POEM - No Fear

The problem in the United States
Is that the Government
does not
Fear
the people

Here, for good reason, it’s the other way around
(Cheney, Bush, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld)

Of course the Government talks plenty about what
The “people” want, need, desire
And dream about
But all the talk is eclipsed by the needs and imperatives
Of the Money changers
Who buy access and influence wholesale

“democracy” is never allowed to interfere with
The Business of the ruling class

In paneled rooms with plush carpeting
Where levers are pulled, buttons pushed, nods exchanged
Deals done and documents signed
Money wins and the people lose
Every time

Under the veneer of civility and legality
The smiles and handshakes
it’s grand theft
as blatant as a mugging

The people may get mad but rarely
Do enough of them become angry enough
To march into the streets
Armed with bottles and Molotov cocktails
Rocks and baseball bats
Determined to extract a pound of flesh from
The ruling classes
Intent on demanding their share of the nation’s bounty

The people are easily misled
Pacified
Distracted
Divided
More interested in shopping for stuff they don’t
Need
Hunkering down in front of their HD TV’s
Playing video games
Than in holding the powerful accountable

The people shake their heads with disgust
When they should be shaking their
Fists
With
Rage

Long Slide into the Pacific

California is about to fall into the sea, sunk by what could be a $20 billion dollar budget shortfall. Our celebrity governor says the people have spoken and it’s time for legislative leaders to buckle down, put partisanship aside, and make difficult choices sure to piss off important constituents.

News flash to the Terminator: It’s long past time for the children who run Sacramento to pull together.

Arnold claims a mandate based on the results of Tuesday’s special election, when five ballot measures crafted during back room negotiations with Democratic and Republican party leaders bit the dust. Arnold says the people are angry, but that’s only part of the tale. As expected, voters stayed away from the polls in droves, driven less by anger and more by confusion about what the propositions were intended to accomplish. When people are unsure or confused, they will not act.

California’s voters are weary of elections, of mind-numbing ballot propositions that promise something for nothing, of endless legislative gridlock, and budgets held hostage while politicians play fiscal roulette and flesh and blood people suffer.

In short, the Great State of California is so fucked up that only a major overhaul can save it. The Federal government is busy handing out money to Wall Street criminals, keeping insolvent banks on life support, propping up General Motors -- and yet the Feds, so eager to make huge bets with taxpayer money, want nothing to do with California’s fiscal woes. If the Feds bail California out, or so the conventional wisdom goes, it could set an unfortunate precedent. Schwarzenegger went to Washington with hand outstretched and came back without the loan guarantees he’d hoped to wheedle from the Obama Administration.

The entire budget fiasco can’t be dropped on Arnold’s doorstep like an unwanted orphan, but let’s be honest: Schwarzenegger’s brand of leadership has made a bad situation worse. Schwarzenegger swooped into Sacramento with big promises about blowing up the boxes, trimming waste, rooting out fraud and abuse, and cracking the whip on the backsides of do-nothing legislators. None of it has come to pass. The state is worse off now than it was when Gray Davis held the wheel. Go figure.

I never understood how Schwarzenegger got elected in the first place. Yes, his opponent in the recall election, Cruz Bustamante, was a political hack with all the charisma of a tortoise shot up with horse tranquilizers. But why did the good people of California think Schwarzenegger had solutions to our state’s fundamental problems? Probably for the same reason they expect top-notch schools, roads, bridges, freeways, prisons, police and fire protection, clean parks and safe beaches without having to sacrifice any cash to pay for it. When it comes to public services, the people of this state are infantile: they want the best of everything, but only if it comes on the cheap. It’s the Wal-Mart mentality run amok.

Big cuts in public education and other services are coming. The state can’t borrow its way out of the ditch this time. The budget razor will slice clean to the bone and on to the marrow and the blood will run like a river through the capitol rotunda, down the front steps and all over the lawn.

What to do? First, voters must grow up and shake off the silly notion that taxation is inherently bad. Second, term limits for legislators must go. Third, toss the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget or tax increases. Fourth, haul California’s most sacred cow, Prop 13, to the killing floor and slit its throat.

Chances of any of that happening are as likely as Congress passing legislation to create a single-payer health care system. The status quo is as deeply entrenched in Sacramento as it is in Washington D.C.

Let the slide into the Pacific begin.

