America is a mere teenager among western nations, and like a teen, it can't decide what it really wants to be when it grows up. Right now, adolescent America sees itself as strong and "super" and cannot possibly conceive of its own mortality. Ask any mother of any teen, and she will tell you what a dangerous time that is in a child's life.
And if Republicans are perceived as the Daddies of this teenage America, and Democrats are perceived as the Mommies, then it is no wonder we have again found one of their children in the campus bell tower with a high-powered rifle. No child can be raised with such conflicting social messages as exist in America today and then be expected to stare down the extremes of puberty with sanity intact.
The dysfunction of the family America is becoming legend around the globe. Even the best of families harbor dysfunction to some degree. But when Daddy became a holy roller, it threw the family into real turmoil. With the intimacy gone from the marriage, Daddy harangues all with Christian edicts. The secular gun money keeps talkin', and the righteous bullcrap keeps walkin'. Mommy stands on the sidelines and wrings her hands.
Daddy as a wing-nut is now a more fearful hypocrite than ever, and Mommy has always been too afraid to cross him about all the guns he keeps in the house. But what about the children? she whines. Has it always been so impossible for Mommy to simply ask Daddy the question: You want to run a Christian household? Well then, what is so Christian about filling our home with automatic weapons?
Were she to take a stand on the righteous answer to that question, hands on squared hips, what would result? Would support for her view flood from the community of the honest? Or would Daddy's gun club slander her around town, paint her a whore, and get away with it, again?
In American family history, the latter seems the rule, and Mommy knows it. Mommy is told to mind her own business, go cook something. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. And Mommy witnessed Mitt Romney on CNN hemming and hawing and stammering around trying to prove he can wield a rifle when it's clearly doubtful he can. How telling.
Anyone wishing to be the President of the United States has to keep the Christian Daddies, the gun-totin' Daddies, and the gun-totin' Christian Daddies happy. He or she has to pretend to be one of the good old Neanderthal boys. No presidential hopeful can risk being perceived as the party poop parent that will put a stop to the cowboys and Indians fantasy occurring in the backyard. Even if someone is getting hurt.
America, like the teen whose pubescent opinions frequently conflict and are based on childish whims, supports in reality the morphology of zero tolerance in school into conceal carry at home. A teen might stay mad at grandma for pointing out that he can't have his cake and eat it, too. But continued attempts to prove her wrong just go against the laws of physics.
Americans will tolerate a bratty six-year-old being dragged out of kindergarten in handcuffs, and in the same breath tolerate a gun being placed within his reach. Mommy and Daddy need to see a therapist, fast. They need a refresher course on common sense and to be told to stop behaving like the teen they propose to parent.
It's true, the Second Amendment does grant Americans the "right to bear arms." But the Constitution and Bill of Rights also grant Americans the right to wear powdered wigs and tell British officers they can't spend the night. America no longer has a need for armed colonials to act as a defensive citizen army just because there is no one else for the job. In 21st century America a massive amount of tax dollars are forked-over regularly to pay for military protections.
When the Second Amendment was conceived by family America's ancestors, there were no 19-round 9mm semi-automatic handguns. There were no armor-piercing bullets. People just mostly shot at their dinner--with a muzzle-loader. Today, Americans get their protein wrapped in cellophane from the Pick n' Save and take it back to suburbia, not to a cabin on the frontier.
Benjamin Franklin could never conceive of an entertainment industry purposed to make billions peddling violence to America. Perhaps if the forefathers returned to witness the current devolution of social standards and the heightening of hypocrisy surrounding the issue of violence, they would be the first in line to either remove the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights or demand an upgrade.
Yesterday, Mommies and Daddies stood silently together on the chamber floor of the United States House of Representatives and were actually, temporarily, united in sharing a moment of joint grief over another senseless loss of young lives on the campus of Virginia Tech. But at some point, sadness will fall away and be replaced by acceptance. Acceptance--the real enemy.
So, until America's Mommies and Daddies can permanently unite in practicing good parenthood skills and agree it's way past time for the sake of the family to lock the gun cabinet and throw away the key, guns will continue not killing anyone. But people using guns will keep on killing.
Just ask the mommies and daddies of the students of Virginia Tech.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Friday, March 23, 2007
Harry Reid Fiddles While Rome Burns
For ordinary citizens, democracy has become a maddening, hair-rending endeavor. America's house of freedom is in flames and, like a college senior, the fire chief is focused solely on spring break. It figures.
As reported today in the L.A. Times, "Let's not rush into this," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters, noting that the chamber would adjourn next week for spring recess. "When we get back from our break, a decision will have to be made on whether to issue subpoenas to Rove and others." Right!
Perhaps he should have added, "But over break, maybe we can all meet up in Cancun. I'll buy the first round, and we can share a yuck over the wackiness that is D.C."
Yeah, yuck! I know I'm disgusted.
Beginning the day George W. Bush seized office, there's been enough yuck to circle the globe a thousand times starting with Bush's deliberately ignoring warnings from his chief counter-terrorism adviser that AlQueda would strike here in September '01. When the twin towers burned and fell, human beings with no other way out jumped to their deaths on national television, ramping up yuck to a level never before witnessed in America. But Harry Reid was not the fire chief then.
Harry Reid was also not chief when Dick Cheney conspired with big oil to use 9/11 to set Iraq ablaze. He was not in charge when America's own Caligula used the Constitution as kindling to commit arson on habeas corpus and threw in the Geneva Convention to make sure it would go. Reid was not in charge when New Orleans flooded and burned and FEMA ran around and around their emergency vehicles like the Keystone Cops.
Now, with the U.S. Justice Department smoldering as a backdrop, Harry Reid, like the frat boys he should be investigating, all but stands up and declares, "Paaarrrrtttaayyy!"
Sorry, Harry. Americans have been expecting better than that. Americans have been hanging on by a thread and waiting with baited breath for better than that. Americans clearly love America more than does the limited pool of people they have to choose from to represent them.
Mr. Reid owes it to Americans to postpone the spring hoedown and start fighting fire with fire. Democracy has been in flames for so long now that the mountain of empty extinguishers expended by private citizens valiantly trying to extinguish the blaze themselves will soon need to be named.
If Mr. Reid wishes to remain the fire chief of Rome past 2008, he should put his grass toga and SPF 30 back in the drawer and take a lesson from the firefighters of Cottage Grove, MN whose motto "non sibi, sed omnibus" means "not for self but for all."
It's the least a fire chief should do.
As reported today in the L.A. Times, "Let's not rush into this," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters, noting that the chamber would adjourn next week for spring recess. "When we get back from our break, a decision will have to be made on whether to issue subpoenas to Rove and others." Right!
Perhaps he should have added, "But over break, maybe we can all meet up in Cancun. I'll buy the first round, and we can share a yuck over the wackiness that is D.C."
Yeah, yuck! I know I'm disgusted.
Beginning the day George W. Bush seized office, there's been enough yuck to circle the globe a thousand times starting with Bush's deliberately ignoring warnings from his chief counter-terrorism adviser that AlQueda would strike here in September '01. When the twin towers burned and fell, human beings with no other way out jumped to their deaths on national television, ramping up yuck to a level never before witnessed in America. But Harry Reid was not the fire chief then.
