America, as a nation, has not been able to regain its equilibrium since the Supreme Court installed George W. Bush as president in 2000, and since Bush then told Richard Clarke in early 2001 to go away and shut up about how al Queda was determined to attack the U.S. on its own soil using commercial planes. The disasters that ensued completed the political tailspin into which America was thrown and from which it has never recovered.
The actions and over-reactions of all three branches of government since 9/11 have left the nation deeply in debt; involved us in not one but two doubtfully winnable guerrilla wars (in which we must pay off the locals with borrowed tax dollars to make the claim "the surge worked"); and left our nation's citizens to fend for themselves against predatory lending practices, a failed housing and mortgage market, exorbitant healthcare costs or no healthcare at all, a lack of living-wage opportunities, empty municipal coffers, off-the-charts fuel prices, and an infrastructure that crumbles before their eyes.
The over-reactions of the Bush administration to their own failure to protect the nation and Congress's own failure to balance the intentions of the administration, have left American citizens flapping in the breeze to deal with it all and without the protectives afforded them by the Bill of Rights or the Constitution on which they could previously depend while boarding a plane, covering a convention, or expressing their opinions on their own telephones or computers.
So, the sudden advent of a Sarah Palin on the national political stage should serve as a hard slap across the face to thinking men and women everywhere in the U.S. Having cut her teeth a mere 12 years ago in both politics and civil management in a Wasilla, Alaska building that more resembles a lower-48 Dairy Queen than a city hall, Mrs. Palin was plucked from obscurity by the McCain campaign like a single crayon from a box of all reds, whites, and blues and thrust upon the national stage to serve as the shapely policy gams of the Republican party.
The press is all a-twitter at the new (hubba hubba) Republican smart-ass on the block. And yes, it takes one to know one. Smart-ass can come in handy, but it generally just adds to a problem rather than solves it. Like the magician who is never without the scantily dressed assistant on stage while the tricks are being performed, John McCain whose record speaks for itself, and many empty-walleted Americans were already pretty sure it wasn't speaking to them, has hired himself a good assistant.
Who wouldn't be flattered? The pay is great--akin to working Vegas. But still probably not a career move one wants published in the high-school-reunion newsletter. And while true that the assistant always comes to learn how the tricks are done, how many female magician headliners readily come to mind? Senator McCain is guilty of expedient use of a female. And Mrs. Palin is guilty of letting the sequins on her new costume blind her to it.
It has been said repeatedly that America now sits at a crossroads, and it appears for all practical intents and purposes to be the hard truth. America needs solutions to big, ugly problems if she is to right her economy, set all her people to constructive work, and find the political and practical equilibrium that once made and kept her great.
It was magic tricks that got America into this mess, but it is not magic that will get her out. And the last thing Lady Liberty needs right now is an assistant whose only experience is shooting and gutting the rabbit.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
U.S. Passes Bad Paper Instead of Seeking Credit Counseling
If Republican MBA captains of industry are supposedly smarter than the average bear, a recent AP-Ipsos poll asking average Americans the way out of recession proves that average Republicans, as a pack, may not be the brightest bulbs in the socket. Only 18 percent of them believed that pulling out of Iraq, where the nation has spent, is spending, or has lost track of untold billions of public tax dollars, would staunch the financial bloodletting of American treasure and help our economy "a lot." Sixty-five percent of Democrats think ending the war will help.
Nineteen percent of overall respondents from both parties indicated they wouldn't even spend the money when the rubber checks begin arriving in May of this year. Forty-five percent said they’d use the money to pay bills. Congress and the president, clearly unaware of how the other half lives, do not seem to comprehend that average Americans were already long behind the eight ball on fuel, medicine, food, and mortgages when Washington concocted this fuzzy stimulus plan.
Granted, no high-falutin' economist is authoring this blog post, but isn't it a law of the universe--like gravity--that debt on top of debt only equals more debt? With rutted roads, rusty bridges, sub-standard schools, and cash-strapped state, county, and municipal governments staring our nation's citizens in the face daily, is it any wonder 43 percent said increasing government spending on health care, education and housing programs would help a great deal? Sixty-eight percent overall felt the money would be better spent at home.
Perhaps instituting jobs geared at solving this nation's burgeoning list of problems or funneling more money to local projects would contribute exponentially to the economy by creating and keeping steady jobs in the public sector. People are more likely to spend money regularly if they know they can count on having more of it next month.
Could there be a better investment of borrowed government funds than piling further debt onto national bankruptcy in order to dazzle citizens, who in fact will barely notice the refunds as a blip on their budgetary radars? Give a man a fish, he eats for one meal. Build a pond and hire the guy to open a fish farm, he'll eat forever and so will his community. Three-, six-, or twelve-hundred dollars doesn't keep someone who cannot support himself regularly off the streets for more than about 30 minutes at today's prices.
No doubt a CAT-scan peek into the collective brain power of Washington would reveal little, if any, activity occuring on a neurocellular level. When the citizenry, who is used to living within the constraints of budgetary and checkbook balances, displays more common sense regarding economic disaster aversion than the so-called finest economic minds, Houston: there is a big, BIG problem with America's leadership.
With the exception of those Republicans, the ones who clearly never tire of building someone else's nation at our expense (unless one day they notice their own surroundings have come to resemble a scene from The Day After), the AP-Ipsos poll demonstrates Americans are aware the place is lookin' a might shabby lately. Generally it doesn't seem they mind borrowing a bit to fix it up. But this stimulus package, the handing out of rubber government, one-use checks, will not result in any long-term or permanent improvements for America or Americans or stem the tide of an ever-increasing and exhorbitant debt that is dragging America rapidly backward.
Frankly, this brand of stimulus rather more resembles borrowing a dollar from a predatory uncle to help the homeless camped in the Wal-Mart parking lot. It doesn't change a thing for the homeless, and now you owe the uncle.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Stimulus Schmimulus
I’ve been following this “Stimulus Plan” coverage fairly closely, and I guffaw every time I hear it mentioned. President Goober is working with Congress to help out CorMerica . . . er, help out the stock market . . . er, help us all out of the mess the Admini-Congress has gotten us into.
Congress, which had all of 2007 to do something about the Alternative-Minimum tax problem, is now going to turn around and give me a check from the extra tax money they will take from me—check amount still undetermined while the players battle it out over which laughable sum will make me run to spend it—to save me, or someone, from a bad economy. Are these people for real, or did we experience an invasion of the mental snatchers one night in the greater D.C. metro area?
