Enough

Hillary Clinton has become an embarrassment to her party and to this nation. Not to herself; she is well beyond anything that relates to shame.

Yesterday’s comment in South Dakota to justify remaining in a race she cannot win probed a new low, even for her. Her lack of an apology has shown she is less interested in the welfare of her party, or this nation, than she is in getting she wants. Her only possible reason to remain in the race is because she’s Hillary Clinton, and she’s entitled.

She’ll make every effort to become the victim again. The misogyny cries have been loud the past few weeks, even though no responsible voice has uttered any such comments. The usual suspects—crackpot, rednecks, Fox News anchors—made the usual sophomoric arguments; no one who might have voted for her listened to them, anyway. Playing the victim is an unorthodox way of petitioning for a position of leadership; some might consider such a tactic unworthy.

It wasn’t working, so she raised the stakes to martyrdom: she’s staying in case something happens to Obama. What might happen to him? Lots of things; since she brought up assassination, she may consider one of the possibilities to be some hard-working, white American busting a cap in his uppity black ass. Has it never occurred to her that some of her less enlightened supporters—in, let’s say, West Virginia or Kentucky, where she currently bases her claim to be “America’s Candidate”—may consider such comments akin to King Henry II’s comment to his nobles regarding Thomas à Becket: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

As if this wasn’t bad enough, her “apology” shows more about her than the original gaffe. When Mike Huckabee made a tasteless Obama assassination joke last week, his apology was immediate, and contained the sentence, “I apologize that my comments were offensive.” Not “might have been construed as offensive,” or, “some may have taken offense.” Were offensive. Period.

Compare that to Hillary’s apology: “I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma…was in any way offensive…”

If? If? What meets her definition of “offensive,” if that does not? While not as callous as George W. Bush’s numerous statements on the Iraq War or Hurricane Katrina, it certainly meets any sapient human standard of giving offense. The lack of even that scintilla of self-awareness alone disqualifies her as a worthy candidate. I can’t wait to see how her supporters try to justify her as vice presidential material now. “She’s the best qualified person to take over when—oops, I mean if—someone clips him?”

Enough is enough. No more of the Clinton camp demanding forgiveness because she’s allegedly being held to a higher standard than Obama. The Obama campaign bent over backward to be gracious when questioned afterward. What would her campaign’s response have been if the roles were reversed? Can you picture Terry “The Prince of Darkness” McAuliffe shrugging it off?

In the words of an old Willie Nelson song, “I’ve forgiven everything that forgiveness will allow.” The sniper fire in Tuzla. Signing a pledge to say Michigan and Florida wouldn’t count, until you needed them to, and your later statements that declared these people had been unfairly disenfranchised, comparing it to women’s suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and the civil rights movement, while still claiming caucus states do not count for as much. Placing images of Osama bin Laden in an anti-Obama ad. The 3:00 AM phone call ad. Kissing up to Fox News and Richard Mellon Scaife. Exploiting William Ayres on the ABC debate. Whining about always getting the first question.

Go away. You are little better than a Rovian Republican in liberal garb. The break this country needs from the politics of Bush-Clinton-Bush demands better than you.

They're Serious About This

Maybe the reason I’m not a published author is a lack of imagination. I worry constantly about how much—and for how long—the audience is willing to suspend disbelief; maybe I should talk with House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH). He seems to think people are willing to forget things that actually happened.

Last week Boehner unveiled the new Republican “strategy.” Faced with public’s slow but insistent realization that Republicans have presided over an ill-conceived and mismanaged war, a failing economy, unprecedented separation between rich and poor, a policy of actions we’d call war crimes if anyone else did them, and an erosion of Constitutional rights more extreme than the McCarthy era, Boehner knows they can’t run on their record. So he’s going for marketing. To use a Madison Avenue term, they’re changing the brand. The Republicans are now pushing themselves as “The Change They Deserve.”

To quote Budweiser: Dude. You’re the guys we want a change from. House Republicans are so steadfastly against changing anything “accomplished” during their tenure, they voted against mothers, as a stalling tactic. Their regular whining about how Democrats haven’t implemented their promised changes have the sincerity of the Menendez brother asking for mercy because they’re orphans. For Republicans to realize now they’ve spent ten years going down the wrong road is like pulling the emergency brake after the car has gone over the cliff.

Republicans claim to be the party of Bible-reading, God-fearing Americans. It looks more every day like voters may be ready to administer some Biblical lessons on that whole “reaping what you sow” thing. One can only hope.

250 Days and Counting

The Literary Correspondent recently sent in an informative piece showing the relative “greenness” of George W. Bush’s Crawford ranch and Al “I invented Climate Change” Gore’s home in Tennessee, which has a carbon footprint the size of Texas as viewed through a microscope. The data checked out on Truth or Fiction, though the Crazy Like Me Correspondent insists I point out Gore uses his home as an office for his organization, which is why it’s so large and energy-intensive, and that he buys carbon offsets to minimize the effect. Okay, maybe, but still, where’s the wind farm and solar panels, Mr. Green Jeans?

Under other circumstances I would have re-circulated that, showing I can poke fun at blues and reds alike. Not for Dubya. My distaste for him transcends political disagreement. Not only do I detest him as a person, I loathe the elements of the American psyche he has so successfully appealed to, and what it says about us as a nation. His cynical invocations of patriotism have debased the concept to the point where someone who used to sincerely tear up when The Star-Spangled Banner was played before a ball game now rises only to avoid embarrassing the Sole Heir.

This is no exaggeration. If anything, he has received a pass, as occasional bouts of Outrage Overload force me to recharge my batteries. This week I’m in the mood to call him for what he is, with his own words as evidence. Not malapropisms; not misstatements. The real deal.

When asked about the current oil situation, and his thoughts on conservation, here are his own thoughts, from an interview with CBS Radio: "Bush also said that, while he was a 'big supporter' of energy conservation, he would not issue a specific appeal to the public to ease up on driving and not use as much fuel. 'I think they can figure out how to do that,' he told CBS. 'I mean, the market has a way of convincing people to drive less, depending on their ability to afford.'"

This, from the alleged president of all the American people. His partners and peers can afford gas at ten dollars a gallon; what about the guy who needs to fill up his ten-year-old car to make a fifty-mile daily round trip to his job that pays only enough to qualify him as one of the “working poor?” He can’t move closer to work; he can’t afford to live there. He can manage gas to get to work, or bread for his family; not both, and his president tells him, in essence, to eat cake.

Recently Bush was asked about sacrifice in time of war; were any Americans aside from the troops and their families sharing the costs of his war? Specifically, had he made any personal sacrifices? Here’s his response to Mike Allen of Politico:

Allen: "Mr. President, you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?"

Bush: "Yes, it really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.

Above all, he is a coward. Not just for his avoidance of the same military service he now claims to envy those dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. He speaks before only hand-picked audiences, afraid to face even the possibility of dissent. Sent his wife to brief the press on the Burmese cyclone, knowing they wouldn’t ask her to draw too fine a comparison with New Orleans. He lacks even the fortitude to admit to human frailty. By never admitting to a mistake, he is a parody of the Christian piety he claims to embrace.

Jeremiah Wright had the right church, but the wrong pew. If God is to damn anyone, then God damn George W. Bush. It is beyond the capability of anyone with a shred of conscience to dream of attributing such thoughts to someone else, let alone to sincerely claim them as his own. This man has no decency, no conscience, no humanity. He is as vile a caricature of a human being as has disgraced the public stage in my memory. We cannot be rid of him soon enough.

No One's Wrong All the Time

Not even me. Frequent Commenter Runs With Scissors rarely agrees with me, though his comments are always appreciated. He chimed into The Home Office's most recent post with a link in his comment that deserves more recognition than a comment.

George F. Will is someone with whom I rarely agree, even less often as time goes on. Still, once or twice a year he hits one out of the park, such as this essay on Jewish World Review. Not only is he dead on, he evokes a rare nostalgic moment for me, as my first fully realized memory is of listening to Bill Mazeroski hit the home run that won the 1960 World Series for Pittsburgh.

Thanks to Runs With Scissors for reading, commenting, and pointing out this excellent morsel.

Differing Perspectives

My friend, and Clinton supporter, Sean has posted a passionate inventory of his feelings about the events in North Carolina and Indiana last night on his blog. My comments are below:

Running the risk of seeming ungracious (since my candidate is now ensconced as the presumptive nominee), it’s a shame Clinton supporters can't resist sour grapes even when conceding defeat. Much as Bill's impeachment debacle played out, none of what did Hillary in was her fault. It was a conspiracy involving the media, addled voters wearing rose-tinted glasses, and a Rube Goldberg nominating process.

