Poem - A December to Forget

Xmas lights are hung,
the moon is down
Santa’s on his way

Think he’ll skip Baghdad and Darfur
New Orleans, too
no safe place to land the sleigh
what’s the use anyway?

Broken vets slump in crooked doorways,
already forgotten, worse off than brothers in flag-draped coffins,
living dead;
Shock & Awe meets disgrace under pawn shop glass
Purple Heart medals alongside rusted .38’s
Swiss Army knives,
money clips, harmonicas, GI watches

Lives stolen by immoral cowards
who sleep at night in warm featherbeds
and celebrate their failure

The tunnel is dark, the shelves are bare,
the last train has departed, the fire’s out;
no cookies on the plate for Santa, no turkey
in the oven

Remember the reason for the season,
son of God, born in a manger
three kings on his trail, guided by a star
seeking something to believe in

Same need now as then -
to believe in angels
and a savior; in an unseen hand
and a well of mercy

Santa’s on his way

Bush the Befuddled

That voice. That snide voice. That jeering, wasted-Yale-education voice, that lifetime of upward failure voice, shamelessly breathing new life into dead and discredited ideas, into failure and shame, into torture and death. It was too early in the day for that voice.

“Turn it off,” I yelled to my wife. “Please.”

Bush the Befuddled, holding another useless press conference, and insisting, despite graphic evidence to the contrary, that the “war” in Iraq is worthwhile, winnable, and key to protecting American citizens from those horrible people who ascribe to an “ideology of hate.”

If Bush believes his own bullshit he’s insane. Iraq was unnecessary, a waste of young lives, a waste of tax dollars, a waste of American moral credibility – and that’s just for starters from a provincial American perspective. It’s the Iraqis who have lost big time, Iraqis who fear for their lives in outdoor markets and office buildings, on street corners; Iraqis who are without basic human services, due in large part to American arrogance, ignorance and greed.

For Bush to stand there and state his belief that the majority of Americans don’t want US forces withdrawn, to stand and say that we don’t understand the consequences, is crazy gibberish. Bush is the one trying to beat his dead, maggot-infested horse to life. The people get it. Iraq is a lost cause no matter what we do, and has been since we toppled Saddam and unleashed bottled up sectarian strife.

US miscalculation placed Iraq on the path to civil war. The US is responsible for destroying a country that never posed a credible threat to our national security. Thanks to Bush and his cronies, the average Iraqi now has ample reason to distrust, despise, and discredit any move the US makes in Iraq.

Bush talks a lot of nonsense about liberty and freedom for Iraqis while he systematically dismantles Constitutional protections here at home. Enough already.

This unarmed, lower middle-class American citizen, an Air Force veteran, is sick of the bullshit, lies, posturing and criminal behavior of Bush the Befuddled and his cronies. I’m sick of Wolf Blitzer and Tim Russert and Brian Williams, just to name a few of the many blabbermouths in TV land who blithely lend Bush Administration fantasies credence.

The America that lives (only barely) in my imagination is a country with a moral reservoir deep enough to admit failure and make amends for its misdeeds.

Bush was a fraud from Day One and he remains a fraud now; he was unfit from Day One and he’s even more unfit now; he was an embarrassment to our country from Day One and so he remains.

APPLE PIE - FICTION

Fell face first into his apple pie, dead, still holding my hand when his heart stopped. Strangest thing I ever witnessed. What a time for his time to come! Would it have happened if he hadn’t been home when I brought the pie over, if I had just left it on his porch with a note, which was what I intended all along. Ed insisted I have a piece with him, wouldn’t hear otherwise. I sat in the little dining area. Ed only had two chairs, which I took as a sign that he got as many visitors as I did. I noticed there were no pictures in the living room, no frames with smiling faces in them. No wife. No kids. Not much furniture. Ed seemed shy and a little more nervous than he was the day he drove us to the hospital. He admitted that he wasn’t used to visitors. Other than Mensa, a chubby stray cat he’d taken in, he had only himself to worry about, and since his tastes were simple he didn’t need much. As I watched him brew coffee and pull plates from the cupboard I got a solid feeling about Ed, like if a flood or a hurricane hit Crystal Springs he’d be the last resident standing. He was everything Steve never could be, everything Steve never bothered trying to be; Ed was the kind of man who kept his trailer neat, who voted in every election, who took care of his pets, who changed the oil in his truck every 3,000 miles, who owned insurance. Solid, responsible, dependable. I imagined that he was sweet to his late wife, brought her flowers for no reason, fixed her tea with honey when she was sick, stuff that never in thirteen years crossed Steve’s mind to do for me. Only thing I could ever depend on Steve for was losing his temper and making a complete mess of things. Ed had kind brown eyes, like the eyes of those dogs you sometimes see outside the grocery store, waiting on their owner, as calm and patient as can be. The years had etched some lines on Ed’s forehead and around his eyes, proof that his days hadn’t been all sugar and daffodils, but the lines didn’t mask the kindness in the man. Ed sliced the pie and served me first. Still wore his wedding band I noticed. Took his coffee black, chewed his pie slowly, like he wanted to wring every drop of flavor from it, and again I thought of Steve, the caveman way he ate, all slurps and grunts and mess, as if eating was a competition. When Ed said my pie was the best he’d ever tasted, I felt fire on my cheeks. I didn’t know what to say, it had been such a long time since a man paid me a compliment, but I was happy to be sitting here. I was even more surprised when Ed put his hand over mine, and held my eyes with his, as if he was searching for something he’d lost, and I felt my heartbeat speed up; it felt weird, to be honest, I’m not your touchy-feely type of person, no time for that, but something passed between Ed and me in that moment, not love or even physical attraction, it was more like connection, clear understanding, human being to human being. When he smiled I smiled back, and then he squeezed my hand and his throat clutched like he was choking on a bone, and before I could say or do anything he had collapsed face first into his pie, dead. Left me stuck with his cat.

Word From On High

Judging by the froth in the mainstream media, you’d have thought that the Iraq Study Group report was coming directly from the pen of Jesus, a document that would deliver us from our own evil and set beleaguered Iraq on a path to peace and brotherhood.

Wrong. It’s always hard for an imperial power to apologize, even harder for it to admit defeat and flee the scene of the crime. Word to Bush/Cheney: the Invasion/Occupation was a mistake based on lies, your regime is responsible for a calamity, and you two, as principal architects and shills for the fiasco, should be sitting in Leavenworth Prison in orange jumpsuits.

Iraq is fucked, whether the US sticks around for a year or two or folds its tent and retreats as soon as possible. The screwball dreams the Bush/Cheney junta had of a “democratic” Iraq and free-flowing oil opened a Pandora’s Box filled with death and misery.

The US will be washing this blood from its hands for fifty years.

We reap the consequences of a mentally-challenged commander-in-chief, a wicked Vice-President, and a complacent, rubberstamp Congress. It’s a dangerous thing to try and remake the world in your own corrupt image. You’d think our Bible-toting leaders would know better, but all they had in mind was power, and the wisdom of the good book flew straight over their heads.

The anti-war protestors who filled city streets all over the world in 2002 and 2003 were right, though it didn’t take a crystal ball to predict the bloody outcome.

We’ve done enough damage. It’s time to go.

The Earle of Tatum

Gary Earle, President of the Coalition for Sensible Planning, an organization which sounds like, and probably is, run out of a Goleta PO Box, brings to mind an image of a slick, smarmy, slippery, slimy used-car huckster, willing to employ any means necessary to sell a twice-wrecked, cosmetically-restored Plymouth with an Earl Scheib paint job to an unsuspecting sucker for top dollar.

Ever since the Santa Barbara School Districts announced it was conducting a feasibility study of options for making sorely needed cash from two unused parcels (Hidden Valley & Tatum) of land it owns, a study that included the idea of building affordable housing for teachers and staff, Earle and others of his sort have come out of the woodwork, the shadows, out from behind adobe walls and from under goosedown comforters, to protest, bray, sputter, smear, and malign the study, the School Board, and the District Administration.

Before the ink on the contact with UniDev LLC – a firm with expertise in building “workforce” housing for non-profits – had time to soak in, before any projections on the number of homes was released, before a stitch of research had been accomplished, Earle’s posse of NIMBYs were standing outside Vons on Turnpike, passing out home-made fliers decrying the District’s intent to erect some four hundred homes, smack in the heart of their precious suburban “neighborhood.” Where Earle’s Coalition got that number is anybody’s guess, but it’s not even in the same area code with the number proposed in UniDev’s final report.

From the outset, Earle called UniDev’s motives into question, claiming the company was steering the study toward the workforce housing option so it could make major league money as the ultimate project developer, a claim not tethered to the reality of the UniDev contract, but what the hell, who’s paying close attention to meddlesome facts? Taking his cue from modern masters of mendacity like Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Hannity, Earle stretched and kneaded the truth to suit his own ends, which are, apparently, to keep anybody else from calling this Promised Land home, especially teachers and school workers, who, to be sure, carry meaningful water for the community, but must accept their impoverished servitude and move to Lompoc, Oxnard or the shitty end of Salinas Street.

After the final UniDev report was presented to the school board on November 28, Earle, decked out in a pin-striped suit, hair coiffed and tanning booth glow in place, got face time on KEYT, where he was quoted as saying that the District hasn’t cooperated with the Tatum community, and that, “the District just wants to make as much money as possible.”

The first statement is flat wrong and the second just plain stupid. The District held a number of public meetings about the feasibility study, accepted public comment for a month, gave community members ad naseum opportunity to speak at school board meetings, and so on. Claiming the District has been uncooperative with the local community is like claiming the U.S. Army never tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib. We got digital photos, dude!

As to the money angle, well, Duh! Mr. Earle, squeezing these vacant assets for every dime they will surrender is THE POINT! What’s wrong with the school district exploring every revenue-enhancing option at its disposal? People like Gary Earle don’t piss and wail when a private individual seeks to earn obscene amounts of coin, so why get your Grigioperla boxers in a wad when a school district seeks to exercise the very same capitalist imperative? Good old American money-grubbing, baby! The school district’s got something that’s as good as gold in these parts, and its anemic financial condition demands that the school board do whatever it takes to bring more coin into the coffers. It would be a colossal failure of the school board’s fiduciary responsibility not to seek the biggest score it can haul to the bank. The taxpayers from whom the prized booty came in the first place should expect no less.

