Of Lou Dobbs and Cato The Elder

Carthago Delenda Est -- Carthage must be destroyed.

Those are the words of Cato the Elder. He repeated them constantly. Whenever he was speaking before the Roman Senate, regardless of the subject, he concluded each speech with that statement. Carthago Delenda est. Carthage must be destroyed. He knew the Mediterranean wasn't big enough for both Rome and Carthage. Sooner or later, one of them would have to buckle under and cry uncle. He was determined that it wouldn't be Rome.

Carthage must be destroyed.

Carthage eventually was destroyed. The Romans razed it down. They slaughtered all the men, sold the women and children into slavery, and planted salt into the ground so nothing would ever grow there again.

Talk about staying the course. Talk about taking care of business. Holy Shit!

I think about Cato the Elder every time I watch Lou Dobbs. Because no matter what is happening, he always repeats the same, tired refrain: we must keep out the illegal aliens. Everything always winds its way back around to that. We must keep out the illegal aliens. Is it a sunny day? We must keep out the illegal aliens. Is it a rainy day? We must keep out the illegal aliens. Are we at war, are we in a depression, are Martians levelling New York City with nuclear bombs? No matter. We must keep out the illegal aliens.

Which, as we all know, is transparent code for, "Keep the fuckin' spics out."

I just don't get it. I worked as a laborer a couple of years ago on a big construction site. There were a lot of Mexicans there. At lunchtime, they used to wave me over to where they hung out and made burritos for me. "Hey, Mickey, come here, come here. You want some food, man?"

We communicated in Spanglish. Our efforts were often awkward, but we always managed to convey a single point to each other, and we usually did so in a way that made us laugh like hell: the boss is an asshole.

Most of these guys were just poor workers, toiling away at shitty jobs to scrape a living. If you were cool, they invited you in. Guess what, Lou Dobbs? They aren't the Antichrist. In fact, their wives made some kick-ass carnitas.

So what if Mexicans come in? Who cares? As Gore Vidal once pointed out, history is really just the constant migration of tribes. Like it or not, we're ethnically evolving. What language do you speak? English? Your English is a mongrelized stew of Latin, Norman French, Anglo-Saxon English, and even Arabic. There is no such thing as a "pure" race or a "pure" language.

It's not anything to get in a wad about. It's something to cherish and embrace.

So just who is this pudgy old rich man called Lou Dobbs, and why does he get on our television sets and stir up irrational fears and hatred about these people?

The answer is ratings, I suspect. He's doing the blue collar, angry man thing. Still, I pity the old fool. He's never had good carnitas with Mexican laborers. Whenever I hear him ranting about the scourge of illegal immigration, I just shake my head and say, "Lou Dobbs delenda est."

Family Support

I wake up every morning praising God and go to bed each night an atheist. It's a problem. Many years ago, I worked for the District Attorney's Child Support Collections Office. We called it Family Support. That sounds much nicer, doesn't it? Family Support. In reality, it was a bloated extortion racket coated by a thin veneer of syrupy wholesomeness, Family Support.

I used to show up for work with dark circles under my eyes and rumpled clothes. My supervisors thought I was out partying all night. Given the fact the my armpits usually stank like a brewery, I can understand their suspicions. But it wasn't so. In truth, I had been at home, sober, tossing and turning in existential anguish, enduring what Edgar Alan Poe called a long dark night of the soul.

Just who is God, and why is She doing this to us?

cvvvv

(Whoops. That was my neighbor's cat walking on the keyboard. He's a splendid little chap who hangs around the house every once in a while. I don't mind.)

Some days I'm convinced there's a divine intelligence governing our affairs. Other times, I know with the same abslolute conviction that we're all just muddling through a Godless chaos, pretending, hoping, erecting totally arbitrary values to give our lives meaning. It's a problem.

I quit Family Support. But I still suffer from insomnia.

The Consolation Of Philosophy

I keep dreaming about Rachel Maddow. But just when I snap on the rubber gloves, the senior gynecologist slaps my hands and orders me back into the hallway to mop the floor. When I get there, there's a huge, leather bound volume of Boetheius's The Consolation Of Philosophy waiting on the bench outside the door. I randomly open it and read the following:

'To pleasant songs my work was erstwhile given, and bright were all my labours then; but now in tears to sad refrains am I compelled to turn. Thus my maimed Muses guide my pen, and gloomy songs make no feigned tears bedew my face. Then could no fear so overcome to leave me companionless upon my way. They were the pride of my earlier bright-lived days: in my later gloomy days they are the comfort of my fate; for hastened by unhappiness has age come upon me without warning, and grief hath set within me the old age of her gloom. White hairs are scattered untimely on my head, and the skin hangs loosely from my worn-out limbs.

Then a bucolic old black man comes shuffling down the hall. He's a cross between Scatman Crothers and Red Fox. He pats me on the shoulder and says, "Cheer up, son, monogamy was invented by people whose lifespan was only thirty years." Then he wanders off, his cackling laughter echoing through the empty hallway, and I continue mopping my way towards the exit.

Then I wake up, and everything is the same as it's always been.

