Drive-by politics

Why is it that men with the most opinions about women's bodies rarely look like George Clooney?  Usually they're gargoyles like Donald Trump, Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh.  Can they see well enough to cross the road?  Or are they perpetually in high school, angry at the girls who laughed at them and enraged at the guys who didn't get laughed at, like Bill Clinton?

I can't decide if Gary Johnson is the Dan Quayle or the Sarah Palin of 2016, but I'm sure the Libertarian Party wish they could reverse the ticket and put Bill Weld at the top.  And that their platform didn't include the decriminalization of marijuana.

Why, exactly, do vice-presidential candidates debate?  Who cares what they think, or how they explain it?  The job consists of going to funerals, casting a tie-breaking vote every seven years or so, and waiting around.  And it's not as if we can pick the one we like better, they just come with the other one.

It must have been with some relief that Chris Christie rushed from one trainwreck to another this morning.  Apparently he has been tasked with preparing Donzo the Clown for his next "debate."  Bring a cattle-prod, Chris.  Your boy has the attention span of a concussed bee and the IQ of a drawerful of socks.  On the other hand, he has probably earned the right to wear that Purple Heart -- HRC cleaned his clock, oiled it, set it to Naval Observatory time and stuck it right up on his mantelpiece.  So his new strategy is to insult all non-Christians and yell about Monica Lewinsky.  That should work.

"Detached" was the word used to describe Ronald Reagan, especially in his second term, when Mommy and her astrologer were more or less running the Executive Branch.  How does that differ from "having trouble staying focused"? 

Trump claims/doesn't claim that global climate change is a "hoax" perpetrated by (who else?) the Chinese.  But nobody in Taiwan or southeast China thinks it's a hoax, as they stagger out from under the third typhoon in a month.  How many Katrinas and Sandys will it take to convince the pinheads?  I guess we'll find out.

When you pass a law, however idiotic, you have to provide for enforcement.  So I expect North Carolina to create a new force of State Toilet Police.  Stationed before every public restroom in their spiffy uniforms (I like lime green), they will check every person's birth certificate against her/his anatomy to make sure they pee where God intended.  It's a creepy job, but clearly someone has to do it.

It's just a microphone, Donzo.  What you want is Political Auto-Tune, where you spew idiocy and bullshit and reasoned speech comes out.  Hasn't been invented yet. 

 
   

Trouble with a capital "T"

A wise blogger once wrote, "Why is Republican doctrine indistinguishable from mental illness?"  All right, it was I.  The one can be an effective camouflage for the other, is what I meant, and events have caught up with me.  To be blunt:  I don't give a gnat's nuts about Trump's tax returns -- I'm sure they're as fictitious as  his business "empire."  We should forget the taxes and demand a thorough medical report, including a recent CT scan.  Like, no more than twenty-four hours old.  A letter clearly dictated by Trump and signed by a "gastroenterologist" will not do.

Trump's unvarying response to criticism is the classic nine-year-old's "I'm rubber and you're glue..."  Point out his racism and he calls you a bigot.  Question his sleazy business dealings (of which "Trump University" is only the tip of the iceberg) and he names you "Crooked Hillary."  So last week, when Sean Hannity and other flunkeys pronounced Clinton brain-damaged because she wears glasses or something, I knew there was serious medical information to be obfuscated.  Consider:

At the very moment  you declare your intent to reach out to African American voters (with the spectacularly condescending "What the hell have you got to lose?"), you hire a neo-Nazi blogger named Bannon who calls black people "savages" and toasted George Zimmerman for getting away with murder.

Your trademark position -- "I will build a beautiful wall!" -- and its accompanying promise to deport eleven million people are now up for debate.  Or not.  No, they are again.  What time is it?  Confused stormtrumpers are reduced to calling the Glenn Beck show to vent their frustration, i.e., threaten violence. 

When the President, at the request of the governor, does not end his vacation and rush off to view flood damage in Louisiana, you seize the opportunity to look energetic and presidential, not like that lazy...well, you jump on the "Spirit of St. Vitus" and head for Baton Rouge, there to present people who have lost everything with a carton of Play-Doh.  I did not make that up, and everyone at The Onion wishes they had.

Suggesting your "Second Amendment people" shoot your opponent? 

Trump saw "thousands of Muslims" celebrating on 9/11 in the streets of Jersey City, or possibly Hoboken.  No one else saw them.

Trump heard a request for a "moment of silence" for the sniper who killed five Dallas police officers.  No one else heard this.

Trump saw video of a plane being loaded with cash for shipment to Iran.  This video does not exist.

Trump got a letter from the National Football League objecting to the debate schedule.  They sent no such letter.

Lies or hallucinations?  There is no third possibility.  It is important because even a pathological liar can choose to tell the truth, but if you are hallucinating, you should not be in charge of a laundromat, much less a nuclear arsenal.

And by the way, why does a political campaign have a retired neurosurgeon on staff?  Surely not for his political skills.  These derps almost failed to get their candidate on the ballot in Minnesota, but they have Dr. Carson around  for what?  In case he has another seizure? 

Hallucinations...paranoia...a total lack of impulse control....a severely truncated attention span...delusions of power (have you seen the make-pretend "Cabinet Room"?) -- we really need that CT scan.


 

The turning point

When the history of this bizarre political season is written, I believe it will be seen to hinge not on the economy or foreign affairs or even race, but rather on a man who died twelve years ago and was unknown to most Americans until last Thursday night.  The words of Khizr Khan, moving as they were, constituted only one statement by a speaker at the Democratic convention, but they penetrated the notoriously thin skin of the Republican nominee and he can not shut up about them.  Can NOT.  All criticism maddens him, but this was like a perfect jab from a master picador, enraging the bull and making him fatally reckless. 

