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.
Friday, March 23, 2007
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.
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