Let's start with "people buying into hope." Here's a brief quiz: Who said this: "Now, one of Clinton's laws of politics is this. If one candidate is trying to scare you and the other one is try get you to think, if one candidate is appealing to your fears and the other one is appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope." Give up? Bill Clinton, during the 2004 campaign. Obama keeps coming back to the hope theme: Hillary runs ads of sleeping children who will be unsafe of she isn't elected.
Then there's the "media's notion of inevitability." First, she didn’t mind any it six months ago when everyone with a press card presumed she would win. As for lately, it's not the media's notion of inevitability: it's a mathematical notion of inevitability. Even before last night, she couldn't catch up if she matched her best previous performance in every remaining primary. Dropping out isn't defeatist; it's a simple matter of reading the handwriting on the wall.

As for the "tragically flawed nominating process," she had no objections to it until she realized she couldn't win within its rules. There's a good reason for that: Clinton supporters probably played as much of a role as anyone in writing those rules.

What did Hillary Clinton in was a poorly run campaign that assumed this was a coronation, not a campaign. She changed messages and personas as often as Dubya changed reasons for going to war in Iraq in the winter of 2003. It finally caught up to her when enough people decided she was a triangulating chameleon who would say whatever she thought was necessary to sway whoever was standing in front of her when she opened her mouth. In the northeast or a college town? Wonk time. Moving south? Drop those Gs and knock down a few boilermakers in the back of a pickup truck.

Hillary Clinton would have made a fine president, but she would have been more of the same of what got us into the current state of affairs. It's time for something different. Maybe it will be better; maybe not. It sure as hell can't get much worse.

James Lee Burke

Every time I read something by James Lee Burke I tell myself, “You really need to read more James Lee Burke.” This year I’m finally getting around to it, and it’s made my reading time richer and more rewarding. I just finished PEGASUS DESCENDING after reading CADILLAC JUKEBOX in March and JOLIE BLON’S BOUNCE in December. I don’t like him more each time anymore; he’s who I come back to when I want to be reminded why I love to read.

His characters walk in off the cane break as fully-formed people, with lives beyond the glimpse we catch through the window Burke provides. He uses the Cajun, Creole, and Confederate background of New Iberia Parish like Rembrandt choosing a precise color from a palette of his own creation. The names are eccentric to a northern ear; PEGASUS DESCENDING includes Cesaire Darbonne, Koko Hebert, Monarch Little, and my personal favorite, Bellerophon Lujan. Maybe those who don’t live along the Bayou Teche don’t think twice about them, but they set the tone and atmosphere better than five pages of description.

Which, come to think of it, Burke also does as well, or better, than anyone. It’s fashionable today to skip non-essential description in the interest of moving the story forward. Nothing wrong with that; the quicker pace fits better with contemporary readers’ expectation and attention spans. Burke’s descriptions come from another, more leisurely time, before television and movies denied us the privilege of drawing our own mental pictures. The astute reader quickly forgives the lessened pace, thanks to descriptions of such beauty you don’t want him to cut to the chase. An example from PEGASUS DESCENDING:

The transformation that took place in Whitey’s face was like none I had ever seen in another person. The eyes didn’t blink or narrow; the color in them did not brighten with anger or haze over with hidden thoughts. The jawbone never pulsed against the cheek. Instead, his expression seemed to take on the emotionless solidity of carved wood, with eyes as dull and cavernous as buckshot. I believe I could have scratched a match alight on his face and he wouldn’t have blinked.

The same counter-contemporary tendency is shown in Burke’s scenes of violence. It’s not that he lingers over them for prurient or gratuitous purpose; he lets them unfold, like watching in slow-motion. The suspense builds as he ramps up the tension a sentence at a time, holding back the climax like a classical composer’s delayed cadence, so when the release comes it’s quick and you have to wait for your blood pressure to return to normal before going on to the next page. The pressure is never completely released; enough always remains to sow the seeds of the next crescendo.

It takes a singular talent to be able to fight the tendencies of modern culture and win as Burke routinely does, and what I say may read like the pabulum of hero worship. Those who are unfamiliar with his work should try him, then draw their conclusions. Those already acquainted with Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel are already wondering which one they should read next.

The Long Goodbye

I’m late to the party, as usual, but I can’t resist getting in on the City of Chicago’s program that encouraged all Chicagoans to read Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye as part of a city-wide discussion. The Outfit has covered this in detail, and better than I’m likely to do here, but that never stopped me before.

It had been several years since I read The Long Goodbye, though I have always thought it was the most beautifully written of Chandler’s works, and I read Chandler for the writing. A lot of other reading competes for my attention, and it’s sometimes difficult to choose to reread something when the pile of books never read threatens the safety of anyone who disturbs it. I took the attention focused on TLG as an excuse to give it another look. What I found was unexpected.

Maybe it was all the commentary I’d already read; maybe I’ve grown as a reader. (Probably the former.) This was different book than I remembered; in particular, a different Marlowe. No longer the knight errant, fighting battles he can’t win in the hope that enough good will be accomplished to make his draw—or narrow defeat—palatable. This Marlowe has seen too much, lost too much, and been alone too much. What had been sardonic comments are now cynical. This Marlowe is a man well down the road to bitterness, who no longer expects things to work out in any appreciable manner. He plays out the string because his code demands it, not for any expectation of accomplishing anything. He views all others in shades of dark grey; he can’t help them, and, since they probably don’t deserve it, he’s not going to overextend himself. Even his walk into Mendy Menendez’s trap at the end is more an act of fatalistic resignation than of the courage displayed when boarding the gambling boat to look for Moose Malloy in Farewell, My Lovely. Marlowe doesn’t care what happens to others, so why should he care what happens to himself? It makes the book no less effective, but makes his solving of the final puzzle even more bittersweet than usual.

Chandler’s writing is at its peak. The famous similes are there, and almost every page has at least one line to inspire any writer to whisper “I wish I’d written that” as his eye passes over it. Time has forced a change in perception here, too. The Long Goodbye is Chandler’s farewell to Marlowe in many ways. Playback came several years later, a shadow of the work that had come before, Marlowe rebelling against the prospect of becoming a kept man. It’s impossible to know how Poodle Springs would have turned out had he lived to finish it, instead of Robert B. Parker. The unabashed Chandlerphile Parker—then at the height of his considerable powers—returned Marlowe to the character who took on all comers in The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely, a man probably overmatched who is willing to fight a battle of attrition because, whatever happens to him, he believes it is his will that prevails.

Denouements fall like October leaves in The Long Goodbye as Chandler wraps up loose ends with Eileen Wade, Bernie Ohls, Sylvia Loring, and Terry Lennox. In some ways it’s as if he knew he would never again write anything of this stature and wanted this one to last as long as he could reasonably prolong it, the literary equivalent to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. In it, he sums everything good and not so good about his writing—nothing about it was ever bad—and lays before the reader as conclusive a testament to his archetypical detective as any scholar could hope to accomplish. Chandler’s own struggles with women and booze showed him Marlowe had to become; in The Long Goodbye, he shows the rest of us.

Knowing what's Important

Apparently the repairs for Hurricane Katrina are complete. The Louisiana state legislature now has time to debate whether it’s a crime to wear jeans too low on the hips. The ACLU and Plumbers’ Union will fight the bill in court if it passes.

Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth

Washington Capitals fans are in full self-pity mode today, after losing Game 7 of their first round Stanley Cup playoff series in overtime. One of the players was quoted to the effect that beating Philadelphia would be hard enough without having to beat the refs, too.

Waaa.

The Caps had to live with a tough, but proper, no-call that cost them a goal. The penalty that left them shorthanded for the game winner had to be called, or there was no point in even bringing the referees onto the ice for the overtime.

It all worked out for the Caps and their fans. Now they can cry in their beer about how they got jobbed in overtime of a seventh game, instead of spending the summer licking their wounds after Pittsburgh swept them in four games, which is what would have happened had they advanced.

Some people don’t know when they have it good.

Bitter?

I am a native of Western Pennsylvania, grew up in what used to be a small steel town. My father, grandfather, and uncle worked for Alcoa. I left the Pittsburgh area when I joined the army in 1980; the only relatively local teaching job I could find paid $8500.

I still visit my parents in the house where I grew up. My roots to Pittsburgh are deep and solid; the Post-Gazette's web site is regular reading for me. I've lived from Atlanta to Boston to Chicago to Washington DC, but I still consider myself a Pennsylvanian.

