Protecting America

There are two major political parties in the United States: Thugs and Cowards. They masquerade as Republicans and Democrats, but today’s incarnations bear as little resemblance to the parties of Lincoln and Roosevelt (even Eisenhower and Johnson) as a giraffe does to a manatee.

Thugs will stoop to any depth to scare, browbeat, intimidate, vilify, or disparage anyone who disagrees with them. Think the war in Iraq was a bad idea? You’re a terrorist sympathizer who wants our brave troops not only to die, but to suffer first. Think we might want to consider raising enough money to pay for the myriad of pork projects written into law in the dark of night without any recorded votes? You’re an advocate of sending the working man to the poor house. Best plan for health care? Give all your money to private insurers and let them decide whether to provide care, or not.

Sounds pretty oppressive, doesn’t it? The Cowards are worse. A Coward never met a challenge he couldn’t back away from. This makes Cowards natural fodder for Thugs, since a Coward is an invertebrate that couldn’t stand up for what is right if he recognized it, which he’s afraid to do, because all viewpoints have value and merit in the eyes of a Coward. Wouldn’t want to invalidate someone’s true feelings. Sure, we believe in the Constitution, but the perspective of our Thug brethren has just as much validity, even though where the Bill of Rights says “yes” the Thugs say “no” and where the Bill of Rights says “no” the Thugs say “yes.” We may disagree in our hearts, but when it comes time to put our vote where our oath is, the word “threat” trumps “freedom” every time.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is straightforward: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It’s that ”no Warrants shall issue” part that hangs everyone up. Warrants require probable cause, and Thugs don’t want to fool around with that. They’ll decide who to search and seize, no impartiality required. How to get around that tricky language? Do away with warrants altogether.

Never mind that warrants have had a place in jurisprudence since the Magna Carta. Forget that we won two World Wars and the Cold War without disposing of them. This is different. A few thousand people died on one day six years ago; the values that made this country great must be put on hold so no more will join them. What about the hundreds of thousands who have died over the past two hundred-plus years to preserve that freedom? Brave men and women die in Iraq and Afghanistan every day, allegedly so we won’t have to fight here. Yet we freely sacrifice the liberties that make this country worth fighting for.

At the top of this page is a quote from a man who was largely responsible for the type of nation we once aspired to be. His words were never truer than they are now: Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security. All members of Congress swear an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. May those who voted for the Protect America Act spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders, for they have ensured none of us will truly know whether those who would prey upon us are foreign, or domestic.

For the Thugs, disdain, with a grudging respect for their ability to get their way. For the Cowards, nothing but contempt.

Bush vs. Clinton

The Second Amendment Correspondent and I have been good friends for quite some time. While I find no fault with most of his comment about the previous post, I must take issue with its ending.

Here’s the SAC’s final paragraph. (Emphasis added by The Home Office.)

Bush's real "crime" here is once again doing things without any regard for how his office will appear to the American people. And yes, he has repeatedly said that he won't tolerate criminal behaviour in his administration. Then again so did Clinton.

This is a common Republican failing. They spent eight years vilifying Bill Clinton for everything he did. Now, no matter how egregious Bush’s actions, they immediately compare it to something Clinton did, or to Clinton’s character.

Isn’t that self-setting the bar awfully low? To say that Clinton is a low-life, bottom-feeding, son of a bitch, then continually compare your guy to him every time he’s criticized, is to admit Bush is a low-life, bottom-feeding son of a bitch, at best.

Bill Clinton is a detestable human being. I wouldn’t walk across the street to shake his hand, and I wouldn’t allow my daughter to be I the same room as him. That being said, his Administration paid for things as they went, and the Constitution wasn’t treated as something only he had the power to interpret. George Bush has been a catastrophe to the nation he swore to defend; the damage he has done to our standing and respect abroad is immeasurable and will take years to repair. The damage done to our domestic institutions may be irreparable. To compare his record of malfeasance to anyone else is not unlike comparing a swale in your backyard to the Grand Canyon.

Written on the Fourth of July

In celebration of the 231^st anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, The Home Office is printing the letter that was sent today to Senators Mikulski and Cardin, and House Majority Leader Hoyer.

Dear -----,

President Bush’s pardon of Scooter Libby shows his complete disregard for the responsibilities of the presidency, but also a lack of common sense. Anyone elected by his razor-thin margins should be painfully aware of the need to reach out to ensure he is the president of all the people, not just those who got him the job.

I suspect Scooter Libby is a fall guy. Either his lawyers declined to call Vice President Cheney as a witness in the hope that the president would express some form of clemency, or the deal had already been brokered. Libby isn’t the problem here; he’s the symptom.

George W. Bush has shown a complete disregard for mercy or clemency for many years, extending back to his tenure as governor of Texas. No execution deserved a stay under his rule. He has often expressed an opinion that all sentences should be carried out in full, and the will of a jury should never be overturned. To make a complete change of direction is one thing; to start with a personal associate is disingenuous and unconscionable.

President Bush and his supporters in and out of government often refer to the “unitary executive,” and claim it as a Constitutional principle. Anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of the Constitution’s origins knows better. The Founding Fathers had learned from the failure of the Articles of Confederation that a strong executive was necessary to hold together factions and broker compromise. Their fresh memories of living under a king, and the potential for abuse inherent in unchecked power, led them to fill the Constitution with limitations on executive power and privilege.

There is no question a president does not have many of the powers the office’s current inhabitant has claimed for himself; or, even worse, those claimed by Vice President Cheney. Congress alone has the power to rein in such abuses, and for too long has allowed executive ambition to remain unfettered. Please take this opportunity to say, “No more.” Mr. Bush is either president to all of us, or to none of us. Surely he must answer to all of us, and Congress is the only instrument the people have to exercise their will, outside of an election. Please do not fail us.

Do You Hear Me Now?

From the Washington Post’s In the Loop column of July 2, 2007, by Michael J. Fletcher

Maybe it was the school setting, but [President] Bush was leaving nothing to chance in explaining the world to the audience at the Naval War College. "Remember," he said at one point, "when I mention al-Qaeda, they're the ones who attacked the United States of America and killed nearly 3,000 people on September the 11th, 2001."

Oh, that al-Qaeda.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

It occurred to me today that two weeks have passed since I took The Sole Heir to see the US Open. It was part of a long Fathers Day weekend: the Open on Thursday, nine holes of golf on Friday, with my dad riding in the cart over the course he taught me to play on, watching his granddaughter play golf for the first time. Thirty-six holes of miniature golf on Saturday, then home to watch the final round of the Open.

I wish I was as smart every day as I was the day I thought up that weekend. It was four days of multi-level bonding, including my mother teaching the Crazy Like Correspondent the secrets of homemade Syrian Bread. They may not sound like much, but by Sunday evening they had acquired an almost surreal glow, events far enough removed from normal activities to seem like they’d happened to someone else.

The cool part is that they didn’t. We spent eleven-and-a-half hours walking the Oakmont Country Club, watching the world’s finest golfers, talking about golf, and whatever else came to mind. Not a harsh word, none of the strained good humor that comes from a sixteen-year-old feeling dragged around by her old man, or the old man resenting the kid for hurrying him. When we left the course for the gift shop at 7:45, we both agreed we’d have stayed if there was any more golf to be seen.

It was the best vacation I’ve had since out last car trip to Colorado in 2005. In some ways it was even better. Opportunities like this don’t come up every day; yours probably won’t include a golf tournament. Stay alert for them. They won’t hit you over the head, and they aren’t the kinds of things you’ll miss if you don’t do them. Only after they’re done will you appreciate what was gained by making the effort.

One last thing: Don’t wait until the kids are sixteen before thinking of cool stuff. Kids know when you’re doing something because you think you should, maybe when you finally realize time is running out on how long they’ll remain kids. Don’t kid yourself; no matter how old they are, the time is running out now. Start today. Expose your kids to things that give you satisfaction. They won’t grab onto all of them. They might not get any of them. But they’ll understand and appreciate the effort if they know it’s sincere, and that’s all that really matters. Parents who doesn’t get as much from their children as the kids get from the parent shouldn’t be parents.

Inside Football (Inside a Cell, that Is)

Norman Chad is best known for providing the “expert” commentary on ESPN’s poker broadcasts. He also writes a weekly sports column that never fails to amuse. The end of each column are Chad’s (aka Couch Slouch) replies to readers’ emails. Particularly worthy emails win a prize of $1.25, paid by The Slouch’s secretary, Shirley.

The following is yesterday’s email exchange. It doesn’t get any better than this

Ask The Slouch (Special Bengals edition)

Q. If Bengals owner Mike Brown spotted one of his players on "America's Most Wanted" and subsequently gave information as to his whereabouts, would his reward money be subject to the NFL's revenue-sharing agreement?

