If any more proof was needed that the Republican Party has drifted so far to the right that it has completely lost its moorings, the recent Tea Bag protests put the case to rest.
It’s clear now that Republican heavyweights and party icons alike have lost the ability to think rationally, let alone critically. The Republicans can’t remember what happened on election night last November let alone what happened in 1932 or 1964. When John Boehner crows that, “the people have spoken and they don’t like what’s happened the past three months,” he simply erases any doubt that the hours he’s spent in a tanning bed have fried his brain.
The central Republican idea that Americans are over-taxed isn’t supported by fact, particularly when one studies tax rates for the wealthiest Americans or compares tax rates in the United States with those of other industrialized countries. Republicans talk a lot about “socialism” and the evils of transferring wealth from the productive rich to the slovenly poor, but they’re oblivious to the fact that for nearly 30 years, the transfer has been in the opposite direction – from the working class and the middle class to the wealthy.
I give the Republicans and their corporate clients credit for seizing absolute control of the terms and norms that govern economic discourse in the United States. The Republicans and the corporate class took over the mass media (scrapping the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 helped) and use its enormous power to promote their viewpoint, focusing zealously on investors and Wall Street, and paying lip service, if that, to working Americans, wages, and middle class buying power.
Here’s a case in point: every weekday morning on the local news, the news reader dutifully reports the opening numbers on Wall Street, as if those numbers have any significance for the people rushing out the door to work for wages that have remained stagnant for decades; for people up to their asses in credit card debt or struggling to hold onto their homes; for people who long ago realized that the American Dream is a fantasy beyond their reach. Even with Wall Street disgraced and in ruins, the mainstream media follows the stock numbers, day in and day out.
The other thing I gave Republicans credit for is convincing working Americans that small government, privatization, outsourcing, and the “free” market actually make them more economically secure. It took many years to sell this notion, and there’s little doubt that an inept, weak and defensive Democratic party aided the Republican cause. By the second Clinton administration, it was difficult to tell Democrats from Republicans, so chummy had Democrats become with corporate America.
The conservative wing of the Republican Party had a genius for propaganda – because it takes no less than genius to convince millions of voters to support ideology and policy that actually work against their self-interest; to convince voters that all taxation is bad; to convince voters that effective government is impossible; to convince voters that the free market is always right, just and self-correcting; to convince the average working person that unions are bad for workers; and to convince the public that the wealthy have no obligation to anyone but themselves. Karl Rove dreamed of a permanent Republican majority, and this might have come to pass if George W. Bush hadn’t been such a bumbler. Bush’s abject failure exposed conservative ideology as empty, immoral and corrupt.
The American public knows something is fundamentally out of whack in the way the nation is organized. The public finally grasps, I think, that plutocracy masquerading as democracy cannot address pressing problems or satisfy human needs. The political class – particularly on the Republican side – doesn’t get this at all, but the majority of citizens do because they are living through the effects.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
The Gallows are Empty
“O, sir, to willful men/the injuries that they themselves procure/must be their schoolmasters.” William Shakespeare, King Lear
The Masters of the Universe peddled dreams to dreamers. They told the gullible that reward would come without work, that dross could become gold with no more than a brief incantation and the flick of a magic wand. The gullible wanted to believe it was so. The game was rigged all along, but only the masters and their minions knew the extent of the ruse. “Don’t worry, the masters said. “The old verities of work and reward are no more. This is the new economy. Trust us.”
And now the dream has been unmasked for a fraud, the benevolent Market God exposed as a charlatan; instead of gold, the streets outside the money palaces are paved with cracked bones, and the stench of broken lives sullies the air. Despite the wreckage and the carnage, the pain and the suffering that lay at their feet, the Masters are untouchable; the stocks that should hold them fast are empty, and none of them will ever mount the gallows.
Regulators were present but rendered powerless by a belief that the Market would reward the virtuous and punish the incompetent. Another falsehood. The virtuous were ignored and the incompetent followed with slavish devotion by people intelligent enough to know better. Virtue and ethics were an old school notion, the last refuge of overly cautious souls out of touch with the new order. This too proved false. Wisdom born of experience and bedrock values never goes out of style because while the world has changed, humankind has not.
Old lessons must be re-learned every generation or so. One cannot stand before an empty fireplace and expect it to give heat; one must first go to the woodpile and swing an axe, break a sweat splitting logs, and then haul those logs to the fireplace. Reward follows work, not the other way around. It takes effort to build an edifice that will survive good times and bad times, war and famine, disease and drought and deluge, not to mention the caprice of politics.
There is no free lunch, in other words, and precious few shortcuts. When a man or woman promises something valuable for what seems like nothing, one is wise to withhold one’s trust long enough to defy the old adage that a sucker is born every minute.
The Masters of the Universe peddled dreams to dreamers. They told the gullible that reward would come without work, that dross could become gold with no more than a brief incantation and the flick of a magic wand. The gullible wanted to believe it was so. The game was rigged all along, but only the masters and their minions knew the extent of the ruse. “Don’t worry, the masters said. “The old verities of work and reward are no more. This is the new economy. Trust us.”
And now the dream has been unmasked for a fraud, the benevolent Market God exposed as a charlatan; instead of gold, the streets outside the money palaces are paved with cracked bones, and the stench of broken lives sullies the air. Despite the wreckage and the carnage, the pain and the suffering that lay at their feet, the Masters are untouchable; the stocks that should hold them fast are empty, and none of them will ever mount the gallows.
Regulators were present but rendered powerless by a belief that the Market would reward the virtuous and punish the incompetent. Another falsehood. The virtuous were ignored and the incompetent followed with slavish devotion by people intelligent enough to know better. Virtue and ethics were an old school notion, the last refuge of overly cautious souls out of touch with the new order. This too proved false. Wisdom born of experience and bedrock values never goes out of style because while the world has changed, humankind has not.
Old lessons must be re-learned every generation or so. One cannot stand before an empty fireplace and expect it to give heat; one must first go to the woodpile and swing an axe, break a sweat splitting logs, and then haul those logs to the fireplace. Reward follows work, not the other way around. It takes effort to build an edifice that will survive good times and bad times, war and famine, disease and drought and deluge, not to mention the caprice of politics.
There is no free lunch, in other words, and precious few shortcuts. When a man or woman promises something valuable for what seems like nothing, one is wise to withhold one’s trust long enough to defy the old adage that a sucker is born every minute.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Fiction: Duke in Love, Part II
I hung out with Duke for another hour, long enough to confirm that he really was in a bad way, absolutely torn by the depth of his feelings for the Swede and the Fijian. Part of me pitied him, part envied him – this audacious sixty-two year old outlaw who broke most of the drug laws on the books of California and the United States, not to mention various other sovereign nations; this globetrotter who carefully fashioned his life so that he was beholden to no one and answered to as few people as possible.
It took balls to do that, balls and drive and cunning and a kind of refined selfishness few people posses. As far as I knew, Duke had never married or fathered any children. Now that I think about it, whenever the subject of wives and children came up – and it arose rarely -- Duke was quick to change the subject to drugs or poker, politics, history or college basketball.
“I’m fucked,” he moaned, “totally fucked. Of all the things that can bring a man down, I never thought it would be Love. The DEA or the IRS, maybe; a dope dealer unable to appreciate my sense of humor, but not a couple of beautiful young women. Shit, how did this happen? I have no idea. I met the Fijian, bang, stone in love; then I met the Swede in Moscow, bang, Cupid strikes again, the cruel bastard.”
In all the years I’d known him, Duke had never been at a loss for what to do next. Even if his next move was impulsive, crazy, illegal or potentially dangerous to his health or person, Duke would do something. For Duke, skirting the edge and drifting across the yellow line at high speed with his eyes shut was what made life worth living. Or at least it did before he met the Fijian and the Swede and swapped his American-made car for a Toyota Prius.
Duke’s misery got me thinking about men and women, marriage, companionship, family – the whole big ball of wax that had been a central feature of my life for the better part of sixteen years. I couldn’t picture Duke calmly accepting the confines of marriage any more than I could picture a woman putting up with his unusual habits. Then again, some New Age types claim that a soul mate exists for each of us, so maybe it wasn’t out of the question.
Unlikely, yes; impossible, no.
“Must I choose between them?” Duke asked, and before I could reply answered his own question. “Of course I must. What the fuck other choice do I have? Even I can’t manage to be in love with two women at the same time. It’s fucking impossible. The Swede or the Fijian, the Fijian or the Swede. I’ve been racking my brain for a scheme that would allow me to have them both. I want them both. Conventional morality and the laws of physics say that I cannot have what I want. I have no use for convention of any kind, but physics can’t be ignored. Do you see how tormented I am? I’m not a decent, stand-up guy who can easily consign his heart to one woman for the rest of his natural days.”
“Have you ever tried it?” I asked.
Duke looked at me as if that was the dumbest question he’d ever heard.
“It’s my learned opinion from years of careful observation that most married people are bored to tears with their mates. Am I right?”
“Well,” I said. “Marriage is a complex equation. The variables are practically infinite.”
“On the other hand,” Duke said, popping a large white pill into his mouth, “married people that appear truly content make me suspicious. You can’t live in close proximity to another person without sooner or later grating on their nerves. Passion can’t survive forever, either. When it goes, what’s left? I’ll tell you – routine, soul-killing routine.”
“You have to figure out a way to keep the relationship fresh,” I said.
“Thank you, Dr. Phil,” Duke said. “That’s really insightful.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m being sarcastic.”
“I know.”
“This is killing me. Even my sleep is troubled. When I dream about the Swede, the Fijian enters the picture with a straight razor and slices my nuts off. When it’s the other way around, the Swede blows my head off with a shotgun. Cruel portents, don’t you think?”
“You’ve got it bad, man. No mortal man can survive having two women under his skin at the same time. You have to choose.”
Duke popped another pill in his mouth, left the room, and returned with a half dollar coin. “You flip it, I’ll call it in the air. Heads the Swede, tails the Fijian.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. I have to save what remains of my sanity. Flipping a coin is how I make all my important decisions. The Universe laughs at our best-laid plans anyway, so why not leave it to chance? The odds aren’t that bad.”
“Yes, but…”
“Flip it. Whatever it is, I accept my fate.”
It took balls to do that, balls and drive and cunning and a kind of refined selfishness few people posses. As far as I knew, Duke had never married or fathered any children. Now that I think about it, whenever the subject of wives and children came up – and it arose rarely -- Duke was quick to change the subject to drugs or poker, politics, history or college basketball.
“I’m fucked,” he moaned, “totally fucked. Of all the things that can bring a man down, I never thought it would be Love. The DEA or the IRS, maybe; a dope dealer unable to appreciate my sense of humor, but not a couple of beautiful young women. Shit, how did this happen? I have no idea. I met the Fijian, bang, stone in love; then I met the Swede in Moscow, bang, Cupid strikes again, the cruel bastard.”
In all the years I’d known him, Duke had never been at a loss for what to do next. Even if his next move was impulsive, crazy, illegal or potentially dangerous to his health or person, Duke would do something. For Duke, skirting the edge and drifting across the yellow line at high speed with his eyes shut was what made life worth living. Or at least it did before he met the Fijian and the Swede and swapped his American-made car for a Toyota Prius.
Duke’s misery got me thinking about men and women, marriage, companionship, family – the whole big ball of wax that had been a central feature of my life for the better part of sixteen years. I couldn’t picture Duke calmly accepting the confines of marriage any more than I could picture a woman putting up with his unusual habits. Then again, some New Age types claim that a soul mate exists for each of us, so maybe it wasn’t out of the question.
Unlikely, yes; impossible, no.
“Must I choose between them?” Duke asked, and before I could reply answered his own question. “Of course I must. What the fuck other choice do I have? Even I can’t manage to be in love with two women at the same time. It’s fucking impossible. The Swede or the Fijian, the Fijian or the Swede. I’ve been racking my brain for a scheme that would allow me to have them both. I want them both. Conventional morality and the laws of physics say that I cannot have what I want. I have no use for convention of any kind, but physics can’t be ignored. Do you see how tormented I am? I’m not a decent, stand-up guy who can easily consign his heart to one woman for the rest of his natural days.”
“Have you ever tried it?” I asked.
Duke looked at me as if that was the dumbest question he’d ever heard.
“It’s my learned opinion from years of careful observation that most married people are bored to tears with their mates. Am I right?”
“Well,” I said. “Marriage is a complex equation. The variables are practically infinite.”
“On the other hand,” Duke said, popping a large white pill into his mouth, “married people that appear truly content make me suspicious. You can’t live in close proximity to another person without sooner or later grating on their nerves. Passion can’t survive forever, either. When it goes, what’s left? I’ll tell you – routine, soul-killing routine.”
“You have to figure out a way to keep the relationship fresh,” I said.
“Thank you, Dr. Phil,” Duke said. “That’s really insightful.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m being sarcastic.”
“I know.”
“This is killing me. Even my sleep is troubled. When I dream about the Swede, the Fijian enters the picture with a straight razor and slices my nuts off. When it’s the other way around, the Swede blows my head off with a shotgun. Cruel portents, don’t you think?”
“You’ve got it bad, man. No mortal man can survive having two women under his skin at the same time. You have to choose.”
Duke popped another pill in his mouth, left the room, and returned with a half dollar coin. “You flip it, I’ll call it in the air. Heads the Swede, tails the Fijian.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. I have to save what remains of my sanity. Flipping a coin is how I make all my important decisions. The Universe laughs at our best-laid plans anyway, so why not leave it to chance? The odds aren’t that bad.”
“Yes, but…”
“Flip it. Whatever it is, I accept my fate.”
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Golden Shower
I was sitting in Shaloob’s the other day, waiting for my chicken wrap, when Wolf Blitzer appeared on the flat-screen above the bar. My opinion of Wolf Blitzer has always been low, on a par with bill collectors and telemarketers, but in this segment about the American economy Wolf outdid himself.
Swear to God Wolf started jabbering about how Wall Street and the financial sector are the keys to our recovery and future prosperity. Any sane American citizen living outside of Manhattan and the DC Beltway would have thought that Blitzer had finally plunged over the edge and into the abyss; he sounded like a paid shill for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or the American Society of Overpaid CEO’s (there’s no such organization, I just made it up, but you get the idea.)
If the American people have realized anything since last fall when the financial system went south and Bernie Madoff admitted that his empire was an empty shell, it’s that Wall Street’s comings and goings, ups and downs, peaks and valleys, surges and declines, have nothing to do with the economic prosperity of the average American family. Nothing, nada. During the Bush years, when no corporate CEO, hedge fund operator, bond trader or real estate shyster was left behind, working Americans lost ground, acres of ground. Wages flat-lined. The cost of medical insurance skyrocketed. College tuition soared into the stratosphere. The only way working people could maintain the illusion that the American Dream was within their grasp was to borrow like fiends and hope to hit the Lottery.
It took far too long, but Joe and Jane Public are finally waking up to the cold, unpleasant reality that the great American casino called Wall Street, aided and abetted by lobbyists and far too many Members of Congress imbued with the instincts of pimps and street hustlers, is a game rigged in favor of the few at the expense of the many. The people know now that they don’t stand a chance in the game and that the heart of the American Dream is barely beating. You can hear the people’s rumblings, the slow recognition that they have been sold out and ripped off, duped and played for fools.
When the CEO’s of the Big 3 auto companies jetted into Washington DC looking for a taxpayer handout, their chief strategy for achieving a recovery was to strong arm the UAW into making wage and benefit concessions. Forget the fact that the UAW has been ceding ground at the bargaining table for years now, trading concessions for jobs – the CEO’s automatically demanded more sacrifice from workers. Several Senators from southern, right-to-work states leapt on this Blame-the-UAW bandwagon, Limbaugh and Hannity pumped life into the myth, and before long the average UAW member was making $70 an hour. How could GM, Ford or Chrysler compete against the world with that albatross around their ankles?
Contrast the UAW with AIG, corporate basket case and recipient of billions of taxpayer dollars, whose top brass nonetheless argued strenuously that AIG was “contractually” obligated to pay bonuses to its top executives, even those that played a direct role in the reckless practices that sunk AIG in the first place. The fact that AIG was a ward of the taxpayers held no sway whatsoever. Unlike the UAW contract, which simply had to be renegotiated if not abrogated altogether, AIG couldn’t break its solemn obligation to its executive class, dozens of whom no longer work for AIG.
Have the people been duped? You bet. For decades. By the likes of Ronnie Reagan and Milton Freidman and Alan Greenspan and Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay and Jim Cramer and Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers and Lou Dobbs and Steve Forbes and John McCain and every other prosperous, comfortable white guy who argued that the key to prosperity was to elevate investors at the expense of workers and let the riches trickle down.
Like a golden shower.
Swear to God Wolf started jabbering about how Wall Street and the financial sector are the keys to our recovery and future prosperity. Any sane American citizen living outside of Manhattan and the DC Beltway would have thought that Blitzer had finally plunged over the edge and into the abyss; he sounded like a paid shill for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or the American Society of Overpaid CEO’s (there’s no such organization, I just made it up, but you get the idea.)
If the American people have realized anything since last fall when the financial system went south and Bernie Madoff admitted that his empire was an empty shell, it’s that Wall Street’s comings and goings, ups and downs, peaks and valleys, surges and declines, have nothing to do with the economic prosperity of the average American family. Nothing, nada. During the Bush years, when no corporate CEO, hedge fund operator, bond trader or real estate shyster was left behind, working Americans lost ground, acres of ground. Wages flat-lined. The cost of medical insurance skyrocketed. College tuition soared into the stratosphere. The only way working people could maintain the illusion that the American Dream was within their grasp was to borrow like fiends and hope to hit the Lottery.
It took far too long, but Joe and Jane Public are finally waking up to the cold, unpleasant reality that the great American casino called Wall Street, aided and abetted by lobbyists and far too many Members of Congress imbued with the instincts of pimps and street hustlers, is a game rigged in favor of the few at the expense of the many. The people know now that they don’t stand a chance in the game and that the heart of the American Dream is barely beating. You can hear the people’s rumblings, the slow recognition that they have been sold out and ripped off, duped and played for fools.
When the CEO’s of the Big 3 auto companies jetted into Washington DC looking for a taxpayer handout, their chief strategy for achieving a recovery was to strong arm the UAW into making wage and benefit concessions. Forget the fact that the UAW has been ceding ground at the bargaining table for years now, trading concessions for jobs – the CEO’s automatically demanded more sacrifice from workers. Several Senators from southern, right-to-work states leapt on this Blame-the-UAW bandwagon, Limbaugh and Hannity pumped life into the myth, and before long the average UAW member was making $70 an hour. How could GM, Ford or Chrysler compete against the world with that albatross around their ankles?
Contrast the UAW with AIG, corporate basket case and recipient of billions of taxpayer dollars, whose top brass nonetheless argued strenuously that AIG was “contractually” obligated to pay bonuses to its top executives, even those that played a direct role in the reckless practices that sunk AIG in the first place. The fact that AIG was a ward of the taxpayers held no sway whatsoever. Unlike the UAW contract, which simply had to be renegotiated if not abrogated altogether, AIG couldn’t break its solemn obligation to its executive class, dozens of whom no longer work for AIG.
