Things to Consider Before The Voting Booth

Here is a list of things to consider before you pull the lever or electronically record your vote when you go to the polls this November:

1. It will no longer do any good for the Dems to claim that Barack Obama will get us out of Iraq and John McCain will not. Now that the White House has done a 180 and sent Condi to formalize a withdrawal with deadlines, the next president, Obama or McCain, will be stuck with a formal agreement between the U.S. and the Maliki government. These things are not entirely set in stone, especially since the current president wants to sidestep Congress and reach an agreement with Iraq, and the once and future king may decide to shred the document on such grounds. (Treaties have to be ratified. Duh!) This might be unwise, as it could alienate Iraqis eager to see us go, prompting public demonstrations protesting the continuing presence of an imperialist invader.

2. Swiftboating will know no bounds, and most of it will come from GOP operatives. It may be that the party that airs the cleverest TV commercials during the other party's convention, will get a bump. Nobody, not even Jim Carville, can outdo Karl & Co. when it comes to dirty defamations, but rumor has it they're arranging to lure Larry Craig into the Minneapolis Airport, have him arrested in a toilet stall, and held till the convention is over.

3. Although John McShame touts his party's reputation as standing firm against governmental intrusion into our lives, the administration of George W. Bush, a Republican, invaded our privacy in unknown, unknowable, sinister ways that would make Joe McCarthy blush. Now that habeas corpus has been abolished, you can be charged in secret of being a terrorist, arrested, and kept incommunicado without resort to bail, a preliminary hearing, or anything determinative of probable cause. Perhaps Obama will fix that.

(To be continued as the contest rolls on....)

2.

Why I Despise John McShame

Yes, McShame tries to hide behind his P.O.W. past as refuge from any criticism, as witness the silly "five years in one house" TV commercial, put out in a desperate attempt to justify John and Cindy's score or so of houses, condominiums, and other digs. But even Obama praises his "heroism" and "patriotic" service during Vietnam. What is lost upon both candidates is the fact that some of us thought Vietnam an immoral conflict America had no business getting involved in, and one that gave our generation a clear choice: to serve or not to serve. McShame chose to do so. I, and many others, chose not.

It really didn't matter that we had a draft then. Those of us who objected to the war on pacifistic and moral grounds found ways to stay home. McShame did not. Not even waiting to be drafted, McShame blindly followed his family tradition of signing up: he volunteered to fight a war that was odious to many of his generation. While some of us were participating in protests and sit-in's, Mr. Flyboy eagerly joined the fray. For all I know, he dropped napalm indiscriminately on the Vietnamese people, a latter day Arnaud-Amaury, the papal legate chosen to head the Albigensian Crusade, who, being asked how his troops would recognize a Cathar from an ordinary citizen, said: "Kill them all, the Lord will recognize his own."

Given his willing participation in an immoral war, McShame deserves no respect for his service, nor for his imprisonment. We know that many of our captured troops in that conflict were subjected to far greater deprivations and torture yet refused to cooperate with their captors. McShame was not one of them. He did a few cutesy things like telling his tormentors the names of professional football players when requested to list fellow "imperialists," but so what? He caved. Worse, he learned nothing by the experience. Not only did he support Bush's illegal, imperialist invasion of Iraq, he flip-flopped on the waterboarding issue, which made a mockery of his own captivity.

McShame is a dangerous man who wants to attack Iran, get tough with Russia (although we now know, clearly, the Georgians provoked their invasion of South Ossetia). The last person we need in the White House today is a militaristic, jingoistic, slavering warmonger like John McShame. As for all of his dwellings, I'm surprised he hasn't gone whole hog and, in response to queries some Iraqi vets are homeless, sleeping in underpasses, and going hungry, said: "Let them eat cake."

Wag the Dog?

Has Hollywood repeated itself, or has history done so? It just occurred to me that perhaps when George W. said he'd looked in Putin's eyes and seen his soul, what he really meant was that he'd seen his evil twin. Psychologically, these two blowhards would seem to have been cut from the same cloth, and it may even be that they mutually agreed to be each other's film studio for their very own wag the dog.

Now that attention needs to be taken off Iraq -- although the right wingnut pundits still blab about surge success and goal-accomplishment ("we're winning the war"), there's that nagging question of political success, divvying up the oil monies among various sects and tribes, and reconciling Shia with Sunni so that there's no Balkan style genocide (what a euphemism, "ethnic cleansing"!). These matters can easily be taken off the 24/7 cycle if only....

That's it! Get Vladimir to invade Georgia. Between that spectacle and the Olympics, you outdo the Roman emperors' gifts of bread and circuses. You may think I am paranoid, but if I learned anything from the Sixties, it was the slogan, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean nobody's out to get you." Yeah, I know, lousy grammar, weak syntax, but you get the idea.

Light Sweet Crude

Nothing upsets me so much as seeing a big pickup or SUV with only the driver inside. When she or he pulls into the convenience store and fills the tank, they shell out three to four times what I do to fill mine, which allows me to think they're more responsible for the ongoing energy crisis because I was wise enough to buy a Toyota Corolla. In a post to one of the egroups I subscribe to, a member made reference to SUV's and parenthetically defined them as "Stupid Useless Vehicles." I soon enough entered my hat into the ring for Fool when I told another subscriber about the definition only to be informed that he owned two of them himself.

But, hey, let's face it: SUV's in particular look like dinosaurs, don't they? I mean, notice how many people have simply parked them in the garage, on the driveway, or (as is most often the case in South Texas) on the lawn. And check out what's going on in Detroit: billion dollar quarterly losses. And at your local dealarship. I even heard a commercial by a dealer offering fifteen thousand dollars off the price of a new SUV! And, now that crude has enjoyed a temporary slump in price (all the way down to $125 a barrel the other day), the SUV's and even the big pickups will see slowly rising sales.

It's all psychology -- and mass psychology at that. The current SUV owners are using them less because they dislike paying throught the nose. Amusingly, one wag put his frustrations on his posted price sign: "Regular Unleaded: An Arm and a Leg." I mean, you can only amputate an arm or a leg once. And when the other two have been cut off, there's nothing left but the head and the unmentionable. I am not about to contend that all of these vehicles at all times of the day, all week, all month, and all year have only one person inside and are only headed for the inflation station (read: grocery store). No, of course not. During the week, the pickup might hold the implements or inventory of the breadwinner's small business, and the SUV during the school year is put to use driving the most precious cargo of all to local schools.

But, generally, speaking, big trucks and SUV's chap my ass. Most have "BUSH-CHENEY 2004" bumper stickers. Some have N.R.A. Some have Jebus fish symbols or "In Case of Rapture, This Vehicle Will be Empty." I don't mind their naive notions about cosmogony, biology, &c., I just wish they didn't throw them in my face. (There are some aspects of Islam that I think have great value; for one, visual depictions of the founder of their religion, Mohammed, are strictly forbidden. That's why not-so-radical Islamists made such ado over the publication of cartoons showing their patriarch as a terrorist with a bomb in his turban.) Seems to me, you have a pretty weak religion if you have to run about with such proclamations of faith on your rear window or bumper. Reminds me of that old homily, "Fools' names and fools' faces always appear in public places."

McShame, Obama, and the Real Race Card

As the presidential race moves through its pre-debate, mudslinging comic opera phase, we see McShame, lacking any innovative ideas of his own and using fear and race as his only weapon, trades barbs with Obama only to further waste time by making an issue of who used the race card first. The answer is simple: Karl Rove. Nobody could have come up with such a seemingly clever, archly ironic TV commercial as the Britney-Paris fiasco. But Barack seems loathe to explain his reasoning in pointing out the true culprit in the who-hit-first debate, perhaps because getting hung up on the race issue is perceived as crippling to his campaign.

