Nealism

OMG, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, the George Bushes, and Dick Cheney are Kenyan!

2010-10-17T13:49:00.001-07:00

Forget Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, the new game in America is Six Degrees of Barack Obama. Apparently . . .

President Obama is the only presidential candidate in American history to make his birth certificate public (contrary to the insane ravings of the "Birthers"). Should the Bushes and Cheney need to do the same, or else have the legitimacy of their presidencies investigated? Should Caribou Barbie have to do the same before her inevitable run for the Real Oval Office? You betcha!

As for Limbaugh, having a common ancestor with Obama in a "large landowner in Virginia" can mean only one thing: one of Rushbo's great-grandads must have "made the massah with two backs" with one of his slaves! (Okay, actually, it means nothing of the sort, but you know the Right wouldn't hesitate to make such a claim if the roles were reversed.)

Nealism Defined

2009-07-17T04:08:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, May 18^th, 2008, I began writing this blog about my beliefs, modestly titled “Nealism.” Since then I’ve shared my views, with less or even less regularity, on a variety of subjects, though I’m sure the diversity of my opinions in reality isn’t nearly as broad as I convince myself it is. Yet despite the hours I spend—or used to spend—expressing those beliefs, I’ve never really defined what Nealism is.

I’ve now been asked, quite inadvertently, to do so.

Nealism is a philosophy with delusions of relevance. So far it has exactly one adherent (of whom I am aware): me. I dream that Neil Diamond, Neil Peart, Neil Young, Neil Patrick Harris, and Neil Gaiman, and Zora Neale Hurston will become converts, even though they spell their names incorrectly (and the last of whom is dead), as will Patricia Neal and Neal Stephenson, who do spell it properly. However, I have no illusions, or few of them anyway. I know of three people who actually read Nealism, none of whom are named “Neal” in any of its accepted or inferior forms, and I’m pretty sure they stopped when I stopped writing it. If they didn’t, they need help that I am unqualified to provide.

Nealism is, at its core, a belief in the importance of curiosity. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” So said William Shakespeare through his most famous mouth (and the original Emo), Prince Hamlet. This quote is often used to attack non-believers (which is oddly only used to describe those who don’t believe in things without evidence), suggesting that if you don’t believe in God/Heaven/Elvis/What-Have-You, then Willy the Shakes thinks you closed-minded and short-sighted. Nealism reads that differently. Nealism sees Hamlet’s admonition of his best friend as both acceptance of and wonder at the fact that there are still many mysteries to be solved, and as the bright snicker-snack of a vorpal and caustic wit. We don’t know all the answers—we don’t even know all the questions—and that is a beautiful thing.

That’s not to say that Nealists are about the journey, not the destination. Journeys are great (so is Journey, at least when Steve Perry was with them), but destinations frequently rock too.

“Nihilists! Fuck me. Say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos..”—The Big Lebowski

While having existential tendencies, Nealism is not nihilism. While human existence is inarguably absurd, there is just as assuredly a point to it all, even to the absurdity.

Nealism believes that cheesecake and irony make life worth living, that Han shot first, that the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42, that “with great power comes great responsibility” should have been the First Commandment (since by the Bible’s account, God could have used some reminding in following that one). Nealism believes that writing is art, the quality of which can no more be measured with a rubric than can a sunset or an ice cream sundae.

Nealism loves personification.

Nealism believes that music is the great unifier, and that all music has merit and beauty and value. Except country.

Nealism believes that sarcasm is verbal irony and should be part of all high school English curricula.

Nealism believes that morality based on the promise of heaven or the threat of hell is not morality at all, but evidence that the person in question can be bribed or extorted into doing what someone else said was right. True morality is doing what’s right regardless of any cost or benefit to oneself.

Nealism believes that No Child Left Behind is heinous fuckery most foul, and that “heinous fuckery most foul” is the greatest expression of distaste ever written or spoken.

Nealism values procrastination and the importance of being fashionably late, though not fashionable.

But most importantly of all, Nealism is a pun, and puns are all anyone really needs to find true happiness.

"It's clearly a budget. It's got a . . . lack . . . of numbers in it?"

2009-03-31T18:11:00.000-07:00

I never imagined that anyone, even the members of the Republican Party, would ever look back with longing to the economic skills of Former President (how I love saying that!) George W. Bush, but here we are.

In one of his all too frequent dumbass statements, The Dubster once said, "It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it." Wow. Yeah. That guy was the leader of the Free World for eight years. I suppose in some sense we shouldn't complain about how screwed up the country is right now, and should just be thankful that we still have a country at all.

Amazingly enough, though, Bush seems to have been the economic genius of these chuckleheads. As Keith Olbermann reports below, the GOP has released a so-called "budget" . . . only they failed even President Bush's pathetic criterion: there are no numbers in it!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

But don't take that pinko-commie Keith Olbermann's word for it. Go to this lefty website to see the actual document.

Not only is it seriously lacking in those pesky "numbers," but I've gotta say, I've seen better projects produced by ninth graders with learning disabilities. Their "roadmap" looks like one of those economics boardgames kids make for social studies classes: simple circles connected by lines. I kept expecting to see "Inherit Fortune from Hotel-Magnate Parents and Pay No Death Tax: Advance 1 Social Class" in one of the circles.

Republicans kill me. Check out their graphs, especially the one from page 16. Even though the graph is titled "Deficit Under Democratic Budgets," and even though it distinguishes between Democratic and Republican budgets, the only budgets listed were exclusively from two administrations: Bush's and Obama's, and only half of Bush's budgets (2004-2007; 2008 is mysteriously between the cracks) at that. In fact, while Bush was in office for eight years, they only include four years of his budgets, while Obama, who has been president for seventy days is inexplicably represented by twelve years of budgets (man, that guy works hard!).

This is likely due to the fact that, as anyone can see here, over the last seventy years debt and deficits have generally decreased under Democratic presidents and increased under Republicans. Not the message the "fiscal conservatives" want the American public to get, I'm guessing.

The exit of George W. Bush was a bittersweet joy for me. As a patriot, I was glad to see him go, but as an amateur satirist, I feared that I would miss him dearly. I needn't have worried. John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and their congressional mooks in the Notorious GOP are filling the void nicely.

I can't wait to see what numbers make it into the next installment of the GOP's "budgetty" proposal, released tomorrow. It's just a shot in the dark, but I'm guessing "Number 1" isn't going to be one of them.

One of the Great Things about America . . .

2009-01-19T18:12:00.000-08:00

. . . is the fact that any idiot is free to speak whatever idiocy he wants.

I ran into this head-first this weekend. I stopped into a music store I frequent, an "Exchange" run by a guy named "Steve," to get some patch cords and cables for my studio. The store had moved, unbeknownst to me, and it was sheer luck that I happened upon the new location. That is where the serendipity ended--or began, depending on how you look at it.

Just after I arrived, a man the owner identified as "Uncle Tom" came in and started talking to the owner and his girlfriend. Tom asked about an item he wanted ordered. What followed from Steve was a lengthy rant on the difficulties of relocating a business to a new building, one he apparently purchased. He went on about plumbers and carpet layers (heh, I'm such a child sometimes) demanding payment in cash, leaving him no capital with which to purchase new inventory, etc.

At this point I noticed an Ovation ukulele, like the one above, only red. Now, I have no real interest in a ukulele, but I love musical instruments, I don't have a uke, and it looked just like a miniature version of a couple of my Ovation guitars, so the little sucker appealed to my senses of symmetry and brand loyalty, as well as to my inner collector and musician. Plus, it was a really good price. So, with a fresh paycheck and a payment from a client impending, I decided to do my bit to help a struggling small businessman. I took the uke, gathered the cords I needed, and went to look at some songbooks. In all, I had some $200 in merchandise and a debit card in hand.

You know how our brains are wired to filter irrelevant information, only processing things that interest us? It's the wiring that unfortunately leaves me to hear the most uncomfortable facts from my teenage students, even when I'm not listening and don't want to know. A few things from the conversation in the room sifted through.

The owner explained to his "uncle" that, if he ordered the item that day, it wouldn't be in until Tuesday due to the impending holiday. Uncle Tom said something that didn't register for a moment: "they should be happy they got their guy in the White House." Hunh? Who was this "they?" Democrats? Senators? Americans with college degrees? To which of the many demographic groups Barack Obama represents could they have possibly been referring? Maybe they had something against comic book nerds.

Alas, no. The conversation devolved rapidly. References to "White House bar-b-cues" (did they not know who'd been there for the past eight years?), complete with "chicken" and "watermelon," insued. Then, the cherry on the sundae, as it were: "I can't wait to see his dance. I wonder if he'll do a spearchucker dance."

"Spearchucker." In the 21st century. Really. (A troubling side note, Firefox's spell-checker doesn't recognize "Barack Obama" as correctly spelled words, but it does recognize "spearchucker"--not sure what I think about that.)

I understand that small business owners have to be careful about contradicting or rebuking customers--I've certainly tutored enough Republicans to have learned when to keep quiet--but Steve didn't just give Imus-like faux shock, or even nod politely. He contributed to the conversation.

I returned the ukulele and the cords and, still sporting the Obama '08 sweatshirt I'd entered wearing, I headed for the door. Having ignored me up until then, they fell all over themselves to be polite. I smiled, said "good luck with your business," and left.

One of the great things about America is the fact that any idiot is free to speak whatever idiocy he wants. Even better is the fact that I'm free to never give racist peckerwoods my business ever again.