Congress, who hasn’t brought us a balanced budget for seven years or done anything to advance the concept of living within one’s means, have sat on their hands and allowed rampant negative government spending on a war only a few guys with GI Joe aspirations really wanted, then they enlisted the aid of, or looked the other way while the Saudis, the Chinese, and God knows who else, started buying up US assets at fire sale prices to prop up a sagging US dollar brought on by our borrowing jones.
Congress let mortgage brokers and lenders run rampant across the countryside raping the dreams and pillaging the limited resources of the ignorant masses, then watched initially mutely as corporate America, in conjunction with their media, pointed the finger at all the newly-minted poor homeless bastards and said, “This is you ignorant bastards’ fault because you wanted a house.”
Congress is the same band of privileged brothers and sisters who have allowed mega-corporations to feed at the tit of society and then helped them load the moving van for the islands so they can avoid any loyalties to the country from which they have gorged.
Now Congress and Alfred E. Newman are finally going to team to save me from failed economic policies and their dozy inaction, and I’m supposed to feel better now. They’re going to give me back $2.95 of my own money in the form of a rubber check drawn on the empty account of America’s Bank of Broke n’ Trust, and I’m supposed to be a good American and find a place to put it.
I will most likely have to use it at the grocery, the pharmacy, or the gas pump, which is a shame because it will prevent me from putting it where it really belongs.
Congress, which had all of 2007 to do something about the Alternative-Minimum tax problem, is now going to turn around and give me a check from the extra tax money they will take from me—check amount still undetermined while the players battle it out over which laughable sum will make me run to spend it—to save me, or someone, from a bad economy. Are these people for real, or did we experience an invasion of the mental snatchers one night in the greater D.C. metro area?
Congress, who hasn’t brought us a balanced budget for seven years or done anything to advance the concept of living within one’s means, have sat on their hands and allowed rampant negative government spending on a war only a few guys with GI Joe aspirations really wanted, then they enlisted the aid of, or looked the other way while the Saudis, the Chinese, and God knows who else, started buying up US assets at fire sale prices to prop up a sagging US dollar brought on by our borrowing jones.
Congress let mortgage brokers and lenders run rampant across the countryside raping the dreams and pillaging the limited resources of the ignorant masses, then watched initially mutely as corporate America, in conjunction with their media, pointed the finger at all the newly-minted poor homeless bastards and said, “This is you ignorant bastards’ fault because you wanted a house.”
Congress is the same band of privileged brothers and sisters who have allowed mega-corporations to feed at the tit of society and then helped them load the moving van for the islands so they can avoid any loyalties to the country from which they have gorged.
Now Congress and Alfred E. Newman are finally going to team to save me from failed economic policies and their dozy inaction, and I’m supposed to feel better now. They’re going to give me back $2.95 of my own money in the form of a rubber check drawn on the empty account of America’s Bank of Broke n’ Trust, and I’m supposed to be a good American and find a place to put it.
I will most likely have to use it at the grocery, the pharmacy, or the gas pump, which is a shame because it will prevent me from putting it where it really belongs.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
The Unpolished State of the Union
The current state of the American union is one of a shiny red apple whose glossy outer appearance, the result of nature's handiwork up through the moment of ripening, belies a rotten inner core. America's treasure, the sap and pap of the apple, has been steadily siphoned off by the worm of corruption, leaving only the illusion of an intact fruit.
If the strength of a democratic nation can be measured by the hope its citizens possess for a peaceful and equitable future, then America quietly slid past its zenith sometime after 1980 whence began the current era of corporate baronies. American power has turned its eyes away from Main Street, where Americans live, to Wall Street, where corporate raiders reside.
The fate of America is not, and has never been, decided by those who are asked to execute it. For this reason, to whom much is given, much is required. Historically, this axiom has guided, more so than not, America’s leaders, generally the wealthiest among us. Were this axiom not generally followed, America could never have achieved its current level of modernity in a mere 200 years.
Specifically, sometime after 1980 the societal tenet of noblesse oblige, which had held America in good stead and advanced her as a people, followed a path of sorry and rapid reorder to the point where the sanctity of no religion, the sacrifice of no individual, the forfeit of no moral precept or founding document has become too great or too small to be surrendered on the altar of noblesse d'entitled.
In the citizenship vacuum left by the absence of noblesse oblige, non noble Americans try valiantly but often unsuccessfully to carry on and hold up the oblige on their own, the weight of which is staggering. Homes are lost, jobs displaced, healthcare for mind and body a hopeless, unaffordable tangle of jargon and inhumane rules. The playing field that once gave all Americans an equal chance to make ends meet, succeed, and even exceed now tilts crazily on its fulcrum, leaving the serfs charged with executing the plans of the noblesse running wildly from one end of the field to the other trying to find Level and a way to pay for it.
If the strength of a democratic nation is judged on the ability of its citizens to engage in productive employment and pay the bill both for the necessities and dreams of nation and citizen, then America's strength, like her citizens, is exhausted. The federal treasury has been emptied into the pockets of shadow appropriators, the resulting debt placed into the hands of nations whose loyalty can never be assured.
Those citizens who would willingly risk making the sacrifice of life in order to defend America have been driven to the breaking point of mind, body, and family, daily doing a dance of death while a noblesse Nero fiddles. Those citizens who wish simply to live in peace, care for family, and be productive in society are bombarded daily by those of greater resource who would legally and blatantly take advantage of them and then compel them to suffer the consequences of their own innocence.
Those citizens who would, to the furtherance of democracy, attempt to level the playing field by reporting on and speaking truth to power are ridiculed, spied upon, penalized, and even physically assaulted. Citizens who once fervently and reverently believed in the institution of democratic elections, have witnessed them become mere games of noblesse manipulation allowing only a limited number of voices to be heard and votes to be counted, and they have become disillusioned and mistrustful of the system.
The rules of societal fair play and the purity of one citizen-one vote are no longer overseen by a sovereign press which diligently and routinely sifts through campaign, governmental, and corporate muck to expose cheaters solely for the purpose of advancing democracy. And therein lies the source of rot at the core of the apple. The journalistic mirror into which America should ever be gazing has itself become corrupted and its transparency of purpose eliminated.
