Yak Pate

Rest In Peace Yak Pate

2010-05-27T06:21:00.000-07:00

"Yak Pate" (my aunt) drifted peacefully to her next big adventure late Monday night. She will be missed and loved and remembered as the poet she was. She had some poems and a couple of posts written in her notebook she kept at her side until the very end....I will try to post them for everyone later. One of her last wishes was to have a poetry reading with her friends and she didn't get that chance. I know she would love for all of you to remember her with poetry and or comment here.

Thanks,

From one of her Loving Nieces.

She was a star, a dreamer and a poet - a very special woman!

Please visit the following website for her obit:

http://www.courier-journal.com/ (click obits and last name Kaye to view)

STAGE FOUR HOWL

2010-02-27T09:19:00.001-08:00

with copious bowing and scraping to Allen Ginsberg

I see the best minds of every generation metastasized by madness, running burned slashed and poisoned through doctor ghettos with desperation prayers for a cure that never comes,
angelheaded children with bald heads begging for the heavenly connection to feeling better for just one night, just one hour of release from the clinking, clanking machines of half-life, so Mommy and Daddy will stop crying and the doctors will stop telling lies
to hollow-eyed grandparents waiting in darkened rooms smoking one last cigarette before the ambulance blasts its banshee song, and delivers them to operating rooms
where every last scrap of poetic sexual bravado and emotional mercy meets the tip of a scalpel and dies,
and dreams of lingering youth float across the tops of burning roofs where even the fire escapes collapse
while bodies fry, and insurance perverts count heir money count their money count their money tapping clipboards made of human hopes and needs, skin stretched tight across their holocaust of greed,
and priests stand on corners rattling thin tin cups, taking contributions for the cause the cause the cause collecting millions, billions, trillions of dollars to save us all like Salk did for a dime, before compassion dried like tears on homeless faces invisible to the suburban mass of dittoheads turning their radios up and thumbs down.

We who walk hospital halls in paper gowns hiding insane beliefs that stepping up to the programmed punishment for our crime of cancer will redeem us, crack open the door to a heaven where we will celebrate the Gods who metastasize their arcane tests of worthiness, wearing hair shirts announcing the Avon 5K for Cancer, the Susan G. Koman Walk for a Cure, the Puscilanimous Scam of Pretending to Find a Cure, when the misery mills better suit their justified ends, and from somewhere far, far away we hear the money jingle as we lay down to submit to fate, dutifully chastened, spirits professionally broken, grinding our teeth because we think we hear the sound of champagne corks popping through the walls, of cruiseliners booming on their way to Dubai, to the Senate Supermarket, to Rodeo Drive, to the fire sale in carpeted rooms where Picassos hang and lobbyists smile at their own reflections in the bloody sheen of Mission Accomplished, inborn rights abolished, selling miniature pink and blue coffins and reusable urns that are converted to wine carafes after the ashes are scattered and the mourners gone, quoting Ginsberg’s Howl that “I'm with you in Rockland where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse.”
But it does.

I rise like an angry Phoenix from the ashes of everyone's treatment, transformed by living within futile systems, ennobled by clinging to thin shreds of beauty still visible through drugged-out, impossible days, choosing between more of the same insane choices for staying alive to feed insurance schemes, and see from this perspective how the healthy are twisted with fear, too delicate and trembling to demand a cure for a lynchpin disease that twirls the world on its scaly finger, to insist upon the defeat of a monster that may never darken their lives, even though its steamy breath permeates liquid walls between home sweet home and right next door, and I say I understand the fear the fear the fear but hear this while I can tell it: we will drift between the boundaries of heaven and hell until we use the cure that is out there in X-Files black and white, curling in hard-copy folders, waiting to be invited into the light of a brave new wave of implacable life.

Every Day Is Saturday

2010-02-07T19:46:00.000-08:00

There is no substitute for adventure. You’ve heard this adage since childhood, right? If, like me, it resonates with your impulse to bypass that office job and head for Europe with a backpack, you probably assumed it originated from one of those pillar-of-thought guys like Socrates or Plato or Aristotle.

Not so. It was penned by the otherwise unremarkable, 20th Century journalist Mel Ellis, who gilded his lily of a phase by continuing to write: “It is as fundamental as hunger. It is as compelling as love. It is as necessary as air. It is as exciting as Saturday.”

We get it, Mel. But adventure isn’t necessarily a set-your-hair-on-fire and jump in where angels fear to tread event. It can be multi-faceted, tempered with an impulse for self-preservation. It can be an effort to save your life instead of risking it. That’s how I see my participation this past January in the Immunovative Clinical Research FDA-approved cancer drug trial. For me, it really was as exciting as Saturday.

I have great friends and family members, so none of them tried to talk me out of choosing the drug trial instead of leaving my fate in the computerized hands of City of Hope. But I know that some wondered why I was willing to defy conventional medical protocol by becoming a drug trial subject. Well…

For those who are too busy to click the Immunovative Clinical Research link to learn how the trial works, here’s the “For Dummies” version: It educates one’s own immune system to recognize cancer cells and kill them. If this sounds too good to be true, or too easy, be assured that it is a truly radical approach. It is the only drug trial currently in existence that seeks to train the body to kill its own cancer cells instead of poisoning them (and the host) with chemicals. Not surprisingly… there isn’t one dime of American drug money funding the trial. That, for me, was a no-brainer inducement to participate.

The trial organizers keep a low profile. I found Immunovative Clinical Research accidentally, while researching cancer-suppressing herbs on the Internet. I clicked their modest link and went straight to the fireworks: The creativity and stunningly simple logic of the Immunovative concept triggered my sense of adventure and, yes, stirred my hope. I admit that hope is not the most objective filter for decision-making. But neither is despair.

Some of you may remember my recent poem (the prior post on this blog), “There are no plastic bottles in heaven.” During my initial interview at the Immunovative Clinic, when I quoted this line to Dr. Har-Noy, the M.D. who conceived the Immunovative method and designed the trial, he looked into my eyes for several audible clicks of the second hand on my watch before saying, “My hope is that you write many more poems about your life on earth.”

Know how it feels when you are stopped short by an unexpected display of beauty, such as a smog-free night in Los Angeles when a few fierce stars shine through the light pollution? That’s how Dr. Har-Noy’s compassion made me feel. When is the last time a doctor inspired you with his or her empathy? Yeah, me too: I was six years old and got a sucker for not crying after my shot.

Unlike the many clinics where I have undergone cancer treatments ranging from surgery to radiation to chemotherapy, where I have shared space with brave but often waxen souls who looked more like their own ghosts than patients, the atmosphere at Immunovative Clinical Research is upbeat, as if everyone is participating in a hopeful new approach with the potential to revolutionize cancer treatment, eliminate the misery of chemotherapy and save countless lives (we are). The doctors and nurses and staff laugh a lot, and interact with patients on a frank, personal level. (I know which staffer hides a tattoo and where. I know who calls President Obama President Obummer. I know who conducted impromptu philosophy classes for his college frat bros so they could pass mid-terms and remain on the football team. I know who has a photographic memory and could unexpectedly repeat my idle reference to Burbank as “Borebank.” I know who comes in at 4:00 am to answer emails. I know who works until midnight. And everyone, and I do mean everyone at the clinic, knows how sensitive I am about my weight, and politely deducts two pounds of “boot weight” when I step off the scale.)

One of the things I most appreciated about the clinic is that I never felt like a number there. (Although, I later learned, I DO have a number: I am the 25th subject). Not once did I feel rushed. The intake orientation alone lasted five hours and answered all of my questions, including some the doctors encouraged me to ask. And I never felt hustled. As part of the orientation I was repeatedly asked if I understood that I had other treatment options. And, just to make sure I didn’t proceed because I thought I had nowhere else to go, the clinic required me to visit an unaffiliated local oncologist to discuss those options.

Although potential side effects were disclosed at each step of the trial process (fever, chills, aching muscles or joints), the effects I experienced were so benign that an Alleve and a good meal made them go away. Word, brothers and sisters! (During the trial I think I also re-grew most of the hair I lost while taking oral chemo last November.)

If all goes well and the trial succeeds, I will announce well in advance the date of my appearance on the Today Show Special that proclaims a cure for cancer (I will be the one wearing homemade jewelry and smiling like I have just won the Powerball Lottery). If it doesn’t, I will move on to the next life-affirming option for treating my disease, which may be a second go-round at the clinic. If nothing else, participation in the trial connected me to a level of personal courage I didn’t know I possessed: I had to trust my instinct that I could recognize a promising concept when I saw one. I had to overcome my misguided belief that courage consists of “taking one’s medicine,” as in submitting to the punishment of chemotherapy, as if there were some inherent virtue in suffering. (There isn’t, no matter what the Pope says.) I had to say, “no thank you” to the established medical protocol for cancer treatment, not caring how the computer at City of Hope rated my decision. I had to stop being a good patient and become a bad girl, one with the stones to choose adventure.

I will know by mid-March if my immune system has responded to the treatment by “reducing my tumor burden,” a cool, clinical phrase that sidesteps the assertion of a cure. So, how do I feel about my medical adventure so far?

Like every day is Saturday… even Monday.

Dr. Har-Noy, this poem is for both of us:

There is no sane reason to
Fall in love again, to sail to that
Flat edge of earth where
Touch and desire still shimmer on the
Bent horizon, and the drift of
Someone else’s breath feels like
Everything, yet nothing at all. But
I can’t ignore him, the way he
Possesses his nature with
No intent to impress, how he
Overlooks his own virtues as if
He is comfortable without them, but
Always notices mine. I love the way
He suggests I open a door between
Memory and this instant, dismisses
the prejudice of mind over flesh, so I
Remember what any genius but no
Madman could ever forget: How
Love reinvents the world, how it curves
The dead-end edge of not enough into the
Starrier sphere of tomorrow,
And lets the flattened day slip away.

REMEMBRANCE

2009-11-13T09:51:00.000-08:00

There are no plastic bottles in heaven.
No big pharmacy moguls who smoke cigars
As they sell poison on prime time TV, only
A few snake oil salesman whom God
Has forgiven because they were kind to
The horses that pulled their wagons.

There are no artificial smiles in heaven,
No artificial hormones, no artificial anything.
No one needs artificial sweetener there,
Because it is sweet to remember even the
Hard times on earth, those contrasts that make
Joys more joyous, kisses more passionate, and the
Wins more descriptive of the losses.

God doesn’t sit on a throne in heaven, unless
Someone wants him to. He is just as likely
To hang with the blues musicians at
Club Habit, and plays a mean jazz sax all by
Himself, the harmonica, too, when He is
Bored with that big, golden harp.

And there is no money in heaven, not one dime,
Nothing to accumulate into a greedy mass
That drives needy men crazy and makes them
Sacrifice their earthly goods by polluting the
Air we all must breathe, the water we all must
Drink, and the food we all must eat. Greed is
Analogous to the cancer it creates, in that
It hates turning back, once it has done its damage
And has a taste for it.

And Heaven is not a floor on the department store
Of life, it is the larger sphere in the center of
Imagination, the light that guides us through the
Dark, pointing out the stars and the warm, deep
Softness of the night, it is the ying before the
Yang, and then the ying again, turning in a lovely
Pirouette of life and love and the treasures of
Remembrance.

FISHING IN OPHELIA LAND

2009-10-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

I troll my toes through the inky
Cold waters of recuperation,
Ten little pink and white lures
For the metastatic bites that sicken me.
Will it come back again? The doctors
Say not, but I am the bait
The killer cells keep swimming toward
And I smell their rot, their
Relentless intent to have me again, to
Drag me down with them into
Ophelia Land.

Friends gather like diving birds to
Save me, as if staging an intervention in
My fate, willing to slip below the surface
Of my fears with kind words and kisses, wishing
Me back into their sphere of immortality.
But when they leave I step with wetted feet
To a fishier beat, one that leads to the
Edge of probability, where I cast for the
Flotsam of my life and reel it back to shore for
One last look, angling with baited hook
For more, more, more.

Plop a Beret on Its Head, and Presto... A Pedophile Becomes a Genius!

2009-10-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

I don’t care, and I don’t think anyone else should, either, that Roman Polanski directed Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, The Pianist and other works of genius. He also drugged a 13-yer old girl, raped, sodomized and fellated her, pled guilty to all of these offenses and then cheated justice by fleeing the United States while awaiting his sentence.

Now other Hollywood geniuses are going public with their support of Polanski, like Woody Allen, who left a Polaroid of Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, naked and spread-eagled for the camera, on the living room mantle for Mom to find. (It’s in the transcript of the ensuing custody trial, which Woody lost, if anyone cares to look it up.) Although Soon Yi was underage when she began having sex with Allen, he argued that her adoption records were inaccurate, and that she was really 19. He also famously said, “The heart wants what the heart wants,” an odd confusion of basic anatomy for a genius.

If Allen, Lynch and other Hollywood pedophilia apologists believe that genius is a defense for contriving to ravish children, maybe there is hope for Phillip Garrido, the pedophile who kidnapped 11-year old Jaycee Dugard and raped, impregnated and imprisoned her for 18 years. Plop a beret on his head, dress him in an Armani suit, teach him to play the saxophone, and presto… he’s a genius! Case dismissed!

How many geniuses does it take to realize that prepubescent and teenage girls are entitled to possess their own evolving sexuality, and that no matter how curious or malleable they may be, molestation by an adult during their young, formative years can cause irreparable damage? Apparently, more geniuses than the film industry has yet to produce.

An adolescent girl who experiments with peer sex is not damaged by it in the same manner as when molested by an adult. It’s her body and her sexuality, so she is entitled to express it. In fact, when her curiosity is satisfied by her own, natural impulses, within her peer group, she generally is empowered, in spite of how disapproving her parents may be. But when the same adolescent is drugged by an older man to whom she is not attracted, and forced into adult sexual activity she neither wants nor is ready to experience, she is not empowered, she is victimized.

It doesn’t matter to me that Samantha Geimer, Polanski’s victim, is now all grown up and wants to “put the incident behind her.” I know from personal experience that forgiveness can be a trick victims play on themselves to escape the trauma reverberating in their memories. All the more reason that society should champion the victim’s cause with at least as much fervor as those in the film industry (and elsewhere) dismiss it.

I can live without another Rosemary’s Baby. But I will not live with the notion that it’s OK for an adult to act out misdirected sexual impulses with children merely because he or she can make a movie.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone

2009-08-26T11:22:00.000-07:00

Ted Kennedy
1932 – 2009

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H. Auden

Although this poem expresses my deep sense of loss, I must add:
Something now CAN come to good... it is now up to us to take up Senator Kennedy's deep belief in empowering all Americans, from the lowliest to the highest... and bringing all to the level created by courageous love.

Poem for Sally, Morel and Mechelle

2009-08-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

COURAGE

Courage is the pearl
We create layer by layer
Each time we face the truth
Or allow it to overtake us.
Courage does not discriminate
Or judge, it is what we make
Of the bad and the good, and
How well we see the thin
Distance between them.

Courage often is the gift
Of those who love us, inspiring
Us to dream without limit,
Until what is and what isn’t
Become our own, unpredictable kismet
Bound within the gleam.

Knock Knock. Who's There? Race Card. Race Card Who?

2009-08-02T11:12:00.000-07:00

GUEST RANT by Nikole Slocum

Okay, let’s say you grew up as an intelligent young black man in the 60s, 70s and 80s. We all KNOW that you experienced racism, which hurts very deeply. Then you come from what we like to call the “ghetto” or “inner city,” but you are smart so you get yourself through the school system. You play by all the rules, you don’t break the law and you work hard. Maybe you take advantage of scholarship funds specifically geared toward minorities, maybe you don’t. (Let’s face it, there are scholarships for everything from test scores to being left-handed) so I don’t see the beef here.)

Anyway, if you are Henry Louis Gates Jr., you not only graduate from college, you become a respected professor at Harvard University. You are a good citizen, and basically lead a successful life. Then one day you get locked out of your house…crap!!! Where are those keys? You fumble around your car looking for them and decide you will try to enter through a window. Then the cops come.

After explaining, look, this is where I live, I am locked out, let me show you my ID, harsh words are exchanged. You already are irritated… wouldn’t YOU be irritated if you were exhausted after a sleepless, international flight, and then lost your darn keys? So, maybe you aren’t nice, maybe one of the cops doesn’t believe that this indeed is your house. Maybe he is just an asshole and would react the same to anyone… Or, maybe he is racist and doesn’t realize it, or maybe he realizes it but doesn’t care. Either way it goes… what are you going to think if you are the law abiding, college educated professor who got locked out of his house (irritating enough) and now you are getting arrested? WTF?!?!?! Wouldn’t you perhaps wonder, “Would this cop arrest me if I weren’t black?”

The facts are clear. Professor Gates PROVED he did indeed live in the house he entered through a window. And the cops DID arrest him for disorderly conduct. Maybe the exhausted professor was in a bad mood… but cops should be trained to deal with that kind of attitude, without over reacting. I am not the happiest camper in the world when I get pulled over for a rolling stop or expired tags, etc. But if I am not “nice” to the cop, if I don’t, in his opinion, display the proper respect, does that mean I should be arrested for disorderly conduct?

In this situation, it appears that emotions escalated on both sides… but with an all-American twist. For a moment, let’s take “RACE” out of the equation. How irate would YOU feel in a similar situation??? Black, white or brown, we all would have to pay court fees, waste valuable time going to court, and worry about appearances… even if, as was the case with professor Gates, all charges were dropped. (Perhaps the authorities dropped all charges in this instance because they agreed with President Obama that the police “behaved stupidly.”)

The law enforcement justification that crime is more likely to occur in certain areas is irrelevant in this case, because it occurred in a respectable, middle-class neighborhood. If you want to argue that there is more crime in “poorer” areas of town, I would be inclined to agree… but for sociological reasons that have more to do with lack of education and opportunity than with skin color. As for the argument that minorities are inherently inclined to commit more crimes, this is patently RACIST.

So, I say to everyone whining that Professor Gates is playing the race card… get off your high horse and face reality! (If you don’t believe that cops treat blacks and whites differently, you are lying to the world AND to yourself.)

The President, when asked about the incident, BEGAN his answer with, “I cannot answer without first making it clear I am biased in this situation, he is a friend of mine.” Nonetheless, the right wing media went crazy over his remark. As a result, the vitally important issue of HEALTH CARE REFORM was lost in the controversy. Since Republicans have a long and shameful history of tapping racial fears to manipulate public opinion, I ask you… who is playing the “race card” here?

Happy Birthday, Laurie

2009-07-25T09:01:00.000-07:00

Happy, happy
Birthday, to one who walks
the halls of beauty
With angels in her eyes
And demons clinging
to her skirts, insisting
they be heard above
the rustle of her divine
Inspiration from every
Worthy host, Plato, Aristotle,
Juno and all the rest with
Their splendid words.
Happy birthday, dearest friend,
You who listen to every
Promise, expecting nothing but keeping
Your own, bearing the burden of
All knowledge with courage,
Calm, and the radiance of
Your original, truthful face.

My Big Fat Healing Ego

2009-07-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

Hello, everyone… this post is for YOU!

While I was recuperating from metastatic bone cancer/hip replacement surgery at Cedars-Sinai, I began working on a blog post titled, “Losing Your Big Fat Ego… One Enema at a Time.”

Hospitals DO impose a million assaults on one’s dignity. But hey, that’s over. I’m home now, well on the way to recovery, and a philosophical treatise on the link between self-esteem and control of one’s bodily functions is the last thing I want to write. (I can hear all of you sighing with relief!)

Oh, wait. Let me share just one TMI moment. Kudos to a male nursing aid aptly named Angel, whose matter-of-fact bedpan technique helped me survive my hospital indignities without killing a nurse. (Laurie, I am SO glad you didn’t bring me that loaded gun I requested.)

Moving on… it will take about six months of physical therapy for complete recovery, and I will probably spend July and August learning how to look sexy while using a walker. (Forgive me, God, for once thinking that motorized chairs were for… squares.) As I return to normal, though some might say I’ve never even approached that condition, I will use my newly acquired sense of mortality to:

Bow down and chant, “I’m not worthy” to my niece Heather, who saved my ass by producing my client newsletters while I was hospitalized; to my niece Nikki, who made the Smart Mom decision to stay in a hotel instead of with me during her visit here, avoiding the risk that her 3-year old and 4 1/2-year old sons might take flying leaps at Aunt Pat’s exotic new wheelchair; to my friend Anna, who knows my tastes so well that she selected and arranged for the purchase and delivery of a new couch and new bedding, so I could return to a more comfortable home environment; to my niece Stacy and my Dad and Sister and so many friends, who called the hospital twenty times a day to check on my progress (OK, maybe 15 times); to Victoria, and she'll know why; to the wonderful circle of friends I met through Laurie’s blog, who sent me funny, fantastic and supportive emails; and finally, to my soul-of-generosity sister-in-law, who left crops in the ground at her Kentucky farm AND a paying job to care for me during my first two weeks at home, and who is not only a great companion but a gourmet cook.

I may not be worthy, but I sure am lucky. And all of YOU are too wonderful for words from this writer who has exhausted her superlatives.

Rant from the Evil Pre-Dead

2009-06-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

After six weeks of bullshit medical reassurances that I didn’t need an “expensive” (doc’s emphasis, not mine) MRI to diagnose my escalating hip pain, that it probably was just a regrettable consequence of aging, I finally pitched a big enough hissy-fit to get the friggin’ procedure scheduled.

And the MRI revealed that I have metastatic bone cancer.

So.

I am now a member of the evil pre-dead, and I am pissed off.

By pre-dead I mean that, unlike you, dear readers, I am no longer immortal. That’s right. I am going to die some day. But since I am told that my cancer is slow-growing and thus highly treatable, I assume that I still have time to publish my novel, buy a home with a city lights view, and fall in love with a man hung like Seattle Slew (1977 Triple Crown winner).

Oh. And also to vent as only the evil pre-dead are disposed to do.

With the full force of my evil, cancerous rage, I ask: Why, after trillions of dollars and billions of man-hours have been devoted to cancer research, are the children of today as much at risk of getting the disease as the hapless victims of Polio before Dr. Salk found his cure?

Where is my cancer cure?

Where is your cancer cure?

Where is our children’s cancer cure?

I don’t believe that a group pf lecherous old billionaires with skin tags and palsy is hiding in a bunker somewhere chanting “greed is good,” thwarting a cancer cure because they’d rather keep making their obscene profits. But I DO believe that greed and unenlightened self interest have created a Byzantine medical bureaucracy that is eating our flesh and bones with no clear goal except to perpetuate itself.

Picture Keanu Reeves in the original Matrix, waking in an infinite maze of tubes, fluids, poisons and hopelessness. Yep. Our American Health Care system is a lot like that. And I can say so, because I am the evil pre-dead.

Medicine, however, isn’t the problem. Rather, it is the corrupt, intertwined bureaucracies of the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries that would rather see us dead than lose a dime. And just because you can’t see my laser pointer doesn’t mean I can’t back up this claim with examples. For example, as my oncologist wrote out prescriptions for the high-contrast MRI, radio-isotopic bone scan and PET scan that I needed, she said: “You’re lucky that you have Medicare… patients with private insurance, even when their need is critical, can’t get these tests without the written consent of their insurance companies, which can take four to eight weeks to process.”

AARRRGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!

The Mephistophelean rot of any system that operates in this manner must be overturned by the most revolutionary means available. (Single-payer care, anyone?) Otherwise, we are heading for a health care system that sends the terminally ill to the nearest ice floe to drift away in whatever is left of our oceans.

Our health care crisis is part of a pernicious continuum of greed that includes global warming, environmental degradation, the extinction of some of the most beautiful creatures to emerge from the eye of God, and acceptance of whatever bullshit excuses we are handed for a world in which cancer cannot be cured.

In this matter we are all brothers and sisters. Our socio-economic status, skin color, religion and beliefs are all leveled by the need to survive. And in our nation, the richest in the world, how can we not reject the concept of health care as a privilege, how can we not embrace it as a willingly shared resource for all? How can we not demand that our politicians promise a cure for cancer as they once promised… and delivered… a man on the moon?

So, from the foul pit where the evil pre-dead dwell to all the rest of you rosy-cheeked skateboarders, hootchie-mamas teetering on seven-inch platform heels, corporate lions plundering without thought of consequence, and Moms and Dads who want your sons and daughters to soar in this life:

Demand a cure for cancer. Now.

To be continued…

Simply Holding Hands

2009-05-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

This poem was inspired by the humbling experience of watching my nieces love their father as he died, and in the process, bond with many others who also loved him.

SIMPLY HOLDING HANDS

Love does not seek nourishment
From the things we try
To achieve. Sometimes love
Flows more freely when we
Simply need it, an achievement
That leads to greatness, as when
Holding hands becomes more
Memorable than front page deeds
Or all our grandiose plans.

Love not only says hello, but
Also goodbye, and the letting go
Of those we love can open our eyes
To the meaning of our past, and
The richness of simple tasks, the value
Of every last moment. We find the strength
To love without measure or comparison, to say,
“I love you, Dad,” and to share this treasure
With every sister and brother.

In the true circle of yesterday, today and
Tomorrow, we love by simply holding hands.

One for Today

2009-04-16T07:54:00.000-07:00

SMELL THE ELEVATOR GREASE

I smell the elevator grease
As I push the button to
Go down, down, down
Into the basement of my life,
This time to do the laundry, but
In the same direction I
Take at night, going down
To all the undone things that
Worry me. I
Keep unlived dreams below my
Sleep; the things I believed
Were possible once, and even now
Cannot release to yesterday.

Dancing in a grade school wedding dress
I would wear with gardenias in my
Hair, under the cool blue
Light of bluest moons, catching
Stars on the tips of my fingers and
Wishing on them until I, too, grew
Full. I was to fall in love with
Men as luscious as sonnets, swooning over
Their youth hostel eyes and bearing
The children they planted in my
Womb like oats, each child
Miraculous, until, too fulfilled for speech
I would compose a waterfall of rhyming words
Both powerful and sweet, with subtle
Undertones of meaning that were nothing
Like these.

Instead I step back into the
Elevator, still reeking of its grease, my
Laundry done, even if my dreams are
Not. The weatherman says it may
Rain today. I press the button that says
Up.

One for Easter

2009-04-12T11:39:00.000-07:00

Hope is not always wrapped in lovely words. Sometimes hope is the weed that cracks the sidewalk.

LOVE'S INDOMITABLE SPECTRUM

Leave the horrible garden
Behind, its barbs and thorny hooks
Hiding inside the flowers. It
Has died but not I.
I spring forward to thrive

In a new and faraway field of
Time, where blooms are not
So heavy and quick to wilt, where
Even landfill weeds are better
Than the rotting soil my mother

Left. From her hanging babble of
Wire mesh and threats, her
Insinuating stench of the corpse plant I
Have opened in flagrant hue
Bearing fruit from the furthest

Reaches of love’s indomitable spectrum.
Now it is time to rise
Unfettered by the past, to
Reach for life’s most precious
Gifts, and let the future shape them.

Giving... A Look Behind the Packaging

2009-04-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

I always think that, given a chance, I would step up and make a meaningful contribution to my community and the collective heart of the world. But, like packaged meat at the supermarket, some opportunities to contribute leave us disconnected from the life-and-death realities behind them.

Here’s a chance to look behind the packaging of Peace 4 Kids, a local community project devoted to helping foster children.

Foster and at-risk youth face challenges that defy imagination. But try for a second… Imagine switching homes, schools and caregivers, as often as three times a year or more. Imagine trying to cope with these challenges while living in one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Under these circumstances, imagine how you would feel if you then lost a loved one to gun violence… or a relative to incarceration.

Nearly every foster child served by Peace 4 Kids has experienced these traumas or worse. But these children aren’t halfway around the world. They are right here in our own community.