Jesus IS Black!

2008-12-16T09:49:00.000-08:00

If you haven't seen "Prop 8: The Musical" yet, you really should watch it here:

Setting aside the joy of seeing Jack Black play Joshua ben Joseph (aka Jesus of Nazareth), to say nothing of "West Wing's" Allison Janney as "Prop 8 Leader's #1 Wife," this is a brilliant little piece of art and rhetoric. In spite (or perhaps because) of the fact that I was raised a fundamentalist evangelical Christian, it has always irked me that Christians so blindly pick and choose what portions of the Bible are to be "read literally" and what portions are not, a point nicely made here. But P8tM makes another point I've not considered: when it comes to gay marriage, there's money to be made.

Yes, gay marriage will save the economy, indeed!

When I looked this video up on YouTube to embed it, another, similar link popped up: Faux News' response to Prop 8: The Musical. Trust the Faux Guys to put their requisite spin on it.

Gotta love the vitriolic contempt with which Brian Kilmeade says the names "Neil Patrick Harris" and "Jack Black."

Their thesis (which, since this is Faux News, comes in the form of a question, because that makes them Fair and Balanced!): "Is this video Hollywood's attempt at poking a little fun or is it an outright insult [to some Christians]?" Yeah. Like those are the only possibilities.

Some of their premises:

* It's stupid to do this before Christmas
* The video "mocks Jesus Christ and belittles the Bible for political points"
* The content is "anti-religious"
* "The majority [of America] doesn't find this funny"
* There's a disconnect between the people in Hollywood and the rest of the country

Apparently, "shrimp cocktail" puts the News Clown Brian Kilmeade "on edge," and casting Jack Black holding shrimp cocktail as Jesus Christ is "obviously offensive." Really? That's obvious? Wait, which is the obviously offensive part, Jack Black or the shrimp cocktail?

What really slays me is James Hirsen's evident irony deficiency. One, he condemns Mark Shaiman for helping to "get some guy to resign his position as a head of a theater in Sacramento," claiming that means Shaiman doesn't "seem to be practicing much in the way of tolerance or sensitivity." (For the record, the theater director in question was Scott Eckern. Shaiman was one of thousands of gay Californians who protested Eckern's financial support of Prop 8, given the fact that so much of his success directing a theater that puts on musicals depends so heavily on the gay community, for patrons, actors, artists, stage workers, etc.)

What's far more astounding is Hirsen's assertion that the gays "bring these tired, old attacks on the Old Testament" against People of the Book, willfully oblivious of the fact that that was exactly P8tM's point, that the Old Testament is tired and old and no more relevant to such a modern issue than the Judaic proscription on haircuts for men or sex with menstruating women (Leviticus 19:27 and 15:19-24, respectively). Would that the Christo-Fascist Zombie Brigade would stop using these tired, old attacks from the Old Testament against the rest of us.

Petty correction time: Brian Kilmeade claimed that P8tM was trying to change the minds of "people who have voted against Proposition 8." Ummm . . . no. Okay, it was probably just an honest mistake, but they make them a lot on Faux, and never seem to correct them when they do, which leads me to believe that they are fine with perpetuating the confusion about whether voting for or against Prop 8 was a vote for or against civil rights. This casual relationship with the facts is compounded by the identification of Hirsen as the author of "Hollywood Nation" (sic), but the failure to disclose his association with the right-wing lunatic fringe (and frequently factually challenged) magazine NewsMax. This would be like using L. Ron Hubbard as an "authority" on military history, identifying him as the author of Battlefield Earth without also noting that he's the nutjob who thinks humans were dumped on earth from DC8s at the command of intergalactic tyrant Xenu. Yeah.

The funniest part is, given the number of television shows featuring LGBT characters on Fox and its affiliated networks, clearly Fox knows there's money to be made from the gay community.

See ya later, Sinners!

"Who Throws a Shoe? Honestly!"

2008-12-15T10:09:00.000-08:00

They say you can judge a man by his enemies, and George W. Bush has strange enemies indeed. Remember that this was the man who was almost killed by a pretzel (and supposedly there was no beer involved). Now, he's been attacked by a shoe-throwing assailant.

Seriously, there can't be many jobs worse than working for the Secret Service to protect this man.

Vote!

2008-11-04T14:12:00.000-08:00

'Nuff said.

Are You Kidding Me!!?

2008-10-30T04:52:00.000-07:00

"To all those who name the name of Christ who plan to willfully disobey Him by voting for Obama, take warning... No, this election is not about race. It's not about the economy. It's about obeying God... Obey Him in the voting booth and out of it. If not, do us all a favor and quit calling yourself a Christian."
-- radio host and commentator Janet Porter

You know, the Third Commandment (Second if you're Catholic) is often misinterpreted (I know, right?). "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God," or "taking the Lord's name in vain," was always explained to me as saying "Oh, God!" or "Jesus Christ!" as an interjection.

I recently heard another interpretation (sorry, I don't remember where) of this commandment: God doesn't want people speaking for him. This makes so much more sense to me. Were I an omnipotent god (working on it), why would I care if someone shouted my name after stubbing his toe? On the other hand, I would have a real problem with some schmuck claiming that I agreed with him. I don't care if she's claiming that we should find a cure for cancer, she doesn't get to speak for Omnipotent Me.

These people go too far. Who the fuck does this Janet Porter think she is, speaking for Jesus? If Jesus really wanted to influence this election in favor of John McCain (or Ralph Nader, for that matter--omnipotence is omnipotence), I'm pretty sure he could manage it without this asshole.

That said, I truly don't get how they can possibly justify this position. What is it about the modern conservative movement that has dick to do with the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth? Tax cuts for the rich? Umm, no. Strong defense? Not remotely. Gutting help for the poor? Absolutely not.

In fact, with the possible exception of abortion, there's not one single platform position with which there is a shred of evidence that Jesus would have supported, and there is direct evidence that he would have opposed almost everything these fascists claim in his name.

This is way too big a topic for the moment, but I'll be addressing it in more detail later. For the moment, let's just talk about universal health care. The Right (including the Christian Right) attacks the concept of health care for everyone as "socialized medicine," and on that, at least, they're right. Full coverage would be socialized medicine, just like free public education, public police and fire safety, and a tax-funded public military are "socialized." Is this really an insult anymore?

Do you know who believed in socialized medicine? Jesus. All the times he and his apostles healed people, they never once took a single dinar for the service.

I actually agree with these words from Ms. Porter: it's about time that Republicans do us all a favor and quit calling themselves Christians.

Fuck the Vote!

2008-10-29T19:57:00.000-07:00

Have they no sense of decency? At long last, have they no sense of decency?

A former colleague of mine, a particularly vile Right-Winger (and former Republican state congressman) who bore a stomach-churning resemblance to Dick Cheney, once told me, regarding the suppression tens of thousands of African-American voters in Florida in 2000, "If black people don't want to lose the right to vote, they need to start voting Republican." On another occasion, when I said the Republicans could only win the 2004 presidential election if they stole it, he replied, "if that's what it takes."

I thought he was just a wingnut, but it turns out, he was the rule among Republicans, not the exception.

This was Paul Weyrich, co-founder of The Moral Majority and The Heritage Foundation, speaking in 1980 at an event addressed by both Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell. He spells it out pretty clearly:

There is no doubt that Republicans don't want Americans to vote. They admit. They're actually proud of it. And they do whatever they can to suppress it, all the while whining about Democrats supposedly trying to steal elections by using cigarettes to bribe Mickey Mouse to vote for them. Yes, people registered fictional (and sometimes animated) characters to vote through Acorn, but unless the Mickster actually shows up to vote, and does so a few hundred thousand times, this is not going to affect the election at all.

On the other hand, Republicans have turned voter suppression into a art form. In Florida in 2000, Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris "delivered" the election to George Bush by sabotaging ballots and scrubbing tens of thousands of eligible voters--mostly African Americans--from the rolls. In 2004 Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell took numerous actions that impeded Americans--mostly Democrats--from voting. In my own state, Republican operative Allen Raymond clogged Democratic phone lines, interfering with their attempts to get out the vote, which contributed to Jeanne Shaheen's loss to Senator John Sununu.

They are, of course, doing it again, outlined in detail at TPM Muckraker.

If you have to prevent eligible citizens from voting in order to win elections, then your ideas must really, really suck.

Republicans want to Fuck the Vote. I say "Fuck the Republicans." Vote!

Follow the Money

2008-10-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

It's the guiding principle of political analysis of our time: follow the money. Oh, yes. Let's.

There's been a lot of flap over Joe the Plumber and his question to Barack Obama. Republican John McCain has seized on Obama's phrase "spread the wealth" as proof that Obama is a socialist. Wow.

Since then, the Right has been whining that the mainstream media has been trashing Joe, and hasn't reported enough on the incident because they so want Obama to win. Worse, Joe himself complained, "You know, when you can't ask a question of your leaders anymore, that gets scary."

The so-called "liberal" media, which allegedly wants Obama to win, hasn't been reporting to heavily the fact that not only did Joe Wurzelbacher lie to the senator in his question, Obama did answer his question. Watch the entire encounter:

That's not scary, Joe. Not only did no one try to prevent you from asking your question, not only did Senator Obama not brush you off, he answered your question, he answered it thoroughly and well, and he gave you nearly six minutes of his time to do so. What's scary is the fact that you lie through your teeth about being able to ask your question, and the media has done relatively little to shoot your lies down.

