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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