That's why the furor over Obama's "bitter" comments offends me. Over the past forty years, the people he's talking about—people I grew up with—have seen their jobs, their medical insurance, and their pensions disappear. Their children—such as me—have moved away to find jobs with futures. Every "improvement" in the American economy has passed them by. Damn right they're bitter. If they seem insular and untrusting, that's because they're down to a few things they can depend on, and they're holding onto them for dear life. If they think every advance made by another group comes at their expense, they have forty years of experience of watching it. The anger is misdirected—more of what they lost has gone to wealthy whites than poor blacks—in large part because Republicans have based their success over the past three decades on portraying the races as natural foes, when the real issue has been class.

Obama’s comments will not play as much of a role as the media predicts for one reason: little offense will be taken. These people know they're bitter. They're used to it, and they might even like Obama a little more for recognizing it in them.

My life and family are established here now; I'm not likely to move back to Pittsburgh. It still makes me feel good to see Pennsylvania play an important role in this pivotal election, as the parts of it I know so well have been taken for granted for so long.

Declan Hughes on New Mystery Reader

New Mystery Reader has just posted an insightful interview with Irish Crime Fiction writer Declan Hughes, who has written three books in his Ed Loy series. While the questions are nothing special (not surprising, considering who asked them), Mr. Hughes’s replies are insightful and entertaining. Well worth checking out.

My Kind of Town

I lived over three years in the Chicago area—Woodridge, actually—and have tried, with diminishing efficiency, to get back as often as possible. It’s been four years since my last trip, and the time has not been kind to my image of the city.

I write a lot of crime fiction set in Chicago, which is the perfect place for crime fiction. The problem is, once you do much research in Chicago’s criminal history, and its ostensibly straight history, one conclusion cannot be avoided: there’s no difference. Maybe New York City’s Tammany Hall era was as corrupt as Chicago has been routinely. Maybe.

Organized crime doesn’t run the city as overtly as in the days of Al Capone, or Tony Accardo and Pat Marcy. It’s also true Chicago has a way of getting things done that, while not unknown elsewhere, has become so entrenched in Chicago as to be part of the culture. Chicago celebrates its criminal past more than any city except Las Vegas, which is not the standard a respectable city wants to maintain.

I’ve learned too much about criminality to romanticize it, so I didn’t look forward to returning as much as I usually do when work took me back this week. It would be nice to see some friends I’ve missed, and four years without an Italian beef from Portillo’s is virtually a life-threatening situation. The plan was to see my buds, eat some beef, get my work done and come home.

That held up until the cab from the airport started driving me past streets I knew too well. My hotel was on West Adams; I was working on South LaSalle. I used to work on West Randolph, so I knew where everything was. All previous disclaimers aside, I felt at home right away. I walked the streets, bought a tee shirt at Blue Chicago, and would have gone to Wrigley Field has I not remembered—just in time—that the Cubs were in Pittsburgh, not the other way round. I enjoyed every second I spent there.

This is no faint praise. I’m a country boy by nature. My childhood home—where my parents still live—had a neighbor on the adjacent property, another across the street. The next house on the other side from the neighbor was half a mile down the road. There were no house behind us for a couple of miles, past a wooded area and the Meadow Gold dairy farm. This is my idea of reasonable population density.

I work in Washington DC every day, and can’t wait to get out of it. I took my daughter to see a photographic exhibit in New York a few years ago, and made it a day trip. There’s something about Chicago, even in the Loop, that’s different. Maybe it’s the freshness of constant rebuilding, or the variety of architecture. More likely it’s the attitude of people all just doing what needs to be done. Chicago calls itself that city that works; its people sure do. Too many of them work in unsavory enterprises, but Chicago is not a place that wants something for nothing.

The weather was typical Chicago April, which is to say Alaskan crabbers wouldn’t want to go out in it, at least not Thursday’s mess of cold, wind, and rain. And I got a head cold worse than I’ve had in years. I’ll be back, though. For the beefs. And the lakefront. Navy Pier. Buckingham Fountain and Ed DeBevic’s. The million little things I didn’t realize I missed until I saw them again.

I just won’t go back on American Airlines.

Getting it Down in Black and White

The reaction to Barack Obama’s speech about race last Tuesday has been generally favorable, with comments ranging from “a milestone in American political rhetoric,” to “a brilliant fraud.” I’ll leave the high-flying rhetoric and minute parsing to those who get paid (too much) to do it. All I know for sure is that Obama’s speech took me from the status of Supporter to Believer.

The comments about his white grandmother reeled me in. I’m from Western Pennsylvania, the area in the political headlights as being key to the now-crucial Pennsylvania primary. I know people like his grandmother well. I grew up with them. I’m related to them. I’ve made comments similar, if not identical, to those he heard his grandmother make. I know what he’s talking about, and it’s about time someone addressed it.

There are racial grievances, real and imagined, on both sides. Actually, more than both, as Hispanics and Asians now have to be included in the discussion much more than forty years ago. The crux of racial intolerance in America will always be black and white, as was ensured by the codification of slavery in the Constitution.

The point I heard Obama make is, no matter who holds the grievance, or whether it’s real or imagined, it doesn’t help. Creating scapegoats gives an excuse not to do anything to help yourself, because it won’t matter. Either The Man won’t give you a break, or some nigger took your job. Wash your hands of it, feel sorry for yourself, it’s not your fault.

Maybe it’s not your fault, but it’s in your best interest for it to get better, and it won’t ever get better without the cooperation of the group you feel is oppressing you. It’s not that The Man took your job, or the black guy got it instead of you. The problem is that the job went elsewhere when some big company cited “best interests of the stockholders.” The stock and profit boom that fed the myth of the Bush expansion was built by removing jobs from the very people the boom depended on to buy the products to sustain the boom. The side effects of this government subsidized Ponzi scheme are now being felt in a very real way.

What made Obama’s speech special was not whether he’s right or wrong; it’s the courage and leadership he showed in taking an uncomfortable and unfortunate situation by the horns and calling it for what it was, without pointing fingers.

White guilt has nothing to do with embracing Obama’a speech. Slavery is a blot on this country’s soul that can never be erased. That being said, no one reading this had anything to do with it—or with Jim Crow—therefore we share no responsibility or guilt. That doesn’t mean we don’t live with the consequences every day. Sooner or later we have to deal with them as a nation. Barack Obama is uniquely suited to start that discussion.

Iraq and Roll Politics

Before I had a blog, I used to torment personal friends only with my rants. Most of them are, thankfully, lost to history. In cleaning off my hard drive in preparation of getting a new computer, I found this one, originally written March 15, 2003, just a few days before shock and awe.

Okay, so the email petition against the war was a fake. Big deal. The point is still well taken.

The Bush Administration has not made the case for doing whatever the hell it wants to do. Colin Powell’s evidence was not a smoking gun, it wasn’t even a sputtering candle. The follow-up evidence of the medical attention provided to what’s-his-name isn’t worth talking about, either. Seems Iraq got rid of him as quickly as practically possible.

Sure, Saddam Hussein is the worst thing to happen to the world since reality television. The Bushies’ argument for his removal, once you wade through the raisons du jour, seems to be that Iraq is a rogue state who can’t be trusted to live respectably in the community of nations.

They’re right. He can’t. Unfortunately, Bush has squandered so much hard earned American prestige that we may be destined to be the losers here, whether Saddam survives or not.

This Administration has pulled us out of the Kyoto Greenhouse Accords. We refuse to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, lest any American’s be tried as war criminals. (I wonder what the reaction would be from Don Rumsfeld is another country had done that.) We have made mention more than once that we are willing to use nuclear weapons in Iraq.

A few weeks ago Rumsfeld went to Congress to ask that the Missile Defense System, better and more appropriately known as “Star Wars,” be excluded from operational testing before being deployed. He says we need it right now. The fact that there hasn’t been a single successful test doesn’t enter into the equation.

John Ashcroft makes daily forays into new and creative interpretations of the Constitution. The Orwellian-named Patriot Act essentially makes possession of a library card probable cause for a warrant. There is now a database to determine your “threat level” as an airline passenger. A red listing will deny you access to your plane, whether it’s accurate or not. Even the current poodle Congress finally has its hackles up at the proposed Defense Department database to track and cross-reference every financial transaction we make.

Are these the acts of an administration reacting to an overwhelming electoral mandate? Hardly. Let’s think back a couple of years. The votes finally got counted and Bush won, but more people voted for Gore. The fairness of the victory is not in dispute here, just the size of the mandate.

We said we didn’t need the UN, which we probably don’t, then went in for a resolution, anyway. We said we didn’t need another resolution, but we’re still fooling around getting one, unless it’s one of those days where we don’t think we have the votes. All compromises not suggested by us are deemed to be non-starters.