As for the toxic "spread the wealth" meme that's going around, let's look at the candidates and their plans.

Consider this: according to the candidates' 2007 tax returns, John McCain, who claimed $361,393 in income last year, would not get a tax cut from Barack Obama, but he likely wouldn't have his taxes raised either. That is, of course, if you ignore the fact that most of Republican John McCain's income and assets come from his mistress-turned-second-wife, beer heiress Cindy McCain. We'll get to that.

But under his own plan, Barack Obama, who made a little over $4 million last year, would pay about $250,000 extra in taxes. As Joe Biden would say, let me repeat that: Barack Obama is going to raise his own taxes by a quarter of a million dollars.

Republican John McCain is, of course, less than honest about his finances. The The USA Today report above, from last April, was really misleading, given that it only included his income, and half of his and Cindy's as well. However, as reported here, Cindy McCain only disclosed her tax returns this month, and she made a hell of a lot more last year than her husband: about $4.1 million, which means, between them, they'll get about the same tax increase from Obama's plan as Obama himself will.

On the other hand, under McCain's plan, not only will his own family's taxes won't go up (and might actually go down), but the Obamas will get the opportunity to enjoy the Bush tax cuts as well.

In fact, if you consider that the McCain tax plan isn't really his, but is rather George Bush's plan made permanent, assuming similar returns for the McCain's in previous years (unlike the Obamas, who disclosed back to 2000, the McCains only disclosed the last two years) have already saved about $1.75 million under Bush's redistribution of the wealth upward.

All of this, of course, is merely income, not assets. The Obamas have done well for themselves for years. Until 2005, they collectively made about a quarter of a million dollars a year (the same that he's going to tax himself), but after the publication of Dreams of My Father in 2005, Obama increased his family's income to over $1.7 million. In 2006, their income dropped below a million dollars. The publication of The Audacity of Hope is what pushed their income to just a few hundred thousand dollars short of what John McCain once defined as "rich." All this means that the Obamas, if they've been extremely frugal, may have put away 6 or 7 million dollars.

The McCains, on the other hand, have generations of wealth behind them. Cindy McCain is estimated to be worth between $36 and $54 million, not to mention what she will ultimately inherit from her father (the latter of which, of course, won't be taxed under the Bush/McCain plan, and might be under Obama).

For myself, I would much rather vote for the candidate who is willing to pay more taxes so that I can pay less (estimated here at about $1300 less), than the guy who will save more in taxes under his own plan than I will ever make in my lifetime.

And Joe the Plumber wants to vote for the other guy? Idiot.

I Wish This Were Fiction

2008-10-28T06:04:00.000-07:00

Dilbert is often hilarious, but this one really struck me. Even though I don't work for a tech company, I can still identify with Adams's themes more often that not. Today, for instance, he hit home:

Sadly, though, while Adams is satirizing idiotic suggestions from co-workers, in my case it was my principal and superintendent who made us spend two faculty meetings coming up with a procedure for making school procedures.

No Child Left Behind really missed the mark when it tried to identify why our public schools are performing so poorly. No Idiots Left in Charge might be a better approach.

Whasssuuuuuuuup?

2008-10-26T05:54:00.001-07:00

This makes me wish an actual campaign could get away with running this on national television.

Simpler Times

2008-10-25T15:42:00.000-07:00

This pretty well speaks for itself.

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

With Opie, Matlock, and the Fonze on our side, fuck yes we can!

WWSD?

2008-10-22T08:53:00.001-07:00

What must it be like, I wonder, to be George Takei right now? Actually, I've wondered that for a long time. When I was little, I thought Lieutenant Sulu was the coolest (and yes, I realize the picture above is Chekhov, not Sulu--go to Goats to get the full joke). Of course I always liked the underdogs. Spock, Starbuck, and Mickey Dolenz were great, true, but I preferred Sulu, Apollo, and Peter Tork. Sulu was the shit. He fenced, he knew martial arts, he flew Enterprise and fired the phasers. Even though it was always Kirk who always got to make the horta with two backs, Sulu was my man. My favorite Star Trek Moment was when, in the novelization of The Wrath of Khan, it's revealed that after the Enterprise's training mission, Commander Sulu would be promoted to captain of the new starship Excelsior (I was heartbroken when I learned the scene was cut from the movie).

I shouldn't have been surprised, I suppose, when George Takei came out in 2005. It was apparently a pretty open secret among Trekkies, and anyone who saw him in "The Naked Time," fencing shirtless . . . wow.

The reason I bring him up is this: George Takei married Brad Altman, his partner of twenty one years (how many heterosexual couples stay together so long?) last month, after the California Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to deny homosexuals such a fundamental freedom as the right to marry whom they choose. Now, however, the Republican party and its Christo-fascist allies are pouring millions of dollars into California to pass Proposition 8, which would amend the California constitution to ban gay marriage--the only way to overrule the supreme court's decision. In other words, the marriage of two men who, like so many other same-sex couples in California, clearly love and are committed to each other stands on the precipice of being criminalized, all because of a narrow-minded, bigoted interpretation of a text* written almost two thousand years ago by nomadic shepherds in the Middle East.

Takei is not alone. So what makes his story more compelling than that of Ellen Degeneres, or any of the other hundreds of gay couples who might lose their marriages (in the case of 4,037 of them, for the second time)? What makes Takei different is his life story.

George Takei was born in Los Angeles in 1937. In 1942, when Takei was five, his family was interred at Rohwer and then at Tule Lake until the end of the war. In an interview with Air America's David Bender, Takei admitted that his experience growing up in an internment camp affected his decision to keep his homosexuality out of the public for so long. Ya think?

This story fascinates me. George Takei has what may be a unique perspective on this issue. He knows better than anyone how the promise and dream of freedom can be so suddenly and arbitrarily taken away, even in America. Now, sixty six years after he was denied his right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness for no better reason than that he existed, George Takei could have that liberty, that attainment of happiness, ripped from him again.

There is unequal parity between having a marriage license invalidated and being locked in an internment camp, I'll grant you. But the parallel is far too close to be acceptable in the land of the free and home of the brave. Whether you agree with homosexuality and gay marriage or not, the fact is that gays are human beings, and millions are Americans. They have this right. If America, its Constitution, and its flag don't stand for everyone's right to marry whom they choose, then what do they stand for?

The Japanese Internment Camps were among the worst stains on America's honor, and our honor can't take too many more such hits. Support the opposition to Proposition 8. Let the gay and lesbian citizens of California live long and prosper.

It's what Sulu would do.

* If we're going to be literal in our interpretation of the Bible, let's be literal. Leviticus 18:22 says, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination." Okay. Fine. If a man sticks his penis into another man's vagina, I think we can all agree, that would be an abomination. That is not, however, literally what gays and lesbians do.

How Much is too Much?

2008-10-11T06:32:00.000-07:00

I once asked one of my Republican friends, regarding the latest (at the time--now so quaint) abuses by the Bush Administration: "How much is too much? How far is too far?"

I was an imperfect supporter of Bill Clinton. On the whole, I thought he was a good president, with some serious flaws, both personal and professional. Of course, in retrospect, compared to what we got to replace him, Bill Clinton was a great president. Hell, compared to what we have now, Poppy Bush was a great president, so, whatever.

Even so, when Bill Clinton bombed Kosovo as the Monica Lewinski scandle heated up, for me that was too much, too far. It seemed clear to me that Clinton was starting a war to distract from his domestic problems. Since then, I've come to see Clinton's actions in a different context, especially after reading Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies, but at the time, I was disgusted.

The last eight years have really made me wonder, how much is too much for otherwise decent human beings who happen to be Republicans? The democratic farce that was the 2000 election, including the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of African American voters, to say nothing of the Supreme Court effectively deciding an election, clearly wasn't too much. The lies about Saddam Hussein, 9/11, and WMD that led to the deaths and dimsmemberment of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis apparently wasn't too much. Domestic spying, the outing of a covert CIA agent for political reasons, the exploitation of fear and terrorism to win elections, the fact that a score or so of everyday airline passengers on United 93 were more effective at protecting us on 9/11 than the Bush Administration wasn't too much. Even Bush callously challenging insurgents in Iraq to "Bring it on," inciting them to attack our troops wasn't too much.

Now, I'm wondering again. Rachel Maddow reports on much of what troubles me:

To Republican John McCain's credit, when someone said to him directly that she thinks Barack Obama is "an Arab," he testily took the mike from her and said, "no ma'am." (He went on to call Obama "decent," implying that "decent" is an antinym of "Arab," but that's a whole other racist smorgasborg.) However, when he said that people didn't need to be scared of an Obama presidency, he was booed loudly, and clearly lost control of his audience for daring to suggest such a thing.

More troubling is the fact that Republican Senator McCain's own speeches, and to a far greater extent those of Republican Governor Sarah Palin, are actively inciting such reactions. Palin calls Obama an "outsider," suggesting that he doesn't "thinks America is imperfect enough" to work with "terrorists." McCain repeatedly asks "who is the real Barack Obama?" Several people who have introduced either candidate have made a point of emphasizing Barack Hussein Obama's middle name, knowing the emotional reaction that incites.

Audio and video abounds of people in the crowd holding up signs that say "Obama bin Lyin'" and stuffed monkeys with Obama name tags, answering the aforementioned question from McCain and Palin with "Terrorist" and "off with his head." On more than one occasion, participants have yelled "Kill him!" and a woman in Georgia yelled "bomb Obama!"

