Thanks for the help when we needed it, chums.

From the time I was very young, my father drilled a phrase into my memory that always serves well in times when progress is at a standstill. You've probably heard it before: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way." If there's one sentiment I would like to share with Republican party leaders today, that would be it.

Today, Ohio Representative John Boehner introduced the public to the Republican party's counter-proposal for a national budget, an eighteen page pamphlet that contains no actual numbers. This move has all the tell-tale signs of a joke, but the punchline just isn't funny. This isn't leading, this is trying to be an albatross around President Obama's neck. And their political strategy is obvious: do whatever it takes to help Obama to fail, by whatever means necessary, so that 'Pubs running for office in 2010 can appear to be a favorable alternative. Well that's great for your careers, guys, but for the rest of us average joes...not so much. I would like to believe that the Republican "strategery" is too transparent to go unnoticed by the general public, but I'm not that naiive. After all, this is still the same country that elected a mentally disabled drug addict and religious zealot to office...twice.

One would think that the United States' (and by extension, the world's) financial crisis would be obvious to any politician, no matter their party affiliation. If continued employment is the Republican party's goal, then they should first see to it that their employer...in this case, the American people...stays in business. Instead, they're doing the equivalent of spending every hour of every work day updating their resumés and padding their portfolios. For all the talk of this idea that politicians work for the people, our impotence in terminating their employment is disappointing to say the least.

I am quickly becoming less and less impressed with Obama's efforts to reach across the aisle for Republican support. That strategy also has obvious political motivations, and it's equally unhelpful in this situation. The minority party's political mission right now is to be completely unhelpful, and I question why Democrats continue to hope for cooperation from Republicans when they consistently have no intention of leading, following, or getting out of the way. Democrats have a majority in both houses, and the advantage should be put to use. If Republicans won't make themselves useful, then to Hell with them.

Let us fight for a world of Reason

Reunite the red white and blue before it turns to stone

It’s been three months since Barack Obama won the election, and almost two weeks since he took office. Obviously, I’m happy about how the election turned out, but it hasn’t come without its share of disappointment. Like many people, I was shocked and disgusted that California voters took two political steps forward and one step back by electing Obama and passing Proposition 8 on the same night. But on a personal level, it’s going to be a long four years in terms of getting along with my Republican mother. I love my mother to bits. I pretty much have to. Unlike my brother, I’ve accepted the fact that a person only gets one family and he can’t pick who they’ll be. But she is a complete flake, and getting flakier with every passing year.

As soon after the election as Thanksgiving, when I came home for the holiday dinner, my mother made sure to ruin the evening by yelling in my face all night long about how America is doomed because people like me elected a black Muslim, and that we’re living in the “End Times,” or some such bullshit. Of course, she would never admit responsibility for ruining Thanksgiving. I never uttered a single word about politics that night. I didn’t even respond to her raving. I just sat still and allowed her to make an ass of herself in front of the rest of the family. In spite of all that, she characteristically defied all conventional logic and blamed it all on me because I walked in the door still wearing my Obama campaign button. I’ll be honest: My happiness with the election’s outcome may have something to do with it, but mostly I’ve just been too lazy to bother taking it off. But that explanation just wouldn’t be sufficient when dealing with someone in the throes of lunacy.

My mother demanded to know why I was still wearing the button. I had a rare moment of inspiration, and with a smirk I answered, “Because I’m a patriot. I love America and I support our President. After all, isn’t that the precedent that the last guy set?” Then, as I sat grinning smugly while my Uncle Bill softly chuckled, I thought silently to myself, in the parlance of our times, “Pwned.”

I still haven’t removed the button.

Imagine all the people living life in peace.

That's one more kid that'll never get to be cool.

The Pennsylvania We Never Found

Now that the election is over, and the good guys have won, I'm going to take a moment to validate something that Barack Obama “got caught thinking” during the campaign:

“So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre… I think they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work—don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s… There were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today—kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.

“Here’s how it is: In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by… It’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.

“But… So the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What’s the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is—so, we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing—close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide health care for every American. So we’ll go down a series of talking points.

“But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

“Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background—there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.”

First of all, I find it interesting that, even with the references to xenophobia and world trade, the media and the public in general focused their attention on Obama's references to guns and religion. I think that indicates that either this country generally feels that those remarks were indefensible, or it feels that they're irrefutable.