Harry Reid was also not chief when Dick Cheney conspired with big oil to use 9/11 to set Iraq ablaze. He was not in charge when America's own Caligula used the Constitution as kindling to commit arson on habeas corpus and threw in the Geneva Convention to make sure it would go. Reid was not in charge when New Orleans flooded and burned and FEMA ran around and around their emergency vehicles like the Keystone Cops.
Now, with the U.S. Justice Department smoldering as a backdrop, Harry Reid, like the frat boys he should be investigating, all but stands up and declares, "Paaarrrrtttaayyy!"
Sorry, Harry. Americans have been expecting better than that. Americans have been hanging on by a thread and waiting with baited breath for better than that. Americans clearly love America more than does the limited pool of people they have to choose from to represent them.
Mr. Reid owes it to Americans to postpone the spring hoedown and start fighting fire with fire. Democracy has been in flames for so long now that the mountain of empty extinguishers expended by private citizens valiantly trying to extinguish the blaze themselves will soon need to be named.
If Mr. Reid wishes to remain the fire chief of Rome past 2008, he should put his grass toga and SPF 30 back in the drawer and take a lesson from the firefighters of Cottage Grove, MN whose motto "non sibi, sed omnibus" means "not for self but for all."
It's the least a fire chief should do.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Turn Back the Clocks? America Already in Retrograde
If there is one singularly ridiculous, man-made attempt to control the environment of America, it is the practice of turning back clocks to create a Daylight "Savings" Time. The Republican-dominated 109th Congress mandated in 2005 as part of an Energy Policy Act, that Daylight Savings Time would be further extended in 2007 by an extra three weeks in Spring and one in Fall.
During the tenure of the 109th, Iraq was spiraling out of control, the Bush administration was stomping all over the Constitution and Bill of Rights, mortgage brokers were over-loaning money to mortgagees, middle-class wages were fleeing overseas, New Orleans conjoined the Gulf of Mexico, polar icecaps continued to melt, huge sums of tax money disappeared into the Middle East faster than American citizens disappeared into Gitmo, the rich got richer--the poor even poorer, and more Americans than ever found themselves with no way to pay for health care. It seems criminal that the 109th wasn't making better use of its time.
That Americans simply complied then and now without question only underscores the Lemming-like capacity Americans have for questioning nothing. Content to stumble over their own befuddled bio-rhythms for four additional weeks, no one ever bothered to ask, How does one go about saving daylight?
Is there a First National Bank of Daylight of which we are unaware where one can make deposits of unused daylight for later withdrawal? Say, when Aunts Mary and Martha for once aren't fighting like cats at the family reunion and, amazingly, no one's in a hurry to flee the scene?
Is it possible to turn back the clock on the sun? Logic would dictate that dependent upon the season it is and where one lives in North America, there is a finite amount of daylight in any 24-hour period. Humans can manipulate clocks until the cows come home, yet there is still only so much light to be had. Even the cows know that.
Is energy really saved by DST? With or without it, lights will be on in homes and public buildings morning and night. Period. Americans love their electricity. In the summer, isn't one spending more on air-conditioning on the hottest part of the day, which now has been artificially shifted to last seemingly forever?
Highlighting the ridiculousness of this time-manipulation endeavor is the fact that not everyone in America even observes this useless ritual. It is not observed in Hawaii, Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, or by most of Arizona, with the exception of the Navajo Indian Reservation. Indiana, which used to be split over the practice, has now climbed wholeheartedly onto the DST bandwagon. Lemmings.
But, even if daylight could be saved in a box and the amount of savings quantifiably provable, what are we saving it for? The better to see one's diminishing standard of living?
If America is going to play with time like children dilly in a sandbox, then let's move the clocks back to 1973 and do something about our dependence on foreign oil. Let's forsee the fiasco that is Bush II and prevent this presidency from happening in the first place. Or, let's move the clocks ahead to 2008 right now so that the fiasco that is Bush II is finally and mercifully over.
If Americans wish to experience a traditional American future, perhaps it's time to stop behaving like Lemmings and start demanding that America's representatives quit burning the daylight they tell us to save by enacting silly laws that thumb a collective nose at nature.
A better use of dark and light is to start expecting Congress to make some intelligent decisions that work within the framework of nature for the betterment of the whole.
Twice a year manipulating clock hands gives Americans something to talk about and something to do. However, artificially playing with time is a simplistic and ineffectual substitute for truly using it to engage in real American progress.
During the tenure of the 109th, Iraq was spiraling out of control, the Bush administration was stomping all over the Constitution and Bill of Rights, mortgage brokers were over-loaning money to mortgagees, middle-class wages were fleeing overseas, New Orleans conjoined the Gulf of Mexico, polar icecaps continued to melt, huge sums of tax money disappeared into the Middle East faster than American citizens disappeared into Gitmo, the rich got richer--the poor even poorer, and more Americans than ever found themselves with no way to pay for health care. It seems criminal that the 109th wasn't making better use of its time.
That Americans simply complied then and now without question only underscores the Lemming-like capacity Americans have for questioning nothing. Content to stumble over their own befuddled bio-rhythms for four additional weeks, no one ever bothered to ask, How does one go about saving daylight?
Is there a First National Bank of Daylight of which we are unaware where one can make deposits of unused daylight for later withdrawal? Say, when Aunts Mary and Martha for once aren't fighting like cats at the family reunion and, amazingly, no one's in a hurry to flee the scene?
Is it possible to turn back the clock on the sun? Logic would dictate that dependent upon the season it is and where one lives in North America, there is a finite amount of daylight in any 24-hour period. Humans can manipulate clocks until the cows come home, yet there is still only so much light to be had. Even the cows know that.
Is energy really saved by DST? With or without it, lights will be on in homes and public buildings morning and night. Period. Americans love their electricity. In the summer, isn't one spending more on air-conditioning on the hottest part of the day, which now has been artificially shifted to last seemingly forever?
Highlighting the ridiculousness of this time-manipulation endeavor is the fact that not everyone in America even observes this useless ritual. It is not observed in Hawaii, Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, or by most of Arizona, with the exception of the Navajo Indian Reservation. Indiana, which used to be split over the practice, has now climbed wholeheartedly onto the DST bandwagon. Lemmings.
But, even if daylight could be saved in a box and the amount of savings quantifiably provable, what are we saving it for? The better to see one's diminishing standard of living?
If America is going to play with time like children dilly in a sandbox, then let's move the clocks back to 1973 and do something about our dependence on foreign oil. Let's forsee the fiasco that is Bush II and prevent this presidency from happening in the first place. Or, let's move the clocks ahead to 2008 right now so that the fiasco that is Bush II is finally and mercifully over.
If Americans wish to experience a traditional American future, perhaps it's time to stop behaving like Lemmings and start demanding that America's representatives quit burning the daylight they tell us to save by enacting silly laws that thumb a collective nose at nature.
A better use of dark and light is to start expecting Congress to make some intelligent decisions that work within the framework of nature for the betterment of the whole.
