New Life For Republicans

Now that they’re safely confined to the back benches, they’re kind of funny. I’m speaking about the Republicans, of course. One watches them with the same mixture of embarrassment and hilarity that one feels when watching monkeys masturbate at the zoo. Take this little item from the other day:

Republicans have an answer to the thorny problem of where President Barack Obama should put the 245 inmates of Guantanamo Bay – Alcatraz prison, in ultra liberal San Francisco.

Mr Obama issued an executive order last week directing that the controversial detention facility on the island of Cuba will close within a year. But he admitted that he has no plan yet for where to send the prisoners, many of whose home countries refuse to accept them.

Republicans charge that Mr Obama is basking in worldwide adulation for announcing the closure – something President George W Bush desired – without doing the difficult bit.

“If liberals believe they ought to go, maybe we ought to open Alcatraz,” Congressman John Boehner, Republican leader in the House of Representatives, told NBC. “It’s very secure.”

Perhaps by coincidence, or perhaps not, Alcatraz is in the constituency of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives and a vocal liberal opponent of Guantanamo.

“There’s a lot of discomfort about the idea of bringing the detainees in to the United States,” said Congressman Bill Young of Florida, the first to make the proposal. “That’s why I’ve suggested Alcatraz.” Senator Kit Bond of Missouri said: “Let our good friends in San Francisco deal with these deadly combatants.”

…Republicans believe that Mr Obama’s Guantanamo closure plan will run up against NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard – difficulties among Democrats who like the notion of Guantanamo Bay closing as long as the prisoners are nowhere nearby.

Who says there aren’t any second acts in American life? William Shatner became successful after he gave up any pretence of being a serious actor and settled on becoming a comedian instead, which is what he was born to be. I say the House Republicans should follow his lead. When they have no power, they’re absolutely hilarious, almost a national treasure. They should content themselves with being funny house pets. They’re good at it.

That Same Old Feeling

Hangovers still feel the same.

Note to self: never drink nine beers on an empty stomach, particularly if its a worknight.

Long Live The Republic

I dug this out in honor of today’s festivities. It’s an eyewitness account of Robespierre’s execution:

The crowd was enormous. All along the road to the place of execution one heard cries of “Down with the tyrant!” “Long live the Republic!” and imprecations of every sort. The people were having their revenge for the flatteries commanded by the Terror and the hypocritical homage they had so long been forced to pay.

Just before arriving to the place of execution, he [Robespierre] was shaken from his lethargy by a woman, who forced her way through the crowd and rushed up to the cart conveying this cannibal. She grasped the railing of the cart and with the other hand threatened him, saying the while, “ Monster, spewed up from hell. The thought of your punishment intoxicates me with joy.”…

… The wretched man’s head was now no more than an object of horror and repulsion. When at last it was severed from his body and the executioner took it by the hair to display it the people, it presented and indescribably horrible spectacle.

Okay, that would just be too good, I know. But I would have been happy to see that shoe bean Bush smack in the head. Oh well, he’s gone and that’s all that counts. We can raise the American flag again without feeling like chumps or fools or drones in the service of a malignant ideology. We can start to feel good about America again. Maybe.

Congratulations everyone. We made it. Here’s to better days and better ways!

Cheers!

Historic Boredom

I’d appreciate Obama’s historic inauguration more if people would stop telling me at how historic it is. The talking heads are cheapening the whole event and turning it into just another infotainment show. It’ll be interesting to see what cute titles the news channels come up with. CNN, I think, is already running something called The Obama Express.

By the time Tuesday rolls around, I’ll have been stuffed with so much historic significance the only thing left to experience will be historic boredom.

“The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love In The Time Of Cell Phones

I fell in love for about thirty seconds today.

It was quite amazing. I really didn’t think it was possible anymore. After age thirty-five, a somewhat worldly person has witnessed too much human nature to ever fall in love with it again. (I think that’s Mencken’s line, but I’m too lazy too look it up just now. Besides, I haven’t finished my cigarette).

But sure enough, it happened.

