Shouts from the Balcony

Berries, Bombs and Billions

2009-11-12T19:25:00.000-08:00

Per capita annual income in Uruguay is $12,400.

Per capita annual income in Afghanistan is $700.

Uruguay is 6,212 miles from California by air.

Afghanistan is 7,647 miles from California by air.

Trader Joe’s imports blueberries grown in Uruguay.

According to the CIA’s World Factbook, “Uruguay’s economy is characterized by an export-oriented agricultural sector.”

According to the same CIA Factbook, major challenges facing Afghanistan include: “Budget sustainability, job creation, corruption, government capacity, and re-building war torn infrastructure.”

In 2006 a UK-based organization called Sustain issued a report that said: “Fruits and vegetables are the largest of all airfreighted commodities.” The report went on to note that airfreight is a heavy contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

The Congressional Research Service reports that our government budgeted $227 billion for the war in Afghanistan in fiscal year 2009. Contracts and payroll alone amounted to $3.6 billion per month.

What do all these facts mean? Primarily it means that when I see blueberries in Trader Joe’s -- on sale, $3.99 for 4.4 ounces – the first thing I do is read the label to see where the berries were grown, and if the label says Mexico, Argentina or Uruguay, the berries stay on the shelf.

Call me a grump, a curmudgeon, a crank. Guilty as charged, but I can’t justify the carbon emission required to bring blueberries to California from Uruguay. Yes, some farmer in Uruguay is delighted to have a worldwide market for his blueberries, and people need jobs, but the total cost to our besieged planet is simply too great.

The other facts put me in a profoundly pessimistic mood, a pervasive sense that the world is descending a long slope, down, down, down into the fiery pit of Hell. Bankers, financiers and lobbyists have an iron grip on my country’s politics; serious action on climate change isn’t going to happen any time soon; and President Obama is almost certain to defy logic and defecate on common sense and commit more American troops to the lost cause that is Afghanistan. (Here’s a suggestion: if Al-Qaeda terrorists want Afghanistan so bad, maybe we should let them have it.)

If they give any thought to the mess in Afghanistan, I’d wager that most Americans probably think Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are one and the same (they’re not, folks). We’d gain more security if we let Al-Qaeda run loose in the wastes of Afghanistan and butt heads with the Taliban when their interests diverge, which they will.

While the real economy at home stumbles, shakes and shivers, our government is dead set on “nation-building” in a ruined, ethnically divided country where hope is as scarce as official corruption is plentiful. Let’s face it – most, if not every damn one, of the justifications for continuing the war in Afghanistan are bogus, particularly this dinger: either we fight Al-Qaeda over there or we fight them in Los Angeles, New York City and Pittsburgh, PA. Think logically: if you wanted to wage global jihad, would you choose a shithole like Afghanistan as your base of operations?

A hard truth: few imperial powers willingly walk away from a conquest. To admit to the world that victory isn’t at hand and never will be, requires uncommon statesmanship coupled with uncommon wisdom, both of which are in short supply in our political leaders, including President Obama. When TV pundits, talk-radio yakkers and Members of Congress compare health insurance reform to Nazi concentration camps – and are allowed to continue uttering such absurd fabrications without a bitch slap from their media colleagues or their political brethren -- it’s a telltale sign that the nation is in the throes of a staggering political paralysis. Next to nothing can be expected from politicians of either party -- particularly when it comes to questions of war.

Before the political class, the hawks, the generals and the defense contractors sour on war, the casualties have to stack up and the coffin supply must run low; the wounded, crippled and maimed must become very visible in our cities and towns and hamlets, and the folks here at home must feel the searing pain and sacrifice of war like we did during the Vietnam. Until that happens don’t expect Americans to lift a finger to protest the waste, futility and lost opportunities that Iraq and Afghanistan represent.

Blood and blueberries. Imperial wars and global trade. Failed politics, ruined lives. A farmer in Uruguay just wants to earn his living and feed his family, and an American soldier on patrol in Afghanistan only wants to survive intact and return home to the normal life he or she left behind.

Unarmed, Unheard and Unrepresented

2009-11-05T20:03:00.000-08:00

Sitting in sunny Santa Barbara feeling surly and mean. Thinking, what’s an average, law-abiding American citizen to do? Three thousand miles from here, give or take a few hundred miles, in the capitol city of this so-called democracy, lucrative deals are made in large, high-ceilinged rooms by people who are supposed to represent the interests of residents back in their home districts.

That’s the generally accepted idea of representative democracy, but in reality our elected representatives, more often than not, pimp for the narrowly focused interests of industry (pick one—defense, finance and insurance, real estate) groups. Money rules the day. Money talks. Money dictates.

In our name but frequently without our consent, political rulers write laws that benefit their benefactors. Remember the bailout? Trillions of dollars handed over to banks and investment houses, the insurance giant AIG, with virtually no strings, oversight or accountability attached. In itself that was corrosive enough, but as we purport to be a representative democracy, where was the public debate, the open hearings? Talk about a sweetheart deal: Here, boys, take this huge pile of dough and do with it whatever tickles your fancy. Buy other banks, take illogical and insane risks, award huge bonuses to your executives.

The bankers laughed then, laugh raucously now. A sucker is born every minute. Isn’t American-style capitalism great? We get to keep the lion’s share of our profits and lay our gambling debts on the taxpayers. Perfect, no lose system, a veritable money machine. The Mafia never had it this good. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and he lives in a penthouse apartment on Wall Street.

The political class along with their media and corporate enablers don’t fear the masses because they know how easily we are diverted, distracted and divided. Think on it for a second. If you can persuade a Medicare recipient to stand up at a public meeting and denounce “socialized medicine,” you’re not merely good, you’re a grand wizard, like Albus Dumbledore from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. Some overweight redneck, utterly dependent on Medicare for the pills he needs to control his Type-II diabetes, wearing a ratty t-shirt with “DON’T TREAD ON ME” emblazoned across his chest, thinks it’s patriotic to fulminate about the heavy, intrusive hand of the Government. Glenn Beck said so.