On January 28, the apple will once again be held aloft for the whole world to view. All witnesses will be shown that it still looks shiny and is still red. It will be polished and appear to look delicious. However, every non noble American watching the show may begin to feel a familiar and uneasy rumble in the pit of his stomach. The taste of bile may rise a bit in his throat because down deep in his soul, he knows the only part of the apple reserved for him is the worm.
If the strength of a democratic nation can be measured by the hope its citizens possess for a peaceful and equitable future, then America quietly slid past its zenith sometime after 1980 whence began the current era of corporate baronies. American power has turned its eyes away from Main Street, where Americans live, to Wall Street, where corporate raiders reside.
The fate of America is not, and has never been, decided by those who are asked to execute it. For this reason, to whom much is given, much is required. Historically, this axiom has guided, more so than not, America’s leaders, generally the wealthiest among us. Were this axiom not generally followed, America could never have achieved its current level of modernity in a mere 200 years.
Specifically, sometime after 1980 the societal tenet of noblesse oblige, which had held America in good stead and advanced her as a people, followed a path of sorry and rapid reorder to the point where the sanctity of no religion, the sacrifice of no individual, the forfeit of no moral precept or founding document has become too great or too small to be surrendered on the altar of noblesse d'entitled.
In the citizenship vacuum left by the absence of noblesse oblige, non noble Americans try valiantly but often unsuccessfully to carry on and hold up the oblige on their own, the weight of which is staggering. Homes are lost, jobs displaced, healthcare for mind and body a hopeless, unaffordable tangle of jargon and inhumane rules. The playing field that once gave all Americans an equal chance to make ends meet, succeed, and even exceed now tilts crazily on its fulcrum, leaving the serfs charged with executing the plans of the noblesse running wildly from one end of the field to the other trying to find Level and a way to pay for it.
If the strength of a democratic nation is judged on the ability of its citizens to engage in productive employment and pay the bill both for the necessities and dreams of nation and citizen, then America's strength, like her citizens, is exhausted. The federal treasury has been emptied into the pockets of shadow appropriators, the resulting debt placed into the hands of nations whose loyalty can never be assured.
Those citizens who would willingly risk making the sacrifice of life in order to defend America have been driven to the breaking point of mind, body, and family, daily doing a dance of death while a noblesse Nero fiddles. Those citizens who wish simply to live in peace, care for family, and be productive in society are bombarded daily by those of greater resource who would legally and blatantly take advantage of them and then compel them to suffer the consequences of their own innocence.
Those citizens who would, to the furtherance of democracy, attempt to level the playing field by reporting on and speaking truth to power are ridiculed, spied upon, penalized, and even physically assaulted. Citizens who once fervently and reverently believed in the institution of democratic elections, have witnessed them become mere games of noblesse manipulation allowing only a limited number of voices to be heard and votes to be counted, and they have become disillusioned and mistrustful of the system.
The rules of societal fair play and the purity of one citizen-one vote are no longer overseen by a sovereign press which diligently and routinely sifts through campaign, governmental, and corporate muck to expose cheaters solely for the purpose of advancing democracy. And therein lies the source of rot at the core of the apple. The journalistic mirror into which America should ever be gazing has itself become corrupted and its transparency of purpose eliminated.
On January 28, the apple will once again be held aloft for the whole world to view. All witnesses will be shown that it still looks shiny and is still red. It will be polished and appear to look delicious. However, every non noble American watching the show may begin to feel a familiar and uneasy rumble in the pit of his stomach. The taste of bile may rise a bit in his throat because down deep in his soul, he knows the only part of the apple reserved for him is the worm.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Shot Through the Heart by American Hypocrisy
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.
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.
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.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Happy Holidays from the Sunni Triangle
Everyone who is paid to talk or paid to write is talking about or writing about the war in Iraq. But other than from those folks, you won't hear talk about the most dishonest, deadly, and costly boondoggle in America's history being discussed around the water cooler or at holiday social gatherings.
After nearly four years of the fiasco in Iraq, the Bush extravaganza of death, destruction, and world-class ineptitude starring America's children, yet another holiday season has rolled around and local malls are again full of shoppers but the Mall in Washington remains strangely quiet. Curious.
More's the pity for Sgt. Tony S. who is on tour No. 3 in this "war on terror," a.k.a. this war of terror as Tony's mother calls it. Tony S. is stationed in the Sunni Triangle, and he's not told his mother his exact whereabouts so she won't worry as much. The few who know where he really is are worried sick. His mother just knows he's somewhere in Iraq, and when his family didn't hear from him for several weeks, those in the know wanted to puke every time the phone rang.
When he finally did contact home, he had lost five of his men since his last call. You undoubtedly didn't hear about it on the news. The Iraq Study Group found significant underreporting of the violence there, by as much as 1000 percent. The lives of Sgt. Tony's five men must have fallen into this intentional institutional information abyss.
Sgt. Tony is a career military man, if you can consider a twenty-something as having a "career." He's there because "he wants to be." Isn't that the argument used by the war-instigators, who have only started battles--never served in them, for why it's OK that he's there at all? How could someone ever know they didn't want a career in the Sunni Triangle until they'd had one?
Absent a general military draft, the holiday season for non-military families is not affected at all by this war of terror. Sure, some will make a trip or two to the post office with a few holiday cards and packages, but they will not be troubled by the forms and procedure required to send Christmas packages to an overseas FOB.
They will not worry nights that their packages won't arrive intact to a beloved family member, a son or a daughter, because there's an ever-present possibility that someone will shoot down the vessel carrying these precious missives of love and home, and they'll never reach their destination. They'll also never toss or turn all night worrying that the package makes it but the recipient doesn't.
The general population of America will mindlessly circulate at holiday parties this season exhibiting the usual amount of social anxiety. They will drink too much to cover it over and eat too much to cover that over. Thoughts of Sgt. Tony and his five dead men will probably not pass through even one besotted memory cell.
Christmas Day, Hanukkah, Kwanza, whatever one observes, will come and go with its individually-traditional melee while Sgt. Tony and his remaining men spend yet another holiday season in Hell on Earth, brought to you by America's military-industrial complex and sponsored by some of the same folks who messed up Vietnam.
Sgt. Tony's mother reported that when she finally received his call, he sounded "awful." And then she cried and cried until she ran out of tears. While she is ignorant of his exact location, the ignorance does not provide her with one shred of holiday bliss. She and her family struggle mightily just to feebly carry on with the holiday season. Everyone is jumpy, on-edge, and buying too much in an attempt to purchase a normality that cannot be found in the mall.
