John McCain, Working Man

“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.” John Stuart Mill

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have an important announcement. Are you ready? Hold onto your butts now because this is huge: Republican presidential hopeful John McCain has discovered -- the American worker!

Yes my friends, it’s true, I heard old man McCain singing the praises of the American worker with my own ears. There was McCain on one of the morning propaganda shows answering questions (well, sort of) about the Wall Street meltdown and what it means for the nation. Not only did McCain call for a blue-ribbon commission to investigate Wall Street’s abuses (why do politician’s always call for a blue-ribbon commission?), he also said he believes in the ingenuity of the American worker.

How rich is that? For twenty-five years, the Republican Party and John McCain have undermined American workers in every way possible, from relentless deregulation, to off-shoring American jobs to China, to busting unions, to supporting tax and trade policies that favor Capital over Labor.

Now, as Wall Street swan dives into the proverbial toilet, McCain wants to wrap himself in the tattered flag of the American worker, as if working Americans have had anything to do with the swindles that pass for business-as-usual on Wall Street.

The man has no shame whatsoever and must be exposed for the liar that he is.

The sad truth is that many voters believe McCain’s spiel, even when the facts of their own lives tell them that he is wrong. I happened to catch a TV interview with an unemployed Michigan autoworker the other day, and was flabbergasted when this poor man said that when it comes to the economy he trusts John McCain more than Barack Obama. Dear, suffering man, the problems of Michigan and the hardships faced by average working people all across America are directly related to a quarter century of Republican ideology: the “you’re-on-your-own, rugged individual, government-is-the-enemy, taxation-is-theft, and the Market-knows-best” bullshit that we’ve been force fed. Why any person with a pulse – particularly someone from a state as beleaguered as Michigan -- believes that the Republicans have an answer for our economic woes is beyond me.

Word up, Michigan: a vote for McCain is a vote to continue the disastrous policies that produced the economic suffering you’re experiencing.

How does John McCain explain the fact that the real wages of American workers fell or remained stagnant while productivity soared? How does he explain his staunch opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act – legislation that would make it easier for American workers to join unions and bargain collectively? How does he explain his steadfast support of a tax system that favors capital over labor, or the fact that his dear friend and former economic guru, Phil Gramm, authored the legislation that deregulated the financial services industry and ushered in an era of greed, excess and corruption? If McCain is so pro-worker, why is his campaign riddled with corporate lobbyists?

To hear John McCain extol the virtues of American workers is like listening to a street whore in Bangkok extol the virtues of abstinence-only sex education; it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t work, and it sure as hell doesn’t make a shred of sense.

John McCain and his Republican allies (does the name Alan Greenspan ring any bells?) are responsible for the collapse of our financial system. The facts are clear, the proof irrefutable; to lay the blame anywhere but at the feet of a failed ideology is to believe that that infamous bridge in Alaska leads somewhere.

Serious Times, Serious People, Really

To prove that the McCain Campaign isn’t sheltering Sarah Palin from media scrutiny, John McCain and Palin are hitting the campaign trail and speaking with reporters – at least those reporters screened by Blackwater for Liberal tendencies, anti-McCain attitude or fact-based skepticism. What follows is the transcript of a press conference that took place recently in eastern Ohio.

Fox News: Governor Palin, what shade of lipstick are you wearing today?

Palin: This is hardwood-rose, a good outdoorsy shade, don’t you think?

Fox News: It’s lovely, Governor. How do you feel about taxation?

Palin: Taxation is bad. I support lowering the tax burden on hard working Americans.

CNN: Governor, do you think women who supported Hillary Clinton will support you?

Palin: I don’t see why not. They’re women, I’m a woman, so I expect they’ll vote for me.

McCain: I want to remind you that my opponent never spent time in a North Vietnamese prison camp.

Palin: And let me add that I read about North Vietnam on Wikipedia.

Correspondent from the Nation magazine, sneaking past Security: Excuse me, can we talk about the economy, please.

Fox News: Who let that leftist agitator in? Governor Palin, how do you juggle your official duties and a large family?

Nation Correspondent, before being assaulted with pepper spray: What about Iraq, the illegal invasion and occupation…you bastards – get your hands off me, this is still AMERICA!

Palin: Well, my husband, the First Dude, is really good about helping out around the house. He doesn’t cook, but he will wash windows and do laundry.

CNN: Isn’t she wonderful!

Fox News: She’s electric! She has single-handedly re-energized the Republican Party! McCain is a genius for selecting her as his running mate!

NBC News: John, good to see you again. Do you believe – as President Bush does – that the fundamentals of the economy are strong?

McCain: The economy is robust, the envy of the world. And did I mention that I served time in a Vietnamese POW camp? Let me just say this: Republicans put America first. My opponent will coddle America’s enemies. My opponent doesn’t know what it’s like to survive in a POW camp.

Palin: I gave every citizen of Alaska a tax rebate!

CNN: Governor, I’m sorry to ask this question, forgive me, but did you support the infamous Bridge to Nowhere?

Palin: I did not – I fought against that silly bridge. I don’t know why the Liberal establishment keeps insisting that I supported the Bridge. Clearly, the Liberal establishment is against me – and against women in general.

CBS News correspondent, second row, whispered to ABC News correspondent: I love her but she’s lying. She supported the Bridge and tried to secure more Federal dough for similar projects. She only opposed it when it became a political embarrassment for Senator Stevens. I should do my job and ask a tough follow-up, but isn’t she just wonderful?

Fox News: John, is this election about character?

McCain: Absolutely. And unlike my opponent, my character was molded during my years in a POW camp.

Palin: It’s more important to have character than to be a character. I read that in a book, actually.

Fox News: Governor, the Obama Campaign has made a number of scurrilous attacks against you for an alleged lack of experience in foreign policy. How do you respond?

Palin: First of all, there’s no tougher species of female than a hockey mom. Second, I am the commander-in-chief of the Alaskan National Guard – the front line of America’s defense against a Russian invasion of our glorious nation. I have a uniform and everything. If the Russians want a fight, the ANG is ready for them. Bring ‘em on Vladimir is what I say. Did you know that you can see Russia from Alaska?

Fox News: OMG! OMG! I’m so excited I think I just soiled myself.

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now Host, shoving past Security: This is supposed to be a serious press conference about serious issues! What do either one of you have to say about the trashing of the Constitution, illegal spying on American citizens or the shameful treatment of our veterans?

(Seconds after she asked this question Goodman and her film crew were tasered by State Troopers and arrested.)

Palin: I think I believe in Law & Order, and I’m pretty sure I read the Constitution when it came out in paperback. And I just watched my son ship off to serve his country in Iraq – against the very people who plotted and launched the terrible attacks of September 11.

ABC News correspondent whispered to CBS News correspondent: Oops. I guess Sarah missed the memo from Karl Rove. Well, she’s still amazing even though she doesn’t seem to understand that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Smarts are overrated in politics anyway.

McCain: I don’t feel the need to respond to insolent questions. After all, I was a POW.

Masters of Deceit (or How to Run a Campaign when you have Nothing to Run On)

Rovian logic. If the economy stinks for most Americans and portends to worsen before it improves – talk instead about illegal immigration, abortion, or something nebulous, like “character.” Whatever you do, don’t talk about the real world issues impacting real people’s lives – the issues your party is largely responsible for creating.

Talk about reforming politics in Washington as if your party has not been in total command of all three branches of government – and still controls two – for six of the past eight years. Talk about how you are the one to take on the Establishment even though you yourself are a pillar of that Establishment.

Talk nostalgically about small towns and families while vowing to continue the policies that are destroying small towns and families.

Above all, paint your opponents as unpatriotic and un-American while your party undermines the Constitution, runs roughshod over the rule of law and strains relationships with America’s traditional allies. You don’t need a comprehensive plan or vision for the country, you just need to lie compellingly about your opponents. Run on your biography, not the actual record, and invoke your stint as a POW at every opportunity – even when it’s irrelevant to the topic at hand.

If you watched any part of the GOP Convention you know that the Rove Playbook is still widely read and that Republicans are clinging to George W. Bush’s illusions. If the American electorate was more sophisticated and harder to dupe, the GOP would be packing bags, shredding documents and preparing to depart Washington D.C., because after eight disastrous years of Republican misrule, logic says there’s no way John McCain can beat Barack Obama.

Think about it. Is the Republican ticket running against Barack Obama and Joe Biden or are they running against the long, dark shadow cast by George Bush and Dick Cheney? The crux of the matter is that McCain and Palin must run against their own party’s disastrous record without turning off or alienating the party faithful.

It’s a trick worthy of Houdini, but it’s also a stage show the Republicans have perfected – after all, George Bush made it to the White House twice, which proves that American presidential elections are about images and emotions and distortions, not facts, policies or truth.

For the Masters of Deceit, Sarah Palin is a smart choice (even though her right-wing policy positions and staggering absence of experience make her a ridiculous choice) because she’s enough of a circus act to divert attention from the stiff old man she’s running alongside. The mainstream media took Palin at face value, got caught up in the hype and announced that Palin “electrified” the GOP convention and “energized” the base. Palin is good copy and next to the sclerotic McCain, the dull Fred Thompson and the rabid Rudy Guliani, who wouldn’t look fresh and chipper?

The disciples of Karl Rove will spend the next two months trying to induce gullible voters to forget the policy failures of the past eight years: a failing economy brought on by Republican blind faith in a benevolent Market God; two wars, one of them completely unnecessary; a failure to address America’s energy needs or come to grips with the serious implications of climate change; indifference to citizen concerns about the affordability of health care and higher education; and the erosion of Constitutional protections.

The cynicism of Karl Rove and the GOP would be amusing if it wasn’t deadly serious.