A. Pay the man, Shirley.

Q. When is the Bengals organization going to get with the times and change the stripes on their Bengal Tiger logo to white and black?

A. Pay the man, Shirley.

Q. Will the Bengals have to go to no-huddle next season so their players can avoid associating with known felons?

A. Pay the man, Shirley.

Q. Would it kill Pacman Jones to make it a Blockbuster night every once in a while?

A. Pay the man, Shirley. (I consider Pacman Jones an "honorary Bengal.")

Slouch Rules!

Inside Baseball

Craze likes it when I teach her little things about sports that deepen her appreciation of the game we’re watching. This conversation took place Sunday night, when ESPN gave us a shot of Gary Sheffield in the on-deck circle.

Me: There’s just one thing that keeps Sheffield from being the biggest asshole in baseball.

Craze (perking up): What’s that?

Me: Barry Bonds

A Door Closes, a Door Opens

North Carolina prosecutor Mike Nifong was suspended by a judge today, after indicating he planned to continue in office until July 13, even after being disbarred for his leading role in the Duke lacrosse team rape that wasn’t. Mr. Nifong needn’t worry about paying the bills. The Justice Department has lots of openings for which he is uniquely qualified, as prosecuting nonexistent cases is not only not considered unethical at DoJ, it’s encouraged.

The Last Word on The Sopranos

Still think the last episode had a downer of an ending? See what Emmy Award-winning writer Ken Levine has to say here.

Dramatis Interruptus

Possibly the greatest accomplishment of The Sopranos was David Chase’s willingness not to explain. Tony, Carmela, et al, did what they did without apology or justification from the writer. Loose ends were sometimes left to dangle, or had less than satisfactory explanations. Surprises were deftly balanced with anticlimax. (Remember the feds taking several episodes to wire a lamp in Tony’s basement for eavesdropping purposes, only to have Meadow immediately and unsuspectingly take said lamp for her dorm room?)

Life is like that, and The Sopranos, more than any other entertaining show, reflected life, through the admittedly warped prism of Tony Soprano. Anyone who watched all eighty-six episodes learned to take the characters as the sum of their parts, as though they were real people. Chase rarely took us where we expected to go; when he did, it was via the road less traveled. Not always wholly satisfying, but, as Brian Williams noted in Slate, “the journey is the reward.”

The ending of the last episode was a disappointment because there’s a difference between feeling let down and feeling cheated. An audience has the right to expect that tension, once raised, will be resolved in some manner. Chase spent the last several minutes of Sunday’s finale building tension as well as anyone ever has; the Crazy Like Me Correspondent said her stomach hurt, watching the comings and goings in the diner, Meadow parking the car, Tony’s innocent banter with AJ.

I’ve read over a dozen articles deconstructing the ending, and I’m willing to admit Tony has probably gone to that great pork store in the sky. Flashing to him with Bobby on the boat, “maybe you never hear it,” seems more satisfying a set-up than expecting the entire audience to analyze rock lyrics they may be unfamiliar with to figure the ending. Still, in real time, it was a let down, like hearing the doorbell ring when on the verge of an orgasm.

A more satisfying ending might have been to end the show a week earlier, with Tony sitting in Uncle Junior’s bed holding his AR-10, looking at the door, awaiting his destiny. That was the nadir of the season, and of the series; nothing in the final episode is as bleak.

The pundits are talking me into it, though. As Craze said a few minutes ago, if Tony had to go, better like this than to see him a bloody mess. He went out happy: Phil defeated, Carmela happy, Meadow’s prospects bright, and AJ a whiny douche bag, which is about as much as anyone can hope for from AJ. The end came as fast for us as for him; maybe that’s Chase’s last life lesson. Malicious prick (his words) that he was, no one really wanted to see Tony die.

Maybe it was brilliant after all; it sure was a disappointment when it happened.

You CAN Keep a Good Man Down

The public is, by nature, lazy. Humans (as a species; there are exceptions) don’t want to think any more than they have to, and only about things they want to think about. The topic’s importance is irrelevant; we want a hook to make it easy to remember which is which.

Entertainment provides a trivial example. A fellow writer, whose opinion I respect greatly, has asked me more than once what my fictional detective’s gimmick is. That’s what marketing people are looking for. The public doesn’t have time to distinguish whether the book’s good. What makes the protagonist memorable? Is he an alcoholic? A cripple? Blind? Deaf? Gay? Maybe some mental disorder that makes things difficult, but not impossible. Bipolar disorder, perhaps. PTSD is timely. Think of the heartwarming reviews that could be written if our intrepid detective overcomes his agoraphobia to find the killer on the National Mall during the fireworks on the Fourth of July.

The mainstream media love this. The public’s inability to focus on anything too complex that doesn’t involve slot receivers, blitzes, or Cover Two feeds into a growing media trend: laziness. Reporters used to investigate cases like Watergate and Love Canal; now they’ll take pretty much what’s given to them.

The current Presidential campaign is a good example. Debates are televised more often than Law and Order (if you leave out cable reruns of Criminal Intent). A perfect chance to offer fair and balanced (oops) reporting on all the candidates, possibly allowing one of the so-called second-tier hopefuls a chance to break out of the pack.

No, that would require actually keeping track of them. Better to ride two or three obvious choices and say the rest have no real chance. The best part for the media is that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Don’t mention Chris Dodd in the same breath as Hillary, Barack, and Edwards, and people will think he’s not as important. That will keep his poll number low, which will justify calling him a second-tier (read: second-rate) candidate.

There can be no other reason for Joe Biden’s inability to get traction. Sure, he tends to talk too much. He’s also the only candidate who is willing to not only tell you what he wants to do, but how he’s going to do it. Everyone else just says Iraq isn’t their fault. Their plans for getting the troops home have no more substance than Dubya’s. Biden has a plan; has for some time. No one pays it, or him, much mind, because he’s a second-tier candidate.

Why is he second-tier? All he does is good work. He’s been a distinguished senator for going on thirty years. He’s often mentioned as a potential Secretary of State. But he has no hook. He’s not an alcoholic/cripple/gay/bipolar/amputee veteran. He just blends into the background.

Look at the front-runners. Obama’s black. (Sort of.) Hillary’s a woman. (Sort of.) Edwards’s wife has cancer, for Christ’s sake. Can’t get much more distinguishing than that, unless he gets cancer himself, which would disqualify him for health reasons. (Edwards also has nicer hair than anyone has a right to. You get what you pay for.)

The same thing happened in Tuesday’s Republic party debate. Wednesday’s Washington Post coverage spent about six paragraphs on the actual debate, then digressed into an analysis of Fred Thompson’s concurrent web event, and Thompson’s not even a candidate! (Yet.) But he’s easy to get reader traction on, because he’s the lovable, gruff District Attorney on the aforementioned Law and Order. It doesn’t matter who he is or what he says; he has a distinguishing characteristic.

So Joe Biden toils in the fields of the second tier of candidates. He’ll probably be out of the race after the New Hampshire primary. So it goes. Until then, he’s my guy, the best-qualified man for the job, in both expertise and personal conduct. Chris Dodd is also probably a better choice than any of the Big Three. If only anyone took the time to find out.

The Coolest Thing in Sports

Hockey’s Stanley Cup playoffs ended last night with the Anaheim Ducks’ 6-2 victory over the Ottawa Senators. The event was largely ignored by most of this country. Even many sports fans will read this, scratch their heads, and say, “They’re still playing hockey in June?”

Yes, they are, and yes, that’s way too late in the year to be playing hockey. The NHL’s weaknesses as a sports league have been discussed here before, and will be again. Today we’re to bring attention to what the demographic mentioned above missed.

Hockey is, by far, the roughest major sport. (Football isn’t rough; it’s violent. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Players crash each other into the boards and glass and hit each other with sticks barely a generation removed from their roots as weapons. Anaheim’s Chris Pronger was suspended twice during this year’s playoffs for exceeding even hockey’s loose definition of “unnecessary roughness.” Still, after last night’s game ended the series, both teams lined up and shook hands with everyone on the other team. This required the defeated Senators to wait patiently on the ice while Anaheim rejoiced in their victory, the celebration of which was cut short so the Ottawa players didn’t have to wait an unseemly amount of time.

Then they brought out the Cup. Unlike other major sports, hockey’s ultimate reward isn’t presented to some jock-sniffing owner in the locker room so disinterested observers three thousand miles away can watch while those who laid out big dough to actually be there get locked out of the moment. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman (a weasel-faced ferret if there ever was one) hands the cup to the captain of the winning team, who hoists it over his head for the crowd to admire as he skates around the ice. Then he hands it off to another player, then another and another, until everyone with a hand in the victory has had their hands on the Cup.

