially if the child in question is of the age where she still needs her parent to sign a permission slip so she can attend a class field trip to a museum.

This situation speaks volumes to me about how isolated we as a society have become. How did people meet their spouses in days of not-too-long-ago? Usually through friends, relatives, co-workers, church groups or community organizations. Now we rely on the Internet. And while online communication has brought the world together in so many ways, we are getting more and more adept at using it to keep ourselves as solitary as possible. There is risk involved in talking to someone face to face. There is fear, and nerves and, at times, abject terror of saying what it is that we want to another person. The mask that an online persona provides is a way of getting around that fear.

But here’s the thing: if we lose the skill to do this, we lose our society. We lose the ability to connect with others and we lose the ability to fight for the most important things in life. We become meaner. We become more jaded. We become less able to compromise and less willing to hear from those who are different from us. This is not to suggest that having a life online is a bad thing. I am very aware that at the end of this post, it will list my alias, not my real name. At the risk of being called a hypocrite, I am not about to advocate the elimination of all online resources and a return to the messenger pigeon. I am saying that it is just as important to keep ourselves healthy in all those areas.

As to political investment, if you want to bemoan the lack of people speaking to their elected representatives, look no further than the absence of a congressional MySpace account for the reasons why.

It's College... Do You Know Who Your Kids Are Voting For?

2006-06-23T18:57:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post reported today on a study that purports to show that the faux news program The Daily Show is causing young voters to abstain from voting. According to the story, the study analyzed the students’ attitudes towards politics, President Bush and John Kerry and noted that students who watched The Daily Show had a markedly decreased opinion of all three when compared to those who watched the CBS Evening News.

So, let me get this straight – the population that you have already labeled as apathetic and uninterested in politics self-reports that after watching The Daily Show they have an even gloomier view of the American political stage and the knee-jerk reaction is that The Daily Show has made them less likely to vote? Over this, I am become skeptical.

How far we have come from the 2000 and 2004 elections when the youth vote was hailed (or, you know, not depending on where you got your news) as a major electoral force. Suddenly, the under-30 crowd is labeled as being right back to where it was before: lazy, self-involved, and not to be counted on to make a difference. I don’t know exactly why this crowd gets saddled with these traits. The majority of the youth that I know are quite involved, albeit not necessarily in politics.

Still, the chasm between Apathetic Youth and Participating Member of Society grows despite all evidence to the contrary. Observe the vast numbers of Alternative Spring Break trips every year for one. Go to your local college or university and ask if they have a student volunteer corps of some kind. I promise you, you will find one. Even the much-maligned Greek system, keg parties and hazing rituals aside, tend to be some of the largest philanthropy organizations in any given college town. The youth are constantly giving, whether it is of the very little amount of expendable income that they actually have or of their time to worthy causes.

I admit that I have not read the study in question, so it is entirely possible that I’m missing some key element of the story here, but it hardly seems sensible to me to claim that because one’s views of political candidates are less than robust that it means that a television show has caused a decrease in youth voting. The lack of consideration for youth voting patterns in general seems to be at least one missing element here, although potentially not the most significant.

If the youth of today are watching The Daily Show and it is affecting their view of politics, perhaps politics should consider how ludicrous it is being. In the midst of corruption scandals, blatant political maneuvering that has little actual benefits, and worsening news from the frontlines, surely we can’t lay the blame on Comedy Central. I assure you, Jon Stewart is not poisoning America.

Don’t blame the mirror for the displeasing reflection.

Rick Santorum and the Parenting Students Act

2006-02-23T19:29:00.000-05:00

Pennsylvania politicos in the know probably caught wind a few weeks back that Rick Santorum has signed onto a bill making its way through the United States sentate recently going by the name of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Pregnant and Parenting Students Act of 2005. The bill was read into the senate back in November, although an earlier version of the bill has been around for a while longer. It is currently in committee (health, education, labor and pensions).

As one could probably guess, the bill has some really good ideas wrapped around a couple of really creepy ones. The bill (S.1966, formally) would provide a pilot program to be offered at 200 colleges or universities and would fund an office to provide presumably non-clinical medical services and referrals to "parenting and prospective parenting students". Services would mean getting the schools to provide daycare, family housing, flexible academic scheduling, maternity and baby clothing, and baby food (including formula) to student parents. The schools could also choose to allow non-student school affiliates to partake of services as well.

All good things, right? Let me show you the bad: the office would be required to provide "pregnant and parenting resources" to students, though this is not fully defined. What is defined is that the office will be annually reviewed and it's performance assessed. Among other indicators, the office must provide "education concerning responsible parenting for mothers and fathers and education supporting healthy marriages." I'm all for healthy marriages, but i'm pretty sure my definition of healthy and Elizabeth Dole's definition vary slightly.

Finally, with the uber-creepy: A charming little ection that is related to the type of referrals that can be made and who they can be made for. Here's the direct text from the bill -

"An office shall make such referrals only to service providers that primarily
serve the following types of individuals:
(A) Parents
(B) Prospective parents awaiting adoption
(C) Women who are pregnant and plan on parenting or placing the child for adoption
(D) Parenting or prospective parenting couples who are married or who plan on marrying in order to provide a supportive environment for each other and their child."

In other words, c-ya Planned Parenthood. Also, buh-bye most major medical centers, as they are the ones who will actually perform abortions if the need is there. The only services students utilizing this office will be able to access are programs that will not allow abortion and will demand that the child be raised in a two-parent family home. Presumably, those two parents will have to be of opposite gender.

The kicker to all this? $10,000,000 for each fiscal year starting with 2006 and lasting until 2010. That's not a huge budget, especially in federal terms, but it is a direct spending of federal money to only go to certain service providers with a correct philosophy. Not that far removed from a faith-based inititative, one would assume. The fact that it is such a small budget actually speaks more about what these offices would be doing. 10 mill for 200 universities is $50,000 per university per year. In human resource terms, that's about one fairly low-paid full-time staffer (assuming, perhaps foolishly said staffer gets benefits) and maybe a closet somewhere in a health center. One guesses how much of the budget will go to office supplies.

This is not an attempt to get better healthcare to impoverished student women. It is, however, a very amusing way to test whether or not Elizabeth Cady Stanton really can spin in her grave.

Ho Ho No!

2005-12-18T11:57:00.000-05:00

‘Tis the season to be caustic.

The astute observer of the national news will no doubt have noticed by now that in addition to our country’s wars on terrorism, drugs, poverty, and high school students, we now have a new war to draw the media’s imagination. We are apparently in the midst of a “War on Christmas”, information of said war courtesy of Fox News.

The opening volleys of The War were fired, shot-heard-round-the-world-style, by Target of all companies for publicly wishing its customers a “Happy Holidays” instead of the more traditional “Merry Christmas”. This has turned many a concerned citizen-cum-armchair sociologist into published author on the subject of how our secular country is now in an armed conflict against the sacred holiday. Check out David Limbaugh and John Gibson if you find yourself skeptical amongst all the Christmas lights this season.

The general consensus by such authors and indeed the ever-wise Average Joe citizen on the street is that such behavior is an attempt by secularists to remove all traces of Christianity from the world. One internet poll found that 66% of those surveyed believe that the war is real and legitimate and something should be done about it. With that in mind, I have decided to answer their call and do what I can. Never deaf to the wailing concerns of the vox populi, I have decided this festive season to Do Something.

I’m going to launch war on Christmas.

Not a war of words, mind you. I’m talking actual, full-on, ten tanks-a’rollin’, nine guns-a-blazin’, soon my laser-ray will destroy all of Gotham City type war. My warriors will abduct Santa Clauses from malls all over the country and hold them in dingy basements, hogtied, while they video tape one of them getting their neck cut open and then send it to Al-Jazeera. I’m going to firebomb all the local purveyors of Christmas decorations. I’ll call in bomb threats to every local television station that plans on playing yet another round of It’s a Wonderful Life or The Charlie Brown Christmas. I’ll officially open reindeer season for all area hunters. Red and green will no longer be permitted color schemes for clothing. Henceforth all will wear gray. Our group will call itself the Christmas Liberation Army of the United States or CLAUS, if you prefer. In short, I’m gonna go Shock and Awe on this Christmas thing.

Wherefore such vehemence? It actually goes back to my feelings on marginalization. One of my biggest pet peeves is a group of people who are in power trying to claim that somehow they’ve been made insignificant and the religious right declaring that there is a War on Christmas is just about the biggest example of this that I can find. I’ve seen billboards urging the population to “keep Christ in Christmas” as if there were some way to extricate Him from it.

What it boils down to is another example of an incredibly powerful monster throwing a tempter tantrum when it doesn’t get everything it wants. The religious right, still apparently high on their victory of getting the public to vote for the current president even a year later, will not be satisfied as long as there is any public recognition of any way of thought other than its own. Members proclaim that they are being persecuted as Christians because a couple of stores want to make sure they themselves are being inclusive to all of their customers. And what evil manner of persecution are they being subjected to? What eternal torment? What aching destruction? Being wished "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". Hear that sound? That’s the sound of the early Christians, the ones that were actually hunted down and slaughtered for their beliefs, rolling in their collective graves.

Pettiness is a close second on my list of pet peeves.

All of this should serve as proof that even those in the service of God are not invulnerable to the intoxications of power and influence. Indeed, one could argue that they are at the most risk. Beware those who have either nothing to lose, or everything to gain. Both are powerful positions to be in and those who have everything to gain also tend to have everything by which to gain it with.

This time of year has been special for many of the world’s major religions throughout time. It is arrogance in the extreme that one of them now, one that isn’t even the oldest I might add, would bristle because it is not mentioned first and foremost over all the rest in the litany of festive greetings. I believe the phrase is “pride goeth before the fall.” If, as many Christians assert, faith is a function of your personal relationship to your deity and His/Her representatives, the failure of a department store chain to tell you to have a nice whatever shouldn’t be a cataclysmic issue. Why not take the gesture for what it is - an attempt to wish you tidings of good cheer, to say nothing of peace and happiness, and not undo the entire thing by launching into offense because people don’t want to assume that they know what type of building you worship in. It should be the ultimate disgrace on your person that you were so self-absorbed that you weren’t able to accept a kindly wish from a stranger because it wasn’t wrapped in the correct packaging.