POEM - Inferno

An unseasonably hot day in May
Errant spark from a power tool
Wind from the devil’s forge

Another fire in the tinderbox hills
Above Santa Barbara
Where the brush is dry
the humidity low

We’ve been here before
But every fire’s different
Like women and snowflakes
Every fire brings its own will to bear

Fire in the mansion
Fire in the barn
Fire in the oak grove
Fire in the eucalyptus
Fire in the neighborhood of million
dollar homes

Smoke-filled sky
Crimson moon
The stars hide their faces

Evacuation warnings
News bulletins
Helicopters in the sky
Firefighters on the lines

When the reverse 911 call comes
Play it safe
Pack the cars
With photo albums and children’s drawings
Jewelry and a box of love letters
Things that cannot be replaced
Leave the rest behind
Close the windows
Lock the doors
Shut the gas off

Flee through the smoke-filled night
This isn’t Lebanon or Gaza City
It just feels like war
Like the end of the world is waiting around the corner

Dick Cheney Meets the Press

Dick Cheney scares the daylights out of most people, particularly the flunkies who ride herd on guests for NBC’s Meet the Press. The staff is used to dealing with ego-maniacal opinion makers, notorious skirt chasers like Bill Clinton, liars of all stripes, and John McCain, whose mercurial outbursts are legend, but when it comes to inspiring naked Fear, no man in America can compete with Dick Cheney.

Cheney is Count Dracula, Darth Vader, the creature from Alien and Freddy Kruger rolled into one imposing package. When Cheney enters the Green Room all conversation stops, the coffee pot flickers on and off, the bagels turn ice cold and the cream cheese melts. The only person who dares look Cheney in the eye is Paul, the Dominican guy who runs the pantry. Paul eats raw garlic for breakfast and wears a necklace of rooster talons, blessed by the most powerful witch in the entire Dominican. Paul thinks that Cheney looks like every old, uptight and constipated white guy he’s ever seen.

The Interview with David Gregory

DG: With us today on Meet the Press is former Vice President Dick Cheney. May I call you Dick?

DC: Call me Mr. Cheney or Mr. Vice President. If you call me Dick I’ll sever your scrotum sack from your body and wrap it around your neck.

DG: Fair enough. Mr. Cheney, you’ve been a vocal critic of the Obama Administration when it comes to national security and what are now called Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, such as the type used on Al Qaeda members.

DC: (Snarling) Obama’s a pansy. The United States is in danger from extremist elements. I see no sense in coddling these blood-thirsty people. If we have to keep some rabid rag-head awake for three weeks so he’ll tell us what we need to know, so what? The security of the American people supersedes all other considerations. Our support of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques saved hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives, and in my book, American lives are the only lives that matter.

DG: What do you base that figure on?

DC: (Staring coldly) I base it on the fact that I know things that you don’t.

DG: President Obama says that compromising our values and respect for the rule of law makes us less safe in the long run.

DC: I disagree.

DG: Would you care to expand on that?

DC: Do I look like I do?

DG: Is water-boarding torture?

DC: No. Anybody who says the opposite is a spineless wimp. I’d dunk the Pope to prevent another 9/11.

DG: You’d water-board the Pope?

DC: Without a moment’s hesitation. I’d strip him naked, throw him in a cage with starving rats, and if that failed, give him the H2O.

DG: Let me ask you a hypothetical question: if Rush Limbaugh were suspected of being a terrorist, would you water-board him?

DC: No. Limbaugh’s a patriot and a great American. He would never do anything to harm the United States of America. I wish I could say the same about President Obama. Maybe we should subject the President to water-boarding, eh? He could use some toughening up. The man doesn’t understand the realities of this hard, brutal world. No matter what the United States does, it’s always justified and always morally and ethically proper. Anybody who claims otherwise should move to Cuba.

DG: On a lighter note, have you spoken with President Bush lately?

DC: Why would I? I rarely spoke to him when I was running the country.

Wimps and Pansies

Looking more like a weathered toad than ever, Newt Gingrich keeps popping up on the Tube to speak for the Republican Party. Why Newt is the networks’ go-to Conservative is beyond me. Newt had his chance to fashion the GOP in his own bloated image and bombed. To be fair to old Newt however, I don’t understand why James Carville turns up regularly on Good Morning America, since Carville hasn’t been associated with a winning political campaign in years. I guess when it comes to filling Tube time, name recognition and availability count more than recent accomplishments.

The Republican Party is sucking the tailpipe of political failure. Senator Arlen Specter saw the writing on the levy wall and leapt to the other side, and ever since his former colleagues have cried “foul” and “danger” and “socialism is here.” The Republicans are writhing about like a headless gopher snake, fresh out of ideas, reduced to whining about “one-party” rule and the “expansion” of government. Unable to grasp the grim reality wrought by their own excesses, the Republicans sing their discredited hymn about small government and low taxes to a dwindling audience of true believers.

It wasn’t that long ago that Karl Rove was hailed as a genius, and why not? Back in 2000, the Conservative wing of the Republican Party had eclipsed every moderate influence in the GOP and controlled the White House, Congress, and key positions in the Judiciary. Dick Cheney ridiculed Democrats as pansies and appeasers; Tom DeLay ate Democrats for breakfast; even a weenie like Dennis Hastert gave Democrats the bum’s rush. As frightening as the possibility was, Rove’s vision of a permanent Republican majority appeared plausible.