Don't believe it? Have you heard about the GOP cash bonanza this one TV commercial brought in? Obviously, McShame's base wants more dirt. Obama probably would have only exacerbated his problem by pointing out that the juxtaposition of himself with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton -- young, svelte, attractive blonde caucasians -- would revive a stereotype that should have gone out, even in the South, with the death of Martin Luther King, the Rodney King riots, and all of the talk show ironing out of age-old recriminations in their wake. I mean, after all, has anyone seen the Gregory Peck movie, To Kill a Mockingbird?

"N-----s rape white wimin!" There, I said it. In the vernacular of the ignorant, the superstitious, the intolerant, the frightened.

When Obama accused McShame of raising the race card, both men knew what he meant (or Rove and Obama knew): all of the old (conscious and unconscious) fears of white voters all over America would be aroused, brought to bear on the current situation, and used to bolster the argument Obama is "elitist." (I actually learned from a white woman that she wouldn't be voting for Obama because "that's all we'll see in the White House is blacks.") McShame's card: fear of the unknown. It's really Bush III just as MoveOn says, only this time, not having fear of Islamists as a viable strategy, McShame is using fear of African-Americans.

The pundits asked their guests whether the race issue should be debated head-on, and since it appears to be an inevitable component of the '08 elections, how fully should it be investigated and reported? CNN has started a "Black in America" series. A few pundits have expressed views. But the bottom line nitty gritty is not being discussed. The pundits and the pols seem to be saying, "Don't go there." But maybe it's time we should.

The Strange Odyssey of T. Bone Puckins

T. Bone Puckins has addressed a subcommittee headed by Joe Lieberman and advanced his precis for what he calls "the Puckins Plan." There, in his most resplendent sartorial splendor, was T. Bone telling us we should wean ourselves of foreign oil by going green: wind turbine electricity in the main, with appropriate tax credits and investment allowances for those who invest.

Lieberman sat and listened, then complimented the speaker's statement as if he were a sworn secret member of the Bush-Cheney energy cabal. To judge by the questioning and answering between GOP senators and T. Bone, the hearing smacked of nothing so much as a prearranged direct approach the better to avoid potential problems by moving obliquely via K-Street.

Wouldn't it be an amusing coincidence if T. Bone owns a lot of land in West Texas, where wind is hardly lacking and doing nothing for the time being but blowing along the tumbleweeds. Oh, wait, later TV commercials tout putting natural gas into our car tanks. Now, I'm certain T. Bone owns a lot of land in West Texas. And North Texas. And East Texas. And.....

Huffpost's Bete Noir and the McBush-Hagee Connection

Why the hell isn't Max Blumenthal of huffpost running for office? He has pegged the McBush-Hagee connection so precisely, I got jealous reading it. I wish every American would try this one experiment. Pssssst, pass it on! It is this: (1) seat yourself close enough to the TV to take it all in but not waste much space going from face to face; (2) listen carefully to McBush in those sound bites and speech segments in which either Lieberman or Graham (as in Linsie) appears, and WATCH Leiberman's and/or Graham's demeanor, reactions, &c. carefully. You learn a couple of things right off the bat. Lieberman is there to assist McBush in delivering information as needed as well as, in all likelihood, reminders of what McBush can't remember, while Graham is there to look like the rival politician's halfwit son in the wonderful John Ford movie, "The Last Hurrah," with Spencer Tracy playing the wily, almost Machiavellian pol running for his last time.

Candidate McBush and His Creepy Clerics: Worse Than Wright?

Senator John McBush (R-Arizona) has accumulated a couple of creepy Christer clerics who make Rev. Wright look like Gandhi. I speak of John Hagee and Rod Parsley, a couple of cracker evangelicals who follow in the footsteps of Pat Robberson and Jerry Falwell and spew the same hateful venom from their snake oil seller's forked tongues. And although McBush claims he doesn't subscribe to everything these two fundamentalist rubes sermonize on, he's given no specifics, so that, for all we know, he disagrees with their claim that there is "a living God." It is time the media forced McBush to reveal his true beliefs about the inane, unconstitutional, and un-American positions taken by this dynamic duo of theocrypto-fascists.

An AP article in today's paper brings news that Hagee ("Catholicism = Whore of Babylon") has apologized the U.S. Catholics and that this is fine with McBush: "[McBush] has said he does not agree with some of Hagee's past comments, but did not reject his support." OK, John, WHICH past comments? You're beginning to sound guilty of the same transgression you blamed on Obama: pretending to have been unawares. Of course, hypocrisy is the lubricant of political intercourse. As for Hagee, may I echo the Consul in Lowry's Under the Volcano, who observed: "There are some things you can't apologize for." Hagee was quoted as saying that the Catholic Church is the Great Whore of the Book of Revelations; that the Church urges "a Godless theology of hate that no one dared stop for a thousand years...."; and that Hitler worked together with the Roman Church to "shape the policy of the Third Reich." Apparently, the Catholic Church isn't buying the apology. But Hagee's own theology of hate seems boundless. An AP story on the McBush-Hagee Connection accurately summed it up when it said Hagee has made "controversial" comments about "Islam, homosexuality, women, blacks, and hurricane Katrina."

Hagee's eagerness to judge the behavior of others amazes when you consider the following highlights of the man's own sordid career:

• Resignation under duress from his San Antonio-based Trinity Church in 1975, explaining years of moral impropriety by stating, "My marriage had collapsed and I became immoral in my personal conduct." (Remember Jimmy Swaggart?)
• Divorce from his wife of 15 years, the mother of his two children.
• Re-marriage to a congregation member 12 years his junior (his paramour, perhaps?).
• Violation of the Assemblies of God by-laws, resulting in his excommunication; to put it country simple: defrocked.
• Politically, supports a joint U.S.-Israeli preemptive military strike on Iran. (McBush must be salivating like Pavlov's dog.)
• A "hellfire and brimstone" preacher, he has been known to liken J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter to "contemporary witchcraft."
• Has referred to the Koran as "a mandate to kill Christians and Jews," and likened Arabic peoples and other followers of Islam to Nazis when he said, "[They have] far more than Hitler and Japan and Italy and all of the axis powers in World War II had under arms." (Like me, you may be thinking this dangerous lunatic is a dominionist. They're the most dangerous lunatics around.)
  
• Having heard about N'awlins' notorious Southern Decadence gay parade (more outre' than anything at Mardi Gras!), he used his hot line to ascertain that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment on the Delta for "a level of sin that is offensive to God." The "homosexual parade" was given as one of the indicia of the offensiveness level.

Although the so-called Christ was known to have said that a rich man will no sooner enter the kingdom than a camel shall pass through the eye of a needle, Rev. Hag draws an annual salary of over ONE MILLION a year, the combined pay from donor-supported ministries including his church and TV ministries. (Like most of those being investigated by the Senate, he probably hides at least the same amount using a twin set of books.)

JOHN McBUSH! I call on you to denounce Rev. Hagee and his rantings as those of a Dangerous Lunatic!

Obama had his cross to bear (you should pardon the expression): Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But Wright wasn't completely WRONG. Hag is. Worse, it isn't enough for McBush to have one "spiritual advisor" (read: pander to evangelicals, including dominionists, who all have bumper stickers reading, "In Case of Rapture, This Car Will Be Empty"), he has to be one up on Barack: he has TWO.

The other one is Rod Parsley, and folks, he's just as much a piece of work as The Hag. A Pentecostal, he claims presidency of the Center for Moral Clarity. I'm not kidding you. That is the name of it. He has just as many subsidiaries and fingers in the evangelical pie as The Hag, and his pedigree includes a degree from Falwell University. His cable ministry is as big as Tammy Faye before the Fall. Here are a few of his biographical attainments:

• He had his conversion/revelation/epiphany when he witnessed the signing of the Partial Birth Abortion ban.
• He is opposed to the concept of separation of church and state and claims it cannot be found in the Constitution. (Shhhhhh!, don't wake up Thomas Jefferson!)
  