There is dumb, and there is Dumb.

The sun shines here on the California coast. A turkey vulture circles high overhead, scouting for his lunch. The clock moves slowly around the dial. Birds chirp, twitter and shriek. A truck backfires, a siren wails. The Food Bank runs low of provisions for the poor, and the homeless shelter down by the beach is short of beds; real people, real pain, flesh and blood, soul and spirit, dreams and demons. Bad luck, bad genes, bad karma.

The down and out harbor no hope for a taxpayer bailout or a bank loan at favorable interest rates. In America, that sort of largesse is reserved for those that need it least.

World Series

2009-11-01T17:04:00.000-08:00

Gawd, I hate Fox Sports almost as much as I despise Bill O'Reilly and that nitwit Glenn Beck. Fox Sports is jingoistic, never fails to hype the American military and our "brave men and women" in uniform, sent to fight and die in pointless wars in faraway lands. Of course they never say that on Fox -- it's just the flag and the National Anthem and God Bless America (usually sung by a military man or woman) and some palaver about prayers from a grateful nation.

Sure, and horse shit smells like roses.

The other thing Fox Sports does that makes my blood boil is wring every drop of advertising blood that can be wrung from a sports telecast. "This half-inning brought to you by Chevrolet. This pitch brought to you by the good folks at Budweiser. This thirty-second segment of the Chevrolet pre-game show is brought to you by Taco Bell. Try our new Black Jack Taco! while driving the new and improved Chevrolet Malibu."

It's an orgy of advertising words and images and slogans. Mastercard and Windows 7 and Nikon. All this from the country that shipped its manufacturing base to China and will be in debt for generations to come, the country that cannot figure out an equitable way to provide health care for its citizens, a country that invades and occupies other sovereign countries based on lies and pretext, and a country that is poisoning the environment, like a beagle that defecates in its own bed.

Fox Sports and Major League Baseball conspired to tweak the game schedule of these playoffs in order to reap maximize advertising revenue. This explains why we are playing Game 4 of the World Series on November 1st, in wet, 50 degree weather in Philadelphia. This accounts for the odd intermissions between the games and the series, numerous days off for athletes accustomed to suiting up and playing every day.

Money again -- the American God -- a deity that can be bought, sold, traded, shorted, hedged, insured and transformed into a derivative whose ultimate value nobody can explain.

Anyway, this Game 4 has all the earmarks of a wild affair, probably high scoring, even with C.C. Sabathia on the mound for New York. The Phillies are a good, gritty club and they won't quit.

But hell, who cares about the game. It's the commercials we really care about!

Pissed On, Pissed Off

2009-10-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

I feel like I’m pissing into a cold headwind, and I wonder if you feel the same. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs each raked in more than $3 billion in profits in the third quarter. Stop a moment and take that in. $3 billion each. In the fallout from the financial crisis last year, some firms, like Goldman and Morgan, actually got bigger -- and with transfusions of no-strings-attached taxpayer money -- stronger, while others emerged weaker, less able to compete. Incredibly, financial power in this country is now consolidated into even fewer hands, making firms like Goldman and Morgan “too big to fail, ever,” which is almost the same thing as a license to print money. These firms now have nearly unlimited latitude to take enormous risks because they know that Washington politicians will always intervene to save their bacon.

A year after the global financial system nearly plunged over the cliff, the boom is on for politically connected firms whose alumni prowl the corridors of Congress or hold influential positions in the Obama Administration. Of course, bust is the flip side of boom and for millions of Americans the bust shows no sign of abating. Obama’s stimulus package did little for working Americans once Congress was done gutting it and re-arranging its priorities to placate nay-saying Republicans. Unemployment remains stuck in the double-digits, state governments struggle to provide services to a growing population of needy human beings, and small businesses scrimp to make ends meet. Wall Street may be celebrating its recovery with champagne brunches and gargantuan bonuses, but Main Street is still eating Spam and waiting for the kind of assistance that was lavished on the financial industry.

Don’t hold your breath. The real deal is jobs and wages, putting people to work, but don’t expect to hear much about either on ABC, NBC or Fox – or from the Obama Administration for that matter. All mainstream media outlets care about is Wall Street and runaway balloons.

The joke is on you and me, on every taxpayer, and every person who still believes the American Dream is attainable.

What’s the average wage slave to do? The political system is indifferent to our needs and desires, unaccountable even as we foot the bill, and the financial system is rigged against us. As the poet Allen Ginsberg is reported to have said, “You can’t win, can’t break even, and can’t even quit the game.”

But I can sure feel the spray in my face.

The Winds of No Change

2009-10-11T07:15:00.000-07:00

The winds are blowing but these winds maintain the status quo rather than change it.

Most Republicans wring their hands and wail about the cost of entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, budget deficits, and the burden of high taxes. If you want to see grown men and women frothing at the mouth, get the Republicans (and some Democrats, to be frank) started on the potential costs of “socialized” medicine.

These same Republicans, on the other hand, have no problem at all with corporate socialism, bloated defense budgets or open-ended military campaigns in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. The Republicans believe, I guess, that spending money on corporate bailouts and wars of choice enhance freedom, while social spending on Medicare or unemployment insurance or regulation enhances the role of the government at the expense of freedom.

The winds blow, but not much changes. President Obama talks a great game, an inspiring game, but appears to lack the staying power to see anything through, not to mention that he has surrounded himself with a posse of recycled champions of the established order.

Lost in the noise of talk radio hyperbole is the need to strike an appropriate balance of power between the government and business, between Capital and Labor, and between the wealthy and the poor. Excessive government interference is no better than excessive corporate socialism. Government can become too large, bloated and stifling, just as unchecked corporate power can, and usually does, lead to the reckless behavior that brought the global financial system to the brink of disaster and made life so difficult and uncertain for so many.

