Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

Nov
23

No Thanks to Presidents

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Seal of the Vice President of the United States

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This year will be no different than any other. We give no thanks to presidents till they’re out of office. Till then, we give them a lot of lip, like kids who think their parents are dumb and later realize they’re were pretty smart after all.

This is especially true since JFK. The so-called “seer” Jeanne Dixon claimed to have predicted his assassination, but did no such thing: she merely said he would be an “unlucky president,” a broad statement to catch anything during his administration.

The White House, after all, is the home of Bad Luck. LBJ, after starting the War on Poverty and getting the Civil Rights Bill into law, had to forfeit a second term because of the war in Viet Nam. How unlucky can you get?

Then there was Nixon and Watergate, and ‘nuff said, there. Ford is remembered for falling down stairs. Carter choked on a nearly 20% interest rate brought on by Paul Volcker, who knew it would cost Jimmy a second term, but there was also the hostage-taking in Iran (and who could have prevented that? Nobody, that’s who) and U.S. copters that fell in the desert in a blown rescue operation. Bad luck? You betcha.

Carter’s “malaise” speech, by the way, was notable for his never having said that word, but everything stuck on him, unlike his successor, Reagan, whose failings have been blessed with American amnesia: like his ridiculous visit to Bitberg Cemetery where SS troops are interred, only because Helmut Kohl wouldn’t let him back out, and Reagan preferred to honor Kohl’s sensitivities rather than those of Americans.

We should also add that while he was the darling of the Religious Right, Ronnie was not much of a church-goer during his terms, always citing security concerns, which never bothered Carter or Clinton; and he never invested serious political capital in issues the Moral Majority cared about, like abortion. He always talked a good game but never did anything.

Then there was the financial crisis in ‘87 when the Gipper’s economic policy came home to roost and the markets fell apart. He didn’t know a damn thing about the economy save for a little tax-cutting mantra that he thought was the answer to everything. That, by the way, was when the Federal Reserve decided that someone had to run the country in that crisis, since Reagan wasn’t, and now we have a more powerful Fed than before. Guess who we can thank for that, this Thanksgiving? But no one remembers this, so the Gipper gets to be the one lucky prez in fifty years. Not that he deserves it.

Bush the Elder said we should read his lips but we didn’t hear the word “new” tucked between “no” and “taxes.” That meant all the old taxes got to stay. Then he failed to storm the gates of Baghdad when the iron was hot, and the rest is a legacy of war. Oh, and he puked on Japan’s prime minister.

That brought in Clinton, the only prez whom Alan Greenspan said understood the economy, and Alan had served both Reagan, who he said didn’t know jack about it, and the First Bush, who did, but “didn’t have the courage of his convictions.” But Bill & Co. gave us and left us huge reserves, which it took George the Shrub less than a year to blow. Call it Bush’s Folly.

Remember too that he and his veep Dick Cheney were both unwelcome at the last GOP convention when a Republican was in the Oval Office. Bush hopes his recent book will turn his luck from bad to good: Fox News is leading the cheers, as if to influence history, but that that won’t work. You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. And if Georgie’s biggest downer while prez was being dissed by Kanye West, he needs to get over himself. But his is a shallow mind.

Now we come to the unluckiest of all presidents since JFK. Obama has accomplished a lot in a mere two years but is painted with the broadest brushes of revisionism since his election. Imagine if he cried the way John Boehner did. And he doesn’t dare ever to show pique: we won’t stand to have an angry black man in the White House.

And like Lincoln, there are people out there who want to kill him. Militarist groups among the populace mince no words about that. Sure, there have always been crazies who try to pot-shot our Chiefs but these are no lone gunmen who want to do in Barack. How his wife stands it, I don’t know. And even Michelle is the constant target of vile words, and sometimes they too hurt like bullets. And she doesn’t talk like a lunatic, a la a certain Supreme Court Justice’s wife. Right-wingers forgot about that in a hurry whilst they parse every word of Ms. Obama’s.

Every president since JFK has left office under a cloud of derision. That’s our thanks to them, and not only at Thanksgiving. Not till they’re out to pasture do we look back on them with any fondness. Silly us.

If there’s any lesson to this it must be that the only way to leave office with a nation’s love and affection, is feet first. What a shame.

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Nov
08

Electoral Anger

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Anger Controlls Him

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One can only hope that the arrival, at last, of voting day and of therapeutic release through balloting, may have broken the fever of too many months of extreme emotion. But such emotion must be seen for what it was–and wasn’t.

We were first told that the electorate was seized by anger, and I had asserted in this space that such is an unstable emotion. That is not entirely true, since anger has better uses than what is properly hostility–a more destructive form of aggression.

When the Town Hall meetings across America turned virulent, then violent, persons of low political motives hoped to harness such hysteria for their own purposes and were heard to tell the media, “W-e-l-l, we can understand why they are angry…” thereby authorizing dangerous emotions as a means of undermining our government.

In time, right wing “anger” was deemed justifiable, especially when such ire was hard to find among liberal groups, who were mainly caught off guard by the foment. This in turn morphed into the notion that persons of saner disposition should be fearful of those who were intemperate.