In classic fashion he chose not to respond to what Khizr Khan said, but to what Ghazala Khan did not say in Philadelphia, implying that she was either silenced by Sharia law or just a dumb woman with nothing to say.  Her eloquent response, first in an interview with Lawrence O'Donnell and then on the op-ed page of the Washington Post, threw that back in his face.  So he whined that Khizr Khan "viciously attacked" him by suggesting that he is unfamiliar with the Constitution.  At this point the nominee might have noticed that he was coming under attack by others -- putative allies like John McCain, Erick Erickson, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Gold Star families -- but if he did, it made no difference.  Apparently there is no one in his employ who can persuade him to shut up and let it go.  There is nothing to be gained here.  Move on.   The twit keeps tweeting.  Khan is just a dupe.  Hillary's speechwriters told him what to say.  It's all about TERRORISM!  Their son would be alive if Hillary hadn't voted to invade Iraq!!

The grave of Captain Humayun Khan in Arlington has become a place of pilgrimage.  The Constitution his father held up at the convention is one of the top ten sellers at Amazon.   The latest CBS poll has Clinton ahead by seven points. 

He doesn't get it.  He never will.
 

 
 

Guns and money

"Money talks, bullshit walks," says the old proverb.  So before there is any more bullshit on the topic of gun control, let's try money.  There will never be common-sense gun control until other countries tell their citizens to stop traveling to the United States because it's too violent and dangerous, because unlike France or Mali, we have a mass shooting every week.  When the tourists stop bringing their Euros and yuan and Australian dollars, a great shout will go up from the hospitality industry (the airlines, car rental agencies, hotels, restaurants, tour bus operators, souvenir manufacturers, and every attraction from Vegas to Broadway) that will drown out even the gun makers and their toadies.  It will be audible even to the politicians, who will sniff the air and "lead" in the direction of the money.  And then the killers will find it a little more difficult to kill.   

Spoken

Inside every cynic is a softie.  I'd like to think that after the Pope's address to Congress and some kind of Ebenezer Scrooge experience, John Boehner woke up clutching his bedpost and resolved to spend the rest of his life digging wells for African villages.  But I don't think so.  I'm not sure Dickens believed in personal transformation even as he was writing.  In the real world, Scrooge replaced Bob Cratchit with a twelve-year-old who did his job for three shillings a week, and Boehner will be back in Washington lobbying for the tobacco industry before the construction frame comes off the Capitol.  And weeping.

Wilkommen, bienvenu, later

It's Casablanca in reverse.  Tens of thousands of desperate people, trying to get from the Middle East and North Africa to Germany, exploited by human traffickers more pitiless than Ugarte and Ferrari, abused by officials who make Louis Renault look like the Dalai Lama.  Watching them, you realize what was absent from the classic film:  children.  Old couples, young couples, Ilsa and Rick briefly reunited, but no children.  Not even Moroccan children playing in the bazaar.  The filmmakers understood that children change everything.  They break your heart.

How magnanimous of the world's richest nation to promise it will take in ten thousand refugees, next year some time, if they remembered to bring their passports and birth certificates and can be vetted by the Ministry of Love  Department of Homeland Security.  Economically struggling Ireland, with a population smaller than New York City's, has agreed to accept six thousand.  We could settle ten thousand people in depopulated cities like Detroit and New Orleans and never notice, but it's an election year (when is it not?) and our right-wing xenophobes can out-scream Hungary's any day of the week.  I suppose Pope Francis will bring it up when he speaks to Congress, but as soon as he mentions climate change and economic justice, most of them will tune out and start playing with their phones, scheming to grab a selfie with the pontiff for their Facebook pages.

This being the fourteenth anniversary of the Worst Day of All Time, it occurs to me we can finance this, and much besides, with an Ill-Gotten Gains tax.  Cheney, Bush, and everyone else who benefited financially from the pointless, unjustifiable, region-destabilizing invasion of Iraq, should be assessed one percent of their personal wealth to cope with the consequences of their greed.  It's not realistic to expect them to face trial as war criminals, and they will still be obscenely rich.  Because this is only going to get worse.  As their country is bombed daily by the Saudi Arabian air force flying American and British aircraft, the Yemenis will be the next to hit the road.  Expect a lot more Libyans to flee that mayhem and put their fate in the hands of the Italian navy.  The Turks will keep on harrying the Kurds, against all reason -- who else has had as much success fighting ISIS?  And then there's Somalia...

But let's keep arguing about Tom Brady and his footballs.   

                 

Don't curb your enthusiasm

A remarkable week in our nation's capital, where Acting President John Boehner hosted Prime Minister Netanyahu at the headquarters of the shadow Executive Branch.   And there was much rejoicing, but lo, not all were pleased.  Jennifer Rubin, who apparently works for The Washington Post, took to the Twitter to observe:  "Unenthused Rand Paul Lifelessly Applauds Bibi.  almost like he has been faking his support for Israel until now."  NB 1. Correct capitalization is not a requisite for working at the Post, and 2. Bibi-love equals support for Israel.  (Polling in advance of Israeli elections suggests that roughly half of Israelis don't support Israel either, which would appear to Make No Sense, Jennifer.)

Rand Paul responded by protesting that "I gave the prime minister 50 standing ovations."  (But did you achieve full orgasm, Senator?)   Which naturally got me thinking of the dear, dear days of the Politburo, whose members were expected to applaud Comrade Stalin until their hands bled.  The first to stop clapping was often shot, which probably made it easier.  That's a level of "support" our own totalitarians are still aiming at, no pun intended. 

I think it's disgraceful that members of Congress can't fire their weapons in the air to show solidarity with our heroic allies.  Bad timing, I call it.  The Congressional Open-Carry Bill is tied up in committee, stuck behind a measure which will abolish the laws of gravity on the basis that they were formulated in a foreign country (England) by somebody called Newton, and therefore have no application to our Exceptional Homeland.  Pastor Ham the Dinosaur Man is pushing to have them replaced with "Intelligent Falling."  (And since this blog gives credit where it's due whenever we remember to, Roy Blount, Jr., coined that phrase.)

Blue wall of violence

Some people were apparently surprised when a grand jury refused to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo for choking Eric Garner to death last July.  I was not, and it wasn't because of my ingrained cynicism.  It was because I know a little something about grand juries, and about New York.

The first thing you need to know is that Staten Island is the redneck part of New York, the borough that wanted to secede a few years ago, the borough where a lot of police live, the borough with a significant Ku Klux Klan presence.  Not that these conditions are in any way connected to one another, or to the offer by the borough's congressman to throw a television reporter off a balcony in response to an unwelcome question.  It's the borough that elects Republicans, all right?  It's Mississippi with decent pizza.