Republicans are suspicious of enlarging the role and power of government while Democrats, generally speaking, view government as a leveling force. But both parties are beholden to moneyed elites and when push comes to shove, big campaign contributors win, average citizens lose.

According to a recent column by Frank Rich in the New York Times, job seekers outnumber openings by a tidy 6-1 margin. The stock market shows signs of bounce – prompting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to declare that the “recession” is over. Sure, maybe on Bernanke’s street. In the real America, where people work for wages, struggle to make the mortgage and decipher the one-sided terms of their credit card accounts, afford college tuition, health insurance, gasoline, heating oil, food, electricity and transportation, the night is still dark, foreboding and full of peril.

Working Americans should be mad as hell and dead set on kicking the shit out of the first fat cat they run across. But try to disrupt the status quo and stand prepared to be attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets, as protestors at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh were recently. Americans have the Constitutional right to assemble for the purpose of airing our grievances with the powers that be, but permits are hard to come by in some cities and the authorities prefer to disperse first and answer questions from the ACLU later.

The winds blow, but nothing changes.

Our Collective Insanity

2009-09-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

Endless undeclared wars. Unchecked corporate power. A demagogue like Glenn Beck on the cover of Time. Unemployment high. Real health insurance reform held hostage by the status quo. Misguided “revolutionaries” marching on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Has everyone gone insane? Are we experiencing a collective mental meltdown?

Nowhere is the madness more pronounced than in our determination to remain in Afghanistan.

We can deploy as many troops and private contractors as we want in Afghanistan and still “lose” the war because winning is an impossibility. Echoing his predecessor, President Obama claims that winning in Afghanistan is vital to our security. OK, Mr. President, prove it. Prove that after eight years more American casualties are worth it. Prove that more civilian deaths are justified. Prove that Afghanistan won’t descend into chaos no matter what we do or how long we remain. Prove that for every “terrorist” we kill another doesn’t take his place.

Except for those who have served there, and their families and friends, the American public could care less about Afghanistan -- a far away country with a foreign history and culture. No, Afghanistan is out of sight and out of mind, as invisible and inscrutable as the enemy we seek to destroy. The costs of the war are also out of sight and mind -- charged to our national credit card, hidden in massive budget documents with accounting sleight of hand. Institute a draft and start sending well-to-do kids to die in the Korengal Valley and maybe the public mood changes.

Like all imperial powers throughout history, the United States has discovered that invading another country is a relatively easy affair; leaving is the tough trick. The initial surge of overwhelming military might produces a short-lived euphoria. The real war begins when the dust settles. The cakewalk becomes a quagmire. False honor trumps reality every time. The imperial power can’t admit it blundered without appearing weak or lacking in “resolve,” so instead of cutting its losses it digs in, more determined than ever to “win” what can’t be won. Justifications for staying are created, re-created and recycled; bold new “strategies” for securing peace and stability are unveiled.

Meanwhile, domestic problems mount. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, claims that the recession is over or nearly over, but Bernanke and his ilk live in bubbles protected from the hardships faced by ordinary Americans. How can the recession be anywhere near over when the unemployment rate in California is 12%?

Rest assured, the insanity will continue.

Seething Anger?

2009-09-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

The McClatchy News Service called it “seething anger at President Barack Obama and his far-reaching agenda.”

Out they came, with signs and whistles, fife and drums, onto Pennsylvania Avenue. One sign read: Stop Obama’s Spending Spree. Another: The Greatest Communist President We Have Ever Had. And this: Save Freedom. Stop Obama.

No hyperbole there, eh?

Now, along with every other evil he stands for, Obama stands for the demise of freedom and liberty.

It’s easy to dismiss the tea baggers and anti-tax, small-government zealots as a sideshow, a gaggle of nitwits who have no idea why they took to the streets on September 12, but to do so would be to miss the larger picture. Something remarkable and scary happened last Saturday in Washington.

Verifiable facts and logic should render the anti-Obama protestors a short-lived circus act, too ridiculous to give a second thought. Right down the line these angry, boisterous people have it wrong: the deficits they decry belong to a conservative duo – George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, not Barrack Obama; Obama is not a Communist by any objective measure and to think otherwise is fantasy; nor is Obama leading the country into an era of socialism for if he was his Administration would have sought real regulation of the financial system rather than bending over backwards to preserve the Wall Street status quo.

What’s in play here is the power of the right-wing media establishment to whip up the American political fringe and goad it into action. Obama wants to take your guns away. Obama is a tax and spend maniac. Obama will place your health care in the hands of the Government and indoctrinate your children in the ways of Socialism. Obama isn’t really an American citizen.

This is the Right’s counter-attack from the stinging defeat it received last November, and the attack is succeeding because Barrack Obama and the Democratic Party cannot come up with a coherent counter-message that resonates with people. Only recently has Obama spoken about health care in terms of morality, which at its core is the crux of the issue. Our for-profit health insurance system is not only immoral – it also happens to be inefficient and ineffective for millions of people and a drain on the national economy. That’s the nuts and bolts of a compelling argument but Democrats would rather play defense against the ridiculous and false claims made by the GOP -- or speak in dry technical terms about slowing the rate of health care cost increases.

White people dominated the photographs I saw of the 912 protestors, making me wonder if what we’re seeing here is just a mass case of racism, a reaction against the fact that a black man occupies the White House. Is Obama merely a lightning rod for white people’s anger and fear? What exactly are they afraid of? The policies Obama has advocated thus far are so moderate in scope that racism can be the only reason that white people are “seething.”

While a particular segment of white Americans may be seething with anger and quaking with fear, I believe the large majority of us are simply waiting for the Barrack Obama we elected to show some leadership – and some backbone. I for one didn’t vote for a continuation of the status quo – I voted with the hope – tempered by the knowledge that politicians always fail us -- that Obama and a Democratic majority in Congress might overturn the worst excesses committed by the Bush-Cheney junta, including torture, domestic spying, extraordinary rendition, the failed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and economic policies that favor the wealthy over working Americans.