Indeed, some of them were, to the point of apathy towards better candidates and, at last, their absence from the most sacred act and most venerable shrine a free people: that of the ballot and the ballot box.

Shame on those who fled this responsibility. We are fortunate that the outcome was not worse, though enough damage was done to bring regret on us all by the year 2012, at which time we must endeavor to correct it. But may we never again be held hostage to unreasonable people, their rhetoric and behavior.

I have also said that I wish this “educated” generation (if such it may be called), would read a damn book once in a while since their graduations. Apparently they got merely what they needed to pursue careers but neglected to cultivate character–or as the truism goes: how to make a living but not how to make a life.

One need not major in psychology but should have been exposed to it as a field of knowledge. It is known, e.g., that certain kinds of treatment foster aggression, as in the abuse of the very young. The resulting anger is a form of adapting, hence not necessarily bad but as an expression of power that may lead for example to assertiveness–a word often used by and about women.

But what we saw among those Americans behaving badly was unjustified. The Tea Party, as we know, was a manifestation of their supposed anger. Yet surveys showed that they were among the most unaffected by the economic climate. Indeed, they had both the time and means to spend countless hours in travel and on the internet, not to mention in demonstrations. They and other citizens also continued to buy expensive vehicles and endless series of communication equipment, undeterred by successive service contracts, new gadgets and other expenditures required.

In time, researchers will see more clearly what was upsetting these people: change. This is no longer a world any of us can recognize. But we need to adapt, not indulge in destructive options that put at risk our republic and its democracy.

Anger is one thing, hostility is another and the latter was what we saw in the right-wingnut/Tea Party phenom–an aggression that got out of hand, egged on by cynical politicians who first thought the mayhem to be useful but now have to deal with the little band of Flying Monkeys whom some voters, in their infinite folly, released from their cages.

Anger generally is a temporary response. Hostility is more lasting. We are all angry at certain times, but those we carelessly call “angry people” are more properly hostile, for it consumes their relations with society around them and is not something easily gotten rid of.

This is why Barney Frank’s post-election eruption is not the same. He is not continuously angry but certainly was mad at circumstances that threatened to undo all he had worked for through thick and thin, and which cannot suffer a Congress full of boneheads to lead us through the crisis. We know Barney will not be angry tomorrow and the next day and through the next election cycle. I venture to say that Tea Partiers will.

But to say that town hall disrupters and Tea Party candidates who attacked the Constitution by their ignorance and misinterpretation of it were justified in their “anger,” is to misunderstand who was who, and where they were coming from. Their prodding by Fox News exacerbated the destructiveness of the movement, which is another story–one of a “news source” far removed from journalistic principles and ethics, and playing a segment of society like a fiddle string for its own agenda.

I have thought to peruse Dante’s Inferno for mention of Fox, but to now have avoided doing so for fear of actually finding them there.

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Nov
03

This Just In: the Spin is On

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Wednesday morn, cup o’ joe in hand, I turned to major news channels for post election analysis–CNN’s usual straight election reportage complete with views from Dems and Publicans, and Fox’s “fair and balanced” anaylsis limited to the things they could most crow about: Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.

“Fox and Friends” is the lamest stab at truth-telling in the moral universe. Onscreen, from the left, we see the Big Dumb Doofus, the Little Beauty Queen, and The Other Guy–Fox‘s answer to The Other Tenor whose name nobody recalls. It is to them that Fox turns for probing analysis, and they in turn to series of individual commentators who answer softball questions. Their lock-step judgment: Obama’s in the tank and the GOP is flexing its whip. Good morning, America: for them, the spin is on.

Here’s what they failed to mention, let alone dwell on: that a host of Tea Party faves went down to defeat, and the future will be a very different world than was imagined before election Tuesday.

Let us speak, therefore, of what Fox would not–how Fiorina and Whitman in California; Angle in Nevada; O’Donnell in Delaware; McMahon in Connecticut and Paladino in New York are all headed for the showers, and Murkowski is a step away from sending Joe Brown there too, right up in Sarah Palin’s own Alaska. Oh, and another Tea Party darling, Ken Buck has lost Colorado.

Dear me, Carly the CEO fired by Hewlett Packard, will not be running anything in the Gold Rust state either, and Meg of eBay is $140 million poorer. We no longer have to suffer Sharron’s goofy visage or Christine’s witchy pronouncements. And thankfully there’s no having to endure future interviews with Linda, the maven of World Wrestling, fearing all the while that unwelcome questions might be met with her patented kick to the groin.

In other words, this will not be the wacky world some had feared and others had dearly hoped for. And don’t think GOP incumbents are not thanking their lucky stars. Imagine future party caucuses had those lame-brains won. Talk about gridlock. So there really is a God, though neither party knows much about it.

That the opposition wins midterms is the stuff of lore and we’ve survived them all. CNN is not crowing about the foregoing but they know the world is not about to change as much as is expected. Scott Brown is a shining example: how much have you heard about, or from, him lately? It was believed that the pickup-truck hunk and Cosmo centerfold was going to reform American politics but, as mentioned in this space right after his election, he would do no such thing–at the first Party caucus he would be told to shut up and get in line; after all, the Senate is made up of Seniority and Territory, and no newcomer is going to kick anybody down the stairs.