One Small Step Closer to the Gulag

On the day I begin re-reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Democracy Now host Amy Goodman is arrested in St. Paul, Minnesota for protesting the arrest of two of her colleagues. All three have journalist credentials and Press ID, and yet police in riot gear manhandle them as if they’re members of the Weather Underground. Fortunately, some alert soul captures this outrage on video and posts it on YouTube.

For all of Barack Obama’s soaring and inspiring rhetoric, we didn’t hear much in his convention speech about restoring civil liberties. I wonder if Bill Clinton’s call for restoring the American Dream at home also meant turning back the emerging American police state.

The police state will prevail unless and until the arrest of a journalist as prominent as Amy Goodman is front-page news. As of this morning, at least on the New York Times and Los Angeles Times websites, it’s not even worth a mention. I don’t suspect that Diane Sawyer or Matt Lauer will lead with the story, either, though in the grand scheme of freedom and liberty, the arrest of Amy Goodman and the systematic stifling of dissent in this country is more important than Hurricane Gustav or the hypocrisy of Sarah Palin.

Dissent is as fundamental to a real democracy as free and fair elections. The Constitution still guarantees the right of free speech and free assembly, but when peaceful protestors – with a permit -- are met by police in full riot gear and journalists trying to do their jobs are arrested, one wonders what the Constitution means.

I first read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1979. Back then America seemed as far from the Gulag as the moon is from Pluto. Today the distance is far shorter. We’re in the process of trading some of our most precious civil liberties for a false sense of security. No nation on this planet jails as many of its citizens as we do; we torture prisoners and invade countries that pose no threat to us. And, like Pravda in the days of the Soviet Union, the American media feeds the population a steady diet of half-truths, whole lies, and mind-numbing trivia.

We can ignore what happened to Amy Goodman in St. Paul, but not for long. Tyranny happens gradually.

Moose Burgers, Get Your Moose Burgers

Sarah Palin. Who? Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska for the past twenty months. What is the population of Alaska? Less than a million people – in the entire state! As a point of comparison, that’s less than the population of San Jose, California, Jacksonville, Florida and Columbus, Ohio. Sarah Palin is the best the GOP can do? Palin is the most qualified Republican woman they can find?

I have nothing against a female vice-president or Alaska – but are they freaking serious!

Choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate simply shows that John McCain is desperate. Choosing Palin also confirms – as if any further proof were needed – that the GOP is done, out of ideas, finished, kaput, bankrupt, adrift on the sea of a failed ideology. Choosing Palin does not – even though Sean Hannity tried his best to spin it so – re-establish McCain’s maverick reputation. McCain has marched in lock step with George W. Bush, down the road, around the bend, and over the edge of a sheer cliff.

The GOP run is over. Hannity, Limbaugh, Barnes, Savage and the rest of the right-wing blowhards had their time in the sun, total control of the country -- White House, Congress, Courts – and tanked spectacularly, historically, monumentally.

McCain and Palin, a doddering old man and an untested woman from an isolated state that bears no resemblance to the rest of the United States. Where Palin’s from it’s fine and dandy to support gun ownership, indiscriminate oil drilling and other nutty right-wing ideas because at the end of the day we’re talking about Alaska – a state that, frankly, was added to the union as an afterthought and means next to nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Bill Clinton was right – absent another stolen, fraudulent election – Obama and Biden are on the right side of history and should capture the White House in a landslide. Clinton was also right when he said that this election boils down to two simple elements: restoring the American Dream at home, and restoring American credibility abroad.

And Barack Obama was right when he framed the election this way: “If you don’t have a record to run on (and how can John McCain and his Alaskan sidekick possibly run on the Republican record? Hi folks, we’re losers and we want you to vote for us!) paint your opponent as someone to run from.” Precisely, and that’s what the dying, sputtering GOP machine will do from here to Election Day. Only now the Democrats can do the same thing, spotlighting McCain’s age and mental confusion, his temper and history of ethical lapses, and now the gaffe of all gaffes, tapping unknown, untested Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Need we talk any further about John McCain, the blatantly transparent political calculator – crassly trying to attract female votes by choosing Palin – his abysmal absence of vision, or do we now know everything we need to know?

Racists, Rednecks and Rove

This is a big week for the Republicans, even though the Democrats and Barack Obama are center-stage. You can bet the GOP brain trust – led by Karl Rove – is camped around a massive Plasma TV screen, drinking whiskey neat and recording everything that happens, everything that is said, reading between the lines and below the lines, seeking to uncover the story beneath the story -- all for the purpose of storing ammo for the general election.

If Barack Obama thinks he has seen the worst of the GOP attack machine he is sadly mistaken. Rove and his minions will pull out all the stops once Obama and McCain are officially anointed; oh yes, that’s when the big guns will be wheeled into position, and come September and October, the GOP will launch a major assault on the Truth, and millions of American voters will be cut down and left for dead. From now until then, Rove and his people will be working OT to paint Obama as too Liberal, too Foreign, and too much of a Muslim sympathizer. And if that PR offensive doesn’t gain traction, bet heavy that Rove and Co. will call their pals at Diebold and see about rigging voting machines to record votes for Obama as votes for John McCain.

Rednecks, racists and big money Chamber of Commerce types are worried about Barack Obama -- the idea that a black man with a strange name might take up residence in the White House makes a lot of white folks nervous. The cowboys at the county fair are talking about the possibility of an Obama presidency in apocalyptic terms. This isn’t the same as when Jesse Jackson ran because Jackson didn’t stand a chance of winning. Jesse was, frankly, too black to win over white voters. Not so with Obama, who is smart, articulate and charismatic.

Wall Street movers and their armies of K Street lobbyists are girding for war in the corridors of power. Money is already flowing to grease palms and buy loyalty, just in case Obama gets elected and proposes something sensible like re-regulating the banking system so that middle-class and working-class Americans are protected from predatory Titans of Finance.

The same siege mentality prevails in the health care industry, lest Obama get uppity and use his bully pulpit to promote Universal health care. The Privileged and the Profit Makers know that the time is now to inoculate themselves against an assault on everything they’ve gained during Bush’s reign.

There are, of course, a few realists in the McCain camp who know their man is a corrupt stiff with a liability-laden resume; all they can do is stoke the fears of the masses – fears about Mexicans swarming across the border to rape and rob defenseless white suburbanites; fears of socialized medicine; fears of reverse discrimination; fears of high taxes; and the Numero Uno Fear -- bearded Muslims.

McCain’s operatives know that peddling Fear is all they’ve got. When it comes to policy McCain is Bush Redux, and even the thickest, dumbest, shit-kicking, tattooed American has figured out that Bush and the GOP are responsible for the shit-storm sweeping the country. When citizens are weaned on TV you can fool most of them most of the time, but sooner or later even dolts wake up and realize that George W. Bush and his cronies are guilty of sodomizing the United States of America.

More to the point, McCain’s people know their man can’t hold his own against Barack Obama in a televised debate – even one with cream-puff questions lobbed by journalists infatuated with McCain. “I was a POW” is a statement of historical fact, not a policy position. Moreover, “I was a POW” is irrelevant to this election. This thing is about pulling us out of the open sewer Republican greed, corruption and incompetence put us in.

Irony Abounds & Abounds & Abounds

It’s ironic to hear George W. Bush lecturing Russia about invading a sovereign nation, and demanding that Russia pull its occupying forces back. Isn’t that like telling Russia to cut & run?

George W. Bush and his ideological allies invaded a sovereign nation, Iraq, on a sand dune of lies and insist, five years, thousands of dead and wounded and billions of dollars wasted later, that American forces remain in place until “victory” is achieved. Why should Russia, which has its own interests, do any different?

And isn’t it ironic, not to mention telling, that during the Russian incursion into Georgia, the American media showed viewers plenty of images of war, but that same media machine cannot be bothered to show Americans what is really happening on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are we to believe that there are no weeping elderly women in Iraq, or orphaned children in Afghanistan? Compared to the coverage in Georgia, the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns have been bloodless.

Ironic that conservative ideology asserts that the answer to every social problem or need is to turn to the private sector, where the profit motive and competition will insure efficiency. But then why are Conservatives masters of the “no-bid” contract awarded to big political donors? Where’s the competitive advantage in that?

And, frankly, why would taxpayers want the functions of government turned over to American business? In case Conservatives have forgotten, we’re the nation that cannot compete in manufacturing -- our auto industry is pitiful, we’re losing our edge in technology and science, and our banks and investment houses are run by greed-mongers who can’t tell a sound investment from a bogus one; these people and their regulatory enablers created the mortgage crisis that has the home foreclosure rate up above 50%.

America may be a world leader in entertainment, but that’s not enough to sustain a superpower. The only business arena the American private sector excels in is buying and selling paper, swapping stock, consolidating corporations and lobbying the Federal government for public subsidies, hardly the stuff of which great powers are made.

Ironic that Barack Obama feels compelled to submit to a “faith” grilling at the hands of mega-church leader Rick Warren. If there ever was a tyranny of the “minority,” this is it. Evangelical Christians make up a relatively small part of the electorate and yet our presidential candidates find it necessary to pander to this group. Didn’t John McCain sound tough when he said he’d follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell? Uh, John, your party and your friend George W. Bush have had seven years to bring Mr. bin Laden to “justice” and you’ve failed in spectacular fashion.

The world may indeed be divided into good and evil, but if so, how does humankind defeat evil as Mr. McCain told the Christian faithful he would? By force of arms? By eradicating the distinction between church and state? By making public school children recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments?

Ironic that in a time of great social complexity, nuance and shades of gray, that one of our presidential candidates, Barack Obama, is ridiculed by the Right for being too smart, too intelligent, too eloquent. In a time when we desperately need fresh and bold thinking and all the smarts we can muster to meet the challenges facing our world, the mainstream media echoes the notion that a corrupt dolt is the man we should rally behind. Sorry, but for nearly eight years we’ve followed a fool, an embarrassment on the world stage, a man with an unmatched absence of curiosity and a super-abundance of hubris, and look where we stand: locked in a war on a “tactic,” in debt to foreigners, and in the midst of an economic meltdown.