Have the people been duped? You bet. For decades. By the likes of Ronnie Reagan and Milton Freidman and Alan Greenspan and Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay and Jim Cramer and Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers and Lou Dobbs and Steve Forbes and John McCain and every other prosperous, comfortable white guy who argued that the key to prosperity was to elevate investors at the expense of workers and let the riches trickle down.
Like a golden shower.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Too Big to Fail, Too Dumb to Succeed
What has AIG done with all the taxpayer money it has received in the last six months? When will AIG be considered worthy of failure? What have current and future taxpayers received in return for our “rescue” of AIG? And how many more times will AIG turn to the Federal government for an infusion of taxpayer dough?
Do you feel screwed yet? Regardless of your gender, do you feel like you’ve been bent over a redwood stump and gang-raped by a bunch of lumberjacks?
I’m not disparaging lumberjacks here. I trust men and women who work for a living much more than I do the financial and political elites who run this country.
Of late my ire for the financial class has petered out. The Titans of Finance did exactly what any good Capitalist would do under similar circumstances: they took maximum advantage of every break, loophole and inch of latitude given them by the politicians; then the Titans got greedy and then they became cocky and in a very short time they ran the financial system off the rails, as under-supervised capitalists are wont to do every generation or so.
No, the Titans of Finance acted predictably, which is why I reserve outrage for the politicians – Republicans primarily, but plenty of Democrats, too -- who left the financial system to its own perverse devices, who got caught up in irrational exuberance, in the seemingly magical transformation of tainted assets into gold bullion, of suburban homes whose values knew no ceiling. I’m not an economist, but I watched this castle of sand being built and knew it was a façade that would crumble when the first big wave smashed against it.
But what really boils my blood is the fact that billions of taxpayer dollars have been forked over to incompetents and criminals without an hour of public hearings and open debate, without a vote by the people’s representatives, and largely without conditions for performance or repayment on the part of the recipients. Contrast Washington’s no-strings-attached giveaway to those deemed “too big to fail,” with our local school district, where a single expenditure of $10,000 is carefully scrutinized.
It’s straight corporate welfare, isn’t it? Doesn’t the same moral hazard theory apply to Wall Street elites as it did to single mothers receiving Federal assistance for childcare and job training expenses? Remember the fanfare and self-congratulation when the Clinton Administration ended welfare as we know it? If you can remember that far back, Congress cut those mothers off – for their own good, of course – because we simply couldn’t allow them to become dependent on federal handouts.
Even now, many months after the first handouts were made, the Treasury Department has only a vague idea of what has become of our money. Under questioning by Congress, Treasury officials shrug or offer vague explanations about the complexities of modern banking, derivatives and hedge funds.
Banks and giant insurance outfits rarely have trouble accounting for their profits or obscene CEO pay packages or the millions they save by moving production to China or Thailand. The only time their math skills fail, apparently, is when they’re asked to account for billions of taxpayer dollars.
Do you feel screwed yet? Regardless of your gender, do you feel like you’ve been bent over a redwood stump and gang-raped by a bunch of lumberjacks?
I’m not disparaging lumberjacks here. I trust men and women who work for a living much more than I do the financial and political elites who run this country.
Of late my ire for the financial class has petered out. The Titans of Finance did exactly what any good Capitalist would do under similar circumstances: they took maximum advantage of every break, loophole and inch of latitude given them by the politicians; then the Titans got greedy and then they became cocky and in a very short time they ran the financial system off the rails, as under-supervised capitalists are wont to do every generation or so.
No, the Titans of Finance acted predictably, which is why I reserve outrage for the politicians – Republicans primarily, but plenty of Democrats, too -- who left the financial system to its own perverse devices, who got caught up in irrational exuberance, in the seemingly magical transformation of tainted assets into gold bullion, of suburban homes whose values knew no ceiling. I’m not an economist, but I watched this castle of sand being built and knew it was a façade that would crumble when the first big wave smashed against it.
But what really boils my blood is the fact that billions of taxpayer dollars have been forked over to incompetents and criminals without an hour of public hearings and open debate, without a vote by the people’s representatives, and largely without conditions for performance or repayment on the part of the recipients. Contrast Washington’s no-strings-attached giveaway to those deemed “too big to fail,” with our local school district, where a single expenditure of $10,000 is carefully scrutinized.
It’s straight corporate welfare, isn’t it? Doesn’t the same moral hazard theory apply to Wall Street elites as it did to single mothers receiving Federal assistance for childcare and job training expenses? Remember the fanfare and self-congratulation when the Clinton Administration ended welfare as we know it? If you can remember that far back, Congress cut those mothers off – for their own good, of course – because we simply couldn’t allow them to become dependent on federal handouts.
Even now, many months after the first handouts were made, the Treasury Department has only a vague idea of what has become of our money. Under questioning by Congress, Treasury officials shrug or offer vague explanations about the complexities of modern banking, derivatives and hedge funds.
Banks and giant insurance outfits rarely have trouble accounting for their profits or obscene CEO pay packages or the millions they save by moving production to China or Thailand. The only time their math skills fail, apparently, is when they’re asked to account for billions of taxpayer dollars.
Monday, March 02, 2009
Duke in Love
I heard Duke was back in town from a mutual acquaintance. I hadn’t seen or heard a peep from Duke for eight months, not since he abandoned his quixotic run for a seat on the local school board.
“I would have assaulted one of the incumbents ten minutes into the first meeting,” he explained during a 3:00 a.m. phone call. “And I guarantee you I wouldn’t have suffered for more than two minutes some of the crackpots who speak to the board at every meeting. Rights are one thing, but repeated public displays of stupidity are another. I’ll be out of touch for a while. Keep your sentences short and your bowels open”
The first thing I noticed when I pulled into Duke’s driveway was the new, dark blue Toyota Prius parked there. Had Duke finally given up on the American automobile industry? Over the years I’d known him Duke had always driven American cars: an Impala, an LTD, a Caddy, a Malibu, a cherry GTO and a Lincoln Continental, among them.
When I stepped into his kitchen Duke was doing bong hits that made Michael Phelps look like an amateur. He tossed me a bottle of Rolling Rock and waved me to a stool.
“My Mexican supplier was murdered a week ago by a rival cartel,” he said. “This is the last of the shit I bought from him, may he rest in peace. Mexico is on the verge of imploding. What’s Obama going to do when that action spills across the border?”
“Where’ve you been?”
“All over the fuckin’ place. Vanua Levu. Machu Pichu. Mexico City. Lisbon. Amsterdam. Moscow. I even spent a couple of days in Vatican City. I find the very idea of a Pope unsettling. Do you know who said, ‘A man in love is a fool?’”
“Shakespeare?”
“Maybe. You still writing the blog?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyone read it?”
“Beats me.”
“No feedback?”
“Rarely.”
“Of course you wish for that. Every writer wants to be read, and all writers are insecure.”
“Excepting Philip Roth, I suppose that’s true. All I can do is put the stuff out there.”
Duke took another hit from the bong. “I’m into some very weird, very heavy doings. Sixty-two fucking years old and I’m stone in love – with two women. Never been more miserable in my entire life. It’s like being trampled by elephants. I can’t get these women out of my brain. I go to sleep thinking of them, wake up thinking of them, can’t wait to see them, and can’t bear to say goodbye. I’m experiencing all the classic symptoms: food tastes better, music sounds better, and life feels sweeter. It’s a disaster. It’s the end of my life as I’ve fashioned it. I’m no longer the sovereign of my emotions.”
“Not to be indelicate,” I said, “but how many years your junior are these women?”
“The Swede is twenty-four; the Fijian is twenty-two. It makes no fucking sense. It runs counter to the laws of Nature; the beautiful, vibrant butterfly isn’t supposed to settle on the withered flower. The Swede doesn’t want babies; the Fijian wants a brood. I’m considering Viagra. Or Cialis. Which is better?”
“You’re only comfortable when you’re in dire straits. Ever considered therapy?”
“Fuck you. I’ve got all the therapy I need right here. What’re your thoughts on polygamy? In the ancient world, princes and kings had multiple wives and begat dozens of offspring. That arrangement seems more realistic than life-long monogamy. I wonder if the Swede and the Fijian would go for it.”
“That sort of thing worked better when women had no rights and zero options,” I said. “We’re living in a different age, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Duke applied a lighter to the bong, drew in a long hit, held it, and exhaled slowly. He looked at me with profound sadness in his eyes. “Time,” he said, “ruins everything.”
“I would have assaulted one of the incumbents ten minutes into the first meeting,” he explained during a 3:00 a.m. phone call. “And I guarantee you I wouldn’t have suffered for more than two minutes some of the crackpots who speak to the board at every meeting. Rights are one thing, but repeated public displays of stupidity are another. I’ll be out of touch for a while. Keep your sentences short and your bowels open”
The first thing I noticed when I pulled into Duke’s driveway was the new, dark blue Toyota Prius parked there. Had Duke finally given up on the American automobile industry? Over the years I’d known him Duke had always driven American cars: an Impala, an LTD, a Caddy, a Malibu, a cherry GTO and a Lincoln Continental, among them.
When I stepped into his kitchen Duke was doing bong hits that made Michael Phelps look like an amateur. He tossed me a bottle of Rolling Rock and waved me to a stool.
“My Mexican supplier was murdered a week ago by a rival cartel,” he said. “This is the last of the shit I bought from him, may he rest in peace. Mexico is on the verge of imploding. What’s Obama going to do when that action spills across the border?”
“Where’ve you been?”
“All over the fuckin’ place. Vanua Levu. Machu Pichu. Mexico City. Lisbon. Amsterdam. Moscow. I even spent a couple of days in Vatican City. I find the very idea of a Pope unsettling. Do you know who said, ‘A man in love is a fool?’”
“Shakespeare?”
“Maybe. You still writing the blog?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyone read it?”
“Beats me.”
“No feedback?”
“Rarely.”
“Of course you wish for that. Every writer wants to be read, and all writers are insecure.”
“Excepting Philip Roth, I suppose that’s true. All I can do is put the stuff out there.”
Duke took another hit from the bong. “I’m into some very weird, very heavy doings. Sixty-two fucking years old and I’m stone in love – with two women. Never been more miserable in my entire life. It’s like being trampled by elephants. I can’t get these women out of my brain. I go to sleep thinking of them, wake up thinking of them, can’t wait to see them, and can’t bear to say goodbye. I’m experiencing all the classic symptoms: food tastes better, music sounds better, and life feels sweeter. It’s a disaster. It’s the end of my life as I’ve fashioned it. I’m no longer the sovereign of my emotions.”
“Not to be indelicate,” I said, “but how many years your junior are these women?”
“The Swede is twenty-four; the Fijian is twenty-two. It makes no fucking sense. It runs counter to the laws of Nature; the beautiful, vibrant butterfly isn’t supposed to settle on the withered flower. The Swede doesn’t want babies; the Fijian wants a brood. I’m considering Viagra. Or Cialis. Which is better?”
“You’re only comfortable when you’re in dire straits. Ever considered therapy?”
“Fuck you. I’ve got all the therapy I need right here. What’re your thoughts on polygamy? In the ancient world, princes and kings had multiple wives and begat dozens of offspring. That arrangement seems more realistic than life-long monogamy. I wonder if the Swede and the Fijian would go for it.”
“That sort of thing worked better when women had no rights and zero options,” I said. “We’re living in a different age, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Duke applied a lighter to the bong, drew in a long hit, held it, and exhaled slowly. He looked at me with profound sadness in his eyes. “Time,” he said, “ruins everything.”
Thursday, February 26, 2009
State of the Status Quo
The State of the Union address is an odd and atavistic piece of political theatre. I know of no institution other than the United States Congress that gives itself a standing ovation for doing absolutely nothing. Stand up, clap, sit down, clap, stand up – you get the idea; it’s about as silly as your average high school graduation ceremony. Watching men and women who can’t agree on anything -- and will without a moment’s hesitation screw one another, not to mention the people whose interests they purport to represent – laughing, smiling and yukking it up is disgusting.
To be honest, I missed Dick Cheney’s scowl and George W. Bush’s tortured sentences; I missed the stark contrast between good and evil, black and white, cowboy and Indian; I missed the hubris and the absolute certainty that Bush displayed in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
As my seven-year-old daughter says, “Those were good times, bro, good times.”
Well, not really. It’s not comforting or inspiring to know that the leader of your nation is a corrupt moron.
Obama did his best to stem the naked Fear that is sweeping across the land. The fat is deep in the fire and most people are hip to the fact that the “stimulus” package alone probably won’t succeed in lifting the nation from the doldrums. Obama said as much. But then, Obama said a lot of things; some that made Democrats leap to their feet, others that were designed to reassure Republicans that he isn’t a crazed Marxist intent on dismantling American capitalism.
Obama didn’t throw out words like “Accountability,” “Responsibility” or “Private Enterprise” by accident.
He didn’t talk about reducing the size of the Federal deficit by chance either, even though the odds of that happening in the next few years are longer than the odds of the Oakland Raiders winning next year’s Super Bowl.
Democrats wet their pants when Obama laid out a three-legged strategy for an American renaissance: energy independence, health care reform and a renewed emphasis on education. I can’t disagree with that trio, but the pragmatist within me knows it’s easy to propose such initiatives, and next to impossible to turn them into effective legislation. In this country, nothing is harder to change than the status quo. Americans don’t do what’s sensible and morally right – Americans do what’s profitable.
How much interest do you think American energy conglomerates have in renewable fuels when the petroleum status quo pays them handsomely; they will fight tooth and nail to protect that Golden Goose. Same goes for health care. Obama didn’t specify what his health care reform plan might look like, though the only sensible, cost-effective system is Universal care like that found in every nation in the industrialized world. But again, American insurance companies have an enormous profit stake in the status quo, no matter how sick, broken and inefficient it may be.
There’s a reason we’ve been talking about Universal health care since Harry Truman occupied the White House, just as there’s a reason we’ve talked about alternative sources of energy since the early 1970’s. If the lobbyists, shills, PR flaks and congress people have their way, we’ll be talking until 100 million Americans have no medical insurance and gasoline costs $8.25 a gallon.
You don’t believe that corporations would place their narrow interests above the interests of the nation as a whole? When the camera cut away from Obama and framed John Boehner and Eric Cantor, what do you think those two gentlemen were talking about? “Reform health care! Sure, sure that will happen when pigs sprout wings and pigeons stop shitting on statues.” Boehner and Cantor were having a grand time swapping strategies to protect their campaign contributors from any measure that smacks of “reform.”
Other than when he mentioned “clean coal,” a fantasy on a par with Ronald Reagan’s infatuation with the Star Wars missile defense shield, Obama made the kind of speech we’ve come to expect from him. I want to believe that Obama can inspire the country to wake up and make meaningful changes, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
To be honest, I missed Dick Cheney’s scowl and George W. Bush’s tortured sentences; I missed the stark contrast between good and evil, black and white, cowboy and Indian; I missed the hubris and the absolute certainty that Bush displayed in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
As my seven-year-old daughter says, “Those were good times, bro, good times.”
Well, not really. It’s not comforting or inspiring to know that the leader of your nation is a corrupt moron.
Obama did his best to stem the naked Fear that is sweeping across the land. The fat is deep in the fire and most people are hip to the fact that the “stimulus” package alone probably won’t succeed in lifting the nation from the doldrums. Obama said as much. But then, Obama said a lot of things; some that made Democrats leap to their feet, others that were designed to reassure Republicans that he isn’t a crazed Marxist intent on dismantling American capitalism.
Obama didn’t throw out words like “Accountability,” “Responsibility” or “Private Enterprise” by accident.
He didn’t talk about reducing the size of the Federal deficit by chance either, even though the odds of that happening in the next few years are longer than the odds of the Oakland Raiders winning next year’s Super Bowl.
Democrats wet their pants when Obama laid out a three-legged strategy for an American renaissance: energy independence, health care reform and a renewed emphasis on education. I can’t disagree with that trio, but the pragmatist within me knows it’s easy to propose such initiatives, and next to impossible to turn them into effective legislation. In this country, nothing is harder to change than the status quo. Americans don’t do what’s sensible and morally right – Americans do what’s profitable.
How much interest do you think American energy conglomerates have in renewable fuels when the petroleum status quo pays them handsomely; they will fight tooth and nail to protect that Golden Goose. Same goes for health care. Obama didn’t specify what his health care reform plan might look like, though the only sensible, cost-effective system is Universal care like that found in every nation in the industrialized world. But again, American insurance companies have an enormous profit stake in the status quo, no matter how sick, broken and inefficient it may be.
There’s a reason we’ve been talking about Universal health care since Harry Truman occupied the White House, just as there’s a reason we’ve talked about alternative sources of energy since the early 1970’s. If the lobbyists, shills, PR flaks and congress people have their way, we’ll be talking until 100 million Americans have no medical insurance and gasoline costs $8.25 a gallon.
You don’t believe that corporations would place their narrow interests above the interests of the nation as a whole? When the camera cut away from Obama and framed John Boehner and Eric Cantor, what do you think those two gentlemen were talking about? “Reform health care! Sure, sure that will happen when pigs sprout wings and pigeons stop shitting on statues.” Boehner and Cantor were having a grand time swapping strategies to protect their campaign contributors from any measure that smacks of “reform.”
Other than when he mentioned “clean coal,” a fantasy on a par with Ronald Reagan’s infatuation with the Star Wars missile defense shield, Obama made the kind of speech we’ve come to expect from him. I want to believe that Obama can inspire the country to wake up and make meaningful changes, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The Lords of Nyet
What are the Republicans drinking? Or are they all smoking opium smuggled in from the fields of Afghanistan? Or is crystal meth their drug of choice, the substance that makes them so obstinate and stupid?
From Washington DC to Sacramento, from the Federal stimulus to California’s budget fiasco, the Republicans are the party of No, Nada, Nope, Never and Nyet.
In the midst of the worst economic meltdown since the early 1930’s – a meltdown caused by pig-headed Republican policies that even the Oracle, Alan Greenspan, now admits were nothing more than smoke, mirrors and blind faith in the Free Market Gods – all Congressional Republicans have to offer is more of the same. More tax cuts. More lavish spending on weapon systems that will not rid the world of Islamic terrorists. More shredding of the social safety net and attacks on those dreaded “entitlement” programs like Medicare and Social Security.
More hocus pocus, in other words.
Out here in California, the Republicans are even more crack-addled and brain numb. For more than 100 days, Republicans in the Assembly and the Senate have held the budget process hostage, staunchly refusing to face the fact that a projected $41 billion deficit cannot be erased by spending cuts alone. While the Governor and Democratic leaders have toiled in the trenches to devise a mix of tax increases, spending cuts and borrowing to save the state from insolvency, Republicans have simply refused to go along because many are wedded to nonsensical pledges never to raise taxes under any circumstances.
Never. Ever. Never. Ever. One hand on Bible, the other over heart, read my lips and bow before bronze statues of Grover Norquist and Rush Limbaugh. We can’t cross Grover or Rush because they will tell everyone on the screwball Right that we’re Liberals and Socialists. And then we won’t be able to hop from the Assembly to the Senate and then to a Constitutional post…not that any of us are seeking a career in Government
...no, no, we believe in the sanctity of the Free Market and the glory of Private Enterprise, but someone has to protect the people from the Democrats and their never-ending lust for tax increases and Big Government.