The expressions on their faces are indescribable. Certain Hall of Famer Teemu Selanne was so overcome he couldn’t speak to NBC’s Pierre Maguire. Maguire, a hockey man all his life, did one of the classiest things I’ve ever seen on television. He threw it back to the booth until Selanne collected himself enough to speak. (Granted, the class bar for television is set pretty low. Still, imagine a local news reporter granting that reprieve to someone watching his house burn down with his family trapped inside.)

One last endearing idiosyncrasy remains. Each player and coach on the winning team gets to own the Cup. It goes wherever he wants it. Scott Neidermayer, after winning the Cup as a New Jersey Devil, chartered a plane to fly him to a mountain in British Columbia for a photograph of him holding the Cup aloft, backlit by the rising sun. Devils goalie Martin Brodeur gathered his childhood friends and played street hockey for the privilege of the winning team hoisting the Cup, Walter Mitty come to life.

The Cup’s visits aren’t always so glorious. It’s been at the bottom of Mario Lemieux’s swimming pool. Mark Messier forgot it in a strip joint. (Permanent attendants have since been hired to accompany the Cup. That doesn’t mean it will never see another strip joint; it just won’t have to spend the night.)

Hockey’s hard to watch on television, although large screen HDTVs help immensely. (That’s why I bought mine in time for the playoffs, and it was worth every cent.) It’s still worth watching, for the intensity of the competition and the sportsmanship and tradition each player carries with him. Are there cheap shots and fights? Sure. In the end, it’s rarely taken personally. That’s why Scott Niedermayer and Daniel Alfredsson embraced last night after an ugly incident on Monday. Niedermayer knows that whatever else happens in his hockey career and after, his name will always be on the Stanley Cup. And there’s nothing cooler than that.

D-Day

George W. Bush says he doesn’t read newspapers. (“Doesn’t?” Or “can’t?”) Maybe someone should read this editorial from today’s Washington Post, although I doubt he’d see the relevance to his current situation. Maybe his father could explain it to him.

A Note on D-Day
Washington Post 6 June 2007

WE DON'T always take notice of this day on the editorial pages, and every time we fail to do so we hear about it from people who have the date -- June 6, 1944 -- burned into their memories and who believe that what Americans and their allies did on D-Day must never be forgotten. They're right, of course, and in these times it seems particularly appropriate to recall one act that would serve today's leaders in every branch of government as lesson and example.

On the day before the invasion of France, the supreme allied commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, wrote a note to be read in the event of the mission's failure and put it in his wallet. It said simply, "Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."

That note is, of course, familiar to those of the generation that best remembers D-Day and World War II. But it is about more than warfare; it speaks to the responsibility of all who would order the affairs of others, then and now.
Eisenhower wasn't the ultimate source of authority on D-Day; he served two presidents during the war, the latter of whom, Harry S. Truman, had that sign on his desk that read, "The Buck Stops Here." But Eisenhower knew what a burden the five stars on his shoulders were -- that it was he who was in charge of planning the operation, he who was entrusted with it and he who was sending thousands of men to fight and die. He knew that it was to them that he was ultimately accountable and to them and their families that his loyalty -- today a word casually and often carelessly used -- was owed.

We were pleased to see, from the Internet, that Eisenhower's brief note of June 1944 is now part of lesson plans offered for many students. It would be a good lesson for their elders as well, some of whom might even want to put it in their wallets.

Appreciating Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan resigned from her position as America’s Conscience this week, moving back to California to try to rebuild the rest of her life. While her resignation posting to DailyKos was somewhat melodramatic, let’s not underestimate Ms. Sheehan’s contribution to the Iraq war debate, as well as to political discourse in this country generally.

Cindy Sheehan will always be linked to another larger than life female – Hurricane Katrina – for exposing George W. Bush’s hollow and morally corrupt infrastructure. Flying over, rather than into, New Orleans after Katrina was callous enough. Dubya’s dismissal of Ms. Sheehan’s protest put a human face on it.

Imagine a single president in our lifetime who would refuse to at least console a Gold Star Mother in that situation. Even if nothing changed, basic human sympathy would have gotten some face time and a kind word to a mother willing to go to the lengths Ms. Sheehan went to. Picture Eisenhower, a military man himself. Kennedy. Even Johnson, ruthless prick that he was, would have had coffee with her and been moved by her suffering.

Does anyone think Bush Forty-One would spurn such an opportunity to show his understanding for the human side of the equation? Remember, right or wrong, he was the man who stopped the massacre on Highway 1 in the first Iraq war, saying it was no longer war, but murder. (Colin Powell might have actually uttered the words; considering Bush’s immediate action, it’s safe to say he concurred.)

Hardliners will dismiss all of the above examples. Here’s one they can’t get past: Ronald Reagan. Does anyone think for a nanosecond that the Great Communicator and National Empathizer wouldn’t have had the Secret Service bring Ms. Sheehan in for a meeting? Any chance a hug wouldn’t have taken place? I never thought much of Reagan as president, but I will stipulate to his humanity in one-on-one situations. There’s too much evidence of it. The overrated luster of Reagan’s presidency continues to be burnished by the disaster that is Bush’s.

As I noted in this blog in the aftermath of Katrina, George W. Bush isn’t just a bad president; he’s a bad person. His entire presidency has been built upon a base of pandering to the lowest qualities in all of us: fear, uncertainty, and playing one group off against the other to achieve short-term goals, damn the long-term consequences.

Cindy Sheehan has sacrificed more than anyone should have to for such an ill-conceived and mismanaged debacle. She could have cut her losses when Bush snuck her son back through Dover Air Force Base. She felt a duty to call attention to the bigger picture, sacrificing her marriage and personal well-being to draw attention to the thousands of individual sacrifices that are too easily lumped into the monolithic number that is the cumulative death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan. (3,475 as of this writing.) One may disagree with her methods, but her willingness to show the courage of her convictions cannot be denied. For that, and for her role in exposing George W. Bush as the duplicitous, rights-usurping megalomaniac he is, she is once again owed the thanks of a grateful nation.

If It Walks Like a Goose

Baseball’s Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a star franchise since its creation in 1998 (best season: 70-91 in 2004; all-time winning percentage: .399), is currently dealing with yet another shining moment. A restraining order has been granted to the wife of rookie outfielder Elijah Dukes, preventing the Rays’ player from having any contact with her. This comes after Dukes barged into the middle school classroom where she is a teacher to confront her. Dukes has also allegedly threatened to kill her and her children, and emailed a photo of a gun to her cell phone.

Dukes was benched for a couple of days, but was in the lineup for the Rays’ weekend games against the White Sox in Chicago. Manager Joe Madden recently asked Dukes to stop staring at umpires in a threatening manner when he disagreed with ball and strike calls.

Dukes is a graduate of Tampa’s Hillsborough High School, alma mater to such illustrious baseball names as Dwight Gooden, Gary Sheffield, and Carl Everett. A check of the Hillsborough High School web site shows the team nickname to be the Terriers. Rumors they are considering changing to the Assholes could not be verified.

All Fecked Up

Feck-less [fek-lis]
-adjective
1. ineffective; incompetent; futile: feckless attempts to repair the plumbing.
2. having no sense of responsibility; indifferent; lazy.

Craze knows how to post pictures to her blog; I’m not as advanced. If I were, I could have made a picture worth the seventeen descriptive words above, and posted a picture of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi side by side. It seems appropriate. They must have pictures of someone, or they wouldn’t have their current jobs.

Dubya won the 2000 election (depending on who you ask) with less than fifty percent of the popular vote, and proceeded to run the country like the Lady of the Lake had directed him to pull Excalibur directly form Dick Cheney’s head. “Dictator” is too strong a word; “king” is not inappropriate. Dubya considered the federal government his personal candy store. The only thing he would have changed would be to allow him to appoint Congress, not that either house gave him much grief.

Pelosi and Reid rode a groundswell of popular sentiment into their current jobs. The country had not been poised for a dramatic change since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. The war in Iraq was the key issue; ethics, pork, and the continual erosion of what we had all assumed to be ineradicable rights were close behind. Democratically majorities were elected in both houses of Congress, largely to effect change in those four areas. Pelosi and Reid were handed mandates to make it so.

Let’s see how they’ve done, six months after the election, with four-plus months of governing under their belts.

Iraq – We were promised no more blank checks for Bush’s war. This week’s emergency war funding appropriation bill showed how that worked out. Dubya rolled and bitch slapped Harry and Nan like a Baltimore pimp reminding two hoes who’s boss.

Ethics – There’s not a lot of noise being made about it, but Democrats are quietly debating to eviscerate their own bill. The end result will be some window dressing they can campaign on; nothing material will change dramatically.