In Praise of Experience

We all know John McCain has more experience than Obama, that's a given. But it turns out that his experience is richer, deeper, and more varied than we thought. Over on Democracy Now's website, I found the following headline:

Report: McCain Had Private Meeting with Pinochet in 1985

The website Huffington Post has revealed John McCain traveled to Chile in 1985 to have a private meeting with Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet. According to a declassified US embassy cable, McCain described the meeting with Pinochet as "friendly and at times warm.” At the time of the meeting, the US Justice Department was seeking the extradition of two close Pinochet associates for an act of terrorism in Washington, D.C., the 1976 assassination of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his colleague Ronni Moffitt. During his trip to Chile, McCain made no public or private statements critical of the dictatorship, nor did he meet with members of the democratic opposition in Chile.

There you have it. McCain has journeyman level experience at pampering right-wing dictators, which makes him an ideal steward of American foreign policy (it's an essential part of the job). This also speaks volumes about the two men's capabilities. Obama just hangs around charity functions with b-rate amateur terrorists like William Ayers. McCain can get a sit-down with real pros, people who do more than sit around listening to the Strawberry Alarm Clock and fantasize about bombing the Pentagon. McCain's terrorist chums can seize control of an entire country and get things done, motherfucker, up to and including political assassinations in Washington.

Is it too late to change my registration?

Go Philadelphia! I think . . .

The Phillies are up 3-1. How long before we start hearing about symbolic connections between a Philadelphia win and an Obama victory? Tampa -- suburban sprawl, rampant consumerism, credit cards, a totem to everything that's gone wrong in America lately. Philly -- our original capital, birthplace of the Constitution, home of the Liberty Bell. A Philadelphia win would be a metaphorical rebirth for our country, one made real by an Obama presidency. It's probably already out there, I just haven't stumbled across it.

My personal favorites, however, are the goofy coincidences and statistics that 'prove' a certain party's victory. Hey, did you know that when leap year falls during a presidential election year and the National League team in the World Series wears red against an expansion team that is less than five years old, the Democrats always win the election?

I have a better interpretative model. Since both teams are comprised of multi-millionaires and one team is guaranteed a victory, it means the game is rigged to ensure that multi-millionaires always win. What could be a better metaphor for America than that?

Three Cheers For Mediocre Presidents

It's amusing how media types always speculate about a president's legacy. Like any one really cares. We are the most historically ignorant nation in the world. Just ask your average high school kid what came first, the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. You'll likely hear a variant of this: "The what? Huh? I hate history. I can never remember dates." Having been a history major myself at one time, I can personally attest to the abuse you take from your countrymen for being a devotee of the human past. Telling a girl you were majoring in history was only marginally better than telling her you had herpes. So why all the fuss about a legacy? No one really ever pays attention anyway. Presidents themselves typically don't know jack about history, and the ones who do aren't more wise or prudent, just more dangerous. Take Woodrow Wilson, for example. He had a Ph.D in history and political science, but he was also one of the most interventionist presidents we've ever had. He put troops all over the place, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, even Russia. We have him to thank for America's participation in World War I, which tipped the scales against Germany for good, leading to that nation's defeat, the Treaty of Versailles, Adolph Hitler, and lots of other fun stuff besides. Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not blaming America for Hitler. Of course not. I'm just suggesting that if Wilson hadn't caught a hair up his ass to go make the world safe for democracy, Germany quite possibly would have won that war, and the twentieth century would have been much, much different. No World War II. The Soviet Union probably would have died in its dish. And generations of Americans would have been spared all those hagiographies about the saints of WWII, like Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation. Trees had to die for that, you know.

Oh yeah, and my grandmother's uncle wouldn't have been gassed to death in 1918 (there weren't any shrines to Woodrow on her mantle, no way).

Now, quick, what is Millard Fillmore's historical legacy? Chester A. Arthur's? Name the top three achievements of the Benjamin Harrison Administration. I read about this stuff all the time and I couldn't tell you. I wasn't even sure if Millard was spelled Millerd or not. I had to look that one up. Yes, I was that bored.

Now, what was Polk's legacy? Truman's? Either of the Roosevelt's? It's a lot easier, isn't it. Why? That's easy, too: body counts.

We never remember the peacemakers. Nor do we remember the fat, corrupt hacks with funny sideburns and watch fobs who sat in the president's chair in between great wars and depressions. We only remember the ones who created the most corpses. Put another way, we forget the presidents we probably would have preferred living under, and honor those who presided over, um, less than optimal conditions. That seems like a pretty clear incentive for presidents to make war, doesn't it? And you can you bet that Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and obersturmfurhur Rumsfeld made that point crystal clear to Little Boots when they were plotting to invade Iraq and steal its oil. Can't you easily picture them huddled over W, cooing in his ear about how only war presidents can be great presidents?

It's as if a chef couldn't get a Michelin Star unless a hundred people died from botulism after eating at his restaurant.

Of course, Fillmore, Arthur and Harrison made a few corpses too, but they were Indian corpses, which we also like to forget. But that's another story entirely.