• He criticized Sweden for imprisonment of a Pentecostal preacher, Ake Green, when the latter sermonized snarkily on homosexuality, which Green likened to "an abnormal, horrible cancerous tumor in the body of society," and called homosexuals "perverts, whose sexual drive the Devil used as his strongest weapon against God," finally concluding that "a person cannot be a Christian and a homosexual at the same time." (Don't tell Troy Perry and his Metropolitan Community Church congregations!) Oh, the Parsley-Green animus is exacerbated by the fact that, in Green's words, "homosexuality is chosen, not inborn," in spite of scientific evidence showing exactly the opposite.
• He used his pulpit to help Ohioans pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and woman, and likened same-sex educational materials to racism. (Huh? That one escapes even me.)
• He believes that Planned Parenthood commits genocide against African-Americans because it helps them arrange abortions.
• He supported John Roberts for the Supreme Court.
• He's said that Islam is a "false religion" and that "America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing [it] destroyed." (Gee, Rod, I hope you don't tell all those Arab-speaking monarchies we've armed to the hilt!)
• He's a card carrying member of the dominionists, who are as dangerous as jihadists in their misguided belief in a Neo-Calvinist eschatology: the Final Battle will end Planet Earth as we know it; after all, the Bubble tells us it will happen in the Holy Land and Russia will be a major player. (This perhaps explains the dominionists' slow reluctance to admit there's anything such as global warming; since everything is written and the elect have nothing to worry about, do nothing to turn the tide. This is the same dangerous propaganda Tim LeHaye and Cronies have been peddling as science fiction for Christers. One wee problem: when you treat things as foregone conclusions, you can justify anything to bring them about, including suicide bombings abroad and attacks on democratic ideals at home. It turns one fallacy these morons are famous for -- post hoc, ergo propter hoc -- on its head, inviting an effect to produce its cause.)
  

Parsley's tax-exempt status has been called into question, in part for crossing the line between religion and politics, which is a Constitutional concept Rev. Parsley would not understand.

Sen. Grassley, DO YOUR DUTY!)

JOHN McBUSH! I call on you to denounce Rev. Parsley and his rantings as those of a Dangerous Lunatic!

CALLING ON ALL MEDIA: DEMAND THAT JOHN McBUSH DENOUNCE HAGEE AND PARSLEY!!!

Crooks, Liars, and Why the Dems May be in Trouble

Crooks and Liars (url: crooksandliars.com) is a favorite blogging/comment site. Its liberal-leftist orientation provides me a perfect home for my thoughts. The items posted daily (and replaced by breaking eventualities) cover politics in a way Joseph Pulitzer never fantasized about. Right now, they appear to be partial to Obama. A listing in their Sunday Talking Heads schedule: "NBC’s 'Meet the Press' - Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn.; McAuliffe," seemed to me a bit partisan until I realized John Amato and crew had identified the chairman of the Clinton campaign in an earlier listing. I realized: these guys are on top of their game.

Ruster asked McAuliffe why Hillary was running such a negative campaign, shocking party bigwigs and GOPS alike. Why, for example, one should not conclude Hillary has lost her marbles: caught on a reporter's mic and groggy from stumping, she pronounced what the statistics and exit poll interviews were showing (and, duh!) what everyone already knew: that African-Americans are going for Obama; working class whites, for Clinton.

So why is everybody so shocked -- I say, SHOCKED! -- that Hillary was telling the truth? Some of her supporters -- I, myself, included -- think she has gone to unfortunate extremes to win and that by now she should have seen the handwriting on the wall. But I'll tell you one thing, that woman is one hell of a presidential candidate! I am as proud of her run as I am weary of her sometimes unsavory tactics. Barack isn't going to ask her to join his ticket -- he'd do well to pick a running mate from the ethnic and economic class forming Hillary's base: white, low-middle class, working men. They didn't much appreciate Obama's "bitter" remarks; they didn't like his bowling game; they don't drink Starbucks lattes, and they don't drive Volvos.

One is left with a gnawing fear one had at the beginning of the debates: do the GOPS want an African-American or a woman opposing their candidate of choice? Let me illustrate an element of the equation, first pointing out that I, the Great Jimminy, told anyone reading my Crooks and Liars comments, at least since last fall, that the GOP wants Obama on the ticket. That impression only strengthened my convictions as the Hillary-Barack slugfest really got going.

My reasoning was simple: The GOPS think that an African-American cannot be elected President. Let me offer at least anecdotal evidence as to why this is so. Remember, first, that Karl Rove is working for McBush, as an advisor. That guy might be a scum sucking pig, but he's a master player in the Machiavellian sense. He's also about as legitimate as a sociopathic lunatic bastard turning up at Mother's Day. These sleazoids will play every race card that comes their way; if it's too off the wall for the candidate, Rove McBush will see to it that it's sponsored by a rogue surrogate group over which they have no control. It's Patriotic Christians of America (PCA) vs. "the guy who listens to Rev. Wright."

My friend Rebecca is a 70-something liberal. She is a Hillary supporter. I asked her why she didn't support Obama and she used the usual anti-Barack talking points (lack of experience and lacking in substance are a couple) in taking the position that the Dems have but one candidate and she doesn't hail from Chicago. Now that the primary campaign is beginning to look like a slight Obama victory -- far short of a mandate -- I wanted to know if Becky had changed her position. That is, will she at least support Obama or would she vote for McSame?

"I'll stay home," she said.

W. C. Fields, Where Are You Now That We Need You?

One of the more famous sayings of the late vaudeville and movie comedian W. C. Fields had it that "anyone who hates children and dogs can't be all bad." A concomitant, to my way of thinking, might be, "anyone who uses children or dogs in TV commercials can't be any good."

Commercials featuring children and dogs for infant formula, diapers, and dog food are OK: they don't exploit children and dogs except insofar as their use of them is to sell the very product they're hawking. This type of commercial is almost exclusively limited to a nationwide audience and pays for programming on the broadcast and cable networks. It is local advertising that exploits children and dogs to sell products having little or nothing to do with the goods or services they're selling. This is odious -- shameless exploitation.

Take our local mattress retailer, who calls his business "Chubby's Mattress Company." A chubby little man himself, the owner is shown sitting next to a bed, holding a medium-sized shaggy dog in his lap. That's Chubby. (The owner has also been shown snoozing on one of his mattresses, and the dog has, too.)

I've been tempted to drop by his store and ask if I can see Chubby. More than likely, the pet is at home where, no doubt, the owner beats him regularly, feeds him 25-cent canned dog food, and never lets him in the house. When the salespersons tells me that Chubby is not there, I will go back to my office and and prepare a petition for deceptive trade lawsuit; after all, the TV ads imply that I will get to see Chubby if I stop by the mattress store. Lest you wonder if such a suit might be "frivolous," asking, for example, "How have you been damaged?" I respond: "Like George W. Bush, are you totally ignorant about the cost of gasoline?"

The same could be said of a local automobile tire dealer, Delta. The owner himself started out appearing as a child on his dad's TV ads. Now grown up and a father himself, he regularly holds up his 3- or 4-year-old son, a cute little blond boy, to hype "lowest tire prices in town." I used to enjoy this guy's commercials, but now that he's selling his son on TV, I can't bear to watch them. And that is precisely what he's up to: selling his son. If you have a good product or services, you shouldn't have to rely on cutesy pets and offspring to sell what you're offering. It cheapens the product or services, and it prostitutes dogs and children.