Pork-barrel spending – The death knell for that reform was sounded before the Speaker’s an Majority Leader’s chairs had even been reshaped with new butt prints. Pork was included in the original emergency war funding bill, virtually the first piece of legislation they sent to the White House. “All previous emergency was appropriations had some pork,” they cried in their own (feeble) defense. True, but you were elected to be different.
Constitutional rights – Lots of hearings and hand wringing and finger pointing has taken place. Seen any legislation? This is the one freebie they got, as revoking the sections of the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts wouldn’t cost a cent.

Leadership? Hell, these two political bimbos can’t even follow directions.

Bust Out

Representative democracy is the most fragile form of government. Its survival depends on the good will and intentions of all its participants: voters, elected officials, appointed officials (who are, after all, elected officials once removed), and the hired help of civil servants, plus uniformed military and paramilitary organizations. (Think “police” when you read “paramilitary,” not “Posse Comitatus” or “Aryan League.”)

Disagreements and power shifts are inherent parts of such a democracy. The means through which these take place are what separates a legitimate democracy from a banana republic. Laws and ethics rules can only go so far. A level of common sense fair play must be observed by all participants for any democracy to flourish, or even survive for long.

The levels to which contract has been breached by the Bush Administration and recent Republican “leadership” are only now becoming evident. Today’s case in point: recess appointments.

Recess appointments serve a valuable function, allowing the president to replace sensitive positions while Congress is away, when waiting for their return would be detrimental to the nation’s interest. Not as important as they once were, when gathering a quorum might take a couple of weeks once Congress had scattered to the four corners of the continent, they still serve a valuable function.

It has recently been pointed out that seventeen 2006 recess appointments so blatantly disregarded their accepted purpose as to negate any protestations of good will by the Bush Administration, or their congressional dupes. (Click here for details.)

Creating a bogus forty-one second congressional session for the sole purpose of subverting established laws and principles can most charitably be described as despicable. It is abhorrent to the concepts of fair play and tolerance of opposing viewpoints that democracy depends on for its life blood. Key elements of the Republican party leadership – George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, John Boehner, Dennis Hastert, Karl Rove (unelected, but still culpable) – have treated the world’s longest-standing democracy, previously the gold standard for emerging nations everywhere, as their personal inventory, suitable for dispensing as they alone see fit.

The Sopranos would call it a “bust out.” The Mafia does it all the time. Weasel your way into a legitimate business by any means necessary. Order whatever you want, on credit, with no intention of paying the bills. Treat the inventory as personal possessions. Replace the workers with cronies and relatives. It doesn’t matter that the jobs won’t last long; they’ll just move on to the next feeding trough when the time comes.

Over two hundred years of democracy, treated with the care and respect of David Scatino’s sporting goods store. At least Tony Soprano tried to warn David off.

If It's Good for the Goose

The Literary Correspondent and I often disagree on matters political. This one is merits a lot of thought as something I could sign on to and feel quite good about it.

SOCIAL SECURITY:

(This is worth reading. It is short and to the point.)

Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years. Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social Security and, of course, they do not collect from it.

You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their rare elevation in society. They felt they should have a special plan for themselves. So, many years ago they voted in their own benefit plan. In more recent years, no congressperson has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan.

For all practical purposes their plan works like this:

When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die, except for occasional cost of living adjustments.

For example, Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect to draw $7,800,000.00 (that's Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand Dollars), with their wives drawing $275,000.00 during the last years of their lives.

This is calculated on an average life span for each of those two Dignitaries.

Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more during the rest of their lives. (Editor’s Note: That seems a bit high. Senators currently make $165,200 annually. At that rate it would take 47 years to accumulate the $7.8 million figure notes above. Even allowing for cost-of-living and benefits, I doubt Byrd will be around that long. It’s still a substantial pension plan.)

Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00. NADA..! ZILCH...

This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan. The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds.

From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid) into, every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our employer), we can expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement. (Editor’s Note: Figure based on what an average wage earner has paid into the system. Does not include Medicare. Still, no one’s looking forward to retirement just so they can live on what Social Security will pay them, and everyone will take a pay cut. Except for Congress.)

Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal Senator! Bill Bradley's benefits!

Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made. That change would be to:

Jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us.

Then sit back and see how fast they would fix it.

Editor’s Note: Given their jobs, and responsibility that comes with them, being generous to Congressmen isn’t a bad idea. However, the lives of elected officials have become so far removed from the daily regularities of their constituents, it’s not surprising many heralded “solutions” don’t work well for the general population. Letting Congress live with some of the same consequences of their actions as do the rest of us – let’s throw day care into the mix, as well – might be a nice way of keeping them attached to life as We know it. Getting rid of motorcades would be a nice, and inexpensive, start. Let them see what it’s like to have to live their lives taking into consideration how long it will take to get everywhere they have to go when they’re deciding what to do about transportation funding.

Home of the Brave?

I was recently in a government office building where I saw a sign notifying all employees to remove their identification badges when they left the building.

Has there been a spate of government employee abductions or attacks on the streets of Washington that the mainstream media has covered up? Or is this just another sign of America’s growing timidity? Even worse, is this an attempt by the Bush Administration to keep people just afraid enough to preserve that last, desperate thirty percent of approval?

I thought we were fighting the terrorists in Iraq so they wouldn’t follow us home and make us do things like this Stateside. If the United States is so unsafe that government employees should be afraid to reveal themselves as such outside a secure environment, maybe we should bring the troops home to defend us here.

I know, I’m a liberal pussy. At least I’m not afraid to wear my ID in public.

Irving Godt, 1923 - 2006

Irving Godt died on December 6, 2006. That name won’t mean much to all but a lucky few of you. Those of us who crossed paths with Irv are better off for it, whether we know it or not.

Irv Godt taught music history at Indiana University of Pennsylvania for thirty-three years. Those who had him for an instructor dreaded his class. Irv was notorious for the amount of preparation he demanded from all his students. The supplement he prepared for study purposes was over six hundred pages long. Not the book; the supplement.

I never had him for a class. I had a much better deal. Needing some spending money as a student, I got a job as Irv’s assistant, pulling down $1.75 an hour to help him to prepare and print the supplements, and be the music history departmental gofer. That meant I got to talk with him about a multitude of things beyond music.

I was too young to appreciate him completely. A small gargoyle of a man, Irv’s idea of big yucks was to gather half a dozen lounging students into his office, shut the door, and pass out dirty Elizabethan madrigals for us to sing. Much of what he had to offer went over my nineteen-year-old head. My loss. I should have been paying him, and a lot more than $1.75 an hour.

It always surprised us as students that the odd-looking little man in the basement office had an international reputation as a musicologist. Even today, Googling “Irving Godt” will return over 58,000 hits. He wrote books, gave lectures, and conducted the Pittsburgh Madrigal Society for years. He was far more appreciated away from IUP than in it, but he never left.

It was Irv Godt who taught me that you will never lack for someone to help you if they know you’re willing to do the work yourself. It sounds like common sense looking back thirty-plus years, but no one ever gave me a more valuable, or useful, piece of advice.

I was beyond lucky at IUP to get to work with some wonderful teachers, who had dedicated their lives to training young musicians, with skills and patience far beyond what would be expected from what some disdainfully call the “other” Indiana. Hugh Johnson. Dan DiCicco. Charlie Davis. Bob Lloyd. Charles Casavant. No one there taught me, or anyone willing to listen, more than Irving Godt. He was a rare person, one I hadn’t seen or spoken to (aside from a letter) in over twenty years, but I miss the idea than I won’t have the chance anymore.

Thanks, Dr. Godt.

Inside Man

Among the “benefits” of being fifty-one years old and the owner of a hemorrhoid and family history of colon cancer is the necessity for occasional colonoscopies. (For those of you not well versed in the intricacies of invasive medical procedures, a colonoscopy involves sending a fiber optic tube approximately 75 feet up your ass to take pictures of your innards. Think I exaggerate? It wasn’t your asshole.)

The first impression I got of yesterday’s procedure was the warning that the laxative I had to drink should be ingested through a straw, “to get it past the taste buds.” Doesn’t that sound promising? I hadn’t tasted anything this nasty since Lady Voldemort and I went our separate ways.

There’s more to do than just drinking Liquid Plumber for Humans. My pre-procedure fast lasted forty-two hours. That’s a long time for a 240-pound man. Calling it a “fast” is a misnomer; time had not moved this slowly since I left Lady Voldemort. (I know, that’s two paragraphs in a row. Having things shoved up my ass must bring her to mind.)