I don't know how they do this in Missouri, but a New York grand jury consists of twenty-three people chosen at random, emphasis on random.  I have twice been press-ganged onto a grand jury and I took notes.  Twelve votes are required for indictment, and we indicted (or "voted a true bill") every single time.  By now you may be picturing the grand jury scenes from Law & Order, which take place in what appears to be the Yale Club -- paneled walls, leather chairs, indirect lighting, the faint gleam of brass fixtures.  My ass.  It's a shabby little room just big enough for twenty-three school-type chairs, the kind with writing arms that vex left-handed people.  It's never cleaned because it's in constant use.  I sat for two weeks watching a pile of orange peel decompose beneath a desk.  The lights are fluorescent and there is no sound system.  When the windows are open, which is often because there is also no air conditioning, the traffic makes it impossible to hear the witnesses or their interpreters, whose accents are even more pronounced.  None of this matters.

If you have had the pleasure of being called for regular jury duty, you know how much effort goes into the process.  This is because lawyers know that cases are won and lost during jury selection.  You are asked all kinds of questions:  Have you ever been the victim of a crime?  Are you related to a police officer?  Have you ever heard of the Constitution?  Then it gets more intrusive:  What job do you do?   Do you belong to any social organizations?  Do you like to read?  What do you like to read?  Even if you give nothing but "correct" answers you can be excused for any reason, or for no reason at all.  It's serious business.  That's a real judge up there, and the defendant is sitting a few feet away, and there may be spectators and reporters.   Those officers have loaded weapons.  It's what baseball players call The Show.  The grand jury is distinctly the minors.  Probably the names should be reversed.

When you are called to be a grand juror they ask you one question:  "Morning or afternoon?"  Then they take your fingerprints, in case you are wanted in another state or perhaps are in the country illegally.  And that's it.  If you have a pulse, and fingerprints, you're qualified.  In many states it's harder to vote.

Why?  Because the grand jury process is a totally bullshit rubber-stamp procedure, a waste of time and money. 

Last time I heard nothing but drug cases.  Which is to say police would come in, identify themselves only by their badge numbers (undercover, you see, and why should we be trusted with their names?), repeat word for word boilerplate about purchasing a controlled substance from a certain individual  at a certain location and vouchering same under number something-something, whereupon yadda yadda, and back they went to the mean streets.  The assistant district attorney would then mumble something and step into the hall, and twelve or more of us would raise our hands while the rest went back to sleep or to reading the paper.  Any questions?  Why, yes, what exactly was involved?  Two joints?  Ten pounds of cocaine?  A bottle of Lydia Pinkham's Tonic for Ladies, laced with laudanum?  Sorry, not a proper question.  Justice served.  Next!

Twenty-three crash test dummies, wired to raise their arms in unison, could have done our job more cheaply and efficiently, sitting round the clock and not even littering the floor with orange peel.

So what you should know about today's outrage is that the grand jurors empaneled by Daniel Donovan, the Republican district attorney of Richmond County, were Staten Island residents and were vetted in no way.  I'll bet a dollar at least twelve of them are related to a cop, live next door to a cop, or know a cop to talk to at the supermarket or carwash.  They listened to the case presented by the Republican DA or one of his underlings, and they followed his lead.  "A grand jury," the lawyers like to say, "would indict a ham sandwich."  Yes, and it will refuse to indict one, too.  It all depends on how the evidence is presented.  To watch the video of Eric Garner being tackled, thrown to the ground, choked and crushed by at least half a dozen police while saying over and over, "I can't breathe," witnessing a death the medical examiner ruled a homicide and not indicting the man with his arm around Garner's neck, must have taken more spin than a Roger Goodell press conference.  All it lacks is Groucho asking, "Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"

Does anybody believe that fitting police with cameras will change anything?  There is, after all, video of Eric Garner's death, and of the death of Tamir Rice, the twelve-year-old in Cleveland with the toy gun who was buried today.  (The cop who killed him got a fitness report from his last police force that would make it hard for most people to get a job as a crossing guard.  Cleveland must be hard up.)  There was video of Rodney King's beating, too.  What difference did it make?

Speaking of video, Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed Eric Garner's death, has been indicted for firearms possession.  Another triumph for American justice, a little more cynicism for me.


   

              

A scorecard and an extra-large beer, please, vendor

I admit I was only half paying attention the first time I heard it, and I thought Khoresan was a commercial for yet another drug.  ("Side effects may include drowsiness, nausea, dry mouth, and if you're John McCain, an erection lasting right through the Sunday talk shows.")  Then President Obama went to the UN to announce that the Axis of Evil has been re-named the Network of Death,  so apparently our foreign policy is still being branded by Marvel Comics.  This is not encouraging, or enlightening.

The New York Times, sensing my confusion, stepped up with a sort of chart describing the current permutations of the Death Network, so now I know that the Nusra Front operates in Syria, Shabab is Somalian, and Qaedat al Jihad can be found in and around Pakistan, while ISIS or ISIL (nobody seems quite sure) is all over Iraq like a rash.  Not to forget Boko Haram of Nigeria and its perverted  production of "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers," or our old friends Hamas and Hezbollah.  And really, don't they seem like old friends at this point?  Familiar faces like Joe McCarthy and Barry Goldwater, from the good old days of the GOP?  All I remember about Khoresan is a really angry-looking beardy guy who appears ready to blow up everything twice.  He may in fact be dead now.  This is why I need the scorecard.

None of this is funny -- some poor French tourist lost his head today, preceded by the usual vile rhetoric.  ("The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter."--  Samuel Spade)  When this happens, I admit to wishing someone would napalm these ISILs from the inside out, but this is a passing visceral response and not the basis for a national policy.  Luckily, I don't have to formulate one.  That task has fallen to the President because the Constitution fails to spell out what happens when the House of Representatives is controlled by resentful idiots whose consensus seems to be "Don't ask, don't tell, do whatever you want and we'll back you up and then impeach you.  And climate change is a myth.  Derp."  The Senate has not been much more helpful.