I wouldn't trade with this mattress store or tire outlet if they were the last such establishment in town. I'd drive 140 miles north to the next large city where, hopefully, they eschew use of small beings to sell merchandise. Oh, by the way, there is another mattress store in town that features the son of the owner, directly competing with Chubby's dog. As ours is a South Texas city with a disproportionately Hispanic population ("Anglos" being in the minority), the commercial itself is in English; but when it ends, a small boys beams, saying, "Donde su compra con mucho gusto!" I'd rather shop elsewhere, thank you.

The Face on John McCain's Door Knocker

Ronnie was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial in Simi Valley was signed by representatives, senators, and supreme court justices. McCain himself signed it: and McCain's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Ronnie was dead as a door-nail.

And so it was that McCain was greatly surprised to see the face of Ronnie on the door-knocker of his Phoenix residence one Christmas eve, coming home from a round of stumping, including ingestion of the customarily inedible stump food. He muttered "Bah! Humbug!" at seeing Ronnie's visage on the door-knocker, attributing it as he did to something he'd eaten, a bit of gristle perhaps, in stump food mystery meat.

But upon going up to bed (Cindy Lou was away), McCain was startled by the sound of clanking metal and a heavy banging at his boudoir door and more startled still when the door was opened by someone or something that looked like -- no, it couldn't be -- Ronnie! Disbelieving his eyes, McCain again protested: "Humbug I say!" and reiterated aloud his hunch that the phantasm was caused by indigestion. "You may be an undigested bit of fajita I had at Hispanics for John McCain, or a crumb of chitlin's from the rally of African-American Republicans.

At this, the ghostly specter before him expressed disagreement with this conclusion by rattling a heavy chain wrapped 'round his body, a chain with life-sized bracelet "charms" attached. These included AK-47's, large tape-wrapped packs of Colombian cocaine, and VHS cassettes of Senate testimony pertaining to the Iran-Contra affair. When McCain inquired of Ronnie why he bore such burdens even in death, Ronnie replied almost angrily: "This is the chain I forged in life...." and then, he warned: "You will be haunted by Three Spirits. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls One, the second the next night at the same time, and the third the following night just past twelve," and with that, the spirit floated out the window.

McCain went to bed and, sure enough, at the stroke of one, the curtains of his bed were drawn back by a spirit. McCain squinted, thinking the figure before him bore a resemblance to someone he knew (or knew of); yes, it was the nose: long, with an odd upward curve at the end -- and the lips and chin which, despite being closely shaved, looked like they had a perpetual five o'clock shadow and glistened with tiny beads of perspiration. The spirit announced: "I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"Long past?" McCain asked.

"No. Your past." The spirit bade McCain to touch his robe and, with that, the two of them floated away to the senator's childhood in the Panama Canal Zone (which would, years later, be bombed mercilessly by a GOP president using capture of Noriega as an excuse)...."I see a student playboy at the Naval Academy, graduating last in his class..." Fades and dissolves to other high points in McCain's life, such as dissing America on threat of torture by his Vietcong captors (and, later, relenting on demands that the U.S. cease torturing suspected terrorists at an American military installation in another Latin American country, betraying the very ideals he claimed to stand for, the better to tow the party line and, perhaps, pass muster with the party's neocons).

The spirit went on: "I see a young senator interfering with the orderly administration of justice to help out a campaign contributor and crony named Keating...." And on: "I see a tireless advocate for the tobacco industry though he knows cigarettes cause cancer and that when Americans wake up to the fact that the industry regards them as 'nicotine delivery devices,' the multinationals will start hooking Asians and Africans on them...." And on: "I see a fat-faced, double-chinned man doing a hatchet job on a Dem candidate for president and after giving lip service to the notion that it's dirty tricks, the now-older senator lets it happen for the good of the party...."

"I see a skin cancer patient enjoying the benefits of free medical treatment as a senatorial perk but doing nothing to aid millions of Americans who can't afford health insurance...." By now, McCain was feeling a bit guilty; however, hidebound hack that he was, he smirked , but it was a nervous smirk. After all, one cannot be too careful around ghosts. "Leave me!" he asked the spirit. "Take me back! Show me no more!"

The second spirit arrived on time -- at the stroke of one the following day. It was ensconced upon a sort of throne and surrounded by all manner of cakes and ale, succulent fruit and Christmas fare: a turkey and all the trimmin's as well as a huge horn of plenty with rich candies and nutmeats spilling from it. The spirit sat atop all this, a jolly giant bidding McCain: "Come in! and know me better, man!...I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me!...Touch my robe!"

They were now transported to New Orleans, to a house in the lower Ninth Ward. A family is having a Christmas dinner of canned Perdue chicken (processed by illegal aliens), dressing made of last week's cornbread, and some hand-out peas from the Food Bank. The family, squatting, has no roof overhead as the woodframe house has been marked for demolition. The youngest male child, Li'l Tim, has a severe cough from drafts (makeshift tarps for windows, odd bits of shredded plywood for a ceiling). The father says, "A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!," to which the family echoes, and Li'l Tim, last of all, says: "God bless us every one!"

"Spirit," McCain inquires, "tell me if Li'l Tim will live."

"I see a vacant seat in the poor corner. If these shadows remain unaltered by FEMA and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the child will die."

The last of the spirits arrived exactly on time, but he was the most frightening apparition of all: a phantom in black whose cowl concealed his face. His presence filled McCain with a solemn dread. He tried to speak to the spirit, but it merely motioned him onward, ignoring his question, "Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?" Now, they were in the U. S. Senate during a short recess. A Dem was talking to a GOP, saying, "He had a nasty temper didn't he?" To which the GOP answered: "Beastly! When that man got in your face, his facial veins bulged, he turned red as a beet, and you could almost see smoke coming out his ears and nostrils."

The phantom took McCain to the house in Phoenix where Cindy Lou was weeping in a room adjacent to the study. There, an auctioneer was selling off McCain's personal effects. The ghost then ushered McCain to the National Cemetery at Arlington, where it pointed a finger at a particular gravestone. McCain said, "Before I draw nearer to that stone, answer me one question; are these the shadows of things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?" Still, the phantom pointed to the gravestone, which read:

JOHN SIDNEY McCAIN III (August 29, 1936 - November 3, 2008)

"Spirit!" McCain said, trembling, "why show me this if I am beyond hope? No, Spirit! Oh, no, no! Spirit, hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Your nature intercedes for me and pities me. I promise to quit pandering to the fanatical religious right, currying the favor of the neocons at CPAC. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life! I will honor Christmas in my heart. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"

McCain thought he had grasped the phantom's robe, but he soon enough realized it was his bed curtains. He was awake and heard the sound of cathedral bells. He went to the window and inquired of a small boy passing in the street, "What day is this?" to which the puzzled boy answered, "Today? Why, it's Christmas day!"

After dancing and prancing about the room, giggling like a schoolgirl, he went downstairs, raised his undocumented Salvidorian domestic's salary from $1.50 an hour to $2.25, and, calling the broker of his blind trust, ordered him to sell all of his stock in Perdue Farms. And, with that, John McCain let go a self-satisfied sigh. He thought, at least it was a start.

Moments later, though, he said, again, "Bah, humbug!" for now he was certain the spirits had been nothing but a bit of gristle from stump food. He called his broker back and said to cancel the Purdue Farms sell order.

Why Brecht & Weill Matter More Than Ever

I have an erstwhile friend from college days (the 1960's) who insists that the early, socially-conscious works of Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill (The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny) are "irrelevant," and that all of Brecht's later plays were somehow diminished in stature by the end of the Cold War, the demise of Communism as we knew it, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I say "erstwhile friend" since I ceased all communication with this person about six months ago. My late mother once told me, "In mixed company, avoid all discussions involving three subjects: sex, politics, and religion." I later learned that there was an exception to that rule. One may discuss such things freely and openly with friends; in fact, one cannot truly count as a friend anyone who so completely disagrees with you on matters sexual, political, and religious that they take issue with your every pronouncement on the matters.