After four years, one would tend to think that Baby Boomers, with the winds of Vietnam blowing at the backs of their choir robes and Harley jackets alike, would finally rediscover their inner hippie and take to the streets to protest this dishonest and disastrous war before any more Sgt. Tony's or their men must sacrifice their lives to appease the whims of the Frat Brat-in-Chief. Apparently the most effective way to neutralize civil disobedience is for the government to have their corporate friends keep sending credit card offers to potential disobedients. That way they stay in their own malls and away from the government's Mall.
It seems to be working. The same people who thirty years ago thought nothing of sleeping stoned with someone they didn't know on a dirty matteress at someone's "pad," somewhere along the way morphed into the adults who would scream into school parking lots in large and shiny SUVs and enter the building looking to draw blood on the someone that gave their child a C on his science project. They became the parents who would mortgage all they own to see to it that their senior cheerleader got her rightful senior gift.
But this must be the outer limits of general Hippie/Yuppie concern for "America's" children. While some of them will march in the streets to make sure other people's babies aren't aborted, apparently concern for what happens to these children, or anyone else's children, once they arrive is a nonstarter.
So, Sgt. Tony is stuck in Iraq for another holiday season, but he says to tell everyone back home Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays (from the Sunni Triangle. Ssshhh). He's a pretty selfless guy, and just because he's over there he wouldn't want anyone here to not enjoy themselves this Season.
Who has the heart to tell him he doesn't need to worry about that? From the looks of things, Americans are doing their best to accommodate his wishes.
After nearly four years of the fiasco in Iraq, the Bush extravaganza of death, destruction, and world-class ineptitude starring America's children, yet another holiday season has rolled around and local malls are again full of shoppers but the Mall in Washington remains strangely quiet. Curious.
More's the pity for Sgt. Tony S. who is on tour No. 3 in this "war on terror," a.k.a. this war of terror as Tony's mother calls it. Tony S. is stationed in the Sunni Triangle, and he's not told his mother his exact whereabouts so she won't worry as much. The few who know where he really is are worried sick. His mother just knows he's somewhere in Iraq, and when his family didn't hear from him for several weeks, those in the know wanted to puke every time the phone rang.
When he finally did contact home, he had lost five of his men since his last call. You undoubtedly didn't hear about it on the news. The Iraq Study Group found significant underreporting of the violence there, by as much as 1000 percent. The lives of Sgt. Tony's five men must have fallen into this intentional institutional information abyss.
Sgt. Tony is a career military man, if you can consider a twenty-something as having a "career." He's there because "he wants to be." Isn't that the argument used by the war-instigators, who have only started battles--never served in them, for why it's OK that he's there at all? How could someone ever know they didn't want a career in the Sunni Triangle until they'd had one?
Absent a general military draft, the holiday season for non-military families is not affected at all by this war of terror. Sure, some will make a trip or two to the post office with a few holiday cards and packages, but they will not be troubled by the forms and procedure required to send Christmas packages to an overseas FOB.
They will not worry nights that their packages won't arrive intact to a beloved family member, a son or a daughter, because there's an ever-present possibility that someone will shoot down the vessel carrying these precious missives of love and home, and they'll never reach their destination. They'll also never toss or turn all night worrying that the package makes it but the recipient doesn't.
The general population of America will mindlessly circulate at holiday parties this season exhibiting the usual amount of social anxiety. They will drink too much to cover it over and eat too much to cover that over. Thoughts of Sgt. Tony and his five dead men will probably not pass through even one besotted memory cell.
Christmas Day, Hanukkah, Kwanza, whatever one observes, will come and go with its individually-traditional melee while Sgt. Tony and his remaining men spend yet another holiday season in Hell on Earth, brought to you by America's military-industrial complex and sponsored by some of the same folks who messed up Vietnam.
Sgt. Tony's mother reported that when she finally received his call, he sounded "awful." And then she cried and cried until she ran out of tears. While she is ignorant of his exact location, the ignorance does not provide her with one shred of holiday bliss. She and her family struggle mightily just to feebly carry on with the holiday season. Everyone is jumpy, on-edge, and buying too much in an attempt to purchase a normality that cannot be found in the mall.
After four years, one would tend to think that Baby Boomers, with the winds of Vietnam blowing at the backs of their choir robes and Harley jackets alike, would finally rediscover their inner hippie and take to the streets to protest this dishonest and disastrous war before any more Sgt. Tony's or their men must sacrifice their lives to appease the whims of the Frat Brat-in-Chief. Apparently the most effective way to neutralize civil disobedience is for the government to have their corporate friends keep sending credit card offers to potential disobedients. That way they stay in their own malls and away from the government's Mall.
It seems to be working. The same people who thirty years ago thought nothing of sleeping stoned with someone they didn't know on a dirty matteress at someone's "pad," somewhere along the way morphed into the adults who would scream into school parking lots in large and shiny SUVs and enter the building looking to draw blood on the someone that gave their child a C on his science project. They became the parents who would mortgage all they own to see to it that their senior cheerleader got her rightful senior gift.
But this must be the outer limits of general Hippie/Yuppie concern for "America's" children. While some of them will march in the streets to make sure other people's babies aren't aborted, apparently concern for what happens to these children, or anyone else's children, once they arrive is a nonstarter.
So, Sgt. Tony is stuck in Iraq for another holiday season, but he says to tell everyone back home Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays (from the Sunni Triangle. Ssshhh). He's a pretty selfless guy, and just because he's over there he wouldn't want anyone here to not enjoy themselves this Season.
Who has the heart to tell him he doesn't need to worry about that? From the looks of things, Americans are doing their best to accommodate his wishes.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
There's a Big Difference Between Hanging in There . . . and Hanging
Some years ago I lived in a community that had been in existence a long time, turned out to be utterly inbred, and was quite set in its ways--even if its ways led to disaster. I didn't know all this of course as I, as a fresh-faced newbie, set about getting involved in helping the local school district with various projects like PTA fundraisers and passing levies.
This devotion to education eventually led to my holding a seat on a citizens' advisory committe, followed by my being selected to fill a vacancy on the school board--a spot left open by a member who, unbeknownst to me at the time, had finally had enough and decided to get out of Dodge.
Looking back on it now, I guess I can pat myself on the back that I made it as far up the closed pecking order as I did before I, too, realized I was wasting my young life trying to garner a team to move the immoveable forward. The district, the community, liked things as they were, as they had always been.