Never, ever, because Republicans know that it only takes one or two crusaders to derail a dysfunctional budget process that requires an onerous two-thirds majority to pass a dime’s worth of tax increases.
The new Republican leader, Dennis Hollingsworth, elected just over twenty-fours hours ago to replace a colleague deemed too pliable, is a staunch anti-tax crusader, not to mention a mathematics whiz who seems to believe that spending cuts alone can wipe out the entire $41 billion shortfall.
Nobody knows how the Republicans will accomplish this feat of fiscal alchemy, or why they have waited 100-plus days to divulge their master plan to free California from the shackles of “big” government. Will they shutter our prisons, close our schools, padlock our parks and recreation areas, seal our harbors and ports, and decree that society as we’ve known it is over and from here out it’s every man, woman, child, dog, cat, parakeet and zoo animal for himself or herself?
Hell yes, survival of the fittest, Lord of the Flies.
From Washington DC to Sacramento, from the Federal stimulus to California’s budget fiasco, the Republicans are the party of No, Nada, Nope, Never and Nyet.
In the midst of the worst economic meltdown since the early 1930’s – a meltdown caused by pig-headed Republican policies that even the Oracle, Alan Greenspan, now admits were nothing more than smoke, mirrors and blind faith in the Free Market Gods – all Congressional Republicans have to offer is more of the same. More tax cuts. More lavish spending on weapon systems that will not rid the world of Islamic terrorists. More shredding of the social safety net and attacks on those dreaded “entitlement” programs like Medicare and Social Security.
More hocus pocus, in other words.
Out here in California, the Republicans are even more crack-addled and brain numb. For more than 100 days, Republicans in the Assembly and the Senate have held the budget process hostage, staunchly refusing to face the fact that a projected $41 billion deficit cannot be erased by spending cuts alone. While the Governor and Democratic leaders have toiled in the trenches to devise a mix of tax increases, spending cuts and borrowing to save the state from insolvency, Republicans have simply refused to go along because many are wedded to nonsensical pledges never to raise taxes under any circumstances.
Never. Ever. Never. Ever. One hand on Bible, the other over heart, read my lips and bow before bronze statues of Grover Norquist and Rush Limbaugh. We can’t cross Grover or Rush because they will tell everyone on the screwball Right that we’re Liberals and Socialists. And then we won’t be able to hop from the Assembly to the Senate and then to a Constitutional post…not that any of us are seeking a career in Government
...no, no, we believe in the sanctity of the Free Market and the glory of Private Enterprise, but someone has to protect the people from the Democrats and their never-ending lust for tax increases and Big Government.
Never, ever, because Republicans know that it only takes one or two crusaders to derail a dysfunctional budget process that requires an onerous two-thirds majority to pass a dime’s worth of tax increases.
The new Republican leader, Dennis Hollingsworth, elected just over twenty-fours hours ago to replace a colleague deemed too pliable, is a staunch anti-tax crusader, not to mention a mathematics whiz who seems to believe that spending cuts alone can wipe out the entire $41 billion shortfall.
Nobody knows how the Republicans will accomplish this feat of fiscal alchemy, or why they have waited 100-plus days to divulge their master plan to free California from the shackles of “big” government. Will they shutter our prisons, close our schools, padlock our parks and recreation areas, seal our harbors and ports, and decree that society as we’ve known it is over and from here out it’s every man, woman, child, dog, cat, parakeet and zoo animal for himself or herself?
Hell yes, survival of the fittest, Lord of the Flies.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Stop Talking, I Can't Understand You
Every time I turn around I see or hear someone jabbering into a cell phone. Everyone’s talking, talking, talking, but I wonder if anyone is listening. Talk is cheap and easy; listening takes effort and concentration, and in this nano-second age who has time for that? No, we’ve got to keep our game on, 24/7, win the point, the debate, the argument or the match and there simply isn’t time for understanding.
So, standing in line at the drug store, waiting to pay for a prescription that would be free in England and costs $40 here, I’m listening to the guy in front of me talking to someone – his girlfriend, I presume – about his thoroughly crappy day, which started with him dropping his Starbucks in the gutter when he tripped over a sleeping homeless person. I won’t repeat his opinion of homeless people or what should be done with them, but it’s the same fate that befalls stray dogs when nobody claims them from the shelter.
Then I get home and Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, a player I love to hate because he never produces for the Yanks in the clutch, is talking to Peter Gammons from ESPN about his use of “Performance Enhancing Drugs,” or PED’s as they’re called, when he, Rodriguez, was with the Texas Rangers. Rodriguez, recipient of an obscenely large multi-year contract from the Rangers, felt enormous pressure to prove that he was worth it, and with the MLB culture being what it was at that time – with just about every name player ingesting, mainlining or rubbing their muscles with magic cream – what could A-Rod do but join the parade to the trainer’s office, the counter at GNC, or the trunk of some pharmaceutical rep’s Buick? Under those loosey-goosey circumstances, not to mention the strength-sapping heat of Arlington, Texas in August, how could A-Rod have stuck to the straight, narrow and honest path? A-Rod couldn’t specify what he took or exactly how he obtained what he took, but he was sorry for his fans, the game of baseball which has made him richer than Midas, and all the kids out there who idolize him. Biting his lower lip like a 3rd grader in the principal’s office, A-Rod said he just wants to turn the page and do all he can to win a World Series for New York. “And you’ve been clean since 2003?” asks Gammons. “As a hounds tooth,” replies A-Rod, and we’re supposed to believe him.
Which is sort of like believing that George W. Bush read more than one book a year or that Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, cares more about taxpayers than he does about his cronies in the finance industry. Lying used to be something of an art, but like listening, lying has gone the way of Honor, Fidelity and the Sony Walkman.
Geithner doesn’t believe the Federal Government should ask too much of finance executives for fear that the executives won’t play ball, but isn’t this scenario closer to the truth: the balance sheets of so many American banks are so negatively lopsided by an orgy of speculation, greed, and gross mismanagement, that the banks have no choice but to play by whatever rules the Government demands?
The public clearly wants harsher penalties and more accountability from the recipients of Federal funds, but when the fox is standing guard at the henhouse door, which is what always comes to pass in America, what the public wants is irrelevant, even though it’s our money being tossed down the septic tank that Wall Street has become.
When Obama surrounded himself with Robert Rubin, Geithner and Larry Summers, I knew the deal was done and that nothing much was going to change on the economic front. Don’t get me wrong, even surrounded by some of the same people who helped sever the connection between banking fundamentals and real assets valued realistically, ushering in the great Ponzi Scheme that our economy was until it imploded last fall, Obama is better than the Bush/Cheney junta.
But let’s cut the endless e-mail and text messages from the Obama Machine, telling us how different things are now that Barack is in the Oval Office. Yes, the style is different, better, but the substance hasn’t changed – it’s just been re-arranged on the big conference table in Wall Street’s Board Room.
So, standing in line at the drug store, waiting to pay for a prescription that would be free in England and costs $40 here, I’m listening to the guy in front of me talking to someone – his girlfriend, I presume – about his thoroughly crappy day, which started with him dropping his Starbucks in the gutter when he tripped over a sleeping homeless person. I won’t repeat his opinion of homeless people or what should be done with them, but it’s the same fate that befalls stray dogs when nobody claims them from the shelter.
Then I get home and Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, a player I love to hate because he never produces for the Yanks in the clutch, is talking to Peter Gammons from ESPN about his use of “Performance Enhancing Drugs,” or PED’s as they’re called, when he, Rodriguez, was with the Texas Rangers. Rodriguez, recipient of an obscenely large multi-year contract from the Rangers, felt enormous pressure to prove that he was worth it, and with the MLB culture being what it was at that time – with just about every name player ingesting, mainlining or rubbing their muscles with magic cream – what could A-Rod do but join the parade to the trainer’s office, the counter at GNC, or the trunk of some pharmaceutical rep’s Buick? Under those loosey-goosey circumstances, not to mention the strength-sapping heat of Arlington, Texas in August, how could A-Rod have stuck to the straight, narrow and honest path? A-Rod couldn’t specify what he took or exactly how he obtained what he took, but he was sorry for his fans, the game of baseball which has made him richer than Midas, and all the kids out there who idolize him. Biting his lower lip like a 3rd grader in the principal’s office, A-Rod said he just wants to turn the page and do all he can to win a World Series for New York. “And you’ve been clean since 2003?” asks Gammons. “As a hounds tooth,” replies A-Rod, and we’re supposed to believe him.
Which is sort of like believing that George W. Bush read more than one book a year or that Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, cares more about taxpayers than he does about his cronies in the finance industry. Lying used to be something of an art, but like listening, lying has gone the way of Honor, Fidelity and the Sony Walkman.
Geithner doesn’t believe the Federal Government should ask too much of finance executives for fear that the executives won’t play ball, but isn’t this scenario closer to the truth: the balance sheets of so many American banks are so negatively lopsided by an orgy of speculation, greed, and gross mismanagement, that the banks have no choice but to play by whatever rules the Government demands?
The public clearly wants harsher penalties and more accountability from the recipients of Federal funds, but when the fox is standing guard at the henhouse door, which is what always comes to pass in America, what the public wants is irrelevant, even though it’s our money being tossed down the septic tank that Wall Street has become.
When Obama surrounded himself with Robert Rubin, Geithner and Larry Summers, I knew the deal was done and that nothing much was going to change on the economic front. Don’t get me wrong, even surrounded by some of the same people who helped sever the connection between banking fundamentals and real assets valued realistically, ushering in the great Ponzi Scheme that our economy was until it imploded last fall, Obama is better than the Bush/Cheney junta.
But let’s cut the endless e-mail and text messages from the Obama Machine, telling us how different things are now that Barack is in the Oval Office. Yes, the style is different, better, but the substance hasn’t changed – it’s just been re-arranged on the big conference table in Wall Street’s Board Room.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
An Abbreviated Honeymoon
Man, that honeymoon ended quickly. The wedding day bliss evaporated before the bridegroom got his tuxedo back from the dry cleaners. The poor guy hasn’t finished unpacking yet and his bride is already nagging him about leaving the toilet seat up and his dirty socks under the bed.
Did you really think it was going to be one of those happily ever after stories? This is no fairy tale, folks, this is blood-sport, American-style. Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners – or perhaps crows is a better description of the way Limbaugh speaks – that he hopes Barack Obama falls flat on his liberal face; Congressional Republicans, cowed and demoralized after being whipped at the polls last November, find new life in being the party of No; talk show blabbers like Sean Hannity are aghast and offended by the tax problems of Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle.
Hocus Pocus, presto and abracadabra, the felonies and foolishness of the Bush/Cheney regime are forgotten. The criminal doings of Bush/Cheney at home and abroad make Tom Daschle look like a convicted jaywalker and Geithner like an altar boy whose only crime was knocking over a chalice full of wine. After eight years of fraud, waste and abuses of power that would have made Richard Nixon blush and Ronald Reagan wet his Depends, the Republicans are suddenly hell bent on protecting the American people from wasteful Government spending. The party that for six of Bush’s eight years ladled out pork like the pot was bottomless, have suddenly found their inner fiscal conservative.
Have ye hypocrites learned nothing?
The root of the problem for the Republicans isn’t the stimulus plan – it’s Barack Obama himself. Obama has more charisma, grace and smarts in his left pinky toe than John McCain, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner combined; the only venue where John Boehner can energize a crowd the way Obama does just by walking onto the stage is in his dreams. We’re dealing with frightened old white guys here that desperately want to protect the status quo. They want to bring Obama to ground by showing him the way power in Washington really works. The message is that soaring rhetoric and adoring crowds is one thing, navigating DC’s piranha invested waters without losing a limb is another. GOP leaders want to rub Obama’s nose in the dirt of the Rose Garden and prevent his Administration from developing any momentum; they call this deliberate sabotage Principle, but everyone save Rush Limbaugh’s devoted flock calls it Republican Politics As Usual. This is the game the GOP plays while average citizens lose their homes, their jobs, and their retirement nest eggs.
McCain, McConnell and Boehner know that if Obama’s stimulus plan were to slow the economic meltdown in the short run, and lay a new foundation upon which a more just and broad American Dream might be built in the long term, that the GOP could find itself on the power fringe for two or three decades. Were Obama to achieve a few solid legislative victories and gain momentum, an appetite for real and deeper change might take root, and tilt public policy in favor of average citizens rather than corporate elites, investors and the well-to-do.
And we can’t have that in America, can we?
Did you really think it was going to be one of those happily ever after stories? This is no fairy tale, folks, this is blood-sport, American-style. Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners – or perhaps crows is a better description of the way Limbaugh speaks – that he hopes Barack Obama falls flat on his liberal face; Congressional Republicans, cowed and demoralized after being whipped at the polls last November, find new life in being the party of No; talk show blabbers like Sean Hannity are aghast and offended by the tax problems of Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle.
Hocus Pocus, presto and abracadabra, the felonies and foolishness of the Bush/Cheney regime are forgotten. The criminal doings of Bush/Cheney at home and abroad make Tom Daschle look like a convicted jaywalker and Geithner like an altar boy whose only crime was knocking over a chalice full of wine. After eight years of fraud, waste and abuses of power that would have made Richard Nixon blush and Ronald Reagan wet his Depends, the Republicans are suddenly hell bent on protecting the American people from wasteful Government spending. The party that for six of Bush’s eight years ladled out pork like the pot was bottomless, have suddenly found their inner fiscal conservative.
Have ye hypocrites learned nothing?
The root of the problem for the Republicans isn’t the stimulus plan – it’s Barack Obama himself. Obama has more charisma, grace and smarts in his left pinky toe than John McCain, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner combined; the only venue where John Boehner can energize a crowd the way Obama does just by walking onto the stage is in his dreams. We’re dealing with frightened old white guys here that desperately want to protect the status quo. They want to bring Obama to ground by showing him the way power in Washington really works. The message is that soaring rhetoric and adoring crowds is one thing, navigating DC’s piranha invested waters without losing a limb is another. GOP leaders want to rub Obama’s nose in the dirt of the Rose Garden and prevent his Administration from developing any momentum; they call this deliberate sabotage Principle, but everyone save Rush Limbaugh’s devoted flock calls it Republican Politics As Usual. This is the game the GOP plays while average citizens lose their homes, their jobs, and their retirement nest eggs.
McCain, McConnell and Boehner know that if Obama’s stimulus plan were to slow the economic meltdown in the short run, and lay a new foundation upon which a more just and broad American Dream might be built in the long term, that the GOP could find itself on the power fringe for two or three decades. Were Obama to achieve a few solid legislative victories and gain momentum, an appetite for real and deeper change might take root, and tilt public policy in favor of average citizens rather than corporate elites, investors and the well-to-do.
And we can’t have that in America, can we?
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Absolution of the Titans
I admire the Titans of American Finance and you should too. In the Great American Casino, otherwise known as our Economy, they’re the winners and the rest of us are the losers. Our best and brightest leave the finest universities in the land, flock to Wall Street in search of wealth and power; these are clever, cunning, driven men and women who go after what they want with the same single-minded obsession with which Hannibal Lecter sought human flesh. The Titans buy low and sell high, own beach front homes in the Hamptons and luxurious apartments on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, travel first class, own season tickets for the Yankees and the Giants, and pay for it all with platinum credit cards. Even low on the totem pole Titans make as much in a year as the average American wage slave makes in a decade.
Ah, the mystical world of high finance, stocks, bonds, derivatives, numbers and symbols sliding across tickers from New York to Hong Kong, unintelligible to the untrained eye, full of portent and opportunity for those with a penchant for risk and a wad of other people’s money to monkey with. These are Gordon Gecko’s heirs, knights of Capitalism, who ride alone along the great black river; they ask no quarter and of course give none, particularly to lazy welfare queens or unemployed lesbians. They see the world in black & white, good & evil, Mutt & Jeff, Ozzie & Harriet, Astaire & Rogers.
Like Gecko the Titans are suave, smooth, savvy and savage. Gecko may have gone down in the end, but he went out shouting, “Greed is still good.” We loved Gordon Gecko and everything he stood for much more than we ever loved Horatio Alger and his tedious tale of hard work, honesty and right living.
Right. Hell, yes. We’re Americans and we want what we want when we want it. Delayed gratification is for suckers and tight-assed kill joys. Life is short and death will not be denied, so grab the gusto and let the bulldog roll.
The Titans are master alchemists who turn coal into diamonds, single family homes into ATM machines, bogus mortgages made in Cleveland into Collateralized Debt Obligations sold in Mumbai.
Can you pull off a trick like that? Of course not, which is why the Federal government isn’t rushing to your rescue. Or mine. We’re the grunts of the American Casino, the water carriers, the serfs and sharecroppers, the tenement dwellers. Our purpose is to toil for meager wages, to save none of what we earn, and to rack up as much debt as possible. Sure, we’re free to bitch about the unfairness of it all, throw stones and beer bottles at the mansion on the hill, pin our hopes on political candidates who promise to level the battle field and repair the tattered American Dream, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, the Titans are still more important than we will ever be.
Thus, the sins and crimes of the Titans are absolved. Instead of punishment, they are given coins snatched from our pockets and the pockets of our children, the pockets of their children, and the pockets of children yet unborn. The great Casino is too important to fail; the slot machines must clang and jingle just as the roulette wheel must spin and the loaded dice tumble.
Too big to fail, too cool for the catwalk. It may be good to be King, but being a Titan of Finance is many times better; kings are occasionally beheaded or contract syphilis and go insane, Titans are untouchable.
Ah, the mystical world of high finance, stocks, bonds, derivatives, numbers and symbols sliding across tickers from New York to Hong Kong, unintelligible to the untrained eye, full of portent and opportunity for those with a penchant for risk and a wad of other people’s money to monkey with. These are Gordon Gecko’s heirs, knights of Capitalism, who ride alone along the great black river; they ask no quarter and of course give none, particularly to lazy welfare queens or unemployed lesbians. They see the world in black & white, good & evil, Mutt & Jeff, Ozzie & Harriet, Astaire & Rogers.
Like Gecko the Titans are suave, smooth, savvy and savage. Gecko may have gone down in the end, but he went out shouting, “Greed is still good.” We loved Gordon Gecko and everything he stood for much more than we ever loved Horatio Alger and his tedious tale of hard work, honesty and right living.
Right. Hell, yes. We’re Americans and we want what we want when we want it. Delayed gratification is for suckers and tight-assed kill joys. Life is short and death will not be denied, so grab the gusto and let the bulldog roll.
The Titans are master alchemists who turn coal into diamonds, single family homes into ATM machines, bogus mortgages made in Cleveland into Collateralized Debt Obligations sold in Mumbai.
Can you pull off a trick like that? Of course not, which is why the Federal government isn’t rushing to your rescue. Or mine. We’re the grunts of the American Casino, the water carriers, the serfs and sharecroppers, the tenement dwellers. Our purpose is to toil for meager wages, to save none of what we earn, and to rack up as much debt as possible. Sure, we’re free to bitch about the unfairness of it all, throw stones and beer bottles at the mansion on the hill, pin our hopes on political candidates who promise to level the battle field and repair the tattered American Dream, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, the Titans are still more important than we will ever be.