So I suggest we start forgetting the gun-wielding missionaries, crusading democracy lovers, and sundry other "great" presidents. Let's raise our glass to the mediocrities who didn't care about their place in history, but went peacefully strolling into obscurity instead. They are, after all, the ones who most closely resemble the people they govern.

The Clock Is Ticking . . .

Do you think we might miss him when he's gone, just a little bit?

Naaa.

Sarah, We Hardly Knew Yah.

Republican pundits have been whining for weeks that Palin is floundering so badly because the McCain campaign won't let her cut loose and be herself. She's too stage managed, they complain, too controlled. Let pistol packin' Sarah be pistol packin' Sarah, unplugged.

I think they have.

Since her selection as John McCain's running mate, the Republican National Committee spent more than $150,000 on clothing and make-up for Gov. Sarah Palin, her husband, and even her infant son, it was reported on Tuesday evening.

I guess shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus with an RNC gold card beats moose hunting on the Alaskan tundra in a coon skin cap and buffalo hides. Go figure.

Idioticus Moronicus Revisited

In Monday's New York Times, David Brooks introduced us to a new category of man, Patio Man. No, it's not a primate species whose skull fragments were dug up in the Olduvai Gorge. Patio Man is alive, sentient, and walks upright among us.

According to Brooks, Patio Man is "the quintessential suburban American, the service economy worker, the guy who wears khakis to work each day, with the security badge on the belt-clip around his waist."

Have you got that? Pay heed, liberal elitists . . .

Patio Man lives in a variety of habitats, but he prefers places like Northern Virginia and the "I-4 corridor near Orlando." He's also been spotted in Columbus, Ohio and the "converging megalopolis between Albuquerque and Santa Fe and in many other places besides."

Patio Man is a parochial creature who dislikes change. He's primarily motivated, plantlike, "by a tropism toward order and stability." But, Mr. Brooks informs us, he is not right wing. He's just kind of conservative in a benign sort of way, like a hobbit. Like a hobbit in khaki dockers with a security badge on his belt-clip. He distrusts unfamiliar things, alien things, "things far away." A firm believer in "convention and respectability," Patio Man has a "strong reaction against anything that threatens to undermine the stability of the established order."

Apparently Mr. Brooks has never read Babbit. It describes Patio Man pretty accurately. It also describes Mr. Brooks. But to continue.

Typically, the primary threats to Patio Man's Established Order are "foreign enemies and domestic zealotry," which conservatives like Brooks are more than happy to exaggerate in order to get him to vote Republican. But this time around he's not taking the bait. He's voting Democrat in a big way. Patio Man is the Great White failing middle class and he is, by Brook's own account, at the "epicenter of American politics." His vote carries weight, and for the first time since Clinton the Republicans don't have it. This is big trouble for them. David Brooks knows this and it is he, not Patio Man, who's running scared.

Conservative Republicans have had the whip hand for eight years (if not thirty), and their policies have brought Patio Man to ruin. It wasn't liberals. It wasn't socialists. It wasn't fags, dykes, atheists, commies, blacks or Arab terrorists. It was lily white conservatives. He knows it, they know it. The probable result may be a landslide election of historic proportions that might usher in a brand new New Deal and bury Reaganism forever. If Democrats get a mandate for real change, Brooks and his ilk will be out of fashion. He might have to go back to slumming at the The Weekly Standard where the pay isn't as good as at the New York Times and the secretaries aren't as pretty. Those invitations to appear on Meet The Press and The News Hour With Jim Lehrer will start drying up. He might have to wear khakis each day with a security badge on his belt-clip. He might, God forbid, have to start eating at Red Lobster.

There's only one thing to do: deny that the coming Democratic landslide constitutes a mandate for radical change. Just say that Patio Man is non-ideological. He's essentially a timid pragmatist who only craves security. When faced by economic uncertainty, he gravitates towards the party who promises a return to normalcy. In this case, that's the Democrats, but only "socially moderate, pragmatic, managerial" Democrats. Patio Joe ain't a leveller. So any New Deal version 2.0 is out. This is exactly what David Brooks does:

Patio Man wants change. But this is no time for more risk or more debt. Debt in the future is no solution to the debt racked up in the past. This is a back-to-basics moment, a return to safety and the fundamentals.

Which means, a return to the status quo ante George W. Bush.

Funny, when Bush and the Neocons were riding high back in the glory days of '02 to '05, nobody brought these issues up. Brooks and his pals were too busy jerking off over images of GW in his flight suit and prattling on about America's divine "benevolent hegemony" in the Middle East to worry about Patio Man's devotion to stability and order. All they wanted was for Patio Man to shut up, wave the flag and go marching in Georgie's torchlight parades while the Neocons violently overturned every semblance of law and order in the world. They told Patio Man we were under Code Orange. They told him to buy duct tape, keep lots of bottled water in the house, and "watch what you do, watch what you say." Only when faced with a liberal reformation do the conservatives among us become conservative again. Only then do they toss out Leo Strauss and go back to Edmund Burke.