In Death give Thanks

The floor of the Balcony is littered with empty cups, swizzle sticks, sunflower seeds, ticket stubs, expired ID cards, a ball of yarn, a baby’s pacifier, a grocery list, a dime, half a business card, (left by one Jeff Norton, a financial services salesman from Utah), popcorn seeds, a twisted straw, a discount coupon for a health club, a red playing card (eight of Hearts), and a cocktail napkin with this note, printed in block letters with black lipstick: “I never loved you!” The janitor is on strike, picketing on the front sidewalk, angry and determined to stay out there as long as it takes. “Hey ho, the Balcony has got to go!” The owner is sitting in a dark room contemplating his own death, and how it is unwise to attach too much to any thing, place or person. He’s thinking of his place in the world, the long line of humanity stretching before him, miles and miles of the departed, most with a story to tell. It’s a sad thing when people go to their graves with stories yet untold. The stories die with them. We build the future on the past’s bones. There’s no business on Thanksgiving Day anyway, only the lonely and the young and the crazy walking State Street; the Metropolitan Theatre is open, Blue Bee Jeans is closed. The mannequin in the Blue Bee window is stunning, a Paris Hilton type with a lascivious smile. “Boys, I know you want to do me!” The Rescue Mission is doing brisk business for the down and out, the forgotten and the eternally lost, the unlucky; a wealthy family from Montecito works the serving line to absolve the guilt they feel for having so much while others have so little. The Faulding is full to capacity. Starbucks is open, ready and willing to serve the few foreign tourists out wandering. A Belgian couple peers in the window at Joe’s Café. The afternoon light fades. The steady chant of “Hey ho, the Balcony has got to go!” brings the owner back to his own reality, the contemplation of losing every thing, every person, and every place one has ever loved. The city of his youth is dead, replaced by a theme park, a “destination” reviewed and pimped in travel magazines and Auto Club brochures. Come and play on the American Riviera! He feels like crying but no tears will come. Strangely, contemplating his own death makes him thankful.

Saturday Night, Santa Barbara

What are the wealthy doing in those grand homes
on Alameda Padre Serra and Arbolado Road?
on Dover Lane and Mission Ridge Road?

With those multi-million dollar views of the city and the ocean?
sophisticated isolation and pearl-plated prestige

Diamonds on the ground, diamonds in the sky,
stone and red tile, Mediterranean arches, 30 foot high windows

Are the men smarter than those of us on the north end of Milpas? Better looking?
Are the women hotter? Better at the erotic arts?
Are the children impeccably behaved, less prone to the shits, tonsillitis, lice, asthma, bronchitis, RSV, warts?

Do they have the same trouble finding matching socks
or the remote control?

Is the sex better?
Is the conversation more interesting?
Is the beer colder?
Is the food tastier?
Is the air different?

Do the men lie and cheat?
Do the wives fuck around?
Do the men suffer from Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia?
Do the women have high blood pressure?

Is someone up there rolling a joint?
Is someone up there burning dinner?
Is someone up there telling a lie?
Is someone up there lending a helping hand?
Is someone up there plotting murder?

Are the people up there happier
because of all the splendor
or does the splendor make them happy?

Anyway, it’s Saturday night and the clock is ticking for us all.

"The Republic is Dead," Cheney Claims

Life around the White House has been glum this past week. President Bush offered up Donald Rumsfeld to satisfy the Democrats need for bleeding red meat, but in fact Bush still believes that Rumsfeld is a military genius and he misses his old friend terribly.

Bush has no desire to work with Democrats, but his father explained the new reality on November 8th and demanded that Junior extend an olive branch to the inbound Democratic leadership, and do his utmost to make it seem that he’s eager to work in a bipartisan spirit, even though Junior can’t stand to be in the same room with Nancy Pelosi. “For six years I had no use for those people,” W said. “I didn’t give Democrats the time of day, didn’t invite them to the White House, didn’t pay attention to their concerns. I enjoyed calling them traitors and wimps, and I got a big kick when Cheney told various Democratic senators to go fuck themselves. Dad gummit, I miss those days already.”

Sensing that his son wasn’t getting the message, Bush Senior seized his wayward, half-wit spawn by the shoulders and shook him, hard. “You listen to me, boy, and you listen good. Your swaggering, ‘Mission-Accomplished’ days are over. You’re one of the most unpopular Presidents in the history of the Republic! Sixty percent of the American people think you’re a raving idiot! Look at me, dimwit! You’ve got two years to think about your legacy! Do you want to be remembered as the most incompetent President in American history? Ah, shit, boy, don’t start crying, for crissakes.”

Nobody in Washington has taken the Republican meltdown harder than Deadeye Dick Cheney. Always a terrifying figure, a cross between Ted Bundy and Heinrich Himmler, even when the tide was breaking his way, Cheney has been in a black mood since Election Night, snarling at his staff, his wife, his dog, and even his old and loyal friends from Halliburton. “It’s the end of the Republic,” Cheney keeps saying out of the side of his mouth. “We might as well open the gates and let the terrorists come right in, hand them the keys to the White House, the Pentagon and the FBI.”

Only target shooting at the Secret Service range brings Cheney solace. The Veep demanded that the Secret Service provide him with three hundred life-size targets of Nancy Pelosi, seventy-five of Barney Frank, forty of Teddy Kennedy, and one hundred and twenty-five of John Murtha, which Cheney blasts away at with his Glock 31, one after another. “Keep ‘em coming,” Cheney growls. “And bring me a hundred of that fat fuck, Michael Moore. I’ll show that leftist bastard what I think of him!”

Now that the Democrats have subpoena power, Condi Rice has been busy in her office, shredding documents, notes, cocktail napkins, phone logs, and credit card statements, anything that might implicate her for her role in misleading the American public into backing the needless and senseless invasion of Iraq. The same scenario is playing out all over official Washington and those on-site document destruction outfits are making a killing. Low-level functionaries, lobbyists, congressional aides, pages, and the hookers and call girls (and call boys, of course) who have serviced the Republicans for the past twelve years, flock to the Northern Virginia woods where they douse massive piles of documents with jet fuel and set them to burning.

After moping around for two days in an Oxycontin daze, Rush Limbaugh bucked up his courage and played miniature golf with Newt Gingrich, only to be recognized and ridiculed by a pack of Catholic school kids on a field trip. “My God, Newt, this can’t be happening. We were going to rule for one thousand years!”

Yeah, it has been a rough week in DC, and the Democrats haven’t done a thing yet.

Election Night, November 7, 2006

Verbatim notes while watching the returns…unedited…impressions of impending doom…which spin will win?

My favorite leftist radio station, listener financed KPFK, reported earlier that there were widespread glitches with electronic voting machines in Ohio, leading to long lines for voters and the intervention of a Federal judge who ordered that polls remain open an additional two hours. It was much the same story in Virginia. KPFK noted that the mechanical problems in Ohio were occurring in predominantly African-American areas. Shades of 2004, when the national GOP stole the election for Bush.

C-SPAN, CNN, Fox, PBS, ABC – there’s so much information out there that it makes my head swim. What I fear is another stolen election; the Republicans will not relinquish power willingly, so all their voter suppression tactics make perfect sense -- Robo-calls to voters who lean Democrat, bullshit demands for ID, eligible voters purged from the rolls as if by magic -- these people will stop at nothing.

KPFK also reported that 10,000 lawyers are on duty across the country tonight, watching polling places, challenging edicts issued by Republican Secretaries of State, challenging or correcting decisions made by stressed-out poll workers, harassing voters, or just standing around in cheap suits and scuffed shoes, checking their Blackberries every two minutes, speaking from the sides of their mouths like their hero, Dick Cheney.

I suddenly have this sinking feeling that turn-out doesn’t matter, Iraq doesn’t matter, the piss-poor, rigged for the wealthy economy doesn’t matter, because at the end of this day, the GOP will have engineered massive vote theft and retained their death grip on the nation’s testicles. I can’t help thinking that we are fucked, no matter what, and that Karl Rove is sitting in the White House, enjoying a massage from a Korean prostitute. “That’s nice, baby, but can you move a little lower.” Rove is a pig masquerading as a man. He should be conscripted into the US Army and sent to Iraq where he can experience the wonders of our glorious Occupation, first-hand. Hell yes, issue Rove an M-16 and some defective body armor and send him out to meet and greet the Sunnis and the Shiites.

Rick Santorum, a scary Republican senator from Pennsylvania, appears to be headed for an ass-kicking. One less Bush soldier to worry about.

Results roll across the bottom of the TV screen. Bill Bennett is a guest commentator on CNN, though he doesn’t seem to know jack shit about particular races. I wonder what kind of action Bennett has riding on these outcomes. Old gamblers never lose the itch.

W and Laura voted this morning. I wonder how much trouble W had filling out his ballot. That Yale education isn’t worth much, but I’m sure Laura explained the more difficult nuances and made sure W checked the correct boxes.

Over on MSNBC Tom Brokaw is jabbering, trying his best to bring some gravitas to this sordid Tuesday night affair by offering his years of wisdom and experience. What a star-studded line-up: Brokaw, Williams, and Russert. It almost makes me wet my shorts with excitement. MSNBC projects that the Dems will control the House, but that the GOP will retain a slim margin in the Senate. We’ll see if that holds. The polls closed in California fifteen minutes ago. I’d bet my son’s piggybank that Schwarzenegger just fired up a fat cigar. Four more years of Arnold is like being forced to watch Kindergarten Cop over and over. Bad to worse and back again.

I’d like to see the phrase, “God Bless America,” banned. Every politician, no matter how immoral behind closed doors, no matter how criminal, no matter how psychotic, utters “God Bless America,” at every opportunity, as if this will absolve all sins and make people believe the politician is a good guy or decent gal, no different from any of us. What a crock. In my experience on this planet, the people who bring God into every conversation, or drop their church-going habits and activities the way others drop names, are generally the most sinful. Why don’t you stop talking about Jesus and start acting like Jesus? Novel concept.

If the Dems do take the House and either take the Senate outright or at least increase their number so that real debate is possible, will they act like Democrats or hew to the Bill Clinton tactics that screwed working people (NAFTA), destroyed local media (the Telecommunications Act of 1996), and tossed welfare recipients (Welfare to Work or whatever it’s euphemistically called) on the street? All you Hillary fans should remember that this Republican Reign of Terror began with a mid-term landslide in 1994, well before Monica and Bill began playing hide-the-cigar in the Oval Office.

I’m going to bed where I hope to dream of Dick Cheney on the witness stand, naked, with a black hood over his head, shackles on his wrists and ankles, and electrodes clipped to his old nipples. Give him more juice!