Thus, the sins and crimes of the Titans are absolved. Instead of punishment, they are given coins snatched from our pockets and the pockets of our children, the pockets of their children, and the pockets of children yet unborn. The great Casino is too important to fail; the slot machines must clang and jingle just as the roulette wheel must spin and the loaded dice tumble.
Too big to fail, too cool for the catwalk. It may be good to be King, but being a Titan of Finance is many times better; kings are occasionally beheaded or contract syphilis and go insane, Titans are untouchable.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Memo to GOP Members of Congress
Dear Stupid Motherfuckers:
George W. Bush has left the White House in disgrace and nobody gives a shit about him now. Take your blinders off and face the fact that the Obama and the Democrats stomped your asses in November. You’re a minority party of bankrupt ideas, and becoming more irrelevant every day. You’ve got no irons in the fire or light at the end of the tunnel. If you keep calling on the ghost of Ronald Reagan, taking advice from shitheads like Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh, and pinning your hopes on morons like Sarah Palin, you deserve to spend a generation in the political sticks.
It’s obvious that you fucks haven’t accepted that the Bush/Cheney criminal syndicate ran the United States into the ground through incompetence, greed, politics, spite, power trips and total disregard for the fundamentals of government, law, economics and morality. You bastards controlled the entire Federal apparatus for six of Bush’s eight years – and have nothing but failure to show for it.
Here’s the thing: this isn’t the time for you hypocrites to whine that Obama’s stimulus package contains too much spending and not enough tax cuts. Because of the tax-cutting frenzy the GOP pulled off during the Bush Reign of Error, we’re all Keynesians now. The shit is up to our necks and Obama’s stimulus plan isn’t nearly large enough. Every day you idiots spew your tax-cut bullshit the financial woes of real flesh and blood Americans worsen. We need massive public spending on infrastructure, aid to states and small businesses, food stamps and unemployment insurance – all investment that provide real stimulus, as opposed to the negligible benefits of giving the wealthiest Americans another tax holiday.
Fuck the rich and every one of you who carry water for them. It’s time for them to pay their fair share – and for you piss-ants to support the real economy of wage earners and producers, of teachers and small business owners, of waitresses and secretaries and truck drivers.
Word Up, Assholes: Tax cuts are not a substitute for economic policy. Ronald Reagan was a man, not a God, and for most of his Presidency he doddered around in the early stages of Alzheimer’s; Ronnie got lost in the hallways of the White House, forgot the way to the Oval Office, and believed Alaska had been invaded by the Soviet Union.
Listen, losers, get with Obama’s program – it’s not perfect but it’s necessary.
George W. Bush has left the White House in disgrace and nobody gives a shit about him now. Take your blinders off and face the fact that the Obama and the Democrats stomped your asses in November. You’re a minority party of bankrupt ideas, and becoming more irrelevant every day. You’ve got no irons in the fire or light at the end of the tunnel. If you keep calling on the ghost of Ronald Reagan, taking advice from shitheads like Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh, and pinning your hopes on morons like Sarah Palin, you deserve to spend a generation in the political sticks.
It’s obvious that you fucks haven’t accepted that the Bush/Cheney criminal syndicate ran the United States into the ground through incompetence, greed, politics, spite, power trips and total disregard for the fundamentals of government, law, economics and morality. You bastards controlled the entire Federal apparatus for six of Bush’s eight years – and have nothing but failure to show for it.
Here’s the thing: this isn’t the time for you hypocrites to whine that Obama’s stimulus package contains too much spending and not enough tax cuts. Because of the tax-cutting frenzy the GOP pulled off during the Bush Reign of Error, we’re all Keynesians now. The shit is up to our necks and Obama’s stimulus plan isn’t nearly large enough. Every day you idiots spew your tax-cut bullshit the financial woes of real flesh and blood Americans worsen. We need massive public spending on infrastructure, aid to states and small businesses, food stamps and unemployment insurance – all investment that provide real stimulus, as opposed to the negligible benefits of giving the wealthiest Americans another tax holiday.
Fuck the rich and every one of you who carry water for them. It’s time for them to pay their fair share – and for you piss-ants to support the real economy of wage earners and producers, of teachers and small business owners, of waitresses and secretaries and truck drivers.
Word Up, Assholes: Tax cuts are not a substitute for economic policy. Ronald Reagan was a man, not a God, and for most of his Presidency he doddered around in the early stages of Alzheimer’s; Ronnie got lost in the hallways of the White House, forgot the way to the Oval Office, and believed Alaska had been invaded by the Soviet Union.
Listen, losers, get with Obama’s program – it’s not perfect but it’s necessary.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Sarah Palin's Awful, Terrible, Really Bad Day
Inauguration Day in the Palin household was gloomy. Husband Todd insisted that the entire family go fishing, but Sarah was adamant that they all gather around the big screen and watch “the half-breed” get sworn in as the 44th American president.
Sarah also insisted that everyone, even baby Trig, wear “Palin 2012” T-shirts and baseball caps. In the giddy days after the GOP Convention in Minneapolis, when Sarah was the shining new darling of the Republican Party and her political future seemed limitless, she had 10,000 T-shirts and 5,000 “Palin 2012” caps printed. Now, after the disastrous interviews on ABC and CBS, the debate with Joe Biden, Tina Fey’s impersonations on Saturday Night Live, the flap over her Neiman Marcus shopping spree, the rumors of sour relations with the McCain camp, and the election outcome, the cartons of T-shirts and caps were stacked in the garage, floor to ceiling; Todd couldn’t see, let along reach, his favorite snowmobile or his bear traps.
As the family gathered and jockeyed for prime spots on the sofa, Todd tried one more gambit to avoid the explosion he knew was coming. “Why don’t we go hunt some moose,” he said. “It’s fourteen degrees outside and I’m in the mood to shoot something!”
He was silenced with a single glance from his wife and meekly took a seat.
“Put it on CNN,” Sarah ordered Bristol. “I will not watch ABC or CBS or NBC. Those people are jackals, plain and simple, and because of them and all those lying liberal bloggers, I lost the election! This should be my big day, like the senior prom – only better! If those people had treated me fairly, I would have won and we would be moving into the White House.”
John McCain appeared briefly on the screen as the camera panned the assembled dignitaries.
“There he is,” Sarah shrieked, “that horrible, disgusting man! Look at him – he’s the devil! Stiff as a two by four, full of himself, always talking about the day he got shot down over North Vietnam. He was sooooo booorrring! I’d rather shop for a new septic tank than spend an afternoon with John McCain. And don’t get me started on his wife, that stuck up bitch.”
“Honey,” Todd said. “The kids.”
“God,” Piper said, “look at all those black people.”
“It’s like Africa,” said Willow, “only it’s America.”
“It’s the un-American part of America,” Sarah said. “Those are the people who pal around with terrorists, who love Fidel Castro, who think Hugo Chavez is cool.”
They watched as Joe Biden was sworn in as Vice-President.
Trig loosed a loud fart and smiled.
“Joe was nice enough,” Sarah said, “ for a socialist.”
“There are more people on the Mall than in all of Alaska,” Todd said, somewhat awestruck.
Sarah snorted derisively. “Yeah, but can they see Russia from their front porch? Are they America’s first line of defense against Vladimir Putin? Do they understand that our way of life is at stake, that the socialists have seized control of America and will turn our market economy into a command economy, like the old days of the Soviet Union?”
Obama placed his non-white hand on the Bible. The historic moment was here, at long last. The world watched. Todd watched his wife. Sarah hadn’t been the same since the election. The phone wasn’t ringing as she had hoped it would; none of the Republican Party elders were courting her or seeking her opinion on what to do to save the Republican Party from its own excesses; even Rush Limbaugh seemed to have forgotten her. The fact that she had taken a long, heady draught of the big time, but now found herself consigned to a small stage far from the action, wasn’t sitting well.
The canons fired a twenty-one gun salute, the crowd on the Mall became delirious, a sea of American flags waved in the cold air, and it was done, official: Barack Obama was President of the United States.
As millions in America and around the world cried tears of joy, tears of pride, tears of relief, Sarah Palin cried tears of anguish and mopped those tears on the sleeve of her “Palin 2012” T-shirt.
Sarah also insisted that everyone, even baby Trig, wear “Palin 2012” T-shirts and baseball caps. In the giddy days after the GOP Convention in Minneapolis, when Sarah was the shining new darling of the Republican Party and her political future seemed limitless, she had 10,000 T-shirts and 5,000 “Palin 2012” caps printed. Now, after the disastrous interviews on ABC and CBS, the debate with Joe Biden, Tina Fey’s impersonations on Saturday Night Live, the flap over her Neiman Marcus shopping spree, the rumors of sour relations with the McCain camp, and the election outcome, the cartons of T-shirts and caps were stacked in the garage, floor to ceiling; Todd couldn’t see, let along reach, his favorite snowmobile or his bear traps.
As the family gathered and jockeyed for prime spots on the sofa, Todd tried one more gambit to avoid the explosion he knew was coming. “Why don’t we go hunt some moose,” he said. “It’s fourteen degrees outside and I’m in the mood to shoot something!”
He was silenced with a single glance from his wife and meekly took a seat.
“Put it on CNN,” Sarah ordered Bristol. “I will not watch ABC or CBS or NBC. Those people are jackals, plain and simple, and because of them and all those lying liberal bloggers, I lost the election! This should be my big day, like the senior prom – only better! If those people had treated me fairly, I would have won and we would be moving into the White House.”
John McCain appeared briefly on the screen as the camera panned the assembled dignitaries.
“There he is,” Sarah shrieked, “that horrible, disgusting man! Look at him – he’s the devil! Stiff as a two by four, full of himself, always talking about the day he got shot down over North Vietnam. He was sooooo booorrring! I’d rather shop for a new septic tank than spend an afternoon with John McCain. And don’t get me started on his wife, that stuck up bitch.”
“Honey,” Todd said. “The kids.”
“God,” Piper said, “look at all those black people.”
“It’s like Africa,” said Willow, “only it’s America.”
“It’s the un-American part of America,” Sarah said. “Those are the people who pal around with terrorists, who love Fidel Castro, who think Hugo Chavez is cool.”
They watched as Joe Biden was sworn in as Vice-President.
Trig loosed a loud fart and smiled.
“Joe was nice enough,” Sarah said, “ for a socialist.”
“There are more people on the Mall than in all of Alaska,” Todd said, somewhat awestruck.
Sarah snorted derisively. “Yeah, but can they see Russia from their front porch? Are they America’s first line of defense against Vladimir Putin? Do they understand that our way of life is at stake, that the socialists have seized control of America and will turn our market economy into a command economy, like the old days of the Soviet Union?”
Obama placed his non-white hand on the Bible. The historic moment was here, at long last. The world watched. Todd watched his wife. Sarah hadn’t been the same since the election. The phone wasn’t ringing as she had hoped it would; none of the Republican Party elders were courting her or seeking her opinion on what to do to save the Republican Party from its own excesses; even Rush Limbaugh seemed to have forgotten her. The fact that she had taken a long, heady draught of the big time, but now found herself consigned to a small stage far from the action, wasn’t sitting well.
The canons fired a twenty-one gun salute, the crowd on the Mall became delirious, a sea of American flags waved in the cold air, and it was done, official: Barack Obama was President of the United States.
As millions in America and around the world cried tears of joy, tears of pride, tears of relief, Sarah Palin cried tears of anguish and mopped those tears on the sleeve of her “Palin 2012” T-shirt.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The Great Black Hope
Every year the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday prompts me to think about where the United States stands along its evolutionary path, not only in regard to race relations, but also in measurements of economic and social justice, militarism and our foreign relations. Though Dr. King is best and rightly remembered for his civil rights work, he gave considerable thought and attention to these other matters.
This MLK holiday is obviously different than any that has come before. Tomorrow at noon eastern time, Barack Obama will recite the oath of office and become the first African-American to hold the highest elected office in the land. Given the African-American experience in this country, the legacy of slave chains, codified status as three-fifths a human being, Jim Crow, lynching’s, official and de facto segregation, terrorism and intimidation, murder and oppression, down the bones and down the years, the inauguration of Barack Obama marks more than the breaking of a racial barrier.
America is growing up and finally reaching for its promise.
An intelligent, articulate black man is poised to lead the United States and, in many respects, the world, out of a pit dug by a president and vice-president who disdained the rule of law and every measure of justice that Dr. King struggled for during his short, purposeful life. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney condoned injustice and advanced inequality in a manner unprecedented in my lifetime, and maybe in our history as a nation. Bush and Cheney played to our fears and baser instincts, governed for the few rather than the many, made a mockery of what it means to be an American, and demeaned us in the eyes of the world.
Barack Obama is a man, not a savior, and while our hopes for his presidency soar we must temper our expectations. Our debased politics, grotesquely unequal economy, precarious environmental position, and obsessive focus on material gain cannot be solved in six months, a year, even four years. We’re in very deep waters and our ship of state is listing to one side. Even with a man of Barack Obama’s skill and character at the helm, we may sink.
Dr. King often said that resilience and fortitude were traits inculcated in black Americans by their direct experience in the crucible of the American contradiction. All Americans need that kind of transcendent resilience and fortitude now, for some of the most difficult challenges we’ve ever faced lie on the other side of tomorrow’s festivities. The stakes are enormous; the consequences of inaction or timid half-measures will be severe; no American should be immune or exempted from some form of sacrifice.
The dominant narrative of the past quarter century held that Americans rose or fell individually. This proved an illusion as damning as it is false. Dr. King knew it in his time; Barack Obama knows it in ours.
This MLK holiday is obviously different than any that has come before. Tomorrow at noon eastern time, Barack Obama will recite the oath of office and become the first African-American to hold the highest elected office in the land. Given the African-American experience in this country, the legacy of slave chains, codified status as three-fifths a human being, Jim Crow, lynching’s, official and de facto segregation, terrorism and intimidation, murder and oppression, down the bones and down the years, the inauguration of Barack Obama marks more than the breaking of a racial barrier.
America is growing up and finally reaching for its promise.
An intelligent, articulate black man is poised to lead the United States and, in many respects, the world, out of a pit dug by a president and vice-president who disdained the rule of law and every measure of justice that Dr. King struggled for during his short, purposeful life. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney condoned injustice and advanced inequality in a manner unprecedented in my lifetime, and maybe in our history as a nation. Bush and Cheney played to our fears and baser instincts, governed for the few rather than the many, made a mockery of what it means to be an American, and demeaned us in the eyes of the world.
Barack Obama is a man, not a savior, and while our hopes for his presidency soar we must temper our expectations. Our debased politics, grotesquely unequal economy, precarious environmental position, and obsessive focus on material gain cannot be solved in six months, a year, even four years. We’re in very deep waters and our ship of state is listing to one side. Even with a man of Barack Obama’s skill and character at the helm, we may sink.
Dr. King often said that resilience and fortitude were traits inculcated in black Americans by their direct experience in the crucible of the American contradiction. All Americans need that kind of transcendent resilience and fortitude now, for some of the most difficult challenges we’ve ever faced lie on the other side of tomorrow’s festivities. The stakes are enormous; the consequences of inaction or timid half-measures will be severe; no American should be immune or exempted from some form of sacrifice.
The dominant narrative of the past quarter century held that Americans rose or fell individually. This proved an illusion as damning as it is false. Dr. King knew it in his time; Barack Obama knows it in ours.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
W's Last Stand: As Orwellian as it Gets
Interior, the President’s private bathroom in the White House on the morning of George W. Bush’s final press conference. Bush lathers his face and begins to shave. The camera pans in close. As he pulls the razor across his face Bush stares at his image and murmurs, quietly but resolutely: “Heckuva job, W, heckuva job. You kept the homeland safe from those evil terrorists for seven years. That’s a legacy, and something to be proud of. Your record is solid, with plenty of accomplishments. Don’t give a second thought to those elitist writers and bloggers who criticize you. OK, the economy hit a little-bitty bump, but America is strong and respected around the world. Heckuva job. Hold your head up.” Fade out.
Bush convenes his final press conference and political junkies across the country can’t decide whether to shriek with joy or wail with despair. For pure jaw-dropping, head-scratching spectacle, Bush set the bar very high and in that regard, and only in that regard, we will miss him.
Whenever Bush opened his mouth it was an adventure, not to mention a felony against Mother English. For decades to come, scholars will ponder how a man born with a silver spoon between his lips and a platinum spoon between his ass cheeks, educated at Yale and Harvard, could come across as stupid, obstinate and petulant.
Even after eight of the longest years in American history, we don’t really know W. He acts like a jackass, talks like a moron, evades responsibility like a 7-year-old, but is it an elaborate act or is he a simpleton?
There’s W at the podium, familiar smirk on his face, refusing to admit that he made any mistakes during his reign. There will be no frozen Frost/Nixon moment, no breakdown or cathartic tears, no plea for forgiveness. Disappointments, maybe, but mistakes, never. While America wallowed in foreign wars and turned its economy into a giant casino, W went on vacation, spending some 900 days at Camp David or his Crawford dude ranch. No worries, no stress, just Laura and the Lord, the twins and Karl Rove for comfort and companionship. Not a drop of bourbon in the pantry, no vial of cocaine hidden under the bed – W totally fucked things up without illicit narcotics.
But don’t assume drugs didn’t play a central role in W’s White House. How else can we explain the criminal shit and blatant venality that passed for standard operating procedure on W’s watch? The truth will eventually emerge that W was crocked ninety percent of the time on a wicked combination of Paxil, Effexor and Ambien. No semi-intelligent person can watch Bush in action without concluding that he’s a drug fiend.
W insists that America’s moral standing around the world is untarnished. This is laughable but W appears to believe it. Unfortunately, for those of us who dwell on Reality Avenue and read foreign newspapers, we know what the world thinks of us, and it’s not comforting; when a great many people view the United States as dangerous and bellicose, a force of instability and a beacon of hypocrisy, you know the wheels have fallen off the bus.
The list of W’s crimes, abuses of power and fuck-ups is too extensive to run through here, though every one should be examined, dissected and probed with the same fervor the Government brought to investigating Bill Clinton’s indiscretions. If the Government can spend several years and millions of tax dollars investigating land deals in the Ozarks and tawdry Oval Office sexcapades, then certainly the Government can devote some time and coin to investigate eight years of real crimes against the country.
It’s unlikely to happen, for the political class is intent on “looking forward” rather than back, and the Democrats are too spineless to force the issue, even though Americans deserve a full-scale investigation. Simple justice, the one ideal the United States rarely delivers any more, demands an accounting so that no one is fooled when the next wannabe dictator comes around. But don’t hold your breath. Even if the Democrats find some courage and force an investigation, the lawyers will make sure it’s limited in scope – to avoid, naturally, “putting the nation through needless trauma.” Bush, Cheney, Rove, Miers, Paulson, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez and every other shit-head who served Bush and participated in the rat-fucking of our country will walk away scot-free; some will score big dollar book contracts or become respected commentators on Fox News; others will land gigs as lobbyists or consultants or think tank analysts; but nobody will pay.