Tasked with fighting a war without Americans in actual combat, John Kerry has logged thousands of air miles lining up another Coalition of the Reluctantly Willing.  It's an impressive list, but thunderingly absent is our plucky little ally Israel.  The recipient of so much American money and weaponry apparently isn't answering the phone these days.  Which is odd, because they certainly seem to have a table down front and a large stake in the outcome, so you might expect them at least to match the token contribution promised by, say, Bulgaria.  If ISIL gains control of Iraq or Syria, or both, it won't be Bulgaria they target next.

As always, this is The Most Important Thing In the World, and it isn't.  Bad weather and misbehaving athletes get equal time on the nightly "news".  Terrorists are at work here -- one of them shot two state troopers in Pennsylvania, while another started a massive wildfire in northern California.  What?  No, these are white men.  Not terrorists?  My mistake.  Where's that scorecard, son?  Make it two beers.

        

This is my rifle, this is my gun...

The US has some of the toughest laws in the world when it comes to child pornography.  Production, distribution or simple possession can be punished by years in prison followed by additional years of (probably unlawful) "civil commitment," until a psychiatrist deems the offender "cured" -- and all this in the event no other offense has been committed.  The Supreme Court has ruled that child pornography is not protected speech under the First Amendment, and I concur.  This society is so determined to protect children from exploitation that we deny them even basic sex education until relatively late in life, to preserve their supposed innocence. 

Which makes me wonder why it is so hard to pass laws which will reduce, even slightly, the likelihood of children being murdered.  No one dies from sexual exploitation, or even rape as such, but almost everyone dies from being shot in the head.  Is it a case of "better dead than violated"?  Or is it something much deeper, our cultural inability to cope with sexuality?  Which I happen to believe goes all the way back to our inheritance of monotheism.

Think about ancient Greece, and its polytheistic mythology.  The gods were just like people but more so -- generous, impulsive, sadistic, cruel, chaste, lascivious, merciful, vengeful, wise, silly, immensely powerful and immortal.  Zeus was proof that men are not naturally monogamous -- he would transform into a bull, a swan, whatever it took to couple with comely human maidens.  Apollo, Aphrodite, and others interacted with humanity, despite having official spouses on Mt. Olympus.  Then monotheism came along, offering a single deity who was perfect, male but sexless.  Yahweh was not permitted a consort, and now myth had no way to describe sexuality except to denounce it.  With Allah, things only got worse.  As for Jesus, remember the official outrage when that awful novel The DaVinci Code suggested he had married?  And unlike the others, he had a fully functional human body.

I apologize for being pretentious, but are we not the heirs of all this?  Lacking a divinely ordered outlet for sex, what are we left with but violence?  We have never really escaped the shadow of the Puritans, with their distilled hatred of the body and their inability to recognize "savages" as fully human.  Malcolm was right:  Violence is as American as cherry pie.  Sex is European (the new right-wing pejorative).

We adore violence.  It informs our language.  Someone who recently said we have "a shot" at restricting assault weapons was scolded for his choice of words, but I understood.  The American idiom is awash with ordnance.  "That big-shot from the home office is gunning for me, but I dodged a bullet.  The guy's a real loose cannon."  "I invited her to see that blockbuster movie, and she shot me down."  "Lincecum got shelled, but that new right-fielder has a rifle for an arm."  Violence informs our entertainment, our music, our literature, our thinking.  The iconic Christmas movie is no longer about a miser who learns charity, or an angel who gets his wings, but a nine-year-old who wants a BB gun.  And of course, our sports.

Remember the Super Bowl a few years ago?  In the middle of the half-time show, there was a momentary glimpse of a female nipple.  I thought the Republic would never recover.  Was it deliberate?  Was it a "wardrobe malfunction"?  Did the children see this terrible thing?  How can we talk to them about it?  Are they ruined forever?  Should someone go to prison?  How can we, as a nation, go on?  All right, back to the game.  Back to big men slamming into each other, sustaining brain injuries which will kill them before they're fifty.  Aaahhhhhhhh......And there you have it.  America, the nation of perpetual childhood and perpetual childishness.  A President is impeached over sex (and not very much of it).  A Vice-President shoots his friend in the face and it's just good fun, coupla guys confirming their manhood by blasting away at flightless quail bred to be slaughtered by gutless chicken-hawks. 

Maybe we deserve the numbing daily statistics, the drive-by shootings, the four-year-old who played with a gun, the scuffle at a party that turned into a killing, punctuated by the mass murders that bring out the solemn faces on the anchormen and cause gun sales to spike ("Obama's comin' to take yer guns!").  The truth is, we're nowhere near a "tipping point" yet, nor will we be as long as even liberals have to start every sentence by stating their devotion to the Second Amendment.  I say it's time that amendment went the way of "three-fifths of a man" and Prohibition.  People wrote it, and people can get rid of it.

Put up your guns, or shut up.  

     

Something in the air

Last week the United States warned the Assad regime not to use chemical weapons against Syrian revolutionaries.  At around the same time, police in Lansing, Michigan, were using chemical weapons to disperse unarmed demonstrators.  Hundreds of union members filled the state capitol to protest anti-union legislation being rammed through by the Mad Tea Party; since the new law shrewdly exempts police and firefighters' unions, the cops could deploy pepper spray without compunction.

Of course, pepper spray is not Sarin nerve gas, just as Michigan is not Syria.  Michigan is part of the United States, whose Constitution protects the rights of free speech and assembly.  It's the sort of constitution millions of people in Syria, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere admire and would probably give their lives for.  I wish they could see it in action.

There won't be blood

It's no secret that the Republicans, and especially Mitt Romney, have some serious problems with reality.  Even a hurricane of historic proportions, powerful enough to change the coastline of the United States, was unable to break through their formidable barriers of privilege, money, and sheer what-the-hell-is-that stupidity.  But sometimes, the cost is higher than they know.