So, have a Happy Holidays, be that Christmas, Kwanzaa, Chanukah, Solstice, or just the 25^th of December which you got off from work because of the rest of us nuts. And whatever your personal creed, celebrate it. I will be thankful that there are still remnants of society that take the time to be kind to one another even though no earthly law legislates that they must be.

Happy Christmas to all, but get over yourselves.

Affirmative Action for Republicans

2005-10-13T16:30:00.000-05:00

Conservatives bemoan affirmative action as “reverse racism” as if racism were something that could just be spun in the opposite direction from whence it came. Their charge, however erroneous, is that certain people are just given a job based on their appearance and not because of their qualifications. From that point of view, Harriet Miers is the perfect emblem of affirmative action. She is a candidate for a job that doesn’t have the qualifications, but does look the right way.

The problem, of course, is that affirmative action doesn’t do anything of the sort. No one gets hired or goes to college or becomes a doctor based solely on the color of their skin of the kind of genitals that they possess. People who claim otherwise are forgetting that affirmative action only helps to keep the door open to otherwise qualified candidates. People who receive assistance from affirmative action programs are still qualified to take on whatever position they are being offered.

But the bogeyman persists, which is strangely appropriate given that the Bush administration despises the doctrine so and yet tries to emulate it as much as possible. This nomination is the best evidence we have that opponents of affirmative action just don’t get it.

And that’s not even touching the audacity of the Right on this whole issue. Imagine a group so powerful, so spoiled, and so convinced of their own infallibility that they deride their own man the moment he steps away from them in any respect. This should teach Mr Bush the meaning of the old political adage “you gotta dance with them what brung you” and what happens when you stop moving to the music.

Baghdad Bush Returns

2005-09-16T20:30:00.000-05:00

Good to know that in the wake of natural disaster, bipartisan criticism, and plummeting favorables in the opinion polls, the president still isn’t afraid to make an utterly stupid decision.

Mr Bush decided today that he won’t raise any taxes in order to help pay for the reconstruction and relief efforts the Gulf Coast and that instead he’ll just continue to cut programs. I’m not a professional prognosticator or anything, but I’m willing to bet just about any sum that you put in front of me, those programs are going to be things like education, health promotion and low-level civic safety programs. In other words, the very same programs that would have gone to assisting victims of national disasters.

I have something of a background in psychology, so I know a little something about the Oedipus complex. While I understand a child’s desire to overthrow his father figuratively, if not literally, doesn’t this seem to be a strange twist on it all? I can just hear the current Bush administration in their meeting with each other starting out all conversations with “Now remember: none of our statements can start with the phrase ‘read my lips…’.”

The president also stated that Congress was just going to have to find a way to make this all work and that they would just have to figure out a budget that didn’t involve taxing anyone, which to me sounds a little like a surgeon saying that the triple by-pass is going to have to performed by the intern. In other hospital. Three cities away.

In other laughable news, Mr Bush’s assistant for economic policy also assured the American people that despite the estimated $62 billion needed for Gulf Coast assistance, the needed funding will in no way dampen the president’s plan to have the deficit cut completely in half by 2009. Don’t you just love the end-date? Perfectly timed so that if the deficit isn’t cut in half by that time, it will be one year into the next president’s term, thus assuring plausible deniability on behalf of Mssrs. Bush, Cheney et al.

Finally, somewhat tangentially but still within the realm of the important, the government has decided that it won’t be allowing reporters to ride along with them while search and rescue crews find bodies in the Katrina aftermath. So much for embedded journalism. Apparently it’s fine for journalists to view carnage when the administration looks like its fighting a noble, valiant war but not when it has to clean up after itself. Wouldn’t want the public seeing that.

What's the take-away message here? To all you good people of the Gulf Coast: Don't call us, we'll call you. You thought your government failed you before August 28th? I'm sorry to say its just outdone itself.

I don't normally put these things on here, but...

2005-09-08T20:50:00.000-05:00

I am:
0%
Republican.

"You're a complete liberal, utterly without a trace of Republicanism. Your strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure. (You hope.)"

Are You A Republican?

What can I say? vive la revolucion!

I Want What I Need

2005-09-03T08:52:00.000-05:00

Just when it didn’t look like this whole mess could get any worse…

The Washington Post reported today that despite the president’s photo-op tours of a decimated Mississippi and Louisiana, it looks like Mr Bush himself was campaigning not too long ago against giving money to the very agencies and organizations that could have helped to prevent or at least lesson the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Among other measures, the president has in recent years fought to slice the budget for the US Army Corps of Engineers’ attempts to improve the levees in New Orleans. In 2005, Bush asked for only $3.9 million for funding, reportedly only a fraction of the total amount requested by the corps. Since coming to office he has frozen their spending and in July of this year (yes, just two months ago) tried to block a plan to spend $1 billion over four years to rebuild coastlands and wetlands, nature’s way of protecting against hurricanes.

The question that you are probably asking yourself right now, and rightly so, is why in the world am I bringing this up? Isn’t this a time for banding together and putting politics aside? 500,000 people are suffering directly as the result of a natural disaster, the aftermath of which America has not yet seen in its history and all I want to do it bitch about the president?

Well, actually, yes. Let me tell you why:

First off, I have to say that I believe that Mr Bush is indeed shocked and worried by the damage done. I don’t believe that the man is monster in any fashion. But while I believe his grief is genuine, I doubt his priorities and his ability to admit his mistakes. Granted, I don’t have to do a lot of work to doubt the latter, given that he himself has professed that he hasn’t made any mistakes, or at least very few, in the past five years. In any case, it is true that spending in Washington has been a little…ah…skewed of late.

To the point, it is also true that even if the Army Corps of Engineers had been funded fully in all its efforts over the past five years, there is a significant likelihood that this disaster would still have come to pass. Nothing that broke in the Gulf of Mexico was designed to take the force of a Category 5 hurricane. The administration obviously could not have had any clue this was coming and if it had certainly would not have hesitated to have put as much funding as was humanly possible into protecting the city of New Orleans, to say nothing of the people and towns surrounding the Gulf of Mexico that were also hit.

But that’s just the thing: as much as is humanly possible. A whole lot more would have been humanly possible if money in Washington had been spent in a way that made sense, rather than a way that kept a political pipe dream alive. For those who would like the lines drawn for them, I am, unfortunately, talking about Iraq.

I’m not going to get into the debate about whether or not troops should be pulled out of the country. (For the record, I think that at this point doing that would do more harm than good. More on that at some other time.) What I am going to point out is that Iraq has already cost the United States over $191 billion dollars. For those into money crunching, that means that with that money we could have built over 1 million new houses for the homeless, hired over 3 million new teachers, provided over 9 million students with college scholarships, and funded world-wide anti-hunger efforts for 7 years. All of which would have been attractive options, considering the number of hungry, homeless and displaced residents of New Orleans.

What Katrina should be illustrating is potentially very dire consequences of confusing desire with obligation and want with need. The country is being led by a team of people who are piloting us with the mindset of what they want to have and not paying attention to what the needs of their people and the people of the world are. Little children in the convenience store on the corner claim that they need to have a chocolate bar as a snack. Responsible parents know that they should question whether or not their child needs said snack or just wants it.

And, of course, I would offer to the political nay-sayer out there who suggests that I should just shut up and start caring about something other than politics, it was Mr Bush himself who beat me to the punch of making this political. When asked today if the country could afford to repair the damage, he responded “We’ll secure our country from the terrorists and we’ll rebuild this area.” He also described the damage as if “the entire Gulf coast was obliterated by the worst kind of weapon you can imagine.”

Nice image, eh? Sounds like someone “needs” us to believe something about spending.

Great! Does This Mean That I Can Start Legislating?

2005-08-24T15:05:00.000-05:00

I’d like to introduce you to the 25 most frightening words in the English language. Are you ready? Here we go:

“The Congress of the United States has determined that at this stage of development, an unborn child has the physical structures necessary to experience pain.”

Surely, I hear you saying, these are not the most frightening. There must be worse. “I am not a crook” could rank up there. Likewise, so could “I’m pleased to announce that I’ve signed legislation that outlaws the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes.” For that matter “wardrobe malfunction” is also kinda creepy. (In defense of Ronald Reagan, he did offer his own version of the most terrifying words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” I agree that they’re scary, though probably not for the same reason he thought so.)

No, friends, let me share with you why these 25 words bring an unseasonable chill into my heart. These words are from the text of a script that doctors would be required to read to women contemplating an abortion performed after 20 weeks of gestation. The script is part of a requirement from a bill that was introduced in the Senate in 2004 and again this year that would require medical doctors to alter the manner in which they treat patients who are considering abortions.

The bill, which goes by the oh-so-charming name of the “Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act”, has been introduced by Senator Sam Brownback, Republican. Of Kansas. The Land of Oohs and Oz, if I’m to believe their tourist literature. According to Senator Brownback there is “substantial evidence” that a fetus feels pain when it is aborted. How does he know this? The Distinguished Gentleman from the Sunflower State has drawn his conclusions after an extensive read of the scholarly literature on the subject. Ahhh…Science.

I don’t want to think that I’m the only one who’s creeped out by the notion of a legislative body without any mass formal training deciding what words can be said in a doctor’s office. Big Brother is no longer just watching, he’s doling out your prescriptions as well. To say nothing of the wisdom of this initiative coming out of Kansas, the state that is currently trying to get scientists to recognize that all their theories about the origin of the universe are wrong. For a state with such a collective disdain for scientific inquiry, why in the world are they resorting to it now?

Congress has decided that they know better than doctors how to treat patients. Bill Frist aside, how do they know this? Did top-quality medical training suddenly get added to the new legislators’ orientation, right after they show incoming representatives where the copy machines are and how to dial out of the building? By the most recent counts I can find, dating all the way back to Teri Schivo, only about 20 or so of the over 500 members of congress are medical professionals.

I’m going to speak plainly: abortions should be limited. Women shouldn’t be getting them. They're unhealthy and traumatic. In a perfect world there wouldn't be a need for such a procedure. Here’s my thing, though: How many women do you know want to have an abortion? How many little girls are there out there just praying for the opportunity to have a D and C someday? My guess? Not so much any. Besides, come across any perfect worlds lately?