And here’s the real news: this country will listen to and entertain any and all notions that others put out there. But ever and always it is tending towards moderation, not extremism. That’s what Republicans had best keep foremost in mind. At the moment they are too far right of center and have an extremist bur under their saddle called the Tea Party. It will be no picnic for them twixt now and the year 1012.

If anything can be said about the American electorate, it’s that when it’s not being just fickle, it’s being fickler or plain fickle to the max. Now there will be someone else to blame and it’s not just the Democrats. It’s still about the economy and there’s no quick fix for it, and being a Party of No will no longer fly. What the tide washes in it also washes out.

Next House Speaker, John “Man-Tan” Boehner, has been touting his humble roots of late, but in truth he never had it all that bad any more than Frank Sinatra imagined he came from “mean streets” in Hoboken. Boehner’s also widely known as a lazy bones and by no means a tough guy. From here on he can no longer bark from the sidelines. No indeed, he’s in for a brawl now and he underestimates Obama at his peril.

As for me, I salivate at what’s to unfold. My pen is sharp and ready to comment on the next phase of the Washington Merry Go Round. No one of any political persuasion can be totally happy after last Tuesday because politics, like life, is always bittersweet.

But I still see the cup as half full, not half empty.

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Oct
26

Be Not Afraid of MAD MEN

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Or mad women for that matter.

A great part of the electorate in this year of our Lord 2010 is described as “angry.” Oh, tell them to get over themselves. What are we supposed to do, run and hide when they show up?

Actually, that’s what some people do, to wit, stay home and not vote. To say that certain voters this year are “energized” is simply code for “mad.” Oooooh, they’re Mad Men. So what? That’s their problem. The rest of us are not exactly ecstatic, either, that George Bush mortgaged our futures, but we don’t look around for the wrong people to blame.

The past is the past and we should not allow such people to decide our future. But that’s what they’re trying to do and we should make sure they get pushback for their weird notions and zany proposals–you know, getting rid of the Education Department and privatizing Social Security, to name but two. With such rascals in office, the world will turn upside down, after which those willing to admit they voted for these weasels will be harder to find than hen’s teeth.

People who are mad should be understood as also unstable, for anger is an unstable emotion–not what you want in your leaders or those who elect them. Above all, be not afraid of them. Such crowds of misfits first showed their faces in that infamous Summer of Our Discontent when they turned citizen gatherings into Town Hall Meetings from Hell–a new version of Americans Behaving Badly–where they cursed and spat at elected leaders while old goats in the crowd wrestled each other to the floor, puffing.

No, do not fear such persons. For one thing, they run in packs because they have no real courage of their convictions and would never diss you or anyone if only the two of you were in the room. Tea Partiers who rant at us are just a pack of brats.

Let’s talk about who we should really be afraid of, like the Mortgage Bankers Association, which recently defaulted and walked out on their $79 million building in Washington, DC. and removed themselves to a resort in Texas where they granted no interviews. And this, just after the head of the MBA chastised mortgage holders nationwide not to abandon their own responsibilities by walking away from their home indebtedness.

This of course is all follow-up to the crimes of the financial sector, which is currently throwing money at the Republican Party and at the Angry People who support it.

Such Mad Men, and women, do better to direct their anger at the real sources of our economic pain: Wall Street, banks, credit card companies, all transactions involving “fees” and, yes, mortgage companies. The taxes we pay are nothing compared to those who really gouge us–namely, just about anyone who deals in money, primarily ours. Be Very Afraid also of mortgage companies and foreclosure practices, of outrageous cell phone fees and penalties.

Be Not Afraid however of polls and of Liars Who Figure: e.g., that Obama’s “approval” ratings are low. Yeah, they’ve dipped below 50% but no lower than Reagan’s, though easily impressionable people conveniently forget that, along with the fact that there was a terrible financial crisis in the Gipper’s second term when his tax-cutting chickens came home to roost and many Republicans claimed he had “lost his soul.” It was a time when his having raised taxes eight times during his two terms was fresh on the minds of all.

And not to forget Truman, whose approval dipped to the low Thirties over the Korea crisis, before tumbling into the Twenties when he sent troops there. Now of course people look back in fondness to Harry and Ronnie as if theirs were Golden Ages in national politics.
We forget that James Baker, under Reagan, also had to go hat-in-hand to foreign countries to ask for currency changes to help our recovery, just as Tim Geithner had to do of late.

So what can you do? Even if you’ve done nothing till now in this election season, even if you’ve not sent a dime to a candidate, there’s one thing that will trump all the noise and intimidation from the Mad Men–and that’s to get off your Blessed Assurance and vote! There are more people of sense in this country than there are hot-heads, and a third of the electorate have not yet decided who they’ll back next Tuesday.

Angry people only make more noise. And what all the good and better candidates need most of all, even more than money, is your vote.

Then after Nov. 2, all the Mad Men can take their anger to the nearest shrink and get some real help. I’ve downloaded a list that I’ll gladly share.

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Oct
22

Beer, Or Prayers, with Obama?