That the illogical "principles" upon which their actions or inactions were predicated did little or nothing to advance the district or the community was of no concern to them. It was status quo all the way. The district's employee roster was so chockablock with friends and relatives, and friends of relatives, and relatives of relatives, and friends of friends that nothing, save the set-in-stone, ever got accomplished. And the set-in-stone had all the excitement, energy, and effectiveness of a mud brick.
Though this community sat squarely on a state route adjacent to a big city, an outsider living there could come to believe she had somehow stumbled into a mountain holler at the turn of the 20th century. All that was needed from central casting were some Hatfields, McCoys, and a still, and I've never been sure there weren't some of all three around somewhere.
My increasingly frustrated efforts in this esteemed position on the board of education finally included a decision to step on some toes to see if there was any life in the feet. I found life in the feet alright in the form of a resulting swift kick to my head if I dared to disturb someone's long-held domain. It was like trying to maneuver around a den full of hibernating bears who would not fully rouse if disturbed but would take a swipe at your vitals, claws extended, while rolling over to continue the nap.
No, nothing ever changed. . . except me. I slowly but surely morphed into a different person after months of turning over every rock and peeking under every foundation in search of a workable, modern idea that would fly and not cause someone's Cousin Roger to loudly proclaim his nose out of joint.
It all sounds harmlessly stagnant, but I learned from holding this position that if you attempt to operate honestly enough, word will get around. Eventually you will find yourself up to your neck in Deep Throats, all who would like to see things improve but can't risk openly exposing that Aunt Tilley might be pocketing some of the money from the football tickets she sells or that best friend from high school, Bill, never took any actual bids for the new furnace at the high school.
Ahhh, the dark side of public service. Which got a lot darker, black actually, when I learned through one of these self-styled 007's that the defunct landfill in the middle of the district was tainting the water at three of our schools. Where my children attended. Houston, we have a big, hairy, major problem.
Attempts to get involved, rile the community to action, wore me out physically, mentally, emotionally, and not only produced little result, but actually placed me and the few who would join me in a very precarious and, dare I say, dangerous position. Months passed. There were veiled threats made. And there were whispers of brain tumors and odd cancers in the allotment closest the landfill.
The people living in the district knew they had a water problem and either years ago knuckled under to pressure to stay quiet or chose to live with it by ignoring it. After all, if you know you have a problem, you're expected to do something about it. And that was not the modus operandi of the community fathers. I would wonder later if there was an organic connection between the water quality and this line of thinking.
So my husband and I did the only sensible thing we could. We cut and run. It's a decision we have never regretted. As a matter of fact, it's one of the best decisions we have made together in over a quarter century as a couple.
We followed my predecessor on the board and beat it out of Dodge, realizing as we turned out the lights it had been a mistake to settle there in the first place. All the red flags had been out, waving in our faces. We had only seen what we wanted to see. True, we had all our resources and thirteen years of our lives invested there.
I probably could have withdrawn from public life and the two of us could have continued on as we were, but it wasn't worth risking the health of our children. Enough was enough. Greener pastures existed elsewhere. Chalk it up to lessons learned, dust ourselves off, and choose a new location with more care and wisdom than we had chosen the old.
Yes, there is a big difference between hanging in there and just hanging. Especially when it's your children swinging from the noose.
This devotion to education eventually led to my holding a seat on a citizens' advisory committe, followed by my being selected to fill a vacancy on the school board--a spot left open by a member who, unbeknownst to me at the time, had finally had enough and decided to get out of Dodge.
Looking back on it now, I guess I can pat myself on the back that I made it as far up the closed pecking order as I did before I, too, realized I was wasting my young life trying to garner a team to move the immoveable forward. The district, the community, liked things as they were, as they had always been.
That the illogical "principles" upon which their actions or inactions were predicated did little or nothing to advance the district or the community was of no concern to them. It was status quo all the way. The district's employee roster was so chockablock with friends and relatives, and friends of relatives, and relatives of relatives, and friends of friends that nothing, save the set-in-stone, ever got accomplished. And the set-in-stone had all the excitement, energy, and effectiveness of a mud brick.
Though this community sat squarely on a state route adjacent to a big city, an outsider living there could come to believe she had somehow stumbled into a mountain holler at the turn of the 20th century. All that was needed from central casting were some Hatfields, McCoys, and a still, and I've never been sure there weren't some of all three around somewhere.
My increasingly frustrated efforts in this esteemed position on the board of education finally included a decision to step on some toes to see if there was any life in the feet. I found life in the feet alright in the form of a resulting swift kick to my head if I dared to disturb someone's long-held domain. It was like trying to maneuver around a den full of hibernating bears who would not fully rouse if disturbed but would take a swipe at your vitals, claws extended, while rolling over to continue the nap.
No, nothing ever changed. . . except me. I slowly but surely morphed into a different person after months of turning over every rock and peeking under every foundation in search of a workable, modern idea that would fly and not cause someone's Cousin Roger to loudly proclaim his nose out of joint.
It all sounds harmlessly stagnant, but I learned from holding this position that if you attempt to operate honestly enough, word will get around. Eventually you will find yourself up to your neck in Deep Throats, all who would like to see things improve but can't risk openly exposing that Aunt Tilley might be pocketing some of the money from the football tickets she sells or that best friend from high school, Bill, never took any actual bids for the new furnace at the high school.
Ahhh, the dark side of public service. Which got a lot darker, black actually, when I learned through one of these self-styled 007's that the defunct landfill in the middle of the district was tainting the water at three of our schools. Where my children attended. Houston, we have a big, hairy, major problem.
Attempts to get involved, rile the community to action, wore me out physically, mentally, emotionally, and not only produced little result, but actually placed me and the few who would join me in a very precarious and, dare I say, dangerous position. Months passed. There were veiled threats made. And there were whispers of brain tumors and odd cancers in the allotment closest the landfill.
The people living in the district knew they had a water problem and either years ago knuckled under to pressure to stay quiet or chose to live with it by ignoring it. After all, if you know you have a problem, you're expected to do something about it. And that was not the modus operandi of the community fathers. I would wonder later if there was an organic connection between the water quality and this line of thinking.
So my husband and I did the only sensible thing we could. We cut and run. It's a decision we have never regretted. As a matter of fact, it's one of the best decisions we have made together in over a quarter century as a couple.
We followed my predecessor on the board and beat it out of Dodge, realizing as we turned out the lights it had been a mistake to settle there in the first place. All the red flags had been out, waving in our faces. We had only seen what we wanted to see. True, we had all our resources and thirteen years of our lives invested there.