Poem - November 6th

One more day
Maybe the beginning
Of the end
For Bush and his cronies

All their corruption and criminality
The blood-soaked lies
Gross cynicism
Criminal manipulation
Fear-mongering
Malevolent neglect

You can almost feel the country
Hold its breath
Deep down citizens know
How far off track we’ve wandered

Away from cherished values
Away from self-evident truths
Away from the dream sustained through generations

Into a barren land that resembles
Places we always deplored

The reign of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rove
Many times worse in the long run
Than that shocking September day
Bush milked for all its political worth
Casting a shadow across our
Collective soul

To beat the terrorists we became terrorists
Adopted his methods
His blind arrogance
His indifference to reason

Cloaked in Old Glory and Christian righteousness
We ignored the law
Unleashed the dogs of war
Now our rap sheet is longer and bloodier
And our misdeeds will not be forgotten

Will tomorrow spell the beginning of the end
Or the end of the beginning
Of hope?

Stay the Course

President Bush tossed a pork rind into the air and caught it in his open mouth, took a sip of Coors Light, and winked across the Oval Office at Condi Rice. “Betcha’ I can do that again,” the President said. He lofted another rind, a tad off course and to his left, but he recovered by shifting in his chair, the rind bounced off his nose and into his mouth where it was crunched with tremendous satisfaction. “See what I mean, Condi? Learned that at Yale. Booyah!”

Karl Rove cleared his throat. “Stay the course,” is all he said.

“Bingo,” said the President. “Never said it. Never even intimated it. Hey, that’s a big word, ‘intimated.’ Where’s Bobby Woodward when I need him? I can use a ten dollar word when I feel like it.”

“Never said it,” Condi Rice said, “even though it has been documented 748 times.”

“A minor, insignificant detail,” Rove said. “If we say the President never said ‘Stay the course’ who’s going to argue with us, the national media?” Everyone in the room burst out laughing. “We own the national media,” Rove said, clearly enjoying himself. “The Democrats? I eat Democrats for breakfast!”

“And they taste pretty good,” the President chimed in, “though not as good as these pork rinds. Yummy!”

“I’m not 100% comfortable,” Condi Rice said. ”We’re saying that our policy in Iraq is not our policy. In my opinion, Mr. President, we’re skirting perilously close to the line here. Domestic and international opinion – “

“The truth is what we say it is,” Rove said dismissively. “If we say the President never said ‘stay the course’ in regards to Iraq, then he never did, despite what any objective and impartial evidence may indicate. Those that disagree are traitors or anti-American liberals. We play this the same way we’ve played global warming. Even though it’s absolutely clear scientifically that human activity has altered the global climate, we simply deny the science and question the scientific community’s competence and patriotism, and the entire issue goes away.”

“Listen to Karl, Condi,” the President said. “He’s the man. No problema here.”

Vice President Cheney entered the Oval Office through his private entrance. Cheney was dressed in Army fatigues, a camouflaged hunting vest, paratrooper boots polished to a brilliant shine, and slung over his shoulder was a double-barreled .12 gauge shotgun with a pearl butt. “I heard that last bit,” Cheney said out of the side of his mouth. “We’re in power and it’s our prerogative to define the truth. The average American is stupid and easy to lead around by the nose. If we can convince some shit-for-brains in Middle America that gay marriage is more important to him and his children than bread and butter economic issues, then we can convince him that the President never said ‘Stay the course.’ I’m going duck huntin’. Anyone want to join me?”

“Have fun,” Bush said. “Don’t kill anyone, OK? That might be hard to deny!”

Dr. Duke Emerges from Hiding

Dr. Duke found a seat in the back of the jam-packed board room, between a teacher from Monroe Elementary and an Asian man who appeared to be asleep; the man’s zipper was open and his shoes were untied. Duke was coming off a week-long peyote bender in Sedona and felt as if the room was tilted to one side, like a ship in a storm. He watched a District administrator trip and nearly fall over a laptop power cord. Nobody else in the room seemed to notice, or if they did, they didn’t care. The five Board members and the Superintendent trooped in from an adjoining room. The Board members looked glum, as if the fate of western civilization rested on their shoulders; on the other hand, the Superintendent was beaming as if he’d just won the lottery. The contrast made Duke’s forehead throb and he wondered, again, why he was here on a Tuesday night when he could be home watching the World Series. Duke had $500 riding on the underdog Cardinals. He’d bet a twenty-three-year-old Navajo virgin he met in Sedona and spent a week trying to bed down that the Cardinals would shock the Detroit Tigers in six games. Duke failed to get the girl into the sack, primarily because she thought it would be bad luck to lose her virginity during the Major League Baseball play-offs.

During the Pledge of Allegiance Duke silently cursed George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Newt Gingrich, and for good measure threw in Bill and Hillary Clinton, Joseph Lieberman, Katie Couric, and Diane Sawyer. “May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your pubic region,” he whispered – or at least thought he whispered – though when several people turned to stare at him he realized that he’d been shouting like a street-corner preacher. “I had a bad week in Sedona,” he explained. “Too much sun and peyote, not enough sex. But you have nothing to fear. I’m just a run of the mill psychopath.”

The Superintendent launched into a monologue about an obscure Albanian research study which indicated a strong correlation between eating organic strawberries and improved standardized test scores. The Board members scribbled notes and nodded their heads; one wondered if the strawberries had to come from Albania or would strawberries from Oxnard or Santa Maria work just as well? The Superintendent had no idea and his inability to answer the question didn’t bother him in the least; he was still smiling as if he had the King of Siam by the balls. Duke found the Superintendent’s sunny demeanor annoying and wondered what prescription medications the man was on. Lithium? Zoloft? Paxil? Luvox? Enzyte? Even when he described a gaping hole in the budget the Superintendent’s rosy expression never changed. “Sweet Jesus,” Duke thought, “this guy should have captained the Titanic. He would have glad-handed the passengers when the ship was going down. ‘Isn’t this weather wonderful? Great night for sailing!’ Ladies and gentlemen, don’t pay any attention to that iceberg! I assure you that we have everything under control.’”

A teacher from La Cumbre Junior High was making an impassioned public comment about saving her school from an invasion of elementary kids. The teacher painted a dire portrait of overcrowding, first graders forced to make peepee next to seventh graders, traffic congestion, building code violations, and so on for three minutes and ten seconds. The speech was long on passion and short on facts and logic, but what the hell, George W. Bush is a moron who never lets facts bother him and he’s sitting in the White House playing president. To Duke the argument sounded silly, not to mention premature. The La Cumbre crowd needed to chill, hold a soothing group hug, and then get it through their panicked minds that the District wasn’t proposing to build a fortified, cinderblock and concertina wire compound on the campus. The world would not grind to a halt if a few hundred elementary kids moved into classrooms on a half-empty campus. Get a grip people!

The side-effects of a week-long peyote binge coupled with the endless drone of public comment were taking a toll on Duke. He heard the sound of flapping wings and saw a flock of pigeons fly through the open door and land on the dais in front of the Superintendent. The pigeons bobbed and clucked and cooed and preened until suddenly they transformed themselves into teachers -- angry, underpaid teachers armed with ripe tomatoes – which they began throwing at the Superintendent and Board members, a hail of crimson bombs. The Board members ducked under the dais or scurried for cover while the Superintendent took the brunt of the assault, smiling as jovially as ever as tomato juice and pulp dripped down his face, all over his papers and his necktie. No problem, ladies and gentlemen. Isn’t it great to see such spirited teachers! How about a big hand for our wonderful staff!

In fact – and much to Duke’s chagrin – nothing of the sort happened. There were no pigeons, no tomatoes. About forty teachers merely stood in solidarity while their elected leader read a proclamation. Damn, Duke thought, this time I’ve gone too far, totally rewired my own circuitry. If the illusion is unreal and the unreal is an illusion…what! Sweet Jesus, I’m jabbering. I’ve got to get out of here. But where’s the door? And why are there bars over the windows? And is the Superintendent really holding a cattle prod?

What saved Duke from terrible public embarrassment was Kenneth Locke, self-proclaimed genius, master of the Arts, master of the forehand, the backhand, and the serve and volley; Kenneth Locke, who peddled around town on a mountain bike, with a tennis racket and a guitar strapped to the front forks, visiting every public agency where he could take advantage of his right to three minutes at the podium to spread his gospel of Art for Art’s Sake. “I have the knowledge and I am the messenger,” Locke began, “I am the heir to Leonardo DaVinci and the spokesperson for the emerging avant garde.” Locke attended Board meetings week after week, using his allotted time to advance a philosophy that never failed to amuse and befuddle his audience. “You can’t serve two masters,” Locke intoned, “and it’s even harder to serve three or four.” At this the Asian man next to Duke woke with a start and clapped his hands. Locke said, “If there is no master there can be no student, and if the student isn’t ready, the master will not appear. Think about that!” A driver, a three-wood and a three-iron from sanity, Locke concluded by telling the Board that he would be out of town and out of touch for a while, but would return and update them on his quest.

Duke leaned back in his chair. This was better, much better; being in the presence of genius made the whole meeting worthwhile.