But the main point that I want to make is that this comment about rural communities clinging to guns and religion, that had so much of the country in an uproar, is absolutely correct. I've kept silent on this issue until now because I felt there may be a political risk (however small and unlikely) that some right-winger could tune into my blog and hold up my comments as evidence that all of us dirty liberals are nothing but snotty elitists—not that I have any delusions as to the proliferation of this blog.

There is a paranoia inherent in the rural parts of America that is part and parcel of both the American religious experience and America's formative years in history, and that paranoia draws the unthinking mind ever closer to the concepts of mortal defense and divine intervention. (If you think my opinion on this matter makes me an “intellectual elitist,” then bear in mind that I grew up in the rural Midwest; contrary to the folksy conservative fear-monger's belief, intellectualism is not exclusive to urban life.)

Finally, to follow up my oh-so horribly elitist musings on rural life, here is a similar quote:

“The more harsh the circumstances of daily life, the more potent are the simple and universal emotional themes of struggle, sin, repentance, forgiveness and redemption that form the core of evangelical fundamentalist religion.”

— Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason

Let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised.

It's official. This is what a $700 billion bailout plan will get you, provided that you are not among the destitute, foreclosed, unwashed masses who actually could make good use of it. Was this trip really necessary?

Bush spokeswoman ‘outraged’ by AIG junket

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President George W. Bush's chief spokeswoman expressed outrage Wednesday at reports that AIG executives spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a spa retreat after the US government rescued the firm.

“I understand why the American people would be outraged. I am. It's pretty despicable,” Dana Perino told reporters.

She spoke after US lawmakers were told that AIG spent more than 440,000 dollars for an executive getaway at a California beach resort just days after the insurance giant was rescued by an 85-billion-dollar US government loan.

Bush lobbied for a 700-billion-dollar bailout package to help the US public, said Perino, who stressed: “He did not do that to help top executives and certainly not to help executives go to a spa.”

The US Federal Reserve stepped in to save American International Group from imminent collapse on September 16, with a loan that gave the US government a stake of 79.9 percent in the insurance behemoth in the deal.

“Less than one week later, AIG held a week-long retreat for company executives at the exclusive St. Regis resort in Monarch Beach, California,” Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Tuesday.

Invoices showed that AIG paid the Pacific Ocean getaway resort more than 440,000 dollars, Waxman told the committee on its second day of hearings on the Wall Street economic crisis.

The charges included close to 200,000 dollars for rooms—which cost between 425 and 1,200 dollars per night—over 150,000 for meals and 23,000 in spa charges, he said.

Meanwhile, I'm struggling to stay current with my student loan payments. Die in a fire, Wall Street.

The rich stay healthy, the sick stay poor.

This bailout business is pants-shittingly infuriating. Let's call a spade a spade: the bailout is nothing but the latest event in you-scratch-my-back-I'll-pad-your-Swiss-account politics.

And the suspension of McCain's campaign is, in reality, part of his campaign. He doesn't understand the economy. He has nothing to say in the bailout meetings.

Be thankful they don't take it all.

Translation: VOTE OBAMA.

The Good Life is out there somewhere

You say you'll change the constitution Well, you know we all want to change your head You tell me it's the institution Well, you know you better free your mind instead