Staggering Immorality

2009-08-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

The whole health care “debate,” if you can call our national shouting match a debate is very disheartening for about a dozen reasons. The truth has been distorted by a coordinated campaign of scare tactics and disinformation; right-wing crazies have been let off their leashes, and what should have been a serious national conversation about how we care for our young, our sick, our infirm and our elderly has been cast as socialism and a government take over of private health insurance.

It’s total bullshit. The truth is that health insurance companies bring nothing to the health care table. All insurance companies do is cherry-pick the healthy and blacklist the sick so that they collect premiums and avoid paying claims. That’s how the formula works, and if you check insurance company profits, this formula works really, really well. Naturally, the insurance companies and their powerful lobbies want nothing to do with a “public” option or with any government intervention that might tilt the equation in favor of patients rather than profits.

Medicare is a single-payer health insurance plan. Patients choose any physician who accepts Medicare, access the care they need, and Medicare pays the bill. The physicians and laboratories are not in the employ of the government – all the government does is facilitate payment to providers for services rendered. Socialized medicine? Old Karl Marx wouldn’t recognize it as such. No reasonable person would, either. Smart people understand that Medicare’s administrative expenses are absurdly low compared to private insurance companies.

Why does the United States treat health care like a commodity – like oil or soybeans or rubber – while every other industrialized nation treats it as a human right that will, sooner or later, need to be exercised by every one? Why do we spend more per capita on health care and have crummier outcomes than almost every other nation on the planet? Why are so many Americans uninsured or under-insured?

Capitalism, baby, the free market myth that claims government can do no right and unfettered business no wrong.

Too many of the big players – Senators, Representatives, Administration officials -- who are supposed to be working on our behalf to improve our silly system are pimps, sluts or whores, with cozy monetary ties to health insurance companies or the health lobby that render them incapable of doing regular citizens any good. In other words: they have a vested interest in maintaining or enhancing the status quo, not helping working people gain access to affordable health care.

My employer’s health insurance premium went up by something in the neighborhood of $1.5 million this year, an increase that must be passed on to everyone covered under the plan. So, deductibles for office visits rise, co-pays rise, some services are reduced or eliminated altogether, and employees see less take home pay at the end of each month. Yes, we are damn fortunate to have health insurance, but keep in mind that even people with insurance are very often overwhelmed by medical expenses and forced to declare bankruptcy. Small, medium and even large businesses cannot afford sky high premiums either. A couple of more years of $1.5 million premium increases may force my employer to drop health insurance coverage – adding another 2,000 souls to the ranks of the uninsured.

Our health insurance system isn’t about health – it’s all about money, lots of money, which is why it’s so hard to change.

Duck, Cover & Cave

2009-08-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

The battle is as good as over. President Obama sodomized his supporters over health insurance reform, just like he did when his administration had a golden opportunity to rein in Wall Street criminals. Despite his smooth style and golden tongue, Obama has caved to pressure from the GOP right and the all-powerful insurance lobby. The bastard wouldn’t even call the so-called public option by its proper title: Medicare for All.

The status quo wins again. This is no real surprise – even with a highly popular president whose party controls both houses of congress – because the insurance lobby has stymied health insurance reform for decades. When the dust settles in the next month or so, and a weak, ineffective bill emerges from congress, Obama will claim victory, but it will be of the pyrrhic variety. Millions of Americans will remain uninsured, and millions more will continue to lose battles with Cigna, Aetna and United Health over care decisions that belong in the hands of physicians but are made by insurance underwriters based on profit not health; personal bankruptcies resulting from medical expenses will also continue largely unabated.

Eric Alterman, who writes for the Nation and other national publications, said last fall that Obama would disappoint us; I figured he would, too, but hoped he would wait until at least midway through his first term. Like Bill Clinton, Obama talks a great game, hits the right notes in his speeches and public appearances, but when push comes to shove and his opponents go on offense, Obama folds like a dandy-lion in a hurricane.

Another similarity between Obama and Bill Clinton is Obama’s love fest with corporate interests. Obama had everything necessary – public opinion, numerous examples of corporate greed and incompetence -- to rein Wall Street in and instead abrogated his power by surrounding himself with the likes of Lawrence Summers, Tim Geithner and Robert Rubin, not to mention a number of lesser alumni from Goldman Sachs. No wonder that Obama went soft on the speculators, crooks, and swindlers who brought our financial system to the brink and laid an enormous hurt on average working Americans.

Inauguration Day was the high water mark of the Obama Administration and the trip has been downhill since. Our President has no one to blame but himself for a fatal absence of cajones. Think back to when George W. Bush and the GOP held sway – that posse of greedheads and power mongers rammed bills through congress and treated Democrats like lackeys. Hell, Bush even sold the world a war without a shred of factual justification, and when the world balked, Bush laughed and pulled the trigger anyway. Because of Dick Cheney, Bush had a better understanding of power politics than Obama or any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson. Politics is war, and in war you don’t seek to make friends with your opponents, you destroy them.

Typical fucking Democratic Party. Give them Congress and the White House and they still can’t get anything of consequence accomplished. This is change we can believe in? This is the second coming, the end of business as usual? Another bill of goods has been sold by a graduate of the Ivy League.

The Distortionist

2009-08-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

Rush Limbaugh compares the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler and the media establishment yawns. And why not, what with the ongoing adventures of Jon and Kate, and Paula Abdul possibly leaving American Idol? The media must keep up with these breaking stories, right?

But I wonder if the establishment would have yawned if Keith Olberman had compared George W. Bush to Hitler? Would Limbaugh have let that pass? How about Michael Savage? Bill O’Reilly? Ann Coulter?

No, the right-wing yakkers would have gone totally apeshit and demanded Olberman’s head; they would have declared that the left-wing media was depraved and dangerous, a threat to the nation; the story would have bounced in the echo chamber for days on end, picked up and pushed by Matt Lauer and Diane Sawyer and the editors of the Wall Street Journal.

If Rush Limbaugh is the de facto leader of the Republican Party, hasn’t the GOP slandered the President of the United States?