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Official presidential portrait of Barack Obama...

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In this ridiculous political climate, attacks focus not only on the President, but his wife and his religion.

First Ladies usually are immune from public criticism, unless they’re Democrats, of course. Hillary Clinton did nothing wrong but when her hubby was found to be a cad, somehow she was considered party to it.
Michele Obama has been criticized for sleeveless fashions, taking vacations–and now for trying to improve the health of the nation’s children, while Republicans do all they to keep that from happening.

Of course, President Ford’s wife has a drug treatment center named after her but I don’t recall tacky references to that, just acclaim for having come out regarding her own problems and thereafter trying to make a positive difference in other people’s lives. People laid off Pat Nixon, given that she had suffered enough just being married to the Big Loser.

Carter’s daughter was the issue during his tenure, enduring a constant patter about how homely she was, forgetting that Congress is a leper colony of appearance; politics, as we say, is just show business for ugly people.
With Obama himself, you name it, anything goes that can be dreamed up. Oh, we dare not suggest that his race is a factor, but as Bill Maher said recently on Larry King Live, there are two things certain folks hate–one is being called racist, and the other is: black people. Shortly thereafter a study showed some schools even in Massachusetts are among the most segregated in the nation.

But aside from his skin color, politics, and supposedly questionable citizenship, the dogs of denial are after Obama’s religion. White folks, who after all these years don’t know jack about black religion, had assumed that Christianity had been a successful pacification process that would make them more like other Americans–except for skin tone, natch.

It was also supposed to have induced their collective amnesia regarding how they got here and all they crap they put up with even after Emancipation. Rev. Jeremiah Wright was the perfect excuse for whites to feel betrayed–gosh, after all they’d done for African Americans.

But other complaints must always be sought. One smoke-screen is that Obama isn’t a chummy enough guy for us. We want a prez we can have a beer with–and so he did, with the black professor and the white cop in Cambridge, but as you may guess, that wasn’t enough.

I don’t want to have a beer with Obama. I want him to stay at work, and I don’t mean writing doggerel to his wife from the Oval Office, like Reagan did for Nancy–and for which Republicans wanted to give him a Nobel in Literature. I want our prez to have a brain and I know can count on this one to make sense (as did Clinton) in his speeches, regardless of the spin that Fox and “Fiends” put on them. I long tired of George W’s lisping, simplistic folks-isms for complicated problems.

As for religion, Obama was a devout church-goer till Wright occasioned such public pain with his rhetoric that one can’t blame Barack for taking a long look at where to settle in next on Sunday mornings.

We forget that among recent presidents, Democrats were the biggest frequenters of churches. Reagan, who enjoyed support from the televangelists and the Bible Belt, was largely a no-show–citing always “security” issues, though that didn’t stop the Clintons from regular participation. Reagan’s religion was so deep that he always referred to God as “the Man Upstairs,” and he was always the most uneasy guy on the platform during prayer at rallies for him.

Carter was both a church-goer and Sunday School teacher for decades in his home church. Since retirement, he and Clinton have been peace brokers and creators of foundations for all sorts of domestic and international humanitarian causes. All I remember from Reagan, post-White House was that trip to Japan for a speech to CEOs, shake hands all around and come back with a cool two million for his charitable efforts.

Today there is no decency regarding political or partisan utterance: just open the floodgates, let the sewage pour in, and say it’s all Obama’s fault.
I’m no prophet (I leave that for Glenn Beck) but the economy will turn at some point, and hopefully in time to make some faces as red as the states they’re in. Because it is about the economy. Should the rebound come after a few more right wingers are elected in November, they’ll grab all the credit that their Spin Doctors can muster. With Fox News’ help, of course. But that, too, will pass.

You want a beer, go have it with Joe Sixpack. Ya wanna pray, talk to God. As for a president, I’ll take Obama any day.