This erstwhile friend -- let's call him Tom -- was a person I looked up to in my undergraduate years in college. He was a year ahead of me and well-read, and I mistook his opinionated loquatiousness for erudition. But, then, to me he was erudite. Not only had I come as a freshman to a buy-your-degree "play" university in North Texas from a small city on the Gulf Coast almost 400 miles south, I virtually threw away my three years in high school in favor of playing class clown. (In retrospect, I think I had A.D.D., but now that we know a lot more about the drugs used to treat it at the time, I am glad that some wise synapse in my mother's brain told her to avoid such things as Ritalin, which might have made me "behave.")

Tom had superior knowledge of the very things that interested me most: film, theatre, literature, and the performing arts. But I soon enough learned that these were the only intellectual pursuits we had in common, for we were, politically, diametrically opposite. He was a Goldwater Republican and I was a Kennedy liberal. Sex and religion did not at the time enter into our discourse. Only later in life would those subjects rear their heads and become for me insurmountable obstacles to maintaining a friendship. To make a long story short, it was Tom's politics that dictated his feelings about Brecht and Weill, politics that seemed to me to have degenerated from Goldwater's libertarian, states' rights brand of conservatism to what I can only describe as the crypto-fascist wingnutiness of the neo-cons.

As the recent PBS broadcast of the L. A. Opera production of Aufsteig und Fall der Standt Mahagonny demonstrated, Brecht and Weill are alive and well in a "City of Nets" near you. Productions of the opera are relatively rare, so it's odd that 2007 saw not one but two of them. One was mounted at the Charleston Spoleto festival (founded in honor of Carlo Menotti); the other, recorded for PBS, at Los Angeles. Reviewing the Spoleto version, opera critic Fernando Rivas wrote in the Charleston City Paper that Mahagonny was a "Marxist scream of defiance against capitalism" and wondered why this particular work had turned up at a music festival that 'is in so many ways the product of a solidly capitalist system."

Rivas then went on to speculate that the schisms between the haves and have-nots that were always at the heart of the Brech-Weill collaborations were possibly prophetic. He asks, "why does that final scene of Armageddon [in Mahagonny] when people unhappy with Mahagonny carry protest signs and kill each other seem so...contemporary?" Then, Rivas asks, "Is it possible that Brecht's larger message, not about socialism and capitalism, but about humanity's inability to resolve conflict and its inability to cope with its own fears and violent appetites is still relevant?"

He also wonders why the subplot of a "hurricane barely missing a city" manages to "hit such a responsive chord" in a place like Charleston? Was the Spoleto audience recalling how our federal big brother mishandled the Katrina disaster even as the nation was bogged down in a preemptive invasion in Iraq? Apropos the invasion, ironically the first Gulf War was called "Desert Storm." Instead of claiming that 9/11 was God's wrath visited upon a wicked nation populated by homos and abortion doctors, perhaps the fundamentalist preachers should have speculated on a different cause: Iraq. But God forbid the fundamentalists should ever engage in arguments from post hoc, ergo propter hoc analysis of events. It would seem to me that if we hadn't been spending so much money in the Mideast, we might have had more resources to aid New Orleans. It is commonly known that many rescues in that city, post-Katrina, had to be called off due to a shortage of helicopters.

Brecht and Weill began their association during the Weimar Republic, a time that has come to be "synonymous with political instability, inflation, and decadence," as one Kurt Weill biographer, C. J. Schuler, has written. It might be observed that these same ills mark early 21st century America, especially if, by "political instability" one points to partisan deadlock in Congress, and by "inflation," the rising cost of all goods and services spurred on by oil selling at record prices, and by "decadence" the gross disparity between the middle class and the super rich. For all their troubles, the Nazi's blamed the Jews, while the Republican Party, in appeals to its base, blames homosexuals, illegal aliens, and pro-choicers. It is the use of fear itself that leads to the sort of insanity seen in the Third Reich, and fear has become the ruling politicians' weapon of choice. All we need now is a Beer Hall Putsch.

Schuler noted that the Reichstag Fire, blamed on Jews and Communists, "led to the suspension of civil liberties." Today, we have our "Patriot" Act -- just possibly the least patriotic legislation ever created and passed by Congress, given that it suspended many civil liberties, including that most important right: habeas corpus. Substitute "Islamic fascism" for Communism in almost any account of the transition from the Weimer Republic to the Third Reich and the parallels are easily seen.

My erstwhile friend Tom's contention that Brecht is "irrelevant" would seem to be based almost entirely on the notion that since Brecht was a Marxist, and since Communism collapsed with the Wall, the message of Brecht is either no longer necessary or meaningful in the context of today. I beg to differ. For one thing, equating Communism with Marxism is misguided if not downright silly. The English Catholic essayist, G. K. Chesterston observed that there was "nothing wrong with Christianity, it's just never been tried." Neither has Marxism been tried. After the death of Lenin and the assassination of Trotsky, the Stalinists and, later, the Maoists, made a mockery of Marxism by justification of all manner of evils, including pogroms that made the Nazi's look like amateurs, in defense of Communism's lifeblood.

As I am forever reminding the fabulously wealthy pastors of so called "Christian" superchurches, Jesus also said that the rich would no sooner enter the Kingdom of Heaven than a camel will pass through the eye of a needle. The early Christians were communists in the finest sense of the word: they held no property in private and shared all wealth, and especially food, clothing, and shelter, with their fellow Christians. Far too many Christians today, perhaps the greater majority, have not only forgotten what the founder of the faith stood for, they've made as much a mockery of his principles as Mao and Stalin did those of Marx.

The "Armageddon" critic Rivas discusses as forming the climax of the opera's second and final act, comes after a collage of set pieces involving the "decadence" of the Men of Mahagonny, consisting of drinking, eating, boxing, and fornicating. (It's not for nothing that Brecht and Weill, when reunited in America after escaping Nazi persecution, immediately collaborated anew on a "sung ballet," The Seven Deadly Sins. Isn't it strange that Brecht, an avowed Marxist, would be so obsessed with the Christian concept of "sin"?) Now, take each of the subjects of the Mahagonny set pieces and one does not have to think long and hard to see our modern parallels: widespread use of alcohol and recreational drugs; a nation with so large a population of obese gourmandizers the government has named it a national health problem; major sports figures convicted of staging dog fights, and sex, sex, sex all over TV, magazines, and DVD'S.

No, Brecht and Weill are just as relevant today as in the '30s. They serve as living reminders of the ultimate fate of those who allow themselves to be distracted by mundane, self-indulgent pursuits while their government is robbing them blind, taking them into evil wars, and stripping them of their liberties.

"Unforgivable": Mitch McComical

Sen. Mitch McComical (R-Ky.) has weighed in on the Craig controversy, saying that what Sen. Larry Craig (R-Id.) did (solicitation of sex in an airport men's room) was "unforgivable." This comes from a Baptist, mind you. What always blows me away is how so many professed Christian people refuse to forgive their fellow man for what the Bible views as "sinful." Forget that if the prophet who gave the religion its name stood for anything it was forgiveness.

Of course, when he condemned his fellow legislator, Mitchie Boy may have had in mind the damage the Toilet Incident may have done to the GOP, which of course really was unforgivable. At least in McComical's eyes. Forget that Reb Yeshua said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." But then, Mitchie Pooh, having never committed a sin himself, no doubt believes that the stoning parable couldn't possibly apply to him.

To express belief in a religion and its moral principles, then behave in utter, complete opposition to them is even more hypocritical than Craig's voting for anti-gay measures then seeking gay sex in a john. Why do these twits insist on piling one hypocrisy on another?