How much is too much? How far is too far? In the 60s, two senators who ran for president (one became president) were assassinated. Two African-American leaders were assassinated. Now, we have an African-American leader and senator who is not only running for president, but is the frontrunner. While I in no way believe that either McCain or Palin genuinely wishes Barack Obama harm, the fact is that they are both encouraging negative reactions to him, and failing to shut down the wingnuts who make such threats from the audience. Seriously.

This is so wrong, on so many levels. On the one hand, it's definitely one sided. Where are the death threats against McCain or Palin (or even Bush) from the audiences at Obama and Biden rallies? Even when people boo McCain, Obama tells them to stop, and no one is threatening the Republican candidates, or wishing them harm. Everyday Republicans don't have such limits, and their so-called leaders seem to have no interest in, well, leading.

How much is too much? How far is too far? If Barack Obama is attacked or, decency forbid, killed, by one of those idiots getting worked up at a McCain-Palin rally, would that finally qualify?

I would like to think so, but I suspect that, were that to happen, they'd find a way to justify that too. At long last, they have no sense of decency.

Where There's a Will, There's a Won't

2008-09-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

George Will, along with the late William F. Buckley (or William B. Fuckley, as I affectionately thought of him), has long represented the rather lonely intelligentsia of American conservatism. While I rarely ever agree with anything he says, and I find his obsession with baseball metaphors a bit trying, I've always respected his skill at wordcraft and rhetoric.

Recently, I had one of those rare moments: agreement with George Will.

The article is here, but it's worth reproducing in its entirety.

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around."
--Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

To read the Journal's details about the depths of McCain's shallowness on the subject of Cox's chairmanship, see "McCain's Scapegoat" (Sept. 19). Then consider McCain's characteristic accusation that Cox "has betrayed the public's trust."

Perhaps an old antagonism is involved in McCain's fact-free slander. His most conspicuous economic adviser is Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who previously headed the Congressional Budget Office. There he was an impediment to conservatives, including then-Rep. Cox, who, as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, persistently tried and generally failed to enlist CBO support for "dynamic scoring" that would estimate the economic growth effects of proposed tax cuts.

In any case, McCain's smear -- that Cox "betrayed the public's trust" -- is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people. McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17; and the New York Times of Sept. 19.)

By a Gresham's Law of political discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases."

The political left always aims to expand the permeation of economic life by politics. Today, the efficient means to that end is government control of capital. So, is not McCain's party now conducting the most leftist administration in American history? The New Deal never acted so precipitously on such a scale. Treasury Secretary Paulson, asked about conservative complaints that his rescue program amounts to socialism, said, essentially: This is not socialism, this is necessary. That non sequitur might be politically necessary, but remember that government control of capital is government control of capitalism. Does McCain have qualms about this, or only quarrels?

On "60 Minutes" Sunday evening, McCain, saying "this may sound a little unusual," said that he would like to replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York who is the son of former governor Mario Cuomo. McCain explained that Cuomo has "respect" and "prestige" and could "lend some bipartisanship." Conservatives have been warned.

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.
It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

When George Will abandons a Republican nominee, that nominee is in deep trouble.

"Bush Tours America to Survey Damage Caused by His Disastrous Presidency"

2008-09-23T10:58:00.000-07:00

File under "Things I Wish I'd Thought Of." Gotta love The Onion.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Mortgage-Financin' Idiot

2008-09-18T18:21:00.000-07:00

Wow, I really jumped the gun on yesterday's post. The shit the McCain campaign did today . . .

No one can explain this better than did Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC tonight, so I'll pass it off to them.

Yeah, so, Republican John McCain shows his qualifications for the presidency by claiming powers the office doesn't have (the president can't fire the head of the SEC--even I knew that), Sarah Palin lets slip Freudian that she intends to be a Cheneyesque VP, and Lady de Rothschild says that Barack Obama doesn't respect "rednecks."

Worse, McCain, the aforementioned self-proclaimed expert on foreign policy, apparently thinks that Spain is a) in our hemisphere, b) part of Latin America, and c) is among the United States' "adversaries." Really? Spain? Our ally in NATO? Really.

McCain also wants to enlarge the U.S. government further by creating the Mortgage and Financial Institution. The MFI. Yeah. Those initials could stand for something else, Senator.

Don't Wanna Be an American Idiot

2008-09-17T11:29:00.000-07:00

What is it with Republicans and idiocy? Seriously, from Reagan to Poppy Bush, Dan Quayle to Dubya, and now to McCain and Sarah Palin, why do Republicans insist on nominating the kids from the class who ate glue?

We've entered Crazy World. John McCain (and Hillary Clinton, for that matter) managed to more or less successfully paint Barack Obama, the African American son of a working class single mother, as an elitist. McCain, the son and grandson of admirals and the husband of a multi-millionaire heiress, called Obama an elitist. Just today we learned that billionaire American ex-pat British noble Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild (whew!), a former Hillary Clinton supporter, has thrown her support to John McCain, in part because she thinks Obama is "an elitist." Yes, really. A billionaire who went from New Jersey to marrying into a British title thinks Obama is out of touch with regular Americans, and actually criticized him for calling himself a "citizen of the world" in Berlin.

What kills me is the fact that calling a candidate for president of the United States too smart, too talented, too well educated--too elite--actually works as an insult. Republicans, and far too many independents, actually consider being elite a disqualification for the job.

These people are crazy. Whether I want to have a beer with Barack Obama or not (I would love to!) is irrelevant. I want a president who's smarter than me, more well educated than me, more capable of me. What's the point of following someone who knows less about the world than I do?

Republicans clearly don't have this problem. George Bush is one of the stupidest people ever to hold national office in America (or anywhere else, for that matter), and they elected him (sort of) and, far worse, reelected him.

I've had this argument with Republicans many times, the question of Dubya's intelligence. It's amazing to me the justifications otherwise rational people come up with to defend him: he can't be stupid, he went to Yale; he isn't stupid, he just doesn't speak well; he's smarter than he looks. Wow. George Bush is smarter than he looks. There's a high bar.

Now it's happening again. There's a lot to admire about John McCain, but his mental capabilities aren't among them. He graduated around 790th out of 795 in his class at the Naval Academy. That doesn't make him stupid--he did still graduate--but it shows he's not exceptionally smart either. What's more troubling to me are the things he's said in this campaign.

Aside from his chronic confusion regarding the difference between Sunni and Shia (imagine if Bill Clinton had been unable to tell the difference between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland when he was running for president), he repeated invocations of Czechoslovakia (hasn't been a country in fifteen years--you think he might have noticed), McCain has made some seriously troubling mistakes. In particular, McCain's answer to a question about redeployment of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan on April 14th was noteworthy: "I would not do that unless General Petraeus said that he felt that the situation called for that." Syntax aside, this statement was terrifying from a man--a presidential candidate, no less--whose supposed expertise is in military matters and national defense. At the time General David Petraeus was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and had not yet been tapped to replace Admiral Fallon as head of CentComm. McCain saying he'd go to Petraeus to make such a decision is the functional equivalent of someone asking me, a high school English teacher, to make decisions regarding the curriculum of a rival school's math department. Not only did Petraeus not have the authority to make such a decision, he had a direct conflict of interest: shifting forces from Iraq would reduce his ability to achieve his objectives there, and suggesting as much would constitute a dereliction of his duty.

Here's my problem with McCain: the sum total of my knowledge of military matters begins and ends with my playing with G.I. Joes as a kid, and reading the comic books tied to the toys. Even so, I understand the U.S. chain of command well enough to understand McCain's mistake. John McCain claims that he doesn't understand the economy, but he's an expert on all things military. If that constitutes expertise, I hate to imagine how deep his lack of economic prowess goes.

Now, however, things are worse. Enter Sarah Palin.

Palin's gender is irrelevant. Her experience, and, as importantly, her evident lack of knowledge about much of anything, make Dan Quayle seem presidential. She thought Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack had been "too expensive to the taxpayers," neverminding the fact that they were private until Bush's bailout. She had to have "nuclear" spelled phonetically on her teleprompter so she would pronounce it correctly. She considers Alaska's proximity to Russia a positive mark on a foreign policy resume (I grew up near a new-clear power plant, so I guess I'm a nuclear physicist).

Worst of all, in her interview with Charlie Gibson last week, she revealed that she doesn't know what the "Bush Doctrine" is. Her defenders have argued that it was an ambush, that most Americans don't know what that is (I disagree--I think most actually do). Even if this preposterous logic held, she isn't most people. She aspires to the presidency of the United States. The fact that she didn't already know the Bush Doctrine by heart is despicable.

I want a president (and a vice president) who is smarter than me. Why in the name of all that is rational do Republicans not have the same standards?

Thoughts of 9/11

2008-09-13T19:35:00.000-07:00

Thursday was the seventh anniversary of the horrific attacks of September 11th, 2001. I spent part of that day at the doctor's, getting my still-healing (recently broken) ankle checked out. As she checked my blood pressure, the nurse commented that she spent every anniversary wondering if this would be the one on which we would be attacked again. I'm sure all will be surprised to learn that I have trouble keeping my mouth closed in such circumstances.

I pointed out that al Qaida doesn't have much reason to attack us these days, as their political objectives have largely been met in the years since 9/11. Needless to say, that bore some explaining.