W was defiant to the end, still insisting that white is black and black white, and any evidence to the contrary is not simply wrong, but a product of the “elite,” whoever they may be. Everything else about his Administration lays in ruins, but the bubble surrounding W remains intact, shielding him from truth, fact and consequences; in what’s left of his mind, W sees himself standing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, beneath the Mission Accomplished banner.
Bush convenes his final press conference and political junkies across the country can’t decide whether to shriek with joy or wail with despair. For pure jaw-dropping, head-scratching spectacle, Bush set the bar very high and in that regard, and only in that regard, we will miss him.
Whenever Bush opened his mouth it was an adventure, not to mention a felony against Mother English. For decades to come, scholars will ponder how a man born with a silver spoon between his lips and a platinum spoon between his ass cheeks, educated at Yale and Harvard, could come across as stupid, obstinate and petulant.
Even after eight of the longest years in American history, we don’t really know W. He acts like a jackass, talks like a moron, evades responsibility like a 7-year-old, but is it an elaborate act or is he a simpleton?
There’s W at the podium, familiar smirk on his face, refusing to admit that he made any mistakes during his reign. There will be no frozen Frost/Nixon moment, no breakdown or cathartic tears, no plea for forgiveness. Disappointments, maybe, but mistakes, never. While America wallowed in foreign wars and turned its economy into a giant casino, W went on vacation, spending some 900 days at Camp David or his Crawford dude ranch. No worries, no stress, just Laura and the Lord, the twins and Karl Rove for comfort and companionship. Not a drop of bourbon in the pantry, no vial of cocaine hidden under the bed – W totally fucked things up without illicit narcotics.
But don’t assume drugs didn’t play a central role in W’s White House. How else can we explain the criminal shit and blatant venality that passed for standard operating procedure on W’s watch? The truth will eventually emerge that W was crocked ninety percent of the time on a wicked combination of Paxil, Effexor and Ambien. No semi-intelligent person can watch Bush in action without concluding that he’s a drug fiend.
W insists that America’s moral standing around the world is untarnished. This is laughable but W appears to believe it. Unfortunately, for those of us who dwell on Reality Avenue and read foreign newspapers, we know what the world thinks of us, and it’s not comforting; when a great many people view the United States as dangerous and bellicose, a force of instability and a beacon of hypocrisy, you know the wheels have fallen off the bus.
The list of W’s crimes, abuses of power and fuck-ups is too extensive to run through here, though every one should be examined, dissected and probed with the same fervor the Government brought to investigating Bill Clinton’s indiscretions. If the Government can spend several years and millions of tax dollars investigating land deals in the Ozarks and tawdry Oval Office sexcapades, then certainly the Government can devote some time and coin to investigate eight years of real crimes against the country.
It’s unlikely to happen, for the political class is intent on “looking forward” rather than back, and the Democrats are too spineless to force the issue, even though Americans deserve a full-scale investigation. Simple justice, the one ideal the United States rarely delivers any more, demands an accounting so that no one is fooled when the next wannabe dictator comes around. But don’t hold your breath. Even if the Democrats find some courage and force an investigation, the lawyers will make sure it’s limited in scope – to avoid, naturally, “putting the nation through needless trauma.” Bush, Cheney, Rove, Miers, Paulson, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez and every other shit-head who served Bush and participated in the rat-fucking of our country will walk away scot-free; some will score big dollar book contracts or become respected commentators on Fox News; others will land gigs as lobbyists or consultants or think tank analysts; but nobody will pay.
W was defiant to the end, still insisting that white is black and black white, and any evidence to the contrary is not simply wrong, but a product of the “elite,” whoever they may be. Everything else about his Administration lays in ruins, but the bubble surrounding W remains intact, shielding him from truth, fact and consequences; in what’s left of his mind, W sees himself standing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, beneath the Mission Accomplished banner.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Love, Israeli-Style
Terrorism n. Terrorist principles and practices; the systematic employment of violence and intimidation to coerce a government or community, esp. into acceding to specific political demands. The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary
Ironic to hear a Jewish rabbi, the head of a pre-school not far from Santa Barbara, reacting to a third incidence of vandalism against the school, swastikas spray-painted on the walls in the dead of night. The rabbi spoke of Jewish values handed down the centuries and from every corner of the globe – tolerance, love, understanding, and knowledge – that are the antidotes to hatred, bigotry and racism.
While the rabbi spoke of Jewish values, Israeli rockets, artillery shells and deadly cluster bombs rained down on Gaza, indiscriminately killing Palestinian men, women and children. As the rabbi spoke of love twelve miles from where my family dwells, a United Nations school in Gaza was destroyed by three Israeli tank shells, killing 40 human beings who had taken refuge inside.
And while this act of terror – and what else can it be called? -- was taking place and the lifeless, bloody bodies of innocent children were pulled from the rubble, an Israeli spokesperson had the audacity to accuse Hamas of “war crimes.”
Israel never lacks a justification for its actions. When Israel destroys a Palestinian ambulance with Hellfire missiles (purchased from, or provided by, the United States), the fault lies with Hamas, not Israel, because only Hamas is diabolical enough to transport guns and ammunition in ambulances and thereby make it necessary for Israel to target them for annihilation.
The abuser is really the victim, you see, and the abused deserve to be punished.
And of course that UN school jammed with petrified and helpless people was a Hamas ammunition depot. As an Israeli spokesperson told the Al Jazeera network, Hamas had "booby-trapped" installations in Gaza, leaving Israel no choice but to retaliate. "This is how it is in wars,” the spokesperson said. “We did not choose to be in a war. However, Hamas chose to target Israelis, we did not force them to do anything, and Hamas chose terror."
Like the United States under the Bush/Cheney regime, Israel is always righteous, moral and only acting in its own defense against an implacable enemy; Hamas, on the other hand, never rises above being a “terrorist” organization with no regard for human life, law or recognized standards of decency.
F-16’s, Hellfire missiles and cluster bombs are not instruments of peace. Israel says it has no beef with the Palestinian people, just Hamas, but let’s be clear: Israel’s ferocious assault against Gaza is punishing Palestinians collectively. Hamas did not block critically needed supplies from entering Israel or build settlements on Israeli land or disregard one “peace” treaty after another. Does Hamas bear some responsibility for these hostilities? Of course, but what else can a dispossessed, occupied, and downtrodden people do when politics, diplomacy and decades of UN resolutions fail?
Israel, the United States, and Britain either have short historical memories or willful myopia. A little more than six decades ago, Israel boasted homegrown terrorists determined to wrest Palestine from British control and establish a Jewish homeland. As all people do, Jews ached for their own land and control of their own fate. One leader in this struggle was Menachem Begin, who would go on to become Prime Minister; yesterday’s terrorist is tomorrow’s politician.
Why can’t Israel and its principal benefactor, the United States, understand that the Palestinians want the very thing that the Jews wanted in the early years of the twentieth century? Why does the West always ascribe righteous motives to Israel and evil motives to the Palestinians? The more important question –the one never addressed in the Western mass media – is this: why is Israel allowed to slaughter innocent people with impunity? Is killing really the road to peace and long-lasting security or does it just inflict fresh wounds and slice into old scars?
But don’t say Israel can’t act benevolently – yesterday the Israeli army gave Gaza residents a brief cease fire so they could stock up on supplies before the next wave of attacks. One wonders where in war-ravaged Gaza the people were supposed to buy bread, drinking water, baby formula, medicine, coats, blankets or fuel oil.
Ironic to hear a Jewish rabbi, the head of a pre-school not far from Santa Barbara, reacting to a third incidence of vandalism against the school, swastikas spray-painted on the walls in the dead of night. The rabbi spoke of Jewish values handed down the centuries and from every corner of the globe – tolerance, love, understanding, and knowledge – that are the antidotes to hatred, bigotry and racism.
While the rabbi spoke of Jewish values, Israeli rockets, artillery shells and deadly cluster bombs rained down on Gaza, indiscriminately killing Palestinian men, women and children. As the rabbi spoke of love twelve miles from where my family dwells, a United Nations school in Gaza was destroyed by three Israeli tank shells, killing 40 human beings who had taken refuge inside.
And while this act of terror – and what else can it be called? -- was taking place and the lifeless, bloody bodies of innocent children were pulled from the rubble, an Israeli spokesperson had the audacity to accuse Hamas of “war crimes.”
Israel never lacks a justification for its actions. When Israel destroys a Palestinian ambulance with Hellfire missiles (purchased from, or provided by, the United States), the fault lies with Hamas, not Israel, because only Hamas is diabolical enough to transport guns and ammunition in ambulances and thereby make it necessary for Israel to target them for annihilation.
The abuser is really the victim, you see, and the abused deserve to be punished.
And of course that UN school jammed with petrified and helpless people was a Hamas ammunition depot. As an Israeli spokesperson told the Al Jazeera network, Hamas had "booby-trapped" installations in Gaza, leaving Israel no choice but to retaliate. "This is how it is in wars,” the spokesperson said. “We did not choose to be in a war. However, Hamas chose to target Israelis, we did not force them to do anything, and Hamas chose terror."
Like the United States under the Bush/Cheney regime, Israel is always righteous, moral and only acting in its own defense against an implacable enemy; Hamas, on the other hand, never rises above being a “terrorist” organization with no regard for human life, law or recognized standards of decency.
F-16’s, Hellfire missiles and cluster bombs are not instruments of peace. Israel says it has no beef with the Palestinian people, just Hamas, but let’s be clear: Israel’s ferocious assault against Gaza is punishing Palestinians collectively. Hamas did not block critically needed supplies from entering Israel or build settlements on Israeli land or disregard one “peace” treaty after another. Does Hamas bear some responsibility for these hostilities? Of course, but what else can a dispossessed, occupied, and downtrodden people do when politics, diplomacy and decades of UN resolutions fail?
Israel, the United States, and Britain either have short historical memories or willful myopia. A little more than six decades ago, Israel boasted homegrown terrorists determined to wrest Palestine from British control and establish a Jewish homeland. As all people do, Jews ached for their own land and control of their own fate. One leader in this struggle was Menachem Begin, who would go on to become Prime Minister; yesterday’s terrorist is tomorrow’s politician.
Why can’t Israel and its principal benefactor, the United States, understand that the Palestinians want the very thing that the Jews wanted in the early years of the twentieth century? Why does the West always ascribe righteous motives to Israel and evil motives to the Palestinians? The more important question –the one never addressed in the Western mass media – is this: why is Israel allowed to slaughter innocent people with impunity? Is killing really the road to peace and long-lasting security or does it just inflict fresh wounds and slice into old scars?
But don’t say Israel can’t act benevolently – yesterday the Israeli army gave Gaza residents a brief cease fire so they could stock up on supplies before the next wave of attacks. One wonders where in war-ravaged Gaza the people were supposed to buy bread, drinking water, baby formula, medicine, coats, blankets or fuel oil.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Sticking to the Story, No Matter What
“You delight in laying down laws. Yet you delight more in breaking them.” Kahlil Gibran
When it comes to Gaza, leave it to CNN to reinforce the story line that Israel is only protecting itself against Hamas rocket attacks. The crawl under Larry King’s face informs viewers of the number of Hamas rocket attacks over the past week, but doesn’t say squat about the number of air sorties flown by the Israeli Air Force against a defenseless population. Perhaps it didn’t occur to CNN to ask for that information, though it’s more likely that CNN knew but chose not to report the number because doing so would run counter to the theme that Israel is simply defending itself against indiscriminate attacks.
According to the BBC, Israel has launched more than 700 air sorties against Gaza.
CNN calls what’s happening in Gaza a “conflict,” implying that Hamas is fighting back, which is how the American media absolves Israel of responsibility. The same deceitful terms were used, and continue to be used, to describe the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. As did all major American media outlets, CNN called the US invasion a “war,” which implied that Iraq had attacked the US, which of course never happened.
"War” has a different connotation than “invasion,” and implies a measure of justification, which in the hands of the unscrupulous can turn into self-righteousness.
It’s true that Israel and the Palestinians are locked in a conflict over history, land, broken treaties, self-determination and security. But a count of the dead and wounded in Gaza over the past week describes a massacre, not a conflict: 421 dead in Gaza, 4 dead in Israel. Adding the 2,250 Palestinians wounded (as reported by the BBC) buttresses the argument that a massacre is unfolding.
It bears repeating that Israel’s attacks – no matter how carefully targeted to only strike Hamas – have exacerbated a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Imagine if the medical clinics and hospitals in your home town or city were suddenly flooded with injured and wounded people. Even the best equipped and staffed hospitals would soon reach a breaking point. Medical facilities in Gaza were ill-equipped and supplied before Israel’s assault began; the suffering in the aftermath must be unimaginable.
And like CNN, the outgoing American president, never one to peer too deeply into a crisis lest he see something that might contradict his monochrome worldview, lays blame for the wholesale destruction of Gaza at the feet of Hamas.
When it comes to Gaza, leave it to CNN to reinforce the story line that Israel is only protecting itself against Hamas rocket attacks. The crawl under Larry King’s face informs viewers of the number of Hamas rocket attacks over the past week, but doesn’t say squat about the number of air sorties flown by the Israeli Air Force against a defenseless population. Perhaps it didn’t occur to CNN to ask for that information, though it’s more likely that CNN knew but chose not to report the number because doing so would run counter to the theme that Israel is simply defending itself against indiscriminate attacks.
According to the BBC, Israel has launched more than 700 air sorties against Gaza.
CNN calls what’s happening in Gaza a “conflict,” implying that Hamas is fighting back, which is how the American media absolves Israel of responsibility. The same deceitful terms were used, and continue to be used, to describe the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. As did all major American media outlets, CNN called the US invasion a “war,” which implied that Iraq had attacked the US, which of course never happened.
"War” has a different connotation than “invasion,” and implies a measure of justification, which in the hands of the unscrupulous can turn into self-righteousness.
It’s true that Israel and the Palestinians are locked in a conflict over history, land, broken treaties, self-determination and security. But a count of the dead and wounded in Gaza over the past week describes a massacre, not a conflict: 421 dead in Gaza, 4 dead in Israel. Adding the 2,250 Palestinians wounded (as reported by the BBC) buttresses the argument that a massacre is unfolding.
It bears repeating that Israel’s attacks – no matter how carefully targeted to only strike Hamas – have exacerbated a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Imagine if the medical clinics and hospitals in your home town or city were suddenly flooded with injured and wounded people. Even the best equipped and staffed hospitals would soon reach a breaking point. Medical facilities in Gaza were ill-equipped and supplied before Israel’s assault began; the suffering in the aftermath must be unimaginable.
And like CNN, the outgoing American president, never one to peer too deeply into a crisis lest he see something that might contradict his monochrome worldview, lays blame for the wholesale destruction of Gaza at the feet of Hamas.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Shooting Fish in a Barrel
What would world reaction be if Tel Aviv were under aerial bombardment by the Hamas Air Force for the seventh straight day? Would the United Nations dither over the wording of a statement while scenes of destruction and carnage flash around the globe? Would the United States stand mute while casualties overwhelm Tel Aviv hospitals?
If Hamas military officials were making blithe statements about the pinpoint accuracy of their munitions, and how the Hamas Air Force took great pains to avoid murdering non-combatants, would the world accept the statements at face value or be properly outraged by their absurdity?
We know the answer. The United States and Britain would never allow an Israeli city, town or hamlet to be pulverized into total submission the way the Israelis are pulverizing Gaza. Every political, diplomatic and public relations effort would be made to stop the bombing if Israelis were on the receiving end of Hellfire missiles and bunker busting ordnance. Cries of “Humanitarian Crisis!” would dominate the American and British media until a fever pitch was reached and world leaders were forced to demand an immediate cease-fire -- and pledge sanctions against Hamas if it refused to comply.
But some human lives are obviously worth more than others. We don’t spend much time, expend much effort or cry many tears over dead or maimed Africans, Arabs, Iraqis, Afghans, or Palestinians, while every killed or wounded American, Brit or Israeli is a tragic loss that deserves to be accounted for and cataloged.
Has the world always been so callous about death and so blind to suffering? Ask the Armenians. Ask the Jews of Eastern Europe. Ask Rwandans. Ask the Muslims of Bosnia. Israel claims to be at war with Hamas, but the hurt Israel is putting on Gaza will make the already difficult, constricted and fragile lives of innocent Palestinians worse for months, if not years, to come. Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli homes and citizens are indefensible, but the overwhelming nature of Israel’s response to those attacks, including the cruel blockade of essential supplies that preceded this latest offensive, only reinforces and perpetuates the cycle of violence in which Israelis and Palestinians are locked.
Gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the world and also one of the poorest. Hamas boasts no air force, artillery, tanks, helicopters or navy with which to counter-attack or defend civilians.
The population of Gaza is trapped, like fish in a barrel.
If Hamas military officials were making blithe statements about the pinpoint accuracy of their munitions, and how the Hamas Air Force took great pains to avoid murdering non-combatants, would the world accept the statements at face value or be properly outraged by their absurdity?
We know the answer. The United States and Britain would never allow an Israeli city, town or hamlet to be pulverized into total submission the way the Israelis are pulverizing Gaza. Every political, diplomatic and public relations effort would be made to stop the bombing if Israelis were on the receiving end of Hellfire missiles and bunker busting ordnance. Cries of “Humanitarian Crisis!” would dominate the American and British media until a fever pitch was reached and world leaders were forced to demand an immediate cease-fire -- and pledge sanctions against Hamas if it refused to comply.
But some human lives are obviously worth more than others. We don’t spend much time, expend much effort or cry many tears over dead or maimed Africans, Arabs, Iraqis, Afghans, or Palestinians, while every killed or wounded American, Brit or Israeli is a tragic loss that deserves to be accounted for and cataloged.
Has the world always been so callous about death and so blind to suffering? Ask the Armenians. Ask the Jews of Eastern Europe. Ask Rwandans. Ask the Muslims of Bosnia. Israel claims to be at war with Hamas, but the hurt Israel is putting on Gaza will make the already difficult, constricted and fragile lives of innocent Palestinians worse for months, if not years, to come. Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli homes and citizens are indefensible, but the overwhelming nature of Israel’s response to those attacks, including the cruel blockade of essential supplies that preceded this latest offensive, only reinforces and perpetuates the cycle of violence in which Israelis and Palestinians are locked.
Gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the world and also one of the poorest. Hamas boasts no air force, artillery, tanks, helicopters or navy with which to counter-attack or defend civilians.
The population of Gaza is trapped, like fish in a barrel.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
A Disproportionate Response, Gaza, December 2008
You slice our finger,
We cut off your hand;
You pluck out our eyes,
We chop off your head;
You shell our homes,
We level your cities;
You throw rocks,
We fire missiles from F-16’s;
You kill our soldiers,
We kill your children;
Whatever you do,
We will do X 10;
Because,
Your terror,
Is no match for our terror
We cut off your hand;
You pluck out our eyes,
We chop off your head;
You shell our homes,
We level your cities;
You throw rocks,
We fire missiles from F-16’s;
You kill our soldiers,
We kill your children;
Whatever you do,
We will do X 10;
Because,
Your terror,
Is no match for our terror
Sunday, December 28, 2008
The Ghost of Gray Davis
“He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” George Bernard Shaw
He tripled the car tax and was presiding over a budget hole of around $38 billion when the voters of California ran him out of office and into early retirement. Gray Davis was a wimpy political operator, a bland character in the pocket of his political benefactors, but he never broke the law or misappropriated public funds or had carnal relations with a minor, male or female – some of the usual reasons a sitting governor is recalled.