White-Beard Notes

White beard notes of a Semi-Clean Man. What’s that ringing in my ear? Who do you turn to when all your heroes are long dead, pushing up weeds in neglected graveyards? This isn’t a heroic age. This is an age of cowardice and spin, cover-my-ass hypocrisy, big lies shouted from big platforms, and the silence of the Great Majority, to borrow a phrase from old Dick Nixon. Even Nixon might feel ashamed today. Do you get the feeling that the whole deal is sliding toward the sheer face of a steep cliff? Crack another Coors Light, ignore this nagging disquiet, ignore the ringing in your ear and the man behind the velvet curtain. A crow perched on a wooden fence, hot salsa on a king-sized burrito, pigs feet under glass. Wealthy pale skins come down from their hilltop fortresses to taste the delights of a Westside taco stand. Militarism is the last refuge of a failed government. When moral reason fails, pull your pistol from its holster, wave it around so everyone can see how big and bad you are. Why is investing in people, not things, a radical notion? He was a wise and stupid man, for he could see things far away, yet was blind up close. Switch on the Tube, tune in to Fox’s coverage of the baseball playoffs, and be bombarded with commercials for Fox’s own slate of blood & guts dramas, hospital dramas, legal dramas, and game shows. Hey, Rube, you can win millions! Solve all your troubles in twenty-two minutes. VISA gets a nice slot, so does E-Trade, Verizon Wireless, and oversized liquid crystal HD televisions from Sharp. Whoopee! I feel deprived without my HD TV! Mirror mirror on the wall, which is the dumbest country of all? The most morally bankrupt? Number one in hypocrisy? Oh, baby, we got that market cornered. We’re untouchable, the undisputed champs. And how proudly we wear our crown of thorns! Teach the children, but teach them what? To conform and obediently follow the dictates of crooked masters? Who is teaching the children to stand up and speak out against injustice and hypocrisy and greed and lawlessness? Such thinking isn’t included in the standard, state-approved curriculum. Do you feel the creep of fascism? We love our guns, fear foreigners and immigrants, propose to build walls to keep them out, and trample our most sacred traditions in the name of “security,” in the name of protecting our “freedom.” Means and ends. Remember the wise black man who said, “the ends are not cut off from the means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.” In other words, ends and means must be aligned. Too much hatred, too little love. The morning train rumbles through town, waking the sleepers in the homeless encampments along the tracks. Poverty and want in the shadow of prosperity and wealth. What are we building here? Man rolls over and pulls his dog closer as the train roars past. Have you checked your credit score lately? Have you talked to Chuck Schwab about your portfolio? The DOW is up, how do you feel about that? Or are you worried about your enlarged prostate? Have you heard about Avodart? Ask your Doctor. Oh, you can’t afford to see a doctor? Too bad, man, too bad; your death will be drawn out and painful. Ever thought of going down to the blood bank and selling a pint? I tried it once, but they said my blood was only semi-clean.

MoTown Blues

It’s October, again, and that means play-off baseball, which means that my Yankees are among the field of hopefuls, and even the favorites in the minds of some. If the New Yorkers had better starting pitching and a more reliable bullpen I might agree, but if I had money to wager, I’d bet that the Bronx boys make an early exit.

Game 3, Detroit, and the Yankees are not hitting against Kenny Rogers. The Gambler is mixing a wicked curve with a nice change-up, and the Yankees are flailing. The Yanks have had base runners in every inning but can’t move them because they are incapable of stringing hits together. Shades of last year against the Angels, shades of the great collapse against the Red Sox in 2004, and against the Marlins in 2003. This high-priced offense that lives by the big fly has a nasty habit of going stone cold at the wrong time. A-Rod is absolutely the highest-paid choke-artist in the history of this great game. What’s he hitting in the first three games of this series, .175? The Yanks would be smart to move A-Rod in the off season, to any team that will take on his massive salary and give something of value in return.

Five innings in the books and the Yanks trail by three. Rogers has struck out five. He’s on his game and the momentum has shifted entirely to the Tigers. Giambi just grounded to first for the third out. Another runner stranded.

5-0 now. Detroit has all the mojo, Randy Johnson is off to the showers, and George Steinbrenner must be popping a hemorrhoid. Not much to say, except this looks awfully familiar. Few teams in a best-of-five series have ever come back from a 2-1 deficit, but it looks as if the Yanks are staring down the barrel at that dire option.

Top 7th. Posada strokes a lead-off double to center. The Yanks have had at least one base runner in every inning. Matsui grounds to second, moving Posada to third. Bernie Williams swings like a blind man at a Rogers curve and strikes out; Cano grounds to second to end the inning. The Yanks appear flat and stunned. Rogers is pumped up, Tiger fans, sensing that the night belongs to their club, go apeshit.

Granderson just hit a solo dinger to right for a 6-0 lead. The Yanks are finished. When the Bombers go 1-16 with runners in scoring position, Yankee fans can read the writing on the wall because we’ve seen it so many times over the past four or five years. They could have mailed this dismal performance in from the airport. Should I switch this massacre off? It’s excruciating to watch a $200 million team get shut-out. Joe Morgan, who before this series began said that the Yankees were the best hitting line-up he’d ever seen from top to bottom, must feel like a fool.

Damon just fanned. Jeter works a walk, though he took a pitch that was a borderline strike. Looking toward tomorrow – and what else can we do? -- the Yanks will send Jaret Wright to the mound. How many innings will Clyde’s son last before Torre brings a hook? Abreu goes down looking and A-Rod lofts a lazy fly to right. The futility continues to pile up for the game’s highest-paid player.

Game 3 has been ugly, just ugly. The Bronx boys should feel ashamed. 0 for 18 with runners on base, dominated by a 41-year-old lefthander. They fall 6-0 and trail 2 games to 1. They have dug a deep hole.

The Real Banana Republic

The detainee bill passed recently by Congress sends shivers down my spine. We’ve traded our torch of liberty for a beacon of hypocrisy. How are we ever going to climb back up this slippery slope? It’s too depressing to contemplate, as is the entire reign of Bush/Cheney. These people are deluded, corrupt, and criminal, greedy for power. The more I look the less I see the nation once known throughout the world as the great hope for mankind.

We’ve lost our mojo. We display all the characteristics of a banana republic: government corruption, election fraud, official incompetence, false religious fervor, and a yawning gap between rich and poor.

And now, like the best of the banana republics, we condone torture.

When will this madness end? If the country had an opposition party worth following I’d feel more confident that the bleeding might soon stop, but all we’ve got is a herd of callow wimps: Clinton, Biden, Kerry. None of these people has ever seen a principle they can’t wait to compromise.

The words of Martin Luther King, Jr. echo down from the mountain tops, through the valleys, all the way to the coast, calling good people out, chiding us for our cowardice in the face of outrage. Shame on us for turning our backs on what gave us such promise: freedom, equality of opportunity, justice for all.

Concerned citizens – and they must number in the millions – search in vain for an outlet for their anger. They might feel the urge to march in the streets but hold back for fear of marching alone. Intelligent voices are drowned out by the likes of Hannity and Limbaugh and O’Reilly, misinformation fills the airwaves, and the public is too dispirited to wade through the lies for a nugget of truth.

Immoral means can never lead to a moral end. In the name of preserving freedom we reserve the right to torture, and grant ourselves immunity from any consequences. In the name of security we reserve the right to shred and trample our fundamental values, invade other countries, and demand that the rest of the world remake itself in our image.

The high crimes and misdemeanors of the last five years will weigh like a millstone around our collective necks for years to come. Until someone can convince me otherwise, I remain more fearful of what we can do to ourselves than what can be done to us by outsiders.

FAITH NIGHT - BAGHDAD

On the day the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times reported that American spy agencies are unanimous in their opinion that the Iraq Occupation is fueling terrorism rather than quelling it, Vice President Dick Cheney summoned President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the Oval Office for a meeting.

“What’s up, Dirty Dick?” Bush said as he strutted into the Oval Office, followed by several aides, two attorneys, and a waiter bearing a tray laden with long-necked bottles of Coors Light, pretzel sticks and pork rinds.

Dick Cheney snarled and said, “Heads will fucking roll over this. How dare the press publish the truth! It’s an outrage. Truth has no place in the global war on terror. Truth cannot keep the American people out of harm’s way.”

Smiling, Bush said, “Intelligence is important, but I’ve never had much use for it. Pass me one of them beers, Juan.”

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld reminded the president and vice-president that they didn’t actually have to win the war in order to claim victory, since the US never declared war in the first place.

Cheney slammed his right fist into his left palm. “Bullshit, Don. We will win! I don’t care if we have to annihilate every Islamo-Facist on this planet, but we will win.”

“We’re stretched thin, Dick,” Rumsfeld said. “And, uh, well, I don’t like to admit this, but our adversaries are growing stronger and more sophisticated.”

“Hey, guys,” Bush said, “have you heard about Faith Nights? They tell me it’s the latest marketing craze in professional sports. The Atlanta Braves pass out the good book and play rock music and get the folks all fired up about Jesus. Damn fine idea. Wish I’d thought of it when I owned the Texas Rangers.”

“We should attack Iran,” Cheney said, helping himself to a handful of pretzels, “before those fuckers attack us with their arsenal of nuclear weapons.”

“We can’t say for sure that Iran has the Bomb,” Rumsfeld said.

“Bullshit! If we say Iran has a Bomb, Iran has a Bomb! We’re in power and the truth is whatever we say it is! Get O’Reilly on the phone,” Cheney barked at an aide. “If he’s not available find Limbaugh. And locate Rove. It’s time to crank up the PR machine.”

“Calm down, Dick,” the president said. “Remember your ticker. You get worked up and you’re liable to keel over right here in the Oval Office. That wouldn’t look good, you know? Now look fellas, this Faith Night thing’s got me thinking. That’s our base and we need to keep ‘em happy.”

“Compared to Iran, Saddam was nothing,” Cheney mumbled. “Iran’s the key.”

“The average Iraqi isn’t a happy camper these days,” Rumsfeld said ruefully. “The streets are dangerous, jobs are scarce, electric power is completely unpredictable.”

“You sound like an appeasing yellow-bellied Liberal, Don,” Cheney said. “We gave Iraq Democracy! If it wasn’t for us, the Iraqis would still be under the thumb of a brutal dictator, subject to prison for years without due process of law, tortured, disappeared!”

“Hey,” the president said, “that sounds like what’s been going on in GitMo. Just kiddin’ boys. Look, what do you think of having a Faith Night in Baghdad? We could hand out copies of the Koran and play Iraqi folk music, make the people feel better about themselves and their country.”

Nothing to Fear

When will the next terror scare hit the TV airwaves? It’s about time for an orange or yellow alert, about time for Dick Cheney to assert in that low-key way of his that an attack is imminent, and about time for the Fox News gang to repeat the Administration’s assertion until it becomes a fact. That’s how we do things in America now, isn’t it? Whoever can make a lie stick wins. Scream the lie loud, scream it often and you can rule.

I saw the President’s recent outdoor press conference on the Internet and was appalled. More than ever, Bush reminds me of a spider monkey amped on crystal meth. Bush can’t answer a straightforward question without becoming agitated. “War on Terror, the enemy is everywhere, he hates our freedom, it’s my job to protect the American people from attack,” and so on through the standard Karl Rove-approved phrases. Bush gets exasperated when reporters press him to back up his assertions with facts or logic. Bush flashes his trademark sneer, as if the press people are too dense to grasp the essential truth, and tersely signals for the next question.