When Sandy struck, Barack Obama got to call for Air Force One and Marine One and look presidential because, you know, he's the President.  Romney hinted he'd love to look over ruined towns in New Jersey, but the governor intimated that he'd be better off taking a flying leap at the International Space Station.  So Romney went back to Ohio and his staff scrambled to acquaint him with the concept of compassion ("Message:  I care.")  They bought thousands of dollars worth of canned goods and had them delivered to a Romney event, where those attending were handed a can of tuna and told to hand it to the grinning candidate while the cameras rolled.  They had Romney pick up some small cartons and ostentatiously carry them to a waiting truck, one at a time (I could have hefted three or four, and I'm pretty arthritic).  They assumed the press were too stupid to figure any of this out, much less report it accurately, and gleefully, to the rest of us.  The press responded to the insult by peppering Mittums with questions about his position on FEMA, which, surprisingly enough, did a 180 on Thursday afternoon.   And then Romney came out with one of his patented parables about voluntarism -- the one about the football field full of litter after a celebration.  How to clean it up?  Well, sir, you just get nineteen buddies and each of you takes one five-yard sliver, and in no time you've demonstrated that nobody needs the government.

After the compassion offensive, it took me a little while to catch my breath.  Over a hundred people dead, millions without electricity from North Carolina to Wisconsin, entire communities scoured from the earth, the country's largest city crippled, infrastructure in ruins, people waiting in the cold for food, water, gasoline...does any sentient being really believe this is going to be like picking up toilet paper and plastic cups on a football field?  A better analogy would be the reconstruction of Germany after the Second World War.  Implacable stupidity  always makes me want to take a nap.  And then, refreshed, I saw where it could have gone right but, thankfully, did not.

Image is everything in politics.  Talking the talk replaced walking the walk as long ago as 1988, when the Veterans of Foreign Wars booed ex-bomber pilot Lloyd Bentsen and cheered ex-National Guardsman Dan Quayle at their annual convention.  Maybe image triumphed even longer ago, when draft dodger John Wayne became synonymous with wartime heroism during the Vietnam escapade.  Looking the part is more important than doing the job, and the mere image of Mitt Romney collecting canned goods was deemed more important than reality, even though -- stay with me -- the last thing the Red Cross wants is a bunch of canned food.  They asked for money, and they asked for blood.  

Mitt Romney missed out on the photo op of a lifetime -- one that might well have changed the election.  If he couldn't tour the disaster, he could lead by example by donating blood.  He could explain to people who are squeamish about the process that it takes about half an hour, it isn't dangerous, it isn't painful, and it actually helps.  In fact, it epitomizes the individual action that he seems to think can take the place of huge government programs.  Agencies can bring in heavy equipment, but they can't give blood.  Only human beings can do that.  A lot of Romney supporters claim to be "pro-life," but on examination this turns out to be a euphemism for "anti-choice."  What could be more honestly pro-life than giving life itself?  Romney at the Red Cross, reclining in a chair -- it could finally erase the memory of the 47 percent speech.

I feel safe in saying this not because nobody in Romneyland reads this blog, but because it's the last thing he would ever do.  Give something away without any hope of personal gain?  This spoiled trust-fund brat whose entire life has been dedicated to self-interest, this conscienceless sociopath who will say anything to achieve power so he can practice self-interest on a global scale comes from a family with a proud tradition of avoiding military service over at least four generations.  Strapping a dog to the top of a car for a long road trip was not the act of a bumbling sitcom dad but a stunning display of complete lack of empathy for a living thing.  Look into those dead eyes -- this is someone who didn't need Ayn Rand to teach him the joys of selfishness.  Mitt Romney would no more donate a unit of blood to a stranger than he would give a kidney to a homeless beggar.  He made his fortune destroying companies and the lives of their employees (if corporations really were people, Bain Capital would be indicted for murder).  And now we must depend on a relative handful of people in Ohio to end him.  Bloodlessly.

.

 

Little Boy Brown

I want to say a few words about the debate.  No, the other debate, the first encounter between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, candidates for the Senate in Massachusetts.  I thought it was more enlightening than the over-hyped bout in Denver.  That thing was like a Superbowl -- by the time it started, I was tired of it.

Straight off the bat, Brown ignored the economy, the war, the sorry season of the Red Sox, and went after Warren's ethnicity.  Apparently she's part Native American but lacks glossy black hair and war paint.  In other words, she's lying about her mother's Delaware and Cherokee ancestry.  This is old news in Massachusetts -- when Warren revealed her family background, one right-wing paper dubbed her "Fauxcohontas."  Everybody knows what Indians look like, and she doesn't.  QED

At first I thought Brown was making a subtle and important point about the absurdity of racial categories -- what's the point of having them when you can't tell what people are until they tell you?  This is not exactly news, either.  Mark Twain wrote a novel about it.  It's a subplot in Show Boat.  We're a seriously mixed-up people, and always have been.  On reflection, a little too subtle, too cerebral for a member of the Mad Tea Party.  So what was going on? 

A week later I read a magazine article about the Senate race and there it was.

Scott Brown went to Tufts.

I'm no expert but people tell me that when you apply to Harvard, Tufts is your safety school.  Nothing wrong with Tufts, but it's not Harvard.  It must have been infuriating that this...this squaw was appointed to the faculty of the Harvard Law School when Scottie couldn't get past the director of admissions.  Couldn't be that she earned it by becoming a nationally recognized expert in consumer debt law, by co-writing a book about it, by helping to craft legislation.  She must have "checked the box," thus reaping the cornucopia of benefits which America has showered on undeserving minorities (and women) for the last half century.

This is a constant gripe of the right, and not just the Archie Bunkers, the working class Americans for whom I actually have a lot of sympathy, the ones who are competing with more people for a smaller piece of the pie.  It goes all the way up to the one percent.  In the course of the infamous "forty-seven percent" chat, Mitt Romney made a sort of joke (for him) about how much easier his life would have been if only his father had been an ethnic Mexican instead of an American born in Mexico.  The $50,000-a-platers chortled, thinking of their highly-paid maids and gardeners, I suppose.  The 47 percent think they're victims, said Romney, but you and I, we're the real victims.  They are obsessed with the idea that somewhere, some eight-year-old is getting a free hot breakfast at school and they have to pay for it and it just isn't right.  Scott Brown is a Senator, a member of what has been called "the world's most exclusive club," and he's still pissed because he didn't get into Harvard.  It wasn't because he wasn't good enough -- it was because Harvard, in the name of multi-cultural affirmative action (a string of obscenities on the right), gave his place to a disabled Micronesian lesbian.  And now the world makes sense.