The rhetoric coming from our side has been so harsh as to alienate many of our regular supporters. (Screw the French, no one cares what they think. They have been irrelevant for many years and are just now figuring it out.) We have no place left to negotiate to. Over 150,000 troops can’t be kept in the field indefinitely. They either have to come home or get to work soon, and there’s no way they can come home now without Bush getting more egg on his face than Bill Clinton when they found Monica’s dress.

What has us in this situation? Reduced to its simplest form, it’s because George W. Bush thinks he is God’s instrument on Earth. His fundamentalist Christian beliefs have given him the moral certainty that he is right and anyone who opposes him is wrong. That explains much of what passes for diplomatic communication coming from Washington these days: You’re either for us, or against us. Anyone who disagrees must be wrong, and is therefore either the enemy, or sleeping with him.

I’m no bible scholar, but I don’t remember hearing a lot of that kind of attitude attributed to the man from whom Christianity has taken its name. It sounds a whole lot more like what we would hear from our current sworn enemies, where everything is in absolutes and annihilation of the infidels is the only recourse.

The Bush Administration has told us that the removal of Saddam Hussein will take care of everything from terrorism to Mid East peace to the common cold. Running amuck like a longshoreman on a three-day drunk will remove Saddam, but it is more likely to create more terrorists of those currently on the fence than it is to lessen the danger.

Then again, no matter what is said, lessening the danger isn’t the primary objective here anymore. All that’s matters now is that Bush is Right. And he is. God is on our side.

I hope God remembers that when we’re through there.

Economics 102

Let’s get this straight: Business, as a class of American society, wants the government to allow the free market to operate. True capitalism is messy, they say, but it works in the end. People will lose their jobs and houses, college educations may have to be skipped, retirements gutted by lost pensions, but the general trend will always be upward if business is left alone to let things shake themselves out. The better and stronger ideas will, eventually, overcome the lesser and weaker.

Until it’s them with their tit in the wringer.

Now we can see what it means for the government to keep its hands off business. It means business is free to do what it wants, take what it wants at whatever expense to the general welfare, then run to the same government it vilifies when its unsustainable greed comes around to treat them as it treated all the others who constituted collateral damage when times were “good.”

It is said the institutional investors can’t afford to lose too much of their investment in Bear Stearns. The stock’s fifty-two week high was $159.36; the buyout is for $2. The stock lost 99% of its value, and we’re going worry that California’s pension fund will go broke over the last one percent?

We can’t afford the ripple effects on the rest of the economy? How about the people who have already lost everything? What are we to tell them? I’ve said before, people who got into mortgages they couldn’t pay don’t deserve much sympathy. How much do the people who wrote them deserve, or, more to the point with Bear Stearns, how much sympathy is due those who based their securities packages on mortgages they never bothered to verify were liquid?

The stockholders – and taxpayers, for that matter – should have recourse to sue the hell out of the Bear Stearns managers responsible for this. They’ve banked their hundred million dollar packages and bonuses. They’ll get by if they’re fired. Still advocate reduced tax rates for fund managers? Why? They appear to have no risk. Take any chances – Bear Stearns’ culture demanded it – and walk away with however much you can carry before the music stops, in case you’re the guy without a chair.

September 11. Iraq. Katrina. Now this. Will January 20, 2009 for Chrissakes hurry up so there will be something left to hand over to the next guy?

Economics 101

It is often said the Republican Party is the party of business. That the economy does better when Republican administrations allow it to operate unfettered by oppressive regulation and allow the natural order of business to balance things out on its own.

If that’s true, how come Republicans seem to own the franchise on financial collapse?

1929 stock market crash, leading to the Great Depression – Herbert Hoover, President.

1981-1982 liberalization of saving and loan regulations leads to S&L crisis – Ronald Reagan, President.

“Black Monday” stock market crash, October 19, 1987 – Ronald Reagan, President.

Subprime lending crisis – George W. Bush, President.

Is it true that Republicans have a better understanding of economics, or that they can’t tell the difference between sound policy and unsustainable greed?

The MBAs can leave now.

An Open Letter to Giant Food LLC

March 8, 2008

Giant Food LLC
Consumer Affairs Department
8301 Professional Place
Suite 115
Landover MD 20785

Dear Sir or Madam:

I have been a regular Giant shopper since moving to the Washington area in late 1996. I have always thought Giant’s selection, store layout, and prices were the best value of any local supermarket. My recent experiences at your Laurel Store (0340) have forced me to re-assess my opinion.

The selection, layout, and prices are still the best around. The produce section, in particular, stands out. The produce manager is routinely there when I shop on Saturday mornings, and she is always cheerful, helpful, and willing to go out of her way to find what I need, even if it’s not in the produce section. That is true of most of the employees I have encountered.

Having found everything I need, and judiciously used my Bonus Card, whatever goodwill has accrued during my visit is erased when it comes time to check out. For months now, the number of full-service checkout lines has been woefully inadequate to accommodate the customer volume. The situation became so bad I shopped at Shoppers Food Warehouse for a few weeks before returning to the store I knew best.

My first week back at Giant 0340 found seven carts, all but a couple filled above the rim, lined up to use the sole open checkout lane. I complained to a manager, who apologized. Last week was marginally better, but I didn’t have time to speak to anyone.

This week was the final straw. Nine-fifteen on a Saturday morning, and not one full service checkout lane was operating. I got into the lengthy Express lane and asked the first employee I saw to get me a manager. I noticed as I was checking out that one of my items did not capture my bonus card savings, and the checker could not find it in this week’s flyer.

A manager finally arrived, the same gentleman I spoke with a few weeks ago. I pointed out the situation to him, and noted the cashier now working a full-service lane had only appeared in the past minute. He walked over to see to something and I went back into the store to verify I had been correct about the Bonus Card question. I found the tag on the shelf, but noted in the fine print the offer had expired on March 5.

Catching up with the manager, I asked about the Bonus Card tag, as the checkout lane question was now moot. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Since we don’t seem to be able to get enough checkers, can we at least keep outdated sale notices off the shelves. (Handing him the shelf tag.) I paid an extra buck-sixty apiece for these because the old tag was there.

Giant Manager: Did they give it to you for free?

Me: The tag’s outdated. The price she charged was correct.

Giant Manager: Go back through the line if the tag’s wrong. You can get it for free.

Me (pointing): That line? That’s what started this whole thing.

Giant Manager: (No response)

Me: Tell you what. You keep the tag and my three-twenty, and I won’t shop here any more.

Giant Manager: Okay.

So I won’t. A customer of over eleven years’ standing gone, because Giant 0340 can’t be bothered to take my money in a timely manner, and, apparently, doesn’t care if I shop elsewhere. I pass a Shoppers Food Warehouse and a Safeway to get to Giant 0340. It used to be worth it. No more.

Interesting Statistic

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll found people who consider themselves liberals read more books than conservatives. You know why?

Because they can.

Catch 23

Read Jonathan Turley's column in today's Los Angeles Times.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

Psychiatrists would do well to investigate a strange malady best described as Americanitis. It resembles bipolar disorder in many ways, with traces of messianic complex. It appears to occur uniquely in North Americans living in the United States.

Where else can you find people who spend so much time railing against government intervention in their lives, such as taxes, mileage standards for automobiles, affordable health care, keeping guns out of the hands of those likely to use them to harm others, to name a few. All of these are said to be improper uses of governmental authority, as the government cannot be trusted to keep the people’s best interests and privacy in mind.

Yet these same people have no trouble allowing that same government to listen to their phone calls, open their emails, and keep them under increasing photographic and video surveillance everywhere they go.

Maybe Americanitis isn’t quite the right term. Paranoia Republicania has a nice ring to it, and hits closer to the mark.

A Press Release From The Home Office

The Home Office is pleased to announce the publication of the short story, “Green Gables,” in the February/March issue of ThugLit magazine. Click here and scroll down to Issue 24 to read it.

Many thanks to Big Daddy Thug and Lady Detroit (Todd Robinson and Allison Glasgow) for their support, and for suggesting a key edit.

Sucking it Up

It must be the February blahs. Blogs all over the sphere are springing up with the periodic lament of a writer’s plight. Rejections, how meager our rewards are in relation to the quantity of our souls left on each page. It gets old, navel-gazing raised to the level of whining. Let’s refine the argument.

The question is: Why do you (personally) write? If you write solely for the joy of putting stories on paper, then you're already successful; have a ball.