Forty-two hours doesn’t seem like much compared to Gandhi’s hunger strikes, but look at the context. Gandhi didn’t weigh a buck-twenty-five, even if his diaper was wet. I need twice as much food just to maintain weight. Plus, food obviously takes a more elevated place in my pantheon of pleasures than his. (That’s why I weigh 240, right?)

Aside from that, what did Gandhi eat, and how much of a sacrifice was it to skip three, four, or fifty meals? To me, anything eaten that doesn’t have at least some meat in it is a snack, not a meal. My relatively brief fast allowed cattle to sleep easier than anything since the advent of Chick Fil-A.

So it’s the morning of the procedure. I’m starving, and my butt’s been wiped more times than Tom Cruise has been asked to come out of the closet. I talk to the doctor for a few minutes, and he steps out of sight and gets quiet. For all I know he left the room. Just about the time I start to wonder when the hell they’re going to get this show on the road, the nurse offers me something to drink.

It’s over. I missed it. The anesthesia was so quick and so good, I didn’t even have to count backward from one hundred. If I did, I don’t remember it. Nothing to complain about here, right? An invasive procedure rendered so painless I missed it. Couldn’t be better.

Maybe. Problem is, did I get scoped at all? Sure, they gave me color pictures. What difference does that make? Could you pick your colon out of a photo array? For all I know, they could have played tic-tac-toe on my bare ass with felt-tipped pens. It’s not like I can see back there.

It’s all about trust. (Let’s face it, if pulling down your pants and allowing strangers to knock you out without any supervision isn’t all about trust, I don’t know what is.) The good news is that recent advances in technology have allowed them to make the fiber optic tubes both longer, and more flexible. So now I not only know my colon is clean, I don’t have any cavities, either.

Be Careful What You Ask For

Barack Obama has spent the past several months becoming the unstoppable force du jour in the Democratic Party’s presidential field. Obama makes a good candidate: he’s young, he’s bright, his speeches don’t sound like we heard it all before (which is what I think Joe Biden meant when he called Obama “articulate”).

Obama’s a person of color, but not so much color he’ll offend too many in the powerful White Bread voting bloc. Some of his alleged peers don’t think he’s black enough; if they’d prefer four more years of the Republic Party’s “compassion,” less power to them.

There’s one thing to consider before the Obama train leaves the station. It’s a name not often associated with him, belonging to a person who can provide an important lesson on the pitfalls of voting for someone before you know enough about him: John McCain.

I’ll admit to having been in the tank for McCain. I voted for him twice in 2000: I crossed over to vote in the Republic primary, then wrote him in during the general election. I admired his straight talk, and his willingness to break with party orthodoxy. Six months ago, I couldn’t wait to vote for him again.

Boy, is my face red.

McCain has devoted 2007 to proving he is the basest kind of political whore, so overcome by ambition he’ll say anything, to anybody, if he thinks there’s a vote in it. Hillary Clinton is justly vilified for her constant triangulation; McCain has slipped into the realm of quadrangulation.

First he sucked up to those who stabbed him in the back in 2000. “Good politics,” was the justification. “He’ll tack toward the center for the general election.” Wrong answer. What made McCain special was his ability to portray himself as apart from politics as usual. That’s why so many Democrats crossed over for him. It’s a sad commentary on the American electorate that we only remember what a candidate said five minutes ago, and twenty years ago. What is said during the primaries to get the fringes to vote – from the left or right – apparently doesn’t count come November.

Then there was last week’s horrifying interview with the New York Times. When asked for his position on the Iraq war, McCain said, “I have no Plan B,” which meant, in that context, no alternative to victory.

McCain elaborates in the next paragraph. Quoting from the Times :

He said that if the Bush administration's plan had not produced visible signs of progress by the time a McCain presidency began, he might be forced—if only by the will of public opinion—to end American involvement in Iraq.
"I do believe that history shows us Americans will not continue to support an overseas engagement involving the loss of American lives for an unlimited period unless they see some success," he said. "And then, when they run out of patience, they will demand that we get out."

McCain will cut and run if politics demands. How is this different from the Democrat’s "reckless"… game of "small politics" that "gives them an advantage in the next election" while denying "our soldiers the means to prevent an American defeat." (Excerpt taken from Slate magazine, quoting McCain’s recent speech at VMI.) It’s not. So much for character.

I’m not comparing Obama to McCain; that would be worse than racism. I’m just saying I’d like to see him around for a bit to gauge the level of his ambition before going all in on him.

Politics at Its Worst

Is there anything lower than Hillary Clinton’s contortionist triangulations? Or John McCain’s outright duplicity on the war? Pikers, both of them. Rank amateurs.

Are you already growing tired of the 2008 presidential campaign, even though it’s only mid-April of 2007? Sick of the self-serving and disingenuous statements each candidate feels obligated to trot out on a regular basis? That’s nothing compared to what you’re about to be subjected to until January of 2013, when the Baseball Hall of Fame votes on whether Barry Bonds should be included.

A seminal event occurred last January that transformed Barry’s personality. (An external event is the only thing seminal left to Barry, given the years of steroid abuse.) What could it be? The birth of a child? The death of someone close to him? A near-tragic experience of his own? We’re getting warmer. Hall of Fame voters passed over Mark McGwire for admission.

On paper, McGwire was more than qualified. 583 home runs, 12 All-Star games, 3 Silver Slugger Awards. He led his league in home runs 4 times and is the all-time leader in fewest at bats per home run. (Bonds is third, behind Babe Ruth.) That’s an HOF resume, but McGwire didn’t get close. Why not?

The S-word.

McGwire looked like an idiot testifying before Congress, parsing his words like a Bush press secretary. He was caught with the androstenedione, and hemmed and hawed his way around admitting to more extensive steroid use. The media types who vote for the Hall had a moment of righteous indignation and voted him out. What will happen next time is anyone’s guess.

Imagine Barry’s plight. Poster child for the symptoms of steroid abuse. Under investigation of perjury charges. Quite possibly the biggest asshole in the known world. (Face it, it’s either him or Dick Cheney.) Treated sportswriters like something to be wiped off the bottom of his shoe for years. Didn’t need them. His numbers spoke for him.

Now McGwire’s example shows numbers alone might not be enough. Oops.

Meet soft and fuzzy Barry. Kissing up to writers, though he probably knows which ones have votes, and which don’t. Talking about all the great memories he has of Pittsburgh, and how he would have stayed had the Pirates’ ownership had a clue.

That should cinch his perjury charge right there. Barry Bonds couldn’t get out of The Burgh fast enough. Shot off his mouth every chance he got. The Burgh didn’t exactly rip Barry’s clothes trying to get him to stay. After Barry’s concentrated bridge burning effort, capped off by the infamous Children’s Hospital ball-signing fiasco, the city was happy to settle for booing him on his returns as a visiting Giant.

The Barry Bonds Image Resurrection Tour will be at a ballpark near you throughout the summer. You may also look forward to repeated media sightings after he finally pulls the plug and starts the five-year countdown toward HOF eligibility.

Remember when Deion Sanders said the NFL should change the name of the cornerback position to Deion? That’s the relationship Barry has to “asshole.” Don’t let the new stump speech fool you.

Not Much to Add

Here's a frightening look into what's being done in our name by our government. I challenge anyone to debate the validity of this practice with me in comments.

Just so long as it's not done anonymously. This guy was willing to use his name; the Post held it back. Anyone willing to stand behind what he says here can at least leave a handle.

The Second Greatest Insult

You know what hurts? When your Spousal Equivalent adds someone to The List who’s standing right in front of you.

Last week the Crazy Like Me Correspondent and I went to a book signing by mystery author Robert Crais. His books are favorites of ours, and I’d heard good things about his personal appearances.

Crais started writing for television shows like Hill Street Blues, Cagney and Lacey, and Miami Vice thirty years ago. He’s been exclusively a novelist since 1987.

That’s the resume of a man in his middle fifties, right? I always figured the youngish-looking stud on his book jackets was the product of an old or airbrushed photograph, recycled to protect the author’s delicate vanity.

Imagine my surprise when a trim, compact guy who could have passed for forty walked into the room. He had smile lines around his eyes, probably because he smiles so much. He was witty, funny (not always the same thing), and self-effacing without the affectation of false modesty. I, of course, am none of the above, and immediately hated him with a zest and vigor only a mature and dedicated misanthrope can attain.

We weren’t ten minutes into his appearance when Craze nudged me and whispered, “He’s on The List.”

(Editor’s Note: For those of you not hip to The List, each partner is allowed up to ten celebrities with whom a casual sexual encounter would not be considered cheating. It can’t be someone either of you already knows, and must be a person of whose celebrity others would be aware. The List is a living document. My current incarnation includes Nicole Kidman, Elle McPherson, Cate Blanchett (Australia is my dream vacation), Emma Thompson, Uma Thurman, and couple of others whose names escape me but I’d know them if I saw them.)