Maybe you already know that our foster care system is brutally inadequate. But what you probably don’t know is that, meager as the system’s care may be, it unceremoniously stops the day these foster children turn 18. To say that foster youth are ill prepared for independent living is an understatement. Once they “emancipate,” their first stop outside foster care is often homelessness. Some of them, for example, find it cheaper and safer to spend their nights riding a bus than to pay for sub-standard housing, or worse, to take their chances on the streets.

That’s where Peace for Kids makes a difference. A private, non-profit organization, it helps foster children transition into society through training and support in all areas of their lives: physical and mental health; education; housing; legal needs; and of course, employment. While the organization serves foster children of all ages, it also provides critical, much-needed assistance to transitioning youth up to the age of 24.

And Peace 4 Kids deserves our help. Please visit this worthwhile organization’s website for a better view of its programs and the ways we can support them. You might want to mentor a foster child. Or maybe make a monetary contribution.

But I promise you, once you view the real needs of children at risk right here in our own back yard, you will better understand the impact of whatever you decide to contribute. You may also experience an unprecedented, heart-to-heart connection.

Two New Ones

2009-04-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

When someone asks me to critique their poetry I invariably am rendered speechless... how can one critique a message from the gods, or pick apart the messages they whisper to poets as they sleep? Still. Words are imperfect. So I ask of you what I cannot do for others. Read my two new poems, and let me know if you can see a way to tweak more feeling from them.

YOUR FIERCE TIGER EYES

In every season of my life
Fear has been
The cut that makes me bleed
Red as a rabbit’s eye, and
Just as frightened for
No good reason.

I fear every imaginary
Thing, but only
One real one… that
I might lose the center
Of my self that sings
And asks without guile for
What I see or need or want.

Monticore could drag me
Across the floor before
I would relent
Even if my flesh were torn
And spent, I would be less afraid
Of pain than of the tendency
To submit, to limit who I am.

So stay back a little, if you
Can, and let me get my
Bearings, don’t rock
The boat while I am
Looking into your fierce
Tiger eyes and loving them,
Still wondering if it’s safe to
Show my throat.

CALLING IT

The wisdom quoted endlessly
By relatives and friends is
That love is right
Around the corner for
Anyone who wants it,
Really, truly
Wants it, but
Everyone knows the lottery
Will roll in on tarnished silver wheels,
Seek me out with an embarrassment of
Riches before someone comes to
Love me. I

Know how to figure the
Odds, abacus-up my chance to call that
Valentine flock of turtledoves, and it
Is almost every bit the same as
Tasting a flavor so perfect that, once
Savored, hunger never comes again. Or,
As likely as sleeping a sleep so deep
That forever after one is rested, and
Can run with daycare toddlers, never
Out of breath and always ready for
More candy. Hah!

Like love will come by Fedex,
Glowing, perfect, costing nothing more than
Signing on the line, healing all
Wounds, ignoring the rent and the key
To the lockbox where the will is kept. Love
Doesn’t even know its own name but
I do. I am calling and calling and
Calling it.

Vampire Angel Stands Her Ground

2009-03-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

(Note: This short story was inspired by a post on my friend Laurie's blog.
it's a first draft, so I welcome critiques from writers. Most of all, I hope it strikes a chord...}

God will forgive me for choosing earth instead of heaven, but I don’t kid myself about becoming a vampire. He has no tolerance for angels who interfere with free will.

I miss heaven. But I didn’t know, when I volunteered to become a guardian angel, that loving a child can anchor a soul to earth, even one as full of light as mine used to be.

People have the wrong idea about angels. They envision us as mommies with wings, or as their own personal, cloned Virgin Marys. We’re more like data bytes, weightless and bloodless and moving to enact God’s will, not help teenagers lose weight in time for the prom or loved ones survive drive-by shootings. Although, once I did help Mikey find his dog when it dug a hole under the backyard fence so it could explore the neighborhood, and got lost three streets away. I smile every time I think of Mikey. I’m glad he’s in heaven now, although the way he died is the reason I became a vampire.

In heaven, the only emotion an angel feels is joy. You might think that, with no other emotion to counterbalance it, joy would fall victim to the law of diminishing returns and feel like nothing at all, the way the smell of orange blossoms in Florida is overwhelming when you step off the plane, but three days later is unnoticeable. That isn’t the case with celestial joy… it endures for all eternity, except for angels like me who volunteer to serve as earthly guardians.

When I arrived to look over Mikey I couldn’t feel anything at first. The absence of joy took a little getting used to. I thought he was cute, but I have to confess I wondered why he picked his nose so much. And what is it with little boys and guns? They can make them with their pointer fingers, even when they’ve never seen a real one.

It surprised me to realize that children suffer so differently from adults. They haven’t learned to judge or blame, so they assume that anything they suffer is part of them, like a finger or a knee or a daydream. Even when a child dies, it thinks the loss of life is its own doing. Mikey did.

When his father came home drunk he often beat Mikey’s mother. She was a well-meaning person, but after years of abuse from her own parents she didn’t feel any sense of outrage when her husband hit her. Still. How could she have hidden in the bedroom with a pillow over her head to muffle the sound of her son’s screams when he was beaten on the flimsiest of pretexts? His toys were on the floor. He didn’t want to eat his vegetables. He needed to toughen up because it’s a hard world with no room for loser crybabies. That’s how Mikey’s dad justified the beatings, just as his own father had justified similar abuse, and his grandfather and great-grandfather too, reducing the light of their immortal souls to the tiniest of pinpoints, leaving them at risk for slipping into a morass of antimatter. Or hell, if you prefer.

You might think I planted the idea in Mikey’s little mind that his dad didn’t really hate him, or that he was just acting out his own pain. No. There was no need for that. Mikey cried himself to sleep at night because he believed he wasn’t good enough for his dad to love him. He wondered what was wrong with him, and why he couldn’t figure out how to be better. So I only gave him comfort. I filled his little body with a sense of peace so he could fall asleep, and whispered that God loved him. After a while I began to whisper that I loved him too, because I did. I couldn’t help myself.

I knew the father hated himself more and more each time he beat his child. But not enough to stop doing it. Ironic, don’t you think, since Mikey loved his father with an innocence that would have healed him from the deprivation of his own loveless childhood, if only he hadn’t become too hardened to feel it?

Mikey was beaten to death with his father's leather belt.

Not even an angel can witness such a tragedy without succumbing to rage. I had forgotten what it felt like, actually. Heaven opened immediately to call me back before the rage possessed me, but I was already too heavy with it to ascend. It was another angel, not me, who lifted Mikey’s soul and guided him home. I kept seeing his frail ribs through the size 3T shirt he was wearing during the beating. I kept hearing his father lie that the beating was hurting him more than Mikey. I kept seeing his mother plead, “stop, stop,” without calling the police. I didn’t want to be an angel. I didn’t want to obey the will of a God who justified evil as integral to the process of free will. I wanted only to stop this child beater from hurting anyone else ever again.

While the ambulance was on its way, after Mikey had stopped breathing, I gathered my wings around Mikey’s father before he could pretend to himself that he hadn’t hit his son all that hard, or ask himself how else he could teach his son right from wrong, or claim it was an accident. I sucked all of his psychological defenses from him. Drained him dry. Feasted on them. With nothing to protect him from his past he remembered, for the first time in his adult life, how he felt when he was beaten as a child. He collapsed. By the time the paramedics reported his confession to the police, he was so broken I knew he would never again hurt a child.

See what I mean? I interfered with free will. The dad was supposed to grasp the futility of deflecting pain by imposing it on others, thereby healing his soul through his own efforts. I prevented that. I became a soul vampire.

There are many parents like Mikey’s. Men aren’t the only abusers… far from it. And for every parent who would steal a child’s capacity to love and be loved in return, who would destroy the trust that nourishes humanity, there is now a vampire angel who lays in wait. When I can, I drain away their numb ignorance in time to save the abusers as well as the children. But that isn’t always possible.

I wish I had faith that God won’t abandon me. But in a way, he abandons humans to their own free wills, don’t you think? Odd, when he could prevent so much pain by placing life within a more orderly paradigm. I just don’t get it. Meanwhile, as I stand my ground He keeps sending me the same message, over and over:

“On earth as it is in heaven.”

Right. Until then, I prey on parents who create hell on earth.

You Put Your Left Foot In, You Put Your Right Foot Out...

2009-03-04T15:27:00.000-08:00

“President Obama has moved alarmingly Right of Center, making decisions about Iraq and Afghanistan that render him little more than Bush Lite.” –The Disappointed Left

Or…

“President Obama has moved alarmingly Left of Center with his Economic Stimulus Plan, revealing himself as a Trojan Horse Socialist.” – The Hysterical Right

As Obama’s new administration moves forward, there is so much shouting about the Right, the Left, the In and the Out that one might think Washington politicos were doing that silly, 1940s dance, The Hokey Pokey.

It’s understandable when ultra-conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and his ditto-head minions kick and scream over every move Obama makes. He is the charismatic man of color who outmaneuvered their WASP candidate, persuading Americans to vote for a bold new direction that Rush can’t find with the help of Mapquest, much less understand or engage.

Neither is it surprising, albeit sad, that Republican denial over the extent of their defeat in the last two elections further alienates the electorate that rejected them.

Most of all, though, it is thrilling how much creative debate is generated when a President operates out in the open instead of behind locked doors marked, “Keep Out.” Putting our Left foot in and our Right foot out as we dance the political Hokey-Pokey is exactly what we should be doing… legitimate dissent, debate and compromise are pillars of our Democracy, on par with the Pursuit of Happiness, All Men are Created Equal, and Every Vote Counts.

What, then, is the Left’s objection to Obama?

We should not ignore the sincere anguish of anti-war antagonists who cannot abide one more wartime loss of life, nor accept silence from the White House in response to the absurd Pentagon claim that Guantánamo Bay meets humanitarian standards laid out in the Geneva Conventions. Neither should we deny permission to human rights groups such as the ACLU to independently review conditions at Guantánamo Bay. These and similar issues are valid, and should be heard and addressed.

But there are some members of the Left whose sense of unease over Obama’s Presidency borders on mysticism. A case in point is the blogosphere claim by Doug Page at Dissident Voice that “Obamamania,” or unexamined enthusiasm for and support of the President, is the result of “the false myth of redemptive violence.” Page goes on to explain that…

“Our childhood TV shows, our comic books, many of our movies and our foreign policy are all founded on the false myth of redemptive violence. It promises to redeem, to restore order, law, peace and democracy, but it never does. This myth appears in The Lone Ranger, Batman, Superman, Cowboy Westerns, James Bond movies, TV games, modern adult movies and popular TV shows, and in our foreign policy and CIA. (How Doug makes the leap from Batman to the CIA is unclear, at least to this reader.) He continues… “No cooperation, community effort on our part or democracy is required… The good guys always win.”

In other words, Doug doesn’t like it that we suspend criticism of Presidents we like, or who we think support our views, because it “doesn’t seem necessary” to hold good guys accountable.

OK, then, Doug. Articulate what you don’t like about Good-Guy Obama’s views and we will listen, evaluate, and decide if we agree or disagree with you. By the way, we don’t need complex theories to persuade us that this is a good thing to do.

Another disturbing aspect of dissent from the Left is the odd assertion that we are making too much of racism, that it no longer suppresses the upward mobility of blacks. On a recent broadcast of the Bill Moyers Journal, black political commentator and linguistics scholar John McWhorter said, “…the fact of the matter is that when you look at the problems that the black community has, tracing them to racism has gotten so abstract that really I don't see and maybe I'm missing something. But I don't see how we could convince a significant proportion of the American population that racism was the main issue anymore.”

Really? What neighborhood does John McWhorter live in? It certainly isn’t in Prospect, Kentucky or Pacoima, California, where racist views from both sides are as heavy a burden on progress and mobility as a “Colored Only” sign.

I wonder if Mr. McWhorter has heard of the false myth of redemptive violence. It sounds like he just doesn’t want to believe that bigotry still exists in good-guy America.

Or is it that, below the surface of squeaky-clean Liberalism there is a current of unacknowledged racial mistrust? Because, with no disrespect to Bill Moyers, I find it less interesting that a black social commentator dismisses the notion that racism remains an issue than that a white program host considers it "thought provoking" to feature his views.

Meanwhile, as feet and hands and hips and elbows are put in and taken out in that dance of the Right and Left known as the Hokey-Pokey, there is one thing about Obama on which we can agree: he does, indeed, do it with “style and grace.”

Go Johnny Go!

2009-03-03T06:27:00.000-08:00

Our friend Johnny, who helped many readers of this blog understand the feelings of gay neighbors, co-workers and loved ones during the Prop 8 debate, has been awarded a unique honor:

He will sing “It’s About Love,” the song he composed to express his feelings about discrimination, at the Eve of Justice candlelight vigil on the courthouse steps in San Francisco. The vigil will be held on Wednesday, March 4… the day before the California Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the validity of Prop 8. Johnny’s performance will follow a speech by Gloria Allred, discrimination attorney and feminist lawyer, and is likely to be televised on C-Span.

There will be similar Eve of Justice events throughout California (visit their website for locations). The purpose of these events is: “… to stand together and send a unified message to our fellow Californians, including the Supreme Court Justices, that individual liberties like the right to marry are guaranteed by the Constitution to everyone and cannot be stripped away at the ballot box by a bare majority. Just as important, we will give our love and support to all the families headed by same-sex couples who are threatened by the recent electoral outcome, as well as same-sex couples whose hopes and dreams of marriage and family have been frustrated by enactment of Prop 8.”

Congratulations, Johnny… You go!

WAH! Wall Street Whiner Wants 15 Years of Fame

2009-02-27T11:27:00.000-08:00

It should come as no surprise that Wall Street Whiner Rick Santelli wants more than his 15 minutes of fame. Greed has been the mantra on Wall Street for so long that it appears to have rubbed off on the CNBC Correspondent… Not only does Santelli feel entitled to throw stones at the houses of the less fortunate, he also wants to garner sympathy for his own mortgage foreclosure rant, claiming that the attention it drew was a personal attack on his name.

Rick should get a grip … other than the one he was using when he pretended to think Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ reference to his luxury home was a public threat. To harm him how, exactly? Ring his doorbell and then break his kneecaps with a Louisville Slugger while security cameras recorded everything? Send Child Protective Services to remove his children from an atmosphere of hysterical overreaction? Throw red paint on his wife’s favorite, full-length fur coat? (Assuming that Santelli’s high adrenaline levels haven’t ruled out the possibilities of marriage and procreation)

By going ballistic over the use of taxpayer money to help strapped homeowners avoid foreclosure, when the very industry on which he reports and which he appears to champion has accepted billions in bail-out money, Santelli perfectly illustrates the attitude of self-centered entitlement that has made Wall Street so notorious. “Reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water,” he said. Uh, Rick? How many more rewards do you want? It is easy to imagine him home alone with his remote, replaying that scene from the 1987 movie Wall Street, in which Gordon Gekko crows, “Greed is good.”

By seizing upon Press Secretary Gibb’s allusion to the obvious… that in Santelli’s own pricey neighborhood it is unlikely that anyone needed an ill-advised home loan to add a second bathroom… or pay for childcare or groceries or a parent’s medical bills… he also illustrates the reluctance of Wall Street to acknowledge that privilege is not inherently a virtue, and that empathy, when missing, can skew perception.

Santelli was happy to be in the center of a media spotlight when he ranted that he didn’t want to pay for his “loser” neighbor’s imaginary mortgage. But he was outraged by the response that maybe that foam of spittle in the corners of his mouth was the result of drinking too much coffee instead of actually reading the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan.

Since 15 minutes of fame isn’t enough for Rick Santelli, and since everyone from Kato Kaelin to Joe the Plumber can tell him that flash fame is not a big slice of cake one can have and eat too, here is some advice: Pull up your big-boy skivvies, Mr. Santelli, and help America deal with the mess that Wall Street helped create.

And for God’s sake… stop whining.

Take Me Out to the Obama Game

2009-02-25T11:24:00.000-08:00

I don’t know much about baseball, except that I love washing down Dodger dogs with a good beer and get chills when I hear that “krak” that means a batter has knocked a ball out of the park.

Anyone who doesn’t realize that Obama was at the top of his game during last night’s address must not have noticed that, in addition to hitting homers, he also stole some bases. Not once, not twice, but several times he brought the Republican side of the room to its feet to cheer his remarks. Dodger dog, anyone?

In the game of leadership, Obama appears to be even more of a Natural than Robert Redford in the baseball-themed nineties movie of that name. Or, is it just that the Bad News Team on the Right is so inept that they inadvertently have sent Obama soaring over the opinion polls scoreboard?

When John McCain took Obama to task over the cost of his helicopters in a news briefing earlier yesterday, Obama turned him into a straight man, using his remarks as a setup for getting supportive laughs. Republicans cannot, repeat cannot, fluster the President with an unexpected question. He is most adept when responding on his feet, much better at playing “backatcha” than Republicans are at “gotcha.”

A better illustration of Republicans clutching-up at bat is their choice of Bobby Jindal to make the followup address. Ok, he’s brown. We get it, Republicans are inclusive too. But they are playing T-ball in the big leagues here. Jindal’s deer-in-the-headlights demeanor, his stilted delivery, and his repetition of the same tired Republican push-back made Obama’s message appear stronger and more sincere than it already did.

And Jindal fooled no one with his disingenuous comparison of his own immigrant heritage to Obama’s. Leave it to the GOP to mix racism and terrorist fears in one steaming dish, and slyly serve it up to a nation that now hungers for hope and optimism.

If Bobby Jindal is the frontrunner for the Republican Presidential nominee in 2012, someone should send him back to the batting cage. His comparison of Obama’s new programs to the pathetic Republican response to Hurricane Katrina was stunningly inept, a reminder of all the reasons we elected a Democrat in the last election.

But Obama’s leadership skills have not been highlighted by Republican errors alone. In last night’s speech he made it clear that he is not the Centrist that many decry, but is somewhere Left of that label. He will not, as many predicted, delay the fight to provide affordable health care insurance for every American. He will not apologize for allowing tax cuts for the rich to expire. And even though his timeline for ending the war in Iraq may have lengthened from 16 months to 19, it remains a priority that was applauded even by former hawk John McCain.

Did you hear that “krak?”

Cartoonist in the Mist

2009-02-19T11:27:00.000-08:00

I wonder how Sean Delonas would feel if someone published a cartoon of him sitting at his desk masturbating, with someone behind him poised to stab him in the back, and a caption that read: “They’ll have to find someone else to draw the next racist cartoon.”

Sean Delonas and the New York Post are exercising the American right to freedom of speech… much as the slain pet chimpanzee that inspired Delonas’ “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill” cartoon was exercising its right to rampage.

Too bad Delonas wasn’t around in Los Angeles during the 1992 race riots sparked by the “not guilty” verdict of white cops who beat black motorist Rodney King to a bloody pulp. Delonas could have tapped the rich vein of humor in King’s nine skull fractures, shattered eye socket and cheekbone, broken leg, concussion, injuries to both knees and nerve damage that left his face partially paralyzed. And Delonas also would have enjoyed the LAPD radio transmissions regarding the beating incident, in which cops crowed “it was Gorillas in the Mist out there.”

By plunging his head into the mist of racism, Sean Delonas is not, however, merely exercising a right. He is illustrating that he is blind to the history of oppression and pain suffered by blacks in America, and that he is cavalier about their feelings. Delonas may as well be a chimpanzee himself, one that is playing with matches at a gas station, too much of a narcissistic publicity seeker to realize that racism can have inflammatory results. The Six days of riots that followed the infamous King-beating verdict of 1992 resulted in 42 murders, 700 buildings destroyed by fire, and almost $1 billion in property damage.

Delonas also is blind to the significance of evolving race relations in America. Electing a black President is a good thing, Sean… it means American racists no longer may justify their bigotry by comparing a dark-skinned human being to a monkey… or confusing a mean-spirited lapse of judgment with humor.

In spite of his protestations that he did not intend to make a racist statement, Delonas will suffer irreparable damage to his reputation. His ugly cartoon, and the New York Post’s absurd rejection of Al Sharpton’s objection to it, will forever brand him a cartoonist in the mist.

What Do Republicans Want? Dear God, What Do they Want?

2009-02-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

Medical science finally has answered Sigmund Freud’s plaintive inquiry about what women want, and it turns out it isn’t a penis. The same cannot be said for obstructionist Republican Congressmen, who barely can walk without tripping over their Vote-No erections.

Republicans don’t want bipartisanship… unless it is redefined as ceding them the power that voters withheld.

Republicans don’t want the economy to rebound… unless it restores the same economic imbalance that caused this crash in the first place.

Republicans don’t want empowered Democrats to socialize America… but think it’s OK to socialize banks, especially those they patronize.

And Republicans absolutely do not want President Obama to succeed, in spite of lockstep lies to the contrary… their noses are the only things growing more wood than the parties in their pants.

What DO Republicans want? They aren’t saying, leaving us to infer from their stodgy behavior that they are engaging in political wet dreams. Let’s take a peek inside their Rip Van Winkle heads, shall we?

Republicans want Barrack and Michelle to fall out of love and behave like normal Presidential couples… smile all the time with the aid of pharmaceuticals, or smile inappropriately without it.

Republicans want the President to, just once, (that smug upstart), try to exit a podium through a door that some prankster on the other side has locked.

Republicans want the electorate to return to the grindingly hopeless mindset that only government lies, secrecy and hypocrisy can sustain. (Why would they wish something so awful on us? Because secrecy makes self-aggrandizement easier, the lazy bastards.)

Republicans want to replace the last Wall Street Pyramid Scheme that left millions empty-handed with a newer, ground zero Pyramid Scheme that they can milk for another 10 years until it collapses… again. (Next time they’ll open their Swiss bank accounts well in advance of the final sucker-call.)

But the one wet dream Republicans most want fulfilled, the one that boosts them even more than their No-Vote Viagra… is a coup d’ etat.

If you don’t like my inferences, make your own. Republicans, like Freud’s women, are maintaining an aura of mystery.

You Can Lead a Republican to Water but Can't Make it Text-Message

2009-02-12T09:50:00.000-08:00

Do Republicans “not get it” that voters rejected their platform by electing a Democratic President with majorities in both houses of Congress? Or do they just not give a damn?

Inured by eight years of the Bush administration’s arrogant and potentially illegal assumption of absolute power, Republicans are obstructing the President’s mandate for change with an impunity that borders on sabotage. If this claim seems exaggerated to some, it certainly doesn’t to Republican Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, who suggested that his party “follow the model of the Taliban” in its legislative battles. "Insurgency,” Sessions continued, “we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban… and that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes.” When asked for much-needed clarification, Sessions said, "I simply said one can see that there's a model out there for insurgency."

One might think that Mr. Sessions and his minority Republican counterparts don’t follow the news… President Obama enjoys a record high approval rating for this early stage of his administration. As of today’s polling, even 30 to 40 percent of Republican identifiers rate him favorably. It doesn’t take Karl Rove’s Bushy brain to deduce from these polling statistics that “insurgency” in today’s political climate is self-defeating.

Why, then, would astute Republican politicians reject the President’s offer to work on a bipartisan basis when, by accepting it, they could turn public opinion in their favor? And why are their attacks on Obama’s stimulus plan so riddled with bitterness and acrimony when their own constituents would benefit from it?

Their reasons are not that they fear the plan won’t work… rather, they fear that the plan will succeed, the economy will rebound, and Democrats will further increase their majorities in the upcoming mid-term elections. Many Republicans, including Rush Limbaugh, already are on record with fears that Democrats will acquire an unbeatable “working poor majority” that will enable them to “socialize America.”

Clearly, that’s a nightmare scenario for privileged and entitled Republicans, who have traditionally maintained their power by disenfranchising the working poor, a socioeconomic class that tripled (and is still growing) under eight years of Republican tax cuts for the rich. The same principles of the Republican platform that resulted in its defeat in the last election now threaten its political future… the GOP lacks experience in championing the interests of the poor, having ignored them for so long.

But like the bank CEOs who testified before Congress yesterday, Republicans need to do a better job of dealing with the new political paradigm. Instead of fomenting an “insurgency” against one of the most popular Presidents in history, they need to stick their old, arthritic toes into warmer political waters… loosen up… take the side of the majority for a change… share some of the wealth they accumulated through unfair taxation… learn to differentiate “progressive” from “socialist,” and pronounce either of those two words without undue spikes in their blood pressure levels.

In short, Republicans should learn to text-message.

Econocides Rise as Republicans Dicker for Power

2009-01-28T13:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday in Wilmington, California, a man and wife who both had lost their jobs at Kaiser Permanente enacted a suicide pact, first killing their five children, including two sets of twins. Meanwhile, in our nation’s capitol, Republicans dickered over provisions of President Obama’s economic stimulus proposal. Will their obstructionism raise the likelihood of more “econocides” in the future?

I’m not sure who coined the term “econocide,” which refers to a suicide that is the direct result of economic loss, but there is no doubt that this tragedy is on the rise. Unlike the crash of 1929, which caused some bankers to jump from their skyscraper windows, today’s economy is causing econocides among everyday, desperate citizens. This past fall, in Porter Ranch, California, a man who had lost his job, house and savings committed a similar family murder and suicide; and such tragedies have unfolded in other states as well. Even the fat cats are vulnerable… so far there have been five (that we know of) top financial executives who have committed econocide.

Job loss has always been a trigger for despair, especially among men who define themselves by their breadwinning ability. As far back as March, 2008, the Labor Department reported the jobless rate — also called the “not employed rate”— at 13.1 percent for men in the prime age group. Only once during a post-World War II recession did the rate ever get that high. It hit 13.3 percent in June 1982, the 12th month of the brutal 1981-82 recession. The jobless rate for January, 2009 is not yet available but it is sure to be higher, especially considering that, in December, 2008 alone, U.S. employers took 2,275 mass layoff actions, involving 226,117 workers.

If you count yourself among those who are annoyed by panhandlers on freeway off-ramps holding “Help Me, I’m Homeless” signs, you may wish to meditate when you drive… because homeless statistics also are skyrocketing. Accurate, current statistics are sandwiched within a proliferation of websites dedicated to helping the homeless survive… but there are tens of millions, including an unknown number of American children, whose only “home” is a cardboard box.

Clearly, now is not the time for Republicans to put Obama in his political place by fabricating mock arguments over the efficacy of his stimulus plan. Republicans raised no objections when Bush converted an economic surplus into the biggest deficit in American history by profligate spending on an ill-advised preemptive war. It didn’t bother them to pay government-contracted Blackwater operatives more per day than our soldiers earned in a month. So it shouldn’t offend them when indigent teenagers receive free condoms to help prevent disease and avoid unwanted pregnancies that they, and our welfare system, cannot afford.

Republicans were defeated in the recent election because they demonstrated an appalling lack of responsibility for the economic crisis their policies largely created. Now they are demonstrating an equally dim view of their own best interests. Instead of dickering to regain face and reassure themselves that they can strut if they feel like it (although in their passion to claim undeserved power even walking might be difficult for them), what they should do is reach across the aisle in a sincere, bi-partisan effort to resolve our economic crisis.

Or, maybe Republicans would rather coin a new term for political suicide… any suggestions?

Obama's Plot to Seduce the Voting Poor

2009-01-27T07:54:00.000-08:00

By claiming that Obama is plotting to commandeer the lifelong loyalty of the poor by giving them a tax break, Rush Limbaugh makes one wonder: Is he high on OxyContin again? This is not a rhetorical question. Limbaugh’s paranoid commentary on the subject has been so inflated, even for a gasbag like him, that he might have sucked it from a helium balloon.

What makes Rush think that Obama would use the Bush/Rove strategy of buying votes with tax breaks? The poor are not as easily bought as the rich. The poor have scruples.