It’s a sad and embarrassing scene whenever Bush holds a press conference. It takes all my will not to change the channel over to Animal Planet or Cartoon Network. I wonder if the rumors I’ve read about Bush suffering from syphilis are true; the man certainly seems like he’s in the throes of a mental meltdown. One day, years in the future, we will learn that spirochetes were attacking Bush’s central nervous system in 2006, causing him to act erratically. Video clips of Bush cutting brush on his Crawford, Texas ranch will be aired over and over, to remind Americans of the President at his best, and to set the stage for the rehabilitation of Bush’s image. Most Americans will feel sorry for George, just as they felt sorry for Richard Nixon when the end came. You know our collective memory is short and faulty when an evil man like Richard Nixon is buried with honors; the same thing will happen when George W. croaks, and for those Americans who feel like they’ve been living in Hell the past five years, the media frenzy when W kicks will be an insult to our sensibilities.

How many years will it take to live down the Bush legacy? How many years before our former friends and allies trust us again? Christ, what a depressing thought! The ghost of W will be around when I qualify for Medicare.

But, on the plus side of the ledger, the GOP assures us that the economy is booming and that we are safe from bearded terrorists, lesbians, gay men, Liberals, feminists, the ACLU, unions, drug dealers and illegal immigrants. In other words, all is well and we have nothing to fear, thanks to W and the GOP. That our government is immoral, hypocritical, violent, racist, and incompetent should not trouble our sleep.

Thinking Back on 9/11

It was a beautiful day in Santa Barbara, and a stunning crystal clear day in New York City. My daughter, Miranda, was only eight days old. I took my son to kindergarten at Roosevelt Elementary School, and was on my way home when my wife called and told me that an airliner had flown into the World Trade Center. From then on, like most Americans, I was glued to my TV, trying to make sense of an incomprehensible event.

Our country was attacked, not by another country bent on invading our shores, but by people inflamed by ideology and hatred. Within a few hours, Al Qaeda became part of our mindset, part of our collective history, and the target of what would become a war on a tactic.

On the night of 9/11/2001 I remember jotting down some questions that ranged from how the terrorists planned and coordinated their stunning attacks, and what nations provided them resources and information, to whether the attacks would make the United States reconsider its behavior in the world and its foreign policy. Would we seek to understand before retaliating – or just retaliate with our massive military might?

I remember some weeks or months later reading a New York Times Op-Ed piece by Susan Sontag in which she accused George W. Bush of infantilizing 9/11 with his posing and cowboy rhetoric. By the time Sontag’s piece appeared, it was clear that the US had no intention of using 9/11 for self-examination; we were out for blood, out to redeem our dead and wounded, set on a course that would take us from Afghanistan to Iraq. Bush told the nation repeatedly that Al Qaeda hated our freedom, when in fact what Al Qaeda hated was our imperial behavior. Sontag, by the way, was pilloried in the media for her opinion.

Terrorism – or the threat of terrorism – never changed my family’s daily life. Except when I fly, life goes on as it did before. I realize that there is no protection against a terrorist attack, no safe haven, which is precisely the reason Terrorism is employed as a tactic by the powerless against the powerful. Terror breeds fear, fear breeds a circle-the-wagons mentality that can justify a range of self-defeating actions.

What frightens me more than the threat of Terrorism is the erosion of the rights and laws that make America what it is, and govern what America might one day be. The means of keeping the nation safe do not justify the end, if those means are wrong. I would almost rather have less safety and an intact Constitution, along with an Executive Branch held in check by the co-equal branches of government, than the trampling of Law in the name of Safety that we’ve witnessed in the past five years.

The Drumbeat of Stupidity

The drumbeat of stupidity goes on. P. Diddy, wealthy, well-dressed, and self-important, no longer speaks, choosing instead to have a spokesman utter gibberish on his behalf. Diddy only pantomimes or nods his head. Sweet Jesus.

It’s Election Season in America, and the Republicans are going to sell us their bonafides as the party who can keep us safe from bearded terrorists. Don’t be surprised if they tell us that the War on Terror is going swimmingly or that the occupation of Iraq is a complete success. Hell yes, why not? the electorate has bought this basket of horseshit before, and in big-time power politics you always play to your strength. The fact that the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan – remember that “short” war? – is immaterial. Who cares if Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, probably living now in a New Jersey suburb, next door to a high-ranking official from the Department of Homeland Security, who will, when questioned several years from now, deny any knowledge of the fact. “I never had any reason to believe that Osama bin Laden was living next door. As far as I was aware, my neighbors – who I never met, by the way -- were model citizens. The Washington Post was delivered to their doorstep each day, the yard was cared for by what looked to be an illegal immigrant, and there was a Ford SUV parked in the driveway. I had no reason to be suspicious.”

Indeed. Out here in the Golden State, it’s Competence versus Charisma, Angelides versus Arnold. Big fear tactics will be used by the Schwarzenegger camp: “Angelides will tax you into the poor house!” and without a doubt a sizeable number of voters will buy the line, even ones who would stand to benefit from having a real Governor in Sacramento. Arnold will run from one $10,000 a plate dinner to another, telling each audience what he thinks it wants to hear. It’s campaigning, Hollywood-style. Presentation matters; truth doesn’t. It’s all make-believe anyway, right?

Do you ever think about the food you eat, where it comes from, how many miles it travels from where it’s produced to where it’s consumed? Because of trade and monetary policy, it’s economically viable for a store chain like Vons to import apples from New Zealand. The apples taste OK, usually, but it’s a damn shame, not to mention a tremendous waste of natural resources, to buy apples from New Zealand rather than apples grown in California or Washington. I wonder what the future of basic food will look like; will there be enough for all or just the fortunate few with enough dough to pay?

It’s funny. In the name of corporate efficiency we destroy the small farms and farmers who might save our asses in the end. Efficiency for stockholders and CEO’s, death for the rest of us. Why not? It’s the American Way.

Yeah, that drumbeat you hear in the night is coming closer. It’s only a matter of time.

Poem - $296 Billion

For a moment forget the shattered lives
The maimed and wounded bodies and souls

Forget the white crosses in the sand at Arlington West

Think of the money wasted in Iraq

$296,000,000,000,000
Billion!
Billion!
Billion!
To “liberate” a population of 27 million

The math boggles
And the waste inspires crushing hopelessness

We are less safe today
Than on September 11, 2001
More distrusted in the world
More despised

Bin Laden, where are you?

An eye for an eye leads to blindness for all
War leads to more war
Resentment to bitterness
Bitterness to hatred
Hatred to rage

$296,000,000,000,000
Would have bought a lot of health care
for our desperately ill;
A lot of education for our children;
Prescription drugs for our elderly;
Relief for our poor

When it comes to organized violence,
This is the land of the generous;
When it comes to human needs,
This is the land of the stingy

On the Bubble

It had to happen sooner or later…some poor (figuratively speaking) soul lamenting the fact that she cannot sell her home for the price she wants, the price her real estate professional swore it was worth. (The same real estate professional who boasted to clients that the California market was a one-way, non-stop ticket to the stratosphere.) No, she must lower the price by $35K and cross her fingers…meanwhile, the local media is on scene with a breathless reporter informing us that the housing “slump” is here, and it’s real.

Sweet Jesus, we are dumb and getting dumber by the day. Where was the local media when housing prices were soaring by 20% or more per year, and the ownership class, new and old, was raking in equity and storing the take in silver-plated wheelbarrows, and average folks by the score were being driven out like rats? When apartment owners were jacking up rents – not necessarily because their upkeep or mortgage costs were rising – but because the Market gave them a green light to gouge?

The woman on the TV news, poor soul, probably made three or four or five times as much as she’s had to lower the asking price, so, really, what in the hell is she wanking about? Easy come, easy go, right?

Hell no! Not for the Ownership class. The gains they raked in were due to hard work and smart planning, thrift, frugality and clean living, and by God they deserved every nickel in equity. (Pure blind luck had nothing to do with it!) The American Way, Democratic Capitalism in all its sanctified glory, every person participating in the Almighty Market, doing and getting whatever his or her talents can bring. Gains are American, losses are, well, for poor saps in Mexico and Argentina.

The housing market was never irrational, you understand; by market standards it’s perfectly rational for buyers to bid the price of a dilapidated tract home over a million bucks. Hell yes! We’re a nation of poker enthusiasts and Lotto junkies, we like to lay our money down in hope of reaping a big payday.

The day a house turned into an investment vehicle instead of a place to live was the day the bubble burst.

Poem - Time to Rise

Every day the dream slips further out of reach
lost to a holy trinity of coin, God and fear

We search for our soul
on the border
in the bedroom
and on the backs of the
unborn

While the rich buy jewels for their pets
the Post Office collects canned goods for the hungry
and the line outside the Food Bank
winds around the block

In the name of Democracy we stain foreign soil with the blood
of innocents
ours and theirs
demand they remake themselves
in our image

But Democracy is as Democracy does
and on this desecrated turf
Democracy is peddled
like dish soap or tampons
turned into a carnival of clowns and barkers,
snake-oil wizards

Tom Jefferson’s heart is torn
Lincoln weeps non-stop
Dr. King’s dream is stuck in Louisiana mud
somebody stole Woody Guthrie’s guitar

We can’t distinguish truth from a sack-cloth coat
Sunday piety becomes Monday perfidy
the law of the temple is the law of the asphalt canyon –
exploit or be exploited
cheat or be cheated
lie or be lied to
primitive simplicity
better suited to animals than humans

Self-righteous hypocrites steal all they can carry
unable to get enough of anything
they return to tame their Jones
and their thievery is protected by a wicked few
who watch behind the safety of the laws
they made

TV reinforces our myths and delusions
murders the silence and the wonder
in the same way mega-malls and urban sprawl
murder the landscape

Afraid of our shadows, afraid of life
we swallow FDA-approved cures for imaginary ailments
patented and priced beyond reach;
ask your Doctor, read the label
watch for side-effects
don’t operate machinery

Time for self-preservation
time for the passive many to rise up
off the sofa, the curb, and the barstool
sledgehammer the TV
seek out the hands that rigged this deck
call them to account
for this misery and shame

We can mend Jefferson’s heart
quell Lincoln’s tears
rescue Dr. King’s dream
find Woody’s guitar

It’s our only hope

Doctor Duke Returns, Weighs In on School Board

The Doctor called me late last night, the first time I’d heard from him in a month. “I’ve been in Indonesia,” he said, “working on a couple of deals. If they bear fruit I’ll be sitting pretty, like mega-rich, big time. Boo-yah.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “So I guess you’ve decided not to run for school board.”

“Not so fast grasshopper,” he said. “Have you seen today’s News-Press?”