If you write to get published, suck it up. There are more writers than publishing venues; it’s not going to change. I was an orchestral musician in a previous life before I turned my attention to writing. It's a lot less discouraging to get a rejection in the mail you paid 41 cents for than it is to fly across the country and book a night or two of hotel at mid-week prices so you can play a five-minute audition in competition with 150 others who are vying for the same spot, for a job that may not pay enough to live on. Send your story off and forget about it while you work on the next. It’s not such a bad deal.

If you're writing to make a living from it and aren't, then quit. The “I couldn’t live if I didn’t write” argument doesn't apply to someone who does it for the money.

I can name several good writers of personal acquaintance who might be published now if they spent half the time refining their writing they currently spend bitching about how tough the market is. I have had several short stories published, but publishers have so far managed to pass on all novel submissions, though they claim it pains them to do so. So it goes. (Sorry, Kurt.) The only way I see to keep moving forward is to accept each series of rejections with a simple phrase: The book wasn’t good enough. Make it – or the next one – better. That’s all I can control, so that’s what I deal with. To do otherwise makes it too easy to confuse reasons with excuses.

No Shame on the Right

Here’s a short piece from the current issue of Salon, describing the new Republican ad pushing for passage of the Protect America Act, also known as The Fourth Amendment is for Pussies Act.

My reply, to the Republican National Committee:

I have just watched your new ad, America at Risk. How can you shameless whores live with yourselves? It is President Bush who allowed this law to expire, through his "all or nothing" insistence, and refusal to accept an extension while a valid compromise is worked out.

Where do you draw the line between freedom and acceptable risk? It appears Republicans see no acceptable trade-offs; all freedoms are worth sacrificing for any scintilla of perceived safety.

You claim to be such patriots, and students of the original intent of the Founding Fathers. How do you reconcile these claims with the words of Benjamin Franklin "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security?"

Shame on you all.

Mightier Than the Sword

The Music Education Correspondent (Retired) has written to a local paper, advocating a change to the lyrics of the Maryland State song.

The Home Office’s reply is below.

No wonder they pull you off of airplanes for extra security searches. This is yet another examples of how liberals are ruining this country, with their steadfast refusal to take a chance of offending anyone, as you proudly assert in your letter. (“We are quite certain no one will object.”

First, when did lack of content objectionable to anyone become a virtue? Would we not still writhe under the yoke of English tyranny, were it not for the actions of those willing, through word and deed surely objectionable to Crown sympathizers (“Crown-symphs” as Rush Limbaugh would call them today; except that he’d be one.) to speak out? And you posit this on the 276^th anniversary of the birth of the Father of Our Country? Shame on you, and may your next lunch with Michele Obama taste dry and stale in your mouth as you struggle to find reasons to be proud of this country.

Have you done your homework into the origins of the lyrics you find so objectionable? Once again, cherry-picking examples creates misleading imagery. “The despot’s heel is on thy shore;” “Avenge the patriotic gore / That flecked the streets of Baltimore.” Easy to claim to be unobjectionable when the callow reader is denied full access to the facts.

Who is this despot, with his heel upon Maryland’s shore? None other than Abraham Lincoln, savior of the Union, and freer of the slaves. Witness these words, from Verse Six:

Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain,
Virginia should not call in vain,
She meets her sisters on the plain-
"Sic semper!" 'tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back amain,
Arise in majesty again.

The “sic semper” used in Line Four is a reference to “Sic semper tyrannis,” (Thus ever to tyrants), and was shouted by John Wilkes Booth as he fled from Ford’s Theater after shooting President Lincoln, whose birthday is also celebrated this month, thus doubling the calumny of your supposedly innocently timed statement.

The words of Maryland, My Maryland are the traitorous hymn of secessionists! Yet you, in your haste to be inoffensive, would but alter them, allowing their hidden meaning to seep through to poison the minds of generations of Marylanders yet unborn. You are not a native Marylander; may your covertly seditious intent have come from some hidden wellspring of liberalism far to the north? I suspect so.

If you find the song so objectionable, endorse its abolishment, as the man it so expressly defames abolished the taint of slavery from its shores with his “despotic heel.” What fear have you that a hidden sleeper cell of Confederate sympathizers will have their feelings hurt? Express the courage of your convictions, but do not blink at the precipice and claim to have crossed.

Not to mention that the tune is from a Christmas Carol, which excludes all of our Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Shinto residents who are just as patriotic as you claim to be.

A German carol, no less. Don’t get me started on World War II.

A Political Sports Analogy

I became a mature sports fan while watching the AFC Championship game that followed the 1974 NFL season. Pittsburgh had the ball, leading Oakland 17–13 early in the fourth quarter. The Steelers started one of their patented drives, which consisted mostly of running plays called traps. A trap play is an intricately timed and coordinated action; on television it looks like a guy running into a pile of other guys. Such is life.

What struck me after about five minutes and a few first downs was that the pile, which had moved two-three-four yards in the first quarter, was now moving four-five-six yards each time. I know the announcers didn’t mention it; Burghers hated Curt Gowdy with a vengeance, certain Raiders’ owner Al Davis had him on the payroll. Nothing spectacular happened. Pittsburgh was content to grind it out, moving the chains every two or three plays.

This was memorable to me because winning this game put Pittsburgh in their first Super Bowl. What made it pivotal was my ability, for the first time, to look ahead and know that Pittsburgh had won the game. Ten minutes left, and a turnover or bad penalty could still blow it for them, but Oakland had lost the ability to win this game. It was Pittsburgh’s to lose. (They scored and won 24-13.)

Now replace “Pittsburgh” and “Steelers” with “Barack Obama,” and “Oakland” and “Raiders” with “Hillary Clinton.”

One Small Step for Democracy

The Democrats finally found someone with some stones. Democrats being Democrats, of course it was a woman.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not only didn’t bring the Senate’s version of the Protect America Act up for a vote before the House went on recess, she had the House cite two members of the Bush Administration – John Bolton and Harriet Miers – for contempt. (Republicans responded to this second action by storming out of the Capitol to denounce the Democrats’ “political theater” at a microphone-strewn podium serendipitously found on the building’s steps just in time for their “spontaneous” act..)

Bush responded, of course, by crying we’ll be dead by the time the House gets back if he doesn’t have the authority to listen to every phone call and read every email in the world, warrants be damned. Like the law has ever stopped him before. The Protect America Act is nothing more than a transparent attempt to legalize actions the Bush Administration has routinely taken for years. Immunity for the previously cooperating telecommunication companies – who would be the still cooperating telecommunications companies had their illegal collaboration not come to light – is amnesty by another name. Republicans are happy to grant amnesty to moneyed interests with the legal firepower to know they were violating not just laws, but the entire Fourth Amendment, but if your mother carried you across the Mexican border in her arms fifteen years ago, you’re SOL.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who sent to the House a bill complete with immunity and no amendments the White House didn’t sign off on, wrote to Bush, "I regret your reckless attempt to manufacture a crisis over the reauthorization of foreign surveillance laws. . . . Your suggestion that the law's expiration would prevent intelligence agents from listening to the conversations of terrorists is utterly false."

The most temperate response I can come up with is: Fuck you, Harry, and the horse you rode in on. Bush has rolled you over so many times you can join the Greek hookers’ union. You’re not from Texas, but “big hat, no cattle” was written with you in mind. You sold out Chris Dodd and Pat Leahy, so your big talk now, while Speaker Pelosi has to carry your weight, impresses no one. You want to claim to be a Democrat while acting as Bush’s mole in Congress, fine. Just don’t be upset when people call you on it, as just about everyone has started to do. Let’s hope Senate Democrats can find a few onions of their own and elect a majority leader next year who actually believes in the co-equal branches of government.

I haven’t written this in a while, but it’s time again. For all of you who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 and see what has happened to Iraq, the deficit, the environment, the economy, and civil liberties, keep this in mind: It’s your fault.

What Game are They Watching?

Waterboarding is in the news again, now that Attorney General Mukasey has declared the Justice Department will not investigate individuals who followed DoJ directives, even if those directives were based on dubious or non-existent legal reasoning; nor can those who created, endorsed, or propagated these questionable rulings be held accountable. (To catch up on this week’s comedy, click here.)

First, no whining from any senators who voted for Mukasey; he said he was going to do this, and he has. No surprises. It’s your fault.

The United States of America (remember them?) prosecuted Japanese soldiers as war criminals for waterboarding American prisoners. The current administration’s position is that it might be illegal, unless some mid-level functionary in the Justice Department wants to make points with the White House and writes an opinion no one but Dick Cheney agrees with to say it’s legal. Then it’s legal. Honest to God.