Congress, its wealth of medical knowledge and experience aside, needs to recognize that there is not a mass plague of women out there aborting things. The myth of the woman who uses abortion as a method of birth control is wrong. These bogeywomen do not exist anywhere near the level that politicos and wailing, ranting Pro-Lifers would have you believe. The choice to have an abortion is never easy. And that’s what it is, by the way – a choice. And whatever else you feel it is about, America is about nothing more than it is about the freedom make choices, right or wrong.

Here’s a fun analogy to ponder this whole choice thing: consider cigarette smoking. Smokers are often upset that so many localities now are going smoke-free. They don’t understand why they can’t light up in the middle of a bar, restaurant, ball park, hospital. “I have the right to smoke,” they proclaim. “It may be unhealthy, but I have the right to do it.” For the record, the reason you can’t smoke in public places is because your cigarette smoke is harming those around you who did not make the choice to be unhealthy. But to the analogy part, smokers make an unhealthy (read: wrong) choice, but they feel that it is their choice to make, regardless of the harm it causes them or those around them. So how can the same not be said about abortion? Remember, children: cigarette smoke kills too.

I know many people who are against abortion for moral or, more specifically, religious reasons. To them, I offer this conundrum: If the goal of Christian life is to stray from sin, doesn’t that imply that sin must be present in order to avoid it? Are we not redeemed into grace not because we never saw sin, but because we saw it, were tempted and choose to move in the opposite direction? You may believe that abortion is sinful. You may be right, I don’t know. I’ll leave it to those better qualified than I to determine what a sinful act is. But your responsibility is not to remove the sin from the face of the planet, but rather to bring the sinners to the light.

This is not accomplished by congressional action and it most certainly isn’t accomplished by altering the manner in which a doctor may treat her patients and the words which she must use to do so.

Three Incredulous Moments

2005-08-10T12:28:00.000-05:00

Incredulous Moment One: Daylight Savings Time has been extended by four weeks as part of the president’s energy bill. I’m going to forgo the obvious out loud wondering about the wisdom of allowing a former energy CEO to dictate national energy policy and skip right to the really nutty part: we’re doing what, now?

Daylight Savings Time was ostentatiously created as a way to lend assistance to farmers, giving them more hours of daylight during the summer months so that they could produce crops more efficiently, agriculture being the United State’s largest industry. I say ostentatiously because in reality a lot of farmers didn’t want it. It meant bad lighting in the early morning, the time when farmers traditionally need to get their produce out of the farm and into the markets. The move was really a gift to big city commercial centers, granting them lots of sun-lit hours for shoppers coming home from work to peruse and manhandle merchandise. Daylight Savings Time has only marginally worked to help farmers do much of anything.

Edward Markey, Massachusetts congressman and co-author of the measure, declared that the four-week extension of daylight savings time is "a huge victory for sunshine and puppy lovers.” Okay, I may be lying about the puppies, but the rest is true. What I want to know is where has this heretofore unknown voting bloc of disenfranchised sunshine-lovers been hiding? Why have there been no hand-wringing congressional hearings on the plight of the tan?

What we’re seeing is that Congress has taken something that never worked properly to begin with, examined all the evidence showing that it isn’t doing what it was intended to do now, and decided the best course of action was to expand it because clearly, despite all assertions to the contrary, size matters. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. This is the modus operandi of the current administration: examine evidence, declare it fatally flawed, and go against it anyway because scientists and researchers clearly don’t know what they’re doing but an administration of CEOs does.

My favorite little idiosyncrasy about this issue, however, is that it is being touted as a way of cutting down energy costs, when in actuality it will do no such thing. It won’t save fuel from people getting up later (in fact it may add to it because it will be lighter later which means people may be out and about driving their cars much later into the evening) and it won’t save lives. (Although it may endanger more children because in the western edges of all the time zones the sun may not be up until 8:00 or 8:30 meaning that kids are going to be walking to school in the dark.) It will however cost a lot of airlines upwards of $150 million each year because our clocks are now out of sync with Europe’s.

Incredulous Moment Two: Chicago’s Mayor Daley is experiencing some political woes. The son of one of the most memorable of all Midwestern political figures, Daley is under fire from several sources implicating him as being involved in a federal mail fraud scandal. Other sources are adding that he may be playing political favoritism in his office’s job appointment. Ironically, this is the exact same charge that brought down his giant of a father from the exact same political office.

That’s not what gets me, though. Richard M. Daley is nothing if not perennially implicated in one scandal or another. What’s grabbing onto my ankle in this situation is that the Cook County Republican Party has offered a $10,000 reward for anyone who can provide information leading to Daley’s conviction. I’m all for a little incentive to bring forward the abused element that may be at risk of retaliation by the abuser, ala America’s Most-Wanted, however I just can’t get beyond the notion that man’s professional rivals are seeding the ground for evidence.

How is this not a bounty-hunt? How are the Cook County Republicans not inviting the slaughter (albeit political, not physical) of their adversary? When did this become acceptable politics as usual? The answer, of course, is a long time ago as its not as if this is the first time a political party has used unsavory means to rig The Game. Still, there’s something about those unsavory means being reported a priory in a national news magazine that seems a little off to me.

Incredulous Moment Three: Chocolate is apparently health food. I wish I was making this stuff up, but sure enough Mars Inc., the company that brings you quality junk food, is now trying to market the health benefits of chocoloate, or more specifically cocoa.

Mars Inc. has employed a massive Research and Development wing to investigate the medicinal benefits of chocolate bars. They've even got a new line of candy coming out called CocoaVia which is being touted as a heart-healthy food. Forgive my skepticism, but...well, wait...nevermind, completely pay attention to my skepticism. I'm just not ready to accept candy bars as a good.

Apparently, however, it isn't up to me to accept or deny. The Mars Inc. R&D wing is publishing findings to support their contention of candy as health food. They've even got a study under their belt to prove it. The study looks all fine and good, but the issue is raises isn't the health benefits of candy - it should be the inner skeptic that looks at all research. If a research team announces that a product is good for you, doesn't it make sense to question who is funding said research? In this case, it seems a little far-fetched to swallow the line that chocolate will make you a healthier person when the entity funding the research is a major candy producer.

What this should show once and for all is that research is only as valid as its funding source. This doesn't just extend to candy. Consider all those impressive government statistics you hear about whether or not programs or social policies actually work. Whenever we're looking at someone telling us a bold-faced statement, it should be second nature to question what the person who's making that statement has to gain from it. If you'd like to turn this logic back on me because you were that kid in high school who sat in the second to last row and liked to play the "why" game with your frustrated tenth grade english teacher, I'll lay my motivation on the table for you right now: I don't want to have another day with three frickin' inane news revelations all within two hours. 'Nuff said.

The White House Two-Step

2005-07-13T16:09:00.000-05:00

This is one of those great moments when I don’t even need to try to draw conclusions out of something that has happened. The White House afternoon press briefing from Monday, July 11 has just done it all for me.

Those with a keen eye towards the adventures of Scott McClellan, White House Press Secretary, will note the somewhat trying time he had of it this week but, as the song says, “I don’t like Mondays.” The White House Press corps, apparently waking up after someone put roofies in their coffee for the past four years, decided that maybe it was time to take McClellan out for a little test drive to see what he was made of. Now, some critics may argue that perhaps they should have thought to do this two years ago when he was made Press Secretary after Ari Fleischer resigned, but to you I say that while I agree with you in principle, remember the adage about being late versus being never.

It gives one pause to think why would the press corps start asking these questions now? The obvious answer is that Someone has decided that this is newsworthy suddenly, although its strange because no one ever seems to know who this Someone is. I personally think that it probably has much more to do with journalists feeling a very real threat to their jobs and the manner in which they can earn their livelihood, and while that might seem callous or self-centered, again I ask you to remember the late/never dichotomy in addition to the reminder of what happens when a fire gets lit in the close proximity of someone’s behind: you tend to jump.

For those who haven’t had a chance to see a press corps actually doing its job, check out the transcript of the briefing here.

After reading it, you will no doubt notice how often McClellan is asked to comment on Karl Rove and the recent revelations that he may have had something to do with the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. By my count, he was asked 32 times. Total number of times responding without saying something to the effect of “no comment”: 0. I should also mention that the level to which he refused to answer even extended to questions asking if the president even met with Rove today (as one would assume he would, given that Rove is the deputy chief-of-staff and thus responsible for much in the way of day-to-day White House activities) or what official role Rove plays in the White House, and answer that could technically be gleaned by consulting www.whitehouse.gov. This says a little bit about McClellan’s refusal to even acknowledge that Rove is around. He is, however, perfectly willing to give a 226-word recitation on the virtues of freedom and the value of staying the course of Our Heroic Battle in light of the London bombings last week as well as a 199-word follow-up several minutes later.

I have to say right here that I love London. It is my favorite city on this planet. Having spent a good deal of time there, I know each of the places where the four bombs went off well and could recognize streets and stores when looking at the images of the aftermath. I have always been amazed at the qualities of Londoners, especially in respect to how they deal with hardship. We’re talking about a city that has regular threats to its underground system and yet still runs the trains. The city was leveled during the Blitz in World War Two and rather than run and hide the King and Queen actually elected to stay in the partially ruined city to show their people that they were with them. The city has literally burned to the ground several times, to say nothing of having its population utterly laid waste by plagues and diseases. And yet the city and its people are still thriving. America, for all its own unique history, is essentially an off-shoot of London and its people. And what do we do when our older sibling experiences an attack? We turn it into a message about how we, Americans, are being threatened.

This, along with McClellan’s refusal to talk about something he already talked about which turns out to be HUGELY germane to the country’s national security, is a classic Bush Administration White House Two-Step. Deflect the issue, use saccharine melodrama to hoodwink people into thinking that it is against their patriotic duty to question those in power, swing your partner round and round.

But even then, I have to believe that America, what with all the dancing its been doing for four years and a half years now, is beginning to learn the steps a little better. The press briefing is actually a sign of that. When reviewing what was said, I end up having two things here: One is that McClellan is occasionally beginning to sound a lot like Baghdad Bob and the other is that when he isn’t sounding like the Iraqi Information Minister, he’s sounding an awful lot like Joel Osteen, the author of the self-help book Your Best Life Now. The line coming out of the administration is less General MacArthur, more Captain Kangaroo. His press briefing Monday was a stream of refusals to comment on something he already commented on, followed by a slew of insipid platitudes about freedom, topped off with some nice phony ad-speak about the “two-track strategy for succeeding in Iraq.”

