Episode 66: Hope & The Hooverites

And on your left, ladies and gentlemen, another aspect of the Miracle on the Hudson, just in case you thought we had achieved a classless society.


Do the dwindling number of conservative Republicans in Congress really, truly, believe the convictions they trumpet without end or variation? We are in this heart-wrenching mess due exclusively to the failed policies and actions/inactions of the administration in power over the last eight years. Yet these yahoos still insist that lower taxes for the rich and the initiation of preemptive endless war worked, not to mention that the exploding national debt and out-of -whack budgets are okay (except when they occur under Democrats).

They ignore the fact that this current disaster was visited upon us by them and instead nitpick our new president's stimulus plan. They brush aside the reality that the last time the unemployment figures were this bad was in 1992, during the failed administration of the first Bush. They wave away the truth that the last time our economy was in worse shape than today was in 1974, during the Nixon-Ford years in office.

They demean the efforts of Jimmy Carter, the most genuinely humanitarian of any president in memory, to overcome the miserable conditions left to him by his Republican predecessors. They venerate the simpleton Reagan, whose three-note policies of lower taxes, less government, and opposition to the "evil empire" only succeeded in making his friends richer. (Contrary to what his acolytes routinely declare, government expanded under the actor-prez and the Soviet Union died of its own dead weight, as it would have done even if this here Geezer had been in charge.)

Did I mention who was at the helm during the onset of the Great Depression? For those of you who weren't around before the moon landing, it was Herbert Hoover. Republican.

Fair & Balanced
Fox News assembled the following panel of right-thinkers to analyze the Inauguration: Steve Forbes, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Reagan economic advisor Art Laffler, and Ron Paul. In that crowd, Paul must have been the token Liberal.


Geezer hasn't hidden the fact of his devout atheism.
It was gratifying, then, to hear the newly-minted President add "nonbelievers" to his roster of patriotic Americans in the obligatory incantations of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim citizens. We people of no religious faith comprise an estimated 16% of the U.S. population.
Why then can we not be accorded the same political and societal deference of gays (2.9%), African-Americans (12.3%), Hispanics 12.5%, Jews (2.2%), and Asians (3.6%)?

Why do ELEVEN states forbid, directly or by clear implication, nonbelievers to hold political office?

No Comment
* The critical ingredients for most antibiotics are now made almost exclusively in China and India, according to the New York Times. Further, of 1,154 pharmaceutical plants in generic drug applications to the F.D.A. in 2007, only 13% were in the U.S. The rest were in China or India.
* A study by Brookhaven National Laboratory found that women were less able to suppress their hunger when faced with their favorite foods, suggesting a reason for the higher obesity rate among females.
* The Czech government had to apologize for commissioning an art installation that depicted Bulgaria as a series of hole-in-the-floor toilets, Romania as a Dracula-themed amusement park, Sweden as a giant Ikea box, and Germany as a maze of highways that resemble a swastika.


Geezer Reflects
There was a time when an "afternoon delight" meant something other than a really good nap.

Things Aren't Bad Enough?
Gary sends along news from the Great White North that help is on the way from someone "Dedicated to building America's future, supporting fresh ideas and candidates who share our vision for reform and innovation...to confront the challenges of the 21st Century with integrity, innovation, and determination."


Who might this shining knight be? Why, yes! It's the Guv Lady and her new SarahPAC! We're saved!

Annoyance In A Minor Key
There are people who are merit attention for their cataclysmic ineptitude or overweening arrogance or unwarranted self-regard. Dubya, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, John Boehner, Darth Cheney, Sean Hannity, and vast numbers of CEOs come immediately to mind.

Then there are those whose actions and attitudes simply send prickles of irritation through those more thoughtful people with whom they come in contact: Drivers who thumb their directional signals only after they begin turning. Moviegoers who behave as if sitting on their couches at home. Cellphone users who punch the walkie-talkie buttons on their devices so we not only hear their high-volume prattle but the responses from the callees.

Add your own. I will. For one, there is the guy who makes a fetish of announcing that he doesn't own a TV. Too busy curled in front of the fire with his golden retriever and the two Arthurs, Rimbaud and Schopenhauer. Or his variant, the man who only has a TV - the little black-and-white one in the kitchen - to watch PBS documentaries and the occasional curling tournament.


Then there is the woman who enrolls herself in an expensive gastronomical tour and announces - with frequently expressed regret for the circumstances of sentient beings - that she is a vegan. This requires her hosts, chefs, and fellow travelers to frantically seek substitutes for the foie gras and lamb shanks that were intended on the daily menus, all while she crinkles up her face at the very thought of hamburgers.

An Announcement
Readers may have noticed with pedagogical horror that Geezer split an infinitive in the above paragraph. Be aware that the chairman of the usage panel of The American Heritage Dictionary has recently freed us from the split-verb myth. We can now aspire to boldly go to far galaxies.