I don’t understand how some employees can walk into the Department of Justice building and not get sick to their stomachs just reading the sign. DoJ has done little, if anything, for the cause of justice since Shrub took office. All departments of the Executive Branch serve the president; that doesn’t mean they’re his lackeys, toadying up to spread a see-through veneer of legality to whatever he wants. Torture? Warrantless searches? Renditions? Denial of habeas? Whatever Shrub and Darth Cheney want, someone at the Department of Injustice can be found to justify it.

This is not the United States of America I was taught about, and it’s not just the government that sickens me. Polls show 61% of all Republicans think Shrub is doing a good job. Obviously no one else does; his current approval rating overall is 30%. My question is, who in their right mind can possibly look at his record and say he’s done a good job?

Witnesses for the prosecution:

• Ignored warnings in August of 2001 that al-Qaeda planned to fly planes into buildings.
• Invaded Iraq with no evidence they had anything to do with 9/11, the UN (accurately) said they had no WMD program, and we had nothing resembling a plan for what to do when Saddam was gone.
• Destroyed America’s reputation abroad with our “you’re either for us or a terrorist sympathizer” rhetoric.
• Preached fiscal restraint while increasing the budget by over 63% since taking office. This does not include the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Including those expected “emergency requests” would hike the increase to 74%.
• His brand of fiscal conservatism has increased the national debt 60% since he took over. This is impressive, considering we were running surpluses and paying down the debt when he took office.
• The disparity between the richest and poorest among us continues to grow to historic levels.
• Not even during the Red Scare and the height of McCarthyism have our civil liberties been so badly eroded.
• Torture is now condoned by the Executive Branch, as it feels necessary.
• Long-dismissed legal theories are trotted out as fact. (Unitary Executive, signing statements, ignorance of checks and balances.)

Yet well over half of all Republicans think he’s doing a hell of a job. Let’s see what they might point to:

• We haven’t been attacked in this country since 9/11. (Of course, we’ve now lost more killed and many times more wounded through our misguided responses than terrorists have ever killed here.)
• Their taxes are lower.
• He talks tough.

Shrub will leave office next year with this country improved in no way since he took over, other than relative incomes for those already in the top percentiles. For that, 61% of Republicans approve. A few conclusions can be drawn:

• They’re selfish. (I got mine, and I’m keeping it.)
• They’re cowards. (I don’t care what rights I sacrifice or who else has to die to make me 0.0001% safer.)
• They’re bullies. (Do it our way, or else.)
• They’re mouth-breathing, inbred idiots. (Self explanatory.)
• All of the above. (These are not mutually exclusive.)

If this pissed you off, I guess we know where you fall on the approval rankings. Suck it up.

A Knight Errant Hangs It Up

Basketball coach Bob Knight retired yesterday with an NCAA record 902 victories. Knight has been controversial for virtually his entire 42-year career as the enfant terrible of college basketball.

Knight couldn’t be a fictional character; his gifts are to profound, his faults too dramatic. He’s always fascinated me for that reason, the embodiment of the best and the worst sports brings out in a person, wrapped in the same psyche.

There’s no point in summing up the dichotomy that is Bob Knight, when John Feinstein has done it so well in this article in today’s Washington Post.

A Shyster's Christmas Card

Last spring, in a rash moment of adulthood, I decided to put my affairs in order. Will, living will, power of attorney, the whole nine yards. I realize this can be done by downloading forms off the internet for fifty bucks, but I had a couple of unorthodox things to take care of, and wanted them handled just right, so I violated one of my most cherished principles and hired a lawyer.

We met for forty-five minutes, and he offered me the whole package for $1600. (That’s right, I’m sixteen hundred dollars stupid.) As many consultation as I needed, unlimited hours until we get it right, exactly what you want, blah blah blah.

We was right about the unlimited hours; I can’t begin to tell how much time I spent correcting typos, errors of fact, and incorrect interpretations of my instructions. I finally took his boilerplate, a few lessons I’d picked up from his unsuccessful attempts, and finished it myself. Didn’t even go back to his office for he signings; found a notary and witness on my own. Sent the last check and blotted the whole unfortunate episode from my memory.

That was in May; in December, he sent me a Christmas card, soliciting for more business.

I wrote a reply, which I am willing to share with you below:


Please take me off your Christmas list,
I can’t believe you thought
That I would want to hear from you
So soon since last we talked.

You charged me sixteen hundred bucks
So I could spend my time
Correcting careless errors that
Should not have cost a dime.

I will not be referring you
To anyone I know,
I like to keep friends, so I must
Consideration show.

Your reputation’s safe with me,
Your legal skills are slick,
You meet the highest standards of
A greedy, slimy prick.

The Danny

I love rooting against the Washington Redskins. Not the Redskins themselves so much as their owner, Chainsaw Dan Snyder. (A nod to Gregg Easterbrook of ESPN.com’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback for the “Chainsaw Dan” sobriquet.) It was hard to root against the Redskins when that meant rooting against Joe Gibbs, but now that Gibbs has retired again, let the games begin.

Rarely has anyone made cheering his demise as easy as Chainsaw Dan. He stepped up right away with the current job search. Gibbs hired Assistant Head Coach – Defense Gregg Williams four years, with a strongly rumored understanding that Williams would be the Head Coach in Waiting. (The Redskins invented bloated coaching titles. On any other team, Williams would be the Defensive Coordinator. Granted, he can get pretty defensive when anyone questions his methods, but that’s a different story. Don Breaux, the Offensive Coordinator, is third on the offensive coaching depth chart, behind the Associate Head Coach – Offense, and the Assistant Head Coach – Offense. The Redskins were also the first to hire a Quality Control Coach. The team has made the playoffs three times in the past eleven years. That guy should definitely be renting.)

I digress. Assistant Head Coach – Defense Head Coach in Waiting Williams has been interviewed by Chainsaw Dan four times in the three weeks since Gibbs re-retired. This is after watching him work every day for four years. If ever anyone is looking for an excuse not to hire someone, this is how you do it. Sooner or later Williams will get pissed off, pass gas, or pick his nose in an interview, and Snyder will have his reason. Unless, of course, Chainsaw Dan only wants to keep Williams hanging long enough for all other coaching vacancies to be filled, thus preventing him from coming back to haunt the Redskins for at least a year.

In related news, the current coaching staff was finally called by Gibbs sixteen days after his retirement with updates on their status. This is the first any of them has heard from anyone in the Redskins’ hierarchy about their jobs. Like Williams, their contracts run through this season, so they won’t be sleeping in cardboard boxes under the Sousa Bridge any time soon, but still, this is classless.

So far we’ve established why you might root against Snyder: he’s an asshole. To his credit, he goes out of his way to make it easy for you, so he’s also a douche bag.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that former New York Giants head coach and Robin Williams look-alike Jim Fassel was the front runner for the Redskins’ head coaching job. This prompted a storm of protests from fans to the Post web site, and sports radio stations. One day later, Fassel was no longer acknowledged by the Redskins as their front runner. The reason given: poor fan reaction.

This is why the Redskins win every off-season and suck the rest of the year. It’s all about the media, and the spin. Snyder made his billions in marketing; he talks people into buying stuff they don’t need for a living. He sells out that white elephant of a ballpark by whipping the fans into frenzy of high expectations every year with flashy free agent signings and coaching changes, then weathers the storm all year when they alternately suck, or play barely well enough to make the playoffs. (This year’s combination of things breaking exactly as they had to would, in a different context, be more than enough for Shrub to justify invading China.)

The best thing about sports is that the true bullshit stops when the teams take the field, rink, floor. Sooner or later, someone has to hitch up his jock and kick ass, or go home. Snyder doesn’t get this. He still thinks he’s so smart he can market other teams into laying down for him like they’re rednecks who can barely make the rent on the trailer who think they need a hemi to drive to the bank to cash their welfare check. It hasn’t worked, and it won’t. Which leaves me with endless vistas of enjoyment spread before me, watching the petulant look Chainsaw Dan gets in the owner’s box every time the Redskins disappoint him yet again.

I Got Your Tough Right Here

Ray Lewis thinks he’s tough. Administers punishment, has friends who carry knives and carve people up at Super Bowls. Big bad Ray-Ray, the middle linebacker from hell.

Pacman Jones a bad motherfucker, right? Shooting up strip clubs, earning a year’s suspension for repeated – actually continuous – bad behavior. There are entire criminal law firms who don’t spend as much time in court as the Cincinnati Bengals.

Know what they are? Pussies.