Do you notice the language? It's not just a strategy; it's a two-track strategy for success. The phrase is certainly pleasant sounding even if it is a staid and a not-so creative use of positively connotated words to hide an uglier reality. It’s the same thing as referring to someone as “84 years young” as if removing the reminder that an octogenarian has been around for a while will somehow result in people confusing him or her with a thirtysomething. Just as people get old regardless of how we enumerate them, success in Iraq is not going to be achieved by an alliterative attempt at double-speak, which is in and of itself, just another dance.

Where's Ilsa When We Need Her?

2005-06-22T14:58:00.000-05:00

Recently President Bush spoke in the town where I live. Naturally, there was something of a protest by those oppose his agenda. (I confess I was a part of said protest.) It was blatantly pandering, considering that the President was speaking to high school members of the Future Farmers of America but the topic of his speech was social security. Call me one initiative short of a campaign, but I find it a little strange that a speech to a bunch of potential farmers was about, you know, farming. Instead a bunch of 12 – 18 year old kids got to hear about how the only way to save America was to put all their money into private accounts and hope that the market never recedes again. I can just imagine several of those kids baling hay for a while and then deciding to use their weekly allowance to set up an IRA rather than buy the new 50 Cent CD. But I digress…

The disturbing part of the President’s visit was not his speech or his politics, but the loonies in the protest who started yelling at the kids, saying they were tools of the administration and not paying attention to the world around them. I mean really, imagine that! To be involved in their communities to such an extent that they got invited to a conference for their completely extra-curricular organization and got to hear the President of the United States speak! The nerve of those kids! I tried to shut most of the loonies up, but after I got yelled at several times and at least one friend almost got punched by a woman with a very large banner detailing how the Bush administration partially planned the events of September 11, I decided it was time to shy away. On the way out, however, the loonies started calling the kids Nazis.

Yup, Nazis. The Third Reich. The followers of Dur Fuhrer. Captain Insanity and his Band of Bedlamites. Obviously they’re doing more with FFA these days than they did when I was in high school, because all I remember was listening to my friends talk about winning ribbons for their prize Holsteins. But it got me thinking, and not just because my friend who almost had the literal kind of run in with the September 11 woman is, herself, Jewish: Wherefore all the Nazi talk?

Obviously, when anyone compares anything to 1930s Germany, they are doing so to make a point. But is that comparison deserving? We are a nation comfortable with hyperbole. I get that. I subscribe to it myself. But somehow, it just doesn’t flow. But, and this is especially in response to recent comments made by Messrs. Durbin, Santorum and Byrd and the countless others who have either made headlines or not with their comments, can we please stop comparing anything to Nazism? Cause here’s the thing: NOTHING COMPARES TO NAZISM EXCEPT NAZISM!

Judicial filibuster debate? Scary, but not as scary as a gas chamber disguised to look like a shower room. Ramming amendments through congress to support your ideologue agenda? Freaky, but not as freaky as the systematic extermination of 6 million people. Children at an FFA convention? Must I even go there…?

I find many arguments and positions that I disagree with and even several which I think are just down-right crazy. (See the recent push for yet another amendment to the Constitution that will formally outlaw flag desecration for an example of the latter.) None of the ideas or tactics, however, is comparable to genocide. Well, except when it actually is genocide. But that would be talking about Darfour, and Heaven forbid we do that in this country. Point being, nothing is comparable to Nazism. Nothing even comes close in modern American political discourse.

Democrats – sorry, but the points go to the Republicans this round. Senator Durbin should learn that he wins no points from making the kind of leap that he did, even though yes, Guantanamo is an issue that seriously needs addressing yesterday. Republicans, don’t go too far away now. It was your own point person on social security, Senator Santorum, who made the very same comparisons only a short while ago. And that’s not even talking about Mr. Limbaugh’s ever-so-charming moniker of “feminazis”. There’s plenty of shame to go around.

Madonna and the Evil Empire

2005-06-17T15:10:00.000-05:00

About a week before Ronald Reagan died, I found myself watching Evita on TV during a lazy afternoon. When the funeral preparations began seven or eight days later, it was hard not to watch the events unfolding on CNN, MSNBC, CSPAN, ABC News, Fox News, PBS, the Discovery Channel, the Weather Channel and Crazy Willy’s News Hour on the city local access channel without feeling like I had just stumbled into a rerun.

Evita opens with masses of mourners pouring into the Casa Rosada to view their beloved leader’s corpse as it lies in state. Citizens throng to the building, heaping it with flowers and weeping as they mournfully tango in back alleys. Here in America in the New Millennium, we had got the same thing. Well, minus the tango. The body of the President was flown to Washington after laying in state in California and even though the general public wasn’t allowed to view the flag-draped coffin in the capitol rotunda until 9:00pm, the line to get into it started just after 5:00 in the morning. Some were there as honest mourners, grieving for a president that they whole-heartedly loved for his policies. Others were there by not-so-happy accident, vacationing in the nation’s capitol and taking in the show while they’re there. There were politicos and pollsters, presidents and priests, the passive and pro-active. And through it all was a town dolling itself up for the final farewell of an old flame.

America loves its funerals more than anything, and Washington is the crown prince of the death parade. Riderless horses, boots turned backwards in the stirrups; It’s all part of the show really, and no one gets a bigger curtain call than the star, the President of the United States.

It is in our nature to be self-congratulatory and to make everything an event. (Witness how many awards shows there are on television from February through April.) We love a good funeral for the same reason we love watching real people make a fool of themselves on reality television: it makes us glad that it isn’t us. When someone dies we throw controversy to the wind and embrace that person fully. In some ways, this tendency to ignore the bad and focus on the good is one of our most endearing qualities as a people. It shows that we are forgiving, that we love and honor both our heroes and our anti-heroes. The American penchant for simplification is our greatest gift to our fallen brawlers, our old generals that don’t die but just fade away. Of course, it also allows us to sweep the ugly parts of a person under the rug and ignore the damage done to the rest of the house.

Being President comes with a high price. We’ll let you be the ruler of the free world, but you’ve got to pay us back with one bitchin’ goodbye party. Poor Ronald is the first one in a while to live up to his end of the bargain completely by returning one last time to the city he is inexorably linked with. Washington hasn’t had a presidential funeral in 30 years, all previous presidents since Johnson in 1973 having been too inconsiderate to want to enjoy the media circus from the comforts of their own home states. And so, Washington takes its opportunity to take notice. Main roads get shut down. Banners are draped. Crepe bows are tied on the necks of the public doves. Traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

So why in all this pomp and circumstance was I left feeling a bit like Evita’s Che, sitting alone in an empty movie theatre contemplating “Oh What a Circus” it all was? This time, America, not Argentina, had gone to town over the death of an actor called Dutch.

To say that there are similarities between The Gipper and Madonna’s portrayal of the infamous Argentine First Lady is to say that Tiger Woods is sort of a golfer. The resemblance is especially obvious while watching news reports of mourners thronging to the Capitol building and Presidential Library in Simi Valley and reading in the Washington Post about how groundskeepers for the Capitol Building have been going crazy planting last minute flowers in an effort to give the late President a good send-off. When Eva Peron died, the flowers piled more than six feet upon the walls.

Even the real-life stories of Ronnie and Eva are companions. Both began their lives in the public eye as performers. Both were regarded as being pretty bad at this and it was suggested to both of them that they pursue other fields, although both continued with some success in movies and radio. Their valleys turned into peaks as they moved from acting to politics, arguably not a great leap. The big difference from there was how they left one scene and moved to the other. Ronnie was practically forced out of his acting career after that monkey incident in the 1951 film Bedtime for Bonzo and ended up as Governor of California. Eva took advantage of her connections and married an up-and-coming general. They both enjoyed a long career as celebrated public speakers, policy makers and controversial leaders.

But what of the Che Guevaras? In Evita, a young man modeled after the famous Argentinian revolutionary narrates the story for us, taking us from Eva Duarte’s humble beginnings in the poor village of Los Toldos all the way through her triumphant inauguration speech from the Casa Rosada’s balcony to her eventual losing battle with uterine cancer in only her mid-30s. And yet in the face of such a sweeping life, Che the narrator is hardly able to conceal his anger and bitterness towards the anti-heroine. “The Queen is dead, the King is through,” he sings almost gleefully upon her death. “She’s not coming back to you.” Where is this archetype in the Ronnie version of the story? The unfortunate thing is that such outcry is almost entirely missing. The modern Ches now find themselves publishing articles in online journals, not in the public forum. (For the record, I don’t consider myself a Che Guevera in any sense, although I do think motorcycles are kinda cool.) To criticize was deemed insensitive and un-American and every would-be naysayer to the Reagan Administration had better just keep their opinions to their electronic, non-mainstream readership.

When we ignore a facet of someone (such as the opposition to their leadership decisions, for example), we allow ourselves to lose sight of everything that made that person fascinating. The silence surrounding Reagan’s faults casts pallor over whatever triumphs he garnered because it presents a false picture, a caricature of a life. We could memorialize him, turn him into a stone statue to be placed in sculpture garden or at least an animatronic stage in Disney World but without a counter-point, he will never be anything more than the man who loved Jelly Beans and jokingly told the nation that he was bombing Russia before realizing that the microphone in front of him was turned on.

Ronald Reagan enjoyed high poll numbers during his time in office and many regard him as one of the best presidents of the 20^th century. One woman quoted in the Washington Post extended his executive privilege to making him part of the American icon-osphere when she included him as the third part of an old American triumvirate. To this woman, things are now “as American as mom, apple pie and Ronald Reagan.” He’s no longer a part of the world. What has made the man has transcended into something else, which means that he’s no longer real. And thus, his image starts to change. The woman in the Washington Post proves this more than anything. She isn’t mourning Ronald Reagan, she’s mourning Ronald Reagan. It isn’t the man, it’s the cartoon. It’s the impression of Reagan as the Conservative bastion, the Great Communicator, the president who relied on a psychic.