I hadn’t. Since Wendy McCaw bought the News-Press and the paper began its descent into Libertarian mediocrity I’ve avoided it like the plague. Travis Armstrong and Randy Alcorn strike me as uptight, constipated buttholes who believe that their rigid view of the world is the only view, and don’t even get me started on that airhead, Starshine Roshell. (What were her parents toking when they slapped that name on her?)

“Well,” said the Doctor, “that egomaniac Bob Noel is running again. Yep, the 76-year-old curmudgeon is going for another term because he thinks he’s the only independent voice on the Board, the great defender of the public interest, paragon of moral rectitude, the only member who can’t be bought, influenced, cajoled, blah, blah. Claims the community wants him to run. Your boy Rob Kuznia said Noel was the favorite of the ‘Educated Elite.’ Can you believe that shit? What Kuznia meant to say and would have said if he had any cajones is that Noel is the darling of well-off white folks. Jesus Christ, is Kuznia Noel’s long lost lovechild or what? Not a word about Noel’s pedantic, grandstanding style, his intellectual bullying, nada and nothing but praise. Kuznia should be ashamed of himself. He should reach around and paddle his own ass for gross sycophancy and then jump off Stearn’s Wharf.”

“I don’t think you’re going to make the filing deadline,” I said. “You probably missed it already.”

The Doctor snorted. “Yeah, maybe, but I can still toss my newfound wealth against Noel. Maybe I can buy Kuzina off, get him to write an objective piece about old Bob for a change. I mean, Bob, enough already. Slide into retirement and give up the ghost. Take up stamp collecting or nude sunbathing.”

I heard a match strike and a sharp intake of breath, followed by a long pause and then a long exhalation. “God, Indonesia was a trip,” the Doctor said. “Remind me to tell you about it sometime. I’ll be in touch – when you least expect it!”

Greedy Teachers & Crazed NIMBY's

Ever since Wendy McCaw bought it, the Santa Barbara News-Press has lumbered downhill, becoming more of a rag than ever. The paper is nearly unreadable now – unless you enjoy constipated pundits like Randy Alcorn and Travis Armstrong. And if what Nick Welsh recently wrote in the Independent is true, the News-Press brass is devouring its own and spitting the bones on the sidewalk.

So, when folks ask me if I saw this or that piece in the News-Press, I usually tell them, “No, I don’t subscribe,” which is the reason I didn’t catch a story about teachers or housing for teachers that got one SB resident fired up. I read this resident’s Letter to the Editor, and was as shocked by its vitriolic tone as I was by its inaccuracies.

The guy lit into teachers for working only nine months a year, for being the beneficiaries of lavish health and retirement benefits, and for earning salaries as extravagant as $62 grand a year.

If only teachers had it so easy and so good. Word up to the ticked off resident: a career in public education isn’t the laid back gig you seem to think it is. First of all, starting pay is around $35,000 a year, hardly a king’s ransom for someone just out of college and more than likely saddled with student loan debt. Moreover, teachers work their butts off, particularly at the elementary level, where they must adapt or create lesson plans to meet the needs of students with varying degrees of fluency in English. Most teachers put in far more hours than they are contractually obligated for – a testament to their dedication and commitment. And with the trend toward “accountability,” meaning high scores on standardized tests, teachers are under more pressure than ever.

As far as those lavish health insurance benefits go, well, for the past several years in the Santa Barbara School District the ride hasn’t been free. Due to soaring costs caused by our broken health care system, and the loss of revenue from declining enrollment, a decline sparked by the South Coast’s exorbitant cost of housing, teachers who subscribe to the District’s medical plan have contributed monetarily toward that benefit.

This resident also expressed outrage at the possibility – and all it is at this point is one option among several – that the District might develop one or more of its unused properties into workforce housing for teachers and support staff. He’s not alone: a simple “feasibility study” has NIMBY’s pouring from the woodwork. While some NIMBY’s attack the concept and the process, others excoriate teachers for being greedy, for wanting even more from the public purse. Huge salaries, lavish health benefits and pensions, and now, housing too! For shame! How dare teachers want to live and work on the Platinum Coast without paying full freight! The hell with them! If they can’t afford to pay a million-two for a run-down tract house, too bad! Let them move to Oxnard, Lompoc, Santa Maria, Guadalupe!

Of course, with their McMansions the NIMBY’s desire top-notch local schools staffed by experienced and dedicated teachers, but not if that means building “workforce housing” in their precious neighborhood; not if that means altering the dynamics of supply and demand that are currently tipped so handsomely in their favor. The traffic! The noise! Our property values!

We contradict ourselves at every turn. As a society we are fabulously wealthy and fabulously stingy. We can’t see what is dividing us and exterminating any notion of the common good – when the common good is all we’ve got.

As Bob Dylan aptly put it: “People are crazy and times are strange.” Amen, brother, amen.

Poem - People Talking

Think of all the people talking
On cell phones
Right
Now

Talking about nothing
That matters
Or everything

“Bring home Chinese food.”

“Our daughter failed Algebra.”

“Did you pay the electric bill?”

The philosophy of bullshit
The metaphysics of lies

Too many words
Too many nights

We need more silence
Fewer
Proclamations
Decrees
Opinions

We’re not as great
Or as bad
As we think

Not as cruel
Or as benevolent

Not as greedy
Or as generous

Just ordinary people
Talking
While Stumbling
Toward
Transformation

Poem - Musing on the Muse

I’ve loved her long enough to know
That she answers no summons but her own;
Coming and going like woodsmoke
Like a dream
Where and when she pleases

Indifferent to my need she’s with someone else tonight
Making another’s pulse race, afflicting another’s mind with fever
Stealing another’s breath

Is she in Peru?
Or a Dublin pub?
A farmhouse on the veld?
Or a methadone clinic in East St. Louis?

She’s wherever beauty and ugliness collide
Wherever forces seen and unseen scream for expression
Recognition
Acknowledgment
For life beyond death

My need is naked, raw, primal
But tonight she ignores my plea, toys with my devotion
Proving once again that she belongs to no one
Owes no allegiance to crown or coin
Plays no favorites

Every cell in me wants to hate her
Yet tonight, once again
I await her arrival

Into the Real in a World Unreal

Illegitimate president
Illegitimate “war”
High crimes
Misdemeanors
Premeditated mendacity
Sanctioned corruption
Political perversion
Democratic subversion

One can only take so much
Of this folly of fools

Think I’ll go to the backyard
See if the snapdragons are blooming
Listen to the sparrows
Study a worm
Wait for a swallowtail

Come back inside
Hug my wife
Kiss my kids
Sink into the real

Truth in Whoring

Give the Republicans credit for sticking to the Party line, no matter what. When it comes down to a choice between average citizens and their corporate, well-heeled, business-lobby constituents, the Republicans choose the latter every time. The decision is a no-brainer. Whoever lines their pockets gets their vote, pure and simple. It’s the best Democracy money can buy.

Yesterday, by a near straight party-line vote, the Republican controlled senate killed an amendment that would have increased the minimum wage for the first time in a decade. During that decade, Congress raised its own pay by about $35 grand.

Working people on the low end of the economic ladder can’t catch a break. If you toil at minimum wage for forty hours a week, you will languish below the Federal poverty line. You won’t make it, pure and simple.

It’s about time we have some truth in labeling from our Congressional representatives. Therefore, I propose that every member of the House, and every member of the Senate, be required to sport the logo of his or her corporate sponsor(s). Like NASCAR race cars, let’s plaster the suit coats and trousers and blouses of Dennis Hastert and Rick Santorum and Hillary Clinton with corporate logos so that we can easily identify the constituents they serve. Forget the pretense of representing citizen interests -- let’s call a diamond a diamond, a spade a spade; if you serve Exxon in Congress, wear the Exxon logo. If you shill for Wal-Mart, wear the Wal-Mart logo on the seat of your trousers, if you’re in bed with CitiGroup, wear their name.

Let’s mark the people’s “representatives” for who and what they are: corporate whores.

Distract & Conquer

I dipped my toe in the mainstream entertainment media this morning, checked out a few minutes of Good Morning America, found it more tolerable than usual because Diane Sawyer was on vacation. Diane gives me a pain in the ass, though she doesn’t irritate me as much as Katie Couric.

Anyway, this morning Bush was on, jabbering to the press about his recent trip to Baghdad, and how great things are turning out over there. Yes, Bush checked into the Green Zone – the only territory in the entire country that is reasonably safe – and met a few hand-picked Iraqis, posed for photo-ops, and generally did his level best not to make a fool of himself. After all, this is an election year and Bush’s approval rating is hovering around 37%. Most Americans have finally woken up to the fact that the Iraq Invasion/Occupation is a total failure, with 2,500 Americans killed, thousands of Iraqis killed or maimed, and billions of dollars poured down the shithole.

Never one to stress about inconvenient facts, Bush was still beating the dead dog, mouthing “stay the course,” and “remain until we succeed,” and so on. In short, the usual unconvincing blather.

The sputtering heads at GMA then announced the results of a recent poll which indicated that those Americans surveyed are concerned about Iraq, immigration, gay marriage and abortion, though not necessarily in that order. That a fairly large number of Americans list immigration, abortion and gay marriage as their chief concerns is testament to how thoroughly the Right controls the agenda and debate on our fruited plain.

Why should the average American give a rat’s ass about abortion and gay marriage when the wages of working people are stagnant, when health care is a disaster, when gasoline prices are at record highs (at least in this pampered nation; Euros have paid even higher fuel prices for years) and official government policy is to transfer as much wealth upwards as it can? The answer is that gay marriage and abortion are simply distractions.

Distract and conquer, that’s the Rovean mantra. The people are ignorant, so busy scratching for the crumbs left by the wealthy that they don’t realize how thoroughly we’re screwing them. While they argue about gay marriage we steal them blind! If that’s not pure genius I don’t know what is! He He He He. They don’t call me Bush’s brain for nothing! I am the man! All we have to do to manipulate those dipshits is raise the specter of legalized gay marriage and willy-nilly abortion on demand. It’s like taking cookies from a toddler. And when a few of them start to see the rough outlines of our grand scheme, all it takes is repetition of our mantra, like “small business,” “tax relief,” and “American competitiveness.” It’s so easy that it should be illegal. He He He He.

And the Democrats, the supposed champions of the working class, well, they can’t find their asshole with both hands. It’s as easy to hoodwink them into playing by our rules and debating in our language as it is to fool the “people” into thinking that abortion is more important than the economy. Yes, distract and conquer. I live for this!