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Oct
14

Breaking the Political Fever with Humor

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If ever the American electorate went mad, this is the moment. People have scoured the past for prior insanity but came up short. The 1960s were close, considering Vietnam, the Nixon era and Watergate, not to forget the Generation Gap, a renewal of the Civil War’s “father against son, brother against brother”–not to mention the mothers and daughters in that mix.
But this age of ugly warfare is one that never seems to take a holiday. News coverage in the ‘60s was led by CBS News and Walter Cronkite, setting a standard for civil discourse amid the clamor of demonstrations, disruptions and internecine warfare.
Today, for the first time in televised communications, reasoned coverage like that of CNN steadily loses viewers while you’d think Fox was doing the Lord’s work: the channel of choice now for a generation that went to college but never learned to think, demands instant gratification, and has an attention span of two to three seconds at a whack. Fox is made for the likes them, with its steady drumbeat of vitriol against Democrats, liberals and Obama, all to the tune of “fair and balanced” news reportage.
The saving grace to all this is that their one-sided, vacuous rants lack one important thing–humor. And what better infusion into the dour body politic than Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert of “The Colbert Report” (last two “t’s” are silent).
Following Glenn Beck’s very self-indulgent grandstanding at the nation’s capital, comic relief is in order. There promises to be a bumper-crop turnout for this event at the same location featuring Stewart, currently the nation’s go-to guy for news that hits home, thanks to his expert lampooning of the stuffed shirts that comprise the political landscape; and Colbert, the faux conservative who accomplishes similar results by posturing from the other side of the political aisle.
If anything can lance the nation’s festering boil, or break the fever of Republican and Tea Party utterance that masquerades as truth, it’s these two from their high horses of comedy. Whatever they do on October 30, it stands to reduce to irrelevance America’s jackanape Reality Show in progress since the election of Obama.
Stewart typically delivers a revelatory expose of American politics merely by asking questions, juxtaposing current political rhetoric with prior statements by the same idiots, and follows it all with quick-witted, incisive barbs.
Colbert has the surface persona of a modern conservative windbag, from which emerges nightly the stupidity of their rhetoric, causing viewers to surmise that were modern Republicans real Republicans– and not the late, lame version–he might be one of them.
Everyone in the public eye is fair game for these merry pranksters, and none is above ridicule. The difference is that rightwingers don’t watch either show or, if they do, they don’t laugh, and for one reason only: they have no sense of humor–which speaks volumes about the paucity of modern conservatism. The litmus test is to view them and note one’s own reaction.
Their event, which is the day before Halloween–meaning just before we all return to the politics that are truly scaring the hell out of us, is teased on their nightly shows (Mondays-Thursdays beginning at 11 p.m. on Comedy Central). Stewart’s “Daily Show” exhibits sample posters for his “March to Restore Sanity,” tweaking the idiocy of Tea Party banners thusly: “I Disagree With You, But I Don’t Think You’re Hitler,” “9/11 Was An Outside Job,” and “I’m Not Afraid of Muslims, Tea Partiers, Socialists, Immigrants, Gun Owners, and Gays–But I Am Kind of Scared of Spiders.”
Colbert touts his as a counter-demonstration to “Keep Fear Alive”–a reference to the constant refrain from dingbat politicos currently running for office nationwide and who play on economic anxieties with dire accusations regarding incumbents.
By all accounts, people are poised to descend on Washington from every corner of the U.S. for the day. But there are satellite rallies nationwide too, from whence Comedy Central will broadcast live from the National Mall. Till then, find more at: http://www.rallyforsanity.com
So check your local TV listings or betake thyself for some comic relief from the sex, lies and videotape of inane news and politics and join the fun.
Whoever lacks a sense of humor should get over themselves.

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Oct
09

Big, Bad Taxes

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Sometimes when I get Up To Here with all the blah-blah about taxes, I drive down to Newport, RI–the mecca for all who dream of a world devoid of taxation.

It is there and among yesteryear’s houses of the poor smothered rich that I can smell, as well as understand, why some people today wish to bring it all back. Of course, they wouldn’t stop with Newport but would wish it on all America–and especially for themselves.

What a life they had!–full of wasteful hours and meaningless pursuits, bought by wealth gained in the usual places like shipping, railroads, trade and the stock market where they made the rules of financial games that were all tilted in their favor. And they got to keep every penny of it.

That is, until the personal income tax came along on March 1, 1914, a date that to them would live in infamy. Till then, few things got on their nerves except the Have Nots who longed to come and stare at this insane picture. What is different from today is that there was a monopoly on such wealth whereas now people who are outside looking in, but with sucker eyes from get-rich schemes that have been a staple of TV, imagine that they are but a step away from being inhabitants of another Golden City.

Of course, Newport had rules about that, too, and one thing they didn’t like was New Money. So when someone arrived with what today would be tech-bubble dough or from a handful of Chick-Fi-Lay franchises, they would have to approach the door with hat in hand and hope to be invited to one of the many seasonal parties where, e.g., revelers dressed like characters from Mother Goose. Once in, which was almost never, the newbies prayed that one of the eligible Astor or Vanderbilt bachelors would take a shine to their daughters and at last marry them for anything but love.

My, what a life. But you had to move fast because the party season lasted only a few weeks and then everyone was up and gone, back to New York where other games were played, but always with an eye to the next summer. Why some imagine that this is a picture of heaven and not hell is grist for the Couch. But, hey, maybe that’s just me.

As said, it was all possible largely by the absence of taxes. The Republican party, and conservatism generally in the U.S., used to have a useful theoretical foundation. Before my time, I wouldn’t have been one but would have respected them. But as the world changed, thanks to wars and Rooselvelt, and the GOP and its ilk, lacking ideas, morphed into a right wing and opted for form over substance.

All that was leftover was the longing for a world without taxes: such a simple little word–one syllable in the singular, two in the plural–and perfect for minds given largely to impressions and devoid of details.

Their mantra is that we’re being taxed to death. Oh, no, we’re not. We’re taxed less than any developed, industrial society. Their answer to that is that, yeah, but those other countries don’t get what they pay for. Oh, yes, they do. The reason we don’t is because we don’t pay for it but think we should get it all on the cheap. What they’re talking about is another universe, one that won’t be found, in millions of light years, even in another galaxy,  because it doesn’t exist.