Twice a year manipulating clock hands gives Americans something to talk about and something to do. However, artificially playing with time is a simplistic and ineffectual substitute for truly using it to engage in real American progress.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Of Truth, Justice, and the American Way
If there is a disconnect between the Bush administration and the American people, it has to do with the concepts of truth, justice, and what is perceived as the American Way--democratic fairness, honor, civility, hard work, and just rewards for playing by the rules.
Most Americans live their daily lives still tentatively believing in all of those things even though the current White House early on shifted the American Way to read something like "It's my way or the highway."
If the Scooter Libby trial was about anything, it was about this "my way or the highway" modus operandus which, for six years, has emanated from the Bush II administration like a radioactive cloud. This Hatfield versus McCoy method of governing is a throwback to an era Americans thought they had thrown out by Revolution.
While these White House Hatfields have been otherwise occupied playing an at-any-cost game of global Monopoly and treating average citizens like McCoys, Americans have lost a major city, partial incomes or whole jobs, homes, health insurance, and a way of life they were willing to earn but expected to actually attain and maintain.
I. Lewis Scooter Libby may believe it was his day in court, but in reality Americans have now had their day in court vs. the bullying government dysfunction that is Bush/Cheney/Rove. In finding Scooter guilty of four of the five counts with which he was charged, the jurors in this case, intentionally or un-, sent a message to the beltway and out across the American landscape.
Scooter may be the "fall guy" as one juror put it, but fall he did. The lesson Americans can only hope future leaders heed is: Be careful who you play with and what games you play. If you lie with dogs, you may get fleas. Now Scooter's been outted as a member of a whole pack in need of flea collars. If he ends up actually serving time, at least he will first be deloused.
Whether or not Scooter gets sent to the pound will be in question for some time. However, what really matters at this juncture is that after six long years of dirty-dog government, "if yer not fur us yur agin us," that Lady Liberty has finally raised her head a little and said, "Water!."
It gives an average Jane hope for the resurrection of truth, justice, and the American Way.
Most Americans live their daily lives still tentatively believing in all of those things even though the current White House early on shifted the American Way to read something like "It's my way or the highway."
If the Scooter Libby trial was about anything, it was about this "my way or the highway" modus operandus which, for six years, has emanated from the Bush II administration like a radioactive cloud. This Hatfield versus McCoy method of governing is a throwback to an era Americans thought they had thrown out by Revolution.
While these White House Hatfields have been otherwise occupied playing an at-any-cost game of global Monopoly and treating average citizens like McCoys, Americans have lost a major city, partial incomes or whole jobs, homes, health insurance, and a way of life they were willing to earn but expected to actually attain and maintain.
I. Lewis Scooter Libby may believe it was his day in court, but in reality Americans have now had their day in court vs. the bullying government dysfunction that is Bush/Cheney/Rove. In finding Scooter guilty of four of the five counts with which he was charged, the jurors in this case, intentionally or un-, sent a message to the beltway and out across the American landscape.
Scooter may be the "fall guy" as one juror put it, but fall he did. The lesson Americans can only hope future leaders heed is: Be careful who you play with and what games you play. If you lie with dogs, you may get fleas. Now Scooter's been outted as a member of a whole pack in need of flea collars. If he ends up actually serving time, at least he will first be deloused.
Whether or not Scooter gets sent to the pound will be in question for some time. However, what really matters at this juncture is that after six long years of dirty-dog government, "if yer not fur us yur agin us," that Lady Liberty has finally raised her head a little and said, "Water!."
It gives an average Jane hope for the resurrection of truth, justice, and the American Way.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Lending Crisis Impersonates Housing Slump
Back in the days of Bush 41, the comedian Dana Carvey, as a cast member on "Saturday Night Live," did a pretty funny impression of the sayings Poppy Bush was famous for. Things like "Not gon' do it, wouldn't be prudent," "Read my lips, no new taxes," and "Scary, Scary."
Had we known then what we know now about how scary, scary the next generation of the Bush dynasty could be, Mr. Carvey's impressions might have been non-starters for his career. But thanks in part to ignorance being bliss, we were able back then to laugh at Carvey's send-ups of Papa Bush. The entertainment took our minds off the fact that Poppy gave us new taxes anyway and we couldn't find jobs.
Fast forward through the Clinton years, when anyone who wanted them had both job and home, and we now find ourselves blessedly nearing the end of a Bush 43 reign. Again we are struggling to keep jobs and homes, thus making the need to pay taxes, old or new, a moot point. Life in America under the second Bush administration has become the textbook example of what occurs when you feed a military-industrial beast a steady diet of middle-class, tax-paying citizens.
Among all the crises of wrong-headed government Americans have witnessed in the last six years, an unheeded crisis in the housing market has been looming large. This fact was ignored or largely unaired in any manner that would facilitate the ability of Joe and Jane Average to easily understand such a threat to their already strained financial health. And it isn't as though business education has been allowed to flourish in the public schools under this administration.
Only a handful of the staunchest independent housing market watchers have cared to assume the role of little boy who tells the crowd the emperor is naked. Like Dana Carvey morphing into Bush I, it has been to the benefit of Bush II for reports of an impending real estate crisis to morph into reports that claim all is well and the economy is booming.
The company line can be perceived as true, but only if one owns the company. The fact is, a lot of average people are in big trouble with real estate. The American Dream has morphed into an American nightmare.
When George Bush and Dick Cheney packed up their kits and mentally moved to Iraq, they left behind to act as nanny to the nation a Congress doing its impression of a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate America. The lending of money, the previously well-monitored cookie jar of the finance industry, suddenly became fair game. Low interest rates, like a trail of sweet crumbs across a counter, were an incentive for all manner of mortgage brokers and lenders to get the stool, lift the lid, and declare, "Cookies for everyone!"
The result was rampant lending--lending without requiring substantiated proof of ability to repay, over-value lending, adjustable-rate lending. Combine these with job outsourcing, a healthcare crisis, inadequately insured natural disasters, a record high consumer debt rate, and a negative consumer savings rate. Is it any wonder that many Americans are now discovering the cookie jar in shards on the floor?
A recent article in the Los Angeles Times featured a real estate agency which has shifted its focus from the traditional home-selling process to locating clients by using public mortgage-delinquency information and then waylaying these hopelessly overextended individuals and convincing them to sell. The pitch? They are out of options. The article's title? "Benefitting from pain of others". You bet.
This business is lucrative for both lenders and real estate agencies, both of whom are currently having trouble maintaining fat incomes in a "housing slump." An agent interviewed for the article was quoted as saying he was "giddy" because he was going to be so busy. Cue the video image of Snidely Whiplash twirling his moustache as Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public lie tied to the tracks.
Despite the denial of this fact by those who benefit from denying this fact, the middle-class has taken and continues to take a beating under Bush 43. Alter slightly Sinclair Lewis to read: The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 21st century.
Open any door or window, and a barbarian awaits. There's been no one in Washington driving them back. With abandon they slaughter innocent men, women, and children, all whose last image of the world before they drop is one of wide-eyed disbelief because they've played by the rules.
If the rules were askew to begin with, it's still fixable. A kindly real estate agent will show up at the door and do his impression of the answer to all your real estate problems.