Rush has forgotten that the poor, especially those with religious convictions, have helped elect Republican candidates against all logic, since Republican agendas seldom benefit them. Using racist scare tactics masquerading as morals, GOP strategists have manipulated the poor into voting Republican for 20 years or more. But the poor, without the benefit of Ivy League educations or undeserved tax breaks, managed to wise up to this tactic during the last election cycle. They rejected the Obama-as-Muslim-Bogeyman inferences and helped elect him. Even the religious right lent its partial support to Obama.

The lesson to be learned from this is that the poor will not snuggle up in the pocket of any political party unless they trust its ethics. If Rush and the Republican leaders he caricaturizes don’t understand this, they have no one but themselves to blame when the poor redirect their political allegiance.

But perhaps they do understand it… and that is why they are so nervous. The Bush Administration arguably has been the most immoral in American history. It lied about the reasons for invading Iraq… and the sons and daughters of the poor died in disproportionate numbers fighting on Iraqi soil, defending an agenda that to this day remains unclear. Like everyone else, the poor watched as the Republican Administration approved torture, spied on its own citizens, politicized the justice system, looked the other way while bloated bodies floated over rooftops in New Orleans, and… gave undeserved tax breaks to the richest of the rich.

Now Republicans face a paradox: the poor class in America, whose shifting allegiance they so fear, has doubled or even tripled in size as a direct result of the GOP’s own unfair policies. The poor represent a formidable voting block, now that there are so many of us.

Maybe, as Obama repeatedly stated during his election campaign, he wants to give tax breaks to the poor because they… we… deserve them. Maybe tax breaks for the poor are fair and honorable.

Yeah, that’s it… Obama is plotting to seduce the poor with fair and honorable tax policies.

VP Will Have Lips Sewn Shut to Prevent Gaffes

2009-01-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

Vice President Joe Biden, the White House announces, has agreed to consider an elective surgery that will silence his big, gaffe-mill mouth by sewing shut his lips.

House Democrats and Republicans, as well as a substantial Senate majority, agree that this is the best treatment option for Biden’s post-campaign tour-ette syndrome of kooky comments. “If Sarah Palin had made comparable remarks she would have been satirized on Saturday Night Alive, (sic)” Pat Buchannan is rumored to have said. SNL writers declined to confirm that tonight’s program will make hay from the VP’s fast-growing field of eyebrow-raisers, but neither did they deny it.

The gaffe which led to the unusual treatment option occurred when Biden, while swearing in a crowd of White House staffers, quipped that, "my memory is not as good as Justice Roberts" (who flubbed the words to the oath of office during Tuesday’s inauguration). That quip, and the evil-eye stare it elicited from President Obama, traveled at the speed of light to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where it was mercilessly rewound and repeated over canned laughter. The gaffe also made an appearance on YouTube, although there is no indication it will match the hits earned by the “Leave her alone” performance of Brittany Spears’ crybaby fan last year.

White House insiders claim that little Sasha is purported to have asked, “Daddy, why does that guy with the big white teeth keep saying all those silly things?” She added that, “everybody in third grade says he’s trivializing his position.”

The President, who has publicly stated that he seeks opinions from a variety of sources, was then drawn aside by First Lady Michelle, whose remarks on the subject were emphatic but not clearly heard. Apparently, the two then consulted with the President’s mother-in-law Marian Robinson, who, in light of the country’s economic woes, offered to perform the procedure using her own sewing kit. The President, however, seeking to avoid any appearance of impropriety, visited the AMA website to find an appropriate specialist, which he then text-messaged to Biden. At no time during this process did the President, or Sasha, or Michelle, or Marian or Malia have any contact whatsoever with disgraced Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevish, although the Governor has threatened to reveal details of the medical appointment at his next regularly scheduled press conference.

Members of the Press Corps did not ask Vice-President Biden to comment on the unusual procedure, but he offered that, “It seems like the right solution for now, although if I had known that Michelle would be such a poor sport about a few harmless remarks I wouldn’t have spent $20,000 on my veneers.”

Pee-Wee's Playhouse: The Secret word Is "Former"

2009-01-22T09:11:00.000-08:00

The transparent Obama Presidency unfolding before us, when compared to the Wagnerian eight years of the former Bush Presidency, appears to be almost as much fun, and certainly as hopeful, as the now defunct kids’ TV program, “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”

Although the program was ostensibly for kids, I was not the only adult who enjoyed watching it… as evidenced by loud screams throughout Saturday whenever my friends or I used the current “Secret Word.” Remember?

At the beginning of each show, viewers were told the day's "Secret Word" and were instructed to "scream real loud" every time a character on the show said it. The word was always used continuously throughout the episode, and Pee-wee always said it right before he got onto his scooter at the end of the show.

Hey kids… we have a new Secret Word: “former.”

President Obama prefaced the Presidential Orders he signed yesterday by remarking that his administration valued transparency, and would endeavor to leave the light on when it came to freedom of information. Layered between closing Gitmo and the Cabinet pay-raise freeze, he addressed the issue of the Presidential Records Act, and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) that administers it. Claiming (and I’m paraphrasing, because I can’t find the actual text of his remarks online) that just because an administration could legally withhold information doesn’t mean that it should, he defined the manner in which Presidential records… of the incumbent and “former” President… would be made available.

In Pee-wee’s Playouse, everyone screamed “former.”

Although the actual text of this Day-One proclamation is so densely worded in legalese as to be almost indecipherable, when combined with President Obama’s remarks it seems to indicate that Dubyah’s presidential records will be more accessible now than during his administration. Not that this is a wormhole through which prosecution may be introduced. If, for instance, the United Nations requested information it could use to strengthen a war crimes case, under Section 5, paragraph c, the proclamation states: “This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.”

However, for historians and others who seek greater understanding of the arcane inner workings of the Bush administration, this new Executive Order redefining the Presidential Records Act could be a beacon of enlightening information.

Of course, those who make use of it may also find that, in the day-to-day record of his former Presidency, Dubyah conducted himself in much the same manner as Pee-wee sitting in the arms of Chairry for a hug.

I said “former.” Scream real loud, everybody!

Stand in Astonished History

2009-01-20T08:10:00.000-08:00

Today, overcome with pride and a hope that no disparagement can tarnish, I offer this poem to you.

Stand in Astonished History

Stand together
in this time that we
have created, more
sacred than historic
for today we all
are better angels
transforming ourselves
and this nation we are free
to cherish once again.

Today we have
no color other than
the golden glow of those
who cross a glorious
threshold, who leave
downtrodden hopes behind
by realizing hope
is not a feast to hoard
but a single world we share.

This is our moment
to begin again, redefining
the ends that move us
forward, that light our
dreams and break
our last and darkest chains.
Today we honor
Barack Obama and ourselves
immortal in astonished history.

Last Stop on Bush's Magical History Tour

2009-01-15T21:26:00.000-08:00

As departing President George W. Bush rides out his Magical History Tour with a farewell speech, onlookers are left with one more emotion to add to the horror, outrage, disbelief and despair that his administration has engendered: boredom.

After eight years of acclimatization to Bush’s magical thinking, in which democracy is a condiment to spread over other nations like butter on a slice of Wonder bread, and everything in our wide, wonderful world can be reduced to absolute categories of good or evil, most of us are beyond hearing, believing or caring about anything that rolls off the well-trod footpath of Bush’s tongue. In the interest, though, of protesting one last time that the emperor is not wearing new clothes no matter how sincerely he believes he is, let us note the most flagrant of W’s delusions.

The Bush Doctrine has not made our world a safer place. Afghanistan is hardly the young democracy that now encourages girls to attend school… unless throwing acid in their faces as they walk to class can be considered encouragement. Nor is Iraq the shining beacon of Arab Democracy and friend of the U. S. that will revolutionize the Middle East. Our friends don’t throw shoes at our President when he is making a speech… notwithstanding that many of us in the homeland can understand the impulse. And as for Bush’s pat, farewell claim that, “Democracies do not elect terrorists…” what, exactly, did Palestinians do when they used their first Democratic election to put Hamas in power? The only thing we can say with certainty about Bush's Adventures in TerrorTown is that 100,000 Iraquis and 4,200-plus Americans died in them, while Haliburton and Blackwater grew richer.

Which leads to a Bushism that is only partially delusional: mostly it’s self-serving hypocrisy. When he said in his farewell address, as if blowing a kiss to a lover he was dumping, that “America must maintain our moral clarity,” sensitive JPL instruments registered a sustained rumble as jaws dropped across America. What right does the leader of an administration that gave us Abu Graib, Gitmo and the Katrina fiasco have to utter the words “moral clarity,” much less wave them like a tour-bus banner? Whatever America did or didn’t demonstrate to the world in the past eight years, moral clarity is the furthest thing from it.

Before climbing back onto his history bus, Bush tossed us a final, magical thought: We may not agree with his decisions, but we must at least give him credit for making the hard ones. I won't be the only or last one to point out that, if the decisions made were very, very bad... like, launching a preemptive war over weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist... no credit is due.

Throughout his presidency, Bush has whined that the work of governing, winning wars and rescuing hurricane victims is “hard.” Yes. And it is especially “hard” when the administration responsible for doing the work is unqualified to do it, as it would be hard for a 65-year-old ex cheerleader to lead today's Lakers to victory with a back-flip exposing her size XL thong. What’s the connection? None. If George Bush can say goodbye to America with a string of non sequiturs, I can plant one in my blog.

As Bush’s Magical History Tour recedes into the distance, many of us believe he has proven that radical conservatism doesn’t work. Hopefully we also will realize that collective national denial, just like individual personal denial, offers the briefest of comfort before it collapses in failure.

McCain Inaugural 2009

2009-01-12T09:19:00.000-08:00

By Guest Blogger Ronald P. Wolff

I think my friendly American readers will enjoy this short story...

John McCain’s “Inaugural Address”
My friendly Americans:

First let me clear up the mystery surrounding my failure to appear on the Capitol steps at noon yesterday. I overslept. I’m sorry. I screwed up.

My administration is grateful to Fox News and Hannity and Combs for permitting me to apologize to the American people and give my inaugural address on this show. As a means of expressing my deepest appreciation, I will answer some questions from the press immediately following my speech. I’m sorry Alan Combs could not join us on this austere occasion. For some strange reason he had three flat tires this morning, so he wasn’t able to make it in to the studio. However, I’m certain that my good friend Sean Hannity will do an excellent job of posing questions that are fair and balanced.

First, let me address the war on terror. Terrorists are not my friends. Terrorists are my enemies. However, we should not torture them; we should just shoot them. Or, maybe we should let the Iraqis shoot them – the Iraqi terrorists, I mean. What I mean is, the good Iraqis should shoot the bad Iraqis. They are bad people. Well, the bad Iraqis are bad people; the good Iraqis are good people. You know what I mean.

Fortunately, the surge worked, and their days are numbered. I mean, the days of the bad Iraqis are numbered. Therefore, my first international trip as your President, and as your friend, will be to Iraq. Now, for security reasons, I can’t tell you when I’m going, but the Secret Service assures me I’ll be safe if I don’t announce my arrival in advance and don’t stay more than a few hours. But I feel it is my duty, as a former prisoner of war myself, to visit the country we have liberated.

My second international trip will be to Ethiopia. I am aware that new Presidents of the United States normally visit our international friends first. My advisors recommended that I go to England. But I’m a maverick, and I think Ethiopia would be an exciting place to visit. I understand that it’s possible to Gogle things like that and find out where they are. So that’s what I plan to do, as soon as I learn how to Gogle something on my new computer, courtesy of you, my friends, the American people.

My third international trip will not be to France. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to France. Even if I really wanted to go, which I don’t, communication with their leaders would be difficult, because nobody in my Cabinet speaks French. Some of the residences Cindy and I own have French doors, and that will have to be enough. I don’t think I’ll be visiting Spain anytime soon either. There is no point in trying to talk to anyone who enjoys that much bull.

Now, I know that many of my fellow Americans are concerned about the economy. They say that failures of government oversight created an environment that unscrupulous business people were bound to take advantage of. Nonsense! Our American free market is the envy of the world. It will come back stronger than ever before. We have nothing to fear but regulation itself!

My friends, despite a few soft spots in the financial, manufacturing, real estate, automotive, pharmaceuticals, leisure and travel, technology, health care, and retail sectors, our economy is basically sound. We hear about an employment rate that may rise to as much as 9 or even 10%. Let’s not forget that an unemployment rate of 10% means that 90% of our able-bodied men and women have jobs! Things are really not as bad as they seem! But if things do get bad, I have a plan – Cindy and I will donate one of our homes to the government, and we’ll auction it off to the highest bidder. That should put a dent in the deficit and ensure the blessings of liberty for our posterity that our ancestors promised.

My friends, I promise you a strong defense for this country. Protection of American lives is Job #1 for any American President. George W. Bush was President for 2,922 days, and we were attacked on our own soil on only one of these days, which is less than one tenth of one percent. I intend to do at least this good, or better.

To preserve our freedom, we need strong defense contractors. One of my predecessors, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned that the military industry was complex, and indeed it is. But I know where the hatchets are buried at the Pentagon. I buried some of them myself.

That reminds me -- I’m sorry that Vice President Sarah Palin couldn’t be here to share this opportunity with us, my friends and me. Or my friends and I. I’m not sure which. I guess I’ll have to hire a good speech writer. Anyway, she is out helping our economy by shopping for the new clothes she will need when she visits Russia next month. She’ll be the first Vice President in history to travel internationally using a dog sled, dressed in a suitably fashionable fur coat.

Finally, my fellow Americans, I just want to tell you that today – well, actually yesterday, but you know what I mean – that the torch is being passed to a friendlier generation of Americans, tempered by legalized torture, disciplined by lobbyists. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has requested that I include in this carefully vetted speech the following admonition: Ask not for discounts from your friendly local business owner; ask what you can do to make his business prosper, because what’s good for business is good for the Country! May God be with you.

If you like Ron's brand of humor, you might also like to purchase his satiric novel, "Operation Capitol Hill."

Choosing Sides

2009-01-07T09:28:00.000-08:00

"Choosing Sides" is a poem in progress, dedicated to all mothers but especially Laurie, Nikki and Stacy:

Young on the side of right
March into war and die, while
Young on the other side
Of right, also march and die;
Honor bound
To spill their unlived lives
On the dumb, indecent ground.

So Mothers on the edge of madness
Wait for their young, who die;
And Fathers wait for Justice,
As bitter days go by, while the cup of
War is stirred, tasting sadder than
Hate on both sides, and justice dies
In lands where children lie.

God sits by without choosing
A side to say is right.
Allah doesn’t lead in battle, or
Shine a healing light; for inside
God’s soul, we are dying,
Poisoned by our hate,
One Agony over two side’s fate

The right side never stops, for
Some of them would die; so the other
Right never stops, for some of them
Would die. So all, on every side
Die
Die
Die.

Stop the fight.

Argument with Gala Dali

2009-01-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

The freaks all say you’re just
What we must become;
Tall, enclosed within
The absolute perfection
Of never being wrong,
Lovely aristocrat
Who it’s rumored once won
An argument
By plucking a spider from
Its busy life and
Eating it, eight legs
Still wiggling, and you with
Utter aplomb.

I take issue with your tyranny
Over feeling, your inability
To visit the condition of
Humility, not even in
The face of someone else’s gift for
Pure creation. I guess even
Dali needs someone to hold
His hand, reward him for
Insanity, and there you are,
A spectre in your African beads,
Stolen icons from other
People’s lives and feelings,
Your own heart more polished
Than an amethyst.

You are the constant foil for
Melting clocks and clouds
That drift their edges into
Eternity, yet the breast you bare
For Dali’s brush doesn’t
Suckle, is not the bringer of joy
To anyone’s tender hunger. Still,
You think your life is made
By attachment to the sides
Of Dali’s ship to nowhere,
While the brilliance of his fame
Fades lighter and lighter. Gala:

I would rather have known the spider.

Happy 2009 to all the beautiful, bright-eyed spiders of our world, and to each and every one of us as we spin our webs and pursue our dreams. May all of yours be realized in the coming year. And may they intersect with mine.

From Piltdown Man to Magic Negro: Evolve!

2008-12-30T08:57:00.000-08:00

Chip Saltsman's distribution of a gift CD featuring the song, "Barack the Magic Negro," has been construed my many as a window into the knuckle-dragging soul of the RNC.

It’s true that Republicans have used racial fears to divide public opinion and manipulate votes over the past 44 years. According to Simon Rosenberg, head of the Democratic organization NDN and one of the most well-versed party figures on racial politics: "They (Republicans) don't have another play in their playbook that doesn't start with the exploitation of racial divisions. Whether it is Willie Horton, or welfare queens and tax and spend, or the way they have dealt with immigration... They are going to have to reject 44 years of GOP politics in order to have any chance in the 21st century America."

One of six candidates running for Chairman of the RNC, Saltsman isn’t the first to snigger and wink to the tune of Magic Negro. Rush Limbaugh aired the song on numerous programs during the 2006 Imus debacle. Saltsman is, however, emblematic of the core stupidity of racism, both in and out of the Republican party.

Racism plays along with progressive views on equality, but at its unevolved, Piltdown Man core, it clings to the assumption that “White” culture, and the power it wields, is inherently superior. This flawed, secret assumption is the engine that generates all the double-speaking, ends-justifying, duplicitous errors made by bigots like Saltsman. For example, it provides Saltsman apologists with justification for his racist act. According to one high-ranking Republican, “…if we are going to fall apart in pieces every time someone yells racism than we are going to lose the next four years.... Because that means that the left is allowed to talk about race but we are not. There has got to be a way to talk about the president's agenda without falling into this trap."

It’s too bad that The Huffington Post, which published the comments, didn’t reveal the identity of this “high-ranking” Republican. If only we knew who it was we could explain… speaking slowly and using very small words… that “Magic Negro” and “race” and “the president’s agenda” are not related concepts. Talk about the President’s agenda all you want, Republicans, but please… before assuming chairmanship of the RNC, learn to differentiate the racist lyrics of “Magic Negro” from a serious discussion of race. It also would be helpful to realize that the President’s agenda is not related to “race” merely because he isn’t White.

As for Magic Negro… the term originated right here in Hollywood, to describe black characters who save the world for Whites. The term dates back to the late 1950s, around the time Sidney Poitier sacrifices himself to save Tony Curtis in "The Defiant Ones." Spike Lee, who satirizes the stereotype in 2000's "Bamboozled," goes even further and denounces the stereotype as the "super-duper magical Negro." For a Black perspective on the term and its cultural significance, visit The Black Commentator.

Can we persuade bigots in the Republican Party and elsewhere that their secret assumption of White superiority is an unevolved throwback to caveman mentality? Perhaps we can by example:

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when anthropologists began uncovering fossil proof that early man originated in Africa, establishment science ridiculed their discoveries based on the belief that modern (white) man must have originated in Europe because of his superiority over black and brown races. This assumption was reinforced in 1908 by the discovery, in England, of Piltdown Man, a skull fossil with a more modern appearance. In 1953, however, scientists revealed that the Piltdown Man fossil was, in fact, a hoax… it had been pieced together from a 600-year-old modern cranium, an orangutan jaw and a chimp tooth. The identity of the scientist who perpetrated this hoax is still unknown, but one thing is certain: He committed an immoral act to avoid accepting that Africa is the birthplace of man.

The Republican National Committee is holding a series of debates in January where members will discuss their ability to reach out to minorities and expand the party.

Crawl Back into Your Hidey-Holes

2008-12-23T10:18:00.000-08:00

What shall we all do as Bush rewrites Presidential history and Obama prepares to release a report on his connection or non-connection with Blagojevich’s Senate seat yard sale?

I know…let’s follow the lead of Media Mouths in chewing the bone of what Obama knew, or who he might know who knew, or if he ever stood with a wide stance in an airport men’s room stall next to someone who knew or did business with the corrupt Illinois Governor.

Sniffing along the media trail, let’s demand with righteous indignation to know the exact circumstances of any contact the Obama transition team may or may not have had with Blagojevich…did any one of them know what was going on under the manhole cover that serves as his office door? And if they did, is it illegal that they knew? Or thought they might know? Or knew on a subconscious level which they denied even to themselves, but which our intrepid talking heads are determined to ferret out?

More importantly… how did these news hounds develop such an obsession with minutia that they finally crawled out of the hidey-holes in which they’ve cowered for the past eight years?

Where was their keen and penetrating inquiry into the crimes against humanity perpetrated by George Bush & associates, right out in the open for all to witness?

Who among them stood before the cameras and demanded more proof… or any proof… that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs? Even the SNL writers parodied Colin Powell’s lame, chart-and-pointer assertion that shadows on a satellite photo constituted “proof” of nuclear weapons.

Why didn’t these media profiles in courage pursue, with a tenth of the vigor they reserve for Obama, the deeply disturbing but genuine story of Abu Ghraib? Couldn’t one of them have prevailed in his or her determination to know, “Isn’t torture a violation of the Geneva Conventions which the U.S. helped formulate and agreed to, and doesn’t our abandonment of the provision against torture constitute a war crime?

Which of these inquiring minds spoke out against Bush’s expansion of Presidential powers, which would have been arrogant had he ever had a curious thought but, since he didn’t, bordered on insanity?

Anyone?

The cowardice of media journalists for the entire duration of Bush’s scofflaw Presidency invalidates their posturing as they now lamely, belatedly, attempt to reclaim their chops. Feasting on the dog crap one lazy politician dropped on the sidewalks of Illinois is no way to reassert credibility. But here’s a lead worth pursuing… why has the media worn blinders for the past eight years?

Imagine, just for the investigative exercise of it, that it was a Democratic administration responsible for the missteps of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Barney. By now, Republicans would have impeached everyone who wandered into sniffing distance of the administration, including the White House’ biting, bad dog.

Hear that, Nancy Pelosi?

All of you media posers who now pursue the Obama/Blagojevich non-story, do us a favor… crawl back into the same hidey-holes you called home from the 2000 election until now.

Got Holiday Spirit?

2008-12-12T08:04:00.000-08:00

It seems that some of us do not get excited over the prospect of baking the holiday cookies, hanging the holiday house lights, and surfing the holiday net to purchase the holiday gifts.

If you align yourself with the Grinch end of the holiday gamut we run every December, you may suffer from SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder. Also called winter-onset depression, SAD symptoms usually begin in late fall or early winter and go away sometime after the Oscars are awarded.

SAD is more common in women than in men. (Duh! Who bakes all the cookies? Wraps all the presents? Trims the tree? Returns all the the gifts that are the wrong color-shape-size?) Although some children and teenagers get SAD, it usually doesn't start in people younger than 20 years of age... in other words, the young have limited immunity because they haven't finished accumulating the holiday memories that will later make them ecstatic or suicidal during the holidays.

But take heart: You, too, can get goose bumps on your arms and tears in your eyes as you drift into a sea of holiday nostalgia. It's easy. Just steal three minutes from your day and click the link below. If there are kids in your family, invite them to pull up a chair. Be sure to click the site each time it prompts you.

Enjoy!

(If you celebrate Kwanzaa or Hanukkah, you may need to do independent research to find a similar feel-good site.)

Here's a holiday spirit tweaker... share your best or worst worst holiday memory with other readers. Misery... and joy... love company!

Old Fat Naked Women for Peace

2008-12-08T08:14:00.000-08:00

I think old fat naked women are beautiful in their own right and should be the subject of great works of art... right up there with Botticelli's seashell nymphs.

But I realize there is an element of society that fears the power of naked women old enough to say "no," or, "stop that," or, "the war games are over, collect your guns and clean up this mess." Annoying as it is that our culture prefers to see naked women with every last vestige of normal humanity airbrushed away, Birth-of-Venus style, this foible provides an opportunity just begging to be exploited... and that is exactly what the peace organization Righteous Mothers has done.

You may not want to watch this video while drinking coffee, unless you don't mind seeing it sprayed over your monitor through your nose... you will be laughing and "right-on"ing so much there won't be any available space in your esophagus for swallowing.

Thanks to Sistuh Toni Eddleman for sharing.

It's about Love

2008-12-05T08:40:00.000-08:00

If you were among the readers who commented on my blog about the passage of Prop 8, you will recall the soulful remarks of Raisin in the Sun... a friend who helped us realize the true impact of this hateful assault on the core of gay and lesbian identities.

Many of you offered Raisin encouragement and support... and now he is giving back, by composing the melody, writing the lyrics, and providing the vocals for a gorgeous song, It's About Love.

Have a listen. You will be moved, and amazed that Raisin, who has a voice like creme brule by firelight, isn't already a recording star.

A Bum Steer...Michael Moore on the Auto Crisis

2008-12-03T06:36:00.000-08:00

Forget about understanding the arcane intricacies of the Wall Street bailout... that Gordian knot of lies, scams and greed that is our stock market must, like divine mystery, be taken on faith as we worship before it on bleeding knees, tithing, double-tithing, and triple-tithing to save our financial souls.

But the American auto industry is a different matter. We know people on its payrolls. We see (and smell) the vehicles it manufactures everywhere we go. Some of us even drive them, if we aren't sensitive to ridicule. So, we should be able to understand what it wants and needs from Congress, as well as how this this will benefit Main Street... right?

TA-DA! Yes we can! Thanks to the genius of America's most undersung hero, Michael Moore! Here is the Great One's' take on the polluting, gas-guzzling, stinking mess that is the Big 3 Auto crisis, and I quote:

"1. Transporting Americans is and should be one of the most important functions our government must address. And because we are facing a massive economic, energy and environmental crisis, the new president and Congress must do what Franklin Roosevelt did when he was faced with a crisis (and ordered the auto industry to stop building cars and instead build tanks and planes): The Big 3 are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones.

"2. You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. Why should we give GM $18 billion or $25 billion or anything? Take the money and buy the company! (You're going to demand collateral anyway if you give them the "loan," and because we know they will default on that loan, you're going to own the company in the end as it is. So why wait? Just buy them out now.)

"3. None of us want government officials running a car company, but there are some very smart transportation geniuses who could be hired to do this. We need a Marshall Plan to switch us off oil-dependent vehicles and get us into the 21st century.

"This proposal will save our industrial infrastructure -- and millions of jobs. More importantly, it will create millions more. It literally could pull us out of this recession.

"In contrast, yesterday General Motors presented its restructuring proposal to Congress. They promised, if Congress gave them $18 billion now, they would, in turn, eliminate around 20,000 jobs. You read that right. We give them billions so they can throw more Americans out of work. But... if you throw everyone out of work, who's going to have the money to go out and buy a car?

"These idiots don't deserve a dime. Fire all of them, and take over the industry for the good of the workers, the country and the planet. What's good for General Motors IS good for the country. Once the country is calling the shots."

Thank you, Michael! To read more of Moore's ideas on this subject, visit MichaelMoore.com. You can also watch him expound tonight on the Keith Olbermann Show.

Dazzled by the Light

2008-11-29T14:41:00.000-08:00

Before I visited the Puerto Rican island of Vieques I had heard about the phenomenon of bioluminescence, envisioning it as an ethereal and glowing nocturnal surf. But I never dreamed I would swim in it, under the stars, and that it would far surpass anything I could have imagined.

“It’s the most psychedelic experience you’ll ever have without using drugs,” a fellow tourist promised. He might also have said that Puerto Rico’s bioluminescent bay is among the rarest and most fragile of ecological systems in existence, and that, like so many of our planet’s dwindling treasures, it is threatened with extinction by commercial development. This is what it was like to bask in awe under the ticking clock of the stars, humbled by nature’s gift of bioluminescence…

Island Adventures BioBay Tours advertises its services as, “Interpretive Eco-Tours of the World’s Brightest Glowing Bay.” It sounds fancy, but like most things on Vieques the tour is unpretentious. We meet at the Island Adventures waiting room at 7:00 pm on a night when the moon rises late, so it won't diminish our bioluminescent experience. The large room is covered from floor to ceiling with murals of mangroves, exotic aquatic creatures, and the constellations. Black lights cast an eerie glow on the images, hinting at what will come. Benches line the room, and excited tourists take every available seat.