It’s difficult for me to understand how Reagan can be loved as president. My mother was a schoolteacher who was an opponent of many of his attitudes towards education. As an adult, I take issue with almost all of his policies. I was three years old on the day he took office, eleven on the day he left it and a Democrat every day in between. In primary school, my teacher held a mock election to illustrate to all of us eager learners at Galewood Elementary how the electoral process worked. It could have been because my own parents were avowed liberals themselves or maybe it was because in the menagerie of presidential portraits that lined her room, Mrs. Milligan’s Jimmy Carter was significantly larger than both Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan, but regardless of the motivation I distinctly remember voting for Mondale. To illustrate the concept of a secret ballot, we all kept our heads down on our desks and raised our hands to indicate a vote. In keeping with national trends and the fact that I grew up in a very conservative little town where I’m sure most of my fellow classmates weren't listening to NPR with their parents over breakfast each morning, Mondale walked in shame from the first grade classroom that day and lost by an overwhelming majority, both at Galewood Elementary and America itself.

What’s even more difficult for me to understand is how it is that the country can whitewash his tenure in the Oval Office so neatly. Reagan effectively ignored the concerns of most Americans during his presidency. Iran-contra and Reagonomics are issues that have seen their share of ink, but they are not the only ones. Total number of Americans diagnosed with AIDS by 1988: 36,000. Total number of times Ronald Reagan said the word “AIDS” in public before 1987: 0. Want to unionize? Not during the Reagan Administration. The firing of the LAX air traffic controllers is only one example of his aversion to the masses and their crazy commie idea of organizing so that they can’t be forced to work 16+ hour days and not be paid overtime. (The fact that the only airport within Washington D.C. airspace is now called Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is no small affront to many of those fired LAX employees.) The wall in Berlin was no more not long after he asked Mr. Gorbachev to tear it down, but a lot of walls remained standing in the United States. And by the way, how’s that War on Drugs coming?

Of course, there are excuses for his behavior. He was old, people argue. (He was rounding 70 at the time of his inauguration.) It was harder for him to talk about diversity. He wasn’t raised in a time where that stuff was talked about. This is true, but unless we’re talking about the AARP Executive Board, a president is not elected to make decisions for only the over-60 crowd. A president must lead all the citizens of the country, not just the chosen few. Ronald Reagan’s faults lie not in being an inhuman monster, but in the fact that he, like many other men who held his job before and after him, failed to understand that there are people who are not as privileged as he. The Greeks called it Hubris. We call it “Dude, what are you thinking?!”

It’s not all bad, however. There were significant accomplishments during his time. The Cold War was effectively ended, although it can be argued that saying that it was Reagan’s doing is like giving a painter credit for the sunset. We got to add a lot of cool phrases to the American lexicon. I love the imagery of the “shining city on the hill”, even if I think it’s disturbing that the city had to steep itself in so much muck in order to shimmer like it does. And who doesn’t want to swell with pride when thinking about America’s “rendezvous with destiny”?

During Reagan’s time the United States had a clear enemy that we could blame our problems on: The Soviets, the Evil Empire. As history moved forward, our enemies became more secretive, less obvious. We only have to look to Hollywood to realize how much easier it is to fight when the villain is obvious, dressed all creepily in black and kidnapping ingénues to tie them to railroad tracks. It was comforting at the time to know who our villains were. If we knew where they were coming from, we could surely protect ourselves from them. Ronald Reagan helped provide us with that sense of security. And all this is to say nothing of the boundless optimism he is credited with.

Only two months before his body was brought to the rotunda, I myself stood there as part of an organized tour of the Capitol. Watching on TV the coffin laying in the same spot where I stood, I remembered the tour guide reflecting on how so few Presidents had actually lain in state. I was reminded of the sorrow of the passing of leaders – John John saluting his father, the sad Victorian train traversing the distance one last time between Washington and Illinois carrying the body of the esteemed Mr. Lincoln, the symbolic coffins representing the dead astronauts of the space shuttle Challenger. The tragedy that lies in Reagan’s death, aside from that of the John Donne variety, is that his passing is more indicative of the end of a certain type of politics, at least for now. Partisanship, aside from all campaign promises to the contrary, is the order of the day. Our current presidents can not expect to have trust or friendship across the aisle. Just as there will be no more Ronald Reagan, there will also be no more Tip O’Neil. And American democracy is the worse for it.

Who Needs The Pulitzer?

2005-06-17T13:56:00.000-05:00

Human Events, a conservative magazine, has listed the top 10 most harmful books of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. I have to be honest, I’m a little relieved. I’ve been laying awake for several nights now worried what would happen if some poor unsuspecting child got his hands on a copy of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. That could lead to more environmental laws getting passed within the next twenty years!

Here’s the thing: I actually agree that many of the books on this list probably are not promoting systems or ways of thinking that are good in the long term or even viable, however I still think there’s a difference between thought that isn’t productive and thought that is harmful. And I think I am not alone in finding it funny that books about seat belt laws, the women’s lib movement and basic behavioral psychology are deemed harmful, but the publications of Playboy and Penthouse are given a free ride.

But is it just me or are these reviewers slipping a little bit? Where’s Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia? Or the perennial favorite The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Harry Potter didn’t even make it on the list! Come on, guys! These books aren’t going to pan themselves.

At least we both agree that Hitler was crazy, although I’m not sure that it’s not a bad idea to read his writing. If one of the best ways to understand the sickness of a Schizophrenic is to spend time with him, then I would think one of the best ways to learn about what made a man want to murder 6 million people would be to read his manifesto.

For the curious, here is the full list. For the list direct from the horse’s mouth along with reasons as to why these little Molotov cocktails of the First Amendment are worthy of being included in this august list, check out the magazine’s website here. Make sure to check out their selection of books by Dick Morris, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity while you’re there.

Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels
Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
Quotations From Chairman Mao by Mao Zedong
The Kinsey Report by Alfred Kinsey
Democracy and Education by John Dewey
Das Kapital by Karl Marx (two-time winner!)
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
The Course of Positive Psychology By Auguste Comte
Beyond Good and Evil by Freidrich Nietzsche
General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes

And just to make that no one’s feelings get hurt, here’s the list of honorable mentions, listed in order of harm:

The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich
What Is To Be Done by V.I. Lenin
Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno
On Liberty by John Stewart Mill
Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F. Skinner
Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel
The Promise of American Life by Herbert Croly
The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin
Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault
Soviet Communism: A New Civilization by Sidney and Beatrice Webb
Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead
Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader
Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
Prison Notebooks Antonio Gramsci
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
The Greening of America by Charles Reich
The Limits to Growth by Club of Rome
Descent of Man by Charles Darwin

RIP Marginalization

2005-06-08T16:42:00.000-05:00

I’m something of a unique individual. My uniqueness is not due to the place where I live, my age, my system of beliefs (although I admit they can get a little strange sometimes), or my propensity for pop culture references. I am unique because I have not, at least at any time in recent memory, been marginalized. Lots of others have, although they’re probably not the people you think.

It turns out white, straight, Christian men are really, really marginalized! It’s true! It’s happening all over the place. The latest addition to the marginalized-and-happier-for-it-just-look-at-my-publications list is Charles Krauthammer, writer for The New York Times and Time, among others. In the June 6^th issue of Time, Mr. Krauthammer writes an article entitled “In Defense of Certainty” which argues the case for moral clarity and, by implication, a government run on the same principle. In his article, Mr. Krauthammer makes a clear distinction between “secularists” and everybody else, stating “It seems perfectly O.K. for secularists to impose their views on America…But when someone takes the contrary view, all of a sudden he is trying to impose his view on you.” I’m going to pardon his gender type in this quotation, largely because I agree with him that a lot of the ideologues are mostly male. He continues the foray into abuse, “The campaign against certainty is merely the philosophical veneer for an attempt to politically marginalize and intellectually disenfranchise believers.”

George W. Bush, a self-proclaimed adamant Christian is currently President of the United States. Pope Benedict XXVI comes from a more conservative end of the Church than did his predecessor but still heads the richest country on the planet. Marginal believers of the world, consider yourself disenfranchised.

I’m going to leave out the conversation about African American disenfranchisement and the 2000 presidential election, for space concerns if nothing else. But this marginalizing thing? Sorry. That one’s gotta get addressed.

For starters, the word is far too often misused. Perhaps we need to investigate its meaning more closely. It is an extension of the world “marginalize”, a transitive verb which means “to relegate to a marginal position within a society or group” according to Webster’s Dictionary. (“Marginal” being of course the adjective that can mean, among other things, “not of central importance” or “existing outside the mainstream of society”.)

Indeed, frightening it would to belong to such a woeful group that would meet these requirements. I can think of several groups that this would apply to. Unfortunately, Believers by and large are not one of them.

The religious right wields enormous political power, a substantial voting bloc, significant funds, and has a good corner on the judicial branch of the US Government. If the Devil’s greatest trick was getting mankind to believe that he didn’t exist, then the Christian Right’s greatest trick has been getting American voters to believe that it has somehow been made insignificant.

And so, I’d like to propose a moratorium on the word “marginalized”. You are not marginalized if you have to pay over $5,000 in income taxes. You are not marginalized if the religion you belong to accounts for more than fifty percent of your culture and community. You are not marginalized if any of the professional organizations you belong to have made substantial campaign contributions to a federal elected official.

And you are never, I repeat, never marginalized if you are white.

Yes, I know it seems like all those other folks are getting a whole lot of “unfair” treatment just because of their skin color. But here’s the thing (and for those of you who held Affirmative Action Bake Sales, this is especially for you): get over it. By virtue of the color of your skin and the religion that you practice, you are automatically granted access to wells of power that other people aren’t.

And a special note to you, Mr. Krauthammer: The reason why secularists who advocate their position over others isn’t a bad thing is because the United States is a secular nation. Check out the reverse side of a one dollar bill in your pocket and you’ll see The Great Seal, which is a picture of a pyramid. (Those of you who enjoyed last fall’s National Treasure will know what picture we’re talking about.) Under the seal is the phrase “Novus Ordo Seclorum”, or translated, “A New Secular Order”.

And yes, I’m aware that it also says “In God We Trust”, however savor the distinction with me for a moment: It says God, not Jesus, Krishna, Siddhartha or Bob Jones. God is a part of the United States, not the whole of it. Secularists are asking that freedom to worship God remain in tact. Such would not be the case if the only ones to wield any power in the country were one particular God’s self-perceived right-hand men. Again, Tammy Faye Baker aside, don’t pardon my gender type.