Where’s the outrage? OK, forget outrage. What about accountability? Why aren’t Limbaugh’s corporate sponsors dropping him and running for the aisles? Why does Limbaugh get a pass to say such outlandish, untrue, stupid things?

It’s money, of course. Audience and advertising revenue.

Look, I despised George W. Bush. I believe that Bush was an illegitimate president, and that he was one of the dumbest, if not the dumbest, men to ever occupy the White House, but I can’t remember comparing him with Adolf Hitler. Despising a political figure is one thing, complete ignorance of history is another.

Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk are symptoms of a more serious malady that is deep inside our body politic. We saw it during the financial crisis and see it today in the war of misinformation over health insurance. Sense doesn’t matter, logic doesn’t matter and accuracy doesn’t matter; only volume and repetition matter. Limbaugh distorts, obfuscates, lies, exaggerates, misconstrues and maligns to advance his political agenda. From the safe distance of his studio, where few, if any, competing voices are allowed entry, Limbaugh bludgeons those he disagrees with. It’s not reasoned discourse that aims to find the truth or some middle ground that reasonable people can agree on -- it’s polarizing and divisive, designed to inflame an audience made up largely of people who cannot think critically or independently.

It’s propaganda, in other words, designed to play to people’s fears and prejudices.

I don’t know how our imperfect democracy can survive when our public discourse is as degraded as it is today. Except on rare occasions, common ground seems impossible to find.

Under the Microscope

2009-08-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

Weird times, and no end in sight. I know it’s a bitch to fill twenty-four hours of airtime every single day, but from time-to-time the angle CNN takes on stories perplexes me. There’s the Lou Dobbs “Birther” charade, an absolute waste of time. Memo to Lou: Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. He’s been vetted. Get over it. Go back to scaring people about illegal immigrants. There’s Michael Jackson, Paula Abdul, Jon and Kate, fires and floods, bombings, drought, and corporate-sponsored protests about health insurance.

Yep, there’s no end to the weirdness, the trivia, the hyperbole and the BS. We’re a nation of idiots, spoon-fed misinformation day and night.

A day or two ago I happened to see this headline on CNN: Obama under the microscope. Three talking heads were speculating on Obama’s first eight months in office, and whether or not these months can be termed successful. One of the heads said, “It appears that President Obama has discovered that it’s one thing to win an election and another to govern the country.” Wow, bright people on CNN. I don’t remember the illegitimate Bush presidency being slipped under the CNN microscope eight months in, when all Bush had accomplished was passage of a massive tax cut for the richest Americans. Whooppee.

Remember that it was in August 2001 when Bush essentially ignored intelligence warnings that Osama bin Laden was intent on striking within the United States. Bush was too busy cutting brush on his Texas ranch to spend much time worrying about a stateless Muslim fanatic with an axe to grind against the Great Satan. The rest is, of course, history. Bin Laden struck and the nation freaked out, allowing Bush and Cheney to trash the Constitution in the name of “security.” Remember how twisted things became in the aftermath of 9/11? In order to protect our freedom and liberty, we consented to give up our freedom and liberty. Insane and misguided. We started detaining people all over the globe, some of them innocent, though we tortured many of them anyway, just to be sure they didn’t carry Bin Laden’s satellite phone number. Insane and cruel. Then we invaded and occupied a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Insane and stupid.

Obama entered the White House on a tide of hope and optimism, but trapped beneath one of the biggest Eight Ball’s in American history, a cluster-fuck of epic proportion caused by eight years of misrule; the economic system was on the brink of collapse, workers were losing jobs at a precipitous pace, retirement savings had vanished overnight due to massive fraud and manipulation, nothing worthwhile had been done on the environmental front for eight years, and we were (still are) bogged down in two failed wars. CNN has already forgotten the shitty hand Obama was dealt on Day One.

Given his near-total capitulation to Wall Street heavies however, I think some criticism of Obama’s presidency is warranted, but we must be fair and remember what the man had to work with when he assumed office.

For the good of the country in the long term, a perspective rarely taken in American politics, we need the Obama Administration to propose, and Congress to pass, real regulatory reform of the economic system, laws with enough teeth to keep the Titans of Finance on the straight, narrow and honest path, and reduce the iron-grip corporations have on the nation’s politics. Will this happen? No, we’ll get a Band-Aid instead. We also need a reorientation back toward the real economy of productive work and wages, but Obama seems deaf to the plight of working Americans – the economic system is still tilted in favor of investors and speculators and those “too big to fail.” We desperately need a complete overhaul of our health insurance system to make it more accessible, logical and humane, but the Kansas City Royals will win 110 regular season games and the World Series before that happens. We’ll get some tinkering on the margins, but nothing substantial or meaningful; millions will still be uninsured, under-insured, subject to the whims of insurance companies focused on profits rather than care.

I never thought the Obama Administration could reverse eight years of abject failure in eight months. Seems the talking heads on CNN have mistaken Obama for a magician rather than a politician.

Waiting for an Epiphany

2009-08-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

I recently had my first colonoscopy. While I was sitting in the waiting area with six other men, all of us dressed in dark blue hospital gowns, with locker keys around our wrists, not one of us venturing to say anything, I began thinking about health insurance and health care, and why the insurance system in the United States is so haphazard, cruel and inefficient. Thirty minutes earlier I had plunked $250 down for this procedure because my Aetna insurance, provided by my employer, does not completely cover a colonoscopy, even though it’s a vital tool in the early detection of cancer, the treatment of which, as most everyone knows, can be extraordinarily expensive. In terms of medical care, requiring a $250 deductible makes no sense; in terms of Aetna’s profit, it makes total sense.

And that, in a nutshell, is the great American health care dilemma. Everything is fine and dandy until a corporation’s desire for profit smacks head on into a patient’s need for medical care. Insurance companies love “subscribers” who pay premiums and never get sick; they hate “patients,” particularly those who need blood transfusions or organ transplants. To put that another way: insurance companies make money by collecting premiums and denying care.