Adding someone to the list while he’s standing less than thirty feet away, separated by only fours rows of people so bereft of social life that a book signing is high Friday night entertainment, is gauche. Telling me about it in real time only adds insult to injury. I’m going to have to watch her every second now.

The greatest insult? When your hand falls asleep while masturbating. Don’t ask.

A Date Which Will Live in Infamy

The first day at a new gig is always stressful. (No, I haven’t changed jobs. I’m at two years and counting, nearing my longest tenure for any position that didn’t have “unemployed,” or “musician,” or both associated with it.) Monday was my first day at [Government Agency Name Redacted]. Clearing security, getting a badge, trying to accurately put names to at least ten percent of the new faces – all took priority over remembering my hat and gloves. It wasn’t that cold when I left the house.

It was when I got back to the car. The first day at [Government Agency Name Redacted] went well, thanks to being properly prepared, and not becoming distracted by little things like my hat and gloves. Or turning off my lights when I parked my car. You know how most people, when the car doesn’t start, try it three, four, nine times, in case it wasn’t really dead, just sleeping? Not this time. One try was enough. Not a sound. It was like trying to start a brick.

Fortunately for me, the Crazy Like Me Correspondent was parked close by. (She may be Crazy Like Me, but she is definitely Smarter Than Me.) We took two cars because I started work before she did. We came back together because the Beltway Correspondent and the Music Education Correspondent were waiting at the latter’s home with a hot meal. AAA would be available later. The car could wait.

The Music Education Correspondent has eclectic taste in food. Last time she made what appeared to be Mongolian Yakdick in a sterno sauce. Tasty, if a little chewy. Knowing I was about to spend at least an hour freezing my hindquarters off waiting for the tow truck, I was looking forward to consuming the hindquarters of some unfortunate quadruped to make it a break-even proposition.

The joke was on me. The MEC decided Monday was a good night for a bacchanal of vegetarianism. Spinach lasagna. A salad with vegetables I couldn’t even identify. I found out later some of them were beets. Russian peasants ate beets to keep from starving at Stalingrad. I doubt George W. Bush has our troops fighting and dying in Iraq to preserve our right to eat beets. (I have no idea why he still has our troops fighting and dying in Iraq, but I’m willing to bet eating beets isn’t it.)

A chocolate dessert might hold me over. It would have, too, had there been any. Plum pudding. Flaming plum pudding. The MEC got a little carried way with the igniter fluid (or the “accelerant,” as the arson investigator put it) and we almost had to call Red Adair to put the thing out.

(It’s our turn to host next time. Here’s the menu: Pork cops stuffed with ground beef, covered with thick gravy. A side of bratwurst, boiled in a light beer sauce, then seared over a hot grill. A salad of thinly-sliced salami, pepperoni, cappicola; provolone and mortadella cheese, with finely crumbled feta, topped by a single slice of onion as a garnish. Dessert will be frozen meatsicles.)

I called AAA; a truck would be there within ninety minutes. Craze drops me off, and I sit. I can’t read, because there’s no light. I have a flashlight, but I’m saving the battery in case I need it to signal the tow truck in this big ass parking lot. (Only smart decision I made all day.) At least I’m out of the wind, which is gusting hard enough to shake the car.

And it’s cold. Not Chicago freeze-the-hair-in-your-nose-together cold, but cold for this area. Twenty, with luck. Just as I wondered if I should have accepted the Crazy Like – I mean Smarter Than Me Correspondent’s offer to borrow the blanket from her car, the tow truck arrives.

Two nice guys, made even nicer by how happy I was to see them. I palmed a twenty for a tip while they got their little jump box out of the truck. I’d never seen one before. About the size of a small briefcase, with one end of a set of jumper cables sticking out of it. Hook it up, turn the key, and the car starts.

And it did, too. They advised me to let it run, charge things up a little. I’m game, even though standing in the wind is giving my ears the supple quality of carved gargoyles. (Forgot my hat, too, remember?) Just as I’m ready to call it fixed, one of them decides to shut the car off and re-start it, just to be on the safe side.

Good idea, with one hitch. The car wouldn’t start. It clicked like it was thinking about it, but no dice. Whether it was because of an improper charge, or because they left it hooked up too long to my parasite of a car, the jump box is now an inert lump. Even worse, their confidence in the jump box was such that they don’t carry cables anymore. There I sat, not five feet from a tow truck battery that could jump start the Eisenhower, and Sling Blade and his partner don’t have any cables. My erstwhile saviors spent twenty minutes flagging down passing motorists. They even stopped another tow truck. I could hear him laughing all the way over at my car.

They called AAA and asked for another truck. AAA called me back to apologize, and tell me one would be there in half an hour. He’d better, because all this calling back and forth, plus extended usage at work while my phone got set up, has drained my cell’s battery. If Plan B doesn’t work, I can’t even call home for a ride.

Plan B arrived, the car started, and I arrived at home a mere fifteen hours after I left. I take great pride for showing enough restraint that Craze didn’t feel compelled to move out. This restraint is a relatively new addition to my repertoire. (Ask the Sole Heir’s mother, or Lady Voldemort.) I have to go now. I’m having my gloves surgically attached to my wrists.

For Want of a Tooth

The following appeared on MSNBC.com today:

Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

If his family had not lost its Medicaid.

If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.

If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.

By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died.

To paraphrase John Scalzi’s excellent blog, I’m not going to complain about Medicaid, or the lack of dentists who accept it. I’m not going to rip the government (federal, state, or federal), nor criticize his family for letting things slide so far.

In a nation of such obvious wealth, blame need not be assessed for such an event. It’s a sin. Period.

Another Adherent to the Hypocritic Oath

The following lede appeared in Yahoo News last Thursday:

The lawyer for a former Baptist church leader who had spoken out against homosexuality said Thursday the minister has a constitutional right to solicit sex from an undercover policeman.

I think “former” may be the key word there. The Constitution may be mute on this point, but I hope his congregation – excuse me, former congregation – has something to say about it.

Toensing Up for a Fight

Every so often some allegedly responsible and respected authority goes so far off the rails that common sense demands a public flogging. Today’s subject is Victoria Toensing, described by the Washington Post “a deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, [currently] a Washington lawyer.” In other words, a member of the Republic Party.

Ms. Toensing fancies herself not just a brilliant legal scholar, but clever. Her op-ed piece, “Trial in Error,” is written in the form of a legal brief, defending Scooter Libby from as nefarious a conspiracy of ne’er-do-wells as have trod the earth since The New Deal.

According to her screed, if Libby is on trial, then so should the following: Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, the CIA, Joe Wilson, the media, Ari Fleischer, Richard Armitage, and the Justice Department.

On what grounds? Fleischer, for doing just as Libby is alleged to have done, lie under oath about who he told what about Valerie Plame. DOJ, for abdicating their responsibility by appointing Fitzgerald in the first place. Everyone else? For ignoring what she considers to be a time-honored tradition of ignoring perjury if the lies don’t cover up a crime.

Her logic: Plame was not undercover, so no one was legally prohibited from talking about her. Since talking about her was not a crime, lying under oath about talking about her is also not a crime. Therefore, Libby stands unjustly accused.

Toensing’s premise that Plame was not undercover is refuted in tedious detail here. It’s the lesser of her offenses, a mere misstatement of facts. Republicans have made a science of that for several years now. It’s the entire premise of her piece that offends common sense. If Libby is unjustly accused because there’s no perjury without a precedent crime, then what the fuck was the rationale for impeaching Bill Clinton?

I occasionally back away from political comment because even I think I sound like a broken record. (For those of you too young to remember broken records, ask someone.) Still, the disingenuousness of Republican comment over the past six years continues unabated, and must be contested. We all know what happens when the same lies are told often enough and shrilly enough. And we all know what happens after that.

What's in a Name?

I taught a class for an internet computer application several months ago, and a discussion emerged about Apache Web Servers. For those less familiar with the inner workings of the web, Apache is a common, and well-respected, software that actually hosts and serves up the web sites you see when you’re surfing.

One class member asked repeatedly and pointedly why it was named Apache. I didn’t know, but inferred from his tone and insistence that he was somewhat put out, if not offended.

My curiosity being what it is, I found out where the name came from, and emailed him the following, from Apache’s entry in Wikipedia:

The author claims the name was initially chosen as a catchy name in order to be original, but the most widespread interpretation (which almost immediately surfaced) is that the name comes from the fact that when it was developed in early 1995, it consisted of changes in the code to the most popular HTTP server of the time, NCSA HTTPd 1.3 and was therefore "a patchy" server. However, in the FAQ on the server's official site, it is stated: "The name 'Apache' was chosen from respect for the Native American Indian tribe of Apache (Indé), well-known for their superior skills in warfare strategy and their inexhaustible endurance.