Budget Tip: At a restaurant on a recent trip into the city, I happened to mention it was my birthday. The waitress congratulated me and removed the price of my martini from the bill ($12). That was good, so I mentioned the birthday when we signed up for a tour of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. They waved the admission fee ($13). Afterwards, the bartender at Little Giant bistro down the street, advised of my deeper move into my eighth decade, poured me a free wine refill ($11). Total saving: $36 (not counting the larger tips I felt compelled to leave).

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Episode 65: At Last

He's there, working, doing what he said he'd do: Closing Gitmo. Banning torture. Moving to end a war. Reversing Bush policies on abortion, energy, conservation, and the environment.

Before getting too far along, though, could we please get behind Senator Bill Nelson, who has once again called for a constitutional amendment eliminating the Electoral College and allowing for the election of the president by popular vote alone?

When the Constitution was approved after the Revolutionary War, the great majority of American voters were illiterate. It was felt, not without cause for the time, that a panel of educated, informed citizens should be installed (Article II, Section 1) as a buffer between the Executive Branch and the electorate. That was the reason for the creation of Electoral College. In addition, Senators were elected not by direct vote, but by their respective state legislatures. It wasn't until 1913 and the 17th Amendment that the direct vote for the Senate was approved.

That was almost a century ago. It doesn't happen often, but the Electoral College has overruled the popular vote on occasion. Just consider what might have happened in 2000 if the direct vote had prevailed. Gore. Instead of Bush.

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Darth II?

Now that Dick Cheney is finally dispatched to whatever Hell he so richly deserves for his reign of terror, what fresh reactionary thug is going to step up? I nominate House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner. He's been nasty and vindictive and mean-spirited every since his first election from Ohio, but with Dick and George and Karl clogging the media for eight years, he's been flying under the radar.

Now he's loose, and Obama's proposed $800 billion stimulus bill is only one of his targets. The plan is intended to repair infrastructure, create jobs, stimulate energy innovation, and enhance existing essential services. Where did Representative Bonehead decide to train his laser-like focus? On a minor component intended to expand the availability of family-planning services to Medicaid recipients. Boner called the proposal simply a way to "spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives."

Distortion of the intentions of others is an abiding conservative technique, ignoring reality. In this case, Boner has derided the President's desire to help poor people avoid unwanted pregnancies, HIV/Aids, and STDs. His alternative suggestion? Lower taxes - once again - on rich people.

On an earlier occasion, just a day after the inauguration, Boner said of Obama, "At some point he's going to have to tell people what he's for, and then we'll see whether he really wants to govern from the middle or cave in to the liberals in his party." Not for Bonehead the reflection that he didn't mind one bit when Dubya caved to the far right in his party for eight full years.

Evil gnome Rove is still around, of course, stirring newts and spiders in his pot of bubbling bile. In the Wall Street Journal, he wrote that after Bush departed for Texas, "in a last angry frenzy, his critics again distorted his record, maligned his character, and repeated untruths about his years in the Oval Office." His leader, Rove continued, cut taxes (for rich people), expanded Medicare (to benefit insurance companies), liberated (pre-emptively attacked) Iraq, and protected the country (except for that one time of which he had prior knowledge).

Such is life in the Republican parallel universe. And thus do the Republicans continue their evolution into an ever-shrinking regional party doomed to start feeding on itself.

We Won. Deal With It.

Our next-door neighbor, a staunch Republican, sent me a story. It alleges that a seven-year-old boy in Syracuse, NY challenged a court ruling over his custody. Since he had a history of being beaten by his parents, the judge awarded him to his aunt. The boy said she beat him worse than his parents. When the judge suggested that he live with his grandparents, he cried and said they also beat him.

Since domestic violence seemed to be a family pattern, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him. The boy had a ready idea, and after consultation with legal and welfare authorities, the judge granted temporary custody to the Republican Party, whom the boy firmly believed is not capable of beating anyone.

One of our favorite correspondents, Kelly K., worked at every opportunity in Obama's campaign. She couldn't miss the inauguration, which she attended with her honey, a soldier who returned from Iraq only a few months ago. She took pictures:

Faith On Parade

Every day, in every way, we earn of still more ways religionists poison our interactions with the other people with whom we share the planet. Observe:

* Pope Benedict XVI has lifted the excommunications of four ultra-traditional bishops who formed the breakaway Lefebvre's Society of St. Pius X twenty years ago. This was a few days after one of the bishops said on Swedish television that the historical evidence "is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed." This is the same ecclesiastical pinhead who has publicly stated his conviction that the U.S. staged the attacks of 9/11 as a pretext to invade Afganistan. Welcome back into the fold, Bishop Williamson. You'll have company.

* The Taliban has assumed virtually complete control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, and the government appears unable to counter it. Taliban leaders issue their pronouncements every night by radio, explaining what constitutes un-Islamic behavior. Among the strictures, ever-changing and multiplying, are watching television. Selling DVDs. Singing. Dancing. Shaving beards. Allowing girls to attend school. They enforce these dictates with public floggings, beheadings, murders of dozens of police and local officeholders, and relentless persecution of women - this in what used to be moderately secular region of Islamic Pakistan.