Then our tour guide arrives. Fluent in both English and Spanish, he is funny and a bit of a prankster. As he paces over an enlarged floor mural of the microscopic organism that is the real star of the show, he alternates between both languages to educate and entertain us: The unique bio-bay we are about to visit is home for up to 720,000 single-celled, bioluminescent dinoflagellates per gallon of water. He asks us to guess if the organisms are plant or animal. While we ponder the answer he makes a “ta-da” gesture and says, “They’re both!” They make chlorophyll from the sun but use their tails to move about at will, he tells us. And the flashes of light they emit (the tour group leans forward, fascinated) are in response to motion stimuli.

When our tour introduction ends, we load into a dilapidated, circa 1950s tour bus. “This will be a scary ride,” the guide warns us… and it is. The ancient, battered bus bumps over steep mountain roads so narrow that tree branches intrude through the open windows, forcing passengers to close the ones that still function. But many windows are broken, so we scramble to reseat ourselves and save our tender skins.

When we arrive at the launch site, other guides take our hands and lead us one by one up a narrow plank to board a large, pontoon-like craft that is open to the sky. When everyone is seated it slips noiselessly into the bay, powered by electricity so it won’t emit pollutants into the water. Then we look up at the stars, and the magic officially begins. Our guide produces a laser light and points the green beam at various constellations, creating an illusion that the beam extends all the way through the universe to the stars themselves. His description of the constellations is accurate and informative. “Where’s the North Star?” someone asks. He zaps it with his laser, explaining that, although small, it shines from a fixed position.

As the electric vessel glides noiselessly into the bay, I ask why it is surrounded by running lights, thinking the greenish glow might diminish the natural bioluminescence. “Those aren’t running lights, they’re dinoflagellates responding to the motion of the craft,” the guide explains. It’s difficult to grasp that this light, so bright it illuminates the water to a depth of two feet as we pass, is the creation of organic micro-organisms.

The craft slows to a drift, and the guide uses a standard lantern to illuminates the mangroves lining the bay shoreline. Easily identified by tangled roots, which make them appear to be standing or walking on the surface of the water, mangroves often are referred to as "walking trees.” Our guide describes how the roots provide a protective environment for aquatic organisms, creating the nutrient-rich water in which bioluminescent dinoflagellates can thrive.

“Now,” he announces, “it’s time for a swim.” He switches off the lantern. Once again, we are adrift under a silent ocean of stars. We line up for life jackets, and I hear another guide counting us as we step backwards down a ladder into the bay. The water is silky and warm.

A high point of the 80s film, “The Abyss” was the discovery of scintillating, underwater creatures of light from another planet that seemed to dance as they moved. That's how we look to each other as we swim in the bay, igniting millions of flashing lights in the shapes of our bodies as the dinoflagellates respond to our movements. We glow like opals. We twinkle like fairies. We seem to absorb something magical from the luminescence, becoming as playful as children, even those of us who are grandparents. Splashing and laughing, experimenting with moves to see what kind of sparkles we can create, we lose track of time in the sphere of water, space and light that surrounds us. When the guide calls that it is time to go, nobody wants to get out of the bay. “OK,” he says, speaking to us as the children we have become, “You can have 10 more minutes.” We reluctantly climb up the ladder 20 minutes later, still glittering as we lift ourselves from the water.

While my experience in the bio-bay is one I will remember forever, I also can’t help but wonder if even the relatively benign tour we have taken isn’t harmful to the dinoflagellates’ ecosystem. As tourism on the island of Vieques expands, biobay tours either will be eliminated or the increasing volume of tours will destroy the bioluminescent environment… and If history is any guide it will be the later. During my trip, in the city of Old San Juan on the main island, our cab driver described the public outcry made over a new hotel that Donald Trump wanted to erect on a protected shoreline. “What happened?” we asked. “There it is,” he said, pointing to Trump's brand-new hotel. “He paid off the government and got his building permit.”

Those who would like to experience the biobay while it still exists can get more information at http://www.biobay.com/

Just Flowing

2008-11-27T13:04:00.000-08:00

Star falling
into the dark edge
of the mountain,
so beautiful we
wonder if your
fountain of light
was real
or only imagined.

All moments
of beauty streak
between seeing
and remembering, and
never happen at all
unless we are
not the same, once
we also fall, once we
follow the light
beyond its rim of darkness.

And why should we not
emulate the star's
example, plunging into
the purple, inky deep
of not knowing,
of forgetting to keep
our memories,
instead just flowing?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thank You for Thinking!

2008-11-24T08:38:00.000-08:00

Hello, Everyone!

Have you ever experienced an in-flight emergency that sent flight attendants scurrying and prompted the pilot to make a wacky, unprofessional announcement like, "We smell smoke in the plane and we don't know where it's coming from?"

Well, that's what happened on my return flight from Puerto Rico yesterday. Halfway to LAX we made an "unscheduled" landing in Houston, where we waited seven hours for another American 747 to take us the rest of the way home.

All I can say is... the vacation must have worked, because I didn't feel the slightest bit panicked, or even nervous. All I thought was, "Great... maybe we'll have time to drink one last vacation Pina Colada before I return to my regular, healthy diet in real life! (During the 7-hour layover we actually had time for many, many Pina Coladas... but hey, now that I'm safe and sound in LA I can repair my alcohol-soaked cells with wheat grass juice, right? Riiiiight.....)

Today I will make a valiant attempt to re-boot my mellow brain. Meanwhile, thanks so much to everyone for commenting while I was away... I visited the blog daily to see what you were saying, and even though I lost half of my vocabulary from spending so much time in the sun, I enjoyed your comments tremendously.

I'm thinking of writing a non-political post about my amazing night-time experience in the bio-luminescent bay... anybody interested?

Talk Amongst Yourselves!

2008-11-12T16:12:00.000-08:00

Hello, Everybody!

I'm off to Puerto Rico for some post-election stress reduction therapy... wish you ALL could come, because I know we all need it!

While I am away, please fee free to talk amongst yourselves... here are some ideas to get you started:

What do YOU want from the Obama Presidency?

What would you absolutely HATE to see him do?

And... Do you believe in Obama Claus?????????

Love,
Yak

Where in the World Is Matt Lauer's Head?

2008-11-11T08:43:00.000-08:00

Matt Lauer, apparently bored with the humdrum duties of hosting the Today Show, appears to be auditioning for a spot on Access Hollywood. Why else would he devote today’s broadcast to a cotton-candy review of recycled Sarah Palin gossip?

Without even a pretense of breaking a newsworthy addition to the denials we all have heard once, twice, ad infinitum on other news programs, Matt devoted the entirety of his interview to tossing softballs at Palin. Old softballs. Softballs she already has caught, spun, and tossed back.

What? No recipe for moose stew?

Governor Palin certainly deserves an opportunity to reply to GOP leaks about her wardrobe budget, basic misunderstanding of foreign policy, and lack of knowledge about the continent of Africa. But this is shopworn material for an in-depth interview. The real story behind the apparent attempt to discredit her is… why? What GOP operative would so vehemently attempt to cement her reputation as unready and unfit to serve, and how does this affect the party’s strategy for its uncertain future?

Katey Couric has come under frequent fire as a journalistic lightweight, but she is a powerhouse compared to Lauer’s coy, old-maidish style. When the Today Show occasionally covers sexually relevant topics, he feigns embarrassment by making “I’m not going there” remarks and assuming an aw-shucks body posture. Grow up, Matt… take a risk… explore those aspects of the Palin saga that are genuinely newsworthy. For example…

When the GOP decided to play Pygmalion by plucking Governor Palin from the Alaskan backwoods and teaching her how to dress and talk, were they stunned and caught offguard when she proved to be a person in her own right, with her own opinions, her own backbone and her own agenda?

Did she emphatically demonstrate to Rove and his acolytes that her beauty, poise and feminine charisma were not qualities they could manipulate as means to an end, but minor aspects of a complete human being who was empowered, fully capable of owning her future, and was, in short, nobody’s political blow-up doll?

In other words, did Governor Palin give the GOP a much-needed crash course in feminism?

Report on THAT, Matt Lauer… if you can retrieve your head from the dark place where you appear to have inserted it.

And by the way… we have a new first lady to be. Where in the world is HER in-depth interview?

Can Sarah Palin Smarten Up?

2008-11-07T08:14:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin’s IQ is not the subject of this discussion. Ann Coulter has a high IQ. Osama Bin Ladin has a high IQ. Even Hitler had a high IQ. (No, Sarah apologists, I am not equating her with Osama or Hitler. I’m comparing a number, not a history.)

Ms. Palin’s intelligence remains a hotly debated issue among newscasters and talking heads, usually in the context of, “Can she get up to speed in time to run in 2012?” In other words, can she acquire an education? After all, it is the lack of knowledge obtained through an education, not Palin’s IQ, that has led so many to criticize her intelligence.

Republicans are often accused of celebrating ignorance, as when they pander to the feelings of inferiority among uneducated voters by mobilizing them around derisive labels like “elitist” and “eloquent.” This year, a majority of the working class smartened up and elected the eloquent guy. Not even Joe the Plumber, who works without the license required to legitimize his claim to a profession, could persuade blue-collar voters in, say, Pennsylvania, to reject Barack Obama on the basis of his obvious intelligence. Maybe voters are just tired of a President who is so inarticulate he must coin nonwords like “misunderestimated” to express himself. Maybe they are shocked and terrified by the direction in which a lack of insight and a narrow point of view can lead us.

So, what kind of “intelligence” does the new electorate demand of its leaders? Hopefully, one that is supported by education.

An education is not a prerequisite for intelligence. But it is critically important when the intelligent person is a decision maker, or, as President Bush refers to himself, a “decider.” Education expands the range of one’s point of view, tempering unreflective assumptions with alternative ideas. Education provides a broader frame of reference for ones knowledge, revealing the common sources from which divergent beliefs emerge, Education provides expanded opportunities for communication and conflict resolution. Ultimately, education provides a broad and stable base to support the weight of those who become pillars of our communities.

Education is also the basis for happier, more fulfilled lives, making it just as essential as health care and sound economic policies and a clean environment for the realization of our American dream.

So, can Sarah Palin smarten up? Sure. If she wants to. But education also changes us. Those who choose to learn implicitly accept the expansion of self that accompanies the acquisition of knowledge. Many of us even seek it.

The real question is: Does Sarah Palin want to smarten up?

America to Bush: "Yes We Can!"

2008-11-05T15:50:00.000-08:00

When I wrote yesterday’s post, “Bush to America: Up Yours!” I fully intended to write a follow-up post entitled, “America to Bush: Back Atcha!”

But today, I am so elated with hope and pride and love for my country that I no longer have a mean or vindictive word still willing to roll off my tongue.

By electing Barack Obama President of the United States, American voters have closed the door on Bush’s dark zeitgeist of fear and mediocrity. We now stand ready, as we did when John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960, to move forward with a positive agenda of inclusion, instead of its narrow-minded opposite, entitlement.

Obama’s genius lies in his ability to unite people of every race, gender, age and economic status around universal human needs: We want unity, not division. We want peace, not war. We want vision, not fear. We want to soar on the wings of our better angels into a future where tolerance is the norm, and achievement is the guidepost.

As I waited with others to vote yesterday I felt the momentum of history moving us forward in the long line. When I finally came within view of the voting booths, I was struck by how many parents had brought their children with them, to include them in casting their history-making votes. This, we all felt, was one of those rare moments that would become a frame of reference for the rest of our lives.

So, to George W. Bush and everyone else in our great country… “Well done, America: Yes We Can!”

CONGRATULATIONS, AMERICA :–)

2008-11-05T07:33:00.000-08:00

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Bush to America: "Up Yours!"

2008-11-04T13:56:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine who is a wetlands preservationist in Louisville, Kentucky makes a point of visiting contested land (i.e., lawsuit pending to stop commercial development) on Derby Day and Mothers’ Day… because that is when underhanded developers often show up to clear the land illegally, banking on the likelihood that everyone will be too busy to notice, and that once the wetlands have been destroyed, environmentalists will move on to contest other projects.

Sneaky? Yeah. Just like what President Bush is doing to America right now, while our attention is diverted by the election.

The White House is working as you read this to enact an array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January. (As many as 90 new regulations are in the works.) The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo.

Bush’s 11th hour deregulation goody-bag includes:

Gutting the Endangered Species Act
Enabling mountaintop removal coal mining
Reducing women’s access to reproductive health care
Increasing limits on GHGs and MTR, while decreasing drinking water quality
Revising rules governing family- and medical-related leaves for employees
Relaxing standards for preventing or containing oil spills
And so on…

Bill Clinton also made a last-minute effort to pass regulations before he left office. Most of these, however, were aimed at protecting the environment. Unfortunately, soon after the inauguration, Bush's team withdrew 254 of Clinton’s regulations that covered matters from drug and airline safety to immigration and indoor air pollutants. Many of the proposals were then modified to reflect Republican policy ideals or were scrapped altogether.

Seeking to avoid falling victim to the same partisan tactics, Bush White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten in May imposed a Nov. 1 government-wide deadline to finish major new Bush administration regulations, "except in extraordinary circumstances."

Hello, “extraordinary circumstances:” Officials have just days to meet an effective Nov. 20 deadline for the publication of economically significant rules, which take effect only after a 60-day congressional comment period. Less important rules take effect after a 30-day period, creating a second deadline of Dec. 20.

Not surprisingly, the last-minute activity has made this a busy period for lobbyists, who fear that industry views will hold less sway after the November elections.

As the deadlines near, the administration has begun to issue regulations of great interest to industry, including, in recent days, a rule that allows the nation's natural gas pipelines to operate at higher pressures and new Homeland Security rules that shift passenger security screening responsibilities from airlines to the federal government. The OMB also approved a new limit on airborne emissions of lead this month, acting under a court-imposed deadline.

The only conclusion one can draw from these circumstances is that the Bush administration will do what it wants, when it wants, regardless of what Americans want, up until the last possible moment to serve its own, historically unpopular agenda.

Is anyone surprised that Bush is, effectively, telling Americans, “Up Yours?”

Sources:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=49&entry_id=29393
http://www.ombwatch.org/article/blogs/entry/5479/38

The New Rainbow Coalition: Just Smoking Hopium?

2008-11-01T20:26:00.000-07:00

Today (Saturday) I volunteered at the Obama headquarters in Van Nuys, California. It was raining when I arrived, good symbolism for the rainbow of volunteers who filled the big, rambling HQ rooms wall to wall.

I’ve been volunteering since 1992, and have never seen anything like the professional level of organization at this volunteer center. It is worthy of a shuttle launch! I was greeted the second I walked through the door and asked to sign in… on a keyboard which displayed the data I entered on an oversized monitor. Then I was directed to a phone-bank training class, preparing me in less than 15 minutes to begin making my calls with confidence.

There were so many volunteers that space was limited at the many phone-banking tables, so I joined those who sat on the floor to make their calls rather than wait on a table. There were white volunteers. Black volunteers. Hispanic and Asian volunteers. Some were in their early teens, making calls side-by-side with their parents. Some were young Moms, whose children sat beside them on the floor with their coloring books while they called. Others were old and infirm, making calls from their wheelchairs. And in the coffee and cookie room, where I wandered in search of caffeine after calling for two hours, there was a table where all the volunteers were speaking in Spanish.

We were too busy to chit-chat, but I overheard more than one volunteer express the hope that an Obama victory would result in expanded opportunities to give even more time, enabling a broad participation in the restoration of America’s potential.

I am beyond impressed. I am humbled and grateful. This level of inspired volunteer service makes me hope, after eight years of resigned isolation under the shadow of the Bush administration, that fellow citizens care, and that we are part of an increasingly vocal community in which our better selves can triumph against fear and hate.

I confess I felt so much hope (and pride) at Obama Headquarters today that my chest swelled and my eyes filled with tears. Does this mean, as one of my Lefty friends characterizes Obama supporters, that I am just smoking Hopium?

Well…

Americans are good-natured, so we gave Bush the benefit of the doubt as we watched him send our children off to die in a war with ill-defined objectives. We accepted his national security justification for suspending many of our Constitutional rights under the Patriot Act. We watched in horror as Abu Graib unfolded, suspending our disbelief that his administration did not authorize the torture. We said, “surely not,” when allegations were made that his Justice Department issued wholesale pink slips to judges who refused to slant their decisions in support of his political agenda. And while we hoped for the best from Bush, he betrayed us… again and again and again.

The weight of so many cumulative Bush betrayals has had a crushing effect, leading many Americans to despair. Anger is of limited use in extricating ourselves from despair… it can lift us out, but does not offer a new direction forward. That, I think, is the purpose of hope. Curious to know how others define hope, I went online in search of quotes, and found an ocean of them. Here are some of my favorites:

ELIE WIESEL:
Just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY:
If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

MOHANDAS K. GANDHI:
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN:
The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.

BARACK OBAMA (Yes, he popped up on my Internet search):
We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

So, fellow members of the newer, wider, brighter rainbow coalition: Let’s refuse to be embarrassed by hope. In the past eight years we surrendered to fear… and It diminished us. We indulged in hate… and it dishonored us. Now hope appears on shining new wings and beckons to us.

Don’t bogart that hope. Pass it over to me.

Getting Personal

2008-10-30T15:37:00.000-07:00

ALERT: Anyone feeling the need for comfort as they watch upcoming election returns might take the advice of Café Observer and adopt a shelter dog to watch them with you… thereby enjoying the knowledge that, no matter what the election outcome, you have given a fellow creature a home and stirred some genuine happiness into the boiling pot of the universe.

Now, let’s get personal:

I am WAY past due for thanking all of you who have visited my blog and commented… not just in reply to my posts, but to each other.

I had no idea, when I started this blog, that readers would comment to each other more than to me! But I’m glad it’s worked out that way, because it’s clear that we’ve all learned a lot from the exchange of ideas. So, gentle and not-so-gentle readers:

StacyT: Thank you for comments that remind me of what I have always known… that you are kind-hearted and generous and could teach the rest of us a thing or two about tolerance, a virtue the world needs more than ever now. You don’t just talk tolerance… you live it every day.

NikkiS: Thank you for the brilliance and insight you have shown by agreeing with almost everything I say! Since I know how smart you are, this reassures me that I am on the right track.

Laurie: Thank you for courageously forging ahead with your views, proving that there are always two sides (or more!) to every opinion. You are a blogger extraordinaire in your own right (http://southpasadena.blogspot.com/) and I am proud that we are friends.

Ballbuster/asskicker: Thank you for busting balls from the Marine Corps to the blogosphere, for proving that “French” people (OK, fringe) don’t just show up at Mcain/Palin rallies, and for being related to me. I am rich in nieces!

Voice of Raisin: Thanks for taking time from your efforts to champion equal rights by commenting on my blog with remarks like: “It amazes me that the right wing LOVES to talk about fighting for freedom but doesn't want people to be free to make basic decisions about their personal lives.” Vote NO on Pogrom 8, OK y’all?

Roy: Thank you for injecting some much-needed testosterone into our debate. (You know how shy and sweet we “girls” can be!) Anyone who knows your true identity realizes that John McCain stole his “Maverick” nickname from you!

Judy: Thank you, you fabulous mother, sister, daughter and artist! Judy is not only a brilliant photographer, but a fashion maven with an eye for all things elegant and inspiring. To check out her gallery of work, visit: http://www.earmarkphotography.com

Dixie Bell: Thank you, my Southern friend! You just know that anyone with “Bell” in her name is somebody special… and Dixie is all that and then some. If you like smart, opinionated, torch-singing redheads who also paint and break a lot of hearts, Dixie is your Diva!

StacyJ: When this election is over we will have to meet in Louisville, and spend an entire day baking pies and swapping recipes and waxing intellectual about NOW and your many other alma maters. Have you hung your Obama poster yet?

Café Observer: Thanks for championing the best interests of no less than “man’s best friend.” It is rumored that you are not a dog but a… Look! A piece of steak wrapped in bacon has just been tossed into the blogosphere! Fetch!

"Internal" Polling? Smells Like an Election Fraud Setup

2008-10-29T12:22:00.000-07:00

I will never forget Dubyah’s calm, relaxed demeanor on election day 2000, as he was interviewed after Florida had been prematurely called for the Democrats, saying his campaign had internal information that Florida’s votes eventually would tally Republican.

Now McCain has “internal polling” that he is ahead in the states where public polls show Obama in the lead?

Smells like a setup for another stolen election.

We can all speculate that somebody (Jeb?) told Dubyah not to worry about Florida, that it was in the bag. But we do know that the Supreme Court eventually stopped the recount, making Dubyah the President Select instead of the President Elect, and robbing Al Gore of a fair and square victory in the opinions of many (500,000 opinions, at least).

Are Republicans now laying the groundwork for the “credibility” of upcoming election thefts with their cockamamie internal polling claims, i.e., “See, we told you we had internal polls that contradicted the … real polls.”

In 2000 there was no impassioned, Republican denial that the election was stolen, leading many, including me, to the conclusion that as long as they could get away with it, Republicans didn’t care whether they had stolen the election or won it.

Go ahead, call me paranoid… just don’t tell me you think Republicans are too principled to lie, cheat and steal to keep their grip on power.

Fright Night

2008-10-28T10:17:00.000-07:00

Are you ready to watch election returns on the cold, dark night of November 4th? Have you installed deadbolts on your doors? Loaded up on ammo? Put your therapist’s emergency number on speed-dial?

Good. Because according to MSNBC political columnist John Dickerson, John McCain has a message for you:

Boo!

Dickerson disagrees with those who complain that McCain doesn’t have a consistent message. It’s, “Be afraid, be very afraid!”

McCain is making a last-ditch effort to scare voters with his Obama Horror Show in three acts: “If Obama is elected, your taxes will go up… you'll be unsafe from foreign threats… and, especially if Congress goes Democratic, you will be forced to endure an era of unchecked liberalism.”

I have said before that an Obama victory would be a defeat of fear. In the wind-up days of this election, McCain is handily proving my point.

At his rally in a high-school gymnasium in Dayton, McCain went oogy-boogy over a 2001 interview in which (so the McCain campaign says) Obama claimed one of the tragedies of the civil rights era was that it failed to redistribute wealth. "That is what change means for Barack the Redistributor," McCain told a crowd of about 2,000, which didn't fill the gym. "It means taking your money and giving it to someone else."

One reason McCain’s claim rings sleepy-hollow is that, when read in context, Obama's remarks are neither scary nor subversive. When he talks about redistribution in this speech, he is not talking about taxing the rich to give handouts—as McCain would scare us into believing. Obama is primarily referencing the Supreme Court's reluctance to force school districts to spend money to provide equality in SCHOOLS. Later in the same interview, when Obama again discusses redistribution, his larger point is about the complexities of school funding after Brown v. Board of Education.

As for, "taking your money and giving it to someone else," it is McCain’s plan, not Obama’s, that provides for this this. To mention only one example, Obama’s tax plan reduces taxes for working individuals who already pay taxes, while McCain’s $5,000 health benefit is distributed to everyone, taxpayer or not. (It’s amazing what you can learn when you awake at 4:00 am to watch Joe Scarsborough’s Right-leaning morning talk shoe, “Morning Joe.”)

The real irony, though, is that the working middle class has already suffered from an eight-year greedfest of wealth redistribution, as it watched its hard-earned tax dollars disappear into the black hole of tax cuts for the uber wealthy. The ranks of the middle class have declined as a result, leading many to fear a genuine, not rally-speak threat: that we are moving toward a two-class nation of haves and have-nots, without the middle class cushion by which America has defined itself and achieved greatness.

If McCain really wants to scare us though, he’s missing the most obvious of all horror shows: the one on Wall Street. Or is it the one in the housing market? No, wait, it’s the swelling BLOB of unemployment… Watch out! It’s swallowing our kids’ educations, our retirements, even the artificial cheese we use to make our Walmart macaroni edible!

Conservatives also sneer that Obama’s lead is a result of the disproportionate amount of campaign funds at his disposal, and have repeatedly implied that the funding sources are suspect. Who do they think gave Obama his financial advantage? We did. That’s right… not unknown secret Commie pinko terrorist Muslim Planet 9 contributors… but Obama supporters who, though just as hard-hit by the economic meltdown as everyone else, are willing to donate $50 whenever they can to usher in change.

I’m ready for November 4th. And the only thing that scares me is that McCain might yet fear-monger his way into the White House.

Another Clark Bar in the Pool

2008-10-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

Anyone who cracked up over the Clark Bar floating in the pool in the film “Caddy Shack” knows what the candy represented.

Now George Bush is dumping new Clark Bars into a critically important foreign policy pool in Pakistan… only there's nothing sweet about his dumps, which already have been eaten, digested and eliminated, threatening to foul world events yet again.

WTF, Dubyah???? Did we really need to provoke an already reeling world by sending a drone into Pakistan to launch a missile strike that killed 20 civilians, when Pakistan has nuclear weapons and isn’t sure if we’re friend or foe? Are you just wagging the pachyderm? Or are you defacing the Oval Office desk with your signature, leaving a lingering stench of your ineptitude before you leave?

According to today’s New York Times, the strike was “part of an escalating campaign by the Bush administration to hit the Taliban and their Qaeda backers at their bases in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

“The Bush administration has intensified the drone attacks after backing away from using American commandos for ground raids into the tribal belt. A ground assault on Sept. 3 produced an angry public riposte from the chief of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who said he would defend Pakistan’s borders ‘at all costs’ against such intrusions, an unusually strong statement from one ally to another.”

OK, it’s almost Halloween, so there are a lot of scary movie reruns on cable TV right now. But, after a brief period of relative calm in his war games (somebody please teach the Prez how to use a Game Boy), Dubyah has reduced me to that badass Indian spirit in “Amityville Horror” growling, “Get Out.”

Please, Dubyah… just when Oliver Stone’s movie “W” was convincing some of us that you’re human, must you scare the Clark Bar out of us again? Take a nap! Visit a grade school and read the kiddies a story about a goat! Lock yourself in the bathroom and enjoy a moment of personal pleasure! Just please, please, pretty please… don’t make another one of your notoriously critical blunders in our dealings with Pakistan!

Bruce Riedel, formerly one of the CIA’s senior Middle East analysts and later an assistant to the President on the National Security Council, has just published an insightful book: “The Search For Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, And Future” (Brookings Institution Press. $26.95). Among the many points Riedel makes is that al Qaeda does not, as Dubyah claims, hate the U.S. because of our freedoms and way of life… “As [Osama] bin Ladin has said, ‘if that were the case, Al Qaeda would have attacked Sweden.’ ”

So, what does Riedel recommend for dealing with terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere? Primarily, that we need a more sophisticated approach. Noting that Bin Ladin is an “evil genius” who predicted that the world economic/financial crisis we are undergoing is “exactly what would happen when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began,” and that Bin Ladin actually pointed specifically to the home-mortgage bubble in the United States, Reidel says we must tackle the “fundamental challenge of… Al Queda’s narrative.” That sounds like he thinks we need to talk. (To read the Newsweek interview with Riedel visit http://www.newsweek.com/id/165952/page/1)

After a Pakistani parliamentary resolution last week that encouraged dialogue with willing militants, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, echoed Riedel’s opinion by stating, “There is an increasing realization that the use of force alone cannot yield the desired results.”

Does this mean we should toss chocolate truffles into the pool instead of Clark Bars? I don’t think so. I think we need to stock up on Chateauneuf du Pape and enroll leaders from both political parties in adult education courses on diplomacy.

The Short, Sad Hoax of Ashley Todd

2008-10-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

The significance of the Ashley Todd non-story is not that she followed the example of Susan Smith and others in assuming no one would question her claim that a black man had violated her: It is in the way the incident was leaked and then reported almost exclusively by the Right Wing media.