In Pittsburgh, the city where “tough” got the H, wide receiver Cedric Wilson’s girlfriend held off police for twelve hours on Sunday before being arrested. Not his homie, or his boyz, or who he run with; his girlfriend! And Wilson’s a wide receiver, which is only a notch above punter on the football tough guy chart. (Hines Ward excepted, but, then again, he plays in The Burgh, too.) Wilson’s only the 42^nd toughest guy on the Steelers, and his squeeze is O.G.

Oh yeah. I’m ready for next year.

Hearty Congratulations

I spoke with my cousin Ted yesterday. This is not normally blog-worthy news. I speak with lots of people every day. Okay, maybe not lots, but handfuls. And sometimes they reply with more than just hand gestures and restraining orders. But now I’m off the subject.

Speaking with my cousin might not seem like news, unless you take into consideration that until a few days ago there was a legitimate fear I might not get to do it again.

Ted had ten hours of open heart surgery to replace a worn-out heart valve about ten days ago. Valve jobs are no big deal to him; he’s had at least three, I think. The issue here was that enough scar tissue had been formed to create a concern there might not be any place to hang the new one.

Lucky for all, the doctor was able to clean things up, and found the aorta to be in good shape, so another valve could be supported when the time comes, maybe on twenty years. He also inserted a small piece of Velcro to make future procedures easier.

Ted’s home now. Complete rest for a week, off work six to eight weeks after that. He sounded good – and well – on the phone yesterday, the Ted we all knew, and the collective sigh that left my parents, Craze, and I almost blew out the windows.

So that’s all the news about that. No big deal to most of you, but sixty-three years of my cousin Ted is nowhere near enough.

The American Dream

The local sports radio station is playing a series of ads promoting the newest get rich quick scheme: foreclosed real estate. There’s a testimonial from a guy who paid $25,000 for a house and sold it a month later for a $65,000 profit. It’s a reasonable assumption he was looking for three more 25 grand specials on his way home from the settlement.

This is great for those who have the cash on hand to pay for these discount houses. Period. No one else. It does not help the economy. The banks took a bath, and the construction industry isn’t going to build something new when you can pick up something almost new – that the original owner worked the bugs out of – for ten cents on the dollar.

It also doesn’t help those who are trying to get into the housing market for the first time, unless they were fortunate enough to have their financing lined up well in advance. More likely they’ll pay the speculator three to five times what he paid for it. His value add? Call me if you think of something.

What we have here is another wedge driving incomes apart. Those with money will make more; those without have probably already lost it through the mortgage payments they were able to make before the ARM went up, or the balloon payment kicked in. No sympathy here for them; they accepted terms they couldn’t afford. That’s life. Others shouldn’t get rich from their misfortune.

This is a golden opportunity for Congress to take action that won’t cost a cent, and will actually do some good. Since housing prices are going to fall anyway, let’s stabilize them and get some new homeowners set up. Impose a confiscatory tax rate on any property bought at a distress sale that is flipped in less than five years. If you bought it to live in, you’re cool. If you bought it solely to get someone else to pay you more for it, then who is it really hurting if you don’t make all that much off of it?

They won’t, though. Know why? Because they have money, and most people figure they will too, someday. They don’t want to lose their opportunity to screw someone else when it’s their turn. It’s what’s made America what it is today.

Such a Deal I Have for You

The Home Office received a piece of junk – er, unsolicited mail yesterday. I’m sharing it to show not only politicians are out of touch with reality in the metropolitan Washington, DC area.

The front of the tri-fold mailer invites me to “Come Enjoy the Best of Both Virginia’s!” I immediately wondered, “Who’s Virginia?” and, “Both of her whats?” This looked promising until I saw the mail was from Ryan Homes. The housing market is bad, but offering up both of Virginia’s whatevers to close a deal seemed extreme, especially when I thought of what most home sales representatives look like. (Not what they think, or act as if they look like. “Both Virginia’s” could refer to chins, for all I know.)

The inside screams WHY ARE YOU RENTING??? The reader is informed that single family homes start at just $1,396 per month; town homes from just $1,118 per month. Each claim is followed by asterisks galore, referring you to the disclaimers at the bottom of the page, presuming the purchase of a stripped-down home I hope includes exterior walls and a roof. One hundred percent financing is also assumed; apparently developers haven’t got the word about the sub-prime lending crisis.

Closer inspection reveals these attractive features: your brand new home will be within seven miles of the commuter train, from where it is “just a 1 ½ hour train ride to DC!!!” (“Just” is a key word in such brochures, as are exclamation points and asterisks directing you to small print. Example: Payments as low as 3 cents a minute!!!*

* - based on an average month of 43,200 minutes.)

Here’s the deal: you drive ten to fifteen minutes to get to the station, where you’ll wait for a train before spending ninety minutes of your life (Just $2.70 in mortgage payments!!!) to ride to Union Station, where you can walk, take Metro, or hail a cab to work. At the end of the day, the same in reverse. This is at least four hours a day just getting to and from work. That leaves the rest of your day to get dressed, eat dinner, and watch one episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” assuming you have any left to curb.

The area codes give them away: 304. West Virginia. The best of both Virginias they’re talking about means you can live in Appalachia, only passing through the execution capital of the world on your way to and from work. That’s what’s worth $1,396 a month. Just $7.20 in mortgage payments for each day’s commute. And people will jump on them.

You can’t make this shit up.

Oh, yeah. Happy New Year.

What is a Liberal?

“Liberal” has become a dirty word in American politics, for two primary reasons. Liberalism has allowed its leftmost wing to set its public agenda, while allowing conservatives to frame the discussion. In this quote from a 2002 interview with Reese Fuller, author James Lee Burke lays out the most accurate, and eloquent, definition of what a liberal is. If only more liberals would read it. (Read the entire interview; it’s well worth the time.)

Do you consider yourself a liberal?

I consider myself pretty traditional, really. People of my generation, who were born in the Depression, tend to be traditionalists. If I had to call myself a name I'd say I was a Jeffersonian liberal. But, see, something has become askew in American thinking. Liberals now are tarred in every way by people who want to associate in the popular mind liberalism with some kind of fanatical movement.

Traditional liberalism has involved certain kinds of movements that gave us Social Security, minimum wage, public healthcare, environmental and consumer protection, the civil rights acts of the 1960s, the fair hiring act, the equal employment act, public education. What is it that is so objectionable about Medicare for God's sake?

I remember on many occasions when liberals, or people who were supposed to be liberals, were called liberals and they shrink. It's beyond me, absolutely beyond me. I mean, do people think that the right wing gave us Social Security, collective bargaining, clean water? I don't know. I think it's one of those deals where you say it enough times, people began to believe it.

Now, there are people, to my mind, who are libertine, who have taken on the guise of being liberals and they are not liberals. They are involved in something else. I'm not knocking them, but this stuff about correctness in language, this hyper-sensitivity about ethnicity and the notion that people are not accountable for what they do, this is not liberalism.

Liberalism is founded on the Jeffersonian notion that ultimately the individual deserves the protection of his government, that the government has to give power to and protect those who have no voice, who are disenfranchised. The government is there to make the society work in an equitable and just way. That's the spirit of and the tradition of the liberal movement in this country. This other stuff has nothing to do with it.

Empowering an adult bookstore to open up shop in a neighborhood filled with elderly people who lack political power, whose finances are immediately compromised and their property values plummet, that is not, in my mind, enforcement of the First Amendment. It has nothing to do with the First Amendment. This is a misinterpretation of the constitutional views of people like Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and all these other early guys. They weren't there to protect pornographers who create victims out of defenseless people.

The libertine view of life has much more to do with fashion than it does politics. There's nothing liberal about Hollywood. That's just nonsense. The Disney Company violated minimum wage laws in Haiti. I mean, you've got to really work to violate sweatshop laws.


Thanks to Reese Fuller for graciously allowing this partial reprint.

Fertility Meds for the Goose

Never has the concept of selling sizzle over steak been as obvious as in the ludicrous display of greed and pettifoggery known as the NFL Network.

The NFL has become the sports behemoth of America through careful management of what is, essentially, saturation coverage of its games over free, or basic cable (ESPN), television. Every NFL game is televised. Every fan sees all of the local team’s away games, and any home games that are sold out 72 hours before kickoff. ESPN games must be made available to the local markets of the participating teams via free, over-the-air television. The Golden Goose cranked out eggs at an unprecedented rate for an industry that doesn’t really make anything.

The NFL, not content with billions of dollars a year from the television networks, decided last year to cut out the middle man, and started showing games on their house organ, the NFL Network. That was okay, as far as it went; NFL Network was on most basic cable systems.