Yes, these days irony abounds, and woe to the nation that cannot see it.

Straight Talk

Editor's Note: Things haven't been going the McCain Campaign's way of late, and some in his inner circle are becoming worried that McCain is flat-lining when he should be peaking for the GOP convention. The charge that a vote for McCain is the same thing as voting for a third Bush term rankles the Arizona Senator as much as the charge that he's too cozy with DC lobbyists.

McCain tried to set the record straight at a recent press conference.

McCain: Hey guys.

Press: Hi John!

McCain: I have a statement and then I’ll take your questions. Most of you guys have been on my campaign bus, so you know I like straight-talk, not elitist twisting of the facts. Some liberal media outlets have reported that a vote for McCain is a vote for George W. Bush’s third term. That’s a lot of hogwash. John McCain has his own agenda for America. OK, that’s it, short and sweet. Fire away!

Press: Mr. McCain, what is your stance on taxes?

McCain: I stand firmly on the principle that taxes are bad. My position is simple: no new taxes on business or the American people, ever.

Press: Mr. McCain, by nearly every measure the economy is in rough shape. How do you plan to turn it around?

McCain: Frankly, I disagree with you. The fundamentals of our economy are strong. What we need to do is cut taxes. Taxes are killing us.

Press: No offense, sir, but thanks to the tax cuts enacted by the Bush Administration, corporate and individual tax rates are at historically low levels.

McCain: Listen, pal, if you disagree with me again I won’t let you on my campaign bus. No more free booze or cozy access to me and my staff for you. Read my lips: taxes are the problem. Cut taxes and the economy will take off like a cruise missile.

Press: Speaking of missiles, what are you planning to do about Iran?

McCain: Well, I was a military man and I know that we can’t let tyrants get hold of nuclear weapons. If Iran acts up, threatens its neighbors, Iran will pay the price. If Iran wants to test John McCain’s will, John McCain will not hesitate to respond.

Press: Given that the US is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, is it wise to confront Iran militarily?

McCain: What are you suggesting, that America cut and run? You sound like Senator Obama. Look, the only thing that Iran understands is force. We have to do whatever it takes to keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear device, and if that means military action, so be it.

Press: Switching subjects for a moment, health care is of great concern to the American people. What is your health policy?

McCain: Tax cuts and the free market. My opponent supports socialized medicine, I don’t. Next question?

Press: Mr. McCain, do you think the US can drill its way out of its energy problems or are renewable fuels like wind and solar power the answer?

McCain: We drill, we win our independence. What we need to do is provide tax incentives to oil companies for expanded exploration. The government should get out of the way of oil companies and let them do what they do best.

Press: Mr. McCain, best estimates by the oil industry itself is that the US only has 2% of the world’s oil reserves. If that’s correct, domestic exploration won’t come close to meeting the country’s needs.

McCain: I don’t buy it. Keep your engine tuned and your tires inflated. Stop talking like a defeatist.

Press: Major oil companies are making record profits. Why should the taxpayers subsidize expanded exploration by Exxon?

McCain: Because that’s how business gets done in America.

Press: Mr. McCain, you’ve surrounded yourself with advisors who trained under Karl Rove, and it has been widely reported that your campaign is taking the low road. How do you respond?

McCain: I don’t. John McCain lives on the high road. I’ve never taken the low road in my life. People who insinuate that my campaign is taking the low road are un-American and unpatriotic. I don’t surround myself with lobbyists, either. With John McCain you get straight-talk and a new direction for America.

Press: Gee, no offense Mr. McCain, but your positions sound positively Bush-like!

McCain: No beer for you!

Hot Dogs

Are these the dog days? Why do I see dogs sleeping on raised and rickety porches in the Deep South, where the heat and humidity melt asphalt? Strange visions in a strange time. For all I know it’s raining in Savannah and the dogs have taken shelter. Out here in the dry, dry west, one hundred miles north of Los Angeles, where the beautiful people come to relax and play, it’s another warm and beautiful evening. State Street, our shopping Mecca, is hopping and bopping as if the price of gas is $1.29 a gallon and home values are still in the stratosphere. The beautiful young have credit cards with available balances, and line up to buy Coach handbags, Juicy sweatpants, and $300 Versace sunglasses.

President Bush lectured the Chinese about human rights the other day, without a trace of irony, in fact, though everybody in the world knows that Bush is the great American jailer, sponsor of torture and an all-around despot. Bush lecturing anyone about human rights is like Darth Vader preaching non-violence. The Chinese know Bush lost all credibility long ago and that nobody pays any attention to him. Every time Bush appears in public and opens his mouth Republican Party bosses wince and hold their breath. “What drivel will the fool spew this time? Will he assert that the US is winning the war in Iraq? Will he say that the American economy is fine, just fine, humming like a top? Will he claim that global warming is a myth of the ‘liberal’ media?”

Bad times, dark days. Israel has the bomb and Iran wants the bomb and Bush doesn’t care how many innocent people die in a “pre-emptive” conflict to insure that Israel remains the Middle East’s sole nuclear power. Hell, do they even bother to count dead Iraqis anymore? Americans, yes -- Iraqis, who cares! Pile their dead bodies like cordwood and never mind the weather! The important story of the day is John Edwards and his love child!

I’m sad that Hunter S. Thompson is dead and gone -- we need his crazy energy more than ever. Hunter would stare down the barrel of the upcoming election and give us the deal without all the watered-down mainstream media “analysis.” Matt Lauer would give his left testicle for one-eighth of Hunter’s political acumen. We need Hunter to stride into his pasture at two a.m. with a loaded .357 Magnum and pump a round into a 55-gallon drum full of jet fuel; Hunter to snort coke and throw butter knives at his housekeeper; Hunter to rail against the death of freedom and the police state that America is in danger of becoming.

Ah, but Hunter’s drinking with the Gods and no one can fill his sneakers here on earth. We’re on our own with the plutocrats, Bush, the Chinese, and the sleeping dogs.

Viva!

It’s Fiesta time in Santa Barbara and the city is geared up for brisk tourist business, catering to wide-eyed Europeans flush with cash, out-of-towners here to enjoy Flamenco dancing and overpriced tortas. Most locals head for the hills when Fiesta rolls around, or, if they stay in town, do no more than check out the happenings at Our Lady of Guadalupe church, where the scene feels organic and authentic and one isn’t likely to see many Caucasian guys wearing silly sombreros and shouting “Viva La Fiesta!”

Again this year, the “El Presidente” is a pudgy Caucasian fellow with a European surname.

Fiesta wasn’t always such a big production around here. True, the event has always had a commercial angle, though in the old days it wasn’t as crassly commercial as it is now, but then again, the entire U.S. economy grooves to a crassly commercial tune, twenty-four hours a day, so why should the good merchants of SB (most of them now upscale corporate chains) miss an opportunity to hawk their wares? If some German tourist is willing to lay down $10 for a watered-down house margarita, and $25 for an official Fiesta T-shirt, what’s the problem?

Our Spanish heritage is hailed without getting into the messy details of what the Spanish did to indigenous people during their reign. Instead of an imperial campaign for God, Gold, Guns, and Genocide, the arrival of the Spanish in SB is placed in a benevolent light during Fiesta; the Spanish were decent folk who came to spread the Good Word and bring civilization to the heathen. OK, maybe some Indians croaked laying adobe bricks for the Mission, but on the whole it was a worthwhile endeavor, right? Maybe a few Indians didn’t cotton to the new arrivals, didn’t appreciate their style, and made it a point to say so and were summarily beaten to a pulp, but that was the exception, not the rule, the work of some bad apples. Just like Abu Ghraib a few hundred years later, right?

But despite the commercialism and the historical myopia, it’s still sweet to see the kids in the parade, and the dancers who work so hard at their art. For a few days these events take our minds off the failed Occupation of Iraq, the crumbling economy, and the nastiness of the Presidential campaign.

So bring out the mariachis and let’s get our collective Viva on!

The Long Fall of Mighty Ford

Not many days ago there was a revelation in the massive board room of the Ford Motor Company.

The mood in the room was serious when the head honchos of finance, manufacturing, marketing and sales trooped in and took their seats. Black & white photos of Henry Ford stared down upon the execs, and there was disappointment in Henry’s unwavering gaze. “What have you morons done to my great company?” Henry seemed to say. “We ruled the world once, and now we can’t even hold our own in Michigan! We survived the Great Depression and World War II! Now the Japs and the Koreans are beating our brains out. I’m disgusted with you boys.”

The chairman didn’t look any happier when he arrived. Dispensing with the usual upbeat patter, he launched right in: “Our stock’s in the tank and we’re bleeding money like a hemophiliac. Americans aren’t buying SUV’s anymore. In fact, if our marketing people are right, the SUV, our stock-in-trade, our beloved cash cow, is dead as a dinosaur, croaked by $4 a gallon gas.”

A couple of executives burst into tears. Another cursed the Arabs. Someone else claimed the sudden spike in the price of gasoline was a plot hatched by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. “The CIA should have killed that bastard. Isn’t that why we have a CIA – to take out the enemies of Big Business!”

“Actually,” the CFO said, “the CIA has outsourced the killing of foreign political enemies to Blackwater. According to the Wall Street Journal, it’s a growth industry with an almost unlimited upside.”

“Gentlemen,” the chairman said. “We can point fingers until the sun goes down but that’s not going to help us out of this mess. I love the Expedition as much as you do. The idea that three generations of a family or an entire little league team can travel comfortably together in one vehicle, each with his or her own cup holder, is quintessentially American. But, whether we like it or not, the world has changed. What we need now is a new idea.”