All Things Must Pass

2005-05-11T12:51:00.000-05:00

Old pop stars don’t die, they just fade away.

At least, such is the case for Paul McCartney. As anyone who watched the 2005 Super Bowl and didn’t go barbeque something during half-time knows, the 63-year old ex-Beatle was the headliner for the 15-minute show. He played mostly songs from his Fab Four days, but there was one moment of independence where he actually belted out an old Wings song.

The choice of McCartney to play the super bowl is an obvious one given the excessive fear over last year’s Janet Jackson imbroglio. The kind folks at the Super Bowl, not to mention Network Standards and Practices, wanted to make sure that we had a nice, healthy, wholesome show with much in the way of Americana and little in the way of nipple rings. After a show that’s grandest moment was a rape allegory, it is easy to understand why the powers that be would want to return to scandal-free mode.

So, here’s my thing: what the heck happened to Paul McCartney? Forty years ago having McCartney on stage in front of hundreds of women was just another way of saying that you needed to hire extra security. Can you imagine the consequences had there been a Super Bowl for the Beatles to play then? The adman at the time suggesting that such a show would be hassle-free and low-risk would have been laughed all the way back to his pie chart flip board. So what is it? How did we go from Paul McCartney – Sex Symbol to Paul McCartney – Safe Non-Offensive Alternative to Janet Jackson’s Breasts?

The obvious answer is age. Not only has Paul grown up (notice it’s not like he’s still sporting a bowl-cut anymore), but the country and the world has aged too.

But I think it’s more than that.

Following Jackson with McCartney would seem to be a little bit like feeling obligated to go to church on Sunday morning after getting caught by your preacher on Saturday night visiting a house of ill-repute, only on the national level. It’s a way of saying, “See, that incident was just a fluke. I’m not really that person.” But that analogy implies a sense of impropriety and maybe I just see guilt everywhere because I’m Catholic. I’ll give you that.

The reason I say it would seem to be this way is because I’m not convinced that collectively we feel there was anything wrong with the breast-baring. Certainly on an individual level, people feel that a much larger deal was made out of the whole thing. Having a dourer halftime performer was an act of appeasement, not of contrition. And rightly so. I’m not the first person to suggest that the anger we made out of Janet Jackson is really pretty sad in comparison to the myriad of other things that we could have chosen to be angry about. That for most places in the world people wouldn’t even be able to watch the super bowl because they don’t have power, to say nothing of television sets, is one example. That people should be upset because a woman’s breast got partially exposed and not because it was a man playing to some understated rape fantasy is another.

This is the power of visual media: for all its notions of being able to preserve the past in near-perfect or, let’s face it, sometimes grainy clarity (if only they’d had hi-def for that Ed Sullivan show back in '64), what visual media really does is help to foster an attempt at erasing that past. It fundamentally changes the way in which we experience entertainment, news, news-entertainment, politics, and even household appliances. I recently saw a refrigerator being sold at an electronics store that featured a built-in television next to the ice dispenser. I can only assume that this is the feature intended for midnight snackers so that they can watch infomercials while eating the last of the Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer.

Is it bad that this erasing occurs? Sounds like an “eye of the beholder” question. It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Progress is certainly better than stagnation. We want to try to undo the past by presenting a new image, one shinier and better than the one that preceded it, but we can’t ever really obliterate what has come before. This is why it is appropriate that two flashy young sexualized performers should be replaced the following year by a former flashy young sexualized performer turned distinguished gentleman of the music industry. Like a flashbulb in a camera, the intense part is over soon and we’re left with a fading discoloration in our eyes.

Turning Over An Old Leaf

2005-05-04T15:50:00.000-05:00

The old adage is right: There really is nothing new under the sun. Survivor is now in its sixth incarnation; John Paul II has died but Benedict XVI was one of his right-hand men; The Amityville Horror was just released to be followed by remakes of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Batman, Superman and yet another XXX movie, though this time without Vin Diesel. And, of course, there’s social security.

The “new” Bush Social Security plan is really the same old thing, rewrapped as a brand new initiative. The wealthiest are still taking the smallest hit while the rapidly shrinking middle class take the biggest. The administration is selling the plan as something new and innovative – an attempt at proving not only are they concerned about your future, but also that they aren’t beholden to the wealthy. The President was adamant that this plan would take money away from the rich and give it to the poor.

Let’s be clear on something: despite the administration’s proclamations, this is not Robin Hooding. There is no Noblesse Oblige in this plan. There is, however, an element of class warfare in the oldest definition of the phrase. President Bush maintains that the poorest Americans won’t be affected by his new plan and that it will allow them to maintain their current schedule of payments. He’s completely right. What he doesn’t say is that the same doesn’t hold true across the rest of us. And I’m actually not talking about the rich. The burden of the plan will be staunchly held by the middle class.

The New York Times’ Paul Krugman points out that cutting the benefits of the middle classes creates a serious economic concern. For many people stuck in the middle class, they will need their social security checks in order to keep their homes once they retire. By contrast, cut the benefits of Dick Cheney and “only his accountants will notice” because Dick Cheney obviously does not rely on Social Security as his safety net once his job ends in 2008. This is to say nothing of the notion that I’m sure he will find some way of procuring a regular paycheck even after his tenure of Vice President is over. Weep not, dear friends, for Mr. Cheney.

When Rome began to fall in third and fourth centuries, one of the precursors to the disintegration was the failure of the middle class. For almost 1000 years, Rome had functioned with a class system similar to the one America has enjoyed throughout much of the 20^th Century. Towards the end, the middle class was essentially obliterated. Everyone was either wealthy or poor, with very little in-between. With no middle class, the majority of the people sank into poverty instead of soaring out of it.

The benefit of this plan is that the wealthy were über-wealthy. Of course, they were also über-small in number which is exactly what you don’t want to be when the hungry serfs come a-callin’ with their pitchforks. But, truth to be told, Rome didn’t fall by way of a violent uprising. Nero may have fiddled dramatically at the end, but like General Macarthur, this old empire didn’t die – it just faded away.

The consequences of the unintentional removal of the middle class were obviously dire, but they certainly weren’t intentional. No one wanted the destruction of the middle class and certainly no one wanted an unstable union that couldn’t hold when its size and weight become too cumbersome. What’s the good in being supremely wealthy and privileged if you don’t have a couple of good servants to fetch things for you?

I won’t belabor the obvious parallels between Rome and our post-modern America in this scenario. Well, at least not overly so. I will say that any plan that, whether intentionally or otherwise, contributes to the destruction of the middle class is not a good thing. Holding power is like trying to keep mercury in your hands. Not only is it poisonous, but the bloody stuff is slippery, messy and has a tendency to nip out just when you needed it the most.

Great nations don’t always end in violent conquest. They oftentimes fall victim to their own bad judgment. The Greeks called it “hubris”. You’ll remember we covered that back in Freshman English. The country cannot let the center fall apart. Otherwise, the fall of America may come a lot like T.S. Elliot predicted – not with a bang but a whimper.

Comeuppance

2005-04-06T20:56:00.000-05:00

Today’s Washington Post had a quote from Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from the fine state of Texas, in regards to the apparent rash of judge murders that we’ve had in the country of late. Senator Cornyn, not one to be left without an answer whenever one of life’s great mysteries rears its head, had this to say in regards to those who would ask wherefore:

"I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence."

In other words, if you are a judge making a “political” (read: liberal) decision and you are murdered, you obviously deserved it and brought it upon yourself.

Your elected representatives, my good people.

I wonder what the Distinguished Gentleman would have to say about the Supreme Court Justices making what is very arguably a “political” ruling in 2000 on the Bush vs. Gore case.

My Drug of Choice: Designer NPR

2005-04-03T19:57:00.000-05:00

I love voices.

There is a definite link in my mind between the sound of someone’s voice and how that person actually physically looks. It is part of the process of communication, to hear someone’s words and see that person at the same time. But if communication is, at its heart, the art of two people relating together, what happens when one of them isn’t visible? What do you do when you can’t see the person you’re trying to say something to? This normally isn’t a problem. People communicate through phones all the time. Email is essentially only a one-sided method of talking to someone. Even the venerable hand-written letter is an exercise in solo communication; an attempt to reach out to someone without actually expecting an immediate response.

One of my favorite things to do is listen to a group of people talking and try to imagine what each person must look like. Then I open my eyes and try to see how close my internal picture was. Sometimes I scare myself in my accuracy. Most often I scare myself in my inaccuracy.

I’ve been known to sit on benches in crowded train stations with my eyes closed and just listen to the tone of the people sitting or standing nearby. It’s voyeuristic for me, though not in the way you’d think. I’m not listening for their words necessarily, although sometimes it’s kind of hard not to notice what the topic of conversation may be, especially in train stations. I’m listening for the tones, cadences and rhythms of their speech.

There’s an involvement that goes along with talking with someone and seeing them at the same time, something beyond just the subtle cues of communication that we all send out through body language. My desire to be connected to the people with whom I am communicating can create a sense of ambivalence for me. I love talking on the phone because I can let my mind go wild about the person that I’m talking with, but on the other hand I hate it because I can’t actually see that person in front of me. I like to be involved. So, the method of communication that is to me the most fascinating, fulfilling and yet the most frustrating by far is radio.

I should clarify what I mean by radio. Try as I might, I’ve never been able to get into regular music programs. I’ve tried all genres from Top 40 countdowns to local indie garage bands to all-Dvorak-all-the-time classical. Nothing can keep my attention for longer than about twenty minutes. There’s really only one kind of radio that can draw me in. I am an avid talk radio junkie. It doesn’t matter what the topic is, I will pay attention to it. I’ll listen to the big guys on NPR or the little guys on the local access station. I used to listen to the techie hour program on a college radio station several years ago, not because I know thing one about computers but because it was a bunch of people sitting around a microphone and having a discussion over the airwaves. I didn’t even know what a USB port was, but I was fascinated anyway.

What gets me about talk radio is the same thing that gets me about listening to people in train stations: I can’t see the person who is talking. And to make matters worse, I don’t know the person individually, so I can’t even guess that he or she looks like. It is infuriating to me, and like a good little addict I come back for more every time. I’ve stayed in cars for up to an hour after I just went to the grocery store just to get milk, bread and eggs just to listen to a radio program.