No, Gray Davis was simply unpopular and he never stood a chance to survive the Recall, not with action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger waiting in the wings with a highly calibrated PR machine pumping out photo ops of the would-be governor throwing “Join Arnold” t-shirts to enthusiastic crowds. The story line quickly developed and solidified: Arnold was an outsider with a personal fortune, beholden to no special interest, and therefore perfectly positioned to tame the political monster that is California.
Arnold won at the polls, of course, and brought his slick style to Sacramento, promising to end gridlock, partisan wrangling, budget deficits, freeway congestion, lousy air quality, and every other ill facing the Golden State. Arnold exuded confidence and soundstage charisma. He was the mighty Governator now, riding in to restore order in the capitol. The time was right, the role was meaty, and the script held intriguing possibilities for a sequel or two.
The media lapped it up, and voters were taken in – particularly when the Governator rescinded the hated car tax. Never mind that local governments depend on car tax revenue to fund essential public services; the state’s general fund would make up the difference, somehow. Budget technicalities could not be allowed to interfere with Schwarzenegger’s feel-good show. Arnold’s people erected a big tent on the capitol lawn, and the new Governor invited legislators in to smoke cigars and bask in his limelight. Excluding pols from Los Angeles and San Francisco, most legislators had never been this close to a real live action hero before and orbiting in Arnold’s atmosphere made them giddy and reverential. Imagine an assembly member from Amador County suddenly rubbing shoulders with the Terminator! What a thrill!
And Arnold’s “Can-Do, Anything is Possible in California!” rhetoric was invigorating after Gray Davis’s pinched and uninspired pronouncements. It was like 1980 all over again, Ronald Reagan’s sunny optimism versus Jimmy Carter’s dour pessimism.
At least until reality took hold. After the initial euphoria faded, Arnold discovered the hard, unpleasant truth of Sacramento: the state’s budget problems were real, structural in nature and impervious to easy resolution. Moreover, the state’s budget process was dysfunctional. Faced with a flood tide of red ink, Arnold studied his hand and did what any self-respecting politician would do – he deferred the reckoning to another day. But give Arnold due credit. He at least had enough savvy to realize that proposing a $15 billion bond initiative to fund everyday government operations flew in the face of his campaign promise to end Sacramento’s business-as-usual ways. The bond had to be packaged carefully and presented properly and stumped for enthusiastically, which played to Arnold’s strength. With a tight script, a friendly audience and appropriate props, Arnold could sell the illusion that he was a different kind of politician.
And he did. The Governator criss-crossed the state, telling voters that this was the last time he would plunk Sacramento’s Mastercard down. To prove he meant business, and to the delight of gullible audiences, Schwarzenegger cut up giant credit cards with oversized shears.
Fast-forward three and a half years. The political monster that is California has won. Arnold’s big tent on the capitol lawn is gone, quietly taken down and returned to the prop warehouse. California’s budget is deep in the red, with the potential deficit estimated in the range of $42 billion. The state’s bond rating is junk. Vital construction projects are on hold to conserve cash. Debt service costs $6 billion a year. Partisan bickering and legislative gridlock still rule the day; Democrats refuse to cut popular programs and Republicans nix any tax increases. Absent ideological concessions from both sides and decisive action soon, the state may go bust by spring.
Arnold’s scriptwriters suffer from writer’s block Getting out of a jam in Hollywood was so much easier.
He tripled the car tax and was presiding over a budget hole of around $38 billion when the voters of California ran him out of office and into early retirement. Gray Davis was a wimpy political operator, a bland character in the pocket of his political benefactors, but he never broke the law or misappropriated public funds or had carnal relations with a minor, male or female – some of the usual reasons a sitting governor is recalled.
No, Gray Davis was simply unpopular and he never stood a chance to survive the Recall, not with action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger waiting in the wings with a highly calibrated PR machine pumping out photo ops of the would-be governor throwing “Join Arnold” t-shirts to enthusiastic crowds. The story line quickly developed and solidified: Arnold was an outsider with a personal fortune, beholden to no special interest, and therefore perfectly positioned to tame the political monster that is California.
Arnold won at the polls, of course, and brought his slick style to Sacramento, promising to end gridlock, partisan wrangling, budget deficits, freeway congestion, lousy air quality, and every other ill facing the Golden State. Arnold exuded confidence and soundstage charisma. He was the mighty Governator now, riding in to restore order in the capitol. The time was right, the role was meaty, and the script held intriguing possibilities for a sequel or two.
The media lapped it up, and voters were taken in – particularly when the Governator rescinded the hated car tax. Never mind that local governments depend on car tax revenue to fund essential public services; the state’s general fund would make up the difference, somehow. Budget technicalities could not be allowed to interfere with Schwarzenegger’s feel-good show. Arnold’s people erected a big tent on the capitol lawn, and the new Governor invited legislators in to smoke cigars and bask in his limelight. Excluding pols from Los Angeles and San Francisco, most legislators had never been this close to a real live action hero before and orbiting in Arnold’s atmosphere made them giddy and reverential. Imagine an assembly member from Amador County suddenly rubbing shoulders with the Terminator! What a thrill!
And Arnold’s “Can-Do, Anything is Possible in California!” rhetoric was invigorating after Gray Davis’s pinched and uninspired pronouncements. It was like 1980 all over again, Ronald Reagan’s sunny optimism versus Jimmy Carter’s dour pessimism.
At least until reality took hold. After the initial euphoria faded, Arnold discovered the hard, unpleasant truth of Sacramento: the state’s budget problems were real, structural in nature and impervious to easy resolution. Moreover, the state’s budget process was dysfunctional. Faced with a flood tide of red ink, Arnold studied his hand and did what any self-respecting politician would do – he deferred the reckoning to another day. But give Arnold due credit. He at least had enough savvy to realize that proposing a $15 billion bond initiative to fund everyday government operations flew in the face of his campaign promise to end Sacramento’s business-as-usual ways. The bond had to be packaged carefully and presented properly and stumped for enthusiastically, which played to Arnold’s strength. With a tight script, a friendly audience and appropriate props, Arnold could sell the illusion that he was a different kind of politician.
And he did. The Governator criss-crossed the state, telling voters that this was the last time he would plunk Sacramento’s Mastercard down. To prove he meant business, and to the delight of gullible audiences, Schwarzenegger cut up giant credit cards with oversized shears.
Fast-forward three and a half years. The political monster that is California has won. Arnold’s big tent on the capitol lawn is gone, quietly taken down and returned to the prop warehouse. California’s budget is deep in the red, with the potential deficit estimated in the range of $42 billion. The state’s bond rating is junk. Vital construction projects are on hold to conserve cash. Debt service costs $6 billion a year. Partisan bickering and legislative gridlock still rule the day; Democrats refuse to cut popular programs and Republicans nix any tax increases. Absent ideological concessions from both sides and decisive action soon, the state may go bust by spring.
Arnold’s scriptwriters suffer from writer’s block Getting out of a jam in Hollywood was so much easier.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Merry F'ing Christmas
Christmas cards arrive in the mailbox, some accompanied by an “annual” letter detailing a year of travel, adventures in child-rearing, business success, or, in one case, a bizarre recounting of the restaurants the author had dined in, as if this accomplishment is of signal importance.
Weird shit to be sure, but these are Weird times. It takes a strong person – or a delusional one -- to stand in the maelstrom of bad news and visible misery and still feel the spirit of this Christian season moving down his or her spine. Goodwill toward Men and all that stuff becomes hard to muster when the daily news is filled with evidence that in places like Africa, Gaza and Afghanistan, Goodwill is in short supply. Even here in our beloved US of A, where criminal politicians are lining up to pardon themselves for a host of heinous crimes, Goodwill is scarce. None of this horror is happening to me personally, so I suppose I should shove these dark thoughts out of mind and pour another glass of cabernet and let the world roll on as it will – and as it always has.
Maybe. Except I find suppressing these musings a difficult feat, even with a glass or two of cabernet sloshing in my belly, because the inescapable fact is that the outrages visited upon innocent human beings anywhere diminish human beings everywhere. We can close our eyes, turn up the sound on our iPods or change the channel on the Tube, but the fact remains and remains and remains.
Meanwhile, it’s Christmas Eve and a heavy rain is supposed to fall; the sky is leaden and the mountains wear a shawl of puffy clouds. The eucalyptus trees in the yard yield to a gust of wind, bend and writhe, then snap back and dare the wind to come again. My little family has light and warmth and food, none of us are ill or infirm or mutilated by war, and this seems miraculous, if not just flat lucky.
And on the nightstand next to my bed, the statue of Buddha is still smiling, so yeah, Merry F’ing Christmas.
Amen.
Weird shit to be sure, but these are Weird times. It takes a strong person – or a delusional one -- to stand in the maelstrom of bad news and visible misery and still feel the spirit of this Christian season moving down his or her spine. Goodwill toward Men and all that stuff becomes hard to muster when the daily news is filled with evidence that in places like Africa, Gaza and Afghanistan, Goodwill is in short supply. Even here in our beloved US of A, where criminal politicians are lining up to pardon themselves for a host of heinous crimes, Goodwill is scarce. None of this horror is happening to me personally, so I suppose I should shove these dark thoughts out of mind and pour another glass of cabernet and let the world roll on as it will – and as it always has.
Maybe. Except I find suppressing these musings a difficult feat, even with a glass or two of cabernet sloshing in my belly, because the inescapable fact is that the outrages visited upon innocent human beings anywhere diminish human beings everywhere. We can close our eyes, turn up the sound on our iPods or change the channel on the Tube, but the fact remains and remains and remains.
Meanwhile, it’s Christmas Eve and a heavy rain is supposed to fall; the sky is leaden and the mountains wear a shawl of puffy clouds. The eucalyptus trees in the yard yield to a gust of wind, bend and writhe, then snap back and dare the wind to come again. My little family has light and warmth and food, none of us are ill or infirm or mutilated by war, and this seems miraculous, if not just flat lucky.
And on the nightstand next to my bed, the statue of Buddha is still smiling, so yeah, Merry F’ing Christmas.
Amen.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
The Shoes of our Wrath
The Wall Street bailout is a boondoggle based on exaggeration and lies, and taxpayer money is flowing to all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons; Congress can and should stop the farce but too many in that compromised body are in the pocket of the financial industry; Bush and Cheney are busy re-writing history, claiming at every opportunity that we won the war in Iraq and liberated Afghanistan and made the world safe for Democracy, Freedom and the American Way; meanwhile, the lapdog American media jots down what the liars in Washington say without question or challenge, journalists having morphed into stenographers and mindless repeaters of falsehoods. It’s a shame that no American journalist has the cajones to heave his or her shoes at George W. Bush.
Two days ago I saw this headline in the New York Times and damn near fell over: “Bush Prepares Crisis Briefings to Aid Obama.”
Come again? Bush…Prepares…Crisis…Briefings…to…Aid…Obama.
Sweet Jesus! The same Bush who turned his two-term presidency into a running crisis, fucking up everything he touched, from the misbegotten worldwide War on Muslims to Hurricane Katrina relief to Iraq reconstruction, to the economy and health care, education, the environment, executive authority (which W abused and perverted), privacy, and the rule of law.
That Bush is going to brief Obama? Hey Mr. President-Elect, just tell W “Thanks but no thanks,” and if a crisis turns up in the early days of your presidency, do the exact opposite of what Bush and Uncle Dick would do and everything should turn out fine.
In a normal, rational country, in a normal, rational age, Americans would be screaming for Bush and Cheney’s heads, for an accounting of their high crimes and misdemeanors, and for simple justice. Instead, we, and in particular our elected “representatives,” stand complicit in a collective denial which in a few years will turn into institutionalized amnesia. Bush and Cheney will never account for their crimes, foreign or domestic.
I dream that on the morning of January 20, 2009, a half million fed up Americans will surround the White House and rain a torrent of shoes on Bush and Cheney as they leave the White House for the final time. By everything that is right and holy, and for every drop of blood ever shed in America’s name, they should leave in orange jumpsuits and shackles, but if we can’t have that, a hail of broken, dirt-caked, foul-smelling shoes will do.
Two days ago I saw this headline in the New York Times and damn near fell over: “Bush Prepares Crisis Briefings to Aid Obama.”
Come again? Bush…Prepares…Crisis…Briefings…to…Aid…Obama.
Sweet Jesus! The same Bush who turned his two-term presidency into a running crisis, fucking up everything he touched, from the misbegotten worldwide War on Muslims to Hurricane Katrina relief to Iraq reconstruction, to the economy and health care, education, the environment, executive authority (which W abused and perverted), privacy, and the rule of law.
That Bush is going to brief Obama? Hey Mr. President-Elect, just tell W “Thanks but no thanks,” and if a crisis turns up in the early days of your presidency, do the exact opposite of what Bush and Uncle Dick would do and everything should turn out fine.
In a normal, rational country, in a normal, rational age, Americans would be screaming for Bush and Cheney’s heads, for an accounting of their high crimes and misdemeanors, and for simple justice. Instead, we, and in particular our elected “representatives,” stand complicit in a collective denial which in a few years will turn into institutionalized amnesia. Bush and Cheney will never account for their crimes, foreign or domestic.
I dream that on the morning of January 20, 2009, a half million fed up Americans will surround the White House and rain a torrent of shoes on Bush and Cheney as they leave the White House for the final time. By everything that is right and holy, and for every drop of blood ever shed in America’s name, they should leave in orange jumpsuits and shackles, but if we can’t have that, a hail of broken, dirt-caked, foul-smelling shoes will do.
Spinning History
The spin of history has begun
Karl Rove claims George W. Bush
“Liberated”
25 million Iraqis
from the grip of a brutal dictator
freed
millions of Afghans
from Taliban fanatics
Has Rove ever spoken with an Iraqi or an Afghan?
asked them how it feels to be “liberated” by a foreign power
whose soldiers now patrol their streets and occupy their cities,
lay down laws and mete out justice
Spin it any way you want
but for the Iraqis and the Afghans
it’s the same tired story
whether told in the King’s English
Russian
or on the editorial pages of the
New York Times
46 Iraqis died in a suicide bombing in Kirkuk today;
Baghdad is a city of ruins and blast walls;
the Taliban is back in business
moving on Kabul
attacking at will and fading away
Is this Rove’s idea of liberation?
Peddle your snake oil somewhere else, Mr. Rove
sell it to the fatherless sons and widows
of Baghdad & Kirkuk
the orphans of Kandahar
But don’t be surprised when they don’t buy it
unlike Americans
they know the difference between
truth and lies
fiction and fantasy
They know because they carry the full weight
of your master’s
boundless hubris
and bottomless arrogance
on their backs
Karl Rove claims George W. Bush
“Liberated”
25 million Iraqis
from the grip of a brutal dictator
freed
millions of Afghans
from Taliban fanatics
Has Rove ever spoken with an Iraqi or an Afghan?
asked them how it feels to be “liberated” by a foreign power
whose soldiers now patrol their streets and occupy their cities,
lay down laws and mete out justice
Spin it any way you want
but for the Iraqis and the Afghans
it’s the same tired story
whether told in the King’s English
Russian
or on the editorial pages of the
New York Times
46 Iraqis died in a suicide bombing in Kirkuk today;
Baghdad is a city of ruins and blast walls;
the Taliban is back in business
moving on Kabul
attacking at will and fading away
Is this Rove’s idea of liberation?
Peddle your snake oil somewhere else, Mr. Rove
sell it to the fatherless sons and widows
of Baghdad & Kirkuk
the orphans of Kandahar
But don’t be surprised when they don’t buy it
unlike Americans
they know the difference between
truth and lies
fiction and fantasy
They know because they carry the full weight
of your master’s
boundless hubris
and bottomless arrogance
on their backs
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Busted Bailout
So, Republicans in the US Senate shot down a bid by the Little 3 Automakers and the UAW for a hefty infusion of taxpayer cash, leaving the fate of the domestic auto industry in doubt. Republicans demanded even steeper wage and benefit concessions from the UAW on top of what the union had already conceded to.
Lost in the hurried debate about the auto industry is an accounting from the men (and the auto industry is a man’s playground) at the top, the highly compensated and pampered CEO’s of GM, Ford, and -- before it became the plaything of hedge fund managers -- Chrysler. We hear plenty of thunder from Republicans about overpaid UAW members, but what of the obscene amounts of dough the CEO’s pocket every year, regardless of how well or poorly the corporation performs? About that we hear next to nothing because CEO pay in Corporate America is still sacrosanct, a function of the “free-market.”
No, the discussion always centers on blue-collar labor costs, UAW versus Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Kia, between the rusted unionized North and the right-to-work South. But instead of comparing blue-collar costs, why not compare compensation in the Executive Suite? Do the big dogs at Toyota and Honda pull in 400 or 500 times more than the average line worker? Are the CEO’s at Toyota and Honda surrounded by dozens of Vice Presidents, as are the CEO’s of GM and Ford?
Republicans represent the interests of owners and investors, not wage earners, so of course the Republicans want to turn the current situation to their tactical advantage and crush the UAW once and for all. That’s why the narrative runs like this: Ford, GM and Chrysler are collapsing because of greedy union workers who earn exorbitant wages and overly generous pensions and health benefits. Redundant product lines, poor engineering, woeful quality control and middling fuel economy have nothing to do with Detroit’s woes – it’s all the fault of those overpaid blue-collar workers, active and retired.
Somewhere during the past thirty-odd years, starting when Ronald Reagan declared open season on working people, it became a crime for working Americans to earn decent wages in decent working conditions with decent pension and health benefits. With a great shove from Reagan, Labor hit the skids, Capital became ascendant, and Profit replaced equity, fairness and morality. Welcome to the New World Order.
A Republican commandment these past thirty years or so has been that workers are expendable, replaceable, and far easier to exploit when they are prevented from organizing and bargaining collectively. There are laws on the books against union busting, but these laws have tiny teeth and are easily evaded by slick corporate lawyers. Americans experienced years of downsizing and rightsizing, domestic outsourcing, and then, as digital technology shrank the globe, international outsourcing, so that an American in Boise, Idaho in need of technical assistance with an HP printer finds herself talking to a technician in India; the Indians are invariably polite and eager to help, but rarely are these calls concluded without frustration.
The Republican fascination with union busting and cheap labor never came to grips with this conundrum: how can an economy driven by consumption thrive when consumers’ wages are flat or declining? Even at Wal-Mart, Burger King wages don’t go very far, and sooner or later, as we’ve seen lately, easy credit disappears.
But back to the bailout that didn’t happen. One other point deserves mention and that is health care and health insurance; if the United States had a sensible, sane, rational and cost-effective system of single-payer health insurance (that’s insurance, not socialized medicine) would Detroit and the UAW be in the straits they find themselves in today?