I probably could have withdrawn from public life and the two of us could have continued on as we were, but it wasn't worth risking the health of our children. Enough was enough. Greener pastures existed elsewhere. Chalk it up to lessons learned, dust ourselves off, and choose a new location with more care and wisdom than we had chosen the old.
Yes, there is a big difference between hanging in there and just hanging. Especially when it's your children swinging from the noose.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Dear Democratic Congress, Don't Screw This Up
Dear Democratic Congress,
Once all the meet-and-greet socials and orientations, the lottery for office space, the class-officer elections, and the oath taking in January have concluded, and the newbies are snugly installed in their congressional cubicles staring at the walls and breathlessly reminding themselves, "Wow! I'm really in Congress!" it's time to get down to business. And we out here in reality hope it's not another round of monkey business. We've had enough of that in the last six years to keep us chin-deep in monkeys for the rest of our lives.
We know we've only given you two short years to locate any crevass, no matter how small, through which to lead us to safety from Iraq and a hard place where John and Jane Q. Public have been dwelling, wedged in rigor-mortis-like stiffness for the past six years, unable to draw a full breath. It would be nice to be able to breathe deeply again. In fact, it's becoming direly mandatory.
Election pundits exhausted their jaws all summer and fall whispering, whistling, whispering, saying, saying some more, and finally shouting from the rooftops that the November election result was all about Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. And those pundits were right, wrong, and wrong again. It is about Iraq. And it's not about Iraq. It's more about truthfulness versus truthiness and whether or not John and Jane Q. Public want their world shaped entirely by the monkey-loving military-industrial complex. For the record, we don't. And no one can hold it against us that we thought for a while that we did because we weren't ever told the truth about anything. And as this is a vast nation, it took about three years for the truth to make the rounds the old-fashioned way. Once it did, we knew we didn't. That's America for you.
So, Democratic Congress, where does that leave us and you? Well, it leaves us waiting for leadership. And it leaves you needing to supply us with some. The real and honest kind. The kind we haven't seen . . . well, maybe ever. But America is thirsty for it--as thirsty for it as a lost and hallucinating desert nomad drinking the sand. We've only been able to find sand and we are sick of it. It doesn't get the job done. We want out of the quagmire of Iraq, true. But we also want fresh water and clean air and healthcare and to be treated fairly by corporate America. We want our budget balanced and an end to no-bid contracts and earmarks and lobbyists and $50 toilet seats. We want grandma to get her social security check because it's all she has to live on. And we want her doctor to get his Medicare raise so he doesn't drop her like a stone. We want a fair-trade balance and we want our tax dollars to be spent on honorable endeavors. Here, mostly.
Basically, Dem Congress, we know we are asking a lot out of you in two short years. We are asking you to right all the wrongs that have been foisted upon the Public family in the last six years. We know it's a big job, and it's probably an unfair job at this point in the game. But it is the most important job. The most important job ever. It is far and away more important than politicizing the year 2008. And if you get this right, that particular year will largely take care of itself.
So, Dear Democratic Congress, when 2007 evolves into a political game of Red Rover, as it will, play nice with each other and be very careful who you call over, who you let through the lines and who you don't. Then be honest with us about your choices. This may be your one shot at taking the Red Rover title. So, on behalf of John and Jane Q. Publics everywhere in America, we respectfully request, for god's sake don't screw this up!!
Once all the meet-and-greet socials and orientations, the lottery for office space, the class-officer elections, and the oath taking in January have concluded, and the newbies are snugly installed in their congressional cubicles staring at the walls and breathlessly reminding themselves, "Wow! I'm really in Congress!" it's time to get down to business. And we out here in reality hope it's not another round of monkey business. We've had enough of that in the last six years to keep us chin-deep in monkeys for the rest of our lives.
We know we've only given you two short years to locate any crevass, no matter how small, through which to lead us to safety from Iraq and a hard place where John and Jane Q. Public have been dwelling, wedged in rigor-mortis-like stiffness for the past six years, unable to draw a full breath. It would be nice to be able to breathe deeply again. In fact, it's becoming direly mandatory.
Election pundits exhausted their jaws all summer and fall whispering, whistling, whispering, saying, saying some more, and finally shouting from the rooftops that the November election result was all about Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. And those pundits were right, wrong, and wrong again. It is about Iraq. And it's not about Iraq. It's more about truthfulness versus truthiness and whether or not John and Jane Q. Public want their world shaped entirely by the monkey-loving military-industrial complex. For the record, we don't. And no one can hold it against us that we thought for a while that we did because we weren't ever told the truth about anything. And as this is a vast nation, it took about three years for the truth to make the rounds the old-fashioned way. Once it did, we knew we didn't. That's America for you.
So, Democratic Congress, where does that leave us and you? Well, it leaves us waiting for leadership. And it leaves you needing to supply us with some. The real and honest kind. The kind we haven't seen . . . well, maybe ever. But America is thirsty for it--as thirsty for it as a lost and hallucinating desert nomad drinking the sand. We've only been able to find sand and we are sick of it. It doesn't get the job done. We want out of the quagmire of Iraq, true. But we also want fresh water and clean air and healthcare and to be treated fairly by corporate America. We want our budget balanced and an end to no-bid contracts and earmarks and lobbyists and $50 toilet seats. We want grandma to get her social security check because it's all she has to live on. And we want her doctor to get his Medicare raise so he doesn't drop her like a stone. We want a fair-trade balance and we want our tax dollars to be spent on honorable endeavors. Here, mostly.
Basically, Dem Congress, we know we are asking a lot out of you in two short years. We are asking you to right all the wrongs that have been foisted upon the Public family in the last six years. We know it's a big job, and it's probably an unfair job at this point in the game. But it is the most important job. The most important job ever. It is far and away more important than politicizing the year 2008. And if you get this right, that particular year will largely take care of itself.
So, Dear Democratic Congress, when 2007 evolves into a political game of Red Rover, as it will, play nice with each other and be very careful who you call over, who you let through the lines and who you don't. Then be honest with us about your choices. This may be your one shot at taking the Red Rover title. So, on behalf of John and Jane Q. Publics everywhere in America, we respectfully request, for god's sake don't screw this up!!