Now that their plans have failed, the country has gone bankrupt, and the butcher's bill is way past due, they ask us if we can just forget about it and go back to the way America was before they fucked it up beyond all recognition. No harm, no foul, right fellas? Can't we just have a mulligan and forget the whole Iraq, Bush, recession thing? After all, Patio Man only wants stability . . . Let's do it for the Gipper!

It's pathetic. Hopefully they don't get it.

Call this post Idioticus Moronicus Revisited. It's all about David Brooks.

File Under "Slow News Day"

My nephew got a toy lightsaber for his birthday. This is the picture on the instruction booklet. All the adults got a wry chuckle out of it. I imagine the designer did too.

White Trash World

On a recent trip through Nevada, I was inspired to writea song:

I don't care what they say,
I'll never leave my white trash world.
Everyone's tryin' to get away,
But I'll never leave my white trash world.

I got a satellite dish and a pick-up truck,
My old lady's sister comes over to fuck.
WalMart carries all I need,
My next door neighbor cooks all my speed.

There's Coors Light, football and NASCAR too,
No full time to jobs to make our Mondays blue.
If that don't work we beat queers for sport,
My disability check covers child support.

Met my third wife at the laundry mat,
Got oil stains on my John Deere hat.
My kitchen's empty but my belly's fat --
White trash world, yer where it's at.

Okay, okay, a state that's got legalized gambling and prostitution can't be all that bad, I know. And an influx of Californians have changed the state's demographics pretty dramatically. It just might go for Obama this election. But when you get outside the main population centers it's a redneck desert that's as conservative as Kansas or Mississippi. And whereas those states are steeped in Christian fundamentalism, Nevada is basically amoral. Up until recently it was the crystal meth capital of the country. This may have changed, I don't know. A friend of mine who lives there told me a joke about a notorious hick town out in the Nevada hinterlands. It goes like this:

Do you know why they can't solve a murder case in ----------?

Why?
Because there aren't any dental records and everyone has the same DNA.

That's all for now. Carry on.

The Amazing Mr. Brooks

I heard David Brooks on NPR last night. He said Obama has the potential to be a great president because of his coolness and his calm. Then, in the very next sentence, he said Obama's greatest shortcoming was his lack of passion!

What the *&$%#!@# ???

Making History Nice

When I woke up this morning, something was different. I felt a sense of lightness and hope that I haven't experienced in eight years. Then it hit me. The Bush presidency is coming to an end. It fully sank in and I truly grasped it. The Bush presidency is coming to an end. Say it with me, brothers and sisters, and say it long and loudly so all God's creatures might know, the Bush presidency is coming to an end!

I'm aware that my joy might be premature. I well remember that a few months back Bush told some sycophantic interviewer on FOX news that he wanted to "finish strong". That's a statement that should give us pause. And, of course, with Cheney still lurking around the dark hallways of the White House like a child thief waiting to pounce, we must all remain vigilant. Still, barring any major catastrophes (a bold hope, I know), we can plausibly assume that in a couple of months, our long national nightmare will be over. Praise be to God and the U.S. Constitution. Praise be to Mr. Madison. Praise be to the United States of America. Take me in your arms once more and let me love you again!

After permitting myself to indulge in this pleasing notion for an unseemly length of time, I regained my composure and came back to cold reality. Or, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the buttocks of the evening gave way to the forehead of the morning. I began to wonder how we'll explain the dark phenomenon of Bush-Cheney to our posterity. How will we justify ourselves and lay claim to any virtue when we allowed these dense, cold-blooded reptiles to seize power and inflict such grievous harm on the world?

How?

Then a few names began floating through my mind, like lazy clouds that occasionally blot out the sun on a summer's day. Doris Kearns Goodwin. Michael Beschloss. David McCullough. Suddenly, my stomach began to bloat and churn as if I'd eaten bad Mexican food. Of course, I thought, we'll explain it away the same way we always explain our sins. We'll send in the Court Historians.

They'll unfurl their scrolls and begin scribbling away, doing what they always do best: make history nice. They'll set to work writing, publishing, speaking, and frequently materializing on C-Span and the Jim Lehrer News Hour. Gradually, an acceptable narrative will take shape. It will acknowledge the misdeeds of the Bush Administration but place them in a context that makes them palatable to the saplings in high school who must, at all costs, be made into patriots. I suspect it will look something like this:

George W. Bush was a man of deep faith. He fervently believed in the rightness of what he was doing. Unfortunately, the devoutness of his beliefs often led him into errors of judgment. He was a good man, a likeable man, the kind of guy you want to have a beer with, but, alas, his religious devotion to spreading democracy crashed on the rocks of a world that wasn't ready for it . . . His greatest failing was an inability to adapt his beliefs to the vicissitudes of the world, or some such crap.

Bottom line, George was a true believer and the disasters that resulted stemmed from good motives.