Craig Flynted by Airport Security

Great story in Roll Call (an online Beltway insider publication) about Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) being arrested by an airport security officer after the pol played footsies under a toilet partition, which the cop recognized as "a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct." Craig, in typical Republican fashion, flashed his senatorial I.D. in an attempt to escape arrest, saying, "What do you think of that?" The officer invited him to go quietly, as "I didn't want to make a scene."

I am reading Larry Flynt's Sex, Lies, and Politics, one of the funniest books I have come across in many years. In it, Flynt claims to have coined the word, "Flynted," a reference to his Clinton-era practice of paying informants for dirt on politicians who decry abortion, pornography, and same-sex marriage and attempt to pass Constitutional amendments against such things even as they patronize prostitutes, suck cock, and engage in various other hypocritical activities. The Craig incident is yet another example of why Flynt claims that hypocrisy is the norm in legislative circles -- that such two-faced conduct is the rule rather than the exception. As Flynt likes to say, "I'm accused of being a bottom feeder, which is true...but look what I find there."

And although Larry didn't have to pay a dime for the Craig "Flynting," he really should send a few bucks to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport police -- at least enough to pay for their annual Christmas party at the A. P. Operations Center, where Craig was led in handcuffs to be interrogated. That's where he flashed his senatorial credentials in a moment of patrician pride and arrogance. Such gestures have become commonplace in Republican ranks, but that party hardly has a monopoly on them. Craig's insistence that he only pled guilty to a lesser offense than he could have been convicted of in order to make the incident go away expeditiously and without bruhaha doesn't make the facts of the airport bust go away at all; if anything, his remarks only make things worse for him.

And what facts! As the TV pundits have all noted (save Fox Noise, which didn't even identify Craig as Republican!), the airport security offense report was both detailed and extensive. It has Craig standing in front of the plainclothes officer's stall, pacing in front of it, peeping into the crack between the door and the partition wall, then entering the stall next to it, where he not only played footsies, edging his oxford under the partition, but used his finger, under the partition, to signal he wanted sex. Later, when Roll Call outed him, Craig told a press conference his actions had been misinterpreted by the officer, that when he squats on the potty, he spreads his legs out, and that he was only reaching his hand neath the partition to recover a piece of paper he'd dropped. The cop noted that no piece of paper was found. He also said that all of Craig's movements were consistent with what he knew of men who are seeking sex.

So here is this conservative Republican senator from one of the most solid red states, a man who sings in a quartet with Sen. Trite Loot and ex-A.G. John Asscrap, who voted for the no gay marriage act, and became a vociferous defender of that euphemism of euphemisms, "family values," soliciting sex in a public toilet. For the secular liberals, Craig is a godsend (you should pardon the expression): a fine example of how "family values" = hypocrisy. Here is this hopelessly closeted tearoom queen blabbing to the media about how he only pled out because he didn't consult a lawyer (when, as everyone knows, any lawyer would have insisted he plead out), and saying -- with a straight (again, you should pardon the expression) face: "I am not gay."

Duh! Oh, really? Then why did you all but out yourself a few years back when congressional pages were going public with tales of wild parties featuring coke and cocksucking, hashish and homosex, marijuana and maricons? You must have anticipated that one of those pages would be naming names and that your own would be batted about. Conscience doth make confessors of us all. Come on, Larry, do the right thing. Tell the truth -- that you are a sneaky cocksucking faggot who doesn't have the guts to go public when caught with his foot loose.

Faggot? Yes, I know, a no-no. A politically incorrect epithet on the same order as "nigger" with reference to a person of color. But guess what? An African-American like Obama deserves to be called an "African-American." O. J. does not. O. J. is a nigger pure and simple. Larry Craig is not a bisexual (he only married immediately after the page scandal, and to a woman who already had children; it was a marriage of convenience if ever there was one). He lends support for the conclusion of Gore Vidal that "there are no bisexuals, there are only uncommited homosexuals." But Craig isn't even that. Craig is a faggot. Craig is a cocksucking homo queer. And the sooner he admits it to himself, the sooner he will be forgiven for his pecadillo in the pee room.

The fallout has been almost immediate and dramatic. Once the senatorial point-man for GOP presidential candidate Mitt ("Varmints") Romney, Craig was quietly removed from that role, and when the beady-eyed Mitt was asked for a comment on the airport incident, he said only, "I don't know the circumstances of his setting." No, no, no, Mitt! It's not the circumstances of Craig's "setting," it's the circumstances of his "sitting."

Now, no one wants to have anything to do with Craig. He has no friends "on either side of the aisle." He is anathema to straights, who shun him as a pansy, a fudge-packer, a queer. And gay people regard him as a closet queen, the worst epithet to those who are "out," either because they choose to be or because they are flamboyantly so. Craig's deep denial serves as an object lesson in proof of the old gay liberationist claim of the 60's, that Freudian projection and self-rejection are the hallmarks of "internalized homophobia" -- rejection of one's very essence, the end result of self-oppression, self denial, and a mindset bordering on schizophrenia. If ever one wondered why gays feel the need to declare their orientation, if ever gay rejection of the policy of "don't ask, don't tell" were clearer, Craig's story explains it all.

To those who would join the chorus proclaiming the efficacy of "family values," Craig's outing cries back the acronym of another 60's phenomenon, the union of prostitutes in San Francisco calling themselves "COYOTE": Come Off Your Tired Old Ethics.

Amen!

It Ain't a Surge!

I don't know why everyone is calling the troop increase and Petraeus-led "new strategy" in Iraq a "surge." It ain't a surge, it's a splurge! And, like most splurges, it's a commitment we can ill afford. BRING THE TROOPS HOME N-O-W!!!

Scoots & Bill

Political pundits are weighing in on the likelihood of Dubya pardoning Scoots Libby and, not unexpectedly, there is ample polarization and partisanship, conservatives taking the position that the charges were trumped up and that the prosecution was a farce, a show trial, while liberals point out that the much-talked-about Rule of Law requires punishment for Libby just as it requires punishment for Paris. (Perhaps it was more than just coincidence -- a synchronicity? -- that both of these people were brought before judges inclined to make them do the time for having done the crime.) As one TV pundit put it earlier in the day on one Sunday news and views program, it would seem the "height of hypocrisy" for the Neo Con crowd to lobby for Libby's release when that same, vociferous lot screamed for the head of Bill Clinton during Monicagate.

Taking the bait later in the day, on Fox's Chris Wallace program (examined more closely in an earlier blog of mine) was, again not unexpectedly, Bill Kristol, who condemned the trial of Scoots as a shameless and despicable spectacle, completely without merit. It's like saying, "We're all for the Rule of Law so long as it is only applied to 'Democrat' [sic] party people." Two-facedness never knew such outrages. Double standards have reached a new highpoint. Hypocrisy is alive and well on Fox 'News.' (In quotes because, as a "news organization," Fox is a joke.)

Now, wouldn't it be nice if Scoots was put in the same cell as Paris? He could tell her how to lie to the F.B.I. and a United States grand jury, and she could tell him how to bullshit a county sheriff into sending you home to your palacial 4,000 square foot mansion in Beverly Hills. But, hey, as the fall guy for his boss, Prick Cheney, and for the White House's eminence gris, K.R., Scoots will at least leave the slams to find a huge wad of Halliburton money on deposit for him in an offshore bank. John Dean had it right when he titled one of his books, Worse Than Watergate. It really is!

The Vicarious Life of an American Wife

Boo hoo, Paris Hilton has to GO BACK TO JAIL! How silly of her to think her rich parents could bribe a county sheriff into letting her out for some feigned illness, as it's well known the only sickness she has is terminal boredom -- a malaise that, unfortunately, is spreading. After spending less than six days in the slammer in a cell with about 1/100th of the floor space of her two million dollar mansion, deprived of her swimming pool, wet bar, coke snorting room (it used to be a study), &c., &c., &c., she has decided she is better than anyone else and deserves to stay at home with an ankle brace.