Monday, November 06, 2006
Voting Democratic Tomorrow is the Most Important Thing You Will Do for the Next Two Years
It doesn't matter if your daddy and your momma always voted Republican. My daddy and my momma always voted Republican, too. But they weren't voting for the George W. Bush Junior brand of Republicanism that exists in Washington today.
The George W. Bush brand of Republicanism is akin to being the biggest, baddest boar in the barn. It's the porcine bullying of everyone sharing the sty. It's the hogging of the show, the clearing away of all competition at the trough so that all the feed is theirs alone. It's their using the cloven hoof to hold down in the mud the necks of any and all challengers.
Bush II Republicans don't care if you have the medicine you need, if there are carcinogens in your water, if the wooded property on which you placed your dream home is now devoid of trees. They don't care if your son or daughter, who joined the military to pay for school or to find a living-wage job, has been slaughtered in the name of more war profits for General Halliburton. These people are the richest of the rich, the most well-connected of the networked, and they don't care about you. They don't have to.
This is why no one party should hold all the cards--ever. However, it must be said that it took the Democrats 40 years of holding most of the cards to do what this breed of Republicans have managed in 12--become corrupt enough to warrant being bounced out of Washington on their ears and perhaps jailed. In 12 short years, these Republicans have returned us to the 50's in all the ways that negatively affect life in the United States for John Q. Public, while they have not ventured from their "Leave-it-to-Beaver bubble long enough to realize that the rest of America has 21st-century needs. Like a job. And affordable healthcare. And after Katrina, maybe a house.
These Republicans are blatant hogs and they refuse to share. They don't have to and they won't unless they are made to. Hogs are the most stubborn creatures in the barn. They are opportunists and uproot the bounty of the land for their own gain, leaving in their wake a ruined landscape. To keep them penned, electric fence must be applied or no efforts at corralling them will be effective enough.
On November 7 these porcine Republicans don't deserve your votes. Not one of them. Democrats might not be your cup of tea, but they do own the wire and the transformer needed to restore order to the farm. So for once, forget what momma and daddy always did. They faced different times, and now so do you. This is the barnyard where you live. It needs some balance and fast.
Jane and John Q. , you have the power tomorrow to tell all the Porkies in Washington, "Tha...tha... That's All Folks." For your own good, you'd better do it.
The George W. Bush brand of Republicanism is akin to being the biggest, baddest boar in the barn. It's the porcine bullying of everyone sharing the sty. It's the hogging of the show, the clearing away of all competition at the trough so that all the feed is theirs alone. It's their using the cloven hoof to hold down in the mud the necks of any and all challengers.
Bush II Republicans don't care if you have the medicine you need, if there are carcinogens in your water, if the wooded property on which you placed your dream home is now devoid of trees. They don't care if your son or daughter, who joined the military to pay for school or to find a living-wage job, has been slaughtered in the name of more war profits for General Halliburton. These people are the richest of the rich, the most well-connected of the networked, and they don't care about you. They don't have to.
This is why no one party should hold all the cards--ever. However, it must be said that it took the Democrats 40 years of holding most of the cards to do what this breed of Republicans have managed in 12--become corrupt enough to warrant being bounced out of Washington on their ears and perhaps jailed. In 12 short years, these Republicans have returned us to the 50's in all the ways that negatively affect life in the United States for John Q. Public, while they have not ventured from their "Leave-it-to-Beaver bubble long enough to realize that the rest of America has 21st-century needs. Like a job. And affordable healthcare. And after Katrina, maybe a house.
These Republicans are blatant hogs and they refuse to share. They don't have to and they won't unless they are made to. Hogs are the most stubborn creatures in the barn. They are opportunists and uproot the bounty of the land for their own gain, leaving in their wake a ruined landscape. To keep them penned, electric fence must be applied or no efforts at corralling them will be effective enough.
On November 7 these porcine Republicans don't deserve your votes. Not one of them. Democrats might not be your cup of tea, but they do own the wire and the transformer needed to restore order to the farm. So for once, forget what momma and daddy always did. They faced different times, and now so do you. This is the barnyard where you live. It needs some balance and fast.
Jane and John Q. , you have the power tomorrow to tell all the Porkies in Washington, "Tha...tha... That's All Folks." For your own good, you'd better do it.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
America Will Display Her Soul to the World on November 7
Certain things have the capacity to speak to our individual souls. A tale of triumph, a particular movie, a style of decorating, a color, an odor. Each has the ability to cut through the layers of self-denial we pile on top of our deepest selves in order to make it through a day. A kind word, a compassionate act, a stirring piece of music, and suddenly our soul is laid bare. Time stands still and we are transported from the rat race and into a special place where the world is kind, and we remember what's truly a priority. We envision ourselves and others as products of the better nature of man. Dreams, for that brief moment under the spell of existing in a soul place, seem likely to come true. We dwell briefly in a second of ultimate truth.
While it is not practical or even possible to exist 24 hours a day floating on a dream cloud, and the often harsh, expedience-greedy, goal-oriented pace of modern life prevents all but the most masochistic from trying to move through the day with their souls hanging out, there are water-shed moments where it is necessary to tap into our deepest and better selves and send that message out into the universe. Things can be better than they are right now. Things can be made more fair, more just, more righteous. Perhaps our founding fathers knew this.
The founding fathers also understood the flip side of the coin, how absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely, that greed and avarice can destroy the goodness of a soul and the soul of a society. So they built into our system of government a means for citizens to express the depths of their soul priorities and alert their leaders to disdain for the actions of government should they find those leaders to be or to have become soulless.
One week from Tuesday will be such a water-shed moment. It is election day. It is the day when Americans will be given the opportunity to dig deep in their souls and identify those true priorities that are seldom obvious at the water-cooler, in the boardroom, or on the street corner, but which reside in the deepest recesses of our spiritual make-up and matter the most to our quality of life and the quality of life for those we love. It's again about truth. Truth to self and truth to others. It's about sending a message of truth out into the universe and letting it return to American society bringing back with it great benefit for all.
America will be showing it's true soul to the world on Tuesday, November 7. What depth of soul will the world see? Will it see the boardroom soul or the soul that allows grandmother to afford food and medicine? Will the world witness the layered-over soul used for joking at the water-cooler or the soul that understands the helpless feeling of unemployment? Will it see the cowboy soul of NFL entertainment or the one that knows torturing another human being is wrong? Will the world see the cocky superficial soul of flag-waving self-delusion or the one that holds sacred the genuine freedom afforded by the principle of habeous corpus?
