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.