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!”