*One independent watcher of the housing market, who goes by the identity Bonddad, deserves credit for having posted regularly on this subject on the DailyKos in an effort to warn average Joes and Janes of a coming housing market fiasco. His diaries were so successful at making this issue understandable that his readers pursuaded him to begin his own blog, which he did. He now resides at http://www.bonddad.blogspot.com/.
Had we known then what we know now about how scary, scary the next generation of the Bush dynasty could be, Mr. Carvey's impressions might have been non-starters for his career. But thanks in part to ignorance being bliss, we were able back then to laugh at Carvey's send-ups of Papa Bush. The entertainment took our minds off the fact that Poppy gave us new taxes anyway and we couldn't find jobs.
Fast forward through the Clinton years, when anyone who wanted them had both job and home, and we now find ourselves blessedly nearing the end of a Bush 43 reign. Again we are struggling to keep jobs and homes, thus making the need to pay taxes, old or new, a moot point. Life in America under the second Bush administration has become the textbook example of what occurs when you feed a military-industrial beast a steady diet of middle-class, tax-paying citizens.
Among all the crises of wrong-headed government Americans have witnessed in the last six years, an unheeded crisis in the housing market has been looming large. This fact was ignored or largely unaired in any manner that would facilitate the ability of Joe and Jane Average to easily understand such a threat to their already strained financial health. And it isn't as though business education has been allowed to flourish in the public schools under this administration.
Only a handful of the staunchest independent housing market watchers have cared to assume the role of little boy who tells the crowd the emperor is naked. Like Dana Carvey morphing into Bush I, it has been to the benefit of Bush II for reports of an impending real estate crisis to morph into reports that claim all is well and the economy is booming.
The company line can be perceived as true, but only if one owns the company. The fact is, a lot of average people are in big trouble with real estate. The American Dream has morphed into an American nightmare.
When George Bush and Dick Cheney packed up their kits and mentally moved to Iraq, they left behind to act as nanny to the nation a Congress doing its impression of a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate America. The lending of money, the previously well-monitored cookie jar of the finance industry, suddenly became fair game. Low interest rates, like a trail of sweet crumbs across a counter, were an incentive for all manner of mortgage brokers and lenders to get the stool, lift the lid, and declare, "Cookies for everyone!"
The result was rampant lending--lending without requiring substantiated proof of ability to repay, over-value lending, adjustable-rate lending. Combine these with job outsourcing, a healthcare crisis, inadequately insured natural disasters, a record high consumer debt rate, and a negative consumer savings rate. Is it any wonder that many Americans are now discovering the cookie jar in shards on the floor?
A recent article in the Los Angeles Times featured a real estate agency which has shifted its focus from the traditional home-selling process to locating clients by using public mortgage-delinquency information and then waylaying these hopelessly overextended individuals and convincing them to sell. The pitch? They are out of options. The article's title? "Benefitting from pain of others". You bet.
This business is lucrative for both lenders and real estate agencies, both of whom are currently having trouble maintaining fat incomes in a "housing slump." An agent interviewed for the article was quoted as saying he was "giddy" because he was going to be so busy. Cue the video image of Snidely Whiplash twirling his moustache as Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public lie tied to the tracks.
Despite the denial of this fact by those who benefit from denying this fact, the middle-class has taken and continues to take a beating under Bush 43. Alter slightly Sinclair Lewis to read: The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 21st century.
Open any door or window, and a barbarian awaits. There's been no one in Washington driving them back. With abandon they slaughter innocent men, women, and children, all whose last image of the world before they drop is one of wide-eyed disbelief because they've played by the rules.
If the rules were askew to begin with, it's still fixable. A kindly real estate agent will show up at the door and do his impression of the answer to all your real estate problems.
*One independent watcher of the housing market, who goes by the identity Bonddad, deserves credit for having posted regularly on this subject on the DailyKos in an effort to warn average Joes and Janes of a coming housing market fiasco. His diaries were so successful at making this issue understandable that his readers pursuaded him to begin his own blog, which he did. He now resides at http://www.bonddad.blogspot.com/.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Canada's Best Kept Secret: Democracy
Buried on a back page of the A section in yesterday's USA Today, was a tiny, seven-line article about two of Canada's anti-terror laws expiring today, March 1, and not to be renewed. Of the two laws the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to let die a quiet death, one involved holding suspects for three days without charges if they were suspected of planning a terror attack.
The second, left lying on the side of the road to expire, permitted Canadian judges to force witnesses to testify at investigative hearings about alleged terrorist activities. This law clearly begs an obvious question: How does one force a witness to talk on the stand? Torture them in open court?
According to the article, Canada's Liberal party leader, a woman named Stephane Dion, stated that these two laws had never been used, and she was quoted as saying they "represent a risk to individual rights."
So, in letting these laws go, it would appear at least one governing body on the North American continent remembers there is such a thing as individual rights.
The last line of this mini-story was, as expected, devoted to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's view on the actions of the House in allowing the laws to terminate without renewal. Harper, Canada's answer to Dick Cheney, predictably squawked about Liberals being soft on terror. Yada yada yada.
In addition to my curiousity over which techniques could force a witness to speak in court, or anywhere for that matter (that manual could be a bestseller), a number of other questions leaped to mind as I squinted at those seven lines.
In a paper called USA Today, why was a story of this magnitude deeply buried when the U.S. shares a long border with Canada, and decisions about its anti-terrorism laws have the potential to impact America, also? Maybe the story didn't bleed enough to lead, but it did seem important enough to deserve more attention than to place it where a reader would need to dig through all the kitchen drawers until he or she located a magnifying glass to see it.
If this story had appeared more conspicuously, might Americans have noticed that their neighbor to the north was handling the issue of terrorism in a more thoughtful, Bill-of-Rights kind of way? Might Americans have then gotten riled with the notion their representatives should follow suit to keep America from being viewed as the crazy barbarian the world thinks it has become?
Have Canadians always been a step saner and a tad more progressive than Americans? If so, is it due to a combination of familiarity with French philosophy combined with an English hold-out-your-pinky-while-drinking-tea social sensibility?
America, after all, began as a settlement of British cast-offs, and somewhere in the process of drawing more huddled masses to her bosom by various methods for various reasons, she grew to become a nation that has among its social priorities swilling flavored coffee sans dainty pinky, shopping day and night at the WalMart, and staring bug-eyed at the TV waiting for Anna Nicole Smith to decompose on-air.
So, is it possible that the great American experiment in democracy is being shown up, overtaken even, by a nation that still has a queen as its official head of state? If Canada's parliamentary body is busy protecting "individual rights" despite the threats of terror and terrible opposition from its prime minister, it would seem the answer is yes.
It appears that the practice of democracy post-9/11 only requires a magnifying glass if you live in the U.S.A. today.
The second, left lying on the side of the road to expire, permitted Canadian judges to force witnesses to testify at investigative hearings about alleged terrorist activities. This law clearly begs an obvious question: How does one force a witness to talk on the stand? Torture them in open court?
According to the article, Canada's Liberal party leader, a woman named Stephane Dion, stated that these two laws had never been used, and she was quoted as saying they "represent a risk to individual rights."
So, in letting these laws go, it would appear at least one governing body on the North American continent remembers there is such a thing as individual rights.