While in the microcosmic view, each individual life tragically lost that day was important, and I in no way mean to diminish the pain of anyone directly or indirectly touched that day, but macrocosmically, 3000 murdered Americans and a couple of destroyed buildings, no matter how symbolic, isn't a grievous wound for a nation such as ours. Strategically, al Qaida accomplished little with the attacks themselves. The damage they did was overwhelmingly eclipsed by the goodwill lavished on America in the aftermath of the attack (remember the headline in the French newspaper, Le Monde, that read "Today We Are All Americans?"). So why bother?

Simply and honestly, because of George W. Bush. My guess is that Osama bin Laden understood Bush quite well. Their families, after all, have done business for decades. Bin Laden had to know exactly how a man like George Walker Bush would react to an attack on his watch, and, unlike the rest of us, bin Laden wasn't disappointed by the President of the United States.

As much as I hate the man, even I don't believe Dubya was complicit in the attacks of September 11th, but no one with a functional brain stem can deny that he has exploited that tragedy for his own political gain shamelessly. Moreover, Bush's half-cocked, reactionary, cowboy response was exactly what bin Laden wanted--needed, really--in the way of results. Bin Laden's beef with the U.S. is that we are corrupting Islamic culture with our own heathen ways, and that the U.S. intends to destroy Islam as a religion to make way for our own form of Christianity. This is bollocks, of course, or at least it used to be. Unfortunately, there are elements of our society, elements with powerful political connections, who want exactly that: to use American military might to impose Christianity on others. Tragically, one of those political connections is the Bush-League Republican Party.

Consider how readily our Idiot-in-Chief was willing to oblige bin Laden's wishes. He invaded an Islamic country (Iraq) unprovoked and with justifications based on easily disprovable lies. He even called his war on terror a "crusade." What are moderate Muslims around the world supposed to think about our actions? Are they supposed to believe bin Laden, or our self-proclaimed "Crusader?"

More than anything else (and there is plenty), this is why I think John McCain and Sarah Palin are so damned dangerous. Palin has publicly called the war in Iraq a "task that is from God," and the minister of the church in which she grew up and to which she still has strong ties says that the war in Iraq and the attacks of 9/11 were part of a war "contending for [our] faith," and that Jesus "operated from that position of war mode," whatever that means.

While certainly not as bad as his religious fanatic vice president, at least as far as the apocalyptic foreign policy is concerned, McCain has his own pastor problems. McCain's "spiritual advisor," Rod Parsley, believes that America was founded, in part, to destroy the false religion of Islam. There is absolutely no factual basis to that claim whatsoever, but when has that stopped these guys?

But McCain is dangerous--more dangerous than the like of Parsley and Palin, who can be laughed away in their absurdity--for another reason: his apparent glee at the prospect of more wars. When the nominee for one of the two major political parties sings "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" to a Beach Boys tune, or jokes that selling cigarettes to Iran is a good way to kill them, the rest of the world notices.

We can defeat extremists like al Qaida in open battle. No military wins against a guerrilla force. To win this war, we have to win their hearts and minds, we have to show the majority of the Muslim world, the ones who haven't already drink from bin Laden's Kool-Aid (delivered in George Bush's sports bottle), what America is really about: freedom and opportunity for all, even, yes, Muslims. But if America elects a man who finds the prospect of blowing the living shit out of another Islamic country funny, then their hearts and minds will go elsewhere.

This, we cannot afford.

"You're Gonna Burn, Burn, Burn, Burn . . ."

2008-09-09T19:02:00.000-07:00

An update: the McCain campaign has blatantly ignored Heart's cease-and-desist. While the campaign did pay a blanket fee for the right to use "Barracuda," they never got the artists' permission, and, in fact, use the song against the expressed wishes of the Wilson sisters. Honor, indeed . . .

As Grammar Goddess Extraordinaire Ripe Aplomb pointed out in comments on my last post, "Barracuda" co-writer Roger Fisher is donating his royalties to the Obama campaign.

I Pledge Allegiance

2008-09-09T11:02:00.000-07:00

I'm not a very good patriot. While I often get weepy during the "Star-Spangled Banner," I don't wear an American flag lapel pin (I don't often wear lapels, for that matter), and I don't recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.

This is not out of disrespect. When the Pledge is recited, I always stand, and I always stop whatever I'm doing. As I work in a high school, this happens a lot. About once a week, I find myself standing at attention while someone talks to me, which inevitably leads to some awkward moments, but I don't put my hand on my heart and I don't recite the Pledge.

The Pledge has never really made sense to me. Where does swearing to do whatever a flag tells me to do fit into the American experience? What's patriotic, let alone democratic, about that?

The Pledge has a long, strange history. Of course the most common controversy associated with it is the inclusion of the two words "under God." This is crazy, and anyone who insists that it's our patriotic duty to include those words is, quite simply, an idiot. The original Pledge was written by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist preacher and a socialist, in 1892. It read: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." The words "to my flag" were changed to "to the flag of the United States of America" in 1923-24. The Pledge wasn't adopted by Congress until 1942, and the words "under God" weren't added until 1951, or officially recognized by Congress until 1954. That phrase was not in the "original intent" of the author, let alone the Founders.

I don't wear a flag pin, but I do wear a Constitution pin. So why do we not pledge our allegiance to the Constitution? That is, after all, what we as Americans are supposed to obey as our highest earthly authority. As American patriots, let's recite the following instead:

"I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the Democracy which it created, one nation, founded on Reason, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Maybe if we required our political leaders to make such a pledge, they wouldn't be so inclined to tread all over the Constitution.

Wait a Minute . . . John McCain Was a Prisoner of War!!?

2008-09-06T17:32:00.000-07:00

Who knew? Because the Maverick in Chief has been so reluctant to politicize his military service, I, like most Americans, had no idea he'd been a P.O.W.

Wow. This changes everything!

Seriously, John McCain's time in Hanoi is a part of his biography and he has every right to exploit that to whatever extent he sees fit. The problem, as it so often is with Republicans, is the hypocrisy factor. John McCain has consistently taken political advantage of his military history while simultaneously and shamelessly claiming that he doesn't.

Case in point: in her introduction to her husband's speech, Cindy McCain said, "In World War II, my father's B-17 was shot down three times. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. But he was quiet about that, and never claimed to have done more than his small share. Just like my husband. I think John was a hero in Vietnam. But he thinks it was just his turn."

This the day after an episode of "Law and Order" that described, in excruciating detail, the horrors McCain endured in Hanoi and immediately before a fawning eight-and-a-half minute video about little more than McCain's military service and imprisonment.

Worse, in McCain's actual speech, (which began, purely by coincidence and not political hackery, at 9:11 PM local time, he spent more than five minutes--ten percent of his speech--talking exclusively about his experiences in Vietnam, but not one second about his experiences as a post-war vet. Nothing about the extensive (state funded or, dare I say, "socialized") medical care he received after returning to the United States, nothing about the post-traumatic stress he suffered after the war, and certainly nothing about his suicide attempt.

Given the prominence of health care policy in this election, the tens of thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan without receiving proper mental health care, and especially the record number of suicide attempts by soldiers and veterans, John McCain missed an opportunity to address the relevance of his experience on these very modern issues. Instead, he talked about what a great guy he is.

I have an enormous amount of respect for what John McCain did and went through during Vietnam. I wish he would, for once, do something to earn my respect in this century.

Okay, okay, McCain's real speech is actually here. My bad.

Taking the "Intellectual" out of Intellectual Property Rights

2008-09-05T10:16:00.000-07:00

It was a clever choice of songs, no doubt, so long as you don't pay attention to, you know, lyrics. Pesky things, those.

As Sarah Palin mounted the stage to join her soulmate, John McCain, the inimitable opening hook to Heart's brilliant song "Barracuda" drowned out the tepid cheers. Barracuda. Sarah Palin's basketball nickname, and evocative of the kind of tenacious fightin' femme fatale that the McCain campaign claims Palin is.

It was clever, but not in the way they may think. It reminded me of Ronald Reagan taking the stage to "Born in the U.S.A." in 1984. Even though I was a thirteen-year-old Young Republican at the time, I still remember thinking it incredibly odd that Republicans were cheering the song. If you pay even the most passing attention to the lyrics, it's not the jingoistic "America: Love It or Leave It" patriotism that Reagan and his party took it to be. I would argue (now) that it's an intensely patriotic song, but of the "America: Love It and Make It Better" variety, which was anathema to the Republican Party, then as it is now.

Such irony makes my life worth living (well, irony and cheesecake...let's be honest). As sweet as Ronald Reagan taking stages to a song about the government screwing over its own citizens and veterans, John McCain and Sarah Palin cavorting to "Barracuda's" condemnation of corporate greed and lack of respect for artistic rights is pure poetry.

But the RNC's use of Heart's "Barracuda" raises (or re-raises) another issue: intellectual property rights. For a party that is fanatically protectionist with regard to pharmaceutical and other Big Business patents, the GOP is radically, dare I say, "liberal" with other people's artistic properties. Ann and Nancy Wilson had already asked the McCain Campaign to stop using their song prior to last night's speech. Because their request was apparently ignored, Heart, Universal Music Publishing and Sony BMG have now had to issue a cease-and-desist notice to the campaign.