I will be voting against the proposal to ban gay marriage in Wisconsin, and you should too. Here's why. Some people say that this issue is a matter of policy, not principle, and others say the opposite. I say it's both, and the principle should drive the policy. The issue is about restricting people's rights and benefits as Wisconsin citizens. To restrict homosexuals from receiving the same benefits that heterosexuals enjoy is tantamount to restricting the civil rights of blacks or the voting rights of women. Both of those restrictions have historically proven to be bad ideas, and this one, if it goes through, will be no different. I see no reason to delay the inevitable and hurt other people's lives in the process. One hundred years from now, if anybody is still here, they'll probably wonder why this was ever even an issue. It's nothing but childishness, really. I'm neither black nor a woman, but I have a frame of reference for intolerance: I've always been a dyed-in-the-wool nerd. I really don't have to think back very far, because although I did receive the bulk of my ridicule and beatings in grade school just for being who I am, it is my experience that although people may get older they don't necessarily grow up. So the ridicule, the dirty looks, the personal attacks, they all continue well into adulthood. I don't know what it's like to have my own water fountain or an assigned seat on the bus, or to be dragged behind a pickup truck until my head detaches from my neck, but I do know what it's like to be hated and victimized for something I can't change. (Some readers who remember an earlier blog entry in which I struggled with the use of the infamous N word may now be thinking I'm a bit of a hypocrite, and they'd be right. But I prefer to think that at least I'm trying to do the right thing.) A lot of people think that this issue has something to do with Christian morals, but that's a load of bullshit. Marriage is not a sacrament, meaning it is not commanded by God. If it were, we'd have more married priests and fewer pedophiles. However, to satisfy the people who insist that God has something to do with this, let me clarify a few things. I have confirmed my faith in front of my parents and my church elders, and I went through years of classes to get that far, so I would hope I do have some understanding of the Bible. These days, I watch whatever programming I can find on the "brain channels" that deal with religion, spirituality, and the historical facts of the Judeo-Christian faith, so long as it is objective and unbiased. When you read your Bible, it is important to consider how many languages and how many editors it has gone through to get to you. If you want a real interpretation of the original text, ask an anthropologist. The prevailing findings currently state that all these condemnations of homosexuality that we've either been reading or inferring have been mistranslations or misinterpretations. For example, the story of Sodom & Gomorrah relates not to general homosexuality, but the very real sin of rape, both homosexual and heterosexual. Those two cities were full of rapists, and they demanded that Lot give over his guests to the mob to be raped. That was the sin that condemned those cities: hurting another person and forcing them to do things against their will. How many times do we debate the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law when it comes to our secular laws? And yet most conservative Christians never ask what the spirit of the laws of the Bible really is. Most are content to accept the fire and brimstone condemnations of the Old Testament while ignoring the tolerance and acceptance taught by Christ in the New Testament. The Old Testament gives bigots an excuse to justify their intolerance and hatred of people whom they unrighteously deem to be below themselves, and yet Christ, the very man we profess to be the son of God, the very namesake of our religion, directly challenged nearly every law written in it. Christ was the spirit of the law made flesh. He dared to defy the authorities by preaching peace and tolerance, and it got Him crucified. The same thing goes on today, from Abraham Lincoln to John Lennon to Yitzhak Rabin. People who preach peace get killed. Assuming that God exists, and that homosexuality is a sin, I'm going to repeat a sentiment I stated earlier in this blog: it's God's job to sort out the righteous from the sinful. Leave it to Him, and in the mean time, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We'll all find out who's right and who's wrong when we cast off this mortal coil, and there's no need to rush into that. Supposedly, God loves all of His creations. Is it not the duty of the faithful to emulate our God? Is it not our duty to love our neighbors as ourselves? Why should that love not include having some compassion for their needs as our fellow citizens? But I still maintain that this is not a religious issue, if for no other reason than because the separation of Church and State must be maintained. That line has been blurred over the past few decades by what I must admit are some very good questions (Why swear on a Bible if the Ten Commandments can't be displayed in front of the courthouse? Why can people read Bibles in prison but not in school?). It used to be a surprising result that a hardcore Catholic like John F. Kennedy could be elected President, but now half the country's voters demand that kind of faith in a candidate. If there is to be any separation of Church and State, popular votes that are based on a candidate's religious beliefs should be thrown out. And if anyone needs justification for that kind of barrier between the two institutions, one need only look to the Middle East to see what happens when faith and government are intertwined.

There must have been a misunderstanding

About those pesky, blasphemous, Danish cartoons... Ignoring, for the moment, the argument that the Muslim world is overreacting about a few doodles, and assuming that the artist(s) really did commit a horrible sin, why do they not seem to realize that it's God's job to punish the sinful? Does it say somewhere in the Qur'an that you have to riot if the world doesn't spin your way? 'Cause that's fucking stupid. If you wager that God exists, and you wager that God is all-powerful, and you wager that God will punish the sinful, why not just leave it up to Him? I'm actually kinda curious to find out if God might be getting pissed about mere mortals horning in on his territory. Furthermore, why don't the people holding those placards seem to realize that their actions and words are adding fuel to the fire of preemptive warfare and racism? My fruity aunt sent me yet another link to Neal Boortz's website this week. He's apparently convinced that all Muslims are terrorists and therefore need to be exterminated, which in turn adds fuel to the anti-Islam sentiment already growing in America, which elects government officials based on their willingness to bomb the shit out of the Middle East, which prompts the survivors to hate America, and so on and so forth. The only winning move is not to play. Seriously, I'd like to know. If there's a Muslim out there that can explain it to me, that'd be great.

One For the Vine

Fifty thousand men were sent to do the will of one. His claim was phrased quite simply, though he never voiced it loud. "I am he, God's chosen one."

In his name they could slaughter, for his name they could die. Many there were believed in him, still more were sure he lied, But they'll fight the battle on.

Vote Zod

http://www.zod2008.com