The closing remark in these prematurely reported stories was consistent: “Police reports have not yet confirmed it.” So… how did the Right Wing media uncover it? The answer is, they didn’t. The story was spoon-fed to them by McCain operatives… In the state of Pennsylvania… where racism remains a viable factor, apparently, for Republicans willing to exploit a fragile and unstable young woman to stir up deal-breaking fears among voters.

It would be instructive, if not for the likelihood that Ms. Todd’s eggshell mind might crack under the pressure, to ask her whether she dreamed up her B-grade play on her own, or had help. She strikes me as someone who offered herself up for sacrifice to save the world from God knows what, had second thoughts about it, and wobbled off script.

Meanwhile, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez named the outlets that not only reported but actively pushed the Ashley Todd hoax. In addition to explaining why his station didn't report the story, Sanchez slammed Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio talk show host who appeared on CNN Thursday and blamed "that side" (i.e. the Democrats) for engaging in "extraordinarily" disturbing acts.

"Part of the story is the fact that it was reported by the media," said Sanchez. "We would not be telling the story now had it not been carried by so many outlets…. it was mentioned on… Fox News, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Newsday. And also radio talk show hosts went on their radio stations and talked ad infinitum about the story."

While Fox et al are wiping the egg off their faces, many in the blogosphere are not deterred by leaning that Ashley’s story is a hoax. I’m not sure how to characterize some of these blogs, except by pointing out that they share a common hatred for Obama. Many now claim that, Ms. Todd’s lies notwithstanding, misogyny is rampant in Obama’s campaign (as if Obama’s campaign had anything to do with the attack, even if the story HAD been true).

Obama haters also like to point to the backroom deal they imagine was made between Dean and Obama to steal the nomination from Hillary. If any such deal was made (I can’t prove it wasn’t, haters can’t prove it was), it was in line with the usual struggle over political power, not an expression of hatred for Hillary as a woman. And Hillary, still a formidable politician, is supporting Obama, which I doubt she would do if she thought misogyny played any role in his beliefs or campaign.

Those who fear that some nefarious conspiracy has placed Obama within reach of the Presidency should ask themselves why it appears that publication of Ashley’s story was coordinated among McCain operatives and various news sources on the Right. The effort to manipulate racial fears is a lot scarier than the so-called misogyny of a man who has been endorsed by both NARAL and Planned Parenthood, two organizations not unknown for their support of women.

I would respectfully ask all who think Obama is a misogynist: Please examine your inner feelings to make absolutely certain that some shred of racism, painful to acknowledge, isn’t fueling your fears.

Who Was Sarah's Image Consultant?

2008-10-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

Forget the $150,000 spent on Sarah Palin’s campaign wardrobe. What I want to know is… who was her flippin’ image consultant?

Hello… she’s still wearing her pageant hairdo. Couldn’t someone have suggested that she ixnay the beehive and go for a shaggy ends-flip? That outdated hairdo is even more the basis of Tina Fey’s impersonation than the invisible glasses.

And, not that she looks bad in her campaign clothes… it’s just that, for a paltry $150, she could have achieved the same look from Isaac Mizrahi for Target.

Maybe the reason that nearly $80K was spent at Neiman Marcus is that the store’s personal shopper took the opportunity to unload some of it’s $35,000 handbags and $3,000 shoes on Sarah… because if the stock market keeps tanking, NM is gonna be stuck with a lot of insanely-priced accessories that will end up in the sale bin at Ross.

But Sarah’s un-hockey momish wardrobe isn’t her biggest fashion quandary. By now she should have started wondering what to wear when they lead her to that stake in the public square where all the kindling has been piled.

Unsuitable for her position or not, Ms. Palin answered the GOP’s call and stepped gamely forward to infuse life and interest into the McCain ticket. But now that he is headed south in the polls, the GOP already is pointing its fickle finger of blame at Sarah. Forget sexism… that’s just plain ingratitude.

If I were Ms. Palin I would bundle up that campaign wardrobe and ship it off to the women’s shelter as soon as possible… like, before the GOP uses it to fuel the flame of its defeat pyre.

Walk Like a Democrat

2008-10-22T22:21:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, MSNBC Senior Campaign Correspondent Tucker Carlson told talk show host Rachel Maddow: “If at this point in the election you think there is still a possibility that Barak Obama can lose, you are… a Democrat.”

OK, I’m a Democrat. I carefully avoid making statements like, “when Obama wins,” opting for the more superstitious, “If Obama wins.” Hey… I don’t wanna jinx our guy in the last minutes of the campaign.

Carlson’s statement was meant as a jibe that Democrats are inherently pessimistic. But, as Maddow pointed out in our defense, we have good reason to fear that Republicans can still hijack the election. They have done it twice before, once when they lost the popular vote and robbed Democrats outright with a Supreme Court decision touted as a way to “save” our democracy from a divisive controversy, and again when they stole just enough votes in Florida and Ohio to eke out a victory. (Yes, they did. Shut up.)

Our paranoia that Republicans might swiftboat us into silent, unjust defeat is one of the reasons, I believe, that in this election Democrats are matching Republicans with vitriol for vitriol, slur for slur, slam for slam. It’s as if we collectively cannot afford the luxury of fairly considering both sides of the issues, or remaining moderate in the expression of our views. HELL no! Not this time! And our willingness, even eagerness, to fight back has confused Republicans, who released their pit bull expecting it to devour a poodle, and were demoralized when it found a rottweiler, a skunk and a porcupine guarding the campaign gates. Grrrrrrrrr.

But Democrats will be Democrats. Writing in Wednesday’s Huffington Post, political analyst Lincoln Mitchell wrote of a potential Obama victory:

“This should suggest to the operatives of the right wing that their cynical understanding of America can be trumped by a more affirming and progressive sentiment in the electorate.

“It is, however, the American left which will have to do the most intriguing and challenging rethinking of basic assumptions when Obama wins. For years now a central piece of the progressive worldview is that progressives are enlightened Americans in a sea of their ignorant, bigoted and narrow-minded compatriots… Opposition to progressive causes is often explained away by saying that Americans are bigots, or somehow stupid. This demonstrates an ugly contempt for voters, and in fact for democracy, that should have no place in progressive politics.”

Damn… do we have to start being good again already? Can’t we act like Republicans just a little longer, and gloat when, no, I mean if, Obama wins?

That depends. Once America is safely beyond the grasp of those who would violate its constitution, base a pre-emptive war on a pack of lies, break the law with impunity and thumb their noses at all who attempt to reign in these excesses, we should be able to relax and let our newly-elected Democrats repair the damage of the past eight years, right?

Yeah… and we should all be able to eat our weight in cake and still fit into our high-school-size jeans, too, but that won’t happen. In or out of office, powerful interests from the Right will continue to seek control of whatever they can get their hands on, including what’s left of our money. So we may be able to take a short break to brush the confetti out of our hair, and replace all the houseplants that died while we were volunteering for Moveon, but sooner or later, if we want to make use of the opportunity to advance progressive views, we will have to get back to work. We will have to remain informed about the issues, and volunteer our time and money to support the causes in which we believe, and yes, if rightwing conspirators slime our leaders, we will have to slime them back. Spreading the wealth is nice work, but only if you actually do it.

Meanwhile, if you notice people in the checkout line or at the gas pump or on their way to work, and they are peppered with bruises, they will be Democrats… because most of us are pinching ourselves to see if we are only dreaming that we might, maybe, possibly, probably will win this election.

Hands Across the Political Divide

2008-10-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Response to my “Keys to the Universe” post was so passionate, and so diverse, that I am proposing we reach across the opinions that divide us in search of common ground.

I invite you, beloved members of this debate community, to accept this challenge:

With less than two weeks to go before we elect the next President of the United States, it seems clear that most of us have made up our minds about where we stand on the issues. So, instead of debating each other in hopes of changing minds, let’s get real about the hopes and fears that drive our opinions.

Please list in the comments you post your single greatest hope, and single greatest fear, about EACH of the two candidates. (It has to be just one hope and one fear… listing them all would defeat this purpose.)

I hereby restrain my Virgo impulse to search for the clever turn of phrase… I’m just going to share my honest hopes and fears to get things started, and hope this will encourage you to do the same…

Yak’s Greatest Hope for Obama: That he will help Americans call a truce on our culture war, so we can connect first on areas where we agree, and progress from there to a state of tolerance for areas in which we disagree.

Yak’s Greatest Fear about Obama: That he will fail to accomplish this, dimming the hopes of all who yearn for a spirit of cooperation and equality in America.

Yak’s Greatest Hope for McCain: That he will live up to his maverick claim and infuse his administration with transparency, ending his predecessor’s assumption that the President is entitled to make and execute his policies in secrecy.

Yak’s Greatest Fear about McCain: That he will set back women’s rights (and the entire progressive agenda) by packing the Supreme court with conservative judges.

OK… now it’s your turn.

Spreading the Wealth

2008-10-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

by Guest Blogger Nikkis, CPA

What do Republicans really mean when they say that Democrats want to “Spread the Wealth?” They mean that Democrats want to take wealth away from the rich and give it to the poor. What have Republicans done over the last eight years while holding lead office in our country? They have been spreading the wealth…however, one problem though, they have spread the wealth from the middle class right on up to the wealthiest of us all.

What do Democrats really want to accomplish by so-called, “Spreading the Wealth?”

Democrats believe that members of the middle class deserve a break. They don’t propose to provide this by “taking away” from the rich; rather, they propose that big corporations and very wealthy individuals pay the taxes that already are set in the tax code, without benefit of the tax credits that have been lavished on them. This is how Democrats plan to pay for the tax cuts they propose for the middle class.

One thing my college tax professor told me that I have always remembered is that 5% of the people in this country provide 95% of the tax revenue. That is right, 5%. But here’s how that works…

I am Nancy Smith, an accountant, and I make $50,000 per year. I don’t enjoy any tax credits and pay a straight 15% tax, which is $7,500.
Let us now say I am Nancy Swope and just invented an automobile that runs on a battery, not gas. I sell the patents and make a profit, in a single year, of $45,000,000. With no tax credits my rate would be 39.6%, so I pay $17,820,000 in taxes. Wow, seems like a lot huh? But Nancy Swope still has $27,180,000 after taxes, along with the satisfaction of going a long way to help save “Mother Earth.”

It would take 2,376 Nancy Smiths to pay the taxes that one Nancy Swope pays.

Now, the details are much more complex than this example, and the top 5% in our nation would pay a lot more taxes than on a mere $45 million of income, but you get the point. However:

As a CPA I have worked on corporate tax returns for over ten years, and I am amazed at how little tax is paid on the business returns I prepare. Republicans complain that we have the highest tax rate on businesses at 35%, more than in any other country, and are appalled by that. But what they don’t acknowledge is that many of these companies don’t pay a single dime of taxes. Republicans would be hard pressed to find a corporation that pays anything near 35%. This is exactly why many states have changed their tax laws and are now taxing companies on gross receipts at a lesser tax rate, rather than trying to capture all the add-backs and credits the government has given these corporations. And states can’t rely on revenues from federally taxed income anymore, because nine times out of ten, there is no federally taxed income.

This is why I, just one humble American, believe that the Democratic tax plan is financially more responsible. I don’t understand how a lot of my Republican co-workers and friends, who make about the same amount of money as I do, are tricked by this “Spreading the Wealth” claim against Democratic candidates. I mean, I know they’re smart enough to realize that THEY are “middle class.” So, when they hear that the Democrats want to “spread the wealth,” do they somehow imagine there will be a knock at the door and a federal agent will come in and take their hard earned money, and then give it to someone else?

Don’t my Republican friends realize that they themselves will reap the benefits of a more equitable tax code? The economy will grow stronger as tax credits are given to the people who need them, and when big corporations don’t have incentives to move their customer service departments to India, and when paychecks actually increase along with inflation! How can they not see that businesses thrive only when the middle class actually has money to spend on the products and services they offer?

The increase of tax revenue, at the expense of people who must then “survive” on $27 million a year versus $45 million a year, will allow us to end the war in Iraq responsibly, have better schools for our children, help prevent the next American crisis (which is health care), help pay for our elderly to live out their dying days in dignity, and yes, I know Republicans hate this…but also help the poor and ensure that we do not allow people to starve right here in our own homeland. Can someone please explain to me why this is a bad thing?

I feel it is hypocritical to support the war in Iraq because the people there are suffering, but then turn our backs on the people suffering right here in the U.S.A. Anyone who doesn’t believe there is suffering here should take a look at the statistics: America has more drug abusers, alcoholics, suicides and murders than do most other nations. We are hurting. We need help. So even though the cliché saying makes me feel yucky inside, I say, “Country First” right back to Republicans. How anyone can say it is un-American to want to rebuild our country from the middle class up is beyond belief. When the people rise the leaders rise, America rises, and once again we can become the country which every other nation admires, respects and relies on for help in time of need.

That is why I, just one American, support the economic policies of the Democratic Party.

The Keys to the Entire Friggin' Universe

2008-10-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

Never in my lifetime have I seen a political party as willing to transmogrify itself into anything at all… from Joe Six-Pack to a blow-up rhetoric doll willing to say or swallow anything… as the GOP in this election.

There must be a lot of power at stake. I mean, like, a LOT.

I know that, in spite of my lifetime of cheerleading for the progressive agenda, I am a political neophyte. I know I view politics in simplistic terms, i.e., Conservatives are bad, Progressives are hot-fudge sundae good. But… just how big IS the political power prize (let’s call it PPP from now on) at stake in this election?

If Obama wins, will Republicans have to turn over an oil mill that, like the cursed salt mill that kept grinding until every ocean on the planet became too salty to drink, spews enough cash to render our world so cold, dark and polluted that only retired Haliburton CEOs can live on it?

I guess I was wrong about Big Oil interests. I thought they ALREADY had constructed an atmosphere processor on the dark side of the moon, where they used their oil-for-blood money to build a palatial community that makes Dubai look like a mobile-home park in New Orleans, to which they and their sex slaves plan to retreat when earth becomes uninhabitable. You know… in 25 years or so. But apparently, Big Oil hasn’t quite finished the job. They need more time. More money. More blood. More more more. So they have stocked up on Depends and hunkered down in Chaney’s White House basement digs, where they are conducting secret, “Keep Change from Happening” rituals. And, as Obama’s lead in the polls widens, they are soiling a LOT of Depends. I wouldn’t want to be the housekeeping service that cleans up after them on November 5th.

Or does the GOP’s hysterical grip on the PPP have nothing to do with greed, can it be a desperate need to finish shredding the evidence that might convict them in the world court of pissed-off opinion? Like frat boys who tossed beer cans and passed-out co-eds into an unused room until it overflowed and smelled worse than the back seat of Casey Anthony’s car, are they afraid to move out because even THEY don’t know how much damage they’ve done to America?

Could it be there really is a Star Chamber the GOP hides from upstarts like Bill Clinton, who won two elections but didn’t have the PPP credentials to merit entrance? You know… a center of power where everyone has his or her own diamond throne (They grudgingly gave one to Ann Coulter), and where the highlight of every meeting is when they bend the fabric of space and time to travel backwards, remaining forever young and ruthless and in power?

Tell me, someone, what IS the reason Republicans have such a death grip on the PPP?

Here are the Top Ten Reasons why I think the GOP would do anything to keep their keys to the Entire Friggin’ Universe:

10. McCain is terrified of how they’ll punish him if he loses to a black man.
9. They are pretending to be Sarah Palin’s friend.
8. They invoke the spirit of guys named Joe more than Ronald Reagan
7. They say they aren’t responsible for the French people who attend their rallies. No, wait… that’s Fringe people.
6. They can’t conceal their admiration for Obama’s political instincts.
5. Karl Rove has enrolled in a remedial course on Character Assassination.
4. George Bush says it’s OK, he doesn’t need a library in his name anyway.
3. Dick Cheney no longer cares if he’s caught wearing his fishnets and leather bra.
2. Ann Coulter has been curiously muzzled.

And the number one reason we know the GOP would do anything to keep their keys to the Entire Friggin’ Universe:

1. McCain is terrified of how they’ll punish him if he loses to a black man.

Quote Us: "No Wire Hangers!"

2008-10-17T07:19:00.000-07:00

When John McCain raised his hands to make that derisive debate reference to women’s health with “quote” fingers, I couldn’t help thinking of the ugly symbol of pre-legal abortion rights, the coat hanger hook.

Like Cindy McCain, I felt a chill run up my spine. But it was a real chill, not fake rally rhetoric… because the threat to women’s health posed by criminalizing abortion is as horrific as it gets.

In John McCain’s youth, when his well-connected family was coercing University boards to accept him in spite of his abysmal grades, and hush-hushing campus misdeeds that would have resulted in expulsion for anyone else (Rolling Stone, October, 2008 issue), when he was drinking and carousing and womanizing (same issue), he probably didn’t give a thought to back-alley abortions. As a man, abortion wasn’t his problem. And anyone who got one was probably a tramp or a hooker, not good, decent girls like the debutantes he met at parties.

True, when safe, legal abortions were unavailable, the daughters of the rich still had access to medical abortions: Daddy would place a call to a friend with a respectable medical practice, an appointment would be made, and the following week Buffy or Muffy or Cindy would have a nice, flat tummy, so their futures were protected and their virtues remained intact.

How nice for them.

But, in the real world, women who were poor, afraid, or otherwise unable to bear the burden on their lives posed by an unwanted pregnancy could, and did, seek illegal abortions. Maybe a few of them were “hookers.” (McCain has a nice gesture he can use to emphasize that.) But most were young, or sick, or abandoned by their boyfriends, or desperate for a myriad of personal reasons. And when they went to those back alley addresses for their midnight appointments, many of them never returned.

They died of infections from unsterilized instruments… like coat hangers.

They bled to death from botched procedures.

They were raped or otherwise abused by their illegal, unlicensed, unqualified abortionists.

But one thing the women of this era did NOT do was stop seeking abortions, legal or not, when circumstance drove them to the conclusion that it was a personal necessity.

That’s why, John Mcain, outside the grounds of the country club and the Ritz Carlton, safe, legal abortion is a woman’s health issue for millions of Americans. Women may or may not exercise this choice… but we are sisters, daughters, mothers and friends. We are people who love and are loved in return. We are individuals entitled to the rights of privacy and safety. And some of us are grandmothers, old enough to remember the reproductive straightjackets imposed on women who were not privileged, or lacked the resources, to fly to civilized European countries for a legal abortion when it was not available in our own country.

The truth is, the rich have always had access to medical abortions when they wanted them, abortions they could buy and then forget. And with the short memories of the privileged, they have also vilified those who sought the same remedies by whatever back-alley means were available.

So, listen up, John McCain: Compassion… common sense… fairness… choice for those who wish to exercise it… but "no wire hangers!"

Move Over, Kato Kaelin

2008-10-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

Joe Wurzelbacher, the plumber who John McCain mentioned 21 times in last night’s final Presidential debate, may not have wanted to wake up to 15 minutes of fame. But as early as 3:00 am this morning, his name was popping up on Internet search engine links like bunny rabbits after a heavy mating season.

Joe says he hopes he gets a little extra plumbing business from all the media attention. That might not be all he gets. Kato Kaelin, the poster boy for 15-minute celebrities, not only didn’t benefit from his spotlight, but was permanently branded by the ridicule that ensued. As one of the more colorful figures in the 1995 Simpson case cast of characters, Kaelin became the subject of jokes by TV comedians, who made fun of his spaced-out surf bum persona, lack of employment, and parasitic habits. One popular joke held that he was proof that Gilligan and Ginger Grant of Gilligan's Island had actually had children.

The steady, everyday Joe Wurzelbacher doesn’t seem promising as a source for late-night humor, although the candidates’ use… and misuse… of his name does. McCain portrayed Joe as a symbol of the hard-working American who would be blocked from achieving his dreams by Obama’s tax plan. His claim that the Democrat’s plan to raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year would hurt small-business owners like Wurzelbacher was countered by Obama’s explanation that it would make it easier for Wurzelbacher to provide health insurance for his employees. And Obama reiterated, for the umpteenth time, that 95% of Americans would receive tax cuts under his plan.

(No they won't! Yes they will! No they won't! Yes they will! Terrorist! I know you are, but what am I!)

Wurzelbacher told ABC that he's "not even close" to earning $250,000, but is worried that Obama would increase taxes for those making less. So. Whose plan will reduce taxes for everyday Americans, most of whom, like Joe, are not even close to earning an annual income of $250K?

To find out how the competing tax proposals would affect the amount YOU pay in income tax, here’s a fun link to an online calculator you can use to determine your own tax reduction or increase:

http://taxcut.barackobama.com/?source=sem-pm-fts-jtp-search-nsw&gclid=CKPKwan5q5YCFQ89awodQGHRzQ

Meanwhile, that ding-ding-ding of the stock market opening and closing bell continues to haunt our dreams. Like 9-11 and other infamous events, this crash will forever nail our frames of reference to the floor of history.

Hope you get that extra work, Joe. Kato who?

Liar Liar, Thong on fire

2008-10-15T12:26:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin has relieved me of any feminist obligation I may have felt to empathize with her in the wake of her Katy Couric interview fiasco.

After selling her soul to the demon mind-set of Karl Rove by hate mongering on the campaign trail, Ms. Palin has now stated in public, on camera, for the record, that the Troopergate report found “no unlawful or unethical activity on my part,” and that the report “vindicates” her.

Huh?

An editorial published Monday by the Anchorage Daily News stated, “Her response is either astoundingly ignorant or downright Orwellian.” It continued: Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, “had no sense that the power of the governor’s office carries a special responsibility not to use it to settle family scores. They had no sense that legal restrictions might prevent the troopers from firing Wooten. They had no sense that persistent queries from the governor’s office might be perceived as pressure to bend state personnel laws.”

It added: “And her Orwellian claims of ‘vindication’ make this blemish on her record look even worse.”

Sarah Palin has now demonstrated that she can lie with the best of the Bush Administration’s henchmen. Her response to Troopergate is a reminder that, far from being a maverick in heels, she is just another Republican yes-woman who thinks it’s OK to lie because the end justifies the means. And adding insult to injury, she continues to claim that Barack Obama is lying to America about his “real identity.”

Palin’s hypocrisy is so foul it could induce vomiting in case of accidental poisoning. Too bad there’s nothing accidental about the rabble-rousing lies she uses to poison the minds of McCain supporters, who are desperate for any distraction from the vat of fecal matter into which their party has dumped them.

Palin’s facility with dismissing the truth should also disqualify her, in my opinion, from any further credit for advancing women’s interests. She is a big, fat, phony dead weight on women’s issues, and her rise in Republican ranks will only drag down women who aspire to the authentic power of earned respect.

Palin is among the most male-identified of all women in politics. She is so snuggled into the blinders of fundamentalist Pentecostal Christianity that she joins in prayers for witch routing. She is staunchly aligned with principal-based patriarchal ideology, as evidenced by her blood-tick attachment to the belief that abortion is never warranted, even in cases of rape or incest. And for those who need another example, she is among the Neanderthal chauvinists who think it’s sporting to slaughter wolves with high-powered rifles aimed from helicopters.

John McCain did not select Sarah Palin as his running mate on the basis of her accomplishment, intelligence or vision. He selected her because she is a telegenic woman who is willing to accommodate whatever tactics squirm out of Rove’s spin-mill.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton was chosen by 18 million voters, both men and women, on the basis of her proven leadership, commitment to middle- and lower-class needs, and, oh yeah, her record. She is both a feminist and a politician, in the best and highest sense of those descriptions.

Hillary has too much class to say this to Palin, but I don’t:

“Liar, liar, thong on fire.”

Stopping a Beating Heart

2008-10-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while waiting at a red light, I noticed this bumper sticker on the car ahead of me: “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart.”

This emotionally powerful slogan made me wonder… At exactly what point does the fetal heartbeat begin? (40 weeks from conception, my gynecologist told me.) I also couldn’t help wondering about the mother’s heartbeat… what about her future, her feelings, her life?

Equivocation aside, in most cases an abortion does stop a beating heart. So why, when I can’t go to an animal shelter without agonizing over the puppies I leave behind, when my heart swells with tenderness at the sight of a baby’s face, related to me or not, do I stand so firmly as a pro-choice advocate?

Another way of phrasing this conflict: Can I preserve a choice I believe is fundamental to a woman’s freedom without sacrificing that part of conscience that instinctively protects the small and helpless?

Yes, I can.

Pro-life supporters often use abortion as an issue wedge for imposing their convictions on everyone else’s rights. While “Pro-life” implies support for the vibrancy of living, those with pro-life views typically oppose sex education, premarital sex, the distribution of condoms to protect teenagers from contracting AIDS, same-sex parent adoptions of children who might otherwise languish in institutions, and most importantly, social welfare programs to support the unwanted children and unqualified parents who would proliferate without the option of legal abortion. These views do not support life. They punish it.

Pro-lifers, especially those who base their views on religious doctrine, wave the flag of a moral code from centuries ago, one in which all sex outside of marriage is promiscuous, one that defines sexually active single women as immoral while excusing the same behavior in men as “normal.” In this punitive view, women who fail society by having sex outside of marriage deserve the burden of an unwanted pregnancy. But when pregnancy is enforced as a punishment, it is the unwanted child it creates that suffers most.

No one dictates how a pregnant woman should rest, or nourish herself, or make any one of the infinite decisions affecting the life of her unborn child. Why should anyone dictate when or if she becomes a mother? The Pro-Choice option empowers women to take full responsibility for their own lives, as well as the lives they create or choose not to create.
.
I know that many decent, caring people hold pro-life views. At the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC four years ago, as marchers passed the pro-life contingent near the end of the march route, I saw an elderly woman, probably a grandmother, holding a “ Choose Life” placard. She seemed bravely alone as nearly a million pro-choice marchers streamed by. I wondered: was she genuinely heartbroken over the loss of aborted lives? Did her concern for life motivate her to contribute to the homeless? Oppose the death penalty? Vote to end the war in Iraq? One thing I know for certain is that she was never forced by pro-choice opinion to have an abortion against her will.

By definition, “pro-choice” has no agenda to influence decisions to have, or not to have, babies. It merely provides an opportunity to act in accordance with individual conscience.

Yes, not counting the morning-after pill (which pro-lifers also oppose), abortion after 40 days of pregnancy stops a beating heart. For now, though, legal abortion enables us to create wanted lives or not, and to consider ourselves free, not immoral, when we take responsibility for these choices.

THE RED MEAT OF HATE

2008-10-11T07:51:00.000-07:00

Forget Ann Coulter. A new right wing harridan has emerged from the sewer of McCain’s campaign: Senior Advisor Nikolle Wallace.

Responding to criticism of hate mongering on the McCain/Palin campaign trail, where Joe Sixpacks have shouted from the audience, “Terrorist,” “Traitor,” and “Kill him,” Ms. Wallace choked back the last few shreds of her credibility and lied: “Barack Obama’s assault on our supporters is insulting and unsurprising… attacking our supporters is a new low…”

I’m surprised Ms. Wallace had time to lie at all, considering that she has been WAY busy painting the GOP’s white roses red while stocking up on bullets. But genuine Republican leaders have not been so reluctant to tell the truth.

In a scathing Baltimore Sun OpEd column, McCain supporter and Republican author Frank Schaeffer wrote:

“John McCain, if your campaign does not stop equating Senator Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as ‘not one of us,’ I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate and therefore of potentially instigating violence… you are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.”

Thank you, Mr. Schaeffer. What YOU said!

Why would John McCain, who has been, until now, a lesser evil on the political scene, risk his reputation and credibility by fanning the flames of racism in his speeches and media ads? And why, after empowering his pitbull running mate to pander to the basest fears of the double-wide contingency, has he now asked his audiences to “show respect” for Obama?

Could it be… listen up, magical-thinking Republican apologists… that McCain is not the best man to become the next president of the United States? Who wants a race-baiter’s finger on the trigger? A leader whose words fan hatred, and have the potential to incite violence, even if he later takes them back? Especially if he later takes them back!