America will be displaying her soul to the world on November 7. We will know soon enough the caliber of American soul the world will observe. And from that observation, the souls of the world will deduce a message. On the quality of that message, which will be broadcast into the universe, hinges the future message America will receive from the world in return.
While it is not practical or even possible to exist 24 hours a day floating on a dream cloud, and the often harsh, expedience-greedy, goal-oriented pace of modern life prevents all but the most masochistic from trying to move through the day with their souls hanging out, there are water-shed moments where it is necessary to tap into our deepest and better selves and send that message out into the universe. Things can be better than they are right now. Things can be made more fair, more just, more righteous. Perhaps our founding fathers knew this.
The founding fathers also understood the flip side of the coin, how absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely, that greed and avarice can destroy the goodness of a soul and the soul of a society. So they built into our system of government a means for citizens to express the depths of their soul priorities and alert their leaders to disdain for the actions of government should they find those leaders to be or to have become soulless.
One week from Tuesday will be such a water-shed moment. It is election day. It is the day when Americans will be given the opportunity to dig deep in their souls and identify those true priorities that are seldom obvious at the water-cooler, in the boardroom, or on the street corner, but which reside in the deepest recesses of our spiritual make-up and matter the most to our quality of life and the quality of life for those we love. It's again about truth. Truth to self and truth to others. It's about sending a message of truth out into the universe and letting it return to American society bringing back with it great benefit for all.
America will be showing it's true soul to the world on Tuesday, November 7. What depth of soul will the world see? Will it see the boardroom soul or the soul that allows grandmother to afford food and medicine? Will the world witness the layered-over soul used for joking at the water-cooler or the soul that understands the helpless feeling of unemployment? Will it see the cowboy soul of NFL entertainment or the one that knows torturing another human being is wrong? Will the world see the cocky superficial soul of flag-waving self-delusion or the one that holds sacred the genuine freedom afforded by the principle of habeous corpus?
America will be displaying her soul to the world on November 7. We will know soon enough the caliber of American soul the world will observe. And from that observation, the souls of the world will deduce a message. On the quality of that message, which will be broadcast into the universe, hinges the future message America will receive from the world in return.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
What's Wrong with Closet Compromise?
The compromise to which I am referring is the one made by Senators Warner, Graham, and McCain to the change of language in Common Article III of the Geneva Convention requested by GWB. Combine that with the recently passed additions to the Patriot Act, and our president seems to be holding all the cards. It wasn't much of a compromise, was it?
This issue is very clear cut. And the "compromise" more closely resembled the self-serving, ass-saving, slimy political maneuvering we have come to expect from our representatives. So why are there so many who can't see it? Don't get it? Won't get it? Why is this even an issue when as recently as two weeks ago, Americans could lay their heads on their pillows at night without giving it much of a thought? Because Constitutional freedoms have never been brought into question to this extent before, that's why.
Even when McCarthy was looking under the bed for communists, the Constitution and the Geneva Convention were left intact. Our historically shared and common belief in the limits of governmental power was, we thought, so tightly woven into the fabric of America, into being American, that it would hold forever like medieval chainmail.
Two hundred plus years beyond 1789 and we as a nation have forgotten that the thread of freedom was spun of delicate silk. It must be handled properly and periodically checked for moths. I think around 1980 we threw that silk in the back of the closet believing it would be just fine in there with the other consumer goods we just had to have and then grew bored with, discarded, and haven't looked at since.
Under the cover of closet darkness, Bush got his way with the extended Patriot Act and the rewritten Common Article III of the Geneva Convention, and thereby, he assumed total control over the rights of individuals. He not only broke the silken thread of freedom, he stuffed it in his pocket and walked away virtually unchallenged with the whole cloth. Now, you, or I, can be picked out of a crowd, labeled an enemy combatant, and waterboarded. One, two, three.
But like couch potatos who desperately needed to get out of the recliner long ago and hold a garage sale, I guess Americans grew so comfortable, complacent, and trusting that the closet was a safe place for what we hold dear that after years of protected freedoms, there are those among us who refuse to believe that the game has changed. This is, indeed, a sad day for America because there will be no hue and cry until a wealthy WASP or a popular middle-class citizen is plucked off the street for simply engaging in routine politics.
If we as a nation learned anything from watching Katrina victims sift through the remnants of their lives, it should be this: If you value grandma's silken cloak of freedom, you'd better keep it on your person when the storms come because once they have passed, you can't expect to find it still safe in the back of the closet.
This issue is very clear cut. And the "compromise" more closely resembled the self-serving, ass-saving, slimy political maneuvering we have come to expect from our representatives. So why are there so many who can't see it? Don't get it? Won't get it? Why is this even an issue when as recently as two weeks ago, Americans could lay their heads on their pillows at night without giving it much of a thought? Because Constitutional freedoms have never been brought into question to this extent before, that's why.
Even when McCarthy was looking under the bed for communists, the Constitution and the Geneva Convention were left intact. Our historically shared and common belief in the limits of governmental power was, we thought, so tightly woven into the fabric of America, into being American, that it would hold forever like medieval chainmail.
Two hundred plus years beyond 1789 and we as a nation have forgotten that the thread of freedom was spun of delicate silk. It must be handled properly and periodically checked for moths. I think around 1980 we threw that silk in the back of the closet believing it would be just fine in there with the other consumer goods we just had to have and then grew bored with, discarded, and haven't looked at since.
Under the cover of closet darkness, Bush got his way with the extended Patriot Act and the rewritten Common Article III of the Geneva Convention, and thereby, he assumed total control over the rights of individuals. He not only broke the silken thread of freedom, he stuffed it in his pocket and walked away virtually unchallenged with the whole cloth. Now, you, or I, can be picked out of a crowd, labeled an enemy combatant, and waterboarded. One, two, three.
But like couch potatos who desperately needed to get out of the recliner long ago and hold a garage sale, I guess Americans grew so comfortable, complacent, and trusting that the closet was a safe place for what we hold dear that after years of protected freedoms, there are those among us who refuse to believe that the game has changed. This is, indeed, a sad day for America because there will be no hue and cry until a wealthy WASP or a popular middle-class citizen is plucked off the street for simply engaging in routine politics.
If we as a nation learned anything from watching Katrina victims sift through the remnants of their lives, it should be this: If you value grandma's silken cloak of freedom, you'd better keep it on your person when the storms come because once they have passed, you can't expect to find it still safe in the back of the closet.
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