Then the league held a gun to the goose’s head, and started demanding cable providers pay more for NFL Network than for such staples of basic cable as CNN. Cable companies responded by making the NFL Network either a subscription service (like HBO or Showtime), or by including it in a “tier” of sports channels, available for an additional fee. The uproar was great across the land, peaking when Dallas and Green Bay played a critical game in November; neither city had the NFL Network available in its local cable system. The league relented, cried crocodile tears, and started selling the rights to local stations. Channel 20 here in Washington paid upwards of $700,000 to air the Redskins-Chicago Bears game a few weeks ago.

Now the New England Patriots, led by Bill “Dr. Strangelove” Belichick, are gunning to be the only team in history to win all sixteen regular season games. (“History,” in this case, means thirty years, as the sixteen-game season has only been in place since 1978. Hardly a time span of Biblical proportions, even if you go with that “the world is six thousand years old” thing they’d have you believe.) Stations in the New York and Boston areas paid through the nose for the rights; the rest of the country was still held hostage by the cable/NFL standoff.

This is America. Health care and a proper education are negotiable, but watching a football game on free television is a God-given right. Senators became involved; Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) staff continued negotiations even on Christmas day. (Senator Leahy, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has apparently resolved all the civil liberties, unwarranted searches and wiretaps, and Justice Department scandals to his satisfaction.)

On Wednesday, the NFL announced both CBS and NBC would simulcast NFL Network’s coverage. This gives viewers across the country at least two channels to pick from; those in the metropolitan New York and Boston areas get four! (NBC, CBS, whatever local channel bought the rights originally, and NFL Network, for those who get it.) And it’s the same coverage! Literally. You’ll have the chance to flip from channel to channel and see the same thing, described by the same announcers. Bryant Gumbel available on four New York outlets at once! (He’ll probably wank his elbow out of its socket reading the newspaper articles.)

Here’s the best part: the game doesn’t mean dick. Both teams have clinched their playoff spots. The Pats’ opponent, the New York Giants, get the fifth seed whether they win or lose. Their goal is for no one to get hurt. The Pats can be expected to play pedal-to-the-metal; they’ve done it all year in meaningless situations. (Such as being up 40+ points.) Giants’ coach Tom “Rat Face” Coughlin has said he’ll play his starters; how much is questionable, with a playoff game to follow in a week.

I’m skipping this one. I missed the Steelers against St. Louis last week, and survived with no obvious psychic scars. (I live out of market for Steelers games and won’t pay for NFL Network.) I hope the Pats win, complete their 16-0 season, then lose in the playoffs, making it meaningless. Maybe a key player’s injury in this meaningless game could render him unavailable. Nothing career-threatening; a sprain or a pulled hammy will do.

Don’t get me wrong: I like football, and watch a fair amount of it. The NFL would do well to remember their success grew from providing free access to their fans, and not jerking them around any more than necessary. Golden geese are not immortal.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve, and Craze and I are driving to Germantown, Maryland to visit her niece’s family. Niece, hubby, and adorable daughter moved from Germantown to Houston last spring so hubby could get an advanced degree from Baylor University. (Note to grammarians: “Advanced Degree” and “Houston” may properly appear in the same sentence when accompanied by “Baylor University.”) They’re staying at hubby’s parents’ home, where we are to visit them.

Craze and I drive along the Beltway, north on 270, exit at Father Hurley Boulevard, stop for ice, and make the turn onto Wynnfield. About this time, it occurs to me to ask the immortal question: “I know we’re close, but where’s the turn for [names redacted]’s house? I only know how to get to [niece’s name redacted]’s house.”

Oh.

Fortunately, it was close, and we’d already passed it when I asked; since I’d also been there before, I’m not blameless. (I try to accept as much blame as possible for everything, so as not to give Craze a complex.) Thank God for cell phones.

As a special bonus, I learned what might be the single greatest thing for a father with a teenaged daughter to know. When explaining the curfew to a boyfriend, end your politely worded and helpful comment with, “I’m not afraid to go back to prison.” Works every time.

It's Better to Remain Silent and be Thought a Fool

I had budgeted time to write a thoughtful piece on Shrub’s mortgage rate freeze. Then I watched my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers get torched by the still undefeated New England Patriots, 34–13 this afternoon, after Steelers safety Anthony Smith guaranteed a victory earlier this week.

It is my sincere hope that Mr. Smith has learned his lesson. If not, I’ll lay it out for him.

Anthony, you are not the best player on the team. You are not even the best player at your position, and wouldn’t be playing if Ryan Clark wasn’t out for the season. Shut the fuck up.

Anthony, if you’re going to shoot your mouth off, be ready for them to come at you. Biting on run fakes to let Randy Moss get fifteen yards behind you and getting suckered on a trick play are not options for a free safety who runs his mouth the way you did. Shut the fuck up.

Let’s hope young Anthony has learned not to let his whale mouth overwhelm his hummingbird ass again. At least not until we have a chance to trade him.

A Huckabee By Any Other Name

Looks like Mitt Romney’s not as open-minded about religious choice he’d like you to think. "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom," to use a direct quote, is not the blanket call for tolerance the Mittster would like to claim it is. Recent polls show 18% of Americans define themselves as either agnostic or atheist. The number is probably higher if you include those who may believe in some greater power, but not in what passes for organized religion. Deists, for example. (For those might say Deists don’t qualify, let me cite one who is clearly germane to the discussion of religion versus politics in America: Thomas Jefferson.)

Freedom is supposed to be for everyone, regardless or what they believe. Or don’t. There’s no litmus test for it. It’s supposed to be an inalienable right, whether you believe in God, don’t believe in God, believe God “set the clock and got out of the way” (to quote Chris Matthews), believe in reincarnation, or pagan rituals.

Freedom in the United States is not handed down from God; it’s guaranteed in the increasingly fragile parchment of the Constitution. The framers may have thought they were divinely inspired – and they may well have been – but God does not actively dedicate Himself to the rights and liberty of every American. Want proof? The greatest assault on our allegedly guaranteed liberties in the 220 years since they were handed down from Philadelphia has taken place under the watch of, and with the encouragement of, the only President in history who considers himself to be God’s messenger on earth.

You can think your liberty comes from God, but you’d better be prepared to defend it yourself. Mitt Romney isn’t going to.

Holier Than Thou

Mitt Romney officially declared himself a Christian today, thus observing the unwritten third qualification to be president. (The Constitution puts forth the other two: at least thirty-five years old, and born in the USA. Sorry, Arnold.)

Romney's guilelessness can be debated elsewhere. It may be unseemly to question someone’s sincerity on a matter of faith, but Romney’s earned it, since he’s as sincere as a whore’s orgasm the rest of the time. As political theater, the speech was unmatched since Lloyd Bentsen told Dan Quayle, “I knew Jack Kennedy, and you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Of course, Bentsen went on to lose the 1988 election behind Michael “Helmet Head” Dukakis, so that might not be the image Romney hoped to convey.

On the surface, Romney’s move is brilliant politics. No one doubts his real audience today was Mike Huckabee, who’s hot right now, and misses no opportunity to coyly diss Romney as a Morman. Romney’s speech leaves Huckabee with a Hobson’s choice: welcome Mitt into the Christian tent, or risk becoming the candidate of exclusion. Tom Tancredo would seem to have that gig pretty well wrapped up, but there’s always room outside today’s Republican tent.

The real loser in this Romney vs. Huckabee jihad is Rudy Giuliani. He’s dropped off the media radar faster than anyone since Philip Michael Thomas when Miami Vice was cancelled. This might not be a wholly bad thing for Rudy, as most of his recent coverage had been of the Judith Regan-Bernie Kerik “can my associations be any sleazier” variety.

I almost feel bad for the Republicans. Romney believes in whatever he thinks will get him elected at the time you ask what he believes. (Sort of the Republican Hillary Clinton, with better hair.) Giuliani has more skeletons in his closet than Alfred Hitchcock. Huckabee may be the nicest guy in the world, but he runs the risk of being the Republicans’ potentially most divisive candidate in the general election. John McCain seems to have just enough support to do what he did in 2000; win a surprise primary, excite people for a few weeks, then pull a Howard Dean. Paul, Tancredo, and Hunter? Come on, that sounds more like a firm of ambulance chasers advertising on TV at 3:00 AM than three potential presidents.

The big implosion could be on the way. “Faith” has become such a litmus test for Republican politicians that the radical right could provoke a discussion it can’t win by waking up the sixty per cent of the population who don’t have strong feelings about it one way or the other. The possibility exists that the Republicans, having opened the Pandora’s box of religion, could nominate a candidate to walk into the biggest defeat since Reagan clipped Mondale in 1984. Not saying it will happen; if it does, you heard it here first.