After spending time with the McCain campaign, Radar Washington Editor and Time Magazine contributor Ana Marie Cox commented on Friday’s Rachel Maddow Show: “McCain has lost the pitchfork wavers now. I don’t know who he has left.” (Referring to the boos McCain received when he told a rally crowd that Obama is a decent man they don’t need to be afraid of.)

On the same show, Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin quoted 50s Presidential candidate Adelaide Stevenson: “The hardest thing about any campaign is not how to win, but how to win without proving you’re unworthy of winning.”

Put that red meat of hatred where it belongs, Senator McCain: in the smokehouse of history.

POGROM 8... The Mud-Slinging Measure

2008-10-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

While heterosexuals who aren't affected by gay marriage decide how to vote on Pogrom 8, the anti-gay marriage measure, the homophobic mud slinging portrayed in pro-8 ads is punishing real, caring, tax-paying gay people.

What is up with the heterosexual frenzy to reserve the ritual of marriage for straight couples? Otherwise reasonable people who agree that gays should enjoy the civic benefits of marriage balk at letting them cut a cake and say, “I do” in the presence of their friends and pastors. The illogical basis of this position hints at an underlying fear that isn’t openly discussed, but which might be fueling the homophobia.

The big gun of the Pro-8 ads is that gay marriage will be taught in schools. “Boys will learn that they can marry other boys,” the ads warn. (Girls, presumably, will be too busy applying lip gloss to pay attention in class.) The inescapable conclusion is that anti-gay proponents are so insecure about their heterosexuality that the mere mention of a different orientation places it at risk.

The cliché objection to gay marriage is that it would create an unhealthy environment in which to raise children, i.e., it would predispose them to homosexuality. The absurdity of this notion is easily exposed. How many gay people do you know? How many of them grew up in heterosexual households? That’s right… all of them. Should we conclude from this that heterosexual parents place their children at risk of becoming gay or lesbian? No… and neither should we conclude the reverse.

In another blog, at another time, maybe I will discuss the psychological premise that we all have the capacity to be attracted to the same sex. Maybe I will discuss the plight of individuals who have desperately suppressed their natural same-sex curiosity for their entire lives, and have lived in fear of expressing it, not realizing that doing so would probably free their heterosexual libidos for fuller enjoyment. But not today…

Today I would like to point out that fear-based decision making leads to bad public policy. Fear of another terrorist attack led us to trust President Bush as he launched a pre-emptive war against Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9-11… and the cost of this bad decision has contributed to today’s freak show on Wall Street. Passage of Pogrom 8 would not stop gays from falling in love, or creating masterpieces, or paying taxes, or otherwise being good citizens: It would, however, perpetuate their undeserved status as second-class citizens. That’s bad public policy, and as responsible voters, we shouldn’t tolerate it.

It hurts me that I enjoy rights and privileges my gay friends do not... it isn't fair, and if I do nothing to support equal rights for all, I don't deserve my own privileges.

Carrying Pictures of Chairman Mao

2008-10-09T09:37:00.000-07:00

If I had met William Ayers in the sixties, I would have liked him. And listened to him. And agreed with him.

In fact, I agree with his educational views today. He is profoundly on the side of children, and devotes himself to the methods by which they can learn, grow and remain free to be themselves. (Like me, Ayers was influenced by “Summerhill,” A.S. Neill’s groundbreaking book on child-directed education.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ayers

But one thing I would not have done was become Ayer’s acolyte, as was dramatized by Evan Rachel Wood in “Across the Universe,” the recent film which used Beatles lyrics to dramatize the sixties. I would not, as did three others, have died while making a bomb for Ayers.

I can recognize the difference between an evil condition and an equally evil reaction to it. Yes, I understand the compulsion to test oneself by stepping further and further out on the limb of opposition, but I also know that taking one’s own dare can become more important than righting the original wrong. I believe in retaining my humanity even though living with unacceptable conditions, as I have done during the past eight years of Bush’s Indiana Jones Adventure in Presidency.

Ayers, however nobly motivated to end the Vietnam War and achieve social justice for all, slipped into fanaticism. He followed his passions directly into an arena he shares with fanatic, right-wing zealots who bomb family planning clinics.

Extreme actions do play a role in furthering cultural evolution: Angry women burning their bras helped all women enjoy more equitable pay, even if they were excoriated for their unladylike behavior. Blacks who rioted in Detroit in the sixties, chanting, “Burn, Baby Burn,” helped define the tolerable limit of suppression and ended the racist assumption that they were powerless to oppose it.

The leader of a nation, especially one as culturally polarized as the United States, should understand the full range of hopes, views and expectations that he must oversee. He should know pain as well as joy, hope as well as despair, courage as well as fear, and vision as well as prudence. In my opinion, Barack Obama, who could have slipped into the arena where Ayers chose to go but didn’t, because he chooses to create instead of destroy, is an ideal candidate for the position.

He should also appreciate the lyrics to this Beatles song:

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world.
You tell me that it's evolution,
Well, you know
We all want to change the world.
But when you talk about destruction,
Don't you know that you can count me out. In.
Don't you know it's going to be all right,
all right, all right.
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan.
You ask me for a contribution,
Well, you know
We all do what we can.
If you want money for people with minds that hate,
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait.
Don't you know it's going to be all right,
all right, all right.
You say you'll change a constitution
Well, you know
We'd all love to change your head.
You tell me it's the institution,
Well, you know
You better free your mind instead.
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao,
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow.
Don't you know it's going to be all right,
all right, all right.

HELTER-SKELTER, JOHN AND SARAH

2008-10-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

Charles Manson was crazy, so he believed that the Beatles song "Helter Skelter" was about an upcoming race war. Crazy ideas are one thing… occasionally even normal people have them… but when a crazy person acts on a crazy idea, tragedy can ensue.

How should we rate the sanity of the man who yelled, “Kill him” during the fanatic-fanning speech Palin gave yesterday?

Because he was crazy and riddled with racist fears, Charles Manson thought Helter Skelter was an invitation to black people to start an insurrection. So he sent off his drugged teenage acolytes on a preemptive slaughter of the enemy. (Guess you’ll have to ask Charlie why most of the victims were white.) If we assume a nutcase frame of mind, we can understand why Manson thought the White Album advocated violence: It sang of "piggies" in the tune of the same name, saying they needed a "damn good whacking;" and the sounds of gunfire reverberated in "Revolution 9." But only a disturbed and fearful mind like Manson’s could have assumed these lyrics were speaking directly to him, entitling him to express his reactionary, murderous impulses.

Is there a Charles Manson mind in the partisan crowds at Sarah Palin’s fear-mongering rallies? Maybe the guy who shouted, “terrorist?”

Recent history illustrates the willingness of the fanatic right to make their points with violence: bombing family planning clinics, murdering the doctors who provide abortions as a legal choice, or publishing their names and home addresses in an implied call to violence among fellow fanatics.

So, how ill advised is the GOP strategy to stop the hemorrhaging in its campaign by claiming “Hussein” Obama pals around with terrorists? Never mind that when terrorist Ayers (the white son of American wealth and privilege) committed his anti-war crimes Obama was only eight years old. Never mind that when a rehabilitated Ayers later devoted his life to building better schools he served on a committee with Obama, whose intentions were as ideologically remote from terrorism as George Bush’s are from utopianism.

The GOP’s Ayers diversion is racist at its core. It may pretend not to know that a majority of its rally-goers think a terrorist is, by definition a Muslim… and that anyone whose middle name is Hussein must be a Muslim… and that ergo, Barack Hussein Obama is a terrorist. But the GOP knowingly manufactured this leap in logic to the conclusion that Obama is a terrorist who wants to harm America. They have armed the fearful Right with justification for its prejudice, in the hope of winning a few more votes

Let us all hope, and pray if so inclined, that there is no mind squirming like a toad in Palin’s crowds, fired up by the realization that Sarah is speaking to him (or her) directly, exhorting him to defend his honor and country and claim to racial superiority by means of violence.

It only takes one lunatic to commit a crazy crime. Helter-skelter, John and Sarah.

Ayers, the GOP's New "N" Word

2008-10-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

If you liked swiftboating, the Republican sport of repeating the same lie until its victim becomes playground bully bait, John McCain's 2008 version will disappoint you.

Unable to swiftboat Obama directly on the basis of his race, McCain has launched an oblique attack on his association with "terrorist" Bill Ayers.

The cheers that greeted Sarah Palin's rally portrayal of an Obama-Ayers association today were louder, more lip-smacking and more prolonged than any other crowd reaction during her speech. Now the rabidly anti-Obama constituents can link him to a terrorist bogeyman, since the "N" bogyman is off-limits to them... in public, anyway.

But Obama is not easily intimidated, no matter how vicious the playground bully, no matter how much lipstick she smears over her slurs. He has perfected the art of the gentlemanly, Cary Grant response, and cannot be tarred as easily as Kerry. Instead of taking the bait and biting back the pitbull while the handler cowers on the sidelines, Obama will retaliate with a link of his own... not to McCain's role in the S&L crisis of the eighties, but to the economic collapse of today. And the bully is a sniveling wimp on this issue.

How many racist voters will latch onto McCain's transmogrified Ayers N-word and use it to foment hatred and fear? Quite a few of them, to judge by all that foaming at the mouth as Palin's followers trampled Obama's middle name like a dirty, racist flag. But not enough to prejudice the supporters who are handing him a double-digit lead in the polls.

According to blogster Howard Wolfson at Theflack.com, "Senator McCain will try to make issues of Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko and Rev. Wright, and that might hurt Senator Obama around the margins -- but it will not prevent him from winning. The economy is simply bigger than the rogues gallery that John McCain is conjuring up."

Thanks for saying so, Howard. It's uplifting to think that sticks and stones might break a few votes, but not even McCain's new N-Word can make Obama less of a human being.

Is that a Facial Tic, or Are You Just Glad to See Me?

2008-10-03T07:01:00.000-07:00

Heck! Shucks! Darn!

If I weren't so smart I might have been flattered by Sarah Palin's appeal to the Joe Six-Pack in me, and the implicit reassurance that it's OK to be narrow-minded, uneducated, and sound asleep at the smarts wheel.

But don't ya know, I am confident of my identity and don't need parental figures in the White House. I don't need charming gambits like evading a tough question by answering a different one, nor do I interpret this as standing up to meanies in the media. I don't need the smoking spectre of a "second holocaust" blown up my ass. And I definately, positively, absolutely do not need a wink.

Gosh, I guess that's why Sarah Palin's performance in last night's Vice-Presidential debate failed to impress me. So what if she didn't trip and fall as she walked onstage? So what if she remembered to include all the buzzwords her debate handlers force-fed her? So what if she didn't crack under pressure and blurt out that Jesus wants America to elect John McCain?

Sarah Palin continues to skirt issues that are critical to the future of America. True, it isn't easy to explain McCain's claim that our economy is strong, made on the same day it tanked. But invoking the dead spirit of Ronald Reagan with her "There you go again" assertion that we should just forget the past and move on is contradictory. It's also an evasion, not an answer.

A question, Ms. Palin: In all those magazines you read, and in that vast array of reference material you rely on, did the phrase, "He who fails to understand history is doomed to repeat it" ever pop up?

Anyone who thinks it's a good idea to ignore the Republican failures that have taken root in American soil shouldn't expect to become my gardener, much less my Vice President.

And don't claim, Ms. Palin, that the constitution provides for "more Vice-Presidential powers" after we have suffered through eight years of Dick Cheney's malevolent influence. We won't be needin' any more brazen assaults on our constitution, Ma'am.

It doesn't matter that Sarah Palin can act the part of my mommy, my teacher and my friend. If she shucks and darns McCain into office, America will have to climb out of our quicksand economy under the guidance of the same deregulation spokeman who helped sink it. America will have to extricate itself from Iraq by repeating the same mistakes and expecting a different outcome. And most disappointing of all, America will lose the opportunity to insert the crowbar of reason into the Republican weld between church and state and pry it apart... separate it, in fact... as our constitution demands.

So, don't wink at me, Sarah Palin. We're electing a Vice President, not a flirt.

Don't Let Them Tell You You're Just Paranoid, Man!

2008-10-01T02:28:00.000-07:00

by Guest Blogger H. Anderson, aka ballbuster/asskicker

No, it's not that grass you've started smoking again, Boomers. They really are out to get you.

Who's "they", and what do "they" want?

Well, one thing hasn't changed from your youth: "they" is still "the man". That includes oil companies, banks, greedy corporations, the government, and all the usual suspects.

But, "they" can also be the people you need to trust, particularly on the eve of your retirement: your health care provider, your church, your television, and even your kids.

What do they want?

Duh! Your money.

Here's an important statistic every marketing executive knows: you Baby Boomers are the wealthiest generation in the history of America. Those of you who didn't earn enough to retire young are currently at your earning peak. During the next 10 years, many of you are going to retire, and you're taking a large chunk of America's wealth with you.

This is the land of capitalism, where caveat emptor rules. In America, anybody can compete for a share of the pie. That's how y'all got so much money in the first place, because you love capitalism, and you're damn good at it.

But unfortunately, capitalism isn't about to retire along with you. Remember, your generation has socked away a sizeable percentage of our country's wealth. It doesn't add up — 75 million Americans control a majority of the wealth, leaving the other 225 million to scrap over what's left. Remember, this is a country where everybody has the right to try to steal your piece of the pie. And they're doing it right now.

This whole mortgage crisis? News flash: it was a con! You were duped into falling for the "everybody's doing it" mentality — you guys are real suckers for that one — and gave up perfect good, nearly paid-off homes for overvalued mini-mansions you didn't need. Fell for it hook, line and sinker. Lines like "you must act now to take advantage of these historically low interest rates!" Or "you owe it to yourself to buy that dream home." Who told you this BS? The ones who sold you that now upside down mortgage, that's who. The ones you're indebted to for life.

How many of you went from black to red on your personal balance sheets, trading equity for debt? You were robbed! Did you know WaMu was found guilty by the state of New York for conspiring with appraisers to artificially inflate home values to force borrowers into jumbo and subprime loans? WaMu committed outright fraud. It's true, Google it! WaMu, sued by the state of New York and found guilty of defrauding citizens for millions, probably billions … BUT, settled out of court.

See, instead of putting those bastards in jail, your government instead just set tougher regulations for appraisers. Sure, the FBI is investigating, but so far, nobody's gone to jail. Meanwhile, millions of you are on your way to the poor house. Gee, could there be a financial reason the government's priorities are so far out of whack here?

How are those 401Ks doing? I can't imagine being in your shoes, spending all those years dutifully contributing the maximum allowable amount of your paychecks into that rip-off of a casino called Wall Street. So, where did it go? Stolen by the very bankers who convinced you to put your life savings into an uninsured investment. Bankers don't care where you spend your golden years. In your home, your kid's home, or a ditch. Whatevs, that's your problem. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.

How about your health? I'm mortified to see so many of you sick and broken down, victims of your own self-indulgence. Nobody cares enough about you to tell you to stop eating at MacDonald's. Stop drinking a gallon of diet soda or a pot of coffee every day. Exercise. Chop some onions, for Chris'sake.

No, instead, you're ripped off again. Convinced that you need pills and surgery, not self-discipline and real food. You spend hundreds of dollars a month on health regimens that have left you one of the sickest generations in history. You're the first generation in US history whose life expectancy has actually decreased, did you know that? Few of you are as healthy as your parents were at your age, and some of your elderly parents are probably healthier now. How many of you could even take to the streets in protest these days?

Here's a morbid thought: robbing you blind with damaging health care accomplishes two goals. First, health care companies get your money, which remember, is everyone's goal. Second, if you die young, it solves the Social Security problem. An honest government would do everything it could to maintain the health of the largest retiring generation in history, don't you think?

Please, pull your heads out of the sand! Somewhere down there is the enlightened rebel of your youth. We can still turn this country around, but we need your help. Turn off the television, NOW! Stop allowing "them" to hypnotize you with junk TV and news shows that tell you over and over and over and over and over and over again what to think. That bad mother who might have killed her 3-year-old is NOT important. Monday Night Football is NOT important. And I know this will fall on deaf ears for many of you, but McCain vs. Obama isn't that important, either. Both are controlled by special interests, and no matter how much change and maverick talk they dish up, at the end of the day, both will side with "them", not you.

Your generation is being targeted, because you played by the rules and achieved the American dream fair and square. And now, "they" want it back. You're being rendered powerless — broke, sick and scared — because long ago, when you were young, you had power. Remember when you stopped that corrupt war? Remember when you demanded equal pay for equal work? Remember how you raised a generation that isn't limited by race, gender or sexual orientation? You'd better believe "they" know what you are capable of, and it's not in "their" agenda.

I know you've still got it in you, Boomers. Keep smoking that grass until it re-opens the eyes of your youth. Cast aside your sofas and Blackberrys, and re-emerge as the generation of real change. The generation that doesn't take any bullshit. The generation that rejected the status quo and saved America.

Throw Nancy from the Train

2008-09-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

OK, all you tender-hearted Dems who feel sorry for Sarah Palin because you deem the media ridicule of her views as sexist… let’s see you jump to the defense of Nancy Pelosi, now that Republicans are blaming her speech for their failure to pass the Bailout.

I see a double standard here, and it’s within our own camp. Not that we haven’t seen double standards before, but this one plays to my pet-peeve stereotype of women: Nancy opened her big, fat mouth… and said what most of us have been thinking, saying and blogging: Republicans must take the lion’s share of responsibility for our economic meltdown, because they so zealously promoted the deregulation that contributed to it.

If only Nancy would have kept her mouth shut, all those Republicans who backed out of voting in favor of the Bailout would have stepped forward and cast that unpopular vote, saving the financial asses of their constituents, along with yours and mine. But Noooooo… Nancy had to express her OPINION.

I wonder… would Republicans have blamed their failure to deliver the passing votes on a man who gave exactly the same speech? Probably not. Man-to-man, they would have hurled back a few brickbats of their own, then voted exactly the same way, just as they intended to do all along. But they wouldn’t have made the cockamamie assertion that they voted as they did because somebody’s speech hurt their feelings.

By delivering her remarks in an exasperated tone that could be construed as scolding, did Nancy trigger an infantile response to rebel against Mom’s authority… or, at the very least, to blame the woman when that yukky diaper stuff hits the fan?

If you experienced a moment of exasperation that Nancy’s remarks may have stalled your portfolio recovery (I did), look deep, deep inside yourself. There you will find the truth: A Republican Congressman who blames a woman’s speech for his failure to cast an unpopular vote is no different than an alcoholic husband who blames his wife for letting him fall off the wagon.

Remember that train? Don’t throw Nancy from it.

Banging the Shoe...

2008-09-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

Watching John McCain’s terse, jaw-clenching performance in the first Presidential debate, I couldn’t help noticing his eerie resemblance to former Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev.

Anyone old enough to remember the sixties will recall Khrushchev’s stolid, low-to-the-ground physicality, his box shaped head, and the McCainesque white hair combed over a high forehead. If you count yourself in this group, you will also remember that Khrushchev made international headlines by infamously banging his shoe on a United Nations desk to silence opposing opinion.

McCain kept his shoes on during the debate, but he linked himself to the past as inextricably as old news footage of Khrushchev.

It was as if McCain, before a televised audience, cemented himself to the war in Iraq and therefore, to painful Republican mistakes that most Americans can’t wait to forget. For someone who wishes to position himself as an agent of political change, he couldn’t have been more implacable in his views. Like the old soldier that he is, McCain clings to his fantasy of a conventional victory in an unconventional war, with enemies that appear and reappear like djins, a war that can never be won on a literal battlefield but only on an ideological frontline. The ghost that is Bin Laden can’t be exorcised with a homecoming parade.

McCain’s insistence that we must leave Iraq “with honor” is an ironic impossibility, since we entered this preemptive war on a lie, devolved to torturer mentality in our conduct of it, and have since engaged in magical-thinking warfare to convince Americans that we aren’t bad guys for starting it in the first place.

Even McCain’s references to his POW credentials seemed oddly self-serving… he should let others remind us of what he endured, in the unlikely event we should forget. Again, this reference links McCain to the past, during a time when we need new ideas and fresh thinking to move into a future that is free of dependence on oil, and the ugly wars required to maintain it.

As Americans we must now ask ourselves… do we have the courage to abandon the failed policies of an eight-year Republican betrayal of our values, our economy and our constitution? Or do we want to cling in fear to one of the architects of that betrayal, a candidate who, though a self-proclaimed maverick, refused to look his Presidential opponent in the eye?

He might as well have removed his shoe and banged it on the podium.

On Dali Time...

2008-09-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

“Salvador Dali's clocks aren't wrong or stopped or broken. Their active faces slide like pancake batter over edges of a bureau, bend and hang across branches. Adapted to the shape of every object they meet, these clocks announce that there is no standard time in Dali’s universe - nor, as Dali knew - in Einstein's.”

So says Stephanie Strickland on the website http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/webarts/hypertext

She might have added that there is no standard time in Washington, DC either.

The Bush Administration has had eight years to observe the effects of its decisions on the economy over which it presides. What was that Ms. Strickland said about pancake batter? Yeah, it feels like the most elastic eight years in American history to me, too. And now that Bush is pretending to give a shit about the economy, his corrective plan must be approved by… eight pm tonight?

(I don’t want to hear any more bullshit about how Bill Clinton triggered this mess 12 years ago by encouraging home loans for lower-income Americans. As he pointed out on the Today Show yesterday, that was during a time when there was a budget surplus instead of a trillion-dollar deficit, no war, no recession, and booming job creation.)

But, back to the future, Bush’s legacy to America is an $800 Billion bailout that encases the next president’s feet in concrete and throws him overboard, creating a bleak zeitgeist of loss that will dog taxpayers today, tomorrow, and all the way to end times, immortalizing (and explaining, finally) that smirk he always wears on his face.

Somewhere in freak heaven, Dali is twirling his moustache.

Ms. Strickland continues: “In fact, Dali's clocks are not clocks at all, if we mean bookkeepers that measure unvarying flow. But then the human heart is not that kind of clock either; rather, it …runs concurrently to the beat of several highly variable drummers. When that stops being true, when it runs to no beat… losing some of those long-range correlations that tie it to events thousands of beats into the future, then it is about to die of congestive heart failure.”

Is your heart fibrillating too?

There are no drummers in Washington, unless you count a few bi-partisan bongo players. No one is keeping the beat for millions of American hearts waiting to see what the hell is going to happen to our economy.

Can we have just a little consistency, please? Can we agree to scoop up the sliding clock of this moment in history and set its alarm for tomorrow, or next week, or some other well-reasoned finite point in time by which our bongo-players will have agreed upon the Bailout principles? Can tonight’s debate move forward, giving each candidate an opportunity to beat his own drum, until our national arrhythmia subsides? Dammit, we’re Americans, we INVENTED multi-tasking. If either candidate finds that prospect daunting, let him ask the mother of any three-year-old in America how it’s done.

Tick tick tick…

Even War Heroes Get the Blues

2008-09-25T08:58:00.000-07:00

Poor John McCain.

His ratings in the polls are sliding. The press has been calling him out on his contradictory statements. Palin was unable to provide interviewer Katie Couric with a single example of reforms he has supported. And now his opponent has implied that he is unable to multi-task because he can’t participate in the first Presidential debate and save the economy at the same time.

The economy. You know… the one his Republican party ignored until it crashed. The very same economy now causing Republicans to soil their Depends as they strain to find reasons why Bill Clinton should be blamed for the crisis.

No wonder John has the blues. But hey, he’s a war hero, so let’s cut him some slack. More than we already have, I mean.

When he decides he feels up to the Presidential debate, let’s give Obama a handicap so John will have a sporting chance. Obama can’t flash his radiant smile or make any gestures Republicans might deem charismatic. Obama can’t use the word “fair,” in relation to down-sizing tax breaks for the rich. Obama must say, “I’ll get that stuff and get back to ya,” if asked for details about his health care program.

There, now, John… feeling better?

And by the way, since you’re a war hero and you look like everybody’s grandpa and you’re such a maverick, we’ll make it easy for you to be President, too.

If Russia invades Sweden, you can go ahead and drop a few bombs. After all, how much time do you have left to make a little noise and stir up some dust?

If there is another terrorist attack on the same day the stock market takes a hit, you can go ahead and save the economy again before you follow the terrorists to the gates of hell.

If anything goes wrong in America, anything at all, you can ask Karl Rove for a reason to blame it on Bill Clinton, since he has a database of Bill’s culpability on every issue from the deaths of 4,172 troops in Iraq to the birth of the…blues.

In fact, to show our support, we’ll ALL get the blues… in Florida, Michigan, and in those other states that have suffered from too much red in recent elections.

And we'll all chip in with our leftover pennies to buy you a shiny new cape to wear when you fly back to Washington to save us.

Will that work for ya, John?

If I didn’t know you were a war hero, I’d suspect you were dodging the debate.

Bush's Black Hole: Section Eight

2008-09-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

If you liked the constitution-crushing powers of the coyly named “Patriot Act,” you’re gonna love “Section Eight,” the black hole of Bush’s proposed bailout plan. In a single sentence of thirty-two words, it sucks the light of reason into its vortex, with a consolidation of power and an abdication of oversight authority so brazen that only the Bush Administration could have authored it. Section Eight reads, in its entirety:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Say what?

Isn’t that exactly how Bush has been managing his trophy war in Iraq? Can you say, “No-Bid Contract?”

Section Eight sets the stage for a staggering panoply of bad deals and conflicts of interest. It will give Treasury Secretary Paulson not just the authority to bail out Wall Street… but to “enter into negotiations with financiers who are key to the political and financial base of the Republican Party.” Like that? Keep reading… “Not only will the Secretary be figuring out appropriate compensation for these people, he will also, to an unknown extent, be deputizing a number of them to carry out a wide range of functions for the government.” (Jason Linkins, Huffington Post)

Joshua Rosner, managing director of economic researcher Graham Fisher & Co. in New York, voices an even stronger opposition to the end-times irresponsibility of Section Eight, saying: “It could be used to mask previous illegal activity."

Oversight and regulations of public contracts are designed to prevent malfeasance, corruption, self-dealing and conflicts of interest in the distribution of federal monies. Here, from thinkprogress.org, is a brief overview of the Bush Administration's sorry legacy of squandering taxpayer money:

IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION
-$142 million wasted on reconstruction projects that were either terminated or canceled. [Special Inspector General for Iraq, 7/28/08]
-“Significant” amount of U.S. funds for Iraq funneled to Sunni and Shiite militias. [GAO Comptroller, 3/11/08]
-$180 million payed to construction company Bechtel for projects it never finished. [Federal audit, 7/25/07]
-$5.1 billion in expenses for Iraq reconstruction charged without documentation. [Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction report, 3/19/07]
-$10 billion in spending on Iraq reconstruction was wasteful or poorly tracked. [GAO, 2/15/07]
-Halliburton overcharged the government $100 million for one day’s work in 2004. [Project on Government Oversight, 10/8/04]

KATRINA
-Millions wasted on four no-bid contracts, including paying $20 million for an unusable camp for evacuees. [Homeland Security Department Inspector General, 9/10/08]
-$2.4 billion in contracts doled out by FEMA that guaranteed profits for big companies. [Center for Public Integrity investigation, 6/25/07]
-An estimated $2 billion in fraud and waste — nearly 11 percent of the $19 billion spent by FEMA on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as of mid-June. [New York Times tally, 6/27/06]
-“Widespread” waste and mismanagement on millions for Katrina recovery, including at least $3 million for 4,000 beds that were never used. [GAO, 3/16/06]

DEFENSE CONTRACTS
-A $50 million Air Force contract awarded to a company with close ties to senior Air Force officers, in a process “fraught with improper influence, irregular procedures, glaring conflicts of interest.” [Project on Government Oversight, 4/18/08]
-$1.7 billion in excessive fees and waste paid by the Pentagon to the Interior Department to manage federal lands. [Defense Department and Interior Department Inspectors General audit, 12/25/06]
-$1 trillion unaccounted for by the Pentagon, including 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units. [GAO, 5/18/03]down the Bush legacy.