The last line of this mini-story was, as expected, devoted to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's view on the actions of the House in allowing the laws to terminate without renewal. Harper, Canada's answer to Dick Cheney, predictably squawked about Liberals being soft on terror. Yada yada yada.
In addition to my curiousity over which techniques could force a witness to speak in court, or anywhere for that matter (that manual could be a bestseller), a number of other questions leaped to mind as I squinted at those seven lines.
In a paper called USA Today, why was a story of this magnitude deeply buried when the U.S. shares a long border with Canada, and decisions about its anti-terrorism laws have the potential to impact America, also? Maybe the story didn't bleed enough to lead, but it did seem important enough to deserve more attention than to place it where a reader would need to dig through all the kitchen drawers until he or she located a magnifying glass to see it.
If this story had appeared more conspicuously, might Americans have noticed that their neighbor to the north was handling the issue of terrorism in a more thoughtful, Bill-of-Rights kind of way? Might Americans have then gotten riled with the notion their representatives should follow suit to keep America from being viewed as the crazy barbarian the world thinks it has become?
Have Canadians always been a step saner and a tad more progressive than Americans? If so, is it due to a combination of familiarity with French philosophy combined with an English hold-out-your-pinky-while-drinking-tea social sensibility?
America, after all, began as a settlement of British cast-offs, and somewhere in the process of drawing more huddled masses to her bosom by various methods for various reasons, she grew to become a nation that has among its social priorities swilling flavored coffee sans dainty pinky, shopping day and night at the WalMart, and staring bug-eyed at the TV waiting for Anna Nicole Smith to decompose on-air.
So, is it possible that the great American experiment in democracy is being shown up, overtaken even, by a nation that still has a queen as its official head of state? If Canada's parliamentary body is busy protecting "individual rights" despite the threats of terror and terrible opposition from its prime minister, it would seem the answer is yes.
It appears that the practice of democracy post-9/11 only requires a magnifying glass if you live in the U.S.A. today.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Bush League
In a twist on the old axiom, "The more things change, the more they stay the same," life in America under the Bush administration more closely resembles, "The more things stay the same, the more they stay the same."
Will the real President Bush please stand up?
Are we even certain who the acting POTUS is? Dick Cheney seems to think it's him. Of late, the news crawl lines across the bottom of the TV screen often reveal a quote from Tweedle Dee, of the foreign policy duo Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dee, who seems to be making an increasing number of public statements about anything and everything. Many of the comments concern his continued efforts to poke at Iraq . . er, . . .Iran with a sharpened stick.
Anyone over six remembers when the job of the vice president was to sit phantom-like in a back office and wait for something to happen to the president. Apparently Dick Cheney never got the historically traditional memo that contained this job description.
Closing the Wrong Border
Is there an unrevealed reason the American public should fear Canada? Then why now require Americans and Candians to have passports at the northern border while illegal aliens of all stripes roll in daily, unchecked, under the radar, and in droves, across the Mexican border? To heroically save Karl Rove's son from picking tomatoes is probably not the right answer. Could the right answer loop back to Dick Cheney's continued poking Iran in the eye with a sharp stick?
To fight Iran openly mano-a-mano would require something America hasn't seen for a while. A draft. Given that a recent poll conducted by the AP-Ipsos revealed that 61% of Americans consider the Iraq War a mistake, it's likely that forced conscription of Generations X, Y, Z, and maybe even Me, for an expanded war in the Middle East is not going to be well received by the electorate. Some draftees might even try to run across the border to . . . . . Oh!
George Bush Bikes While the Cabinet Practices for Disaster
From a story in today's Washington Post comes another possible indication that George W. Bush is not really the acting POTUS. He rode his bicycle Saturday while top-level administration officials practiced for disaster. Or was the disaster riding his bicycle while top-level officials practiced governing?
The report did not indicate if Dick Cheney was present at the drill. He may have been otherwise occupied using his Iran poking stick to practice his war drums. But if George W. Bush is not concerned about potential disaster on the streets of America, then Americans should just relax.
John McCain and the '08 Election
The 2008 election will be Senator John McCain's third attempt to get himself elected president. He was a viable candidate in 2000 until he got KO'd in Round 3 by the Rove-Cheney political machine. In the interim, he has been busy being for Bush's war but against a small war, against a surge unless it's a big surge, against conservative Christian "agents of intolerance" until he remembered he had to tolerate their intolerance to get elected.
Mr. McCain appears confused about what he believes, so he may finally be ready to hold the highest office in the land. He has snapped up into his campaign's employ every political machinator and swiftboater that muddied the issues in '04 and got President Cheney . .er, . Bush re-elected.
Now that McCain has gone Bush League, his will be an interesting campaign among '08 presidential campaigns.
Will the real President Bush please stand up?
Are we even certain who the acting POTUS is? Dick Cheney seems to think it's him. Of late, the news crawl lines across the bottom of the TV screen often reveal a quote from Tweedle Dee, of the foreign policy duo Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dee, who seems to be making an increasing number of public statements about anything and everything. Many of the comments concern his continued efforts to poke at Iraq . . er, . . .Iran with a sharpened stick.
Anyone over six remembers when the job of the vice president was to sit phantom-like in a back office and wait for something to happen to the president. Apparently Dick Cheney never got the historically traditional memo that contained this job description.
Closing the Wrong Border
Is there an unrevealed reason the American public should fear Canada? Then why now require Americans and Candians to have passports at the northern border while illegal aliens of all stripes roll in daily, unchecked, under the radar, and in droves, across the Mexican border? To heroically save Karl Rove's son from picking tomatoes is probably not the right answer. Could the right answer loop back to Dick Cheney's continued poking Iran in the eye with a sharp stick?
To fight Iran openly mano-a-mano would require something America hasn't seen for a while. A draft. Given that a recent poll conducted by the AP-Ipsos revealed that 61% of Americans consider the Iraq War a mistake, it's likely that forced conscription of Generations X, Y, Z, and maybe even Me, for an expanded war in the Middle East is not going to be well received by the electorate. Some draftees might even try to run across the border to . . . . . Oh!
George Bush Bikes While the Cabinet Practices for Disaster
From a story in today's Washington Post comes another possible indication that George W. Bush is not really the acting POTUS. He rode his bicycle Saturday while top-level administration officials practiced for disaster. Or was the disaster riding his bicycle while top-level officials practiced governing?
The report did not indicate if Dick Cheney was present at the drill. He may have been otherwise occupied using his Iran poking stick to practice his war drums. But if George W. Bush is not concerned about potential disaster on the streets of America, then Americans should just relax.
John McCain and the '08 Election
The 2008 election will be Senator John McCain's third attempt to get himself elected president. He was a viable candidate in 2000 until he got KO'd in Round 3 by the Rove-Cheney political machine. In the interim, he has been busy being for Bush's war but against a small war, against a surge unless it's a big surge, against conservative Christian "agents of intolerance" until he remembered he had to tolerate their intolerance to get elected.
Mr. McCain appears confused about what he believes, so he may finally be ready to hold the highest office in the land. He has snapped up into his campaign's employ every political machinator and swiftboater that muddied the issues in '04 and got President Cheney . .er, . Bush re-elected.