It practically writes itself. That's why legions of no-talent, hack historians will be rolling it off like machines in the next few years. Their books might even include a few photos of George W. standing alone in the White House, back to the camera, staring pensively out the window like LBJ or Nixon. I can Hear Doris Kearns Goodwin now, "He agonized over the the failure of Iraq. His faith simply didn't allow him to accept that it wouldn't work. Since defeat was not an option, he doggedly persevered . . . "

The more ambitious historians will tie in the Freudian angle. Georgie was driven by a subconscious urge to outshine his father. His insecurity created a manic striving for greatness that actuated itself in the form of military conquest and nation-building. If the war in Iraq failed, he failed, and that meant his father won. George W. couldn't face that prospect, so even in the face of mounting disaster he persevered . . . . In other words, he wasn't just an obnoxious simpleton who didn't know what the hell he was doing. No. He was a complex soul propelled by dark subconscious forces that brought about his fall.

Thus the emotionally stunted moron becomes a tragic, Shakespearean figure who the citizens of the American Empire can sympathize with. It worked for Nixon.

If that fails, they can always fall back on what I call the "Cardinal Wolsey Defense." It was a popular trope during the Middle Ages. Basically, it absolves the king of responsibility for his evil deeds by placing the blame on his advisers. The king, after all, is a good, decent man who thinks of nothing but the welfare of his people. He doesn't wilfully act out of purely vain or selfish motives. It's always his evil counselors who are to blame when shit goes bad. They are the villains. Thus the disasters of the last eight years will be the fault of Cheney, Rove and Rumsfeld. Doris Kearns Goodwin, once again, "Cheney took advantage of Bush's naivete to implement his own agenda."

You watch.

That all of this is pure horseshit is irrelevant. This pure horseshit is exactly what your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be taught about our dismal gray era and the petty little wannabe Caesar who presided over it all. We know what he really was. They will not. Even if the psychological crap is true, it doesn't excuse him. All of us have issues and resentments. It's called life. Most of us deal with them in a responsible way. That's called being a mature human being. If Poor Little Silver Spoon Georgie, who was born a millionaire, who was given a pampered upbringing, who was given an ivy league education, and who was given numerous profitable careers by Big Bad Ole' Daddy, cant' figure that out then, well, I guess that makes him an object of some small pity. That he carried these adolescent neuroses to the White House and used his power to kill hundreds of thousands of human beings makes him a monster, no different than Caligula or Domitian or Lucretia Borgia. He is a mental, moral and intellectual midget. He is evil. No amount of vanilla ice-cream scooped up and slathered over our historical memory by the likes of Doris Kearns Goodwin or David McCullough must ever be allowed to white-wash over that simple fact.

This war is about to end. Praise God.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Printing Press

Our Wall Street bosses have spoken. Now comes word from our other masters:

Pentagon Wants $450 Billion Increase Over Next Five Years

Pentagon officials have prepared a new estimate for defense spending that is $450 billion more over the next five years than previously announced figures.

The new estimate, which the Pentagon plans to release shortly before President Bush leaves office, would serve as a marker for the new president and is meant to place pressure on him to either drastically increase the size of the defense budget or defend any reluctance to do so, according to several former senior budget officials who are close to the discussions.

“This is a political document,” said one former senior budget official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It sets up the new administration immediately to have to make a decision of how to deal with the perception that they are either cutting defense or adding to it.”

Pretty clever, huh? The Pentagon pushes a vulnerable new president into a corner with an ultimatum right from the start: support our inflated budgets or risk looking soft on national defense. I guess that's the way the protection racket's played on the national stage. It should be doubly effective against a President Obama, who will be under pressure to look 'tough' and 'pro-American', i.e., pro-Pentagon. Don't think the Dons at the Defense Department aren't aware of this. They're not much good at winning wars lately, but when it comes to politics they know how to play hardball. Isn't it comforting to know that our defense establishment plays these game at such an economically perilous moment in our history as this? That's what I call putting country first.

And it just gets better:

The new budget numbers reflect the Defense Department’s acknowledgement that the coming bow wave of ever-rising procurement costs, combined with the nonstop growth of defense entitlement spending, will render its already record- high budgets grossly insufficient in the years ahead.