Fresh Horses for My Dems!

2008-09-20T11:19:00.000-07:00

We’ve had a rough ride during the past week.

On Monday our stock market fell 500 points. Later that day, Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin checked under her bed to make sure she had plenty of dry goods stockpiled, in case the Rapture starts early and Republicans head en masse for the haven of Alaska. She also gave the National Guard orders to turn back Democrats and other heathens at the state line.

Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain struck a stately pose and pointed out that the “Fundamentals of our economy are strong.”

On Tuesday President Bush appeared in the Rose Garden to reassure us there was no reason to panic. He stared into the teleprompter, apparently noticed someone wearing an Obama button (insert your own plausible explanation here if you don’t like mine), got miffed and stalked back into the White House without delivering his soothing recommendation to gas up and go shopping at WalMart.

Later that day Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain struck another stately pose and said, with the stern voice of conviction, that he opposed any bailout of insurance giant AIG.

On Wednesday Republican Presidential candidate John McCain reversed his career-long position in favor of Deregulation, explaining we need more regulation to stop Obama from ruining the economy. Then he said that if he were President he would fire Colonel Sanders, the CEO of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Hmmm... does the Deregulation McCain previously supported permit dead mascots to hold CEO positions?

Later that day McCain struck another stately pose (he has three, unless he is campaigning with Palin, in which case he has none) and said, with the stern voice of conviction, that he supported the newly announced bailout of insurance giant AIG.

On Thursday my cable and Internet crashed. Mustering every ounce of intellectual strength to stave off a paranoid fear that Patriot Act goons were trying to silence the righteous howl of my blog, I popped open a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse and downed it with a box of Christmas truffles I found in the back of my freezer, figuring it was as good a time as any to write a poem about elitism, or at least to get drunk. “McCain has nine houses, not seven,” I wrote. “Obama lived on food stamps and organized the poor in heaven,” I continued. Realizing I was a better drunk than a poet, I passed out.

On Friday morning I awoke to find that my cable was back up, that President Bush has proposed we bail out the stock market with taxpayer funds we don’t have and aren’t likely to pull out of our asses any time soon, and that the stock market was soaring in joyous appreciation. Brokers scampered like geckos up their skyscraper walls to windows they had jumped from earlier in the week, chanting, “Greed is Good.” Well, what would YOU do if your neighbors took up a collection and paid off your credit card debt, your mortgage and your car loans, then dropped that pesky lawsuit against you for stealing Social Security checks from their mailboxes?

Now it’s Monday again.

The dust is settling from last week’s stock market crash (Adjustment, my portfolio!) and the bailout, in the morning sunlight, doesn’t look nearly as good as when we dragged it home from the bar over the weekend. It looks tired and old, like something we’ve seen before… remember the Patriot Act? This, too, was hastily crafted to meet an emergency, and Congress was so pressured to pass it that many didn’t read its provisions.

Now Bush is pressuring Congress to “act urgently” again, and greenlight a bailout that is sloppier than an unwanted sexual advance from Bill O’Reilly: It would give the Bush administration the authority to spend $700 BILLION on the bailout, plus economic intervention powers so sweeping that they have no precedent in U.S. history. The Treasury would be empowered to act unilaterally. No court or administrative body could review its decisions, and once the “emergency legislation” is approved, Bush could raise the $700 Billion by methods not subject to Congress’ traditional power of the purse.

Somewhere in the plan, there probably is also a no-bid contract waiting to be assigned to Haliburton.

So, what strategic watering hole should we head for now?

Should we say, “No!” to the bailout, creating another battlefront in our contentious Presidential race?

Should we make room in the Presidential debate for those who believe the financial crisis was staged, much as they think 9-11 was staged, to distract us from the real issues of the economy, the war and the economy?

Should we fake a heart attack for Joe Biden so he can gracefully resign his candidacy, clearing a path for Hillary to arrive in shining armor on a white steed and save us? (Anyone who can guess the number of friends who have suggested exactly that will win my Bear-Stearns stock.)

Induce a collective medical coma that will last until the morning of November 5, leaving strict instructions to revive us only for President Obama’s acceptance speech? Failing that, should we donate our bodies to medical research in another country, since science will no longer be funded in a McCain/Palin America?

No. Those are loser moves.

Instead, we should stop pretending this isn’t a fight to the death for the freedoms we cherish, because that’s exactly what it is, and devote our time to phone banking, registering new voters, volunteering to drive shut-ins to the polls, and generally behaving like winners.

Innkeeper! Fresh horses for my Dems!

I Know You Are but What Am I?

2008-09-15T13:37:00.000-07:00

I don’t want to join the not-so-civil War of the Sisterhood that is now raging in the media and the blogosphere. But the snowballing polarization of women’s views has drafted me into it.

Leave it to the Republican Party to blindside Democrats with their divide-and- conquer coup. Setting aside for a moment the cynical sub-text of choosing an unqualified Vice Presidential candidate on the strategic basis of her sex, McCain has so undermined the woman’s point of view that it is pulling apart like a zygote separating into twins. Which half of the view is more viable?

Sarah Palin apologists claim she is the victim of a “Shock-and-Awe” sexist attack launched by the angry left.

Mooseshit.

Voices from the Left, Middle, and even occasionally the Right have attacked Ms. Palin's views because she (1) condones the war in Iraq as “God’s Plan” for America; (2) is dedicated to repealing Roe V. Wade and thereby aborting our reproductive rights; (3) does not believe global warming is man-made and wants polar bears removed from the endangered species list even as the ice cap melts beneath their paws; (4) claims to be against earmarks even though just this year she sent Sen. Ted. Stevens, R-Alaska, a proposal for 31 earmarks totaling $197 million, more per person than any other state (www.nytimes.com). I doubt that a single disappointed Clinton supporter would lend one second of sympathy to Palin if she were a... he.

Would anyone claim that an interviewer had been “mean” to Joe Biden?.

Would anyone feel sorry for Joe if the interviewer uncovered his lack of knowledge about a policy vital to his party’s record?.

Would any members of the opposition party cry foul if Joe were asked to explain his inconsistent positions on key campaign issues?

Palin supporters contend that I and other feminists can’t critique her views, her record and her weaknesses without being labeled sexist. There is no Presidential race in broadcast history that hasn’t examined candidates and their running mates from every angle, including the one normally visible only during a colonoscopy. Why should Ms. Palin get a girl-pass?

I am offended by those who defend Ms. Palin against all criticism and lump every negative observation about her into the Sexist bag… and I am enraged when Republicans pretend they can’t tell the difference between sexism and legitimate inquiry. I agree that remarks such as Bill Maher’s, “Palin thinks the Bush doctrine is a rule against the removal of pubic hair” are sexist. But that doesn’t mean I can’t point out the real issue: Palin didn’t know what the Bush doctrine is. And it doesn’t mean that, once it was explained to her, I can’t recognize the implications of her vehement defense of pre-emptive strikes against other nations. CRITICIZING HER FOR THIS POSITION IS NOT SEXIST.

From exactly what jar of Pablum is the Right trying to spoon-feed us? Republicans are now claiming to have “liberated” women from the “fear politics” of losing our reproductive freedoms, as if such a loss were a preposterous notion. Here, in McCain’s own words, is his position on the choice issue: "If I am fortunate enough to be elected as the next President of the United States, I pledge to you to be a loyal and unswerving friend of the right to life movement." (Statement by Sen. McCain read by Sen. Sam Brownback at the March for Life in Washington, DC, January 22, 2008.)

Before dismissing McCain’s statement as pacification of the GOP base, remember that he: Voted anti-choice 125 out of 130 times in his Congressional career; Voted for the global gag rule, which prohibits federally funded family-planning clinics from giving women full information about their reproductive-health options; Voted for and co-sponsored the Federal Abortion Ban; Voted in favor of anti-choice Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts. Google it and weep, ladies.

Yesterday on This Week with George Stephanopoulous, RNC Victory Fund Chair Carly Fiorino scoffed that American women are no longer one-issue voters. Meaning, since we don’t have to worry about the “fear politics” of Palin’s position on choice, we also don’t have to worry about her position on, say, the environment. (Palin aggressively opposed the "clean water initiative" on the August ballot in Alaska, favoring instead foreign mining company desires for fewer government regulations controlling their toxic effluent into salmon streams. She has supported oil and gas drilling plans anywhere in Alaska, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the central Arctic, the entire Arctic Ocean, and in fish-rich Bristol Bay and Cook Inlet. Source: Seattlepi.nwsource.com)

But even more annoying in the She-Said/ She-Said arguments was when, on the same Stephanopoulous show, Ms. Fiorino claimed that Sarah Palin responded to corruption in Alaska by raising her hands and crying out, “Enough!”

I don’t care if Republican candidates appear in the upcoming Presidential debates wearing blackface and touting their community organizing credentials. I don’t care if Democrats and Republicans meet in secret at the end of the day and drink toasts to Absolute Power with human blood in champagne glasses. I don’t care if Obama grabs his fake rubber face by the chin and pulls it up to reveal a green mass of tentacles the day after he wins the election.

The stakes in this election are too high to lose sight of the critical issues: I want my reproductive rights. I want to protect our environment and curtail global warming. I want tax breaks for the working class as well as for the rich. I want Neo-cons to reclaim our national prestige from the latrines of Abu Graib where they dumped it. I want my state and your church to remain separate. And I am much more likely to get one or more of these results with Joe Biden in the White House instead of Sarah Palin.

Does that make me a sexist?

I know you are, but what am I?

Scared Like Me...

2008-09-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday an otherwise liberal friend confided that he feared an Obama Presidential win might “unleash Black rage.”

Since then I’ve examined this issue from a personal feelings standpoint: Maybe this is one of those racial secrets that simmer just below the tender skin between our collective subconscious and the voting booth. Do millions of Americans fear retribution from Blacks?

Let’s take a leap… If I were black instead of a middle-aged white woman… no, let’s take a bigger leap.

If I were a black MAN, would a President Obama make me feel entitled to avenge the three-hundred-year history of racial atrocities committed against me and my ancestors by burning, raping, pillaging, looting and otherwise expressing my Black rage? Would it be payback time for every White person who has veered away as we passed on a sidewalk, or hastily locked a car door because I was in pole-vaulting proximity to it, or nervously fidgeted while riding alone with me in an elevator?

How would I go about expressing my rage, exactly? Would I jeopardize my family’s security by risking arrest, imprisonment and maybe my life? Would I humiliate my mother and my pastor by creating an ugly headline? Would I tar President Obama and millions of black Americans with the steaming brush of my Black rage? Would I open a new bakery that specialized in selling Blue-Eyed Devil cakes?

I don’t think so.

If I were a Black man the day after an Obama Presidential win, I think I would be filled with joy. When I stopped celebrating in the streets and all the parties finally ended, even in the White neighborhoods, I would return home to my own bed wondering if I were dreaming. I would lay my head down on my pillow and, for the first time in my life, breathe a deep, cleansing sigh of relief that the bad old days were over. No Klansmen would come for me now, not even in my nightmares. The next day I would notice that Whites looked at me a little differently… not necessarily with respect, but with less pre-judgment… and with less fear.

And I would smile and say “Good Day.”

Somebody Shoot a Moose!

2008-09-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

If Hollywood really marches in lockstep to a Democratic bias, will it PUL-EEZE show us Dems a thing or two about showmanship?

Nobody wants to hear about a health care plan that will save lives and kick the greedy insurance companies in their fat, pampered keesters… we want explosions!

And nobody cares about restructuring income taxes so the privileged rich will have to stop getting even filthier rich with unfair tax cuts that ignore the working majority… we want sex! Illicit sex, if you’ve got it!

And who isn’t sick of arguing over whether or not the surge worked? What surge? What war? What sad roster of baby-faced 19-year-olds who died on Iraqi soil? We want special effects! How about a pale, wrinkled ghost of a presidential candidate who is led around on a leash by his running mate, a former beauty queen who is a dead shot, with her sights set on reproductive rights? It’s OK if she wears glasses, as long as she wears skirts instead of pantsuits.

Come on, Hollywood… show us Dems how to take back the national spotlight! Should we fabricate an outrageous lie and repeat it again and again and again until, thanks to name recognition, it becomes the truth? Should we co-opt the Republican Platform for change and brazenly claim it as our own? (Wait a minute… no good, Republicans already did that.) Should we ask the Makeup Department to put lipstick on O’Bama and Biden? Appeal to hockey moms with a “Save the Pit Bulls” campaign? Sell bumper stickers that brag, “Michelle Can Beat up Cindy?” What, Hollywood, WHAT?

Somebody shoot a moose.

Raindrops on Roses...

2008-09-09T12:05:00.000-07:00

I admit it. I bait-and-switched you. Today’s post is not about raindrops or roses or whiskers on kittens… it’s about torture.

Wait, don’t go away! Humor me! For all of us who haven’t written a dark, disturbing poem since our high school genius days, I present the following. Today is my birthday and I’ll write poetry if I want to!

THE VENGEFUL BELLS

Who speaks for the tortured
Dead, outside cafeterias
Where high school teachers
Write poetry but have
Never bled?

Are the dead well-spoken
Of in the street, by passers by
Who have seen their faces
In photo features but
Forgot them in a week?

Are they mentioned in
The sanctity of our homes
Where other arguments rage
And denial is the only way
To assuage our tarnished hopes?

The tortured dead could tell us
What the reasons were, why
Americans preferred to see them
Naked before they died, in piles
Like Auswitch bones.

They saw how lies multiply
Exponentially, putting hearts
And minds on hold, chasing
Away the last dim lights
That flicker in torturers’ souls.

Who doesn’t want to leave
The tortured dead in their graves,
Move on to new
Distractions, erase the memory
Of Abu Graib?

We want to forget but
Can’t, forgetting isn’t the
Same as not knowing, we
Are subject to history’s judgment
And the vengeful bells still tolling.

Brand New Bag of Jesus

2008-09-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

Anyone watching Sarah Palin wrinkle her nose with delight as she busted O’Bama’s balls in her convention speech had to realize that she was enjoying her work and felt chosen to do it... not just by the GOP but by the Supreme Being Himself.

With her feet planted firmly on a bible, she stood her ground like a messenger who has inherited the GOP’s mission from God, and gave her constituents just what they desperately needed: A brand-new bag of Jesus, an opiate for the red-state masses to help them forget that their party and its elected representatives led us into a needless war, ruined our economy, and denigrated our constitution.

Inhaling the euphoria, Republicans are now absolved of responsibility. Washed clean of Guilt. Re-baptized in the fire of moral superiority. And entitled to keep doing whatever God tells them to do with our lives, our children’s lives and our futures.

Yes. Entitled.

All progressive voters have wondered why the working poor so often support right-wing agendas that work against their best interests, ever widening the gap between the poor, middle and wealthy classes. Why are the issues of abortion and gun control and same-sex marriage so sexy that the working poor will take the Neo-Con side against them, ignoring tax cuts for the rich while bankruptcy laws are weakened, minimum wages are undermined and unemployment soars?

Entitlement.

The working poor may not have a family tree linking them to the Rockefellers, as the Bush family does, and they may not live on the Right side of the tracks where all the good schools are located, and they may not have the education and social credentials of the tax-advantaged rich, but there is one sense of entitlement they still can enjoy: Being Right, with God on their side.

Never mind that, according to the very bible which the GOP has commandeered as its soapbox, Jesus was a kick-ass radical who disrupted business in the financial district. Never mind that the bible says rich men have the same odds of entering heaven as a camel has of passing through a needle’s eye. The fat cats have opiated the working poor with the illusion that God would rather give tax cuts to oil billionaires than reproductive choices to women.

I have no quarrel with Christians or with women who choose motherhood over abortion. Even Sarah Palin’s child, whose choice in the matter of keeping her baby probably was the only one her family would permit her to make, still had… a choice. That’s the point.

I do, however, resent the one toke over the line euphoria of the non-issue, non-substance, non-change Republican popularity surge. I know it’s hard to find your shoes and car keys, pilgrims, but FOCUS. We have an economy to rebuild… a constitution to repair… Cities to revitalize… Alternate energy sources to invent…Workable health care to wrest from the hands of the pharmaceutical and insurance lobbies. That’s a lot of work to do if you’re stoned on the promises of a party whose idea of change is a reactionary politician who has already tried to ban books from a local library, and who would deny an abortion to a 14-year-old rape or incest victim. Sarah Palin has taken and would take these positions again… not just against her own children, but against OURS.

Instead of watching the party lights from afar, and worrying that the GOP’s brand new bag of Jesus will sweep enough votes through the needle’s eye to crash the gates of heaven, let’s sober up and concentrate on returning power to the people.

Don’t bogart that power joint, my Republican friends… pass it over to us.

THE MORNING AFTER

2008-09-05T07:36:00.000-07:00

Can you remember a time in your life when you were so blue you couldn’t pep-talk your way out of the mood, couldn’t convince yourself that everyone is fired at least once in a lifetime, couldn’t erase the image of your lover and best friend doing it doggie style when the elevator door opened, a time when the only plausible exit from your personal hell was to tie one on?

Maybe you lined up shots at a bar. Got shit-faced on medical marijuana. Dropped some X. Whatever. All you knew was that, as the evening unfolded, your life, on this planet, in this universe, began to look and feel and taste and smell and sound… fabulous. That stubble on the bartender’s chin was amazingly sexy… and her jewelry was to die for. The dealer who delivered your drugs was a mathematical genius… no one had ever explained the theory of relativity to you so clearly, and while hand- drumming the theme to Jaws on your coffee table, too. The stranger you met halfway through the night was the soul-mate you’d been searching for since middle school, with a noble brow, charmingly receding chin, and one or two cold sores that you could easily kiss around, if only you could remember where you saw them.

Finally, having accomplished your goal of forgetting your troubles, your brain synapses wasted from transmitting all those pleasure signals, your higher cognitive functions exhausted from all that suspension of disbelief, you found somebody’s bed and crashed in it.

And then. A drum roll. A cymbal clash. The next morning in present time. You wake up.

There, tangled in the sheets with you, is your Grandpa and the high school counselor who suspended you for smoking in the restroom. They are naked.

Get used to this level of oh-shit remorse. After the intoxicating confetti of the GOP convention has been brushed out of your hair and off the air waves, after the euphemisms about everyone joining hands and closing ranks and fighting the enemy have stopped echoing, after the communal tears over sad stories about POW camps and the crash of ‘29 and the Bubonic Plague caused by Bill Clinton have dried, we are going to ask questions. Like:

Huh?

What about health care, kindly white-haired gentleman?

Ma'am? You know all that oil and gas you say is in Alsaka? Didn’t we used to have oil and gas in Texas? Didn’t it eventually dry up? Yes, Ma'am. I’m sorry, I know I have a bad habit of thinking instead of praising the Lord. By the way, what’s that shade of lipstick you’re wearing? Pit Bull by Estee Lauder? Yes, Ma'am, I know I shouldn’t try to lure boys, and it’s my own fault if I get pregnant, and I will go to hell if I don’t stop using my Sonicare to masturbate. Uh, Ma'am? How did you know about that?

Kindly white-haired gentleman, do you promise on a stack of bibles that Dick Cheney will move out of his secret bunker in the White House basement after the election? Oh… as soon as his gun collection is crated up? I guess that’ll be OK, then…

And one more thing, Sir… what should I do about this pink slip I got yesterday? Move to India? Jeez, I am so dumb… if I were prouder of America, I might have thought of that myself.

Are you laughing yet? You shouldn’t be. The GOP has just side-stepped eight of the most dismal years in American history with a glib, rosy, untrue depiction of how it will change America with no plan, no hindsight, no foresight, and no insight.

How will you feel when you wake up the morning after our upcoming election?

Don’t count on undoing a polling-place mistake with a Morning-After pill.

Skirting the Issues

2008-09-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

The GOP harumphed in advance of Sarah Palin’s convention speech that she didn’t have to appear knowledgeable or experienced… all she had to do was make viewers like her. I watched. I listened. But, like her?

It is said that, as a small child, Einstein was terrified by the spectacle of goose-stepping soldiers. With a child’s intuitive awareness, he feared that only harm would come from anything so relentlessly synchronized.

I leap in advance of potential critics to acknowledge that I am no Einstein. But as I watched the inexorable 1-2-3-4-5-6 punch of Ms. Palin’s scripted remarks, I felt the hair stand up on my neck: I am plenty smart enough to recognize a politician skirting the issues.

1. I don’t like it that Palin skirted the issue of our imploding, Republican-ravaged economy by threatening that O’Bama will raise taxes while McCain will make the economy all better and cool and good again. Somehow. (Never mind that Senator O’Bama’s proposed tax increases do not apply to 95% of taxpayers. Remember, Palin doesn’t have to be knowledgeable.)

2. I don’t like it that Palin skirted the issue of our nation’s torture-damaged moral credibility by sneering that O’Bama is …”worried that someone won’t read ‘em (accused terrorists) their rights.” The explanation for this may be, as she stated in her speech, that she is “always proud” of America. I can’t help wondering… how proud did Sarah Palin feel when she saw the photographs of sexually humiliated Iraqi prisoners at Abu Graib, with leering American soldiers pointing to their genitals?

3. I don’t like it that she skirted the issue of America’s health care crisis with an empty promise of being a friend and advocate for parents of special-needs children… empty because the GOP has never, will never, won’t even pretend to ever, consider a national health care system that would benefit these and millions of other children.

4. I don’t like it that she skirted the vital issues of choice and women’s reproductive rights by parading her family before the cameras and lining them up on stage, as if… wink-wink, nod-nod… their sheer number was sufficient comment.

5. I don’t like it that she skirted the issue of our catastrophic need to develop green energy alternatives by paying lip service to “solar, wind and geothermal” options (wasn’t that a 70s rock group?) while making the absurd claim that we have enough oil and gas in Alaska to become independent of foreign oil producers, in this or any other lifetime.

6. But most of all, I don’t like it that she skirted the issue of McCain’s probable extension of a right-wing agenda by claiming, as if describing how Jesus suffered on the cross for our sins, that the torture he endured in Viet Nam means that there is “only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you.” Not so. Endurance is admirable, but it is not the only way to fight. Organizing to empower the downtrodden poor may be a punch line in Ms. Palin’s routine, but it is a courageous effort on behalf of Americans, dignified by real grit without the need for mythologizing.

Like Sarah Palin? She is the hypocritical GOP version of a Trojan horse. If we welcome her through the gateway to political power in this election, we will watch as she unleashes the inevitable outcome of her one-sided, narrow views, as she champions the rights of the Right while ignoring… or harming… those who wish to grow in different directions.

As for my coy reference to the way Ms. Palin skirted the issues, I point out that Hillary, who was narrowly eliminated as a Presidential candidate, never skirts the issues… she wears pant suits.

Republicans Just Wanna Have Fun...

2008-09-02T14:23:00.000-07:00

OK, all you Democrats having hissy-fits because John McCain appointed a scene-stealing beauty queen for his VP… don’t you know that Republicans just wanna have fun?

By planting Sarah Palin’s glowing peach of a face next to his, McCain isn’t just flipping a fun-loving bird to concerns about a 72-year-old cancer survivor in the White House. Since Sarah makes him look like even more of a reanimated cadaver than he already does, he's gambling that America will get the joke that Sarah is way more interesting than all those dumb economic issues that threaten us. Let’s all wave a flag and dance the two-step!

And my goodness, even if we don’t feel happy, can’t we at least act as if we are? Let’s stop reading into the somber, heart-breaking expression on Bristol Palin’s face as she stands before the cameras, her pregnancy concealed by a baby brother and a big blanket, that she might be feeling lost and confused. Let’s stop wondering what on earth that poor, exploited child might have been thinking. Get with it… who cares about one pregnant girl’s happiness when everyone is onstage having so much fun, secure in the knowledge that everything happens for the best in this best of all possible worlds?

Just get over it, Dems, that McCain has a woman VP candidate and we don’t. Let’s all be good feminists and support Sarah because she has a vagina. Let’s ignore her 2006 statement that she would oppose abortion even if her own child had been raped, because she always “chooses life.” And isn’t it lucky that her abstinence-only sex education views will likely result in so many more of those lives, as demonstrated by how well abstinence deterred teenage pregnancy in her own family? And holy cow, Democrats, let’s not make a federal case out of it because, at the time Governor Palin made her comment, Alaska's rape rate was an abysmal 2.2 times above the national average and 25 percent of all those rapes resulted in unwanted pregnancies.

And just shut UP, you Hillary supporters who feel insulted that Palin has a shot at the White House without having supported any of the feminist issues to which Hillary Clinton devoted a lifetime of talent and passion. What are you… humorless bra-burners?

Admit it, you wimpy Dems... plenty of our relatives, neighbors and coworkers have cockamamie views, which we tolerate and wouldn't dream of challenging. What's the diff if the leaders of our country also have some wacky views... like, global warming is a natural occurrence that has nothing to do with pollution of the atmosphere and our assault on the ozone layer, that creationism should be taught in public schools as an alternative to science, that polar bears should be taken off the endangered species list, etc. etc. Are you scared because leaders whose views defy logic are in a position to legislate and control our lives? Then, lighten up and do what Governor Sarah does... deny your human vulnerability... board that plane even though you have already started labor... and become what every patriot adores, a cowboy... or cowgirl. Yee-Haw!

Join the Republican fun-fest and get happy, Democrats. Through sheer genius and force of will, the Republicans have generated a blizzard of speculation to distract voters from the past eight years of scandal, stupidity and outright larceny perpetrated by the Bush administration. Wow! How fun is that!

Let’s all lower our expectations… sharpen our shit-swallowing skills… and practice ignoring the real issues facing the world, our nation and each other. Otherwise, we might have to ask ourselves… did we really think this election would be a day at Disneyland? Did we really think the moral corruption of the past two Republican terms would just go away after November 8th? Did we really think we wouldn’t have to face the Republican steam-roller and fight to take back America?

*****

Quote of the Day: A feminist does not support another woman because of her sex, regardless of her views; a feminist supports another woman because of her views, regardless of her sex. – Pat Kaye

Stupid Is a Four-Letter Word... No, Wait, that's Fear

2008-08-30T12:27:00.000-07:00

by Guest Blogger Nikky Slocum, Louisville, KY

I am NOT Stupid.

I just watched the acceptance speech for the democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama. In this year of 2008, when I have experienced many personal hardships, I once again feel a fire burning deep within my soul. Yes, it was just a speech, delivered by a man, but America, it was a black man with a powerful message and I could feel his passion coming through my television and burning right into my soul.

At this moment, after midnight, I write this never being more proud to be an American, a Democrat, and a Woman. Already people are calling, writing, and blogging like myself, and some are saying, “Yeah it was a nice speech, but that’s all it was, a speech.”

Do you mean to tell me, America, that you have had me entrust my beloved country for the last eight years to a man who cannot put together two words in a grammatically correct sentence… yet tonight, already, some are telling me I am dumb or young for buying into Barak’s “pretty” speech. Don’t insult my intelligence. I get it. I understand it was a speech to inspire us, and that’s just what it did.

Now the Republicans’ job is to continue dividing the Democratic Party. They have perfected this method of politicking over the last eight years. Divide and conquer is the oldest strategy in the world. They are using Hillary, the woman I voted for in the Primary, a great, strong Democratic woman for whom I have the greatest admiration and respect, to spin the media that all women who were going to vote for Hillary are now going to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket. They need to divide Democrats to win the vote.