Lost in the hurried debate about the auto industry is an accounting from the men (and the auto industry is a man’s playground) at the top, the highly compensated and pampered CEO’s of GM, Ford, and -- before it became the plaything of hedge fund managers -- Chrysler. We hear plenty of thunder from Republicans about overpaid UAW members, but what of the obscene amounts of dough the CEO’s pocket every year, regardless of how well or poorly the corporation performs? About that we hear next to nothing because CEO pay in Corporate America is still sacrosanct, a function of the “free-market.”
No, the discussion always centers on blue-collar labor costs, UAW versus Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Kia, between the rusted unionized North and the right-to-work South. But instead of comparing blue-collar costs, why not compare compensation in the Executive Suite? Do the big dogs at Toyota and Honda pull in 400 or 500 times more than the average line worker? Are the CEO’s at Toyota and Honda surrounded by dozens of Vice Presidents, as are the CEO’s of GM and Ford?
Republicans represent the interests of owners and investors, not wage earners, so of course the Republicans want to turn the current situation to their tactical advantage and crush the UAW once and for all. That’s why the narrative runs like this: Ford, GM and Chrysler are collapsing because of greedy union workers who earn exorbitant wages and overly generous pensions and health benefits. Redundant product lines, poor engineering, woeful quality control and middling fuel economy have nothing to do with Detroit’s woes – it’s all the fault of those overpaid blue-collar workers, active and retired.
Somewhere during the past thirty-odd years, starting when Ronald Reagan declared open season on working people, it became a crime for working Americans to earn decent wages in decent working conditions with decent pension and health benefits. With a great shove from Reagan, Labor hit the skids, Capital became ascendant, and Profit replaced equity, fairness and morality. Welcome to the New World Order.
A Republican commandment these past thirty years or so has been that workers are expendable, replaceable, and far easier to exploit when they are prevented from organizing and bargaining collectively. There are laws on the books against union busting, but these laws have tiny teeth and are easily evaded by slick corporate lawyers. Americans experienced years of downsizing and rightsizing, domestic outsourcing, and then, as digital technology shrank the globe, international outsourcing, so that an American in Boise, Idaho in need of technical assistance with an HP printer finds herself talking to a technician in India; the Indians are invariably polite and eager to help, but rarely are these calls concluded without frustration.
The Republican fascination with union busting and cheap labor never came to grips with this conundrum: how can an economy driven by consumption thrive when consumers’ wages are flat or declining? Even at Wal-Mart, Burger King wages don’t go very far, and sooner or later, as we’ve seen lately, easy credit disappears.
But back to the bailout that didn’t happen. One other point deserves mention and that is health care and health insurance; if the United States had a sensible, sane, rational and cost-effective system of single-payer health insurance (that’s insurance, not socialized medicine) would Detroit and the UAW be in the straits they find themselves in today?
Saturday, December 13, 2008
POEM - 3:00 A.M.
A dog howls, once, twice
Low & plaintive
A cry of loneliness that carries over
The silent street
Dark rooftops
Footsteps echo on the sidewalk
One soul moving through the night
Merge with the dog’s howl
Which is louder now, more insistent
To break the silence
and be heard
Lonely at 3:00 A.M.
Lonely in a crowd
Lonely in the marriage bed
Lonely in a church pew
Lonely on the front lines of war
Lonely in a hospital room
Lonely in an unmarked grave
Lonely
Lonely
Lonely
I roll over, awake now
Wishing I could open the window
And howl back at the dog
Low & plaintive
A cry of loneliness that carries over
The silent street
Dark rooftops
Footsteps echo on the sidewalk
One soul moving through the night
Merge with the dog’s howl
Which is louder now, more insistent
To break the silence
and be heard
Lonely at 3:00 A.M.
Lonely in a crowd
Lonely in the marriage bed
Lonely in a church pew
Lonely on the front lines of war
Lonely in a hospital room
Lonely in an unmarked grave
Lonely
Lonely
Lonely
I roll over, awake now
Wishing I could open the window
And howl back at the dog
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Poem - Poor November
In America,
November stands no chance against December
Christmas trumps Thanksgiving every year
Long before the leftover turkey is gone
Christmas swaggers in,
Like a playground badass with a score to settle
Pilgrims can’t stand in the ring with Santa
Any more than Sonny Liston could stand with Cassius Clay
Before the Thanksgiving dishes are dry
Christmas tree sellers erect their tents
Though who of sound mind buys a Christmas tree
In November?
The radio cries, “Happy Holidays” and every storefront window
Boasts a killer red-tag sale, 50% off, bargains galore!
On the corner by the museum a quartet plays Christmas ditties
For the shoppers and the tourists and the homeless
And on Black Friday people race like lemmings to the Mall
To Wal-Mart and Target
Primed for the Great American battle
The last frontier
Of our dubious supremacy
Losing their heads in the moment,
Otherwise decent people push and shove
Elbow their way through long lines
Run up escalators, hurl themselves into elevators
Glare impatiently at minimum wage clerks
Christmas is never content to merely win
It must dominate
Force November to kneel, then crawl in submission
Broken once more by our perversion
November stands no chance against December
Christmas trumps Thanksgiving every year
Long before the leftover turkey is gone
Christmas swaggers in,
Like a playground badass with a score to settle
Pilgrims can’t stand in the ring with Santa
Any more than Sonny Liston could stand with Cassius Clay
Before the Thanksgiving dishes are dry
Christmas tree sellers erect their tents
Though who of sound mind buys a Christmas tree
In November?
The radio cries, “Happy Holidays” and every storefront window
Boasts a killer red-tag sale, 50% off, bargains galore!
On the corner by the museum a quartet plays Christmas ditties
For the shoppers and the tourists and the homeless
And on Black Friday people race like lemmings to the Mall
To Wal-Mart and Target
Primed for the Great American battle
The last frontier
Of our dubious supremacy
Losing their heads in the moment,
Otherwise decent people push and shove
Elbow their way through long lines
Run up escalators, hurl themselves into elevators
Glare impatiently at minimum wage clerks
Christmas is never content to merely win
It must dominate
Force November to kneel, then crawl in submission
Broken once more by our perversion
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Poem - Terror in the Looking Glass
Kabul
Baghdad
Mumbai
Twisted metal
Broken glass
Blood-stained pavement
Mangled bodies
Chaos, confusion and carnage
Death, death, death
The papers and TV tell us Islamists from Pakistan
With possible ties to Al Qaida
Are prime suspects in the Mumbai attacks
Ruthless, righteous, full of retributive hatred
For Westerners
What do they want?
Why are they so eager to die
And take innocent people with them?
Is the answer in them?
Or us?
Baghdad
Mumbai
Twisted metal
Broken glass
Blood-stained pavement
Mangled bodies
Chaos, confusion and carnage
Death, death, death
The papers and TV tell us Islamists from Pakistan
With possible ties to Al Qaida
Are prime suspects in the Mumbai attacks
Ruthless, righteous, full of retributive hatred
For Westerners
What do they want?
Why are they so eager to die
And take innocent people with them?
Is the answer in them?
Or us?
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Happy Illusions
“It is style and story, not content or history or reality, which informs our politics and our lives. We prefer happy illusions. And it works because so much of the American electorate, including those who should know better, blindly cast ballots for slogans, smiles, the cheerful family tableaux, narratives and the perceived sincerity and the attractiveness of candidates.” Chris Hedges, Truthdig
The Tea Fire shoved politics off my table. When a wildfire devastates people in your own family, it’s hard to focus on the goings-on in Sacramento or Washington D.C.
The fire was a stark reminder of the ephemeral nature of life, how in an instant the course of a life – no matter how rich or seemingly protected – can change. In a matter of hours on a preternaturally hot and windy November night, hundreds of people lost a lifetime of memories, investment and their place in the world. You have to walk in the burn area, through the ash and charred timbers, see with your own eyes the collapsed roofs, blackened bricks and torched oak trees to fully grasp the devastation.
But politics has returned now, as it always does, because human beings are political creatures, and the decisions made in the capitol city of any nation carry implications for real people with real needs. Americans are riveted by the economy, desperate to know how bad it will get and how they might be personally affected, while Detroit cries for a bail-out and once proud and arrogant CitiBank calls for a helping hand. The irony is as stark as the hypocrisy and I don’t know where to start my tirade, other than to say that lavishly compensated and coddled corporate CEO’s know no shame.
The bottom line on Detroit is that the Big 3 have been sliding into the shitter for years, stubbornly wedded to shoddy designs and crappy quality. Sorry, UAW members. (The Ford parked in my carport is the most service-prone vehicle I have ever owned, and never, ever again will I plunk down my hard-earned credit on a Ford, GM or Chrysler product.) While the Japanese focused on quality, the Big 3 focused on the slick commercials they would show during halftime at the Super Bowl. While Honda and Toyota were getting out front of hybrid technology, the Big 3 were rolling out one gargantuan SUV after another, with names like Explorer and Expedition, Yukon and Tahoe, rugged luxury for suburban soccer moms who never ventured within a hundred miles of an unpaved road.
Now Detroit wants taxpayer money to execute an about-face, but let’s be honest: six months or a year from now, the Big 3 CEO’s will be back in front of a Congressional committee asking for more money, more concessions, more assistance, and they will spout the same arguments about the auto industry’s importance to the American economy, how it cannot be allowed to flounder or fail, blah, blah, blah. Congress will cave in, as it always does, and the slow death will continue, limb by limb, organ by organ; two of the Big 3 will merge amidst the usual corporate rhetoric -- happy talk of synergy and complimentary strengths and how the merger is good for America and American workers – and that too will fail.
But what was the point I was sidling up to when I got off on a Detroit tangent? Yes, Mr. Hedges, whose piece I came across a week after the election, when Sarah Palin embarked on her magical media tour. The hapless Governor from the Alaskan Frontier didn’t seem to grasp that her ticket was on the losing end of the electoral vote count or that she was the anchor that helped pull it down.
Palin is the poster child for Hedges’ thesis that American voters are easy marks for slick media images, sunny personal narratives, and campaign messages that bear little or no resemblance to reality. Why journalists following Palin didn’t burst out laughing when she said she was keeping her options open for 2012 is beyond me; she won’t be any more qualified then than she is now because the Governor of Alaska is Stupid. Flat stupid. Dense. Moronic. A politician who claims, as Palin does, that the economy will right itself if Government will just get out of the way of the people, is simply not to be taken seriously. The problem, Governor, was caused by lack of government oversight of the financial system, and that lack was systematically engineered by free-market ideologues.
Palin can run amok in Alaska without doing much damage because the state is sparsely populated, remote, and rich from petro-dollars and Federal subsidies. If the people of Alaska want a dolt for a governor, fine, they have the right to keep electing Palin, but do us all a favor and never again allow that dingbat into the lower 48.
Rush Limbaugh’s millions of faithful listeners also add credence to Hedges’ argument. There was Limbaugh, two or three days after the election, two and a half months before Obama will be sworn in, calling the economic downturn the “Obama Recession.” Rush contended that the financial markets were rattled by the mere thought of a Liberal in the White House – as if the past eight years of economic mismanagement by Republicans (and some weak-kneed Democrats, too) never happened. If we’re going to give this recession a name, let’s be fair, include the architects and the enablers, and call it the Phil Graham-Alan Greenspan-Robert Rubin-George W. Bush Recession.
Limbaugh shouldn’t be taken seriously, either, but I can see thousands of his adherents nodding in agreement when he spouts nonsense about the “Obama Recession.”
Meanwhile, the President-Elect is surrounding himself with Clintonites and moving closer and closer to the safe center. No one should be surprised by this – campaigning is one thing, governing another. As Eric Alterman wrote in the Nation, “Obama will disappoint us.”
The Tea Fire shoved politics off my table. When a wildfire devastates people in your own family, it’s hard to focus on the goings-on in Sacramento or Washington D.C.
The fire was a stark reminder of the ephemeral nature of life, how in an instant the course of a life – no matter how rich or seemingly protected – can change. In a matter of hours on a preternaturally hot and windy November night, hundreds of people lost a lifetime of memories, investment and their place in the world. You have to walk in the burn area, through the ash and charred timbers, see with your own eyes the collapsed roofs, blackened bricks and torched oak trees to fully grasp the devastation.
But politics has returned now, as it always does, because human beings are political creatures, and the decisions made in the capitol city of any nation carry implications for real people with real needs. Americans are riveted by the economy, desperate to know how bad it will get and how they might be personally affected, while Detroit cries for a bail-out and once proud and arrogant CitiBank calls for a helping hand. The irony is as stark as the hypocrisy and I don’t know where to start my tirade, other than to say that lavishly compensated and coddled corporate CEO’s know no shame.
The bottom line on Detroit is that the Big 3 have been sliding into the shitter for years, stubbornly wedded to shoddy designs and crappy quality. Sorry, UAW members. (The Ford parked in my carport is the most service-prone vehicle I have ever owned, and never, ever again will I plunk down my hard-earned credit on a Ford, GM or Chrysler product.) While the Japanese focused on quality, the Big 3 focused on the slick commercials they would show during halftime at the Super Bowl. While Honda and Toyota were getting out front of hybrid technology, the Big 3 were rolling out one gargantuan SUV after another, with names like Explorer and Expedition, Yukon and Tahoe, rugged luxury for suburban soccer moms who never ventured within a hundred miles of an unpaved road.
Now Detroit wants taxpayer money to execute an about-face, but let’s be honest: six months or a year from now, the Big 3 CEO’s will be back in front of a Congressional committee asking for more money, more concessions, more assistance, and they will spout the same arguments about the auto industry’s importance to the American economy, how it cannot be allowed to flounder or fail, blah, blah, blah. Congress will cave in, as it always does, and the slow death will continue, limb by limb, organ by organ; two of the Big 3 will merge amidst the usual corporate rhetoric -- happy talk of synergy and complimentary strengths and how the merger is good for America and American workers – and that too will fail.
But what was the point I was sidling up to when I got off on a Detroit tangent? Yes, Mr. Hedges, whose piece I came across a week after the election, when Sarah Palin embarked on her magical media tour. The hapless Governor from the Alaskan Frontier didn’t seem to grasp that her ticket was on the losing end of the electoral vote count or that she was the anchor that helped pull it down.
Palin is the poster child for Hedges’ thesis that American voters are easy marks for slick media images, sunny personal narratives, and campaign messages that bear little or no resemblance to reality. Why journalists following Palin didn’t burst out laughing when she said she was keeping her options open for 2012 is beyond me; she won’t be any more qualified then than she is now because the Governor of Alaska is Stupid. Flat stupid. Dense. Moronic. A politician who claims, as Palin does, that the economy will right itself if Government will just get out of the way of the people, is simply not to be taken seriously. The problem, Governor, was caused by lack of government oversight of the financial system, and that lack was systematically engineered by free-market ideologues.
Palin can run amok in Alaska without doing much damage because the state is sparsely populated, remote, and rich from petro-dollars and Federal subsidies. If the people of Alaska want a dolt for a governor, fine, they have the right to keep electing Palin, but do us all a favor and never again allow that dingbat into the lower 48.
Rush Limbaugh’s millions of faithful listeners also add credence to Hedges’ argument. There was Limbaugh, two or three days after the election, two and a half months before Obama will be sworn in, calling the economic downturn the “Obama Recession.” Rush contended that the financial markets were rattled by the mere thought of a Liberal in the White House – as if the past eight years of economic mismanagement by Republicans (and some weak-kneed Democrats, too) never happened. If we’re going to give this recession a name, let’s be fair, include the architects and the enablers, and call it the Phil Graham-Alan Greenspan-Robert Rubin-George W. Bush Recession.
Limbaugh shouldn’t be taken seriously, either, but I can see thousands of his adherents nodding in agreement when he spouts nonsense about the “Obama Recession.”
Meanwhile, the President-Elect is surrounding himself with Clintonites and moving closer and closer to the safe center. No one should be surprised by this – campaigning is one thing, governing another. As Eric Alterman wrote in the Nation, “Obama will disappoint us.”
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Fire, Fire Everywhere
The Tea Fire shut the Balcony down for a few days, focused
all attention on the here and now, on the direction of the wind,
the temperature and the latest count of homes destroyed
Helicopters chugged overhead like a war zone, only now fighting devil winds and unforgiving heat
The moon turned orange, soot blanketed our cars; the home of a friend went up, an aunt lost everything in less time than it takes to drive to Ventura
Power went out and we fumbled for flashlights and candles as sirens cut the smoky darkness; the blaze jumped and skipped across dry hillsides, laughed at the men who gathered to make a stand in million dollar cul-de-sacs
Rich and poor got the same treatment, not from God but from the hand of careless Man
Drunk maybe, stoned maybe, or maybe just giddy with Youth, playing with fire in a field of tinder; an errant ember latched onto the devil wind’s breath as the sun slipped from sight
One spark to one bush to one tree
And then a car and a house
And another and another, and the sky dripped flame while the wind ran in circles, herding sparks to still more bushes and trees, unstoppable now, an insatiable force, indiscriminate, uncaring
Disaster on Thursday, disbelief on Friday, despair on Saturday, destitution on Sunday
Survivors poke through the rubble in search of miracles
all attention on the here and now, on the direction of the wind,
the temperature and the latest count of homes destroyed
Helicopters chugged overhead like a war zone, only now fighting devil winds and unforgiving heat
The moon turned orange, soot blanketed our cars; the home of a friend went up, an aunt lost everything in less time than it takes to drive to Ventura
Power went out and we fumbled for flashlights and candles as sirens cut the smoky darkness; the blaze jumped and skipped across dry hillsides, laughed at the men who gathered to make a stand in million dollar cul-de-sacs
Rich and poor got the same treatment, not from God but from the hand of careless Man
Drunk maybe, stoned maybe, or maybe just giddy with Youth, playing with fire in a field of tinder; an errant ember latched onto the devil wind’s breath as the sun slipped from sight
One spark to one bush to one tree
And then a car and a house
And another and another, and the sky dripped flame while the wind ran in circles, herding sparks to still more bushes and trees, unstoppable now, an insatiable force, indiscriminate, uncaring
Disaster on Thursday, disbelief on Friday, despair on Saturday, destitution on Sunday
Survivors poke through the rubble in search of miracles
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Rule of Law & Other Fables
George W. Bush continues to strut around the White House as if he will depart on January 20, 2009 on a triumphant note – and not as the worst and most unpopular Presidents in U.S. history. You have to admire George’s uncanny ability to shut out the real world and create his own alternate reality, where the nation’s economy is humming – thanks to his tax cuts for the wealthy – and our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are going according to plan – thanks to his brilliant leadership.
Barack Obama lives in the real world where outrageous political corruption and slavish devotion to failed ideology leads to the suffering of flesh and blood human beings. The cable TV pundits are wild with advice for the President-elect, what he should do first, who he should appoint to what Cabinet post and so on. Office pools predicting the final composition of Obama’s cabinet are enjoying enthusiastic support and faring far better than the average 401K.
Meanwhile, King George is ramping up efforts to rat-fuck the nation one last time. While the country celebrates Obama’s victory and enjoys a resurgence of hope and anticipation, Bush and his cronies are changing rules and re-writing regulations to make it easier for the FBI to spy on American citizens, dismantling environmental protections in place since Bill Clinton enjoyed blow-jobs from Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office, and basically standing around playing pocket pool while JPMorgan Chase and other big banks use their bailout windfalls for mergers and acquisitions rather than loans.