Our problem isn’t, and never was, taxes. We and our economy are ruined by interest, “fees,” and other “charges,” hence the mortgage crisis, the weight of credit card debt and Wall Street thievery: these are what nearly brought down our nation and its way of life. Yet Republicans remain on the side of that kind of wealth and its robber barons and even found apologizing to corporations like BP and defending the rich from further taxation.

Theirs is the same reaction as that of Newporters when that first income tax was one percent on minimal earnings and up to seven percent on a half million dollars and up. And, as under today’s new rules, the overwhelming number of citizens were untaxable, but the lords of dough–like the barons of Newport in days gone by–howled their defiance, but nobody felt sorry for them. It is a credit to the drum-beat of protest by congressional Republicans and of Fox News that people have come to believe that the rich are victims of a greedy government.

Their next ruse is to call reason and sanity a bad name, to wit, “socialism,” which isn’t a bad word at all but ends in “ism,” as does commun-ism. They forget that capitalism does too but, never mind, people who watch only FoX News are letting other people do their thinking for them.

Right now the quibble from wingnuts in Arizona is that immigrants are taking jobs away from us, and using our healthcare resources: lies and more lies. We know that because Missouri (my home state) just voted overwhelmingly (in a slim turnout) against the government health system, meaning that the same people, regardless of wealth or lack thereof–not to mention their color or  status–who won’t buy insurance would continue to go to hospital emergency rooms–and make everyone else would pay for it. Can you say, “socialism,” again? But unthinking people won’t think anything through.

Missouri, by the way, is now being called what Peoria, IL (“will it play in Peoria?”) and other places like Ohio and Indiana used to be, which is, a “bellweather”state. What that means is that it’s the latest to appear like a drunk on a barstool–you never know which way they’re going to fall. Please don’t call that a virtue. Or as their home boy Mark Twain said of its weather: if you don’t like it, wait a minute. Same now goes for its population. It was also a Border state in the Civil War, when families would change sympathies whilst a soldier son was away, and, on his return, plug him good for being on the wrong side.

Being against taxes is the lamest, easiest mind game in America today. We don’t need less or none of them; we need tax reform, i.e., a fair tax system, and that begins with the rich. All this will play out in time, as did the fun and games in Newport, where those grand old homes are what Jesus said of tombs–whitewashed outwardly but inwardly full of dead men’s bones, along with their ideas.

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Sep
18

The Controversy that Won’t Go Away

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Because some people don’t want it to. It’s the best wedge issue they’ve got now that Andrew Breitbart self-destructed and Sarah Palin may soon be right on his heels.

Both have been darlings of the political right wing and seen early and often on Fox News till Andy crashed and burned with his slice-and-dice video of Ms. Sherrod. Fox likes this sort of “journalism” but soon realized that his soiling of himself could soil their nest as well, so he’s no longer even mentioned, let alone begged for more video.

Now Sarah threatens to get on the List too. Fox’s Megyn Kelly was heard to ask why, oh, why are (liberals) still bringing up Sarah? Why, indeed. While Palin gets away with her maverick-y rhetoric that rouses the wingnut “base,” alas and alack, her endorsements of candidates are now all over the map, sometimes with as many losers as winners, and nettling Republicans along the way. Then she unloaded on Sen. Scott Brown, the fair-haired Boy Toy of Massachusetts: maybe she feared he could be her competish for a sexy cover of some popular mag.

So what’s left for the whiners? Glenn Beck? Naw, even Fox has long seen him as a huge problem for them, and when his space-flight is over, he’ll burn to a crisp on re-entry–and that’s no star that wary right-wingers want to hitch a wagon to.

That leaves: the “Mosque.” Well, we know it’s not about a mosque as such, but my does it breed a ton of suspicion and invective. It’s been pointed out everywhere but on Fox that when mention was first made of it many, many months ago on the Laura Ingraham show (no left-winger, she), not a hackle was raised. As Mayor Bloomberg of New York City has said repeatedly, it was only as the mid-term elections loomed that it was stirred as a wedge issue by politicians seeking votes.

As we know, people who watch Fox for their regular news won’t watch anything else. As one acquaintance told me, “I don’t want to hear the other side.” So our assumption all these years that people went to college for an education is not so, since the purpose is to learn to think critically and independently. That means that, besides being in love with celebrity, and given to immediate gratification, too many people are stupid as well. The old bromide is truer than we thought: is our biggest problem ignorance or apathy?–and the answer being–we don’t know, and we don’t care.

It’s bad enough that too many New Yorkers are now revealed as unsophisticated xenophobes, given their reaction to said center near Ground Zero. Thankfully, as their hot flashes abate, there will be fewer.

But in  Massachusetts are those who like to fan the flames. A group of students from the Wellelsley system were treated to a required social studies tour of Boston’s major mosque. While observing a prayer service several boys knelt and were seen on a parent’s camera doing so; she then gave it to a nutwing org that of course pasted it all over the internet.

This brought out all the talk-show bird-brains who forever are seeking a conspiracy, and a school rep had to apologize. Fine. But critics insisted the kids were “forced” to kneel. Not so. What we have to be careful of in these times is any confusion between church-state separation–something right-wingers want to dismantle, except when that principle suits their purposes.