There was just one wee problem. The publicity on which she thrives backfired on her, a torrent of abuse claiming she shouldn't be treated any different than anyone else, and after all, the judge who sentenced her to thirty days in jail for violation of conditions of probation for DUI, signed an order to that effect containing a line about home lockdowns being a no-no. Poor, poor Paris. Boo hoo.

The trouble with cunts like Ms. Hilton is that she forgets that this is a democratic country and nobody is supposed to be treated any differently than anybody else. Had the judge sentenced almost anyone else for probation violation, he probably would have given them 90 or even 180 days. She should consider herself lucky and take the medicine. You do the crime, you do the time. Reminds me of the hapless residential burglar who stood before the court on his third conviction. Sentenced to thirty years in prison, he said, "But, your honor, I can't do that much time!"

To which, the judge replied: "Do what you can, son."

Ms. Hilton may have a famous name and tons of money and celebrity status in a country that lives vicariously in the papparazi world of movie and TV stars, sports figures, and American Idols, but she's managed to forget the simple fact that when she deposits turds in the crapper, it stinks up the bathroom. This is clearly a woman who will do just about anything to get attention, even fuck on video, pretending it was just horrible, horrible I say, how those thieves made off with the production and sold it to the porno producers. It was a trick she'd learned from Tommy Lee and that other slut from Baywatch he porked on video. And, who knows, maybe Tommy learned it from Rob Lowe.

Although Ms. Hilton has had more than her 15 minutes of fame -- quite undeserved, since she hasn't a talented bone in her body and seemingly can't do anything but flash that mouth full of carefully cultivated, perfectly capped dentition, she apparently takes pride in being a poor little rich girl and a bad one at that. But she manages to forget something we all have to learn the hard way: in America, we are free to fuck up, but whatever we do has consequences. The consequences of drunk driving sometimes include incarceration. If you are lucky enough to get probation, don't drink or use dope and drive -- at least while you're still on probation. Everyone knows that!

Congressional Sleight of Hand

The U. S. Postal Service (Postal Department until Reagan partially privatized it) almost with clockwork ups the price of an ounce of first class postage, almost always by two cents. The explanations given always sound suspicious, and the current increase, going into effect May 14, 2007, is no exception. It sees a 39-cent stamp increasing to 41 cents. (At least the increase is exactly the same as the previous one; I still have plenty of two-cent stamps and now have a use for them again.) The apologia this time concerns a vaguely-stated necessity of upgrading equipment or procedures to keep up with the competition.

But, all this stuff about the USPS charging more for stamps because it struggles to compete with rival free market services (UPS, Air Express, &c.) is a lot of hokem and bunk. By law, NO carrier BUT the Postal Service can move first class letter mail. The government has given them a monopoly on it. If the rival, private services are more efficient at parcel movement and other services, perhaps the USPS should simply bow out of the market entirely.

Each time they raise postal rates, the services remain the same. In fact, some wags claim that you can always tell when an increase in postage is coming by the way the services decline. Also, from time to time, they change the names of some services, e.g. "library materials rate" to "media mail," but they don't bring us mail on Sundays, in fact threatening perennially to drop Saturday deliveries altogether. They continue to under staff their counter service, causing long waiting lines and great consternation, although it is to be admitted that the clerks at least seem to have had some training in people skills.

And they still refuse to give us the benefit of the doubt when it comes to postage due, again causing consternation when, sometimes, mail is returned to sender for an additional penny or two. The consternation in this event can be extreme, as the postage-due recoil can cause charge-backs by banks, stiff late fees on unpaid bills, and emotional let-downs for things as simple as a missed birthday card. The USPS simply do not give value for the added costs of mailing.

Now, here is the Big Secret about the USPS: the additional stamp money doesn't all go to improvements in equipment, &c. A hefty hunk of it goes to their boss, the U.S. government. It is then spent in such stupid, misguided activities as building bridges across rivers to connect a few hundred persons on both sides of a river; funding studies to determine if the Wisconsin newt actually has the ability to alter its sex at will, and sending young men to die in colossally misguided misadventures in the Mideast. If the USPS were not the best mail service in the world (and, actually, one of the cheapest) the government might privatize first class letter mail, too. But, then, they wouldn't have all that extra revenue to fund their boondoggles.

The new "forever" stamp, which you can buy for a one-time price of 41-cents, and which you can use till Hell freezes over, is a silly idea. It may seem economically sound for some; after all, with these every-two-or-three-year increases of two to three cents, paying 41 cents when others are paying 43, 46, or 49, could bring to your face the kind of smug smile one gets when buying low and selling high in the stock market. "Ha! I told you so!" But, think about it, let's say you're a business person and mail at least 500 first class letters a year. That's going to cost you $205 for each year you figure you will remain in business.

You may die in a year or two. Or you may retire. Congress might throw in the towel and let UPS or some other carrier deliver first class letter mail, in which your cache of USPS forever stamps will be worthless. Assuming the 41-cent rate will be good for at least two years, perhaps you can wait until 2009 before buying the priceless franking. (Again, to borrow from stock market analogies, you might have, within the Postal Service, a tipster, aiding you in some insider trading.)

Then, again, you might do a bit more correspondence by fax or email. Come to think of it, these may put the USPS out of business. How will you get value for all your leftover forever stamps when the seller winds up in bankruptcy?

No, I think I will buy a roll of 41-centers at a time. Somehow I don't trust this forever stamp ploy.

"Jesus Don't Like Killin' No Matter What the Reason Is...."

I just watched on DVD the docudrama, The Road to Guantanamo by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross, which won mostly positive critical praise when released here theatrically. Essentially, it's the story of four young British-Pakistanis who head for the Mideast to attend a wedding only to be caught up in the Afghan War and wind up on troop transport planes bound for Cuba. It's a tale of almost unbelievable cruelty perpetrated by the very people who once claimed to cherish the noble and egalitarian ideals of democracy, but now, in the name of "security," practice the same evils attributed to the Nazi S.S. and other infamous despots throughout history.

I was reminded of a saying we had during the Vietnam Era, actually the title of a book by Edmund Snow Carpenter, a friend of Marshall McLuhan and teacher of anthropology at the University of Toronto and other academic venues. The title was: We Became What We Beheld. I am very much afraid that somewhere along the road to our becoming the world's greatest superpower, the U.S. became what it beheld, and as Guantanamo illustrated so perfectly well, what we beheld was tyrrany in the name of a better night's sleep. I know it is by now a cliche and that saying it invites accusations of traitorous betrayal, but I will repeat it anyway: We are the New Nazis.

What good is torture when it only produces lies and forced confessions not worth the breath that uttered them? There is a beautiful, telling documentary snippet in the Winterbottom-Whitecross movie -- a blend of TV news footage, reconstructed events, and interviews with the three young Islamic Brits who survived. It comes when the groundwork for the interrogation and imprisonment of hostages flown from Afghanistan to Gitmo is being laid and the then-Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is heard to remark that the captor-interrogators (first the Marines, then the FBI and CIA) would be "following the Geneva Conventions...for the most part...."

I am afraid Rummy now belongs to that select group of Americans who cannot safely travel outside the United States due to the ever-growing membership ranks of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. (No wonder the U.S. has denounced the World Court and refused to participate in its doings.) Like Nixon's architect of war, Henry Kissenger, Rumsfeld risks being snatched on the streets of one member nation or another and taken, Milosevich-like, before the Tribunal.

If I had any doubt that what happened at Guantanamo violated the Geneva accords if not to the letter, then certainly in spirit, The Road to Guantanamo removed any veil of doubt that remained. Worse, the later Iraqi misadventure, an unprovoked escalation of hostilities against both guilty and innocent Iraqis at Abu Graib saw wholesale flouting of the accords. We have indeed become what we beheld.