For a solid minute it was so quiet you could have heard a fly fart. The chairman waited for his brain trust to come up with something; Henry Ford waited.

The VP of Marketing spoke first. “What about bringing back a Ford classic, like, I don’t know, the Fairlane? Americans loved the Fairlane. We can create an entire campaign around a theme of nostalgia.”

“Most of the people who remember the Fairlane are dead or living in nursing homes,” the head of manufacturing said. “If I heard the chairman correctly, we’re looking for a new idea, something fresh, out-of-the-box, and by box I don’t think he’s referring to a coffin.”

Around the table heads nodded in agreement, although every man in the room would have given his left testicle to revive the Fairlane from the automobile museum. Or if not the Fairlane, the Falcon or the Galaxie or the Torino or the Ranchero. The past was sweet, predictable and comfortable; the future was bitter, unpredictable and anything but comfortable. The Indians and the Chinese were growing more powerful and uppity, testing nuclear weapons and hosting the Olympic Games, snapping up US Treasury bonds like the sky was the limit, asserting their new-found power at every opportunity and thumbing their noses at the US of A. What kind of world was it when Chinese communists beat American capitalists at their own game? A perverse and twisted world, that’s what.

Rising slowly to his feet, the VP of Sales said, “I know this will sound crazy, but what if we design and build a line of high-quality, fuel efficient cars.”

“We’ve already got the Focus line-up,” the VP of Manufacturing growled, “and nobody’s buying.”

“That’s because the Focus is shit,” someone said. “If I understand the concept here, we’re talking about taking Toyota and Honda on at their own game, about blowing the roof off fuel efficiency and really getting behind the whole hybrid deal.”

“Holy shit,” said the CFO. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing!”

“We do it in Europe,” the chairman said. “But the question is -- can we do it here? Are Americans ready for a sea-change at Ford Motor Company? Are we ready?”

“We’re about to become European,” the VP of Sales said, his voice laden with sadness.

“It’s the death of the great American road, the death of everything we hold near and dear, the death of life as we know it.”

Henry Ford glowered at them. “No shit, Sherlock. If you jackasses were worth all the money you’re making, you would have figured this out ten years ago and Ford wouldn’t be swimming in the piss hole with GM and Chrysler. There’s nothing worse than a businessman with no vision and no balls, except an entire nation that can’t read the writing on the wall even when it’s written in bright red ink.”

I Believe the World is Flat...I Believe...I Believe...

Which is more shocking, the hypocrisy of Wall Street bankers or the stupidity of our President?

When the good money is rolling in furiously and in amounts almost impossible to count, Wall Street types have no use for government regulation or oversight. It’s only when the bankers’ relentless greed turns south that they run to Daddy Fed with both arms extended. What a contrast to the distaste most banker-types feel for aid for displaced workers, single mothers, and people with mental problems; those folks must fend for themselves in order to build “self-reliance.” Heaven forbid the poor become dependent on taxpayer assistance!

Large-scale corporate welfare is hardly unusual, though government rescue of Big Business is always cloaked in the guise of keeping the economic system functioning for the good of the “nation.” We’re assured that a taxpayer bail-out is in the best interests of average people living in average towns, but we know better, don’t we?

If tough love and zero tolerance for failure are good enough for Average Jane, why isn’t it good enough for Bear Stearns or Indy Mac? What happened to all the happy talk about the self-regulating free market? Isn’t the All-Knowing Market God supposed to weed out the weak, the corrupt, and the inefficient?

Hypocrisy isn’t pretty and it can’t be papered over forever. Even a people as monumentally distracted as Americans will sooner or later see the beacon of truth shining through the fog.

Ah, and then there’s George W. Bush, our man-child Prez. What can you say about a man who is so out of touch with reality? You know we’re in deep doo-doo when our energy policy boils down to a bad Dr. Phil imitation: “By golly, if we want to lower gasoline prices we’ve got to change people’s psychology. We’ve got to drill and pump and refine – in the most environmentally friendly ways, of course – even though that won’t do a thing to lower the price of gas. But people’s psychology will be changed – and that’s what’s most important. Hee, hee, hee. Yessir!”

Is Bush serious? Change the psychology by drilling for crude that -- even if found and extracted -- will not be brought to market soon enough or in enough volume to alter the price at the pump by a penny? This is Bush’s plan to deal with the cold fact that Americans have lived beyond our energy means for decades? (Are you old enough, dear reader, to remember the political whupping Jimmy Carter took for calling the energy crisis of the late 70’s the “moral equivalent of war”?)

The Georgia peanut farmer must be laughing now.

On that beautiful day when W exits the White House for the final time, never, under any circumstances, to be invited back, Barack Obama will need a gaggle of shamans, Tibetan holy men, Buddhist monks, rabbis, and magicians, to cleanse Bush’s evil stench from the walls, carpets and furniture. It will be like trying to clean a cheap Hollywood SRO hotel room after the fire department carts the body of a chain smoker to the morgue. Obama’s team will need sage sticks the size of telephone poles to rid the White House of Bush’s essence.

When the story of George W. Bush is finally written it will be short and to the point: he failed at everything he attempted, and everything he touched turned to shit.
Amen.

Our Never-Ending Search for the Easy Way Out

This week I’ve been thinking about sacrifice and what it means to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. Among the many ideals Americans have lost sight of during the past thirty years of conservative ideological hegemony is the idea of shared sacrifice. What has become of our willingness to sacrifice? Have we become so politically polarized that we cannot agree that anything is worthy of our collective sacrifice?

Our President would have us believe that we can invade and occupy a foreign country without a shred of national sacrifice – no draft, no rationing, no war bonds – nothing, except a mind-boggling bill that will be dropped on the doorstep of future generations.

The conservative, free-market mythology that has prevailed in our country for the past thirty years tells us that we can have low taxes – especially for the wealthiest among us – and still enjoy good roads and highways, well-tended parks, excellent schools, ready and able police and fire protection, and other services that government provides to make life better for all citizens.

Sacrifice entails effort and effort entails sweat, discomfort, even pain. Overweight? Don’t sweat on the treadmill, just swallow this magic diet pill, chock full of sacred herbs from Borneo. Bothered by love handles or cellulite or sagging eyelids? No problem, step right up and let your friendly cosmetic surgeon slice and dice your cares away. Yellow teeth? Thinning hair? Piece of cake, we can fix that. Will that be VISA or Mastercard?

Want to get in on the housing boom but find yourself short of cash? Don’t scrimp and save. Step right up and let me tell you about the magic of sub-prime loans and Collateralized Debt Obligations.

Yes, oil is a finite resource but you’re an American and that gives you the right to drive a behemoth SUV that takes up two parking spaces at the mall and burns more gas in a month than a Peruvian peasant uses in a year. Americans are special and Peruvians are just, well, Peruvians!

Corporations feel no responsibility to sacrifice a dime’s profit so that workers can share in the bounty they produce, just as the wealthiest Americans feel no responsibility to sacrifice some of their coin for the less fortunate. The rulebook has been re-written so that no such sacrifice is required of corporations or the wealthy.

After 9/11, when President Bush was talking like a whiskey-addled cowboy about bringing terrorists and evildoers to justice, the late Susan Sontag wrote that the Administration’s rhetoric was infantile. The mainstream press went after Sontag hammer and tongs, but the truth is that Sontag was right then -- and seven years later Americans are still being addressed like spoiled children. As every parent knows, children demand that the world conform to their whims and wishes, not the other way around.

Instead of accepting that idea that high gas prices are probably here to stay – and adjusting our driving habits, vehicle choices and lifestyles (making a sacrifice, in other words) – our politicians insist that all we need is more domestic exploration or a gas-tax “holiday.” Instead of accepting that Americans use more energy than any other people in the world, we are encouraged to continue consuming more than our share of resources, but to look for the “green” label or the most ecologically friendly packaging.

Like the spoiled child, we want what we want when we want it.

Many years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King said that when profit motives and property rights become more important than the needs of people, the triple-headed evil of racism, extreme materialism and militarism cannot be conquered. Look around and you’ll see that Dr. King was on to the truth.

My Laundry List of Hopes

The Obama Campaign machine sent me a letter the other day, appealing for a donation. That’s Ok, my name is on a lot of mailing lists, though if I receive even one solicitation from John McCain, I’ll be insulted.

So much hype, hoopla and trivial information has surrounded Barack Obama that it’s hard to get to what the man stands for. Is he a closet Muslim? Does he take policy direction from Jeremiah Wright? Will he find a place in an Obama administration for Hillary Clinton?

The Progressive community, small though it is, holds its breath and hopes that Obama will not drift further toward the bland, safe center, but the closer the general election gets the more Obama will be forced to move in that direction. Obama wants to get elected, so he’s not going to propose anything that might disturb the powers-that-be. He can speak eloquently about improving the lot of American workers, but not to the extent that he upsets Wall Street financiers; he can speak sensibly about talking with leaders from nations who oppose the United States, but in the next breath he’ll rattle the saber to ward off criticism that he’s soft on evil-doers; he can speak about a new brand of politics, but again, he can only go so far.

Obama has tapped into the desire of Americans for something different from the disastrous Bush-Cheney regime. I share that desire but my expectations for meaningful change are low. I hope the concerns of people who struggle every day to feed their families and gain a modicum of economic security will be raised to at least equal status with the aims of investors for maximum profits. I hope for a national realization that our current energy policy is a failure; we can punch holes in the crust of the planet under American control until the cows come home, but we’ll never bring enough oil on line to make a difference, and the sooner we realize that the better off we’ll be. I hope for a sensible policy on immigration, a removal of legal and physical barriers that have no chance of working. Most of all, I hope for a return of respect for law and a balance of power between our three branches of government.