Said students, and many classes before them in Wellesley (and elsewhere) go also to churches and synagogues. Is it hard to imagine that some, whether Catholic or not, e.g., may kneel as a sign of respect–as many non-Catholics do when visiting a cathedral on their own? Interestingly, the biggest supporters of the schools’ tour program are the parents–exclusive of course of the one who taped the kneelers and sent the footage to anti-Muslim jerkos.

A rabbi put a funny face on all this when he said he routinely makes an announcement for benefit of the back rows of the synagogue, where younger Jews and their visiting friends are seated, to turn off cell-phones and avoid talking during service. Now he wonders if he has to add that he better not catch them praying!.

While conservative George F. Will says the “mosque” controversy will dissipate by November, other prefer that it fester, at least until voters mayhap send Democrats scurrying into post-election retirement.

Like Fox News, they wonder about the “financing” of the Manhattan center. This kind of snooping was tried before, under Nixon, regarding publication of the Pentagon Papers, and became a lesson in how such a slippery slope of government intrusion sends shudders through countless innocent contributors.

They also plead the silly argument: why not put the proposed center three or four or five blocks away from Ground Zero? Gosh, we’ve cared so much about the Twin Tower tract that we’ve done nothing with it for nearly ten years. Now we suddenly care even about all the surrounding real estate. New Yorkers interviewed had different and heated ideas about distance for the center, so imagine if an alternative location were chosen, the Four-Blockers would be at odds with the Three-Blockers, and Five-Blockers would be at the throats of the Fours. And of course people who want it on the dark side of the moon would hate all the foregoing. What a country.

Americans like to wonder why world peace is so unattainable. Well, this is why. We’re as much at fault as anyone. Like everyone else, we love to fight and all we need is an excuse to do so.

Just ask the right wing–and critics of kids attending Boston’s mosque.

Categorized in Politics and Social Issues
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Sep
09

Mosque-ing the Truth

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Anything Obama says or does will be criticized by the radical right, who are masquerading as “conservatives,” though not worthy of the name.

It warmed my heart to see him give voice to religious freedom in regard to the mosque center–and he did not “back off” or “qualify” that stance the following day. Whoever can analyze sentences (damn few in this day and age) knows he did not, at the time, question the “wisdom” of its location.

The big stink is that the location of the Muslim center is “insensitive” and “inappropriate.” Oh, poor babies. After all these years, we still don’t know what to do with the place where the Twin Towers stood. Lower Manhattan is just the battleground where we intend to fight with Muslims.

I think of when George Foreman wore himself out while Ali let the ropes cushion the blows. As Foreman ran out of gas, Ali pushed him back and said, “Is that it, George? Is that all you’ve got?” When the best we can say is that a new building near Ground Zero is insensitive and inappropriate, we don’t have much to raise hell about. After it’s built, and it should be, it won’t be long before we realize that God didn’t die and everything’s okay.

There have been presidents who took stands without their eyes on opinion polls. FDR was the quintessential leader, publicly admitting that his detractors hated him–and that he welcomed it. Reagan was another: comfortable in his own skin, he felt that if people didn’t like what he was doing, then elect someone else next time. He showed this too many times to mention here, but his great gaffe at going to Bitburg where Nazi SS were interred, was one such case, but in time everyone got over it.

His successor, Bush the Elder, raised poll-watching to the level of an art, as if public opinion came down from Mt. Sinai. As a result, his brief tenure resembled a balloon losing air at a rapid rate and ending up anywhere.

Bill Clinton didn’t mind bringing Dems back to the center, which they needed to be, took the flak and enjoyed the best eight presidential years in memory. Bush the Younger was beguiled by Dick Cheney and together they weathered all criticism whilst starting two wars and divesting our national coffers of the vast reserves left by Clinton.

I admire Obama’s speaking up on behalf of reason and the Constitution while the rest of the country has gone loony and will sell our Bill of Rights for a mess of pottage. That’s okay, Barack. Let the wingnuts choke on their “chicken” bones: they’re never going to like you anyway.

It bothers me not a whit that the polls show most of the populace opposes the mosque center near ground zero. A lot of people still think the earth is flat and that Obama is a Muslim from Kenya, too. The Twin Towers were built only four blocks from an older existing mosque and nobody thought a thing about it.  In a few years, kids will read about this flap in history books and wonder what the hell is was all about–unless they have to read books from those boneheads in Texas who are busy slicing and dicing history to suit their narrow, jingoistic views. I wonder how many people will own up to their kids and grandkids that they opposed building the center.

Obama’s presidency reminds me a lot of Lincoln’s. Talk about a guy who got no love from the people. The country was already divided before his election, then came war and nothing went right. Abe was lampooned in the press for his appearance, and dubbed an ape, a gorilla, an orangutan, a baboon.

They said he couldn’t win the war. The general who should have been the Union hero, McClellan, wouldn’t fight so Abe turned to Grant, who would, but by that time precious time was lost. Each day brought news of another Union ass-kicking by Confederate forces. The press meantime lampooned Lincoln’s appearance as that of an ape, a gorille, an orangutan or baboon. Anything familiar here?