Sitting there in my blue smock, I thought about the 535 members of Congress who enjoy comprehensive, taxpayer-provided health coverage. Not only should average Americans envy the lucky folks in Congress, we should also ask: if a “public” health insurance system is good enough for our elected representatives, why isn’t it good enough for everyone?

Have you ever heard a Congressman or woman complain about access to health care or the quality of the care provided? I haven’t. And it almost goes without saying that they don’t sweat deductibles, pre-existing conditions or pre-authorizations – in other words, the frustrating, often mystifying health insurance tango that most Americans (at least those fortunate enough to have health insurance) must endure in order to access the care they need.

Ours is a fouled up, inefficient, piss-poor system. I’d like to believe that our elected officials will experience a collective epiphany and realize that the United States spends too much money per capita on health care, that health care outcomes are frequently laughable, and that it’s time to let go, once and for all, of the myth that the private, for-profit model is not just the best way to go, but the only way. Conservatives thump the drum and bang the gong for the “free” market approach to health care, when it’s obvious to most Americans that the market is controlled, manipulated and fixed by a few major players who do not have the best interests of the public at heart. In this respect, health care is exactly like the banking system: a game rigged by the few for the benefit of the few.

Every time any momentum builds to reform the financial or health care systems, the drumbeat against the idea begins on talk radio, on Fox News, from the lobbyists who prowl the halls of the capital looking for politicos they can influence (actually, “bribe” is the correct word) with hefty campaign contributions, and from the “experts” who appear on Meet the Press and Face the Nation. We hear cries of “socialism,” “communism,” “Bolshevism,” not to mention horror stories from Canada of patients forced to wait three weeks to have a wart removed. We don’t hear the flip side news that those same Canadian patients receive the primary care they need to prevent minor ailments from becoming major health problems, or that they can afford the prescription medications they need without having to take out a second mortgage or sell a child into slavery. Among industrial nations, only Americans are forced by an inhumane insurance system to choose between medicine and food.

Conservatives believe that, outside of waging war (and with warfare being outsourced to companies like Blackwater and Halliburton even this former government monopoly is slipping away) government – federal, state or local – cannot do anything right, let alone manage something as complex as medical insurance. The popularity and success of the Medicare program makes no impression on conservative true believers, just as Wall Street pyramid schemes are not viewed negatively enough to insure that reasonable external controls are passed into law; conservatives would rather believe that the bad guys can regulate themselves.

There will be no collective epiphany on health care. The industry lobbyists and their craven puppets in Congress will see to that. The bill that finally emerges from Congress will be watered down, convoluted, ineffective, weak, and utterly reliant on “voluntary” rather than mandated reform. In other words, lots of sizzle but no steak. While the legislation may improve the lot of a relative few, it will do nothing for the struggling many. At the end of the day, the insurance companies and financial interests will still maintain control, though the Obama Administration will claim a great, epochal victory.

Sooner or later Americans will mature as a people and see the error of our ways. We may be a second-rate nation by then, living in the shadow cast by China and India, but we’ll get there because there won’t be any other choice.

Better than Squat

2009-07-16T11:54:00.001-07:00

People keep asking me what’s happened to the Balcony, why it hasn’t been updated in several weeks, stuff like that. Hey, life happens, seizes control of every waking moment and chokes off the creative impulse. I’ll try to do better but can make no promises.

Michael Jackson died. I missed the hoopla, the televised memorial service, all the media interviews with the parasites and hangers on who call themselves commentators and purport to speak authoritatively about matters they can know nothing about. Jackson had an enormous talent and a very weird existence almost from the time he slipped out of his mother’s womb. His father is creepy and conniving, and the turn Michael took later in his life was bizarre and, ultimately, sad. Nobody, however, really knows what it was like to be Michael Jackson, to stroll around in his medically lightened epidermis or to breathe through his surgically-altered nose or to feel what he felt in the middle of the night when sleep refused to come and the weight of his tarnished legend became too heavy to bear. Media people speculate, and their speculation is passed off as fact, but they don’t know.

Several years ago, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson said that America was locked into a downward spiral of sheer dumbness, and much that has happened since only confirms the Doctor’s analysis. Barack Obama has discovered the time-worn truth that running for president is one thing, and being president another. Obama says the right things in an inspiring way, but the man is surrounded by status quo types who wouldn’t know how to rock a toy boat in a bathtub. The economic “stimulus” package was too small and timid to do much good for average folks, and the Big Pain still lies in front of us. The media and the government fixate on the stock market, but jobs and wages are the real deal, and those aren’t being addressed by anyone in a meaningful way. By the time the political class focuses on jobs and wages, it will be too late. We’re on borrowed time and playing roulette with borrowed money.

Lobbyists for the insurance industry have already derailed Obama’s attempt to reform our absolutely broken health care system. The so-called “public” option – which polls show that a majority of Americans would welcome – is too threatening to Cigna and Aetna and United Healthcare, and the lobby for these profitable giants is so powerful that it can stymie any change that might start the process of dislodging insurance companies from the health care driver’s seat. American CEO’s talk about competition like it’s the Holy Grail, but when it comes right down to it, CEO’s hate competition and prefer the sure, safe profits that monopolies produce and perpetuate. The insurance lobby is on a war footing, armed with large amounts of cash and an ideological rap about the evils of “socialized” medicine. Money and a bullshit argument is all it takes to prevail in America; you don’t have to be right or factual, just loud and persistent.

Sarah Palin is an idiot, OK? This should be the end of the story, but again, this is America and what should be obvious isn’t. Half the political commentators in the country think Palin made a sound political calculation when she decided to bail from the Governor’s mansion, mid-term, even though her justification for the decision sounded ludicrous, self-serving and disconnected from any objective reality. When Palin compares Alaska to the rest of America I giggle uncontrollably because the comparison is ridiculous; no professional journalist should take Palin seriously or allow her to get away with such mindless drivel. Palin is dumber than W. Bush, but no less dangerous. Because the Republican party is in retreat and disarray, it’s a certainty that Palin will surface again as a favored contender, but don’t expect her to act much smarter than she does now; Palin’s dumbness is like a blood stain on a white shirt – damn near impossible to eradicate.