Reading Barbara Ehrenreich

Got nothing that important to say. Who has anything important to say? Hasn’t it all been said, by poets and writers and mystics and seers? Henry Miller, where are you now? Watch the NBA Finals on the tube or the Daily Show or some dry-ass government access program that features white right-wing Republicans pawing over thirteen-year-old Thai virgins. Vapid, no wonder millions of Americans take anti-depressants, sleeping pills, bladder control pills, blood pressure pills, etc. A nation of pill-poppers and Bible thumpers, and no hypocrisy anywhere in sight. We babble for hours about gay marriage, how immoral it is, how dangerous to the national moral fabric, but it’s perfectly acceptable to drop 1000lb. smart-bombs on innocent Iraqi civilians. Morality, American style. What a country! It’s a wonderful place to be really, really rich.

Sorry, been reading Barbara Ehrenreich again, and while she stimulates my mind, she always depresses the hell out of me. Are we fucked, Barbara, royally fucked? “Definitely, my friend! Definitely!” Yeah, I know, I was just hoping for a light in this cave, a way out of and beyond the Wasteland of Bush Jr. It’s a carnival house of mirrors, with two-headed clowns and men with three arms roaming about with scythes and loaded pistols. Hear ye, hear ye, if you are not white like Tom DeLay, and worshipping with Pat Robertson, and banging Ann Coulter on the side, forget about making it here. We will eat you alive if you’re lucky, or let you die slow if you’re not.

Right, this is the American Dream, to roam the landscape freely and without official interference, to own the freedom to break the law from time to time, drive a little tipsy, puff a fat joint at a Neil Young show, perhaps engage in an extra-marital affair, and still live to tell about it. Christ, these days there’s some addled Christian avenger at every turn. Smoke some dope? Fifteen years. Drive drunk? See you in the lethal injection chamber. Covet another man’s wife? Death by dismemberment. Yes, this is our age in all its perversity. And that’s only the bad news from the social front, wait till you see what we have in store for you on the economic side. Oh, boy, we are going to ream you so thoroughly that you will beg for more. We will shut your factory, outsource your job to India, beat unions into submission, and oh this is great, transfer the maximum amount of risk from the shoulders of government to your shoulders. Oh, baby! Health insurance…gasoline…four walls and a roof…you know what? You’re going down to the bottom rung of the ladder. We’ll preach the gospel of self-reliance and free trade and global competition and rig the system so it’s You’re Own Your Own, Dude, all across the land, and then watch you slink your poor, stupid ass down to the corner Wal-Mart to buy some shit made in China by a twelve-year-old kid who is chained to the fucking machine, with a cup of water and a bowl of rice to eat. Yeah, you’ll forget all that harsh reality when you come into our Hall of Bargains. You’ll gasp, you’ll drool, you’ll beat your chest, you’ll jump up and down, you’ll scream, you’ll pass gas, you’ll belch just like your Uncle Clem does after every meal. Your pig eyes will pop out of your head and your teeth will rattle in the gums.

America. America. America. Can you hear me now? You’re in Good Hands. In God We Trust. (And in his holy name we steal, maim, destroy, rape, violate, penetrate, eviscerate, you get the picture.) Yeah, it’s just another night in the burbs, middle-American bliss, staring slack-jawed at American Idol – or some hyperactive couple in the midst of remodeling a ski lodge in eastern Wyoming. Doug, should we vault the ceiling or demo the living room? Brought to you by Chevrolet! Ask your doctor about Cialis. Old men in retirement homes, amped on Viagara, chasing male nurses down the brightly-lit halls, pawing underage volunteers sent over from the high school. Seventy-nine-year-old man with a hard-on that lasts four hours. Hard as when he was seventeen! It’s a miracle. How do them smart people do that? Make a limp dick rise like a skyscraper. Maybe it’s God’s will. You remember what Tom Waits said about God and the devil, don’t you? “There ain’t no devil/that’s just God when he’s drunk.” Thanks for clearing that up, Tom. You’re probably right. God on a bender and messing with his little invention, the human race. I’m drunk and angry and I think I’ll pour some molten lava on ‘em, just to see what they’ll do. He he he. Laughing when he snaps his fingers and makes it happen. Sound of steam hissing from the Earth.

Barbara, baby, this is all your fault.

Another Night with the Doctor

The Doctor summoned me to his house for another strategy session. I arrived just after midnight and found him in the den, performing the half moon pose while listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon at ear-splitting volume. An episode from the third season of I Love Lucy was playing on the big Plasma TV, also at full volume.

The Doctor is getting very serious about this school board run. The rectangular table along the wall was heaped with California Department of Education publications, pamphlets on school funding and standardized testing, a large map of the school district with boundaries outlined in red, books by Jonathan Kozol and several thick reports from the State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

The Doctor came out of the half moon pose and turned the music and TV volume down. “Immigration,” he said.

“What about it?”

“Molly Ivins.”

“Columnist. What about her?”

“She wrote a piece. I quote: “You want to shut down illegal immigration? You want to use the military as police? Make it illegal to hire undocumented workers and put the National Guard into enforcing that. Then rewrite NAFTA and invest in Mexico.” Smart lady. She also said the president is insane. No surprise there. Back in the day people who lived in fantasy land got locked away in state mental hospitals. Now the nutcases are running the show. I bet the Feds have a permanent tap on Molly’s phone. I bet Bush and Rove have an enemies list so long it makes Nixon’s look like the work of a two-bit amateur. Bush and Rove are vindictive, spiteful bastards – not that Nixon was a creampuff. Nixon would have turned on his own mother if it suited his purposes.”

I pointed at the table. “Homework?”

“A bit of light reading. Tell me, is there anybody in this state that can explain school finance? Christ, it’s like trying to unlock the genetic code of a spider monkey. I’ve read a lot of total gibberish in my time, including Marx, Engels, Chairman Mao and Susan Sontag, but school finance takes the cake. How do you deal with this stuff every day and keep your sanity?”

“I stay as far from any accounting function as possible,” I said. “I’m a word person.”

“Words are weapons,” said the Doctor. “Use them wisely, use them well. When we get into the heat of the campaign I will need you to be on your game, sharp as a tack, firing on every cylinder. We will attack the rat bastards where they live and make them rue the day they were born. We will beat them like a drum and leave their bones to rot in the sun. Indeed! We will take no prisoners and leave no witnesses to testify against us. Once we get a decent head of steam there’ll be no stopping us, and any fool with the cajones to get in our way will be crushed!”

I had no idea what the Doctor was talking about and in fact I felt unnerved by the demented look in his eyes, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to contradict him. In case you haven’t noticed, the Doctor is one of those hypercompetitive people for whom mere winning isn’t enough; he has a gladiator mentality and needs to destroy his opponents in the bloodiest manner possible. I suppose no man can survive for long in the cutthroat drug trade without a psychopathic streak.

The Doctor opened a pill bottle, extracted half a dozen yellow pills, and popped them in his mouth. Within thirty seconds his facial muscles went limp, and the craziness left his eyes. Smiling at me, he resumed the half moon pose and launched into a long monologue on the arcane subject of Equalization funding in public schools.

Look Both Ways Before Crossing the Street

Recent interaction with Dr. Duke has made me more paranoid than usual. I suppose this is par for the course when one is dealing with a man who has for years been a target of local law enforcement agencies. The Doctor is filling my head with crazy schemes and wild ideas about “reforming” public education, a subject he knows little about – not that his lack of knowledge will change his mind about running for school board. The Doctor keeps telling me that he is a quick study with a steel-trap memory for theories, dates, and names. To prove it he rattled off the names of every SBSD Superintendent dating back to 1886.

While the Doctor immerses himself in the minutia of public education, I’ve been reflecting on the steep decline in civility and competence on Santa Barbara’s roads and streets. Just yesterday, while crossing Anacapa at De La Guerra, right across the street from City Hall, I was nearly flattened by a young blonde woman in a gigantic Nissan Armada, executing an erratic right turn while yakking on her cell phone, oblivious to my presence two feet from her front bumper, oblivious to the world outside the Armada’s windows, oblivious to everything except the overriding importance of her phone call. What was the call about, life, death, a pile of money? Or was she demanding a refund from Spa Medicus for a pedicure gone bad?

We will never know because after I leapt out of the way she gunned the Armada down Anacapa Street, damn near side-swiping a UPS truck.

It seems to me that one can draw a direct correlation between the steep rise in real estate prices in Fat City (Santa Barbara) and the steep decline in the competence and courtesy of drivers. As the price of dirt around here rises and hefty equity windfalls roll in, the well-heeled feel entitled to break the rules of the road any time and any where they desire; thus it isn’t unusual to see some joker in a luxury car whip a U-turn on Santa Barbara Street, between De La Guerra and Canon Perdido, and drive half a block against traffic. In Fat City today, pedestrians stroll at their own risk, and even sidewalks provide no safe haven. Jittery LA-types in gargantuan SUV’s could care less about jumping the curb and mowing down a pack of school kids or an elderly person with an aluminum walker. That’s collateral damage, nothing to lose any sleep over. A decent attorney and the Ambien defense will take care of any legal issues that might arise. What matters is not only that LA-types roll unimpeded to where they need to go but also locate a perfect parking space when they arrive. Nine times out of ten that “perfect” space is a handicap spot or fire zone, but here again, the well-heeled feel a strong sense of entitlement to those very convenient spaces, directly in front of Starbucks or Lucky Brand Jeans.

Another thing I notice is that few motorists in Fat City bother with turn signals. Apparently, the new wealthy don’t feel it necessary to inform other motorists of their intent to turn; the rest of us should simply know, and stay out of the way.

Amen. As Tom Petty said, “It’s good to be King (or Queen).”

The Duke Campaign Takes Form

It began as a wicked joke but the Duke for School Board campaign is gathering steam of its own accord. Within two days of posting about my visit with the Doctor, several strangers called to make inquiries. At first I thought it was the usual bumbling DEA agents, fishing for the sliver of a lead that would help them nail the Doctor, once and for all. In case you haven’t guessed, Duke is no stranger to the criminal justice system. He’s been arrested several times, hauled into Superior Court to face bogus charges of drug possession for personal abuse; possession with criminal intent to distribute; assault with a moderately deadly weapon etc., etc., and every single time he strolled down the courthouse steps a free man.

But the folks who called checked out: they legitimately wanted to know more about the possibility of a Duke run for School Board; they were tired of at least one fifth of the status quo and wanted a change in style, substance, and most all, tone. I referred all the callers to Betsy, Dr. Duke’s latest personal assistant, a seventy-two-year-old organizational dynamo who lived in a double-wide in Goleta. Betsy could set the record right for the curious. At that point I still believed the Doctor was just bullshitting me. No way in Hell was he going to make a run for an entry level political position like School Board.