This is hardly an isolated incident. Jackson Browne has filed a lawsuit against McCain, the RNC and the Ohio Republican Party for using "Running On Empty" in a factually challenged smear-ad against Barack Obama, David Crosby and Graham Nash have complained about Bill O'Reilly (a self-proclaimed CSN fan, believe it or not) on his shows, and Rush Limbaugh exploited lax copyright laws to use the Pretenders' "My City Was Gone" as his theme song for years, until the culmination of a lawsuit in 1999 forced him to pay royalties to Chrissie Hynde (brilliantly, Hynde publicly disagrees with Limbaugh but lets him use the song, donating her reported $500,000/year royalties to PETA). John Mellencamp had to ask McCain several times to stop using "Our Country" and "Pink Houses" on his campaign, and Bruce Springsteen, not surprisingly, complained about Reagan's aforementioned use of his music.

As is often true of these cases of Republican ethical hypocrisy, the same isn't genuinely true for the opposition. When was the last time a Democrat was asked not to use a song in a campaign? I'm sure it's happened such incidents are few and far between, rather than a near-pathological pattern, as it is with the Republicans.

(Coincidentally, Republicans have the same problem with hooker sex scandals; yes, the Dems have Eliot Spitzer, but compare that to the GOP's Jeff Gannon, Ted Haggard, Duke Cunningham, Dusty Foggo, Randall Tobias, Jack Burkman, David Vitter, Bob Allen, Larry Craig . . . and that's just in the past four years!)

Of course, to be fair to the Republicans, the Democrats don't have nearly as many talented artists who hate them and their policies. Seriously, what musical artists are also Republicans? Britney Spears? Ted Nugent? Ricky Martin performed at Bush's inauguration, but he lip synced, so does that count?

Thank Darwin they still have country music (mostly) on their side. To paraphrase "Hee-Haw," if it weren't for bad music, they'd have no music at all.

But ultimately what kills me about the "Barracuda" incident is simply this: Barracuda is slang for "a treacherous, greedy person." Maybe McCain/Palin is giving us some straight talk after all, my friends.

You're Doin' a Heckuva Job, Bushie!

2008-09-02T08:26:00.000-07:00

Republicans have certainly learned how to make lemonade out of hurricanes. In a display of class and grace uncommon to their party, the GOP and the McCain campaign have toned down the Republican National Convention, out of respect for the potentially disastrous effects of Hurricane Gustav on the Gulf Coast.

Yeah. Right.

The only people they could possibly fool with such an act drank the Kool-Aid a long, long time ago. Remember, it was Bush and McCain who had a birthday party the day that Katrina made landfall, and then went to a fundraiser in California the day after. Decorum has never seemed to be in their vocabularies (Bush probably thinks it's French).

The real reason Bush and Cheney cancelled their speeches last night is because the last thing the McCain Campaign wanted was to have Vader and his Apprentice on their stage. Seriously, how could that possibly have gone well for McCain? If the delegates cheered, then the whole country would see Republicans cheering for the least popular president we've ever had and the guy who gets drunk and shoots his friend in the face. But if they had remained relatively quiet, the idea that the Republicans hate their own sitting president and vice would have made its own kind of history.

Gustav gave Bush and Cheney, and, let's face it, McCain, a way out. Look presidential while you do nothing, so you don't have to embarrass your heir apparent into political oblivion.

On the other hand, the real reason McCain and the RNC have toned down the convention itself is more simplistic: now they have an excuse for it sucking. Seriously, there was no way the McBushies were going to hold a candle to what the Obama-led Democratic Party did last week. McCain couldn't pay 84,000 people to listen to him speak, even if he were to mortgage all eight to ten of his houses and pimp Cindy to the entire roll call of the Hell's Angels, and Dancing Guy in the Yellow Shirt would have looked like Janet Jackson were he to bust a move in the Republican Hall of Pale Males.

Now they can blame Gustav and New Orleans when, come Thursday night, the baker's dozen of Americans who actually watch their convention breathe a collective sigh and say, "Wow! That sucked!"

Critics might accuse me of not being fair, to George in particular. After all, if he went ahead and spoke anyway, wouldn't I criticize him for being callous? Okay, yeah, probably, but not necessarily. Likely I would have criticized him because likely he would have cocked it up. The real tragedy of George W. Bush is his inability to seize opportunities presented to him and use them for anyone's gain but his own. He once had a 95% approval rating. The country--hell, the world--was united behind him, and what did he do with it? Went after the guy who "tried to kill mah daddy" for perhaps the only crime Saddam Hussein didn't actually commit.

George W. Bush could have said, "Three years ago, I made a mistake. When the country needed its president in a time of crisis, I went to a birthday party, and thousands of good and decent Americans died while I hung out with country music celebrities. But never again. Even if I can do no more than be there for the people on the Gulf Coast, by God I'm going to be there!"

He could even have used his speech, his platform, to finally acknowledge the Great Lie of Ronald Reagan: that government is bad. He could have told his party and would-be successor that, run well, the American government is singularly capable of taking care of Americans.

At the very least, he could have stood up there and called on his party and his nation to get to the Red Cross and give something to help a region of our great country that has suffered enough.

George Bush did none of that. Instead, he did what he has always done when the country I'm sure he genuinely loves has called on him to step up, to serve. He took the easiest path he could find.

And John McCain breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"There's a Fine Line Between Clever and Stupid"

2008-08-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin? Really? Really.

It's a bold choice, don't get me wrong. It went farther to turn the national story from America's first African-American major-party nominee inspiring 84 thousand people in a stadium in Denver and 38 million on television than any other veep choice likely could. But Sarah Palin? What were they thinking?

The primary advantages to John McCain of Sarah Palin as a running man are the contrasts she provides to the senator. She's one of the youngest nominees to the two highest offices in American history; he's the oldest. She's a Washington outsider; he's as inside as they get without being Classified. She's a governor without a complete term to her credit; he's a senator with too many to his. She's not really a maverick; he's a maverick, but not really. She's a woman; he's (according to Joe Lieberman) a man. Unfortunately, every one of those contrasts has its own problems.

The only semi-logical reason for this was to woo Hillary supporters away from Obama, and it speaks volumes that this is what McCains made his priority with his VP choice. That he has become so desperate that he clearly sees angry Hillarites as his last, best hope is telling (and more than a little pathetic). But why Sarah Palin? There are scores (maybe even hundreds) of more qualified women for the nomination, even within the White Boy's Club that is the Republican Party. (Or not; there are only 25 Republican women in congress, and five more as governors or lieutenant governors of states.) Why not Elizabeth Dole, or Kay Bailey Hutchison? Why not Olympia Snowe, or Marilyn Musgrave, or Jean Schmidt (okay, definitely not Jean Schmidt). Hell, why not Katherine Harris? At least she's proven that she knows how to win elections!

Seriously, this is nuts. I've long feared that John McCain would trump Obama's historic candidacy and try to draw on the angry Hillarites in one fell swoop, both bold and brilliant: Condoleezza Rice. My only solace was the fact that she's so reviled for her utter failures as National Security Advisor , as Secretary of State, and as a human being. The damage she could have done might have outweighed the advantages she would have brought. Still, compared to the baggage (or lack of qualifications) Palin brings to the table, Rice may as well be named Condoleezza Reagan.

I've long been a fan of Hillary Clinton. I've backed Barack Obama from early on, and I didn't care for the way her campaign was run, but I attribute that more to Mark Penn and other terrible advisers than to Hillary. I have enormous respect for her, and I can say, anyone who supported her and is now crowing about supporting McCain, is as stupid as Debra Bartoshevich, the pro-choice Hillary supporter who's now making commercials for McCain, evidently ignorant of McCain's intention to overturn Roe v. Wade. Any Hillarites who go over to McCain because of the rabidly pro-life Palin are in another class entirely.

Sarah Palin may be young and exciting as a candidate, but she's woefully unqualified for the job. John McCain's tough, but he's been around for 72 years, five of which were hard beyond imagining. He's also had several bouts with cancer. His vice president needs to be ready indubitably and immediately, not possibly and eventually. Moreover, the choice of Palin reveals McCain's strongest argument against the candidacy of Barack Obama--his relative lack of experience--as the hypocrisy that it is.

The only thing that Sarah Palin brings to the table is the Christian Right. She's one of them, no doubt, and they're saying that they're pleased. Don't be fooled. I come from the Christian Right (the Church of Christ in Tennessee, specifically), and they won't accept the authority of a woman, even one who's as crazy as they are. 1 Timothy 2:11-12 says "Let a woman learn in peace, fully submitted; but I do not permit a woman to teach a man, or exercise authority over him; rather, she is to remain at peace." Add to that the most recent revelation that Palin's seventeen-year-old daughter, like millions of teenage American girls persecuted and condemned by the Christian Right before her, is pregnant, and the political advantages of Palin's nomination disintegrate all the faster. If John McCain really wanted to rally his base, he should have tapped Mike Huckabee. His base isn't ready to accept the authority of a woman, even in the Second Seat.

But that's what this is really about, I think. It's the politics of the Peter Principle writ large: certain Republicans attempting to appear less bigoted than they actually are. They nominate minorities like Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzalez, who are so incompetent as to be embarrassing to any race. They nominate women like Palin, who has gone from having what looked like an extremely promising political career, to becoming, through no fault of her own beyond her choice to accept the nomination, an international joke. In order to "prove" the superiority of the white male, they elevate the least competent Others they can find to positions beyond their abilities. The nomination of Sarah Palin isn't a triumph for women in America. It is a political assault on them.