He graciously thanked me for my reply, including this phrase in his email:

In one aspect it seems like it could be honorable to the Apache nation that the company chose the name and in another it seems kind of insensitive.

I’m tempted to write back to tell him further research has shown the name was originally supposed to be Godless Dirt Worshipper, but that didn’t test market well, especially in Oklahoma and the Great Plains.

This is why I don’t have any friends.

A Glutton For Punishment

Yesterday I took Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to task because he lacked the huevos and chutzpah to do anything like what Republicans just did unto him back when we were losing civil liberties faster than Ford loses money. Imagine my surprise this morning when I received the following email, from none other than Senator Reid himself:

Dear Friend, (Bad start. A man only calls another man “friend” in two circumstances: he’s a Quaker, or he’s thinking of kicking the other guy’s ass. Picture Richard Boone in Hombre.)

Senator Reid continues:

There are very few men and women in America who believe the Iraq war is not worthy of debate. They are the Republican Members of the United States Senate. Yesterday, they did our country a grave disservice…

By voting against a real debate on Iraq, Republicans voted in favor of the President's plan to escalate the war. Numerous Republican Senators are on the record opposing this escalation. Do these Republicans stand with the President or do they stand with the American people?

Help me send a message to Republicans in the Senate.

Help you? How about send it for you, since you have already failed. If one message came out of the recent election, it’s that the American people want a debate on the Iraq war. The Elephant Men saw a chance to snooker Reid, and took it. I’d be madder if it indicated anything beyond their superiority in playing the Senate rules game.

I didn’t email any Republican senators. I’m not a contributor, and many of them are already ignoring their constituents. The guy I wrote to was Harry Reid, in a reply to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee email I received:

Dear Senator Reid,

I have a question. Can someone please explain to me how the Republican minority can hold up a non-binding resolution through the exercise of Parliamentary procedure, and, I presume, the threat of a filibuster, while you were unable to take similar action during your tenure in the minority to halt (or even slow down) the Military Commissions Act, the suspension of habeas corpus, and various other offenses to our Constitutional rights, and to common sense?

I am regularly accosted for contributions by enthusiastic, eager, young Democrats here on the streets of Washington. A life-long Democrat, I'm telling you what I tell them: I'll not give a dime to see the party be run in the same feckless manner as we have been forced to become accustomed.

I liked using feckless. It almost sounds dirty. Not nearly as offensive as seeing “Majority Leader” and “Harry Reid” strung together, though.

The Peter Principle - A Case Study

The Democratic Party today announced a plea for someone, anyone, to please forward a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order to Harry Reid, c/o The U.S. Senate Majority Leader’s Office. It seems the Republican minority has already stifled what Senator Reid considered his primary order of business: passing a non-binding resolution.

It may be recalled that Senator Reid, until recently Senate Minority Leader, was unable to muster such a parliamentary challenge to the Military Commissions Act, the more onerous provisions of the Patriot Act, of the suspension of habeas corpus. Looks like the Majority Leader job may be too much for him, and he’d like his old job back.

Sheer Genius

Among the many things I learned as a musician is an appreciation of talent. Hard work is indispensable for success, but it’s not enough. People who are inordinately successful have talent.

Pete Rose probably worked harder than any baseball player ever. He still didn’t hit .303 without eye-hand coordination most of us can only imagine. Doc Severinsen will be 80 in July. The amount of time he’s had a mouthpiece actually touching his lips can probably be measured in decades. He was also the trumpet champion of Oregon when he was nine years old.

I envy those who have a talent I’d like, but lack. (Pete Rose and Doc Severinsen come to mind.) I try to make the most of the talents I have, and have little regard for those who waste their own gifts. This is why I stand in awe of Virginia Delegate Frank Hargrove.

Insulting people isn’t as easy as it looks. I’ve written and said quite a few things that pissed people off, but rarely has anyone felt truly insulted, even when I make an effort. That takes true insensitivity. Delegate Hargrove managed to offend and insult two diverse groups of people in virtually consecutive sentences last week. (Three groups, if you count people with a brain in their heads.)

Virginia’s history of sensitivity toward those unlike themselves (read: not white Protestants) is distinctive. Shamed into making the third Monday in January a holiday to coincide with the Federal Martin Luther King Day, Virginia created the Lee-Jackson-King holiday so two Confederate icons wouldn’t feel left out while those boys celebrated that Nigruh’s birthday. (The holidays were finally split in 2000.)

Before the Virginia Legislature is a bill that, if passed, would officially apologize to blacks for Virginia’s two hundred plus years of slavery. Common sense dictates any comments be kept innocuous, especially for Republicans fresh off of George Allen’s “macaca” gaffe. Delegate Hargrove apparently has his own definition of innocuous.

“I personally think that our black citizens should get over it,” Hargrove said of slavery. “Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?”

Oh, baby. A two-bagger. Regardless of your sentiments on either comment, I think we can all agree that for an elected official to say that, on the record, is bad taste at a Bushian level. As an outright display of public stupidity, it’s absolutely Sharpton-esque.

I bow to a master. This grasshopper has so much to learn, and so little time.

The Eyes of the Beholder

The Outfit – A Collective of Chicago Crime Writers is an informative and entertaining blog co-written by seven crime fiction writers. Each has a unique perspective and writing style. The posts come in an essentially random progression as each writer latches onto a topic of interest. The end result is an potpourri of everything from fiction to writing analysis to home improvement tips.

Earlier this week, Kevin Guilfoile wrote this thought-provoking piece on how all writing is subject to interpretation. The post itself invites interpretation, and the odds are excellent what I took away from it is not what Guilfoile intended. Still, he touched on a couple of pet peeves that limbered up my fingers for the keyboard.

During Guilfoile’s recent publicity tour, an interviewer started riffing on the intricate and detailed Biblical references in his book. Guilfoile was impressed with her perspicacity and insight, not to mention her knowledge of arcane Biblical references. (Arcane to me; they might be common knowledge to someone of less heretical bent.) He admitted that she was absolutely right, with one caveat: he hadn’t been thinking of any of that when he wrote it.

This episode points out an old gripe of mine that kept me from reading fiction for twenty years. I still bear scars from a seventh-grade English class, where I was tasked with finding the “theme” of a Sherlock Holmes story. “Why did Doyle write this story?” the teacher asked. “What is he trying to say?” I gave her the standard twelve-year-old’s tripe along the lines of “crime doesn’t pay.” Subsequent (and shallow) scholarship taught me what I should have written: Doyle wrote the story for money. At some deep, possibly subconscious level, he was saying he needed – or wanted – more money than he had. Sherlock was a purely commercial enterprise to Doyle; he didn’t like his greatest creation much. While all good commercial fiction has depth to it, implying too much profundity does a disservice to both writer and audience. Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke.

Guilfoile later discusses a review of a book by an unnamed author. The critic (thankfully, also unnamed) unleashes this burst of literary opulence as part of his praise:

To read this book with anything like comprehension, a person has to be, like its polymath author, both intellectual and hip, a person mature and profoundly well read and yet something of a true marginal, a word-nerd with the patience of Job. In my charitable estimate that would describe about five out of 500 people that I know.

Guilfoile himself likes the book, and its author, so don’t be too put off by the critic’s snobbery. The example does bring us to the second of my vexations: the idea that great literature can only be appreciated by at best one percent of the reading population. (I’m no Stephen Hawking, but five divided by 500 is one percent.) Since I’m sure the critic only knows people already in the upper strata of intellectual accomplishment, we’re talking maybe the top one percent of that one percent.

How does that make it great? It can be argued for literature to be great, its message should resonate with more than a handful of people out of a full Airbus, or it becomes somewhat of a masturbatory exercise for intellectuals to trade snarky comments to each other about how dumb everyone else is. Writing to be understood by a small, self-defining group is more likely to make a good textbook than great literature.

This phenomenon is not confined to writing. I have a Masters degree in music, and it used to put me off when people unaware of my education would comment on a piece of music I didn’t care for in such a manner as to imply I just wasn’t elevated enough to get it. Now I think it’s funny, their way of self-perpetuating a sense of being better than someone else, or being smarter, or hipper. It ignores a simple fact: anyone can write a book that no one understands. Writing doesn’t become art because you have to think to read it, but because you’ll think about it.

Thanks to Mr. Guilfoile for writing something that passed that test. I don’t know if these are the thoughts he had in mind, and I hope he doesn’t think I missed the boat altogether. But, as his post so eloquently states, that’s the chance he takes when he lets others read his stuff.