Fellow American women, we are not as DUMB as Republicans think we are. I have faith we can rise above their strategy, call it for what it is, and walk into that booth on election day and vote where our hearts take us… because we are not weak. I voted in the Democratic Primary loving BOTH of these candidates, believing they both held the same beliefs and were passionate about the same ideals as I am, knowing full well that I would vote for whoever won the nomination. The Republican spin is that the only people who are “buying” into Obama’s speeches are either YOUNG or DUMB. Well, I am a 36 year old CPA and the single mother of two young boys, and I AM NOT FALLING FOR IT. I am not stupid.

Now let’s talk about FEAR
Face it, a lot of people fear O’Bama because he is black. Hate to state it so clearly, but I call it like I see it. These people have deep-rooted racism embedded in their souls and are not strong enough to stand up and admit when they are wrong or go against the people who instilled this fear in their hearts. Otherwise, they already would have done so. I think they are lost. We can only hope their children will be stronger than they have been.

Fear of differing religious beliefs... I say to this fearful group one fragment of a sentence: separation of church and state. Don’t tell me what religion to practice and I promise not to force mine upon you.

Fear that change will ACTUALLY be realized… because O’Bama is young and idealistic and passionate. Companies have entire training sessions to deal with employees going through changes within their corporations. Books have been written about accepting change (i.e. Who Moved My Cheese) and people who are not accepting of it are left floundering behind.
We need to walk together, face our fears, and come together again as ONE nation. Those who cannot embrace change and move forward need to get the HELL out of our way.

In Their Place

2008-08-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

The time was not long ago. Even if you were born after it curled into a ball in a corner of history, it still reaches for you. If it cannot touch you directly, it reaches you by touching those you know, or depend on or love.

With skinned knees and messy braids, I escaped this ugly time. But I sometimes hear it breathing behind me, insinuating that I belong to it. I do not. But I will never put it to rest. Only my children, and their children, can break free from it completely. Look at my white skin. It burns when I remember.

*****

As the civil rights movement heats up, Life magazine educates American readers on the torturous passage from slavery to the ghetto. I turn the pages of the article and the backs of my retinas recoil from the photographic images… are they real? White men have lined up to pose for the camera, holding shotguns on their shoulders. Proudly they display a black man on his knees, trussed to a yoke. He is dead. His skin is crackled, hanging in shreds. He has been burned alive. Like big game hunters with a kill, the men stare into the camera and smile proudly. This can’t be possible, I think. This lynching happened after the camera had been invented, not hundreds of years ago. I feel sick. The horrific image follows me into my nightmares.

*****

“How can you be in favor of integration?” the boyfriend of my best friend in high school demands to know. “They’re human beings,” I tell him. “They have a right to the same freedoms as every other American.” He shakes his head and stares at me with pitying eyes. “You are so ignorant,” he says. “Don’t you know that colored people aren’t human?”

*****

Now I am carpooling to work for my first job. We are discussing the number one topic of the day, school bussing as an antidote to de facto segregation. The driver this week is a man in his late thirties, the father of three small children. “I am not a bigot,” he insists. “I like colored people just fine, as long as they stay in their place.” I tell him that’s what everyone says who wants to cling to their prejudices without feeling guilty. “You might as well say that if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile,” I tell him. He is silent for a moment. “They will,” he says.

*****

My family sits transfixed in front of the television. Detroit is in flames. In a banner headline, today’s newspaper says simply, “Burn, Baby, Burn!”

“First Watts and now this,” my father says. “Where is this going to end?”

“But Dad,” I say, “maybe the only way they can get their rights is to demand them. Wouldn’t you feel like burning down the ghetto if you had to live in it because you’re white? Haven’t you always taught us that all people are the same beneath the color of their skin?”

My father looks worried. “Well, sure, we’re all equal,” he says. “But I don’t want them moving into our neighborhood.”

“What? Daddy, don’t you believe in brotherhood, like you always taught us?”

My father doesn’t meet my eyes as he says, “Yes, but I don’t want our property values to drop.”

*****

These ugly times, along with other events like witch-burnings and public hangings, seem far in the past, relics of eras we have since transcended. But I remember the ironic twist that propelled us into a more righteous future. After the fires burned out in Detroit and the embers stopped smoking and the politicians climbed down from their soapboxes, no one, ever again, said they liked colored people as long as they stayed in their place. But that doesn’t mean it’s safe to say, “Hallelujah!” The hate and fear and guilt of yesterday’s racism simmer in the dark corners of our collective subconscious.

Somebody turn on the lights.

Ha-Ha-Ha, Paris Is Burning

2007-05-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

What is wrong with all the TV talk-show commentators and guest experts who are peeing their pants with glee over Paris Hilton’s prison predicament? Sure, Paris is a rich, spoiled brat who could learn a lesson or two. So what?

Is that any reason to salivate on national TV while describing the cavity search Paris will have to endure while “other inmates look on?”

Or repeat ad nauseum the cliché that, “Jail is no Hilton.”

Or crow that, “She won’t sleep on 400-thread-count sheets in the slammer.” (I guess these news hounds don’t get the Neiman Marcus catalog. Paris wouldn’t be caught dead sleeping on anything less than 1,200-thread-count sheets.)

And, umm… why is it only women journalists spewing this vitriol through bared teeth and fogged-up glasses, while their male counterparts give the same news only passing attention? On the May 14th Nancy Grace show, an otherwise sane guest host expressed her outrage that Paris should receive $100,000 per appearance at parties. “Hey,” she said. “I’m available.”

Yes, dear. We know you are.

If all these blood-sniffing female commentators are so enjoying Paris’ humiliation, punishment, and compromised personal safety, why don’t they volunteer to become interrogators at one of our government’s top-secret Black Sites? Surely, there are young, blonde, slender, fashionably dressed, sexually liberated, spoiled rotten terrorists, famous for absolutely nothing, who deserve their attention.

Sisterhood is powerful… except in the litter box.

Stopping a Beating Heart

2007-02-13T09:23:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday while waiting at a red light, I noticed this bumper sticker on the car ahead of me: “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart.”

The ad copywriter in me thought, “Wow, what an emotionally powerful slogan.” Then my feminist brain kicked in. At exactly what point, I wondered, does the fetal heartbeat begin? (40 weeks from conception, I learned today.) And what about the mother’s heartbeat… what about her future, her feelings, her life?

Equivocation aside, in most cases an abortion does stop a beating heart. So why, when I can’t go to an animal shelter without agonizing over the puppies I leave behind, when my heart swells with tenderness at the sight of a baby’s face, related to me or not, do I stand so firmly as a pro-choice advocate?

Another way of phrasing this conflict: Can I preserve a choice I believe is fundamental to a woman’s freedom without sacrificing that part of conscience that instinctively protects the small and helpless?

Yes, I can.

Pro-life supporters often use abortion as a handle for dragging the dead horse of their oppressive convictions through everyone else’s rights. “Pro-life” implies support for the vibrancy of living. But typically, those with pro-life views oppose sex education, premarital sex, the distribution of condoms to protect teenagers from contracting AIDS, same-sex parent adoptions of children who might otherwise languish in institutions, and most importantly, social welfare programs to support the unwanted children and unqualified parents who would proliferate without the option of legal abortion. These views do not support life. They punish it.

Pro-lifers wave the flag of a moral code from centuries ago, one in which all sex outside of marriage is promiscuous, one that defines sexually active single women as immoral while excusing the same behavior in men as “normal.” In this punitive view, women who fail society by having sex outside of marriage deserve the burden of an unwanted pregnancy. But when pregnancy is enforced as a punishment, it is the unwanted child it creates that suffers most.

I know that many decent, caring people hold pro-life views. At the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC three years ago, as marchers passed the pro-life contingent near the end of the march route, I saw an elderly woman, probably a grandmother, holding a “ Choose Life” placard. She seemed bravely alone as nearly a million pro-choice marchers streamed by. I wondered: was she genuinely heartbroken over the loss of aborted lives? Did her concern for life prompt her to contribute to the homeless? Oppose the war in Iraq? One thing I know for certain is that she was never forced by pro-choice opinion to have an abortion against her will. By definition, “pro-choice” has no agenda to influence decisions to have, or not to have, babies. It merely provides an opportunity to act in accordance with individual conscience.

Yes, not counting the morning-after pill (which pro-lifers also oppose), abortion after 40 days of pregnancy stops a beating heart. It’s too bad that pro-lifers don’t militate for a society that loves, wants and supports all children and every beating heart, including the ones already born. For now, though, abortion enables us to create wanted lives or not, and to consider ourselves courageous, not immoral, when we take responsibility for these choices.

Wipe that Bhirka off your Face!

2007-02-01T11:52:00.000-08:00

Of all the terrorist icons publicized after 9-11, none is creepier than the bhirka.

Legions of women all clothed in identical head-to-toe garments that, “bee-keeper suit” aside, are more akin to death shrouds. Every bhirka the same shade of blue. All made of polyester. All with plastic mesh facial inserts that permit just enough breathing to sustain life in public. (Bhirkas are not worn in the privacy of home.)

What sin did our Afghani sisters commit to ignite such hatred? Such contempt? Such a punitive taboo against public evidence of their humanity?

Ask somebody who wants to blame the victim… I’m more concerned about why so many girls and women in Western culture wear that bhirka equivalent, the ubiquitous, innocuous, totally disconnected from any genuine shred of feeling, pasted-on smile.

In the United States, there is a ritual devoted to smiling women. It’s called the Miss America Pageant, and if you doubt that a blinding smile isn’t key to winning it, try to imagine any Miss America, from any state, in any year, wearing a serious expression. You can’t. If Angelina Jolie, Beyonce Knowles, or Elizabeth Taylor in her prime entered the pageant and didn’t smile, they wouldn't have merely lost… they would have been expelled from the pageant. Refusing to smile is the only thing a contestant can do that is worse than agreeing to have premarital sex. (Although the practice may have been discontinued by now, in the eighties many Miss America contestants were required to sign chastity contracts.)

The proliferation of dental veneers is another reminder of how highly the female smile is valued. Veneers “changed my life,” beautiful young girls assure television viewers in commercials for Lumineers, the quick-and-easy smile fix. Their televised teeth are blindingly, unnaturally white… the upper-middle-class version of a rap artist’s blinged-out grill. Men get veneers too, but none of them claim that a perfect smile is life changing. In fact, outside of the incomprehensible and irritating smile of the man on the Bijan billboards, men don’t wear a smile as a prelude to speech, or as a badge identifying them as a “good” person. I’m sorry to say that women do.

On a recent airline trip, I watched a tall, beautiful, silver-haired woman in her sixties make her way down the aisle, wearing a pasted-on smile that was painful to witness. It seemed to announce her as someone who had sacrificed her life to being pleasant. It did nothing to mask the emotion in her eyes, which looked a lot like fear. Maybe, like many women, she was afraid that she hadn’t given enough, nurtured enough, accomplished enough, or agreed often enough to deserve her space in society.

I don’t exclude myself from the blanket of my opinion. When I am in public, people constantly smile at me. It always surprises me to realize that they are returning my own smile, which is part of my default expression, something so automatic I am no longer aware of it.

What’s wrong with an automatic, pasted-on smile? It doesn’t kill or injure anyone, other than potentially harming the psyche of the smiler. It might even serve a useful purpose… say, cheering up the onlooker, or reducing drug abuse, or preventing psychotics from slipping off the deep end, or … wait a minute. If there’s even a remote possibility that automatic smiles could yield such outcomes, why don’t we take men to task for not smiling enough? Oh. That’s right. As women, it’s OUR job to soothe society.

The trouble with smiling-as-a-duty is that the smile doesn’t stay on the face. It migrates through our breathing, our laughter, our guts, our psyches, our brains and, uh, our sexuality. What woman struggling to be nice, nurturing and inoffensive would dare to say, “No, dear, not there. About an inch higher and slightly to the left.”

I’m all for smiling when something is funny or when we’re happy. Otherwise…

Wipe that bhirka off your face.

Kissing Russell Crowe

2007-01-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

(I usually ask for responses to, not critiques of, my posts. But this time, I AM asking for your critiques. The following is a first draft of a piece I'm going to enter in an upcoming short-short fiction contest. Please read, and fire away:)

Languid on the snowy sheets. Satin. Or maybe clouds the angels rested on before winging into the forgetful sky. Smooth like that.

“What’s it like?” Jet asked.

“Like Mommy coming when you cry,” Lily said.

“No, really. If I’m going to try it, I want to know.”

“OK. Was there anything you wanted when you were a kid that you didn’t get? Something you cried and begged for?”

Jet laid back on the white down comforter at the foot of Lily’s bed, remembering. She said, “When I was five years old there
was this yellow organdy dress embroidered with daisies. It had a matching parasol, and that’s why I wanted it. I remember begging my mother and throwing myself on the floor and screaming for it. I got a spanking for doing that. Is it like getting that dress and parasol in all the colors of the rainbow?”

Lily stroked the cold ripples of the sheets. She said, “It’s like your mother told you she had something for you better than the dress. And then she showed you how to fly.”

“Wow. Do you feel like you’re flying now?”

Five minutes later Lily said, “No. Something better. Right now I’m kissing Russell Crowe.”

Jet smiled. I want to kiss him too,” she said.

The corneas of Lily’s eyes looked into the back of her head, so the whites fluoresced over her face.

“One thing,” she said. “You have to be able to take a punch.”

Through a Cat's Eyes

2006-09-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

All cats are beautiful. Even the hairless, bat-eared Spynx breed can stare down critics through luminous eyes, posing to call attention to its regal bearing and long, exquisite toes.

Are cats beautiful because they lavish themselves with care? Anyone who has watched a cat run its pink tongue between every extended toe must marvel at such unselfconscious grooming skills. Even when a cat grooms its private parts it lifts one leg into the air as gracefully as a prima ballerina on pointe.

As all cats are beautiful, why aren’t women? Most of us fall grotesquely short of our own standards of beauty, or rather, the standards our culture sets for us. If cats could read, they would roll their eyes at this. Probably even cats know that, when it comes to looks, women are held to a higher standard than men.

Who cares, our cats purr. Drifting asleep in our laps, they wonder why we don’t look at our mothers, our daughters, our sisters, our friends and ourselves as we look at them and they look at us: without standards… possessing the beauty of our own, unique natures. If we did, what would we see?

When we are young girls of seven or eight already comparing ourselves on the playground to classmates who are thinner, or wear more expensive clothes, we have our long, malleable lives ahead of us, every cell bathed in curiosity, and we are beautiful.

When we are 14-year-old models posing for a fashion magazine spread, and the photo-stagers are feeding us coke and the lies that we are different than other women, that we will never have bad hair days or fall in love with men who betray us, we trust and believe every lying word and we are beautiful.

When we are young women hoping to find husbands, and we think our noses are too big and our breasts are too small or the other way around, every inch of our bodies is covered in satin-smooth skin that sings to the babies that haven’t yet been born and calls to the men who will father them, and we are beautiful.

When we are lost and searching for ourselves and kneel to suck the cocks of men we hope will love us for it, and tattoo their names on our bodies, and whore ourselves and pay surgeons to give us breast implants and liposuction and lip injections so we can hide our ages, we are living in the world we landed in and we are beautiful.

When we have bourn our children or helped our sisters bear theirs, and we race to the brink of bankruptcy to pay for our sons’ and daughters’ summer drama camp tuition, or work three jobs so we can buy Christmas gifts, or make loans we know will never be repaid to sisters who are so grateful for our generosity that they are unable to say thank you, we are beautiful.

When we reach the tops of our professions by working twice as hard as men for half the salaries, we eat lunch at our desks instead of joining the boys for another round of golf and smile without complaining, and we are beautiful.

When we walk down the street and ask ourselves, “Is every last man on earth staring at my fat ass and my sagging breasts and my too-short legs?” we know the answer is yes, every man is, but we keep walking because we have places to go and don’t understand that we are what the world rocks around and always will, and we are beautiful.

And when our thighs turn white and billow like clouds laced with blue veins, and the tops of our hands wrinkle and our necks wattle like turkey skin and we think, “now I am old and ugly,” we forget the encouragement we have given to those who fell and the indignation we expressed to those who hated and betrayed and the courage with which we have delivered through our own bodies every generation, we are inordinately beautiful and because we don’t see this, we are doubly so.

Our cats know this. Maybe that’s why they hold open their unblinking eyes, so we may stare through these portals into a universe with more fascinating standards than our own, where we can see ourselves, not as we imagine ourselves to be, but as we so beautifully are.

Meow. Catnip on the house!

Ann, Meet Eva...

2006-06-16T12:45:00.000-07:00

Remember Eva Braun? She was to Hitler as Ann Coulter is to the NeoCon community… a perverted human being who acts out her sadistic fantasies under a coward’s umbrella, pretending to support an ideology when in reality she is masturbating in the laps of right-wing (OK, fascist) madmen.

It’s the smile that gives Ann away. As she knowingly tells lies designed to elicit outrage and speechless indignation, her eyes sparkle and her lips spread open to reveal her teeth, presumably capped to cover the sharpened points at talk show appearances. Eva Braun also loved the vicarious thrill of watching her master's propaganda wound its victims. She probably smiled, too. But that’s where the power ends for these pusillanimous cling-ons. Like the molls of serial killers who solicit junior high school girls for kidnap, rape and videotaped torture, Ann Coulter is merely a passive-aggressive go-fer for the Neo-Cons whose propaganda she claims to formulate. Anyone who heard the all-male cheerleader plants at her June 15th Jay Leno appearance realizes she’s a coward. Just like Dub-Yah, she won’t make an appearance without a loud and phony support group to corrupt genuine audience response.

Poor Ann. Secretly, she chafes under the burden of her role as NeoCon mascot. Her biggest fear is that, one day, she will blurt out a crazy opinion like, “poor people have feelings too,” whereupon her masters will get out their stun guns, encircle her, strip and make sport of her. No wonder she dutifully broadcasts their opinions in a tone of voice that barely suppresses her hysteria. And late at night, in her dreams, in her deepest, truest self, she is sickened by her pleasure in pulling off the wings of flies. She wonders what went wrong in her childhood. She wishes she could get some therapy. She wants to just forget the whole thing.

Too bad, Ann. Go to hell and take turns with Eva Braun sucking the greasy cocks of the war-mongering, fascist bastards who turn you on. They’re waiting for you with sharpened pencils.

Jogging in Neverland

2006-05-22T15:31:00.000-07:00

Two of my favorite women on earth recently gave birth to their first babies. Both women are strong, independent and intelligent. Both have journeyed far in pursuit of their hopes, dreams and ambitions. And both of them seem markedly different since becoming mothers, as if they have moved into a parallel universe called parenthood, while Peter and the rest of us kids are still jogging around Neverland waiting to sprout our donkey ears.

As a best friend, aunt and observer of life, I am the one lacing up my running shoes, wondering what kind of food they served on that Mommy boat I missed, jogging alone in the state of childlessness. Wow, it’s really fun here… I can buy cool stuff like metallic gold eyeliner. I have time to put it on and places to go where I can wear it. But as I jog around and around until my calf muscles merit “hot mama!” praise from Captain Hook, I can’t help but wonder: Do mothers experience a uniquely transforming experience, a trial-by-fire initiation into a level of maturity only a mother can achieve?

Moms? Are you reading me? I need some answers here. For starters, after courageously taking those risks that made you strong and independent, are you now, as it appears from back here in Neverland, completely surrendering your hearts and souls to nurturing your babies? If the answer is yes, does it make you feel connected to the universe by the same long, genetic string that puts sparkle into the stars? Or, (maybe and/or) do you understand why Andrea Yates woke up one morning, made her husband’s lunch and kissed him goodbye as he left for work, then filled the bathtub and methodically ran down all five of her babies?

Moms, now that you no longer are going on auditions, winning awards, slaying dragons, wearing hot pants and looking good in them, do you still know who you are? Are you proud of yourselves?

Alice Walker says that childbirth is heroic and all mothers are heroes. “Look around,” Ms. Walker says. “Every person you see entered this world through a woman’s body.”

Neverland pales.

Jogging in Neverland

2006-05-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

Two of my favorite women on earth recently had their first babies. One of them is pregnant again. Both women are strong, independent and intelligent. Both have journeyed far in pursuit of their hopes, dreams and ambitions. And both of them seem markedly different since becoming mothers, as if they have moved into a parallel universe called parenthood, while Peter and the rest of us kids are still jogging in Neverland waiting to sprout our donkey ears.

As a best friend, aunt and observer of life, I am the one lacing up my running shoes, wondering what kind of food they served on that Mommy boat I missed, jogging alone in the state of childlessness. Wow, it’s really fun here… I can buy cool stuff like metallic gold eyeliner. I have time to put it on and places to go where I can wear it. But as I jog around and around until my calf muscles merit “hot mama!” praise from Captain Hook, I can’t help but wonder: Do mothers experience a uniquely transforming experience, a trial-by-fire initiation into a level of maturity only a mother can achieve?

Moms? Are you reading me? I need some answers here. For starters, after courageously taking those risks that made you strong and independent, are you now, as it appears from back here in Neverland, completely surrendering your hearts and souls to nurturing your babies? If the answer is yes, does it make you feel connected to the universe by the same long, genetic string that puts sparkle into the stars? Or, (maybe and/or) do you understand why Andrea awoke one morning, made her husband's lunch and kissed him goodbye, filled the bathtub and methodically ran down all five of her babies?

Moms, now that you no longer are going on auditions, winning awards, slaying dragons, wearing hot pants and looking good in them, do you still know who you are? Are you proud of yourselves?

Alice Walker says that childbirth is heroic and all mothers are heroes. “Look around,” Ms. Walker says. “Every person you see entered this world through a woman’s body.”

Neverland pales.

Trusses and Knee-High Boots... Dressing for One's Age

2006-05-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

To dress appropriately for one’s age, one must first be willing to dress appropriately in general. This has never interested me.

Oh sure, I can climb into corporate drag with the best of them: ruffled white blouse, black suit, pearls, pantihose and high-heeled pumps. But this isn’t dressing. It’s earning a living. Functionally, it’s no different than the attire of young ladies strolling on Sunset Boulevard after midnight.

I dress to express myself, not to avoid offending someone else’s standard of what I should or shouldn’t wear. I do not, however, dress to shock, embarrass, or make anyone uncomfortable. For example, I wouldn’t attend a party with one breast draped in velvet burnout while my mastectomy site is exposed because hey, I can’t be arrested for indecent exposure when there’s nothing there to see, can I? I’ll leave that one to performance artists.

What can one expect to see me wear? Black. It’s a perfect foil for purple, flaming coral, fuchsia and all the other colors of passion. You will never see me wearing navy blue, however. Too may bad memories of Catholic school uniforms and prissy girls on the playground, who twirled their full, expensive skirts for no other reason than to ridicule my modest pleats. I haven’t worn pleats since then, either.

At this year’s Oscar soiree I wore a white eyelet tunic over black leggings and high-heeled white leather knee-high boots with lacy cutouts and scalloped cuffs. I felt like I was swooshing through a half&half surf in heaven... I felt like an avant-garde art exhibit on loan from Shag’s studio.

My friends oohed and aahed over the boots and gushed nonstop about how fabulous I looked. Maybe they were humoring me because I brought pastries... but at the bakery where I purchased them on my way to the party, two older women couldn’t stop staring at me. They didn’t look impressed. They looked judgmental. Apparently, unlike them, I wasn’t dressed appropriately for my age. Or maybe it was just that, long before the month of May, I was wearing white boots.

Broke-Back Mall: Hear those PURs A-Jinglin'

2006-05-14T14:57:00.000-07:00

I confess, I’m a fashion magazine junky. What could be more fun than curling up with glossy spreads of anorexic middle-schoolers wearing lime-green mink jackets over see-through blouses and no underwear?
Well, it used to be fun. A few years back I could convince myself that, with the right concealer, I, too, could wear shades of green that naturally occur only on fish scales and insect wings. So what if my trendy green duds went out of style before I paid off the credit cards used to purchase them?
Then, last summer, something ominous happened: the clothes, shoes, belts and bags in fashion magazines started sprouting zeros.
“Yikes! $35,000 for a handbag?” I shrieked after seeing it listed as a New York working woman’s “must-have” in Vogue. Must be a typo, I thought. $3,500 is a mortgage payment, but $35,000? That’s a brand-new C-Class Mercedes.
It got worse. Over the next year, prices for shoes, belts and bags continued to sprout zeros, raising prices for these items so high that not even the wives of retired Exxon executives could buy them with a straight face.
Not that it’s any of MY business. As if to drive home the point that fashion is no longer accessible to working-class women, a new phenomenon has emerged in magazines like Vogue, Elle, Bazaar, Lucky and Shop: “Price Upon Request.” As of current June issues, “PURs” have proliferated like page lice. Is this what happens when the wealthy one percent get so many tax breaks they have nothing better to do than bait the middle class? Forget the literal translation. “PUR” is code for: “Don’t even think about buying this, you Walmart-shopping untouchable.”
For those who think I’m too sensitive about my socio-economic status, let’s see what Amy Larocca had to say in her article, “Double Your wardrobe” in the February, 2006 issue of Bazaar: “Some women are so resourceful that they split the cost of big-ticket items, devising time-sharing schemes whereby a few friends go in on, say, a handbag and then work out who gets to flaunt it when.”
Yes, I know, there are plenty of other outrages to get worked up about, but while I’m planning a strategy for those, I will go to Neiman Marcus carrying a rolled-up brown paper bag and annoy the sales staff with inane questions about cost. I will shoplift my fashion magazines (get over it). And I will wait for the day when, like SUV owners who have begun torching their gas-guzzlers because they no longer can afford to drive them and can’t resell them, former manufacturers of $35,000 handbags will sit on street corners holding signs that say, “Will accessorize for food.”

Derby Day, No Ticket No Hat

2006-05-07T19:29:00.001-07:00

Think back. Remember when you werea kid and your parents had a party and they put you to bed in a dark room with yellow light shining through the cracks of the closed door and you could hear the laughter and the party noise but you weren't invited so you felt sorry for yourself until you fell asleep? That's what it's like to be in Louisville on Derby Day with no ticket to the Downs and no hat.

My Dad lives in Louisville. His birthday is May 4th and the Kentucky Derby is the first Saturday in May, so every year we have a family reunion when the horsies run for the roses. My beautiful nieces and their husbands attend the Derby. I babysit for their kids.

Every May I swear that, next year, I will not be among the pregnant women, AA members on their way to meetings, fundamentalist Christians and others who cannot drink and therefore have no interest in attending the Derby. I also swear I will not be among the ragtag few who, if not actually at the Derby, don't at least have a kick-ass party to attend.

There are three ways to do the Derby, not counting those who qualify to enter Millionaires' Row. College kids and everyday drunks pop for $40 to enter the Infield. If it rains they take turns sliding in the mud, Woodstock style. If it doesn't they suffer second-degree sunburns. Either way, they get drunk on their asses and lose their money.

Then there's the Grandstand, where the price of admission is $60. This buys a hard, unreserved seat in the blistering sun, pelting rain or whatever other elements Derby Day conjures. Grandstand views vary from worthless to nonexistent, but Mint Julep vendors circulate every 15 seconds, enabling those seated in this section to get just as drunk-ass and broke as revelers in the Infield.

There is a sub-set of Derby goers. They dress up like the box-seat elite, complete with gloves and hats, and walk around the cobblestone courtyard as if they're on their way to place bets, find the Ladies Room, or anesthetize the balls of their feet after the third consecutive hour of walking in stilettos.

But to really do the Derby right, to glimpse B-team celebrities and rub elbows with other drunks who sob off their mascara to the smarmy strains of My Old Kentucky Home, one must beg, borrow, steal or actually pay thousands for a box seat ticket. Then one must buy a $500 hat. And pay for over-priced air fare in and out of Louisville during Derby week. And break off one's heels, rip one's bra-straps, sail the high-priced hat into the stands, and stumble into a perfect stranger's limo when the day is over because who the hell can find their car after drinking 19 Mint Juleps?

Next year, to hell with the babysitting, I swear to God I'm going to the Derby.