Sarah Palin wasn't nominated to finally break through the 18 million cracks Hillary Rodham-Clinton put in the Glass Ceiling. She was nominate to repair and reinforce those cracks.

Fired Up . . . Ready to Go!

2008-08-29T10:28:00.000-07:00

I know, it's been awhile. My absence is a long story, probably too boring to share, but I might eventually anyway, assuming both the people who've ever visited Nealism actually want to know (actually, both of you probably already know the story). Thursday night's speech by Senator Barack Obama was motivational for me, to say the least, and prompted me to write a couple of thoughts about the conventions, both the one that just ended and the one about to begin.

Primarily I want to note the fact that nearly all the primetime speakers during the Democratic National Convention acknowledged, recognized, and honored Senator John McCain's service and sacrifice for our country. This might not be too noteworthy, and might even be, as I heard a reporter describe it on NPR this morning, obligatory. What was more significant, however, was the response of the (virtually) all-Democratic audience: in every case, they cheered. A lot. With gusto.

This is not terribly surprising. As I've noted before, few Democrats don't honor John McCain's service, as a navy pilot, if not so much as a senator. What's striking about this is the absence of any sort of parity from the Republicans. I don't recall any speaker during the 2004 Republican National Convention paying homage to John Kerry, a thrice-decorated war hero. Of course, I could barely stomach that convention, so I can't say that with any certainty. So I did something Bill Orally and Limbaugh the Hutt never bother to do: I checked.

Of the major speakers at the 2004 RNC, only Rudy Guliani and Mitt Romney paid any respect to John Kerry's service and sacrifice to our country. After attacking Kerry, Giuliani said, "This is not a personal criticism of John Kerry. I respect him for his service to our nation," before continuing to attack him. That's fair; it was a convention, he was supposed to attack Kerry. At least he had the decency to acknowledge that he was attacking a veteran before he took the shot.

Romney did the same . . . sort of. "Let me say I respect his four months under enemy fire in Vietnam; we should honor that service as we do the service of all our fighting men and women." Of course, he didn't bother to hide the snark. He respects Kerry's four months under fire? Really? Can you imagine if Joe Biden had said "I respect John McCain's twenty three combat missions in Vietnam?"

This is a difference between Republicans and Democrats. Metaphorically, it's the difference. Watch the videos. Listen to the crowds. The crowds in Denver genuinely cheered for John McCain's service. The crowd in New York did not do the same for Kerry's. When Giuliani praised Kerry (advance to 7:55), the pause was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. When it finally started, notice who Faux News immediately cut to: Al Franken. It seems they didn't want their audience to think Republicans were the ones cheering.

But it's more than that. As I've noted before, in 2004, Republican delegates wore purple band-aids in blatant and shameful mockery of John Kerry. Where were the Democrats carrying pens in their right hands in 1996 to mock Bob Dole's injuries? Where were the Democrats shrugging their shoulders this week to mock the injuries John McCain sustained in a Vietnamese prison camp? Absent.

Individually, there are plenty of perfectly decent Republicans. My mom is one. But as Kay famously said in Men in Black, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." When you put a person in a group, he or she tends to take on the attitudes of the larger group, especially if the participants are there for a common purpose. When an angry Democrat gets in crowd of thousands, listening to Barack Obama, her anger can slip away and leave her believing in hope. When a decent Republican gets in a crowd of thousands who promote what the modern Republican Party has come to preach, his decency can slip away. He can wear a purple band-aid.

Watch the RNC next week. Wait for John McCain and his surrogates to call Barack Obama the example of the triumph of the American Dream that he is. Wait for them to praise the sacrifice Barack Obama made when he gave up wealth and privilege to help people in Chicago. Wait for them to say anything positive about Barack Obama's extraordinary story at all.

But in the meantime, I recommend that you continue breathing.

"I'm 37, I'm not old!"

2008-05-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

Well it's time to celebrate my birthday
It happens every year
We'll eat a bunch of broccoli
And drink a lot of beer . . .

I scored R.E.M. tickets for next month from my paramour, a Robert Rankin book and a Neil Gaiman t-shirt from Ripe Aplomb (but no Line 6 guitar--strange), and a kick-ass new guitar from myself. One of my aunts was buried today, while one of my brother's was married (not sure which is sadder), making it a complete "circle of life" thing. And I skipped work, using a personal day I submitted back in September (if you work on your birthday, stop it!).

On balance, a good day.

Tomorrow we are having my Monty Python themed "I'm 37, I'm not old" party in our new house. I've got my Knight of Ni helmet, my Rabbit with Big Pointy Teeth slippers, my Spamalot boxers, four cans of Spam, my Horse Action Figure, coconuts from which to drink margaritas, two cases of Holy Grail Ale and enough chocolate bunnies to conquer Troy seven times over. Now, if only people show up (and bring me shrubberies!).

Why I Am a Democrat

2008-05-28T06:47:00.000-07:00

Let's face, some days it's hard to be a proud Democrat. The Democratic Party has a few . . . issues. Witness the circular firing squad that the current battle for the nomination has become.

Given that George W. Bush has been operating with an under-50% approval rating (currently 28%) for more than three years, the abysmal state of the economy, and the nausea most Americans feel over the way the war in Iraq has gone, combined with the fact that John McCain is all but running for Bush's third term, Gumby should be able to win the election in November in a landslide. Instead, thanks mostly to the fact that since February Hillary Clinton has been doing the Republicans' dirty work for them and John McCain has run unopposed, the race is closer to a dead heat than it has any reasonable expectation to be. Democrats have an almost supernatural ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Given all that, it's still great to be a Democrat. Why? Because we have honor.

It hasn't been widely reported, but there is some small question regarding the eligibility of John McCain to even be president. The Constitution requires that candidates be "natural born citizens" in order to be eligible to be president. John McCain, arguably, is not. He was born in Panama.

The argument is, of course, ridiculous. McCain was born on a military base in Panama because his father was stationed there while he was in the Navy. No one with an ounce of honor or basic decency would claim that McCain doesn't qualify for such reasons. Still, such a fact is just the sort of thing that Republicans would exploit in an opponent without a second thought. Don't believe me? Consider the fact that high profile Republicans have repeatedly harped on the fact that Barack Obama's middle name is "Hussein," as if that has any relevance whatsoever to the presidency.

Not so with the Democrats. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduced a resolution in April to put the question to rest, if unofficially (a Constitutional Amendment would be necessary to completely bury the question). The resolution passed the Senate unanimously, but what's particularly noteworthy is the fact that the resolution's co-sponsors were Senators Clinton and Obama.

Imagine if such a question had been raised about John Kerry in 2004. Would Republicans have supported, let alone co-sponsored, such a bill in support of a political opponent? No way. Remember that this was the party whose delegates wore purple band-aids to the 2004 Republican National Convention in order to mock John Kerry's three purple hearts for wounds sustained in combat in Viet Nam. Imagine if, at the 1996 Democratic Convention, delegates had carried pens in their hands to mock Republican nominee Bob Dole's war wounds (Bob Dole himself questioned Kerry's purple hearts, an act of hypocrisy that turns the stomach).

Democrats don't do this. We don't Swift Boat our opponents like this, and it's not for lack of opportunity. There are facts in John McCain's biography that could be used against him, video that would be damning to a politician. Karl Rove would not have hesitated to use such facts against an opponent. I submit that no Democratic candidate, and probably not even an independent 527, will do such a thing to McCain.

That's not to say that Obama and his supporters won't go negative against McCain, but there are subjects that are sacrosanct to Democrats that are not to Republicans.

Victory without honor is Pyrrhic at best. Democrats understand this. I wish Republicans did too.

Some Updates

2008-05-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

As I reported yesterday, the new G.I. Bill has now passed both the House and the Senate. The Senate version is slightly different, which means it will have to go back to the House, but given the margin of victory the first time, it should have no difficulty passing again, which means it is on to the president's desk. It'll be interesting to see what he does. I'm guessing he wishes that the timing were right for a pocket veto, but I don't think that's going to work out for him.

My Representative, Paul Hodes, stepped up and voted for it, as did one of my Senators, John Sununu, despite the fact that neither sponsored the bill. My other Senator, Judd Gregg, voted against. Curiously, Sununu is up for reelection in November (and faces a tough challenge from former governor Jeanne Shaheen) while Gregg is not. I'm sure that's just a coincidence . . .

As for John McCain? He didn't show. Seriously, didn't vote. Couldn't be bothered. Apparently it was not worth the effort to fly to Washington in his wife's private jet, Trollop One. Of course, to be fair and balanced, Ted Kennedy didn't vote either, but his lame excuse was "I have a brain tumor." McCain had more important matters to attend to: fund raising in California.

Go here to see how your senators and rep voted, and here to sign a petition to President Bush to sign the bill into law.

A Good Day to be an American

2008-05-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

Today the Senate passed the new G. I. Bill 75-22. Now we'll see if the president follows through with his threat to veto.

Seriously, though, this is a great day for American democracy. An important, valuable and practical bill passed both houses with overwhelming bi-partisan support.

For spacious skies indeed . . .

Putting the "Holy" into "Holy Shit"

2008-05-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

You'd have to be living under a rock to not have heard of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Barack Obama's controversial minister from Chicago. The media spent most of the month of April playing twenty seconds of video and audio from Wright, in which he described the 9/11 attacks as America's "chickens coming home to roost," and implied that AIDS was created by the government to kill black people. Most damningly, Reverend Wright was quoted in a loop saying, "God bless America? No, no, no, God damn America!"