That’s a lot to hope for. Obama claims he can deliver if enough people send his campaign a check. I haven’t taken that step yet, though I probably will. A McCain presidency is inconceivable to me, though I never thought American voters would re-elect George W. Bush in 2004 and won’t be surprised if McCain’s fear-based politics carry the day this November. That’s a depressing thought, not to mention a dark commentary on the American electorate.

Nutcases

Full disclosure: I’ve never watched more than a snippet of Bill O’Reilly’s cable news program, The O’Reilly Factor. Fox is a channel I skip past on those rare occasions when I have sovereignty over the remote control. I’m one of those people who believe that Fox epitomizes all that is wrong with the corporate-dominated American news media.

Last weekend in Minneapolis, 3,500 other folks who share my belief gathered at the National Conference for Media Reform, a group spurred into being a few years ago by Robert McChesney and John Nichols – names most Americans have never heard of – a fact which illustrates one problem with the American media.

Conference attendees heard from Amy Goodman, Phil Donahue, Naomi Klein and keynote speaker, Bill Moyers. That’s a fairly impressive line-up of people, particularly Bill Moyers, who has been one of the most thoughtful voices in American television for almost half a century. While it’s true that all these folks lean left politically, they share in common the belief that a free, independent news media is essential for a healthy Democracy, and a deep concern that the American media has moved in the opposite direction as a result of corporate consolidation and Federal Communications Commission policy.

Along comes the O’Reilly Factor in the person of the show’s producer, Porter Barry, who ambushed Bill Moyers in a corridor and badgered him to appear on Mr. O’Reilly’s show. An onlooker had the presence of mind to record this verbal mugging. I heard it on KPFK. The piece was introduced with a clip from the O’Reilly Factor in which Mr. O’Reilly ridiculed the Media Reform Conference in general and its participants in particular, calling them all “far-left nutcases” or words to that effect.

Think about that for a minute: nutcases for believing that a Democracy cannot flourish without a free, independent media that challenges the powers-that-be and the status quo? nutcases for asserting that the American people were ill-served in the run-up to the Iraq invasion by a media machine that echoed power rather than confronting power? nutcases for advocating for reform of a system of ownership and control that can no longer be said to serve the people?

If so, count me among the nuts.

Does Bill O’Reilly honestly believe that the American news media does a good job of informing the people, or of using the publicly owned airwaves in the best interests of the people? When O’Reilly looks across the media landscape does he see diversity of opinion? Does he hear reasoned debate that elevates people’s understanding of the critical issues we face?

I wonder what he sees and hears.

The American news media is remarkable, not for the information it illuminates but for the stories and events it keeps in the dark, for the stories it highlights and those it downplays. You can bet the American Occupation of Iraq looks different in Britain or France or Spain than it does here.

Unlike Bill Moyers, Bill O’Reilly is not a journalist – he’s a propagandist for a point of view that has made him wealthy, powerful and largely untouchable. The powerful and privileged never give up their perquisites without a fight, so it’s understandable that O’Reilly would dismiss any movement for reform as “Liberal” or “Leftist” nonsense rather than confronting the issue with intellectual rigor or honesty.

And Bill Moyers never resorted to ridiculing his guests. Moyers even lets his guests speak.

The Graveyard of Empires

Why is the U.S. in Iraq? Most thinking citizens realize that the Bush Administration misled the nation into a pre-emptive war based on bogus information and an aggressive PR campaign that used ex-military officers and a compliant, negligent news media to push the case for invasion.

As the situation on the ground in Iraq changed, when it became clear that the Iraqis did not want us in their country, our rationale for the invasion changed from finding WMD to spreading Democracy to rooting out terrorists.

For the record: we found no WMD; discovered that freedom and Democracy cannot be imposed on another country, particularly one lacking a tradition of political freedom; and created chaotic conditions that will undoubtedly produce more terrorists, not less.

Yet, like empires before us, we persist in thinking that our will can be imposed on Iraq, that we can coerce a weak, fragmented Iraqi government to sign a security pact with the U.S. that will allow U.S. bases in the country in perpetuity, and secure the grandest prize of all – exclusive access to Iraqi oil for multinational energy companies.

I was listening to a lecture by a professor of classics a few days ago and perked up when he said that through the ages the Middle East has been the crucible of conflict and the graveyard of empires. Americans don’t like to think of their country as an imperial power with an empire; we shy from linking the freedom and Democracy-loving US of A with the Romans, the Ottomans or the British, but the fact is that America often imposes its will, its culture and its values on other nations by force – economic, political and military. We need to believe that America only wages war when it’s absolutely necessary, and that other, less enlightened nations, choose to start wars.

But we made the choice for the world to witness, and no matter how President Bush or John McCain or the mouthpieces on Fox News spin the truth, the consequences have been disastrous. The Occupation of Iraq is a military, political and moral failure, and a humanitarian nightmare. When American politicians or generals talk about “Victory” in Iraq it’s obvious they have little idea what victory looks like. The corporate-controlled U.S. news media may ignore what’s happening in Iraq in favor of the latest celebrity gossip, but ignoring what we have wrought will not make it go away.

I read somewhere that the U.S. seeks as many as 50 permanent military facilities in Iraq. I wonder about the proximity of those military bases to oil fields or distribution facilities and major highways. When we slice through the rhetoric and the distortions and the bluster, one fact stands clear and alone: multi-national energy companies want to use the taxpayer-supported U.S. military as a security force for their private investments.

Access to Iraqi oil was, and remains, the ultimate objective of this war-of-choice.  

Bring on the Rabbi

Just when you think the Presidential primary season can’t get any sillier, along comes another story about a holy friend of Barack Obama, this time a Catholic priest who mocked Hillary Clinton while speaking at a church Obama frequents. Who’s next, a deranged rabbi or a Hare Krishna?

The Clinton camp took offense, of course, and Obama issued the standard apology (and then went so far as to quit the church altogether) while the mainstream media speculated breathlessly about what this latest flap might do to Obama’s chances to clinch the Democratic nomination.

Sweet Jesus, have all the nitwits at ABC and NBC swallowed stupid pills? Why is Barack Obama constantly being held accountable for statements made by other people? People not connected to his campaign? With all the critical issues in play in this election, why is the media so concerned with what people around Barack Obama say? Those folks are not running for president. If we’re going to lower the bar to ground level, why not interview Obama’s barber, his dentist, and his auto mechanic? Let’s find out if Obama has ever stiffed a waitress or left the toilet seat up. Let’s interview Obama’s trash hauler and find out if the Senator separates his recyclable trash from his kitchen waste.

Barack Obama can’t control what comes from the mouths of friends and associates, and in any case those folks are entitled to their opinion – no matter how inaccurate, indecent, or inappropriate. If the priest had called for Hillary Clinton to be strapped behind a Chevy Suburban and dragged through the streets of Chicago, OK, then all this teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing would be appropriate. But what’s wrong with saying that Hillary feels entitled to the Democratic nomination and her old bedroom in the White House? Entitlement oozes from the woman.

Bill and Hillary Clinton have some questionable acquaintances and a well-documented history of ethical two-stepping. John McCain’s inner circle includes a number of high-powered DC lobbyists with ties to dictators. If we’re going to judge our political candidates by the company they keep, let’s at least judge them all by the same criteria. And then let’s seal them all in a plastic bubble – for their own good, and ours.

It's the Little Things

Another weird week or two on the political front. John McCain is apparently fit as a fiddle and physically up to the challenge of a run for the White House. McCain has also cleaned his campaign house, repudiating endorsements from a couple of whack-job evangelical types; he’s still surrounded by a posse of ethically challenged advisors, fine gentlemen who lobbied for the dictators of Myanmar, among others. McCain insists that he’s clean as a hounds tooth despite being surrounded by slime balls.

Hillary Clinton refuses to believe that her campaign is toast. It’s inconceivable to Hillary that voters actually prefer Barack Obama over her. Hillary gamely soldiers on, putting a resolute face on her non-existent chances, playing up her recent primary victories, and insisting, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, that she is the Democrat who can win in November.

Bill Clinton recently made a bizarre statement out on the campaign trial, asserting that the real divide in America is not class or race, but the arrogance of people like Barack Obama. Statements like that from the Clinton camp underscore their desperation. Bill might find it helpful to conduct a quick unscientific poll of average, working-class Americans to see if they are really worried about smart people or about the high cost of gasoline, food, medical care, education, housing, cable TV, and the insane Occupation we refuse to abandon in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the airwaves are full of right-wing nutcases who thunder about the dangers of illegal immigration and how poor Mexicans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans are swarming the border and undermining the American Way of Life, stealing babies from suburban homes, spreading diseases, taking jobs from Americans, and overwhelming hospital emergency rooms. It’s nothing more than shameful fear-mongering, but you can bet it will sway a fair number of voters in November. Because he has nothing to run on except Fear, McCain will pander to this extreme notion and promise to lynch any brown-skinned person with the temerity to cross the border without proper papers.

According to the nut-job Right, Muslims want to do us in from without and Mexicans want to do us in from within. Our task is not to understand these people – our task is to stomp them beneath our iron heel. Crazy times breed crazy notions. Truth, reason and verifiable facts take a beating in a climate of fear. Nobody on the far Right ever asks why Mexicans are compelled to leave their homes and risk everything they have, including their lives, to come north and do the low-wage, dangerous shitwork that Americans are unwilling to do. You can’t expect Bill O’Reilly or Lou Dobbs to examine the nexus between NAFTA and illegal immigration. No, no, these fellows have more important things to do than exercise their intellect. It’s so much easier to spout wild generalizations about savage illegal immigrants.

On the bright side, the Reign of Bush is winding down and the man hasn’t started a war with Iran yet.

It’s the little things we need to be thankful for.