Of course, Southerners were not alone in considering him a traitor for sticking up for the “n—– slaves” and suspected him of having similar lineage. It was all a fine kettle of fish till the tide began to turn, but not till Vicksburg and Gettysburg, deep into his tenure.

But then of course he was shot and the nation realized how much they had loved him and that it was his opposition who were cowards and traitors. Keep in mind, too, that Booth’s act was one of terrorism.

This is what troubles me about the stockpiling of guns after the election of Obama. The rhetoric is that they feared he would outlaw them, but if he did, would they not be holding worthless firearms, sort of like Confederate money? What then: would they want to shoot somebody? And, if so, who? Guess.

I knew many people who thought they hated JFK, but when he died they realized their politics had got in their way and blinded them to the level of hate that began to swarm around him long before. I saw them weeping at public memorials for him, and all knew the time for cut-throat politics was over and that healing had to begin–a lesson since forgotten.

I don’t hazard a guess of what can or will happen in the current climate, but these may be as bad or worse than the times of Lincoln and Kennedy. There are people dedicated to bringing down the Obama presidency regardless of his being right or wrong on anything, and they’re raising their hate to the boiling point.

The present flap shows how others are mosqueing–er, masking the truth.

It’s a terrible time to be president. Even Jesus Christ couldn’t pass that test. Look what happened to him.

Categorized in Guns Control, Politics, Race in America, Religion and Social Issues
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Aug
03

Being Careful What They Wish For

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Help me to see what’s smart about this: faced with extreme challenges, avoid pulling together, just get rid of all leaders and take a chance on any worm-in-the-apple that runs for office.

Gosh, why didn’t we think of that before? Well, because it’s stupid, for one thing, a page from the old “throw-everything-up-in-the-air-and-let-God- sort-it-out” school of political theory. It’s also  why we all have to grow old and die, and let better heads prevail.

But there are certain people who think this is all a Party, and that there are no consequences for lame-brained thinking.

The “party” in mind is that leaderless bunch of knuckleheads who crawled out of the political backwater and decided what we all needed was their collective insanity. Yeah, that’ll steady the ship of state, alrighty. If they get their way, we’ll be in a pretty fix after election night in November.

Given that stopping to think is not in their bag of tricks, Tea Partiers have wet dreams of bringing about the unthinkable: in California, their idea of avoiding “politics as usual” was to nominate two corporate people, one–Carly Fiorina–who was fired from Hewlett Packard for sending too many jobs overseas, and the other that rich-as-Midas former eBay exec, Meg Whitman, who just spent nearly $80 mil of her own dough on her primary race. So Meg Whitman joins the crowd that likes to buy political offices with their own money. And, gosh, we thought Michael Huffington was bonkers for spending only a third of that trying to win there–and the choice of Whitman is supposed to represent “change”?

In South Carolina, what comedian Bill Maher calls the “Sexy State,” Nikki Haley’s primary proves that right wingers think sexual indiscretions are okay as long as the offender is conservative. But we already knew that from all their Republican pols who’ve gotten a pass after dipping their wicks in places other than home. Haley’s sack-time is deemed by her voters to be merely rumor, but what have the two-guys-and-counting have to gain by lying?

Nevada is the best example of Tea Party folly: to get rid of Harry Reid they went all-out for Sharron Angle, who thinks her state needs more nuclear waste and no EPA or Energy and Education departments as watchdogs. That would mean a more dangerous environment complete with lack of oversight, and citizens sitting in the dark, literally and mentally. Oh, my bad: I forgot she’d also abolish the UN and the IRS–the eternal targets of simpletons–and has evil thoughts about Social Security, Medicare and jobless insurance. This is Tea Party Nation at its hole-in-the-head worst.

If it’s their wish to transform the GOP to their likeness, maybe they’ll call themselves the Greatly Odd Party. No wonder they’ve lost friends by double digits from only two months ago, with half the country now dis-enamored of them, up from 39%. Even Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips is greatly exercised over their lack of political sophistication and for bringing more (gasp!) “politics as usual” and “looking out for themselves instead of the country”!

This is what happens when one’s news sources are Glenn Beck (the king of revisionist history); Sarah Palin, whose endorsement of an Iowa candidate shrank his double-digit lead to victory by a whisker; and Rush Limbaugh who, just married for the fourth time, had the nerve to lambaste Al and Tipper Gore for parting after forty years. Of course, when Rush speaks, we don’t know if its him or his OxyContin talking.

And let us not forget Anne Coulter, the stick-figure who thinks she’s a total babe in her mini-skirts, low necklines, heavy eyeliner and long, fake eyelashes, incessantly flipping back her long straight hair while gabbing about liberals as if she were a schoolgirl  dishing on classmates she doesn’t like. Oh, yes, and her bare arms: remember when the wing-nuts went after Michelle Obama for going sleeveless? But, hey, “fair and balanced” has never been their forte.

When such persons are your political mentors, you can only sink to new lows. And heaven forfend that such voters prevail in any election. We’d be the Planet of the Apes all over again, but this time halfway up, not halfway down, the tree.

Let Tea Partiers be very careful what they wish for. As Oscar Wilde noted, all such saviors have their disciples, but it’s always Judas who writes their biographies.

Categorized in Politics
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