There’s an enigma to talk radio personalities. They do for me what the standard television or movie personality can’t – they create mystery. I want to know all about them. What does this person look like? How would his or her appearance affect my perception of the subject matter? Why don’t they want me to see them? What are they, chicken? I want to be able to connect with the writer so badly, to understand things from the perspective inside that wonderful little head of which I am only afforded a simple preview.

It is definitely an issue with radio. Even with a novel, I don’t have a problem. With a book I expect to sit down and listen without talking back for a good while. I am, after all, hearing a story of some kind and it would be rude for me to interrupt the teller. But even though the author of a book is obviously not there with me, there’s always that comforting little half-intimate bio on the back page that gives me a hint of what’s going on with that person. Without the little picture and paragraph blurb to accompany me, there’s this conspicuous absence present that invades me.

And while I maintain that everyone’s voice when it is broadcast on radio sounds distinctive, I particularly like listening to it when the contributor has a distinguishing voice. A little bit of gravel in the throat or a dash of a vocal crack makes my day. There’s a reason why I look forward to hearing Ira Glass, Sarah Vowel and Starlee Kine. That’s to say nothing about hearing someone speak who has any kind of an accent. I have yet to hear an accent that I didn’t want to hear more of, and this is speaking as someone who has been to Texas.

Hearing a unique voice on the radio has the effect on me that drinking a glass of warm milk when you’re trying to go to sleep does for most people: it reminds me of the essential distinctiveness of people. It gives us permission to remember that no one is a carbon copy of anybody else. And that’s also part of the fascination with the lack of a visual to tie that distinctiveness to. We are a visual society, so when the visual cue is removed from the equation, it lets us experience something in a completely different and enthralling way. I am exasperated by the whole process, but I’ll be damned if I’m not coming back time and time again, the good little talk radio junkie that I am.

Passion Play

2005-03-28T21:28:00.000-05:00

And then there was passion.

Easter was yesterday. The lilies bloomed, the faithful worshiped, and on the all-news-all-the-time cable channels, pundits pundited. It was the case of the passion of Terri Schivo and people have taken to the cause like the penitent to communion wine.

The lessons to be learned in this situation are numerous: consider drafting a living will; clearly communicate your wishes about quality of life with your loved ones; don’t stick your collective congressional actions into a venue that is clearly private as a political issue, lest the electorate perceive you as “politically motivated”.

The part that really boggles my mind, however, is that her method of death is the removal of a feeding tube, a slow and gradual attempt at starvation with the goal of gaining some existential control over death. The reason Ms Schiavo is in her compromised state may be largely due to her history of an eating disorder, a slow and gradual attempt at starvation with the goal of gaining some existential control over life. Yes, Virginia, there is irony. And there’s plenty of it to go around. There’s also the irony of the fight for life coinciding with Easter weekend, a time of redemption and resurrection for Christian faithful. To say nothing of the larger irony of woman who was painfully shy and certainly not comfortable in any kind of spotlight being turned into a national media figure.

So wherefore all the hoopla? Why the insistence that one course of life is right and another course (or lack thereof) is wrong? The tragedy here is the corruption of a woman’s life, through her family, her elected officials and through herself. All sides find themselves adhering to strict credo, be it an insistence on the sanctity of any life, the insistence of the right to die with dignity, or the insistence that you can try to gain political points towards your future by rushing an emergency bill before congress at 12:30 in the morning and taking it to the president to sign in his PJs an hour later.

For the observant, I’m obviously not a fan of congressional action in this case. That in itself is strange for me, being someone who feels that a strong central government is a good thing and that the Union is more important than the State. The reason this is not a time for superseding action is because this women, this victim of the failure of her own better angels, has yet to live a single day for herself in her life. She has gone from being controlled by her family to be controlled by her inner psyche to be controlled by a life-sustaining machine.

I can understand why Ms Schiavo’s parents want to keep her in the world. What I don’t understand is why they are using their daughter to keep themselves alive. They are as dependent upon her as she is upon her now-absent feeding tube. The value they place on their daughter’s life goes beyond just filial devotion and has extended into need. The removal of their life support would create a heartache that they can’t comprehend.

We are all terrified of heartache, for good reason. No one wants to be enslaved by pain, so we go to great lengths to avoid that pain or try to correct it. And those of us on the outskirts of the painful event without any real influence to what happens can do nothing but stand by and watch, feeling helpless and superfluous. We want to the world to be a good place. We want everyone to be okay, to have shelter, sustenance and love. We want that no one should be long separated from their loved ones, that no one should have to walk through any part of life alone.

What we, all of us be it insider or outsider, have to realize is that life is at least in part defined by loss. We measure our distance traveled by the obstacles we’ve overcome. Our moments of gladdest grace come when we make it through hardship, bruised but not beaten. And the lucky ones wear their dents, scars and imperfections with honor. The parents of Ms Schiavo have come to a place where they are being asked to give up their life support, their daughter. That sacrifice is the only thing that will help them to move beyond the issues that have led to this misfortune.

And thus, I advocate for Terri Schiavo to be allowed to die. Her husband has come to a place where he feels this is the best thing to do. Obviously her parents have not. I realize that what I am asking of them is enormous.

I’m not a parent. I know many parents would tell me that I have no concept of the devotion that a parent feels for a child until I am in that position myself, and I don’t doubt them on that assertion for one moment. So in that light, what I’ve said about their family no doubt sounds horribly uninformed and heartless. What I can testify to, however, is that parents’ motivations are not always innocent and not all parents have only their child’s best intentions at heart.

The sacrifice of this Easter season is not Terri Schiavo. The sacrifice is her parents’ need for her. And that is the true passion play.

In Praise of Scrooge McDuck

2005-01-30T23:15:00.000-05:00

Hallelujah, Glory Be! Finally after seventy years of relative peace and quiet someone is finally going to address this whole social security problem once and for all. I knew I could count on the Bush Administration to be good for something.

So, let me get this straight: there’s a plan for social security out there, it’s going to involve personal/private savings accounts, there are concerns about other issues that we’re not going to talk about right now (labor and Medicaid to name a couple) and no one really knows what the whole deal is. To say nothing of the current administration portraying itself as the canary in the social security mineshaft and trying to convince everyone that the cave-in is going to happen any minute now when in actuality there’s a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Sounds like another day in paradise.

To be honest, the debate over social security reminds me a lot of a cartoon I saw as a kid. The cartoon featured Scrooge McDuck, the miserly old uncle of Donald Duck. In it, Scrooge decided to make a play to increase the fortune that he already had by doing something that we would now call diversifying: he decided to expand beyond the banking business into marketing. A fair plan, so say all of us. Here was the catch: he didn’t have anything to market. Uncle Scrooge had a brilliant idea to sell something to the people that he was sure everyone would buy because everyone would think they would need it. If only he actually knew what that something was.

Now, your average, modern-day entrepreneur would probably use this opportunity to take the pulse of the consuming nation. Our clever friend would conduct some kind of needs assessment, create a business plan and pitch ideas to as many Fortune 500 companies as would open the door. Or just lie back down on the couch, turn on the television and spend the next five years at social gatherings starting conversations with the phrase, “You know what that company should really do…”

Uncle Scrooge, however, is not the average modern-day entrepreneur. He has verve, business savvy and a disposable income that would make Donald Trump envious. Uncle Scrooge is also not daunted by his lack of an actual product. Being the good armchair sociologist that he apparently is, he understands something of human nature and what makes people do things. He understands that intrigue sells and that when in doubt, just smother your potential customers in advertising and you’re sure to pick up at least a few buyers. So Scrooge goes to work marketing his product, undaunted that there is no product to actually sell.

Scrooge hires a famous actress to appear in billboards, commercials and magazine ads talking about the great new product “Pepp”. Never does our photogenic actress actually mention what Pepp is or what it does. She merely attributes her financial successes, shining hair, active social life and personal triumphs to it. The ads are everywhere, blanketing the city with news about the newest wonder, Pepp.

The result of all this talking and advertising? Pepp is in demand everywhere. Stores are barraged with people wanting to know when Pepp will be arriving on the shelves. Neighbors ask neighbors about from whence such a wonderful thing as Pepp came to be. Consumers literally flock to stores (remember, this was a show about ducks) to pre-order this wonderful new miracle product.

Eventually, Scrooge releases Pepp and it turns out to be nothing incredible. People are disappointed, but life continues. Scrooge has made an initial foray into the world of marketing and has come back the better for it financially. In a move reminiscent of P.T. Barnum’s observation about suckers, Scrooge may be left with smoke and mirrors, but they are smoke and mirrors that people paid good money to see.

In the absence of an actual substantive thing to sell, Scrooge McDuck manages to sell nothing and to do it in a way that has the entire world around him buzzing. The greatest aspect to this plan is not that people were willing to buy something when they didn’t know what it was, but it was the extent to which a whole lot of hot air went into a big chunk of nothing.

I’m not suggesting that the current hoopla over social security is nothing. Quite the contrary, I think this is going to be a major issue. The reason we have social security is because we learned the hard way over eighty years ago that people generally don’t independently manage their own money that well. When they do, bad things happen and a whole lot of other people get left in the dust. (That dust being literal if you lived in Okalahoma, Texas, Kansas or any of those other Middle-American states in the 1930s and had to grow accustomed to sandstorms wiping out your entire farm.)

What I am suggesting is that the buzz over the social security plan only raises the level of hot air in the room. Of course, by writing all this I am arguably contributing to that hot air, but I suppose that’s the inevitable consequence of a guy with a sequence of thoughts in his head and some word processing software.

The Education President

2004-12-17T01:55:00.000-05:00

Dear Former President George H.W. Bush,

Hello. How are you doing? It’s been a long time since we talked, but I figured that it might be nice to get reacquainted. A lot of stuff has happened since the last time you and I spoke.

Well, maybe “spoke” is the wrong word. I should probably rephrase that. You spoke a lot. I mostly listened. I guess you could say that what we shared wasn’t exactly a dialogue, so much as a speech. That being said, I don’t think I’m to blame. After all, I was only 14 at the time and if I had tried to engage you in civilized discourse, your Secret Service probably would have had me removed the premises. Oh, did I mention that when we met, it was a campaign speech and that I was in the audience? That probably goes a long way to explaining why you might not remember me. Don’t feel bad. I wasn’t particularly noticeable, except for the fact that I was carrying a trumpet at the time.