The next time you want a raise, just tell your boss that the coming bow wave of ever-rising procurement costs render your current wages grossly insufficient. See how far that gets you. Before we proceed, let's have an assessment of the Pentagon's performance over the last sixty odd years to see if they deserve more money. We won't count all the little show bizz bombings, like Libya. Nor will we count all of the dirty little covert proxy wars, like Nicaragua during the eighties. We'll just look at the biggies, without regard to their morality or necessity, and judge them by the Pentagon's own simple standard of win or loss: Korea, tie. Vietnam, loss. Panama, win. Iraq War One, win. Somalia, loss. Serbia, win. Afghanistan, probably loss. Gulf War Two, loss. By my reckoning, that makes the Pentagon 3-4-1. Would you feel optimistic about your team's chances of making the play-offs with a record like that? Would their coaches deserve a raise? In light of America's looming bankruptcy, I'd be inclined to hold back on the bonuses this year. Nevertheless, we'll probably keep shoveling more money at them under the rubric of national defense. Then we can continue beating our chests, waving the flag and chanting we're number one! as we patriotically march over Insolvency Cliff and tumble into a pile of mouldering headstones marked Athenian Empire, Persian Empire, Roman Empire, Spanish Empire, Hapsburg Empire, Ottoman Empire, French Empire, German Empire, Russian Empire, British Empire . . . We already spend more money on defense than every other country on earth combined. But it's not enough. The Pentagon needs more. It's national defense, you see. To accommodate their needs, we've even taken the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan off the budget. The costs of those wars aren't included in the Pentagon's annual outlays. They're funded through extra monies called "supplemental appropriations." So the most astronomical military budget in human history doesn't even include the cost of two wars that the U.S is currently fighting and that have no end in sight. It's as if a car wash didn't have to account for the price of soap and water in it's monthly expenses. I guess the standard 'baseline' defense budget is the frosting and the "supplemental appropriations" are the candy colored sprinkles we scatter on top. But don't worry. The folks at the Department of War -- er, Defense -- are trying to overcome the problem: Supplemental appropriations have been used to fund procurement and personnel costs that are predictable and therefore should be placed into the regular budget, said Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Eureka! Just add the supplemental appropriations into the normal budget, and then raise the overall budget. Bingo! What do you wanna bet that the Pentagon and the next president will then go around touting this gimmick as a way they "cut supplemental expenditures"? Yesterday in the New York Times there was a little article about how there's been a dramatic rise in cheating among high school kids. That's right, out of 25,000 students surveyed between 2001 and 2008, 90 percent admitted having cheated "in one way or another." I can't imagine where these misguided young students keep getting the idea that cheating is okay.

No More Gates

Let's stop adding the word 'gate' to every political scandal and start referring to them as what they are, crimes.

Bitter Wisdom

Optimism always precedes a tragedy.

Beyond Belief

We all know that if Obama is elected president, there's a high probability that some racist nut job will take a pot shot at him. It's just a sick and disturbing fact of American life. Remember the meth-head bozos they caught in Colorado? More to come, I'm afraid. A bar near my house displays a photo of Obama sporting a turban and a beard (it's next to a photo of Hillary Clinton in SS apparel; so funny). Most of the patrons simply refer to Obama as the nigger. The good news is that most of them don't vote. The better news is that they're usually too fucked up to shoot a gun straight. On the other hand, I've met at least two Obama supporters -- one of whom said that Obama's election would be the greatest thing for the country right now --who both matter-of-factly stated that if Obama becomes president, "somebody will probably assassinate him."

I was surprised to learn today, though, that McCain might have a problem with this as well. Apparently, there are a few kooks on the religious right who are praying that John McCain will win the election, become president, and then die so Palin can step in.

Read the story. It's truly unbelievable. These people are basically praying for God to kill McCain. It's not much of a stretch to imagine one of them picking up a rifle and doing it himself. I knew John McCain had problems with the religious right, but this is freakin' ridiculous. These people are demented beyond belief.

Country First!

Gentleman, We Have Different Colored Lights

This 'debate' is a cross between Romper Room and a cancer ward.

Brokaw: Billy in section C wants to know if Russia is an Evil Empire . . . Please be mindful of the different colored lights, gentleman. Green means go, yellow means slow down, and red means stop . . .

McCain (clanking around like a rusty old C-3PO): "I've looked in Putin's eyes and saw three letters - K G B."

Good God. Can the grown-ups get a tax break for buying new toilets to throw up in?

Obama is poised, thoughtful and competent. He's also distressingly conventional. McCain is a cantankerous old asshole. Brokaw ain't Cronkite. Result? Exactly what the ringmasters of this ludicrous circus planned, no real change. Perhaps a slight edge for Obama. Stay tuned for round three.

Health Policies, Energy Policies And Entitlement Reform

Early in the debate everyone agrees on cutting costs. McCain decries the spending spree in Washington and Mr. Moderator Brokaw, in a lead-up to a question says there are "new economic realities facing us" and choices have to be made. He brings up three areas of spending for the candidates to comment on -- health policies, energy policies, and entitlement reform.

As usual, not a word about defense spending.

The Thrill Of It All

When the Senate obeyed Wall Street's command last week and created a new and improved bailout bill, I heard Mitch McConnel serve up what I knew was destined to be the core narrative about the whole bailout mess: now is not the time to point fingers; it doesn't matter how we got here, but how we solve the problem; don't play the blame game; we must join together in a spirit of bipartisanship and pull America out of the crisis, blah blah. You've all heard it a million times. The government says it whenever they've fucked something up and want to cover their asses. Sure enough, I heard that meme drifting around the cable talkies a few times yesterday when it became clear that the bailout wasn't working as advertised. George W. Bush tacked on his own addition, "we must be patient." But there was another addition as well. It came over CNBC, that paradise for slick "experts" who always get things wrong but somehow keep their cushy jobs anyway (thus mysteriously defying the free market laws they all worship like scripture). Someone being interviewed was dutifully repeating the script about avoiding that petty little blame game and working on productive solutions intstead, etc., etc. Then he said that, besides, assigning blame right now "won't do any good anyway."