At the risk of sounding like an apologist for Wright--I'm not an apologist for any minister, as I figure they have enough to apologize for without my help--there are some important pieces of context that were generally left out of the mainstream reporting of this. One, the quaint "chickens roosting" comment wasn't actually Wright's. As reported by Roland Martin on Anderson Cooper's 360 blog, of all places, Wright was actually quoting Edward Peck, a former deputy director of the terrorism task force under that Pinko Lefty Ronald Reagan, as well as a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq (we know what a cushy job that must have been). What's even better is the fact that Peck said this as, wait for it, an analyst for Fox News! So, the actual source for the statement that caused Barack Obama such grief was Faux News. The universe is not without a strong sense of irony.

The second comment, the one about AIDS, seems shocking and controversial, and more than a little bit crazy, at least to us Pale Males. Among certain minorities in America this is not a radical theory at all. I first learned of this idea in 1992 from Native American author Leslie Marmon Silko's brilliant novel Almanac of the Dead. To Native and African Americans, who experienced joyous government intervention like the forced sterilization of women by Indian Health Services and the Tuskegee Experiment, respectively, such fears aren't paranoia, they're history. Does that mean the government created AIDS? Probably not, but just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the world isn't out to get you. Moreover, such context makes Wright's fears much more sympathetic, if not actually plausible. To paraphrase Chris Rock, "I don't agree, but I understand."

Finally, I think Wright's call for God to "damn" America was just misunderstood. Remember, it was a speech, so we don't know how he intended to spell the word. Wright was probably just calling on God to fix America's crumbling infrastructure.

Okay, maybe not, but isn't spin fun?

The real point is, who cares? Obama is (was?) a member of Wright's church and is no more responsible for what Wright said, in whatever context, than any of the rest of us are responsible for what our preachers or teachers say. One of the preachers at the church of my childhood claimed on three separate occasions when I was in the pews that atheists had founded their own town in a Midwestern state. The town died in a matter of years because without God, atheists have no morals whatsoever, and therefore didn't follow any laws, slept with each other's wives, stole from each other, killed each other, and burned Darwin Fish on each other's lawns. The town was, "of course," named "Liberal, Kansas!"* Would it surprise you to learn that this same preacher was an elected politician in the Republican Party? He was also a child abuser, but that's another story for another time. I was in the congregation, and, unlike Senator Obama, I was in the pews when he said it (all three times). Does that mean that I believe such a nut-job lie by association?

What is most amazing is the fact that John McCain's religious connections (which are more political than religious anyway) have not received anywhere near the same scrutiny and air time as Barack Obama's. Unlike Obama, who never used his connection to Wright for political gain in the first place, beyond as evidence that he goes to church and is not a Muslim, and Wright, who, until recently, wasn't active on the political stage in America at all, McCain's Dirty Little Preachers are not his own preachers, but are rather political operatives of the Christian Right from whom McCain actively sought and accepted support and endorsements. Makes a difference, I think.

McCain's Ministers are numerous and astounding. Jerry Falwell (whom McCain courted last year by speaking at his college) and Pat Robertson (who, admittedly, originally endorsed Rudy Giuliani) claimed, not unlike Reverend Wright, that 9/11 was punishment for America. Unlike Wright, who asserted that 9/11 was a consequence of our government's bloody history and foreign policy, Falwell and Robertson said God allowed 9/11 because of the ACLU, pagans, gays, lesbians, abortionists, and feminists. Yeah. Those guys again.

Rod Parsley, another McCain endorser and politically active fundamentalist Christian, says that America was founded to "destroy Islam."

But the best of the best, the elite of the grotesque? John Hagee. If you've been paying close attention, you probably know that Hagee called the Catholic Church "the great whore," said Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment of New Orleans for tolerating gay pride parades, and that Jews brought anti-semitism on themselves because they were rebellious in the Old Testament (all here, conveniently).

Those are bad enough, but the more time passes, and the more watchdog groups dig, the more exquisit information comes out. Before we get to that, however, we have to ask ourselves, why have such comments, especially those of Hagee, gotten so little press? Is it because Obama is a Democrat and McCain a Republican, or because Wright is black and Hagee white, or because Wright wears funny African costumes in church and Hagee wears expensive Big & Tall three piece suits? Who knows, but the media silence may (or may not) be about to change, because there is audio of Hagee saying things that trump any of the tasty comments he's made previously.

Hagee has claimed that God sent Hitler as "His hunter" in order enact the Holocaust, which forced the world to found Israel, so that Israel and the (surviving) Jews could set the stage for Revelation and the return of Christ (and, coincidentally, the final extermination of the Jews). Seriously. No, really, I'm not making this up. I write science fiction and fantasy as a hobby, but I couldn't have thought of this one on my own.

Quoting Jeremiah (the Biblical prophet, not Reverand Wright), Hagee says:

"'Behold I [God] will send for many fishers and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them'--that will be the Jews--'from every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.' If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust, you can't see that . . . And that will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended." ~Pastor John Hagee

Seriously. The guy just called God a Nazi. Let's see if the mainstream media jumps on this like they did Wright's silly, but comparitively mild, comments.

* (I think he claimed Liberal was in Kansas, but I don't recall for sure, and I can't exactly research it because, well, because it was a damned lie. If anyone has evidence of this "atheist town," I'd love to see it.)

I Wish I Supported the Troops this Much

2008-05-21T17:42:00.000-07:00

I admit, I’m not much of a fan of President George W. Bush, but when I learned of the incredible sacrifice he has made in the interest of “solidarity” with the families of the fallen in Iraq, I had no choice but to give the man props.

When I think of my friends and students who have served, the one who has panic attacks every time he drives beneath an overpass, or through a rotary, or hears a starter pistol at a race, the high school sweethearts and newlyweds who are now getting divorced because they keep getting deployed to hellish places like Kuwait, Iraq and Texas, the one whose eyes went flat and lifeless as he told me about pulling half of his sergeant’s body out of a blasted (and under-armored) Humvee, it gives me great comfort to know that my president is suffering too. His predecessor once famously said, “I feel your pain,” but this president understands that words are empty; it’s actions that really speak to the American people, and his actions speak volumes. He doesn’t just say he feels our troops’ pain. He shows it.

Our president has made the ultimate sacrifice for his country and given up golf.

If there’s one thing that has always troubled me about being a Democrat, it’s the fact that we just don’t support the troops as well as the Republicans do. Really. We don’t. It’s in the by-laws.

That’s why so few prominent Republicans these days are veterans and so many more Democrats are, and why after six years of almost total Republican rule in America, veterans issues suffered disaster after disaster, and now that the Democrats have a majority in Congress, Republican obstruction and filibuster have slowed and even stalled legislation to help our military and its veterans. The Republicans understand that you can’t support our troops and veterans if you are one—that would be a conflict of interest and conflicts of interest are unethical. (Ethics are another thing Republicans have that Democrats don’t.) John McCain is especially cognizant of this. As a once-disabled vet himself, the Straight Talkin’ Maverick knows that supporting benefits for disabled vets would just send the wrong message, would just play into the hands of special interest groups.

Maybe Bush’s sacrifice and McCain’s incorruptibility are what inspired them to show the courage and strength of leadership necessary not to support the new G.I. Bill (Bush even threatened to veto it if it passed, which would make him the first president ever to veto a veterans' aid bill--he's such a straight shooter!). If only the eleven Republican senators and ninety representatives who have signed on to the viciously partisan Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act had shown that kind of courage. Thankfully, my own legislators, Senators Sununu and Gregg, and even Democratic Representative Hodes, haven't shown such weakness of character.

I think about what it would cost me to give up miniature golf, and I shudder. I’d like to think I could give it up, for the sake of my country, but the colorful balls, the challenging obstacles, the crazy characters . . .

If only I could love the troops that much.

Eric the Half-a-Present

2008-05-18T20:22:00.000-07:00

My twenty-first birthday was pretty much a let down since, as a Cheerleader for Jesus, I didn't drink at all, and getting the right to legally not drink is a dubious honor at best. I fully expected my parents to do something special for me to acknowledge the fact that I was a teenage tea totaller, but alas, the only person to do anything special for my birthday that year was my ex-girlfriend's mother. Sad, really.

When we're kids, friends and family go out of their ways to make our birthdays special. As adults, meh, not so much.

I love getting presents almost as much as I love giving them, so after a girlfriend I adored broke up with my answering machine on my 24th birthday, I decided to satisfy both joys and get myself a present. Since then I've bought myself something special each year. About ten years ago, I got a bit more specific and started buying myself a new musical instrument every May. Last year I bought an Adamas, an acoustic guitar I've coveted ever since I first saw Neil Diamond play one when I was a kid. The year before, I got a mandocello, a guitar-sized mandolin tuned to lower notes. This year . . . this year I wanted something special.

I ordered a custom Stratocaster body from Warmoth, specially routed to accommodate the computer and electronics of a Line 6 Variax 300. I already have a Variax 700, which I love, but I wanted something just as versatile but with better materials in a more classic form. The result: an alder Strat body painted Candy Purple that plays like a Variax.

Unfortunately I couldn't afford both the body and neck at the same time, so I'll still have to wait a couple weeks for the neck. The old 300 neck just doesn't do it justice.

If you don't buy yourselves birthday presents, you should. I'll post new photos when the circle is complete.