I remember the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when several hundred people from New Orleans were being sheltered in the Houston Astrodome.  Someone asked Barbara Bush what she thought of it all, and she gave that same chortle and said, "Well, these people are underprivileged, so it's working out well for them."  Because there's nothing the poor like better than sleeping on cots in an abandoned baseball stadium.  It's their version of sailing around the Greek islands.  They get everything -- food, water, blankets, even donated clothing -- and all it costs is everything they had in the world.

It's almost funny.  They can't accumulate enough.  They start fake populist "parties" to knock their tax bills down to zero.  They're surrounded by moochers and redistributors and socialist demagogues and nobody is grateful for all the jobs they create, if only for maids and gardeners. 

They want their country back.   

     

Mittwit

Under the illusion that he has been elected president, Mitt Romney set off this week to introduce himself to the world.  His first stop was London, where he compared the Olympic preparations unfavorably to his own masterful effort ten years ago in a place called Salt Lick City.  Tomorrow he leaves for Poland to unveil the latest "How many Polacks does it take..." joke.  Then it's on to Israel, where he plans to distribute copies of the Book of Mormon at the Western Wall.  Personally, I can't wait for the first G8 meeting, where he can share his hilarious "Hey, who goosed me?" routine with Vladimir Putin.

If anyone is reading this at the State Department, I implore you to revoke this clown's passport before he gets to regale Japan with his "Me so solly" schtick.  Allies are precious, and the world is not an Amway convention.

Birther, dearther, flat earther

All right, this birther stuff was funny four years ago.  Now, like Donald Trump, it's boring.  If you want to work in absurdity, you have to be prepared to take it to the next level.  Challenging Obama's birth certificate went nowhere, apart from some fines imposed by judges for filing frivolous lawsuits.  By now, you should be back in court challenging Hawaiian statehood.  Any bona fide "originalist" can make the argument that the Founding Fathers (peace be upon them) never intended the United States to include a bunch of islands way the hell out in the Pacific Ocean.  They didn't even know the islands existed.  Ergo, they can't be a state.  If, in fact, they really exist.

I've never been to Hawaii (or "Hawaii").  I don't know anyone who has.  Okay, maybe one person.  I think it's awfully convenient that these so-called islands, and a harbor supposedly made of pearls, figured in the United States's entry into World War II.  Documents which I have personally seen, or anyway copies, suggest that Franklin Roosevelt (a secret Jew) had orders from the Elders to involve us in the war, so he sent a number of battleships to sail off the end of the earth and blamed their destruction on Japan.  That film they keep showing on December 7 was faked on a Hollywood soundstage, like the moon landings.  All so that Israel could be established and the Russians could occupy eastern Europe.  Also, vaccines cause autism, Michael Jackson is still alive, and there's a car that runs on peanut butter. 

See?  Something like that, before we all fall asleep.  It's Romney, for Bob's sake.

Rhythm (method) and blues

Determined to outflank Rick Sanctorum, Mitt Rombot announced that not only will he ban all contraception once he is The Leader, he will also prosecute those who used it in the past.

Moreover, he will ask the LDS to name and baptize all unfertilized eggs produced by American women. Because you can't be too careful.

It's a flat-out battle for the essential ultra-orthodox ultra-ultra-Catholic swing vote. The Catholics who won't even call Benedict XVI "the pope," preferring "Bavarian Muslim usurper." The Catholics who have not recognized any pope since Hitler's pal Pius XII, and consider the rest a bunch of Protestant-appeasing, Limbo-abolishing, Friday-meat-eating, Galileo-pardoning secular humanist heretics. They're here, they're Republicans, and they're helping to make this the most entertaining election since the last one.

Out in the real world, few Americans would list moon colonies or funding for Planned Parenthood among their main preoccupations. The 99 percent are more concerned with feeding, housing and educating the children they already have, than with how to avoid having any more. They watch events in Iran and Syria with trepidation; they try to comprehend what is happening in Greece and Egypt; they wonder how to pay the mortgage and put gas in the car, and they mostly don't give a wet slap about gay people getting married or serving openly in the Air Force. Some of them sense that Obama's join-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya approach to governing is not working, but nobody is challenging him from the vast expanse of territory on his left except the sporadic Occupiers and The Daily Show. As amusing as the Mad Tea Party is, entertainment is not enough.

Department of Scrupulous Fairness

Michelle Bachmann has taken a lot of abuse for saying that Waterloo, Iowa, was the birthplace of John Wayne, when it turns out -- this is priceless -- that it's the birthplace of John Wayne Gacy. See? She can't tell a movie star from a serial killer! I'm doubling over.

What the smart kids may not know is that John Wayne, ne Marion Morrison, was born in Winterset, Iowa. I know, lots of people think he was from Texas. They also think he was a war hero. Nope -- draft dodger from Iowa.* Frau Bachmann (horse whinny in the distance) should take note. It's not easy buttering up the Iowans by pretending their state's history is full of significant events. For instance, all you need to know about Davenport is that Bix Beiderbecke was born there and Cary Grant died there. Like Gacy and Wayne, their careers took place elsewhere. Iowa is the only flyover state where same-sex marriage is legal, but I don't expect Republicans to act happy about that.

It's more disturbing that a would-be president confuses John Adams with John Quincy Adams, and that she may actually believe the endlessly invoked "Founding Fathers" wanted to abolish slavery. Some of them not only approved of it (and depended upon it to generate the wealth that allowed them to hang around Philadelphia for months, founding) but incorporated it into the new Constitution to give the states with the most slaves disproportionate representation in Congress. As far as I can tell, Jay and Dave and Craig have not dwelt on this display of ignorance, probably because they would need to explain it to their adoring audiences. The trivial and the cheap make for easier laughs, just as the obsession with Anthony Weiner's creepy hobby was far more interesting than the points he was trying to make about Clarence Thomas's gutter ethics.