And so on and so on into the dog days of summer.

Guardians of the Status Quo

2009-06-17T05:10:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure what to make of the happy talk I hear from the mainstream media about the American economy, but when pundits of every stripe unanimously crow that the worst of the economic crisis is behind us, and that the housing market is poised for a dramatic rebound, I get nervous and then suspicious. What are the masters of the status quo up to now?

In the Men’s Lounge of a posh Connecticut country club, a pack of blue-blooded moguls are sipping scotch and laughing their asses off about how easy it was to turn their gambling losses into gold, courtesy of the American taxpayer. “Is this the greatest country in the world or what? When I make a pile of dough I get to keep it, and when I lose a pile I just transfer the losses to the little people and walk away scot-free. Boo-yaa!” Better still in the eyes of the moguls, there was no messy democratic process to go through in order to socialize their losses; the great, fat, lazy and stupid masses had no say in the matter at all; their easily bought and sold elected representatives made sure of that. Nope, John and Jane Q. Public didn’t have an opportunity to cast a vote or make their voice heard regarding the Wall Street bailout; all they get is the bill.

To this day the Treasury department can’t account for much of the dough it lavished on the criminals, incompetents and liars who drove the economy over the cliff. Ten million here, twenty-five million there, fifty million to the fat man standing by the door, but nobody knows what the fat man did with his share of the loot; for all the government knows he stuffed his mattress with the money or had himself a helluva weekend in Antigua.

And now the forces behind the status quo are telling us that everything is looking rosy and that happy days are dead ahead. For proof all we need do is look at the stock market. If you believe CNBC, things are turning so ducky that we should shift our focus from stimulus to good old-fashioned fiscal austerity. Notwithstanding that it was Dick Cheney himself who boasted a few years back that “deficits don’t matter,” Republicans have seized on the debt issue like a barracuda on a flounder and are blaming Obama for plunging the nation into the abyss. Sorry, GW Bush and Cheney managed that all by themselves.

Of wages and working people we hear next to nothing. The same goes for homes lost to foreclosure, people up to their necks in credit card or medical debt or families who cannot afford decent food or clothing. The misery is hidden inside the media euphoria and cheerleading over the recent up-tick in the stock market. As long as the crisis is over for the investor class who gives a shit if the masses are hurting? Who gives a shit if California goes bankrupt? The stock market is showing signs of life, and part-time real estate agents all over the country insist that the housing bust is a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, those of us who work for wages get no relief. The cost of gasoline is rising again; Iraq and Afghanistan are sinkholes for our tax dollars; Congress is corrupt and deaf to the plight of everyone except large campaign donors; a rational proposal for a single-payer health care system was swept off the negotiating table before talks even began.

Same old, same old. The high hopes many of us had on Inauguration Day are long gone, crushed by the guardians of the status quo.

POEM - The Great Majority

2009-06-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

the great majority
will never hit a home run
in a World Series game

discover the cure for cancer

write a symphony

headline a Broadway play

rape somebody

steal from a blind man

kill out of anger

the great majority
will go on year in and year out
doing unspectacular things

like

reading to their children
cooking meals
sweeping floors
planting roses
donating blood

the great majority
will pass away unnoticed
by the great minority
who get all the
attention

The Presidential Version Of Oprah

2009-06-10T19:53:00.000-07:00

Where is the change Barrack Obama spoke so eloquently about when he was campaigning for the presidency? When are his actions going to measure up to his soaring rhetoric? Six months into his first term, Obama has shown that he is cool and smooth, articulate as the day is long, attuned to the political vibrations in DC and a compelling photo op when he and Michelle stroll across the White House lawn, but where’s the change, where’s the substance? Obama sneezes and his well-oiled PR machine cranks out an e-mail blast; Obama shoots hoops with inner-city kids and five million text messages are launched; Obama cracks a joke at the pyramids in Egypt and it’s on YouTube in a matter of minutes.

Obama is a wonderful show after the desolation, corruption and stupidity of the Bush-Cheney junta, but the status quo in America is still alive and thriving. Not that any but the most naive observers expected Obama to honestly challenge the status quo or deliver on his many campaign promises, for politicians rarely keep the promises they make in the heat of a campaign. And let’s not forget that the Obama Administration was behind the eight ball from Day One. Still, it’s hard to reconcile how Obama could campaign so boldly and govern so timidly; how with majorities in both houses of Congress and enormous popularity he can be cowed by the warp and wail of Rush Limbaugh and the nitwits from Fox News.

Six months into the Obama Administration, the Whacky Right, aided and abetted by a handful of pusillanimous Democrats, still control the national agenda. We can’t have a sensible discussion about creating an economic system that best meets the needs of the majority of Americans; health care reform is doomed to fail; ditto any meaningful action on the environment or energy policy; average Americans are suffering economic hardship and all the mainstream media can talk about is the stock market; nobody speaks with any intelligence about jobs and wages.

It’s depressing. A great opportunity is slipping away.

When the GOP controlled both houses of Congress they rammed their pet policies into law, stomping Democrats in the process. Tom DeLay lived to fuck Democrats in the ass, and his GOP comrades swaggered through the corridors of power like SS storm troopers. Put Democrats in the power position and they act bewildered.

Obama is the presidential version of Oprah. He makes us feel good, from time to time he makes us think, but in the end little changes. Powerful, vested interests still rule, call the shots and dictate the terms by which the majority of citizens must abide.

Yes, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are light years better than Bush and Cheney, but if that’s the standard by which we measure Obama’s success, we’re really in deep trouble.