The Big Disconnect

The New York Times is considered our “paper of record,” an authoritative source for news, information and opinion on life in these United States at this point in history. A few days ago in its on-line edition the Times ran this headline: WALL ST. STARTS TO SEE SIGNS OF A TURNAROUND.

With thousands of citizens in danger of losing their homes, individuals and small business owners suffering from sky-high fuel costs, health care a luxury millions of Americans cannot afford, our paper of record leads with a story about how Wall Street is faring, as if what happens on Wall Street is in any way connected to the reality of hard times in Portland, Oregon, Durango, Colorado or Chicago, Illinois.

Below the headline was this tidbit: “For ExxonMobil, $10.9 billion profit disappoints.” While average Americans struggle to make ends meet with rising costs and flat wages, ExxonMobil is unhappy about its $10.9 billion profit.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton argue about which of them has shadier friends or who is more patriotic; not to be outdone, John McCain is trying to sell Americans the idea that a tax break to buy a health insurance policy is the same thing as health care. John McCain’s blind faith in the “free market” is a subject for another day, though if McCain’s faith doesn’t sound eerily familiar and absolutely chilling, you haven’t been paying attention.

Wall Street may see golden light at the end of the tunnel, but directly below the headline in the Times was another: “Consumer Spending Stagnates as Prices Rise.” Consumers are in the deep end, up to their ears in debt, unable to buy stuff, which is a problem since our economy is based on ever-rising consumption of goods and services. But here’s the conundrum the cheerleaders for current economic arrangements seldom mention: how are consumers supposed to continue consuming if their wages remain flat?

Hard times coming. Hard times already here. If you work for wages, you don’t need to be reminded that it’s getting harder and harder to make ends meet.

What does it say about America’s economy when the Investor Class sees daylight and working people see darkness? Do you get the feeling that there’s a Big Disconnect in our society, a decoupling of public and corporate interest, of individual freedom and social responsibility, of individual good and common good?

Turn off your TV, put your computer to sleep, take off the iPod, power down your phone, and listen. Do you hear the sound of paper being torn, ripped, shredded? That’s the last page or two of the social contract being destroyed. The brainchild of FDR, who believed that no American should struggle for the necessities of bare survival, the social contract came into being after World War II. The contract was Business and Labor agreeing that when workers produced they should share in the profits; the contract implied that there was dignity in work and that working people deserved a fair shot at dignity; the contract was a shared belief that the next generation would do better and have even more opportunity than the current generation.

Gone. That in the midst of these worrisome economic times the New York Times chooses to report on Wall Street illustrates how difficult it is to have a real conversation about our economy – not only who it works for, but who it doesn’t, and why. In real, inflation-adjusted terms, the wages of working Americans have been flat for thirty years, but when was the last time you saw a news story about that? American families are working full tilt – not to get ahead, but just to hold their place. Seen any stories in the major media about that? The political buying power of corporations and their lobbyists is so pervasive that they have driven wages down, exported manufacturing jobs to countries where workers are more easily exploited, eliminated health insurance, dumped pension obligations and gutted regulatory bodies, all of which is great for investors, price per share, and lavish executive compensation, but a death sentence for workers.

Think about it. Big Business controls the media and therefore has the power to shape, frame, spotlight and filter the information we see and hear. In the middle of presidential primaries in a watershed election year, we get endless takes on the words and deeds of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright; not that America doesn’t need to hold a national conversation about race relations, we do, desperately, but that’s not what’s happening in news coverage of Reverend Wright. Big Media sets the story line, and no deviation from the script is allowed.

I don’t know if Americans can ever return to a shared social contract that takes into account the idea that human beings have needs other than economic needs. The conservative, free-market, ownership society, you’re-on-your-own ideology that has prevailed for the past three decades has turned us into anxious economic animals, constantly running to hold our place, working two jobs to earn the wage that one job once provided; constantly worried about whether we can afford health care or if we can afford to educate our kids or retire with enough financial wherewithal to live with dignity and give something back to our families and communities. The power arrayed against that happening is daunting.

But for the millions of us who believe that human life is about more than chasing a dollar or a euro, we have an obligation to stand against the prevailing power structure – to question it, to demand answers from it, to use moral persuasion to make it listen to our legitimate concerns. That’s Democracy. Dissent is a patriotic, creative act. As Dr. King said, “There is never a time in our American democracy that we must ever think we’re wrong when we protest. We reserve that right.”

It’s past time for America to reconnect with its basic values, just as it’s past time for working Americans to say, loud and often, enough is enough.

Hillary, the Chameleon

We’ve fallen behind the news cycle here on the Balcony. Hillary won the Pennsylvania primary by, what, ten percentage points, but from the media hype the day after you’d have thought she won by ninety. ABC News reported breathlessly about Hillary’s “double-digit” victory, and how she had successfully appealed to gun owners, bowlers, and beer drinkers.

Sweet Jesus, the day-after stupidity was nearly too much for a sane, thinking person to accept. Bowlers? Beer drinkers? The absurdity of Hillary Rodham Clinton trying to pass herself off as a “Regular Jane!”

The mainstream media is full of nitwits who rarely ask questions that matter, and even when they remember what it is a real journalist is supposed to do and ask a direct question, they too easily let the candidates get off the hook with bland answers. Hillary Clinton has been running for President for a long time now and I still don’t know what bedrock values she wouldn’t -- under any but the direst circumstances -- compromise away. (In fairness, I can’t answer that question about Barack Obama, either.)

Hillary Clinton is a successful politician, but she’s not a leader. Hillary commissions polls and then adjusts her positions accordingly. Leaders present their followers with positions and policies based on values. This doesn’t mean that leaders are infallible; after all, George W. Bush has steadfastly and slavishly pursued policies based on Conservative values that have inflicted tremendous damage on our republic.

I’m ready for a woman – white, African-American, Asian or other – to be President of the United States, as long as she has a vision for the nation, respect for the rule of law, and a willingness to honestly confront our most pressing issues, such as, and not necessarily in order of priority, economic inequality, the environment, foreign relations and health care.

Hillary’s campaign people are in Indiana now, polling likely voters. I expect it won’t be long before Hillary rolls out a homily about her long lost Uncle George or Samuel or Randolph or Clay, a salt-of-the-Earth farmer who settled in Indiana and tilled the land, worshipped God, and was the proud and responsible owner of a .30-.30 rifle, a 12-gauge over & under shotgun, and a Civil War vintage revolver.

I can hear Hillary’s stump speech now: “I remember my Uncle George, who loved this great state and its people. Uncle George believed in the old-time values of hard-work, faith and self-reliance. When I think of my uncle, I know that I too am a Hoosier in my heart, one of you. When I’m elected, I promise you I’ll find a place in my administration for Bobby Knight or Larry Bird.”

Or some such shameless pandering.

I may be ready for a female president, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready for Hillary. Her hubby duped me once, but I never trusted him again, and I don’t remember the Clinton years with fondness; Hillary’s cut from the same duplicitous, smarmy Ivy League cloth. Power’s her trip, and she’ll say or do anything to obtain it and keep it.

Jack Kemp - Football Hero, Political Hack

Jack Kemp played ten years in the old AFL. During his career Kemp tossed 114 touchdown passes and 183 interceptions. His average pass covered 6.9 yards, not great by the standards set years later by Dan Marino, John Elway, and Brett Favre.

Kemp made out better in politics. He served in the House of Representatives for many years and ran for the White House with Bob Dole in 1996. Dole & Kemp went down in defeat to Clinton & Gore, though when Clinton got caught up in the Lewinsky mess Kemp got the last laugh. At least he didn’t have to answer embarrassing questions about cigars and semen-stained dresses under oath and surrounded by high-priced DC lawyers.

Like most arch-Conservatives, Jack Kemp is horrified that John McCain will be the GOP’s standard bearer in November. In the end, Kemp will hold his nose and support McCain – as will other staunch Conservatives, like that fat toad, Rush Limbaugh -- but that doesn’t mean he’s happy about it. In fact, Kemp is as depressed as a Buffalo winter.

I came across the following Kemp quote in a recent edition of the Nation: “…those who would weaken our nation’s defense, wave a white flag to al-Qaida, socialize our healthcare system, and promote income redistribution and class warfare instead of economic growth and equality of opportunity.”

I happened to be on an airplane flying to San Jose when I came across this twaddle, and when I burst out laughing the flight attendant immediately came over to see if I needed anything. Apparently, it’s no longer acceptable to laugh out loud aboard an airplane.

“Jack Kemp is an idiot,” I said, pointing to the quote. The flight attendant raised her eyebrows, concerned now that I might be dangerous. “Does he really think things could get worse if the country doesn’t elect another right-wing pinhead? My God, how’d this fool ever get elected to Congress? ‘Socialize our healthcare system.’ Does this pecker-head have any idea of the disgrace that our for-profit health insurance system has become? We don’t provide care, we specialize in denying care. That’s what for-profit health care does best. The more care the big insurance companies deny, the more dough they make.”

I was warming to my subject now, building a head of outrage and the flight attendant was clearly worried. A routine morning flight from Santa Barbara to San Jose was turning into something ugly.

“And how about this ‘class warfare’ horseshit?” I asked the flight attendant. “What does Kemp think has been going on in this country for the past twenty-five years? It’s class warfare alright, an all out pitched battle against the middle-class and the working-class by free market ideologues. Redistribution of wealth my ass. We’ve redistributed – to the wealthiest citizens. Tax cuts for the rich, subsidies to corporations, no-bid contracts for cronies! Is this what Kemp means by ‘equality of opportunity?’”

“Sir,” the flight attendant said, glancing nervously toward the cockpit door. “Please take your seat and fasten your seat belt.”

Whoa, I didn’t realize I’d risen from my seat, or that I was shouting or that my fellow passengers were staring at me. This wasn’t good, not in fascist, reactive, Gulag-loving America. I had a quick vision of Dick Cheney coming at me with a cattle prod.