A Justification For Chocolate

"Stressed" spelled backwards is "Desserts". Break out the Godiva and molten cakes.

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Episode 64: Delusions R Us

Monument to a Super-Duper Ego
Roland Burris, the likely senatorial designate from Illinois, is a pip. He built this mausoleum to himself and had carved upon it the words "Trail Blazer," followed by a chiseled resume of his achievements and additional space below to enter any future feats. Among the personal milestones therein enumerated are the facts that he was the first African-American in Illinois to become the state Attorney General and the first black Southern Illinois University exchange student to the University of Hamburg. There is an adjoining stone structure intended for "Other Major Accomplishments". Burris (71) is said to frequently refer to himself in the third person. His children are named Ronald and Ronalda.

But as we know, a towering ego is hardly an obstacle along a political career path.
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Independent of What, Exactly
In politics, smugness isn't confined to Senators or Congresspeople running for election in safe districts (A liberal Democratic candidate in Mississippi? Snicker). Far greater in number are those citizens who identify themselves as "Independents". They puff that they "reject partisanship" and "make their choices outside ideology," ignoring the fact that politics is by definition partisan and ideological.

Worst of all is the knee-jerk assertion of declared Independents that they "vote for the person, not the party." This is a assertion that denies reason. If you vote for a conservative Republican, you must accept that he or she almost certainly stands with anti-abortionists and gun fanatics, against single-user medical care for all citizens, and supports notions of limited government, a strong military, strict immigration control, and lower taxes for businesses and the wealthy. Vote for a liberal Democrat, and he or she will surely be aligned with pro-choice and gun-control activists, and those who believe that government spending can solve social and economic problems, including healthcare for all and programs intended to relieve poverty.

Of course, few politicians adhere exclusively to positions held by the right or left, but an independent who votes for a George Bush or a Bill Clinton must know what kinds of people either candidate is likely to appoint to key positions. Vote for a man or woman because he or she speaks well or looks good or likes dogs or would be "fun to have a beer with" and you can easily be in for four or eight years of initiatives and steamrolling policies you despise.

There is nothing noble or virtuous about being a non-aligned voter. Parties and their platforms matter. Convictions are important.
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Video Alert
Apparently this link didn't work in an earlier blog. It's worth another try - it's Robin Williams, after all. (About ten minutes long.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puMz1Q3E000
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Military Efficiency
The Army admitted this week that it had mistakenly sent "Dear John Doe" letters to family members who have died in Iraq and Afganistan.
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And You Were Thinking What, Mr. Jarrar?
In August 2006, Raed Jarrar, an Iraqui-born legal resident of the United States, had a ticket on JetBlue flight from JFK Airport. He was stopped at a checkpoint because a legend on his T-shirt, in both Arabic and English, read "We will not be silent."
He was given another T-shirt to cover the first one, which the security officer thought was inflammatory. Jarrar was incensed. He sued. Got a $240,00 settlement. OK, the security officer may have overreacted, and there is that First Amendment thing.

But in such times as these, how on earth did Jarrar imagine his declaration might be received?
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Oh, For a Memory Like That
Governor David Paterson gave his first State of the State address this week. It was over an hour long and included family names and ages of children he cited as exemplars of the spirit of New Yorkers. Paterson is legally blind and cannot read Braille.
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P.S. Your Cat Is Dead
George and Laura had a black American shorthair cat called India. It expired last week. So it goes as life and time dribble away.
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A Product Whose Time Hasn't Come (At Least Not For the Target Group):
Cialis for daily use.
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It Isn't Easy Being a Democratically Elected Dictator
* With a cholera epidemic, total economic collapse, rampant hunger among the citizenry, and the utter breakdown of every imaginable public service, President Robert Mugable of Zimbabwe is just plain exhausted. Really. So he has left his country for a month-long vacation.

* Venezuela's oil weapon has lost its punch, with a two-thirds dump in price-per-barrel since last July. This takes all the fun out of poking the gringos with a stick, one of President Hugo Chavez's favorite pastimes. He's had to suspend the much-publicized program providing discounted heating oil to about 200,000 households in poor communities in 23 states. Under Chavez, oil has accounted for 93 percent of the country's export revenue, up from 69 percent when he was elected president a decade ago. He is delaying devaluation of the national currency until after a referendum soon to be held that would allow him to seek re-election forever.

*Vladimir Putin is in a similar twist. With oil revenues way down and his great popularity at home starting to slip, the surly little ex-KGB agent picks fights with the West to distract Russians from the slumping economy. This week, it was Ukraine and, by extension, much of Europe, when he shut the tap of natural gas sent through the former Soviet republic to France, Germany, Italy, and several other countries.
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