The funny thing is that I don’t remember many Republicans warning about the dangers of one-party rule when their solitary hand held the tiller. And there’s the rub. Now that the leather loafer is on the other foot, the Republicans are beside themselves with worry about the future of our dear Republic. The fact that the Democrats might have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate to go with their majority in the House has Rush Limbaugh jonesing for Oxycontin, Sean Hannity dreaming of the Apocalypse, and Glenn Beck pissing down his own leg.

All the Big Three of the Wacky Right can do is make wild claims about the imminent socialist takeover led by President Obama (reality: Obama is no socialist); the imminent loss of the sacred right to bear automatic weapons; and the imminent collapse of America as a Christian nation (reality: We’re not all that Christian). According to the fear mongers from Fox News, Obama is going to do all that, and much more.

The Republicans talk about strength and power and self-reliance and the sanctity of individual liberty, but when it comes right down to it most Republicans are wimps. The GOP is out of intellectual and moral fuel and Republicans know it. All the GOP can do is hope the Democrats OD on hubris-flavored KoolAid and screw up as monumentally as the Republicans did when they had a monopoly on political power.

POEM - Turning 50

50 may be the new 40
But 40’s not a half century;

I was born in an analog age
When writers wrote on typewriters
Vinyl records spun on turntables
And family photos, like TV, were in black & white;

Eisenhower was President
The world was different
Not necessarily better, just different
We worried about the Soviet Union
And Communist China;

I don’t have a clear memory of the day JFK was killed
Though I do remember when Martin Luther King was shot
And RFK went down in LA
I remember the Watts riots
TV images of Newark and Detroit in flames
No adult I knew could explain why these events
Happened;

I watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon
And the Vietnam War unfold on our TV
I remember the Oil Embargo of ‘73
Nixon & Watergate
The Vice President with the funny name – Spiro Agnew;

I’ve now lived long enough to know
That the sum of what I know
Is less than the sum of what I don’t
And that I’ll never know all I’d like to;

So what else have I learned in 50 years?
Life is fleeting
Knowledge is easy, wisdom is hard
Ask for what you want
Don’t wait for the planets to align to begin something
People and places are seldom what they appear at first blush
We’re all searching for answers
Life is frequently cruel, brutal, violent, heart-breaking,
Incomprehensible, sad, ridiculous, hilarious and
Beautiful;

We come into this world naked and alone
Leave the same way
Our end is known at the beginning
And the only uncertainty is the hour and circumstance
Of our departure
The time in between is brief, best measured in minutes
Not years
What matters are those we love and what we do;

OK, the calendar says I’m 50
But as far as I’m concerned
I’m just getting started

Sadism, American-Style

Just following orders from the top, that’s all. The word came down from on high to waterboard Al Qaida detainees or strip them naked and lock them in cages for days on end, and the CIA operatives obeyed, using the same amoral logic that hundreds of SS guards employed when they shot or gassed Jews in Poland; same logic used by the underlings of Joe Stalin and Idi Amin and Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.

In this case, just following orders means absolution from culpability.

The Obama Administration should be commended for releasing internal Bush-Era Justice Department memos that bring to light the heinous “legal” methods used by the CIA to torture suspected terrorists -- and condemned for not pursuing prosecution of the people who carried out these un-American practices.

Because someone must be held accountable for torturing human beings in the name of the United States government and lowering the United States to the level of a sadist.

Under George W. Bush, we kidnapped real or suspected terrorists, jailed them, and then tortured some of them when we believed it suited our ends.

If we’re willing to do all that, we have to ask what else we’re willing to do in the name of “national security.” Where does it end, and with whom?

President Obama declares that these perversions will never happen again – and that might be so, on his watch – but what is to prevent a future administration from reviving the Bush Administration’s entire “pre-emptive” framework, including torture?

I want to know: Does the United States of America torture human beings we find threatening or don’t we? Does our conduct depend on circumstances? Do we reserve torture only for Muslims or would we also torture Mexicans or Swedes?

Although the United States is a militaristic empire with a long rap sheet, our respect (OK, maybe it was only lip service) for the rule of law, domestic and international, stood us above rogue regimes. Identifying the bad guys on the world stage used to be a relatively black & white affair. Regimes that held people in jail for years without due process, or tortured political prisoners, were bad and the United States condemned them.

Until George W. Bush came along and used the aftermath of 9/11 to stand international conventions against torture on their head.

By every indication Barack Obama is a decent, intelligent man, but he’s also a politician infatuated with having it both ways; he wants to appear as if his administration is cleaning house – but only if the cleaning excludes the basement; he also wants to protect his political capital from charges from the Right that the administration is on a witch hunt.

A politician talks about looking forward; a leader talks about making sure the evils of the past do not repeat in the future.

A leader knows when to stand on principle and not budge an inch.

Since Obama assumed office the style and tone in Washington D.C. has definitely changed, but at the end of the day real change has not yet arrived. In fact, real change isn’t even in sight.

Get Your Tea Bag On

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.