As Barack Obama slides inexorably toward total capitulation to the Rightzis, we need thoughtful people to discuss the gravest problems we have faced since the 1940s. We're not going to get that. Instead, we're going to hear which candidate has done the most to shore up the declining white birthrate, who has the best hair, whether the Latter-Day Saints are a religion or a cult, and why a proposed federal law should be written so as to fit on a pizza box. Politics in America smells like John Wayne Gacy's crawlspace.

Sixteen months to go.



*It's a textbook example of the way image trumps reality. Like the 1988 convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who cheered former National Guardsman J. Danforth Quayle, and booed decorated World War II bomber pilot Lloyd Bentsen. As somebody remarked in a John Wayne Western, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Print it? It's tattooed all over us.

Dick moves

Some years ago the Brazilian Department of Health produced a public service announcement urging men to use condoms and practice safe sex. The PSA featured an animated talking penis named Gaetan. The day after it aired, the department was flooded with calls from men named Gaetan who pronounced themselves humiliated and enraged that their government appeared to be calling them a bunch of pricks.

I remember thinking that this could not happen in the Anglophone world, where virtually every male name is synonymous with the penis. It's called Dick, Willie, John Thomas, Jimmy, Peter, occasionally Lance and Woody, not forgetting the verbs Roger and Jack. It even has a last name: Johnson. I didn't know about that one until Earvin "Magic" Johnson announced that he was HIV-positive, possibly as a consequence of having unsafe sex with hundreds of women. Before his press conference, I thought his nickname had something to do with basketball. Afterward, I was forced to re-examine my assumptions about Randy Johnson ("The Big Unit"), Walter Johnson ("The Big Train"), and even Lyndon Johnson, who allegedly took out his favorite body part at a White House meeting and proclaimed, "I bet Ho Chi Minh don't have one that big!" Size notwithstanding, Ho eventually prevailed against both Johnson and "Dick" Nixon. But I digress.

This unappetizing subject has been inescapable for two weeks, owing to the inexcusable though relatively harmless activities of a New York congressman. For years, politicians, athletes, and for all I know clergymen, have been sending pictures of their genitals into the ether. Every man has a phone in his pocket, every phone has a camera, and the proximity is just too tempting. And once you have a digital snap of what Robin Williams used to call "Mr. Happy," and internet access, it seems only logical to share it with the world. Don't blame the phones -- that's like blaming Gutenberg for the novels of Dan Brown. Technology is morally neutral. Blame men and their eternal childishness.

Why is this more than a two-day story in the silly season? Because the congressman in question is named Weiner. That's right, he must have heard all the jokes since the age of five, and now he's at the center of them. The name is irresistible to the mental five-year-olds who populate late night television; they're not letting it go. Now Anthony Weiner knows why John Boehner keeps saying "It's pronounced BAY-ner." (Sure, John, maybe in Germany.) Weiner doesn't need therapy, and he doesn't need a risible "ethics" investigation run by the party that turns a blind eye to its Ensigns and Vitters. What he needs is a new name. Anything but Johnson.

The music goes 'round and 'round

I spent the afternoon listening to Verdi's Don Carlo ahead of the Metropolitan Opera's new production this season. The opera contains Verdi's clearest statement about self-determination and religious freedom, specifically dealing with the persecution of Dutch Protestants under Spanish rule. It must have been scheduled years ago, but it fits neatly into the current farcical "debate" about the construction of an Islamic cultural center two blocks from the hideous new Freedom Tower, formerly the merely unattractive World Trade Center. We can't even discuss religion in this country without becoming utterly unhinged, even in the context of a nineteenth-century opera about the sixteenth century.

Don Carlo was first given by the Met only 60 years ago, the inaugural production of the Rudolf Bing regime (1950-1972). Even before opening night, it was in the news. Boris Christoff was schedule to make his debut as King Philip II, but the State Department refused to grant him a work permit. Although Christoff had long been a resident of Italy and was not remotely political, he was a citizen of Bulgaria. In 1950, with Joe McCarthy waving a letter from a collection agency (probably) and claiming it was a list of Communists in the State Department, no one could take the risk that Christoff would insert subliminal Red propaganda into "Ella giammai m'amo." The Met engaged Cesare Siepi, who had a triumph and began a long relationship with the company. Although he eventually sang with other American companies, Christoff's anthracite bass was never heard at the Met.

After the opera opened, pickets appeared on 39th Street to complain that it was a slanderous attack on the Catholic Church. Only five years after World War II, and facing criticism over its lack of criticism for the Axis, the Church was anxious to change its public image in the US -- from Father Coughlin to Bishop Sheen, so to speak. Don Carlo's terrifying Grand Inquisitor and auto da fe was not the face it wanted to show to a country which had only recently begun to accept it, thanks to its impeccable anti-Communist credentials and the strenuous efforts of entertainers like Bing Crosby. Catholics had reason to be nervous: in 1928, Al Smith's presidential campaign was doomed, in part, because fundamentalist ministers convinced their congregations that if Smith gained the White House, he would rule as the pope's viceroy. The first Catholic president, elected by the narrowest of margins, was still a decade away. Verdi was definitely not a Good Catholic. The Church not only stood in the way of Italian nationhood but made life uncomfortable for him personally, and for his common-law wife Giuseppina Strepponi. Verdi's dislike extended to all clerics: the priests of Isis in Aida come off no better than the Grand Inquisitor. Why this opera now? It must have looked like a plot.

The proposed Islamic center, Park51, will also be known as Cordoba House, after the capitol of Moorish Spain, where Muslims, Catholics and Jews lived a mainly peaceful, shared existence. (This was in contrast to Catholic Spain, which expelled all Muslims and Jews in the magical year of 1492 -- or worse, forced them to undergo baptism.) The imam is so conciliatory, he's practically an Episcopalian. He used to work for the FBI! It doesn't matter a rap to the Rightzis, who are determined to make this their Willie Horton issue and have, by dint of relentless repetition, convinced millions of morons that Obama is a Muslim. (But --- but --- Jeremiah Wright? The radical Christian pastor who hates America and has Obama in his toils? That is so 2008.) Sadly, many Catholics and Jews are happy to link arms with the Protestants who still despise them and march downtown to hate on the Muslims. Religion being by its nature intolerant, the religious minorities only want someone else for their enemies to hate. Once they control their own territories (Utah, Israel), the minority minorities had better run.