Much to my consternation, not to mention a rude interruption of my sleep, the Doctor called at two A.M. the very next night to inform me that he was “seriously contemplating” a run for school board, and that he wanted me to run his campaign.

“Look, Tanguay,” he said. “I got to thinking and came to the conclusion that it might be fun to sit on the Board, make some waves in the local education community. I decided that it’s about time I added some public service to my long and distinguished resume. Now, I haven’t the disposition or patience to plot strategy with some twenty-four year old PolySci major. In politics victory is the only objective. You understand this, and that alone qualifies you to be part of history.”

Duke was talking quickly and somewhat incoherently. I tried to bring him back to Earth: “You’ve got a few things working against you,” I said. “Want me to list them?”

“Go ahead,” he said. “I can take it.”

“OK, first and foremost, you have no standing or connection with the education community. You’re not a teacher or administrator or a parent with an axe to grind. Second, you’re an X factor, an unknown quantity in the law-abiding, tax-paying, traffic-signal respecting world. You know ten times as many drug dealers as you do public movers and shakers. Third, your CV is going to scare the crap out of many voters. Fourth, I don’t know more than basic nuts and bolts of running a political campaign. You need to hire a proven professional. “

“That’s a fine load of crap,” Duke said, his tone measured and reasonable. “I can deal with reality, even though I do my level best to escape its clutches. The reality is that if I get in the race I’m going to find myself running against a Libertarian crackpot with a corncob stuck in his ass, or some privileged parent of a so-called gifted student, or some community crusader looking to make a name for herself. As our Dingbat-in-Chief would say, ‘Bring ‘em on.’ Indeed, we’ll wage a campaign that will send the establishment reeling. Our model will be Hunter S. Thompson’s 1970 Freak Power campaign. That’s why I need you, Tanguay – you know as much about Hunter’s twisted political mind as anyone.”

This was true, though I don’t want to toot my own horn. Freak Power, right. Politically, HST’s 1970 campaign for Sheriff of Aspen is light years away from Bush & Cheney’s America. Hell, in 1978 a man could walk into Bob’s Big Boy with a lit joint dangling from the corner of his mouth and a bunch of counterfeit twenties in his pocket and nobody would raise an eyebrow. Today some misguided cretin would call for a SWAT team and the Fox News helicopter. I think it was Hunter who always asked this rhetorical question: where were you when the fun stopped? These are not happy times for people living on the fringes of society. The government not only tosses thousands of mild offenders in prison every year, it also listens to their phone conversations and monitors the silly e-mail messages they send to their cousin in Indiana. Osama bin Laden has never been sighted in Indiana, but if you’re a member in good standing of George W. Bush’s security state, it’s as reasonable a place to start looking as any.

But the state of our personal liberties is neither here nor there and I don’t know how or why I slipped off on that tangent. The point I was trying to make to the Doctor, the one he refused to listen to another word about, was that guys with baggage as explosive as his didn’t run for any public office.

“Don’t be a wimp. Where’s your sense of challenge, of flipping the middle finger to Power? Have a shot of tequila and get a grip. We’ve got heavy brain work, grasshopper.”

THE CTM CHRONICLES - JAN'S HOUSE

Chuck followed Alice through the disaster-area front yard, past General Lee, who seemed very melancholy, and up the steps to the front porch. The dog began howling before Alice knocked. They heard the dead bolt slide, the tinkle of a chain being unlatched, and then the door swung open and a large, mannish woman in a lumberjack shirt and paint-splattered overalls appeared. She was nearly Chuck’s height and at least fifty pounds heavier. The Great Dane was at her side, barking its head off. After taking in the dog’s huge head, Chuck noticed that the animal only had three legs.

“Well, well,” Jan said, her voice a whiskey and cigarette rasp. “Look what the wind blew to my doorstep. What the hell are you doing in South-fucking-Carolina, Alice?”

“Running away from the ruin of my life, sister dear. What happened to Milo?”

Jan slapped the dog on the head to shut it up. “My asswipe neighbor ran him over, on purpose. The SOB thinks I poisoned his precious cat. What he refuses to accept is that his precious cat died of purely natural causes. I had no part in it. If I wanted to kill his cat I would have slit its throat and left it on his doorstep.”

Alice cocked her head at Chuck. “This is Chuck Miller, a fellow runaway. Picked him up in Florida. He’s got a good line, though it sounds like a load of crap to me. Claims he’s running away from the circus, but he’s obviously hiding something. He’s a natural born liar, not unlike my husband. Why are men so terrified of the truth? What have you got to drink, Jan?”

They followed Jan into the house. When the Great Dane bumped into the tattered sofa, and then banged against a floor lamp, Chuck realized the dog was blind as well as crippled. Not that a blind dog could do much damage to a house that looked as if it had been the site of a month-long party for a thousand frat brothers. Chuck was no stranger to sloth, but as he related to me several years later on one of his rare trips through Santa Barbara, Jan’s house was in a league above and beyond anything he’d ever seen.

“Tang, there was dog shit on the rug, empty tuna cans, moldy cottage cheese containers, pizza cartons, newspapers, magazines, cancelled checks, empty beer bottles, cereal boxes – it was like the woman had never seen a friggin’ trash can. The joint smelled like a cesspool. Now you know me, I’m a first-team all-world slob, a pig to the core, but this place stretched my tolerance for filth. No way was I going to sit down. Hell, it was all I could do to keep from stepping in dog shit, particularly when the damn dog comes over and starts sniffing my crotch. He smells like piss and liverwurst, and even worse, he’s got a boner the size of a Dodger dog. If Jan hadn’t been built like Mike Tyson I’d of clocked the dog with a bottle.

“Anyhow, Jan comes out of the kitchen with a bottle of peppermint schnapps, takes a belt and passes it to Alice, who takes an even bigger belt before handing it to me. Alice is already tipsy and it occurs to me that unless I keep my wits we’re going to spend the night in this shithole. I take a wee sip and hand the bottle to Jan. ‘Pussy,’ she says to me, pulling a Sherman from behind her ear and a Zippo from her pocket. She’s eye-balling me as if I’m some kind of alien. Of course I’m thinking that she’s certifiable, a nuthouse refugee. I’m a tolerant guy but I can see why the neighbors want to run Jan out. She’s the classic neighborhood freak, the crazy lady that all the kids avoid. She looks at me through a cloud of smoke and says, ‘You planning on sleeping with my sister?’ I say, I’m just trying to put some distance between myself and a bad situation. ‘Why should you be any different,’ she says. ‘Every last one of us is in a bad situation called life. Death is the only happy ending.’ ‘Oh, Jan,’ Alice says, ‘you’re so dramatic.’”

They polished off the schnapps. Alice passed out on the sofa, her head thrown back, mouth parted. Jan ordered two large pizzas with everything on them and told Chuck to run down to the street when he heard the delivery boy honk. None of the boys would come to her door. Bunch of wimps, she called them, every last one. Piss-ant boys afraid of their own shadows.

It was almost an hour before the pizzas arrived, an hour that passed for Chuck like the last hour of life on Death Row. When she wasn’t ranting about men, her neighbors, her ex-husband, lesbians, white trash, the government, Chinese-Americans, African-Americans, Serbs, Muslims and soccer moms, Jan bitched about Alice and how their father had always favored her.

Milo followed Chuck out the front door and down the walk, much more at home outdoors than in. The pizza man was a young Hindu with dark skin and wary eyes. Chuck handed the kid a $20 in exchange for a ride to the highway. “Ten dollars more for the dog,” the kid said. “I wasn’t planning on bringing him along,” Chuck said, “but what the hell. Let’s go.”

Five minutes after the pizza boy dropped them beside the Interstate, a faith-healer and self-proclaimed mystic driving a Ford station wagon with Kentucky plates picked Chuck and Milo up.

IN THE COMPANY OF SAVAGE CAPITALISM

Working people are getting ass-whipped in this country, losing ground and falling backwards, and unless you happen to subscribe to the Nation or belong to a labor union, you probably don’t even know why or how this mugging has happened.

Productivity rises continuously, but American workers don’t share in the fruits of their production. No matter how much more efficiently we produce and deliver goods and services, our corporate masters parrot the same old line: in order to compete in the global economy we must slash wages and benefits and close plants, blah, blah, blah. Off the working class trots to the salt mines to diligently produce more for lower wages, with nary a complaint about vanishing benefits or government policies that fatten corporate coffers for exporting labor to low-wage countries. The Federal minimum wage hasn’t been adjusted upwards in eight or nine years; rarely a week passes without a news story about another profitable corporation running away from its pension obligations or dumping thousands of workers on the avenue.

“Trickle down” economics gained traction during Reagan’s presidency, and has loomed large ever since “Dutch” read his lines from cue cards. Make the investor and owner class prosperous, the tale goes, and every American will eventually share in that prosperity. Sure, and bet your money on the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series. Trickle down is a suspect idea with a lousy track record. How much extra dough is trickling down into your household? Thanks to corporate-friendly monetary, labor and trade policies, the investor and owner class hasn’t been this pampered in years. They’re running the world, calling the shots, buying Congress and the White House, profiting from war, trashing the planet, living high and large at our expense.

But what of the paradox of France, a nation -- albeit a much smaller nation than the US -- that made the decision long ago to erect a stable social support system, with short work weeks, boucoup vacation time, health benefits, and employment protections. By America’s savage, dominate-at-all-costs capitalist standards, France is a wreck, a decrepit “socialist” state that simply can’t deal in the world economy. Why then does France boast one of the more successful economies in the world? Somehow, the French take care of their people and hold their own in the international marketplace.

Savage capitalism as practiced on this fruited plain works beautifully for the privileged few. For the broad majority, savage capitalism means struggle, uncertainty, and hardship. I’m not arguing here for a cradle to grave welfare state; what I’m advocating is that we grind the sharp edges off the system and restore the balance of power between owners and workers, Business and government, the pursuit of profit, and the pursuit of justice.

And just in case anyone assumes I’m against individual responsibility let me say that I’m not. Individual responsibility and initiative would still be in play in a kindler, gentler capitalist America. The central problem is that the balance of power has shifted grotesquely in favor of corporate interests and the owner class, to the point where the game is rigged in their favor. All the individual responsibility and initiative in the world is for naught when one is playing the game at a rigged table.