I smiled at the flight attendant, spread my arms wide, just your average, un-armed American. “It’s OK,” I said. “I’m fine. My medications will kick in any second now. I suffer from Terminal Outrage, a result of seven years of Bush-Cheney and all the pig-headed, reactionary, and un-American policies they have shoved down the throats of good people. They’ve shrunk the great America heart to the size of a raisin! I love my country and I want it to live up to its ideals. I revere Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR. I’m fine, really, go back to your laptops and Blackberries. I’ll keep it together for the remainder of the flight. Don’t forget to vote this November. Vote as if your life depends on it. Vote your pocketbook. Vote for your children and their children. Thank you for listening.”

I sat down, buckled my seat belt and pulled the Sky Mall magazine out of the seat pocket. The Nation would have to wait until I was locked safely in my hotel room. I began flipping the glossy pages, through electronic mole zappers and $1500 BBQ grills. Yes, a little consumerism to calm the nerves. I’ll see you in Hell, Jack Kemp, you and the rest of the architects of American inequality.

WE AIN'T LEAVING

“Trapped, trapped like rats.” Cowardly Lion, the Wizard of Oz

And that sums up the U.S. position in Iraq. If we continue our Occupation, violence will continue; if we pack up our camp, give up our desire for permanent military installations and access to Iraqi oil, violence will continue, at least until a group or individual seizes power and squashes all opposition.

As I listened to part of the Petreus-Crocker dog & pony show earlier this week, the language they used struck me. Unabashedly imperialist, they might as well have been speaking of Hoboken, New Jersey, or Delano, California, as of Iraq. It was all about American interests and next to nothing about what the Iraqi people may desire for their nation; it was as if Petreus and Crocker were dealing with children who cannot be trusted to make their own decisions.

Clearly, American policy makers don’t care what the Iraqis want. Why should they? We invaded and occupied Iraq to serve American interests, not to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein or establish Democracy in the Middle East. The only rational that makes any sense for this grand example in imperial overreach is securing access to the sea of oil buried beneath the sand. The U.S. constitutes around 4% of the world market for goods and services, but consumes in the neighborhood of 25% of the world’s resources. And guess what? Most of the resources that turn our economic engine are located in other countries.

Throughout human history, powerful nations have invaded, subdued and occupied weaker nations. Different guises were employed to justify these exercises of raw might: God, civilizing the natives, vanquishing Communism or toppling dictators who became rambunctious or began to speak of nationalizing industries. Once invested in an Occupation, imperial powers have been reluctant to let go; they are usually driven out by unceasing guerilla warfare or because the cost of the Occupation – in coin or blood -- becomes too great for the imperial power to sustain.

My son is eleven. I have no doubt that the U.S. will be militarily involved in Iraq when my son turns eighteen. Now that we’ve made an investment in coin and blood, we must justify it. The same cowardly arguments making the rounds today will make the rounds in the future. We’re in deep, heavily invested, and only an extraordinary political leader with true courage can extricate us from this debacle.

Given the current crop of presidential contenders, I’m not holding my breath.

The New Grapes of Wrath

“And it came about that owners no longer worked on their land. They farmed on paper; and they forgot the land, the smell, the feel of it, and remembered only that they owned it, remembered only what they gained and lost by it.” John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Doesn’t it feel that America is about to reap the grapes of wrath? Do you get the feeling that we’re trapped in train car decoupled from the locomotive, hurtling backwards toward a sheer cliff and a two-thousand foot free fall?

Not to hear our morally, intellectually, and curiosity-challenged President; according to George W. Bush, everything is moving along the tracks just fine, according to plan. For purposes of sheer survival, you’d think GOP bosses would do everything in their power to keep Bush away from microphones, press conferences and speaking engagements, because every time Bush opens his mouth the Republicans drive another nail into their coffin. The same goes for Dick Cheney. While young Americans die in a pointless war of which Cheney was chief architect and head cheerleader, Cheney goes fishing with Middle Eastern potentates every bit as corrupt as he is.

I haven’t felt such acute loathing since Richard Nixon occupied the White House. I can’t even watch George W. Bush throw out the first pitch at a baseball game – and I consider myself a baseball nut. This pinhead is our President! This embarrassment to every good impulse our country ever stood for? Does the Supreme Court still think installing this joker in the White House was a sound idea?

It’s simply astonishing to listen to George W. Bush speak on the state of the economy or the Occupation of Iraq. The disconnect from reality! The giddy denial of facts! The total disregard for experience! Why angry Americans haven’t stormed the White House gates demanding Bush’s removal from office is beyond me. A populace with a normal level of outrage and a functioning sense of indignation would have exhausted all patience and tolerance long ago, taken to the streets of the nation’s capitol to overturn cars and set them on fire, battle the Blackwater riot squad with sticks and stones, bricks and bottles; nothing less than outright mayhem seems to get the attention of the American ruling class.

Bush and his GOP cronies have sodomized America on a mind-blowing scale. Even now, near the end of his disastrous reign, Bush’s phallus is buried deep, his hands are locked on our hips and his trousers are down around his ankles and he’s banging away with a smirk on his face, this twisted, perverse product of the ruling elite, a man for whom utter failure is a way of life.

Regardless of political orientation, Americans should be outraged. The Bush junta has no plan for the Iraq follies except more deaths, more waste, more shame; they have no plan to deal with gasoline prices that will soon soar north of $4 a gallon; they have no plan for the economy except a stupid tax rebate scheme that will send Americans down to Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target and Circuit City, there to gorge themselves on products – made in China. And in the long run this helps us – and by us I mean people who work for wages -- how? Public investment in school construction, teacher training, highway and bridge repair, energy conservation, job training, mass transit projects that put money into America and make that money multiply – that would be a true stimulus program. But the Bush Junta’s “free market, private is always better than public” ideology prevents them from taking that sensible course; the best idea they can come up with is to give people money so they can buy imported goods made by exploited workers.

The Grapes of Wrath, then, and now. Maybe it’s true that everything that dies one day comes back, maybe we are once again heading into an era when government is seen as an entity that counterbalances corporate power and provides for the common good, rather than an evil that stifles, strangles and steals.

Remember your Steinbeck: “We all got to figure. There’s some way to stop this. It’s not like lightning or earthquakes. We’ve got a bad thing made by men, and by God that’s something we can change.”

4,000, and Counting

George W. Bush sounded as dim-witted as ever when he said, upon hearing of the 4,000th American killed in Iraq, that our dead had laid a “foundation for peace.”

Remind me -- was there War in Iraq prior to the American invasion?

Was there chaos, violence, car-bombings, suicide bombings, sectarian death squads, ethnic cleansing, and a mass internal exodus?

Prior to the U.S. Invasion and Occupation, did the electric grid work, did clean water flow through the pipes, did raw sewage get treated and could Iraqis move about the country in relative freedom and safety?

The people who brought us the Invasion and Occupation told us – told the entire world – that the armed action would be brief, relatively bloodless, and monetarily cheap; they told us that everyday Iraqis would rise up and establish a glorious Democracy in the Middle East; they told us that the Americans would be welcomed as deliriously as the French welcomed Americans in Paris in 1944.

Intelligent people the world over knew that invading Iraq for its purported role in the 9/11 terror attacks was an insane foray into a vipers nest; intelligent people knew that there was no logical nexus between 9/11 and Iraq; and those same intelligent people were quite certain that no Weapons of Mass Destruction would turn up in Iraq. When Bush changed the rationale from rooting out WMD to “liberating” the long-suffering Iraqi people, intelligent people knew the President was full of shit.

If the sole point of the Iraq Invasion and Occupation was freeing people living under tyranny, when is the U.S. going to invade Cuba, North Korea, Pakistan or one of several suffering African nations? Aren’t the people in those places worthy of a gift of freedom from the U.S.?

No matter how we mourn 4,000 American dead – and all of us should examine our complicity in this mess, though none more than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and a number of lesser arrogant assholes -- ordinary, innocent Iraqis have suffered many times more. Every Iraqi killed or injured is like the proverbial pebble in a pond, emanating outwards, touching dozens of lives – mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends.

The failed Occupation of Iraq may have vanished from American TV screens, but the consequence of our stupidity, hubris, and foolishness goes on, and on. We may bestow medals on the survivors of this grim exercise in imperial overreach, call them heroes, name streets and federal buildings in their honor, but none of that hoopla will erase the fact that this Invasion and Occupation was based on lies and propaganda and had nothing to do with keeping the U.S. secure.

Tear Off the Scab, Expose the Wound

I don’t understand the big media flap over statements made by Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., Barack Obama’s former pastor. Why is Obama being held accountable for statements made by someone else, statements taken out of context, statements that probably resonated with the largely African-American audience to which they were aimed? Dr. Wright has no doubt seen his share of poverty, despair and hopelessness. Dr. Wright’s job is to give hope to people who have none. In the short video clip that has become so familiar to TV news viewers, I didn’t hear Dr. Wright calling for African-Americans to rise up and smite their white oppressors; I heard him describing a reality that African-Americans know all too well.

White Americans – and particularly Conservative white Americans – become nervous when an African-American person brings up the race issue. Whites would much rather believe that institutionalized racism is long behind us and that we are now color-blind, with no need for corrective measures like Affirmative Action; whites want desperately to believe that only merit matters; and I think whites desperately wish to believe that the incarceration rate for African-American males is disproportionate because of some inbred lack of ambition, responsibility or morality within African-American males rather than the predictable result of a society where racism is still prevalent. Overt signs of racism may be less obvious today than they were in 1940 or 1950 or 1960, but the underlying assumptions about black people in the minds of white people are still alive and well.

White Americans would do well to read James Baldwin who wrote in an essay called “The Fire Next Time” that, “The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace…” In other words, African-Americans could see America for what it is, warts and all, rather than an idealized picture that bears no resemblance to reality.