To avoid stroke, I won't launch into all the things that piss me off about this arrogant, condescending line of bullshit that is a transparent effort to let the guilty go free at our expense. Instead I'll offer a simple refutation to the idea that casting blame won't do any good. My answer to Mr. Two or Three Million Dollar a Year Pundit and his smug fat face is this: Oh, but it will do good, it will!

True, it might not solve the problem. It might not produce any tangible results that you can slap on a graph or a chart and yack about all week, but it will do good nonetheless. It will feel good.

We have plenty of time for bipartisanship. We have plenty of time for productive solutions. But for now, let's indulge in petty finger pointing. Let's cast blame. Let's isolate the greedy bastards responsible for this catastrophe and lock them up in stocks in the public square so they can be pelted with dog shit and rotten vegetables. It would be, I think, what left-wing egghead elitists call "cathartic." It would put us all in a more rational, bipartisan mood.

What quantitative good does the Superbowl do? The World Series? A good stiff drink after a tough day? Arguably none, but nobody claims that's a reason to take them away. They just help keep society functioning smoothly. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church allowed something called All Fool's Day (April Fool's Day), during which the people could openly mock the hypocrisy and stupidity of their rulers, including Church officials. It was harmless fun that gave the peasants a chance to let off steam. It kept things together in the long run. Let's have our own celebration and call it Market Correction Day. We can kick off the festivities by pouring a bucket of warm cow shit over Hank Paulson's head while he reads from Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal or recites Goldman Sach's Mission Statement to the tune of the Marsellaise.

So in that spirit, it was satisfying to hear the following little factoid today. Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, was working out at the gym after the announcement that Lehman was going under. He was on a treadmill wearing a heart monitor, presumably because lying and extortion is stressful work that may cause high blood pressure. Somebody at the gym recognized him, walked over and clocked him in the face, knocking him out cold. Maybe that's why he showed up to the hearings yesterday sporting what appeared to be a brand new pair of front teeth.

Nobody questions fucking for the pure pleasure of it (well, almost nobody). Why should we crow about stripping some criminals of their loot and publicly humiliating them for no other reason than the pure thrill of it all?

Was There Any Good News Today? You Betcha!

Regarding my last post, it seems Sarah Palin does know how to make dough rise. Rich Lowry, the ageless, conservative boy wonder at NRO sounds like he beat himself numb after Sarah Palin started winking at the debate. Also, on Keith Olbermann's "worst persons" segment, he mentioned a couple of talk radio morons in Minnesota who had an on-air jerk-off session about her. Personally, I find Sarah Palin somewhat nauseating, though this has less to do with her physical traits than with her repellent conduct in the campaign; and the whole "you betcha," moose hunting, hockey mom persona ranks about as low as baseball and algebra on my libido scale. But there you have it, a bunch of conservatives are panting like fourteen year-olds who've discovered Dad's hidden Playboy collection in the garage. It proves that Sarah Palin is supremely qualified to be a calendar model for Budweiser or MacTools, not VP. It's also more encouraging evidence that the McCain campaign is slipping rapidly into rigor mortis. Really, is that all you guys got, a ditsy vice-presidential candidate whose only qualification for the job is that she titillates the Cro-Magnon base of the Republican party?

McCain has basically conceded Michigan. He's down in Virginia, North Carolina and Iowa, and he has to send Palin to campaign in friggin' Omaha a month before the election. That's a definite rearguard action that signals code red, blood red. And all they've got is Palin's dubious sex appeal and Obama's possible connection to who, what? The Weather Underground? What the fuck is that? Is that the group that starred Patty Hearst or Angela Davis? I can't recall because when they terrorized our country I was in elementary school, just like Obama. But trust me, the swelling legions of unemployed Americans want to know. It will give them something to discuss around the fire at night in their tent cities. Is there a word stronger than pathetic to describe the McCain campaign?

So despite this dismal day when civilization seems to be crumbling, there is something to be hopeful about. The American people just might be having one of those occasional outbreaks of good sense that dot our history. And let's hope so, because if we don't we may not ever have the opportunity again.

Betty Crocker For VP

A buddy of mine says Betty Crocker would make a better vice president than Sarah Palin. Why? Because at least Betty Crocker knows how to make dough rise.

Live Blogging The Debate

Question: Do you know the Heimlich maneuver?

Answer: Yes, it's named after Mr. Maneuver.

Question: How do you perform it?

Answer: Place your arms around the choking victim, clasp your hands together and pull as hard as you can against the diaphragm.

Question: And then what happens?

Answer: The victim stops choking and pukes.

Raise The Pie Higher

Tonight there's gonna be a party. You bring the microwave popcorn, I'll bring the diet soda. We'll flip for who has to drive to the store for vodka.

According to CNN, McCain aides admit that Sarah Palin "has spent countless hours, since she was picked, cramming on subjects she's never dealt with, from North Korea to the Mideast. But while the issues are more vast and the stage much larger, the reality is Palin participated in some two dozen debates in Alaska and held her own."

Then they cut to one of those amorphous creatures called a "strategist." This one was named Scott Reed, of the the republican variety, who said, "you people have all fallen for this trick that she's [Palin] not capable of putting two sentences together and I think she's gonna prove that she is."