You see, I was in the school band that played for your arrival during the 1992 presidential campaign, so I suppose that even that trumpet in my hands probably didn’t distinguish me too much from the twenty-some odd other kids who had a trumpet just like mine. And that’s to say nothing about the drummers. It was a fairly inauspicious beginning for me, at least politically speaking. But I promise you that I had already gone a long way to mastering my musical talents at that time and played “Anchors Away” and “Hail to the Chief” along with the best of them that day.

Anyway, getting back to the point, a lot has happened in the world since that fall day in 1992. I’ve been through a lot, and while you’ve mostly stayed out of the major world news, with the exception of that sky-diving escapade on your 80^th birthday, I have a feeling that life is a lot different for you now too. I graduated high school, went to college, worked, went to grad school, worked, went back to grad school, voted for the first time, traveled around the world some, and just generally languished about a lot. You’ve seen the construction of your presidential library in College Station, Texas, had an aircraft carrier and an airport named after you, co-authored a couple of books, hit the lecture circuit, worked for the multi-national conglomerate The Carlyle Group, and of course watched your son become President of the United States. All in all, I’d say it’s been a pretty eventful 12 years or so for the both of us.

Now, Mr. President, I’m going to let you in on something that isn’t exactly a secret, but I don’t think its anything that you and I have ever talked about before. The thing is I’m a Democrat. I’m going to be honest with you right now and say that in 1992, my vote would have gone to Mr. Clinton if I had been old enough to actually cast a ballot. In fact, when he ran for reelection in 1996, the year I turned 18, I did vote for him. That being said, I really want to tell you how sincerely sorry I am that you lost that election. Seriously. There’s no liberal propaganda trickery in that statement. I really felt for you when it was announced that the no-name governor from Arkansas had somehow managed to beat a sitting President, especially one who had such high approval ratings during the Gulf War. I remember sitting in civics class and wondering what you were going to do with the two months that you had left in the White House. It seemed like such a loss to be given that time but not really have anything to do. Sad, really. I know that seems strange that I would feel that way, given that I just told you I would have been one of the people voting you out if I’d had the chance, but that’s the duality of life I suppose. And you’re an intelligent man. I’m sure you understand that people can behave in one way but feel contrary to their actions.

But let’s be honest with each other, we both kinda knew it was coming. I mean, there was the whole recession thing. Although, to be fair, you had very little to do with that and your predecessor is really the one who should have stepped up to the plate to address that issue. Again, I’m sorry that the candidate that I liked used that against you. As if that wasn’t enough, my guy was willing to go on MTV and talk about issues of faux intimacy. (Though, I have to admit that it was weirdly prophetic hearing the man-who-would-be-president admit to preferring boxers over briefs considering that it certainly wasn’t going to be the last we would hear about his…ahem…personal business.) And for every time you got to call yourself the “Education President”, he got to say “It’s the economy, stupid!” And really, which one of those is the better rallying cry?

Speaking of quotations from which there is no return, let’s talk about that “read my lips” thing. I’ve got to say, I’m on your side on this one all the way. Yeah, it was a mistake to say that in public. No one likes to hear a president going back on a comment made about taxes. You really should have just kept your mouth shut and maybe things would have been better, but Mr. President you had no choice. Quite frankly, I’m getting a little sick of the heat you’re taking for making that comment. You had a hard choice to make. You were stuck between a rock and Congress when it came to coming up with a budget for the country and after a long battle you had to admit that your most memorable campaign slogan was about to become as irrelevant as your vice president.

So yes, you went back on your word. But here’s my thing: So what? Being president is about making hard choices. And unfortunately, it sometimes means that the promises that are made in one year are no longer valid later on. It is foolish to assume that the world should change while campaign promises remain the same. And while my party rejoiced when you did that and your party groaned and tried to hide behind their Wall Street Journals, I’d just like to say that I respect you for doing what you understood was right. Yes, people criticized and a whole lot of pundits fell back on that fateful phrase when the fledgling all-news-all-the-time networks began to proselytize how your downfall began. But I like to think that in a moment of honesty, you did what you had to do, despite what people would think

I understand that I’ve got some contrition to do for this too. I admit, I laughed at Dana Carvey and his Saturday Night Live impressions of you. What can I say? I was a young teenager and a funny voice coupled with a strange, squinty-eyed look was all the biting political commentary that I could fathom at the time. I’d like to say I’ve moved beyond that phase of my life completely, but in the spirit of a frank and open discussion I’ll admit that to this day I still find myself muttering that that fake nasal, west-Texas accent “Not gonna do it, wouldn’t be prudent” at strange moments.

My point, Mr. President, is that hard choices need to be made. It takes a certain kind to have the strength to run the country and the political graveyard is full of wishy-washy wannabes that made some strong and not-so-strong (are you listening, Senator Lieberman?) arguments about why they should be that person. What isn’t widely understood in our post-modern political discourse is that strength doesn’t just mean having strong convictions. The strongest people waver, not because they’re weak but because they have an inherent need to understand the world. And let’s face it; the world is a confusing place. The more we learn about it, the more we realize that fast and dirty dualism just doesn’t cut it in a world of more than two people. The truly strong are the ones who can go against what they’ve said earlier, not because they’re caught making promises they can’t keep, but because the world around them is not what it was before.

So, why am I bringing this to your doorstep? Why am I asking you to answer this call to arms that I’ve issued? Yes, it is partially because you used to be the president, but that’s not the whole reason. It’s because I think that when push comes to shove you are a better man than you were an elected official. Some may disagree with me. They’ll point to the scandals that you and your family members have been involved in as illustrations of your failings as a parent. But I’m not going to get into the issues about the choices that your children have made with their lives, without saying that I do believe that if you had truly shown them the world rather than just handed it to them, maybe a lot of people would be better off now, but that’s not what strength is about. Make mistakes. It’s okay. We all make them. But learn from them and teach those lessons to others. You called yourself the “Education President.” If you seize this opportunity, you may finally be able to live up to that claim. It could finally be the rallying cry you hoped it was 12 years ago.

Good luck with it, Mr. President. I look forward to seeing what happens.

Sincerely,

Clovis

Eight Little Letters That Are More Trouble Than They're Worth

2004-12-06T22:13:00.000-05:00

Here's my thing: I don’t really like equality.

For my money, equality has gotten America into way more trouble than it’s worth for eight little letters, just over half of which can be considered vowels under the right circumstances. We’ve established doctrines because of it, we’ve made speeches, we’ve sang songs, and we’ve probably engraved it in stone a lot into the nation's public buildings.

Equality isn’t all it's cracked up to be. It’s not the end-all-be-all of social justice. Want proof? How about “Separate, But Equal”? There’s a reason we’re not clamoring to be back into that territory.

Equality is when everyone is on equal footing, something that is unrealistic for this country because in case people haven’t noticed, we’re so not. Yeah, we sort of get it. We understand that there are those worse off, people in need, lost sheep, et cetera. And sometimes (maybe one or two days out of the year) we volunteer our time at soup kitchens or the like to remind ourselves of how not-equal we are.

The problem is while we recognize that not everyone is on the same level, we allow ourselves to cultivate this image that the people who are on the top of the social food chain, the “haves”, somehow got that way by virtue of themselves alone. (I should also probably take this very special time to talk about how much I don’t like the idea of rugged individualism, but one issue at a time…) Don’t get me wrong, some of them did get there independently. We’re nothing if not industrial. Remember the labor movement? How about women’s suffrage? And that’s not just to talk about socially progressive movements. Microsoft and Apple are two über For-Profit companies that completely germinated out of the Protestant work-ethic mainstay. Say what you like about Americans, we are definitely not afraid of the hard work. But that hard work that we’re so proud of in ourselves becomes our undoing when we use it as a justification.

What we should really be striving for isn’t equality, but equity. The difference is that equity is equality but with something nice to say. It places a higher value on what’s right, rather than what’s fair. Inherent in equity is a sense of connection to other people, an acknowledgement that we are all in this together, living together as brothers or perishing together as fools, to paraphrase. It recognizes that those who are underprivileged don’t need the same access to things as everyone else, they need more.

Equality is saying that everyone gets the same sized piece of pie after dinner. Equity says maybe we should skip the pie and take it down to the homeless shelter and give it to people who it would really make their day to have it. After all, we’ve still got cake.

I know, I know. This whole idea flies in the face of American history. I’ve even got what are perhaps the most beautiful words in the pantheon of American voice on the subject inscribed at the top of this page. Who am I to fly in the face of these venerated men who did so much for our fledgling country?

I have a friend who is a high school history and economics teacher in a suburban school district. She told me a couple of years back that for kicks she trained all of her tenth grade history students to automatically chant “dead, fat white guys” whenever someone said the phrase “our Founding Fathers”. Irreverent? Yes, but it makes a point. I don’t think the men who drafted the foundations of our country intended this equality thing to end where it did. They knew there was more to the whole deal, or else why would they have seen to it that the constitution could still be amended after they thought it was done?

Gavin Moony has to my mind the best definition of equity: he calls it “equal access to equal care for equal need.” Do you get it? Equality is Equity Lite. It is pervasive within the concept of equity, but the difference is that equity is what equality becomes once it has evolved. The Founding Fathers, dead, fat white guys that they may be, understood that America had a long way to go. It wasn’t ready for equity yet. It had just won the right to stand on its own under the ideal that no one would ever be able to dictate to it again. The people who won the war couldn’t have taken it if instead of being rewarded for all their hard work they were told, “Sorry, but you’re going to have to share that pitchfork with farmer Ben down the way come harvest time next year, just because it’s the right thing to do.” (Seamlessly segueing into my conversation about communism, also at a later date…)

The point is we are not those people anymore. We can put away the notion of equality where everyone gets the same as everyone else. We can start looking at the reasons why we should be more concerned with everyone getting what they have to have instead of what they ought to have. Equity is a lot like forgiveness. It isn’t given because people deserve it; it’s given because they need it.

Inauguration Day

2004-12-03T01:12:00.000-05:00

These ramblings began at 10.14pm on Thursday, December 2, 2004 when I really should have been writing an Epidemiology paper.