A Giant Falls

2009-06-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

The tires are flat at GM. The transmission is croaked and the radiator is full of holes. The behemoth American corporation that once stood astride the global automobile market is in the death throes, stumbling into bankruptcy, a ward of the federal government. This is like the day Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, or the day the Berlin Wall came down in chunks -- a day we won’t forget, a milestone, a marker in American history. The symbol of our faded industrial prowess is broken down on the side of a one-way road.

Although this day has been coming for years, it’s hard to accept that the United States has thrown in the towel and quit the manufacturing game in disgrace.

Because that’s really what this means, Mr. Jones.

The reasons for GM’s demise are too numerous to list here. Like every other American corporation that once made money building stuff, GM’s top brass became more enthralled with finance than on building quality products that domestic and foreign consumers wanted to plunk money down for. As the world around it changed and Honda and Toyota elbowed their way into the US market, GM clung stubbornly to the formula that had once made it great. In the end it was simply too many vehicle models with too much similarity between them, too much marketing hype and too little quality. One of the reasons it’s such a sad tale is that it didn’t have to happen.

No, thousands of workers didn’t need to be sacrificed to the gods of downsizing and globalization, ruthlessly discarded so the corporate bottom line might look rosier for Wall Street investors. As GM’s fortunes declined year after year, entire communities in the Midwest watched helplessly as their lifeblood drained away. For at least two generations of working stiffs, GM was the Golden Goose, a place where a worker with a high school education could earn wages and benefits sufficient to support a family, put kids through college, vacation in Mexico, and score all the rest of that American Dream stuff.

Long gone.

UAW members have been on a concession binge for decades, steadily ceding ground in the hope that givebacks would halt GM’s slide. Workers gave and GM executives issued self-congratulatory pronouncements, but it never altered the downward trajectory. With great fanfare, GM reorganized, redesigned, re-engineered, but market share continued to erode. Plants closed, workers got the sack. The management class was immunized from the pain of failure by stock options and golden parachutes.

Nothing new or surprising about that. Protecting executives, stockholders and Wall Street investors at the expense of workers is the American way of doing business. The United Auto Workers union usually played a convenient scapegoat role for GM’s staggering inability to compete with Toyota and Honda, as if earning a decent wage with decent benefits and a decent pension was a crime against the natural order.

An American giant has fallen. Remember the names: Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Chevrolet and Pontiac. Remember the glory years of Motown, for we won’t be seeing them again.

POEM - No Fear

2009-05-25T05:48:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Long Slide into the Pacific

2009-05-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let the slide into the Pacific begin.

POEM - Inferno

2009-05-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

Smoke-filled sky
Crimson moon
The stars hide their faces

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

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

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

Dick Cheney Meets the Press

2009-05-12T15:45:00.000-07:00

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

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

The Interview with David Gregory

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

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

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

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

DG: What do you base that figure on?

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

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

DC: I disagree.

DG: Would you care to expand on that?

DC: Do I look like I do?

DG: Is water-boarding torture?

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

DG: You’d water-board the Pope?

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

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

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

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

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

Wimps and Pansies

2009-05-09T06:23:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

POEM - Turning 50

2009-04-24T05:23:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sadism, American-Style

2009-04-21T19:13:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get Your Tea Bag On

2009-04-19T06:55:00.000-07:00

If any more proof was needed that the Republican Party has drifted so far to the right that it has completely lost its moorings, the recent Tea Bag protests put the case to rest.

It’s clear now that Republican heavyweights and party icons alike have lost the ability to think rationally, let alone critically. The Republicans can’t remember what happened on election night last November let alone what happened in 1932 or 1964. When John Boehner crows that, “the people have spoken and they don’t like what’s happened the past three months,” he simply erases any doubt that the hours he’s spent in a tanning bed have fried his brain.

The central Republican idea that Americans are over-taxed isn’t supported by fact, particularly when one studies tax rates for the wealthiest Americans or compares tax rates in the United States with those of other industrialized countries. Republicans talk a lot about “socialism” and the evils of transferring wealth from the productive rich to the slovenly poor, but they’re oblivious to the fact that for nearly 30 years, the transfer has been in the opposite direction – from the working class and the middle class to the wealthy.

I give the Republicans and their corporate clients credit for seizing absolute control of the terms and norms that govern economic discourse in the United States. The Republicans and the corporate class took over the mass media (scrapping the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 helped) and use its enormous power to promote their viewpoint, focusing zealously on investors and Wall Street, and paying lip service, if that, to working Americans, wages, and middle class buying power.

Here’s a case in point: every weekday morning on the local news, the news reader dutifully reports the opening numbers on Wall Street, as if those numbers have any significance for the people rushing out the door to work for wages that have remained stagnant for decades; for people up to their asses in credit card debt or struggling to hold onto their homes; for people who long ago realized that the American Dream is a fantasy beyond their reach. Even with Wall Street disgraced and in ruins, the mainstream media follows the stock numbers, day in and day out.

The other thing I gave Republicans credit for is convincing working Americans that small government, privatization, outsourcing, and the “free” market actually make them more economically secure. It took many years to sell this notion, and there’s little doubt that an inept, weak and defensive Democratic party aided the Republican cause. By the second Clinton administration, it was difficult to tell Democrats from Republicans, so chummy had Democrats become with corporate America.

The conservative wing of the Republican Party had a genius for propaganda – because it takes no less than genius to convince millions of voters to support ideology and policy that actually work against their self-interest; to convince voters that all taxation is bad; to convince voters that effective government is impossible; to convince voters that the free market is always right, just and self-correcting; to convince the average working person that unions are bad for workers; and to convince the public that the wealthy have no obligation to anyone but themselves. Karl Rove dreamed of a permanent Republican majority, and this might have come to pass if George W. Bush hadn’t been such a bumbler. Bush’s abject failure exposed conservative ideology as empty, immoral and corrupt.

The American public knows something is fundamentally out of whack in the way the nation is organized. The public finally grasps, I think, that plutocracy masquerading as democracy cannot address pressing problems or satisfy human needs. The political class – particularly on the Republican side – doesn’t get this at all, but the majority of citizens do because they are living through the effects.