Sounds somewhat familiar, doesn’t it? Sounds like the myths and distortions bandied around every day by white right-wing radio commentators like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who tell their largely white audiences that racism is all in the heads of black people, an excuse blacks use to account for their failure to lift themselves out of poverty, drug addiction, and violence.

Perhaps the white media is upset about Dr. Wright’s sermon because it rips the scab off the American scar and exposes the wound that no amount of myth-making by white people can heal.

Icing On Bush's Cake

Do you still believe in the Ownership Society, in the sanctity of the Free Market, in endless tax cuts, and that Government, at every level, is an evil that must be rooted out?

Last Friday, President Bush attempted to reassure financial titans that the American economy is still rosy. Bush tried to make light of the crisis engulfing the banking industry, but nobody in the audience believed him; today the DOW opened 143 points lower. Bush’s fantasies are shop-worn. It’s certain he will leave office in disgrace, with the United States stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan, the economy in disarray, and average citizens far worse off than they were when the Supreme Court installed Bush & Cheney in the White House.

Where is Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Alan Greenspan, Tom DeLay, fat Rush Limbaugh and all the rest of the cheerleaders for the “permanent Republican majority?” Bush & Cheney tried their best to implement every absurd neo-con idea and look what happened?

Bush will make more jokes and gaffes today when he tries to assure Americans that the economy is fine, just suffering from a temporary setback, but he won’t be any more believable today than he was last week.

Of course, the mainstream American media is crying for the poor employees of Bear Stearns, but where was the media when those employees and Bear executives were raking in cash from sub-prime mortgages and other shady investment instruments? In the salad days, when the good money was flowing, the media had nothing but positive things to say about the American economy and the marvelous “creativity” of the Titans of Finance.

Five years in Iraq, billions poured into that mess, no end in sight. Are you still worried about “family values” and the “personal morality” of the President? How did Bill Clinton’s personal indiscretion in 1998 harm you? According to Gingrich and the other hypocrites who called for Clinton’s head, that piss-ant scandal was the worst event to befall America since Pearl Harbor, a sure sign of our moral decay and imminent collapse. Compared to the wholesale mess we’re in today, Clinton-Lewinsky was a Saturday afternoon picnic.

PENIS DEFEATS BRAIN -- AGAIN

OK, Eliot Spitzer, here’s the first question I want to ask you: was that young hooker worth it? Second question: did it ever occur to you that cash money is untraceable?

Jesus, Eliot Spitzer’s a brilliant guy with a first-rate pedigree and a reputation as a kick-ass anti-corporate warrior, but it goes to show that when a man leads with his dick instead of his brain, terrible things usually happen.

The moral side of the Spitzer mess doesn’t trouble me too much – powerful men have sought solace with prostitutes for millennia. Flagging a hooker down on a Manhattan street or making arrangements through an agency is a personal decision that, for most men, carries personal consequences, such as, being rolled by a pimp, contracting an STD, or having one’s spouse find out. For a high-profile elected official, it’s all of those risks and more. Spitzer’s political career is finished, for now anyway, at least until he emerges from Rehab cleansed of his sexual addiction. That’s probably a year or three down the trail, and until then Spitzer has a family to feed and clothe. Even in the sleazy world of big-time corporate law, it’s unlikely a reputable firm would take a chance and hire Spitzer.

Until the dust settles and public memory fades – and if you don’t believe that it will, remember that Bill Clinton is today stomping the campaign trail for his wife, despite that fact that he played hide-the-cigar-in-your-pussy with an intern in the Oval Office – Spitzer might try becoming a lobbyist for a condom manufacturer or perhaps the sex toy industry. Experts generally advise job seekers to stick with what they know, and Eliot obviously knows a thing or two about the tawdry world of sex.

At least Spitzer wasn’t nailed with child pornography on his computer or the names of underage boys on his cell phone; he didn’t, as far as I know, bugger interns in his office or stage an orgy in Central Park. His “crime” was pedestrian, stupid, pathetic; the former NY governor is obviously hauling some heavy baggage around, unsatisfied in his own bedroom, and under a lot of stress; although his wife stood at his side while he informed the planet of his fuck-up, she struck me as a unforgiving lady, and I hope the Spitzer’s have a spare bedroom for Eliot.

Another politician goes down in disgrace. Ho-hum. The Republicans will crow about moral decay, spout illogical claptrap about Christian values, renew calls for the abolishment of public education (a hotbed of immorality and vice) and generally have a field day making the Spitzer story a black mark against all Democrats. NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox, and all the crass infotainment programs will continue to trot out current and former madams and hookers, pop psychologists, sex experts and reformed perverts of every persuasion, and analyze poor Eliot to death.

Was she that good, Eliot? Could she could suck a golf ball through twenty feet of plastic tubing or shoot a ping-pong ball from her vagina? Did she do tricks, swing from the ceiling, suck you off in the shower?

I was under the impression that Ivy League schools do a better job teaching their politically ambitious students to break the law with panache; guess Eliot skipped those lessons.

The Scarlet Endorsement

What does it feel like to win the endorsement of the worst president in American history? Is it like being anointed king of a leper colony? Like being handed the keys to a Potemkin Village? Like entering a best-ball golf tournament and being informed on the first tee that your partner is Charlie Manson?

You’d think John McCain would have spent the day after clinching the GOP nomination any place except the White House. He’d have told George W. that he was sorry, but he had a previous engagement with his manicurist or his auto mechanic or his proctologist. Instead McCain stood there and accepted Bush’s endorsement, as if Bush is a serious statesman and not the greatest fuck-up since Herbert Hoover.

Memo to McCain: through pig-headed policies and slavish devotion to an empty ideology, Bush hung a rotting albatross around the GOP’s collective neck. It’s called the US Economy and it’s steaming toward a big-time crack-up the likes of which Americans haven’t seen in years.

Sure, the Democrats will pound on one another for another month or so, while McCain takes it easy, has Botox treatments, studies yoga to control his temper and continues sucking up to the Religious Right. Hillary and Barack are egomaniacs who won’t quit until they are splattered with one another’s blood. Fine, American politics is pure blood-sport, and nobody grasps that primal fact better than Hillary Clinton. Like her hubby, she’d strangle a puppy with her bare hands if it helped her win.

Huge amounts of money, time and energy will be spent by Democrats between now and the primary in Pennsylvania.

The Democrats have one glaring problem -- they are still searching for the soul they misplaced when Jimmy Carter lived in the White House. In this regard, McCain and the Republicans clearly have an advantage; Republicans have no soul whatsoever and are proud of it.

But when it comes down to it, McCain is saddled with the Republican record of the past eight years: a failed occupation in Iraq and an economy in tatters, gas prices sky high, the federal deficit ballooning by the day and Wall Street jittery. Even a tree stump like John Kerry could take McCain out under these circumstances. What’s McCain going to do, run on the Bush record!

I hope he does, just as I hope he can get used to the smell of rotting albatross.

Another Tuesday

The political handicappers and pundits are busy this morning, crunching numbers on their laptops and Blackberries, checking in with ground troops in the Obama and Clinton campaigns, and readying the story that will be the Story in the news cycle for the next 48 hours or so.

Obama Triumphant or Hillary Down but Not Out!

Can Hillary come back from the brink? If she makes semi-decent showings in Ohio and Texas, will she remain in the race? If she tanks again, will she bow out gracefully and make the party "unity" speech?

Either way, it will be tough for Hillary. Until the Obama phenomenon exploded, Hillary was the presumptive Democratic nominee, the woman who was making history; all she had to do was avoid a major gaffe and make sure her husband kept his hands off female campaign volunteers. Hillary had big name campaign advisors and consultants, the political pedigree, and a wad of cash. What could possibly go wrong?

Obama-mania. Oprah.

On the stump, Hillary speaks of her experience, her judgment, and her intimate knowledge of the way the White House works; she knows how to get a club sandwich from the kitchen staff at 2:30 a.m., the best places to hide Easter eggs and where the Christmas decorations are stored. She’s ready to move in, clean out every last vestige of Bush and Cheney, and begin another chapter in the history books.

Hillary wants the public to like her, but many of us can’t because we remember the Clinton years differently than she does. Too much NAFTA, too much cozying up to corporate interests, too many hints of scandal from all the people the Clintons fucked over and abandoned on their way to power.

At this point in the campaign, I couldn’t tell you what Barack Obama stands for, whether he’s more of the same or if he has my – and people like me – economic interests at heart. Barack is all gauzy poetry right now, juxtaposed against Hillary’s wonkishness; Barack comes alive on the stump while Hillary turns wooden; Barack dances, jabs and ducks, Hillary stands toe-to-toe, prepared for a slugfest.

But when is Barack going to start identifying the ideology that underlies the failed policies Conservatives have foisted on the country since Reagan? When is he going to offer a different narrative of the way things can be? “Change We Can Believe In” is a catchy slogan, but what the fuck does it mean for citizens who are terrorized and shell-shocked – not by religious nutjobs from Iran or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia – but from domestic economic policies – American policies -- that have denuded the middle-class and created a devastating gulf between the rich and everyone else? When is Barack going to speak out on the corporate fantasy-land that America has become? When is he going to tie the futility of the Iraq Occupation to our economic woes?

Maybe never, who knows? If Barack winds up as the Democratic nominee, he’ll have to find a message that resonates with Independents and even moderate Republicans, which means he’ll move away from fundamental questions and toward the soft, compromising middle.

Over in the GOP camp, McCain’s handlers are honing their man’s message, which at this point comes down to a few key phrases: no new taxes, ever; al Qaeda operatives are hiding under every rock and they hate America; God must be mentioned frequently; and for good measure, just so McCain doesn’t forget under pressure, the handlers repeat these magic words: tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts.

This circus will be over, eventually.