Clueless Near Seattle

It is often said that small business is the bulwark of the American economy. If that is true, this post falls under the category Good News/Bad News.

The following quote was attributed to Idaho restaurant owner Rob Elder in the current issue of Newsweek:

"At $5.15 an hour, I get zero applicants-or maybe a guy with one leg who wouldn't pass a drug test."

Rob is lamenting the fact that neighboring Washington state’s minimum wage is $7.98/hour, the highest in the nation. It is implied that he welcomes the prospect of Congress increasing the minimum wage nationally, allowing him to better compete with Washington business for qualified employees.

The good news is that Rob proves not all small business owners have a knee-jerk reaction against raising the minimum wage.

The bad news is that it has obviously never occurred to him that the minimum wage is just that: a minimum. There’s nothing to prevent him from paying more. It looks like Rob considers his employees to minimum wage earners – whatever the minimum wage might be – and unfit to be paid any more than he absolutely has to.

Maybe that’s another part of the reason people aren’t lined up around the block to work for him.

Older Than Dirt. Dumber, Too.

Lost in the current Iraq turmoil is the Bush Administration’s perverse lack of honesty, intellectual or otherwise, in every facet of government. Take the National Park Service. “What possible pervasive disingenuousness could hinder the Park Service?” might be among the questions that spring to mind. Just don’t ask who old the Grand Canyon is, or how it was created.

Those not asking can currently buy Grand Canyon: A Different View, by Tom Vail, at any of the park’s book stores. The book explains how the canyon was created by the great flood. You remember, the one where Noah saved two of each living creature, including, apparently, all 900,000 species of insects. Poor Noah must have got them all, since nothing has evolved and God quit Creating after the first Saturday.

Aside from foisting a book of such dubious scholarship (read: none) on the public, park rangers current labor under a gag order much stronger than anything Scooter Libby’s grand jury heard of. The official response of all National Park Service employees to questions about the Grand Canyon’s age is, “No comment.”

An e-mail recently circulated, allegedly written by well-known social commentator Ben Stein. (Stein was the boring science teacher in The Wonder Years, and had a highly entertaining game show on Comedy Central for several years.) In the e-mail, Stein laments how those who believe in God in America are under daily assault from the forces of Evil.

Which America is he living in? Certainly not the one where right-wing religious zealots control government policy on matters ranging from the age of the Grand Canyon to Shrub’s Messianic insistence on his right to wage war against any Muslims, wherever he finds them.

The relative triviality of the Grand Canyon controversy is more than valid. Here’s the equation it represents: science has a pile of evidence as high as the Grand Canyon is deep, and fundamentalist Christians have the Bible.

The Bible failure to mention the creation of the Grand Canyon is damning in itself. You’d think God would be all over getting credit for that one. It’s a keeper, much better work than His work on leeches, or New Jersey.

Here’s something to ponder for those who assert the Bible’s infallibility: God didn’t write it. Each book was passed down for hundreds of years by word of mouth and translated God knows how many times. Even if we concede it was originally passed from God’s lips to Moses’ (Abraham’s, Noah’s, take your pick’s) ears, can anyone look you in the eye and say nothing got changed? Books that used to be in the Bible are no longer there. Were they no less the Word of God in their time?

Translation is a whole other issue, as so much of translation is in the mind of the translator. Translating anything word-by-word rarely, if ever, gives the true meaning of what was intended. Interpretations have to be made, and anything subject to interpretation is open to argument. Witness figure skating judges. Or Hall of Fame voters.

Even punctuation comes into play. Punctuation is a relatively recent invention; early Bibles had none. Observe the difference the placement of a simple comma can have, from Lynne Truss’ excellent book on punctuation, Eats, Shoots and Leaves:

“Verily, I say unto thee, This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”
And:
“Verily I say unto thee this day, Thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”
Now, huge doctrinal differences hang on the placing of this comma. The first version, which is how Protestants interpret the passage (Luke, xxiii, 43), lightly skips over the whole unpleasant business of Purgatory and takes the crucified thief straight to Heaven with Our Lord. The second promises Paradise at some later date (to be confirmed, as it were) and leaves Purgatory nicely in the picture for Catholics, who believe in it.

So enough about the absolute infallibility of the Bible. Christians themselves can’t even agree on what’s in it.

Don’t confuse a belief in the Higher Power of your choice with religion. Religion is a set of arbitrary rules, created by humans, primarily to keep other humans in line. Do you really think it’s a coincidence that Christianity is fraught with rules laid down by a relatively few educated, powerful, and wealthy men, most of which involve telling people living in shit up to their necks that when they die everything gets better, and those living the lives of luxury (and keeping the losers in shit up to their neck) will get their come-uppance in the end? Considering the general state of ignorance and poverty in what the heyday of religion (now known as The Dark Ages), how hard a sell do you think that was?

“But it’s faith,” they argue. “You have to believe.” Faith, as practiced by contemporary religious types (Christian, Muslim, take your pick), consists of being confronted with the pile of evidence mentioned above and saying, “Are you going to believe me, or your lying eyes?” True Believers argue for the fallibility of science by pointing out how scientific ideas change (evolve) over time, asking how anyone can be sure they’re right this time. Asking is the whole point of science.
Knowledge is an elusive quarry; every incremental step just brings us closer. To accept things on faith alone would have us still believing the Universe rotates around the Earth.

Faith is the final refuge of those who don’t want to think anymore. Life is often a confounding series of seemingly random events where the good guys don’t always win. Good people get sick and die; bad guys prosper. It can be difficult to accept all of this without wanting to think there’s a greater plan that we can’t begin to grasp from our remote perspective. Believe what you want; it’s still a (relatively) free country. Just don’t make it public policy that yours is the only “right” way. Don’t even think about compelling me to think, act, or believe like you.

There’s no need to step away from the lightning bolt I have earned by my blasphemy. There’s no blasphemy here. Heresy, sure. I can live with heresy. A little heresy is a good thing. No man is infallible. Every authority could use some constructive questioning from time to time.

The Grand Canyon is as old as dirt. Those who would argue it’s not are as dumb.

January Faces Both Ways

The news has picked up after the holidays, and the primary question for any blogger is, “Where to start?”

The now-minority Republicans are whining about the trampling of their rights by the big, mean Democrats. A few Republican pipsqueaks even re-submitted the Minority Bill of Rights, first circulated by then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in 2004, when she was trying to get then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay's cowboy boot off her throat. That request was laughed aside. Now the Prada pump is on the other foot, and the GOP (which now stands for Grumpy Old Pussies) want the same treatment they denied Democrats.

What's fair? Pelosi and her peers promised bipartisanship, so some accommodation is in order. Worse things could happen than for the rule changes to be delayed a few weeks, if only to show Doughboy Denny Hastert and his merry band of midgets how the other half lives, and that the status quo ante could be revived by a 233-202 vote any time the Republicans become too obstructionist.

Shrub took his turn at disingenuous behavior by calling for Congress to cut spending and balance the budget by 2012. This tasks the new majority party (not his) with the Herculean task of cleaning up his party’s mess, while ensuring not much can happen until his successor is stuck with the heavy lifting. Conveniently overlooked is the fact that the budget is whacked in the first place because the Republicans simultaneously cut taxes, increased spending, and started a war. This trifecta had never been attempted in American history. Now we know why.

Speaking of American history, Keith Ellison was sworn in as the nation’s first Muslim lawmaker. His decision to take his oath on the Koran sparked an outburst of conservative indignity unseen since the advent of Freedom Fries in the congressional cafeteria.

Those who so staunchly (and irrationally) protest any perceived affront to either the Declaration of Independence or our “Christian Values” consistently forget one thing: the man who wrote the Declaration wasn’t a Christian. Thomas Jefferson was a Deist, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who sees the wide divergence between the wish for religious freedom expressed in the Declaration and its current state of practice. In a rare example of justice, Ellison was sworn in with his left hand resting on Jefferson’s personal copy of the Koran.

Shrub also continued his unconstitutional practice of nullifying duly-passed statutes with signing statements. This time he “amended” a law prohibiting the government from opening private mail to read, “Unless I want to.” (Silly me, I thought this kind of thing was already covered by the Fourth Amendment.) Almost as bad, no one in the “watchdog” media noticed this for over two weeks, as the journalist who usually reads them is off writing a book. Hopefully it’s on the constitutionality of signing statements.

After a week like that, George F. Will advocating a minimum wage of $0.00 barely rates any space at all. Will is one of those columnists with whom I rarely agree, but often makes me think, and sometimes even changes my mind. Occasionally he writes something so dumb, it’s not worthy of comment. This is one of those times.

2007 is off and running. Let’s hope it’s not just a matter of “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”