Now that McCain has gone Bush League, his will be an interesting campaign among '08 presidential campaigns.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Ignorant Congress? Or Most Ignorant Congress Ever?
The actor Richard Dreyfuss went to England for two years to study Civics at Cambridge or Oxford, or one of those high-fallutin' British colleges. Then he appeared as a panelist on the fall season of Bill Maher's Real Time where he waxed poetic, almost lectured with Bill's tacit permission, on the subject of Civics in America. Or rather, the lack of Civics in America. Either way, he was correct. Too bad this Congress wasn't watching.
This Congress is not getting it. They have substituted civic duty for a glaring example of political and personal expediency. One now has to leave the country to study Civics while they self-centeredly dance around the one issue that Americans hired them to put to bed for good and all. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to the country in the face of the world. It's embarrassing and maddening to those citizens that last November sent a loud and clear message that enough was enough with Bush-Cheney-Iraq already.
Is this new Congress even aware that Americans already view them as impotent political hacks--puppies chasing their tails and pulling the fur of toothless old dogs to show they're tough? If Civics can be defined as the rights and moral and ethical duties of a society's citizenry, then the civility of this Congress resembles Frankenstein's monster. Many more children will return home in many more coffins while Congress hops haplessly around on one foot trying to decide which course of action will get them re-elected.
If this now passes for American civics in action, then all hope is lost. Americans, their Congresses and presidents, have engaged in some stupid antics in the past. But because of the way America was, because she knew her Civics, she always produced at least a small posse of Congressional heroes who, at risk to personal gain, were willing to stand up and call out the Emperor for showing up naked. The lesson here is that virtue is its own reward. And in a society starving for virtue, it could be fabulously re-electable were Congress not so involved in Congressional American Idol to see it.
Would it help to play an endless-loop tape of Richard Dreyfuss's talk on Civics in all government buildings in and around Washington? Or is the political hackery too ingrained in both the persons and the system to be deprogrammed now? As the youth say, it's looking like. And, ah, the poor youth of America. Doomed to live with the failures of their parents who can't pull it together long enough to set a wise course for America's future. Well, look at that--The "Me" generation has made it all about them. If nothing Congress is attempting to do is turning out right, maybe it's because none of it is being done for the right reasons.
There is no acceptable or believable excuse in the universe for Congress's failure to step up to the plate and do their civic duty to suck the poison out of a failed pre-emptive war and the failed leadership of the current administration, and to do it for the future of the nation and for their fellow Americans. It is no less than America's floundering citizens deserve after six years of neglect by Washington. It is no less than the practice of Civics.
This Congress is not getting it. They have substituted civic duty for a glaring example of political and personal expediency. One now has to leave the country to study Civics while they self-centeredly dance around the one issue that Americans hired them to put to bed for good and all. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to the country in the face of the world. It's embarrassing and maddening to those citizens that last November sent a loud and clear message that enough was enough with Bush-Cheney-Iraq already.
Is this new Congress even aware that Americans already view them as impotent political hacks--puppies chasing their tails and pulling the fur of toothless old dogs to show they're tough? If Civics can be defined as the rights and moral and ethical duties of a society's citizenry, then the civility of this Congress resembles Frankenstein's monster. Many more children will return home in many more coffins while Congress hops haplessly around on one foot trying to decide which course of action will get them re-elected.
If this now passes for American civics in action, then all hope is lost. Americans, their Congresses and presidents, have engaged in some stupid antics in the past. But because of the way America was, because she knew her Civics, she always produced at least a small posse of Congressional heroes who, at risk to personal gain, were willing to stand up and call out the Emperor for showing up naked. The lesson here is that virtue is its own reward. And in a society starving for virtue, it could be fabulously re-electable were Congress not so involved in Congressional American Idol to see it.
Would it help to play an endless-loop tape of Richard Dreyfuss's talk on Civics in all government buildings in and around Washington? Or is the political hackery too ingrained in both the persons and the system to be deprogrammed now? As the youth say, it's looking like. And, ah, the poor youth of America. Doomed to live with the failures of their parents who can't pull it together long enough to set a wise course for America's future. Well, look at that--The "Me" generation has made it all about them. If nothing Congress is attempting to do is turning out right, maybe it's because none of it is being done for the right reasons.
There is no acceptable or believable excuse in the universe for Congress's failure to step up to the plate and do their civic duty to suck the poison out of a failed pre-emptive war and the failed leadership of the current administration, and to do it for the future of the nation and for their fellow Americans. It is no less than America's floundering citizens deserve after six years of neglect by Washington. It is no less than the practice of Civics.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Impeachment: What is Congress Waiting For?
In the minds of many Americans the idea of impeachment is not only not "off the table," as newly installed House Speaker Pelosi said it was, it in fact sits dead center on their kitchen tables, taking the place of grandma's heirloom vase.
The best kept secret about America, of which beltway insiders are unaware, is that too many mainstream Americans are struggling too heroically to hold it all together to find the shenanigans of Washington palatines even slightly amusing. Perhaps the orbiting constellations around the former Ivy League frat boys at our nation's helm can afford to take a boys-will-be-boys view of their antics. But Jane and John Q. Public can't and won't. Thank God.
Perhaps the last of Washington's moral center did spiral down the drain in December 2000. But Jane and Joe Average-American's moral center is still largely intact, and that in itself is a miracle. However, central to that miracle is a level of disgust generally reserved for the likes of a Jeffrey Dahmer. The comparison is apt because these leaders, having been left to run amok for six years, have also eaten America's young.
So, how many more times and in how many more ways do Darth Vader and Alfred E. Know-nothing have to show their asses, our asses, to the world before someone, or 535 someones, actually decides to take some action and stop them? Colluding to perpetrate a national lie, then attempting to destroy every critic of their skeevy machinations, and now having the resulting blood of thousands of human beings on their hands is not enough? Must they also hold a toga party on the White House lawn complete with human sacrifice in the Rose Garden as the grand finale before American representatives are embarrassed enough to say "Enough!"?
In a homicide investigation, one always looks first for the smoking gun. The highest leaders of our land have stuck on their persons so many smoking guns that the subsequent fog hovering above them could be pegged as a major contributor to global warming, which they have also colluded to lie about.
In six short years America has descended from a well-meaning superpower whose leaders sometimes get it wrong to the bully in the schoolyard whose leaders take turns footballing the globe around the Oval Office like a hacky sack. The world now hates us. They should. It's become hard to live here and love this country and not simultaneously hate the collective us.
At what level of hubris and fiasco and state of denial will our representatives, who represent an angry and repulsed population, decide to stop worrying about what is good for American politics and finally have the courage to do something that is good for America?
It is embarrassingly past time for members of both parties of Congress to stop waving the flag and trying to decide if "these colors don't run" or not. It is time for them to stand together and decide if these colors still mean anything exemplary in the world.
The best kept secret about America, of which beltway insiders are unaware, is that too many mainstream Americans are struggling too heroically to hold it all together to find the shenanigans of Washington palatines even slightly amusing. Perhaps the orbiting constellations around the former Ivy League frat boys at our nation's helm can afford to take a boys-will-be-boys view of their antics. But Jane and John Q. Public can't and won't. Thank God.