Winterbottom and Whitecross's movie ends with the surviving Islamic Brits being flown home, eventually joining their friends in Pakistan for the long-planned wedding. But all three men tell the camera they've been permanently changed. Actually, it is amazing they remained sane, much less capable of going on with their lives. I am afraid it just won't do for our leaders and our national security people to perpetuate a wicked twist on the old saying that it is better to set one guilty man free to protect all who remain innocent. The modus operandi at Guantanamo turned this notion on its head, insisting as it did on imprisonment and psychological torture of many innocents in often vain hopes of sussing out one or two members of bin Ladin's al Qaida.

There was a bit of talk in the film about the differences between Islamic and American "values." That became the buzzword for the Neo-Cons who put George Bush and Dick Cheney in the White House, the latter at least, it's now known, already with plans to invade Iraq. One is left to wonder, "Whose values?" The same glib value talk held sway at the recent MSNBC Republican "debate." The values they mean -- those of Romney, Tancredo, Huckabee, and Brownback -- are clearly Christer values, which are really bigot values, church-state union values, undemocratic values, hypocrite values. If this is not the case, why did John McCain denounce the two leading Christer fundamentalists months ago only to suck up to them more recently as the time came for his hat to go into the ring?

As I watched the DVD, I was reminded of another saying from the Vietnam Era. One of our finest folk singers, John Prine, a master of irony and the "protest" song, wrote and recorded a little ditty titled "Flag Decal," on the singer's brilliant debut album. The song is too long (not to mention copyright-covered) to repeat at length here, but fair usage might allow me to quote the refrain:

Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason is
And your flag decal won't get you
Into heaven any more.

You know, I kinda doubt Jesus would like torture, either. But you certainly see a lot of those yellow ribbon decals on vehicles these days. Do those drivers think their Iraq Era decals will get them past Saint Pete? It amuses me to see that some people, perhaps feeling guilty about the non-WMD, non-al Qaida link, non Saddam nuclear-capability revelations of late, have been trying to scratch their decals off...only to discover that the shitheads who marketed them forgot to make them car paint- friendly. Even if you manage to remove the decal, your paint job is ruined.

To those drivers who've left the the decals in place thinking they'll get them through the Pearly Gates...well, they've got another think coming.

Stewed Newt, Very Tasty With Mustard

Poor Newtie (that's his mom's name for him, not mine). As the first GOP "debates" (the news channel's name for them, not mine) were winding down on MSNBC, Newtie was telling Sean Hannity on rival Fox News he thought it absurd to hold what amounted to a "joint press conference" (NOT a debate) some 20 months before the next president moves into the oval office. Newtie appeared to be turning a bit green. All of the attention was on announced candidates and there was Newtie, still with no hat in the ring, grumbling like a small child running home to blubber, "Nobody wants to play with ME!" Of course not, stupid. You're not running yet.

All the same, these introductory chit chats really do seem not only premature but calculatedly civil. Like the Dems before them, the announced GOP candidates avoided jibes at each other; unlike the Dems, none of them dared criticize the current occupant of the White House, AWOL from some village missing an idiot. To paraphrase an old Marlon Brando movie, the assembled hacks at the GOP "debate" "coulda been contenders," but they were too busy pretending that all is right with the world, that nothing in American is broken, so there's no use in talking about having anything fixed.

There was a decidedly Christer tone to the proceedings. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said that the reason politics and religion should mix is that "religion influences all of us. We all have values...." It is a perennial complaint of agnostics and atheists from Huxley to Harris (with Madalyn Murray O'Hair thrown in) that this observation carries an inherent argument that if one is not religious, one has no values. Although a fairly obvious fallacy, it's nevertheless one most TV audiences are not likely to grasp.

But that was the least of the logical fallacies. Indeed, one of the worst was delivered by the hands-down (if unofficial) winner of the debate, Fmr. Gov. Mitt Romney. Discussing his flip-flopping on abortion, Romney said that he was pro-choice until he got enmeshed in the controversy over stem cell research in his home state, Massachusetts. Stem cell research, he said, "was caused by Roe v. Wade"! I kid you not. He actually said it!

Of all the preposterous foreign policy positions of the night, one "took the cake": Rep. Tom Tancredo's insistence that sending troops into Iran was inevitable because Ahmadinejad believes in the return of the "Last Imam," who will bring about the Islamic equivalent of the Second Coming. (The 12th Imam of the Shiites, Ali ibn Muhammad Simmari, is sometimes referred to as the"Hidden Imam," and many believe he did not die but will return, Jesus-like, in the Shiite version of the Apocalypse.)

This religious-based "fear" of Iran is central to the beliefs of such ultra-fundamentalist groups as the Remnant Church, which you can google if you want to have nightmares. Many ultra-evangelical organizations are in a hurry to bring about World War III because, just as Jihadists see suicidal martyrdom as a swift trip to Paradise, so do the fundies view Armageddon as a promise of their just desserts. It's sickening to think that an Apocalyptic War to the death might be waged over differing eschatological beliefs. (Me, I kinda like living in the here and now, and I wish the Tancredos of this world would simply disappear , and take their goddamned fucking Rapture with them!)

In view of Tancredo's credo, it shouldn't be a bit surprising that when a reader of Politico.com sent in a question to Sen. John McCain asking if he believed in evolution, he hesitated noticeably before admitting that he did. But when the same inquiry was put to all the other candidates on the dais, three said no, that they did not believe in evolution. Naturally, one of them was Tancredo, but it surprised me that Fmr. Gov. Huckabee of Arkansas agreed; he's appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, hardly a seeming haven for creationists. (It did not surprise me at all that Brownback held up his hand. See my earlier blog about this lunatic.)

Until he back-tracked from social liberalism to quasi-conservatism in an obvious effort to curry the GOP right wing base, I had some hope that Rudy Giuliani (fmr. mayor, N.Y.C.) might be someone I could support, at least in the primaries. But his performance during the debates was pathetic. Not only did he join the phoney homage-payment to Ronald Reagan (I kept expecting someone to quip, "I knew Ronald Reagan, Governor, and you're no Ronald Reagan"), he delivered the most preposterous remark of the night when we finally negotiated release of hostages taken from our embassy in Tehran, their Iranian captors took one look into Reagan's eyes and released their hostages two minutes later.

Yeah, sure, but only after Lt.-Col. Oliver North's little White House basement operation put lies to Ronnie's promises to Americans that there would be "no arms for hostages." Is this the kind of president Giuliani will be? Will he conveniently forget important events and/or statements when the chips are down, as Scooter Libby learned from Reagan?

Worse, Giuliani came off as both slippery and ingnorant. He could not adequantely explain the historic differences between the Sunnis and the Shiites. After five years of Iraqi War, degenerated now into a sectarian battle of attrition, that Giuliani is so poorly versed in Islanic history shows a weakness in foreign policy issues that, increasingly, determine the course for America's future. We can't have another man who needs on-the-job training. Even Hillary would have the edge in that department.

The only candidate who emerged as someone I could cross party lines and votes for in the primary is Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a libertarian Republican whose views hark back in some ways to Goldwater. He is a fiscal conservative, which is good. But when it comes to government's involvement in quotidian, purely personal matters (e.g. abortion), he is a hand's-off individualist. It's a throw-away vote, of course, but worth it all the same.

The participants, for the record:

Fmr. Gov. James Gilmore (R.-Va.); Fmr. Mayor Rudy Giuliana (R.-N.Y.C.); Fmr. Gov. Mike Huckabee (R.-Ark.); Rep. Duncan Hunter (R.-Cal.); Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.); Rep. Ron Paul (R.-Tex.); Fmr. Gov. Mitt Romney (R.-Mass.); Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.-Col.), and Fmr. Gov. Tommy Thompson (R.-Wis.).