Almost from the beginning, the 9/11 attacks were misinterpreted, perhaps deliberately. The ruin was named "Ground Zero," a term from 1950s nuclear civil defense preparations. I remember the concentric circles around the spot where the A-bomb would fall -- these many would die instantly, these many would die in a week, these would die a hideous slow death from radiation -- and thus we grew up. ("Ground Zero" turned out to be all too accurate for the hundreds who believed Christine Todd Whitman when she said the air was safe to breathe, and are now dying their own hideous slow deaths.) Before the second tower fell, people who talk into microphones without thinking were comparing it to Pearl Harbor, as if one sovereign nation had attacked the military base of another. It was actually the greatest crime scene in the history of this country. A dozen individuals decided to hijack some planes and fly them into some buildings, acting for no government or state. A better comparison would be the actions of the Manson gang in Los Angeles in 1969.

There are a number of interesting parallels between Osama bin Laden and Charles Manson. Both are charismatic types who attract and mesmerize the weak-minded. Both offer idiosyncratic interpretations of well-known texts (the Koran, the White Album). Both were careful to be far away when the murders took place, and both could be described as delusional psychotics. Bin Laden imagines he can destroy Israel and restore the Caliphate; Manson evidently planned to ignite a race war which would somehow leave him in control of the United States. Beyond that, the difference is chiefly one of scale. To treat either of them as anything but a criminal demeans us all.

Their crimes were noticed in high places. Richard Nixon famously pronounced Manson guilty before his trial had ended, nearly causing a mistrial. At least he didn't cite the murder of Sharon Tate to justify invading Cambodia. George W. Bush was the first president to lose the popular vote since Rutherford B. Hayes, and needed something to shore up his shaky claim to the White House. And as Henry V knew, nothing unites a country like a foreign war, so Bush invaded Afghanistan, where bin Laden may have been in those days, and then decided to resume his family's vendetta against Saddam Hussein, who had no discernible connection to the murders. Retroactively, "Ground Zero" became the opening battle in a Clash of Civilizations, or a war on "Islamofascism," or anything except a huge crime scene. Now it's also "sacred ground," despite the gigantic commercial building going up there.

The 9/11 murderers were nominally Muslims. So what? Timothy McVeigh and his friends were nominally Christians. Who wants to tell the people of Oklahoma City they can't build a church near the site of the Murrah Building? Yes, I'm being disingenuous. Muslims are foreign, Other, scary -- like Catholics in 1928, like Mormons in the nineteenth century, like those heretics who burn in the second act of Don Carlo as the crowd rejoices. The real Pearl Harbor was followed by the roundup and detention of thousands of people whose only offense was Japanese ancestry, an event of which this country is now rightly ashamed. Are we going to learn to distinguish between the acts of individuals and their group identity? Do we learn from the past? Verdi says no.

Know your enemy, part 17

"There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos." (Jim Hightower)

And oncoming traffic which has veered from the right-hand lane and is bearing down on you, as you politely wave it past. Which is a metaphoric attempt to explain what happens when the Obama administration pays attention to the Rightzis.

We're being encouraged to honor To Kill A Mockingbird, with its message of tolerance and brotherhood in 1950s Alabama, but it seems to me the life of Shirley Sherrod would make a better story. After the murder of her father in 1965, for which no one was ever charged, she chose to stay in Georgia and work for change, marrying an official of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. While trying to help black farmers, she was approached by the Spooners, a white couple facing the loss of their farm. After much hesitation, she agreed to accompany them to the bank, and foreclosure was avoided. Years passed, history rolled on, and Mrs. Sherrod found herself working in the Department of Agriculture during the nation's first black presidency. Then a vicious reactionary got hold of a video of a speech she made to the NAACP, talking about the Spooners and how her experience led her to abandon her hatred of white people. He edited the video to make her sound like a racist and posted it on his blog, and soon it was being gleefully promoted by more vicious reactionaries on a "news" network. Before she could defend herself, Shirley Sherrod was ordered to resign, by no less than the Secretary of Agriculture, with the backing of the White House.

Anyone who has watched a Hollywood biopic knows what comes next: The complete video is finally aired, the Spooners, now old and frail, tell their story, and everyone but Mrs. Sherrod is revealed to be a coward, a liar, an idiot, or a previously undreamt-of combination of the three. She is offered another, better job at Agriculture. Will she take it? Will she be played by Alfre Woodard or Angela Bassett? Stay tuned.

More important, will the Obama people finally learn to ignore the Rightzis? Compromise, appeasement, and gathering for a few beers and a chorus of "Kumbaya" have not worked and never will. The Rightzis have nothing to contribute but paranoid fantasies. If Obama takes them seriously, he will eventually come to believe that he is a Nairobi-born Muslim who admires Adolf Hitler (yet hates white people) and is preparing to turn the country over to Ban Ki-moon and his army of flying monkeys. Also death panels.

Steps must be taken:

1. Instruct the White House switchboard (or whatever it's called in digitalese) to put Republicans on hold with accordion music. No, they'll like that. Play Yoko Ono until they hang up.

2. Have a haz-mat team check the building for hidden copies of The American Spectator, National Review, Washington Times and all Regnery publications.

3. Equip all televisions with an F chip to block Fox stations. An exception can be made for FX because it carries Louie, the only damn sitcom worth watching. (When Dick Cheney checks into a hotel or hospital suite, he demands that only Fox News be playing, so this isn't as childish as it sounds.)

4. No reading of blogs from the right bank of Blogenheim. Not even for laughs.

5. Have Robert Gibbs respond to all slanted questions by yelling "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!"

6. Send Capitol police into Teabigot rallies to check ID. If they don't have any, throw them in jail on the grounds that they are "undocumented." Even if they have some, it could be fake. Don't take a chance.

This is war.