Perhaps the last of Washington's moral center did spiral down the drain in December 2000. But Jane and Joe Average-American's moral center is still largely intact, and that in itself is a miracle. However, central to that miracle is a level of disgust generally reserved for the likes of a Jeffrey Dahmer. The comparison is apt because these leaders, having been left to run amok for six years, have also eaten America's young.
So, how many more times and in how many more ways do Darth Vader and Alfred E. Know-nothing have to show their asses, our asses, to the world before someone, or 535 someones, actually decides to take some action and stop them? Colluding to perpetrate a national lie, then attempting to destroy every critic of their skeevy machinations, and now having the resulting blood of thousands of human beings on their hands is not enough? Must they also hold a toga party on the White House lawn complete with human sacrifice in the Rose Garden as the grand finale before American representatives are embarrassed enough to say "Enough!"?
In a homicide investigation, one always looks first for the smoking gun. The highest leaders of our land have stuck on their persons so many smoking guns that the subsequent fog hovering above them could be pegged as a major contributor to global warming, which they have also colluded to lie about.
In six short years America has descended from a well-meaning superpower whose leaders sometimes get it wrong to the bully in the schoolyard whose leaders take turns footballing the globe around the Oval Office like a hacky sack. The world now hates us. They should. It's become hard to live here and love this country and not simultaneously hate the collective us.
At what level of hubris and fiasco and state of denial will our representatives, who represent an angry and repulsed population, decide to stop worrying about what is good for American politics and finally have the courage to do something that is good for America?
It is embarrassingly past time for members of both parties of Congress to stop waving the flag and trying to decide if "these colors don't run" or not. It is time for them to stand together and decide if these colors still mean anything exemplary in the world.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Americans Are Entitled to Have It All
It's a hard time in America's history for people who care about such things to have much respect for the citizenship skills of our fellow Americans. Stand in a crowded mall, a WalMart, a football stadium; pick any public venue. Look left and look right at the people around you. They are bustling, they are artificially busy, they are rude, they are grabby, and they are shouting their personal business at the top of their lungs into a cell phone.
Or they are wearing a Bluetooth headset, walking alone, and appearing to hold animated conversations with unseen others in their heads. Maybe they really are. It's not hard to believe it when one contemplates the poor quality of shared citizenship being exhibited by Americans today.
If God exists, and according to a 2003 Harris poll 79% of Americans think He does, then He must be looking down on this 21st-century black hole of self-absorption that America has become and viewing us as He viewed the doomed ancient Romans sans the headsets. The collective sense of decency held by our forebearers has been sucked out of American society and thrown into a whirling vortex of consumerist Me-ism.
Though they're footing the bill, oblivious Americans are generally too faux busy to pay much attention to the global reputation being foisted upon them by the consistently speculative yet inept actions, since they seized the office in 2000, of the Bush administration.
This administration has been operating below the radar, or above (no matter to them), and slowly dissolving the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and any hope of truly spreading democracy to the rest of the world. Its help in ridding Iraq of Saddam's tyranny exemplifies the old saying, "With friends like you, who needs enemies?"
It's been a piece of Marie Antoinette's cake for the Bushies to operate both stealthily and overtly dishonestly without challenge. Why? Because too many Americans simply aren't paying enough attention to do something about it. To ask for a recall, if you will. Ask for a store rebate? Yes. But to recall incompetent, morally bankrupt, and possibly a little mentally off-center "elected" officials? Too time-consuming.
Did you have a nice 2006 holiday season? If you did, good for you. But for the second Christmas in a row, thousands of people are still floundering around New Orleans, or crammed eight to a better-late-than-never FEMA trailer, or can't return home to New Orleans at all, so they probably did not. Good thing your last two Christmases weren't like that, huh?
Did it cross your mind while you were rifling through piles of holiday gifts that you have witnessed in your lifetime one of the most blatant failures in the history of the U.S. government to care for its own citizens during a natural disaster? You'd better hope your neighborhood doesn't exist in an area statistically likely to suffer a natural calamity because gross ineptitude + photo-op concern = you're out of luck, Jack. So are you, Jill. With this administration in charge, some holiday season could find you in a strange city squatting indefinitely on someone's couch. So keep your sleeping bag packed.
Are you affected at all personally by the war in Iraq? Have a loved one there? Know someone serving? Maybe, but probaby not. And if you are old enough to remember Vietnam, did you think you would live to see it repeated? Oh, this isn't another Vietnam, you say? Sure. Now stop chasing your tail and go read something, for godsakes. There's certainly a wealth of books to choose from out there on the antics of America's oiliest Hardy boys: George Bush and Dick Cheney.
If you weren't aware, the Iraq War is being brought to you by the very same people who brought you Vietnam. They didn't like the way that ended and thought they'd take another stab at getting it right, er, wrong. Either way, it's no skin off their aristrocratic noses or the noses of anyone they sired to give it another go. If they get lucky, first prize this time is better anyway--oil., lot's of it. The Iraq War--where administration-friendly contractors get bloatedly richer and the honorable but poor just bloat in the desert.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration's modus operandi sadly seems too in tune with the rest of America's, and it has been running loose for six years, via citizen neglect or ignorance or both, and making a mockery out of everything good that America once stood for.
Our grandparents must be rolling in their graves for in their lifetimes they forged, from the hottest fires of immigration--escape from poverty and tyranny--service and sacrifice during two world wars, and from survival of a long economic Depression, a wisdom that demonstrated they understood that to whom much is given, much is required. Prior to the advent of MTV and several decades of Wall Street slogans, this was societally understood.
Life for the Greatest Generation was not one big trip to the mall. And when grandma did go shopping, she was wearing her girdle and minding her manners because these folks reverently and demonstrably appreciated the good things in life. They had learned the hard way that good times, and even life itself, could be fleeting. They didn't believe in squandering, especially not the lives of living, breathing human beings, unless it was for the most honorable of reasons.
They would be disgusted to learn that present-day America has become one big parTAAAY, and as grandpa used to say, we're standing in shit and don't recognize the smell. But grandma and grandpa would have been a lot quicker to demand a do-over with this administration if for no other reason than the fact that this president and his minions conduct themselves publicly like spoiled brats. The Greatest Generation didn't have much use for spoiled brats.
They also didn't have much patience with bad ideas either. And they sure as hell went after with a vengeance any official who had the nerve to spend their hard-earned tax money on bad ideas or bratty behavior, much less both at once. The ancestors of present America would have been standing outside the White House gates with pitchforks and torches waiting for this president to emerge whence someone would have grabbed him up and given him the lesson of his life. More's the pity that most Americans don't seem to feel that same sense of collective moral outrage today.
If you're an activist and have been busy rounding up the farm implements and soaking rags in oil, my apologies for painting you with such a wide brush. But you'll have to take it like a man or woman because there simply aren't enough of you. If there were, someone would be cell-phone-videoing the trials and punishments of our current leaders who have done no less harm, only employed different means and advertising, than those they martyr.
Citizenship, as grandpa knew it, is out of vogue. It isn't stressed much in schools. It sure isn't demonstrated by average citizens like the woman who cuts short a left turn in her car and almost takes off the front of yours while she's talking on her cell phone. The rule of law has become up for grabs, negotiable, relative, in America.