We expected nothing less from Bush than a last gasp orgy of ideological intercourse, one or two final lost weekends where the rich and well-connected get richer and American taxpayers get saddled with the bill. The big bailout (paid for with our hard-earned money and our kids’ future, don’t forget) wasn’t supposed to play this way, and we can only hope that an Obama Administration will tweak the bailout to make it work the way it was intended. This is important. The country’s leaders need to understand what made the financial system run off the rails, identify who was culpable, and enact legislation or create regulations to make sure it never happens again. Unfortunately, with the likes of Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers circling Obama’s camp like birds of prey, it’s possible that Obama, in the end, will do nothing to upset the status quo.
That would hurt, not to mention insult, all the people who supported Obama’s campaign by donating money, knocking on doors or making phone calls; people didn’t work their tails off for Barack Obama only to watch him fall victim to the Clinton Syndrome. Remember? Clinton entered the White House on a wave of hope, but after encountering some early opposition, promptly pitched his tent in the valley of corporate interests and became a shill for Wall Street flim-flam. Despite his rhetoric and good-old-boy charm, Bill Clinton was no friend of working Americans. Frankly, when he wasn’t screwing someone other than his lawfully wedded wife, he was screwing us.
It’s natural for TV pundits and citizens to focus on the economy in this time of uncertainty and spreading financial distress, but personally I would like to hear the President-elect say something about restoring the rule of law at home and abroad. It seems to me that an affirmation of bedrock American principles is not only necessary, but a precondition for solving all the other problems we face. Are we going to allow Administration officials to ignore Congressional subpoenas or not? Are we going to continue violating the human rights of detainees? Are we going to turn a blind eye to Israel as it continues to violate every treaty it has ever entered into with the Palestinians? Are we going to allow further erosion of our civil liberties in the name of a false security? From there we can debate the best way to create a more just and equitable society, deliver health care to those in need, and get the hell out of Iraq, with or without “honor.”
I don’t think such introspection and reflection will happen, but it’s nice to hope.
Barack Obama lives in the real world where outrageous political corruption and slavish devotion to failed ideology leads to the suffering of flesh and blood human beings. The cable TV pundits are wild with advice for the President-elect, what he should do first, who he should appoint to what Cabinet post and so on. Office pools predicting the final composition of Obama’s cabinet are enjoying enthusiastic support and faring far better than the average 401K.
Meanwhile, King George is ramping up efforts to rat-fuck the nation one last time. While the country celebrates Obama’s victory and enjoys a resurgence of hope and anticipation, Bush and his cronies are changing rules and re-writing regulations to make it easier for the FBI to spy on American citizens, dismantling environmental protections in place since Bill Clinton enjoyed blow-jobs from Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office, and basically standing around playing pocket pool while JPMorgan Chase and other big banks use their bailout windfalls for mergers and acquisitions rather than loans.
We expected nothing less from Bush than a last gasp orgy of ideological intercourse, one or two final lost weekends where the rich and well-connected get richer and American taxpayers get saddled with the bill. The big bailout (paid for with our hard-earned money and our kids’ future, don’t forget) wasn’t supposed to play this way, and we can only hope that an Obama Administration will tweak the bailout to make it work the way it was intended. This is important. The country’s leaders need to understand what made the financial system run off the rails, identify who was culpable, and enact legislation or create regulations to make sure it never happens again. Unfortunately, with the likes of Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers circling Obama’s camp like birds of prey, it’s possible that Obama, in the end, will do nothing to upset the status quo.
That would hurt, not to mention insult, all the people who supported Obama’s campaign by donating money, knocking on doors or making phone calls; people didn’t work their tails off for Barack Obama only to watch him fall victim to the Clinton Syndrome. Remember? Clinton entered the White House on a wave of hope, but after encountering some early opposition, promptly pitched his tent in the valley of corporate interests and became a shill for Wall Street flim-flam. Despite his rhetoric and good-old-boy charm, Bill Clinton was no friend of working Americans. Frankly, when he wasn’t screwing someone other than his lawfully wedded wife, he was screwing us.
It’s natural for TV pundits and citizens to focus on the economy in this time of uncertainty and spreading financial distress, but personally I would like to hear the President-elect say something about restoring the rule of law at home and abroad. It seems to me that an affirmation of bedrock American principles is not only necessary, but a precondition for solving all the other problems we face. Are we going to allow Administration officials to ignore Congressional subpoenas or not? Are we going to continue violating the human rights of detainees? Are we going to turn a blind eye to Israel as it continues to violate every treaty it has ever entered into with the Palestinians? Are we going to allow further erosion of our civil liberties in the name of a false security? From there we can debate the best way to create a more just and equitable society, deliver health care to those in need, and get the hell out of Iraq, with or without “honor.”
I don’t think such introspection and reflection will happen, but it’s nice to hope.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
When the People are Ready
The euphoria from election night lingers. It’s like stepping from a subterranean cavern into the first light of a fresh morning. The way ahead may be difficult and perplexing, but at least we can feel proud of our President as he represents us to the world. Obama reads, studies history, and speaks in complete sentences – by themselves these attributes make him radically different from the current occupant of the White House.
On January 20, 2009, intelligence and rational thought make a triumphant return to the White House. One thing is certain: willful ignorance will not be a virtue in an Obama Administration.
The reaction from people around the globe to Barack Obama’s victory proves that the idea of America is alive and kicking. Perhaps the world is reacting so favorably to Obama because he appears calm, collected and sane, reasonable and reassuring; he doesn’t swagger like a gunslinger (Bush) or talk like a fascist (Cheney). We have yet to fully appreciate the damage done by Bush and Cheney to our standing in the world. It won’t happen overnight, but Obama has a window of opportunity to repair that damage and restore our credibility and moral authority.
Tuesday night’s historic results were a relief, a catharsis -- hope that had been dammed for nearly eight years escaped in a deluge. Americans know that we are better than the last eight years. We’re hungry to rebuild our country along more equitable lines, with a stronger foundation that supports more citizens; hungry to prove that we are more than slaves to the “free” market and mindless consumerism; hungry to relate to the rest of the world in less bellicose ways; hungry to find solutions for pressing human needs.
George W. Bush is an aristocrat and he governed like one, never asking the people to sacrifice or put their collective shoulder to the wheel. Even when it came to Iraq, Bush asked for nothing but our prayers and blind faith in his word. In Bush’s twisted, out-of-touch worldview, the people need not concern themselves with complex matters of policy; instead, they should shop, watch TV and let the chosen ones at the top run things. When the people spoke about their concerns, as when millions took to the streets to protest the Iraq invasion, Bush ignored us.
When Barack Obama takes his seat in the Oval Office for the first time, he will face a daunting array of inherited challenges. Obama is stepping into a house trashed by a bunch of spoiled frat boys – light fixtures dangle from the ceiling, every toilet is clogged, furniture is upended, the kitchen is wrecked and nobody ever bothered to take out the garbage or clean out the refrigerator. What the frat boys couldn’t carry off they destroyed.
One of the great reclamation projects in American history will begin with the deck stacked against it.
But perhaps Americans owe George W. Bush a debt of gratitude, for it was Bush’s utter incompetence and failure that made it possible for Barack Obama to become President, for Obama’s message of hope to echo across the wasteland Bush bequeathed to us, and resonate with millions.
When the people are ready, the leader will appear.
On January 20, 2009, intelligence and rational thought make a triumphant return to the White House. One thing is certain: willful ignorance will not be a virtue in an Obama Administration.
The reaction from people around the globe to Barack Obama’s victory proves that the idea of America is alive and kicking. Perhaps the world is reacting so favorably to Obama because he appears calm, collected and sane, reasonable and reassuring; he doesn’t swagger like a gunslinger (Bush) or talk like a fascist (Cheney). We have yet to fully appreciate the damage done by Bush and Cheney to our standing in the world. It won’t happen overnight, but Obama has a window of opportunity to repair that damage and restore our credibility and moral authority.
Tuesday night’s historic results were a relief, a catharsis -- hope that had been dammed for nearly eight years escaped in a deluge. Americans know that we are better than the last eight years. We’re hungry to rebuild our country along more equitable lines, with a stronger foundation that supports more citizens; hungry to prove that we are more than slaves to the “free” market and mindless consumerism; hungry to relate to the rest of the world in less bellicose ways; hungry to find solutions for pressing human needs.
George W. Bush is an aristocrat and he governed like one, never asking the people to sacrifice or put their collective shoulder to the wheel. Even when it came to Iraq, Bush asked for nothing but our prayers and blind faith in his word. In Bush’s twisted, out-of-touch worldview, the people need not concern themselves with complex matters of policy; instead, they should shop, watch TV and let the chosen ones at the top run things. When the people spoke about their concerns, as when millions took to the streets to protest the Iraq invasion, Bush ignored us.
When Barack Obama takes his seat in the Oval Office for the first time, he will face a daunting array of inherited challenges. Obama is stepping into a house trashed by a bunch of spoiled frat boys – light fixtures dangle from the ceiling, every toilet is clogged, furniture is upended, the kitchen is wrecked and nobody ever bothered to take out the garbage or clean out the refrigerator. What the frat boys couldn’t carry off they destroyed.
One of the great reclamation projects in American history will begin with the deck stacked against it.
But perhaps Americans owe George W. Bush a debt of gratitude, for it was Bush’s utter incompetence and failure that made it possible for Barack Obama to become President, for Obama’s message of hope to echo across the wasteland Bush bequeathed to us, and resonate with millions.
When the people are ready, the leader will appear.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Election Night, Historic Night
5:10 P.M. We just cast our votes at the Methodist Church on Anapamu Street. The lines were short and the poll workers chipper. During the day people kept asking me if I had voted; most of them had and wore stickers to prove it. Obviously, this is not a run-of-the-mill, ho-hum election; people are into it, hopeful. We waited until late in the day so we could take our kids with us.
At this moment MSNBC has Obama at 103 electoral votes and McCain at 58. I wonder what McCain is doing right now…probably taking a nap and hoping that he’ll wake up to a stunning upset. McCain clearly believes in fantasies and Hollywood endings, which is why he choose Sarah Palin as his running mate…I’m still trying to understand what his Brain Trust was snorting when they tapped Palin. It’s as if they tossed some names in a hat, closed their eyes, reached in…
Speaking of Palin, I saw that cipher on TV last night, regurgitating the same tired clichés that Republicans have employed for years, still straining, on the night before the election, to tar Obama with Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, and to make the unconvincing claim – except to a cadre of die hard Republicans, rednecks, racists, and utter morons – that Obama is a socialist.
Why is MSNBC giving Tom Delay a forum? The prick is a criminal, a disgraced no-good unrepentant criminal who doesn’t deserve to speak to a national audience; of course the rat predicts that a Democratic majority in Congress will “ruin” the American economy. Huh? DeLay was a swaggering power broker in Bush’s first term and did a wonderful job terrorizing Democrats while transferring wealth to the richest Americans and pissing on the rest of us. DeLay wielded power like a Roman proconsul, sparing no one.
The Talking Heads are jabbering like barroom drunks, making projections, predictions and prognostications, most of which will be disproved by the time the night is through. But there’s air time to fill while the numbers trickle in so they need to say something.
The Big Board shows Obama at 175 and McCain at 76. Thousands of Obama supporters are gathering in Grant Park in Chicago. The Deep South goes for McCain – no surprise there -- old habits die hard.
I read this morning that Maya Angelou hoped that an Obama victory would signal that the people of the United States have finally grown up, thrown off the shackles of fear and racism and bigotry, and entered adulthood. Forty years after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed. After RFK went down the same way.
The Talking Heads are now saying that Obama will win Ohio! This is a huge development. In 2004 I went to bed thinking John Kerry would squeak out a victory there and woke up to discover that Bush had taken the state – by fraud as we would later learn.
Virginia. Florida. North Carolina. Indiana. All too close to call at this hour, 7:03 P.M. on my end of the continent. Iowa goes for Obama with 7 electoral votes. Should the current trend hold and Obama win the election, I wonder what will become of the Republican Party. It will be a smaller party, even more right-wing and wacky than it is today, and just as apt to hitch its wagon to a wingnut like Sarah Palin. Or Huckabee. Or maybe they’ll pass the baton to Pat Buchanan.
I wonder what is going through John McCain’s mind right now. Is he working on his concession speech or maybe staring at the developing scene in Grant Park and wetting his Depends? Cindy is no doubt by his side, as she always is, now drug-free though still high-strung and as inclined to psychological meltdown as her hubby is. I have a hunch that she’s thinking: “You owe me old man, big time. I followed you from town to city to hamlet, from gated community to country club, from Wal-Mart to 7-11, from the Waldorf-Astoria to the Biltmore. I’m tired! I’m sick of politics, of your political aspirations, and of all the phony people that have surrounded us for the past year! I want to go home, but I can’t decide to which of our eight homes.”
MSNBC just called it for Barack Obama. Can it be true? Finally, an African-American in the White House! What a tremendous First Family the Obama’s will be -- bright man, smart woman, lovely children. And not white! Finally, finally, finally, after all these years, after all the lynchings and beatings and shootings, after all the dreams deferred and denied…now we can call ourselves Americans. Now we have an opportunity to live up to our most cherished ideals.
OK, the Talking Heads are getting mushy and teary-eyed. Rachel Maddow is crying like a baby. My 12-year-old son just commented that Sarah Palin is only a footnote now. The boy is so happy that the Era of Bush is nearly over that he’s bouncing off the walls. On the TV Jesse Jackson is teary-eyed. This is amazing. I almost can’t believe it. Not only did Obama win Ohio, he also won Florida! Florida – the Bush backyard.
The electoral count is 333 to 156. An emphatic statement. A dramatic repudiation of the last eight wasted years.
McCain is conceding now before his faithful, and actually sounding like a reasonable man, like a US Senator, like a gracious statesman. Where has this version of John McCain been since August? McCain’s crowd in Arizona is so lily white that I need my Ray-Bans. McCain’s people are chanting “USA! USA!”
Waiting for the man now, for Barack Obama to take the stage before a throng estimated at 100,000. What does it mean that the voters of America have elected an African-American man president? What does it mean for our tomorrow?
And here he is, conjuring FDR and Martin Luther King Jr., and RFK. Yes we can. Yes we can. Yes we can. After eight years of being told that only some of us can, that only some of us are worthy, that only some of us matter. Yes we can. Yes we can. Together as Americans. All of us.
That’s worth thinking about on this unbelievable night.
At this moment MSNBC has Obama at 103 electoral votes and McCain at 58. I wonder what McCain is doing right now…probably taking a nap and hoping that he’ll wake up to a stunning upset. McCain clearly believes in fantasies and Hollywood endings, which is why he choose Sarah Palin as his running mate…I’m still trying to understand what his Brain Trust was snorting when they tapped Palin. It’s as if they tossed some names in a hat, closed their eyes, reached in…
Speaking of Palin, I saw that cipher on TV last night, regurgitating the same tired clichés that Republicans have employed for years, still straining, on the night before the election, to tar Obama with Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, and to make the unconvincing claim – except to a cadre of die hard Republicans, rednecks, racists, and utter morons – that Obama is a socialist.
Why is MSNBC giving Tom Delay a forum? The prick is a criminal, a disgraced no-good unrepentant criminal who doesn’t deserve to speak to a national audience; of course the rat predicts that a Democratic majority in Congress will “ruin” the American economy. Huh? DeLay was a swaggering power broker in Bush’s first term and did a wonderful job terrorizing Democrats while transferring wealth to the richest Americans and pissing on the rest of us. DeLay wielded power like a Roman proconsul, sparing no one.
The Talking Heads are jabbering like barroom drunks, making projections, predictions and prognostications, most of which will be disproved by the time the night is through. But there’s air time to fill while the numbers trickle in so they need to say something.
The Big Board shows Obama at 175 and McCain at 76. Thousands of Obama supporters are gathering in Grant Park in Chicago. The Deep South goes for McCain – no surprise there -- old habits die hard.
I read this morning that Maya Angelou hoped that an Obama victory would signal that the people of the United States have finally grown up, thrown off the shackles of fear and racism and bigotry, and entered adulthood. Forty years after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed. After RFK went down the same way.
The Talking Heads are now saying that Obama will win Ohio! This is a huge development. In 2004 I went to bed thinking John Kerry would squeak out a victory there and woke up to discover that Bush had taken the state – by fraud as we would later learn.
Virginia. Florida. North Carolina. Indiana. All too close to call at this hour, 7:03 P.M. on my end of the continent. Iowa goes for Obama with 7 electoral votes. Should the current trend hold and Obama win the election, I wonder what will become of the Republican Party. It will be a smaller party, even more right-wing and wacky than it is today, and just as apt to hitch its wagon to a wingnut like Sarah Palin. Or Huckabee. Or maybe they’ll pass the baton to Pat Buchanan.
I wonder what is going through John McCain’s mind right now. Is he working on his concession speech or maybe staring at the developing scene in Grant Park and wetting his Depends? Cindy is no doubt by his side, as she always is, now drug-free though still high-strung and as inclined to psychological meltdown as her hubby is. I have a hunch that she’s thinking: “You owe me old man, big time. I followed you from town to city to hamlet, from gated community to country club, from Wal-Mart to 7-11, from the Waldorf-Astoria to the Biltmore. I’m tired! I’m sick of politics, of your political aspirations, and of all the phony people that have surrounded us for the past year! I want to go home, but I can’t decide to which of our eight homes.”
MSNBC just called it for Barack Obama. Can it be true? Finally, an African-American in the White House! What a tremendous First Family the Obama’s will be -- bright man, smart woman, lovely children. And not white! Finally, finally, finally, after all these years, after all the lynchings and beatings and shootings, after all the dreams deferred and denied…now we can call ourselves Americans. Now we have an opportunity to live up to our most cherished ideals.
OK, the Talking Heads are getting mushy and teary-eyed. Rachel Maddow is crying like a baby. My 12-year-old son just commented that Sarah Palin is only a footnote now. The boy is so happy that the Era of Bush is nearly over that he’s bouncing off the walls. On the TV Jesse Jackson is teary-eyed. This is amazing. I almost can’t believe it. Not only did Obama win Ohio, he also won Florida! Florida – the Bush backyard.
The electoral count is 333 to 156. An emphatic statement. A dramatic repudiation of the last eight wasted years.
McCain is conceding now before his faithful, and actually sounding like a reasonable man, like a US Senator, like a gracious statesman. Where has this version of John McCain been since August? McCain’s crowd in Arizona is so lily white that I need my Ray-Bans. McCain’s people are chanting “USA! USA!”
Waiting for the man now, for Barack Obama to take the stage before a throng estimated at 100,000. What does it mean that the voters of America have elected an African-American man president? What does it mean for our tomorrow?
And here he is, conjuring FDR and Martin Luther King Jr., and RFK. Yes we can. Yes we can. Yes we can. After eight years of being told that only some of us can, that only some of us are worthy, that only some of us matter. Yes we can. Yes we can. Together as Americans. All of us.
That’s worth thinking about on this unbelievable night.
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