The scrappy kid from Alaska can hold her own against the grizzled old Biden. She's been cramming on all those hard issues about war and peace and whatnot. She's been training. She's also capable of putting two sentences together! You'll see. The stage is set for a knock-down, drag-out grudge match. Stay tuned.

After eight years of Bush, we're arguing about whether or not a vice presidential pick can put two sentences together. The fact that she probably can is offered as proof that she's competent! And here we are.

I believe I once heard Bush himself say something about "the soft bigotry of low-expectations." I don't think this is what he meant, but give credit where credit is due.

Democracy In Action

That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.
Ecclesiastes 1:15

Monday, the House voted The Wrong Way on the bailout bill. So the Senate took charge and hammered together a brand new plan designed to persuade the House to vote The Right Way next time (Friday).

How do the wise lawmakers of the Senate propose to influence the rabble in the House? First, stop calling it a bailout. From now on, it's a financial-rescue plan. Got it? Any fool Representative can vote against a bailout; try going back to your district after you've shot down a financial-rescue plan!

Second, don't make it smaller. Make it bigger. Tack on another billion. After all, once you're passed a few hundred billion, the numbers themselves lose any real significance in the average person's mind. They become foggy mental abstractions. Sure, he might vaguely grasp their importance, the same way a ten year old dimly comprehends the importance of "booby" or "vagina," but they have no concrete reality for him. Oh, and anyway, that extra billion or so won't be packaged up in the form of dollars. It will come in the form of "growth oriented tax cuts."

Third, substance. Where, exactly, do these "growth oriented tax cuts" go? Straight to what the folks love most, "motor-sports race tracks, makers of wooden arrows for children, and the rum excise tax for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands." You thought there was nothing in this bill for the people? Guess again, Jack.

Democracy in action! The hot-heads in the House said no; the Solons down the hall say yes. A compromise bill is produced, and the whole farce gets replayed Friday in the House, and this time they'll probably vote The Right Way.

America may go bankrupt, but NASCAR will go on, your kid's toy arrows will be safe, and rum will be cheaper (and that's a good thing, because after tomorrow I have a funny feeling we're all going to need more rum).

The Wrong Kind Of Stupid

I think Team McCain-Palin has contracted a terminal illness and is going down, down. We mustn't be too hopeful, of course. We've all been hurt so many times before. But I think Sarah Palin may have made a critical, even fatal, mistake. Now there are many flaws in McPalin, but until now they were the kind of flaws that aren't only acceptable in American politics, but even beneficial. You can be as stupid as a high school football coach and succeed in politics. In fact, it's often necessary. You can believe man walked the earth with dinosaurs. You can believe Noah built an ark and packed it with every living species in existence. You can believe zebras have stripes 'cause that's just the way God wanted 'em painted, by golly, and if it's good enough for Jesus it's good enough for me. Not only will such inanities not hurt your career, they will help it. They can even make you president. Hell, combined with enough blood lust they can even make you a "great" president, and someday you might get lucky and have an airport named after you. Ignorance and stupidity is not and has not been the problem. But Sarah Palin showed us all the other day that she is the wrong kind of stupid.

Fundamentalist Christian, check. Historically illiterate, check. Hasn't travelled and doesn't know jack shit about the world, check -- hell, that last qualifies her to be an expert in the American foreign policy establishment. So far, so good, grease the rails to the White House . . . What's that? She can't name a single newspaper that she reads? Uh oh. We have a problem.

Don't get me wrong. We don't care if she reads or not. George Bush bragged that he doesn't read any newspapers. Warren Harding preferred the sports pages. Can anybody honestly picture such fine presidential specimens as Gerald Ford or Calvin Coolidge curling up with a volume of Tacitus? That's just not the issue. But when asked what papers she reads, Sarah Palin answered that she reads "all of 'em," yah knohhh? Then she couldn't name one. Not one. Any experienced politician, any pro, could have knocked that one out of the park with his eyes closed. You don't even have to think. New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, just name one, any one. Can't do it? Play to the base by taking a stab at the press: "Newspapers are biased. I prefer to get information and advice from my advisers; who says you can learn anything from reading newspapers, Katie?" Politics 101. Katie tossed her a softball and she whiffed it, badly. She got caught lying and looked as dumb as a mule doing it. She did try to turn it around and imply that the question was some elitist attack against Alaska, but it was a clumsy, obvious dodge and fell totally flat. Most people don't care if she's ignorant, dishonest or even kind of stupid. But they do insist that she have political smarts, gut instinct, and can think on her feet, otherwise how will she combat the legions of evil menaces that constantly threaten the Homeland? If Katie Couric runs circles around you, how can you possibly get the better of Putin? You can't. Now everybody knows it. Furthermore, why hadn't any of the sharpies at team McCain prepared her for such obvious questions? Or have they, but she just can't quite get it right? Either way, it doesn't look good, and now the high-brow George Will type conservatives are walking away from the impending crash. Team McCain has been wounded. After Thursday night that wound just might become gangrene.