Citizenship can be demonstrated at the polls, but apparently only by a narrow margin. And that's only if one can believe the election results because a while ago a self-serving Congressman from Ohio needed campaign funds to keep a job he no longer deserved, so he joined up with distorted people to distort a law to benefit the industrialists that gave him some green. That his actions turned our electoral process on its ear was of no consequence to him or his benefactors. Time spent in a jail cell might alter his philosophy of citizenship, but he'll unlikely experience it.
America is diseased and the illness is named "Entitlement." Our citizens and our leaders have a sense of it which rivals that found in the court of Louis XVI prior to his beheading. It's fine for another American to do something selfless or honest or to whistleblow or to sacrifice his or her life to military service, but it is enough for the rest of us to just visit the mall. After all, this president told us that's how we can best help the country.
But thank heavens that's all we have to do for we modern Americans just love to accomplish things that are such a piece of cake. So, our president need not fret. It seems for the time being his position secure, and we are doing just what he needs us to do.
Or they are wearing a Bluetooth headset, walking alone, and appearing to hold animated conversations with unseen others in their heads. Maybe they really are. It's not hard to believe it when one contemplates the poor quality of shared citizenship being exhibited by Americans today.
If God exists, and according to a 2003 Harris poll 79% of Americans think He does, then He must be looking down on this 21st-century black hole of self-absorption that America has become and viewing us as He viewed the doomed ancient Romans sans the headsets. The collective sense of decency held by our forebearers has been sucked out of American society and thrown into a whirling vortex of consumerist Me-ism.
Though they're footing the bill, oblivious Americans are generally too faux busy to pay much attention to the global reputation being foisted upon them by the consistently speculative yet inept actions, since they seized the office in 2000, of the Bush administration.
This administration has been operating below the radar, or above (no matter to them), and slowly dissolving the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and any hope of truly spreading democracy to the rest of the world. Its help in ridding Iraq of Saddam's tyranny exemplifies the old saying, "With friends like you, who needs enemies?"
It's been a piece of Marie Antoinette's cake for the Bushies to operate both stealthily and overtly dishonestly without challenge. Why? Because too many Americans simply aren't paying enough attention to do something about it. To ask for a recall, if you will. Ask for a store rebate? Yes. But to recall incompetent, morally bankrupt, and possibly a little mentally off-center "elected" officials? Too time-consuming.
Did you have a nice 2006 holiday season? If you did, good for you. But for the second Christmas in a row, thousands of people are still floundering around New Orleans, or crammed eight to a better-late-than-never FEMA trailer, or can't return home to New Orleans at all, so they probably did not. Good thing your last two Christmases weren't like that, huh?
Did it cross your mind while you were rifling through piles of holiday gifts that you have witnessed in your lifetime one of the most blatant failures in the history of the U.S. government to care for its own citizens during a natural disaster? You'd better hope your neighborhood doesn't exist in an area statistically likely to suffer a natural calamity because gross ineptitude + photo-op concern = you're out of luck, Jack. So are you, Jill. With this administration in charge, some holiday season could find you in a strange city squatting indefinitely on someone's couch. So keep your sleeping bag packed.
Are you affected at all personally by the war in Iraq? Have a loved one there? Know someone serving? Maybe, but probaby not. And if you are old enough to remember Vietnam, did you think you would live to see it repeated? Oh, this isn't another Vietnam, you say? Sure. Now stop chasing your tail and go read something, for godsakes. There's certainly a wealth of books to choose from out there on the antics of America's oiliest Hardy boys: George Bush and Dick Cheney.
If you weren't aware, the Iraq War is being brought to you by the very same people who brought you Vietnam. They didn't like the way that ended and thought they'd take another stab at getting it right, er, wrong. Either way, it's no skin off their aristrocratic noses or the noses of anyone they sired to give it another go. If they get lucky, first prize this time is better anyway--oil., lot's of it. The Iraq War--where administration-friendly contractors get bloatedly richer and the honorable but poor just bloat in the desert.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration's modus operandi sadly seems too in tune with the rest of America's, and it has been running loose for six years, via citizen neglect or ignorance or both, and making a mockery out of everything good that America once stood for.
Our grandparents must be rolling in their graves for in their lifetimes they forged, from the hottest fires of immigration--escape from poverty and tyranny--service and sacrifice during two world wars, and from survival of a long economic Depression, a wisdom that demonstrated they understood that to whom much is given, much is required. Prior to the advent of MTV and several decades of Wall Street slogans, this was societally understood.
Life for the Greatest Generation was not one big trip to the mall. And when grandma did go shopping, she was wearing her girdle and minding her manners because these folks reverently and demonstrably appreciated the good things in life. They had learned the hard way that good times, and even life itself, could be fleeting. They didn't believe in squandering, especially not the lives of living, breathing human beings, unless it was for the most honorable of reasons.
They would be disgusted to learn that present-day America has become one big parTAAAY, and as grandpa used to say, we're standing in shit and don't recognize the smell. But grandma and grandpa would have been a lot quicker to demand a do-over with this administration if for no other reason than the fact that this president and his minions conduct themselves publicly like spoiled brats. The Greatest Generation didn't have much use for spoiled brats.
They also didn't have much patience with bad ideas either. And they sure as hell went after with a vengeance any official who had the nerve to spend their hard-earned tax money on bad ideas or bratty behavior, much less both at once. The ancestors of present America would have been standing outside the White House gates with pitchforks and torches waiting for this president to emerge whence someone would have grabbed him up and given him the lesson of his life. More's the pity that most Americans don't seem to feel that same sense of collective moral outrage today.
If you're an activist and have been busy rounding up the farm implements and soaking rags in oil, my apologies for painting you with such a wide brush. But you'll have to take it like a man or woman because there simply aren't enough of you. If there were, someone would be cell-phone-videoing the trials and punishments of our current leaders who have done no less harm, only employed different means and advertising, than those they martyr.
Citizenship, as grandpa knew it, is out of vogue. It isn't stressed much in schools. It sure isn't demonstrated by average citizens like the woman who cuts short a left turn in her car and almost takes off the front of yours while she's talking on her cell phone. The rule of law has become up for grabs, negotiable, relative, in America.
Citizenship can be demonstrated at the polls, but apparently only by a narrow margin. And that's only if one can believe the election results because a while ago a self-serving Congressman from Ohio needed campaign funds to keep a job he no longer deserved, so he joined up with distorted people to distort a law to benefit the industrialists that gave him some green. That his actions turned our electoral process on its ear was of no consequence to him or his benefactors. Time spent in a jail cell might alter his philosophy of citizenship, but he'll unlikely experience it.
America is diseased and the illness is named "Entitlement." Our citizens and our leaders have a sense of it which rivals that found in the court of Louis XVI prior to his beheading. It's fine for another American to do something selfless or honest or to whistleblow or to sacrifice his or her life to military service, but it is enough for the rest of us to just visit the mall. After all, this president told us that's how we can best help the country.
But thank heavens that's all we have to do for we modern Americans just love to accomplish things that are such a piece of cake. So, our president need not fret. It seems for the time being his position secure, and we are doing just what he needs us to do.
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