I was in this depressing big-box outlet where you can buy cardboard flats of things like Stag Chili or cases of frozen corn dogs at wholesale rates (except they don’t call them corn dogs. They call them Deep-Fried Honey-Battered Frankfurters on a Stick! Whatever. A turd by any other name still stinks like shit). Occasionally you get lucky and find frozen hamburger patties or cans of dog food stamped “For Institutional Use Only. Not For Retail Sale.”

So I’m walking around this God-forsaken hellhole of American Consumerism Gone Bad looking for cheap toilet paper and deodorant soap when I stumble upon a vision of surpassing loveliness: a beautiful girl!

I don’t just mean beautiful girl. I mean a stunningly gorgeous young woman, totally out of place among the luckless and misbegotten clientele of this dismal purgatory of frozen food and type II diabetes.

It was like a miracle. What was she doing there? Was I imagining it? Have I inherited my dear grandmother’s schizophrenia, which landed her in the nut house? Couldn’t be. This girl was real. No hallucination could produce such palpable flurries of lust and hope, could it?

She was a naturally graceful being who reminded me of Shelley’s Ode to a Skylark:

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert -
That from Heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.


Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.


In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.…

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!


Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

Then a little jingle went off in her coat. She whipped out a cell phone, stuck it to her face, and said in a loud, obnoxious voice that sounded like a cross between Jennifer Lopez and a goose being throttled by a wild dog: “Whaddup?”

And my thirty seconds were over.

It’s Hard

I should have gone to Stanford. Then I might have learned to speak like this:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Friday defended Israel in the face of civilian deaths in Gaza, saying “it’s hard” for Israeli troops to protect residents because the area is so densely populated and Hamas allegedly uses people as human shields.

“It is very difficult in circumstances like Gaza, which is a very densely populated area,” Rice told reporters when asked if Israel is living up to its humanitarian obligations in the offensive which has left more than 780 Palestinians dead.

“I might note it’s also an area in which Hamas participates in activities like human shields, using buildings that are not designated as military buildings to hide their fighters. So it’s hard,” Rice said.

“I was encouraged that Prime Minister (Ehud) Olmert, after an extensive conversation we had, agreed to open a new humanitarian corridor,” the chief US diplomat added.

I’ve never participated in an activity “like human shields” before. In the privacy of your own home, with other consenting adults, it sounds like it might be kinda fun.

I know she’s just towing the line, which requires her to speak in jargon. But still, couldn’t a PhD from Stanford avoid calling Gaza a “circumstance” or make references to “humanitarian corridors”? (As opposed to what, non-humanitarian corridors?) And how dare those wicked terrorists operate in places that aren’t designated as military buildings.

Oh well, when you represent the Bush administration I guess you just can’t help sounding silly. After all, the Bush administration is stupid and corrupt and incompetent, so it’s hard.

To Protect And Serve

This story about the BART cop who shot someone in Oakland the other day reminds me of a heartwarming personal anecdote about our friends in law enforcement.

Many, many years ago, my brother and I were in a little pet store in LA when somebody accidentally tripped the alarm. Nobody in the place knew it had happened, and we were the first two lucky customers to step outside and hear the news.

“Freeze!”

The street was cordoned off by a blockade of police cars, and the cops were all crouching behind them with their guns drawn, just like in the movies. If about four or five rifles hadn’t have been pointed at me, it would have been exciting to watch; as it was, me and my brother were a tad bit, uh, what’s the word, nonplussed? We were only there to buy a few crickets for our pet chameleons and a mouse for his baby boa constrictor (we weren’t into sports or drugs, so collecting reptiles became our default hobby. What can I say? It was better than going out and getting into trouble with the police, ha ha).

So a cop with a bullhorn ordered us to drop our bags, raise our hands and walk slowly towards him. We didn’t argue. It was obvious we hadn’t robbed the place or anything, and when we reached him another officer came over, lazily padded us down and told us to sit in the back of the car. The bullhorn cop said everything was okay and that he’d explain what was going on in a minute, just sit tight. Meanwhile, his partner on the passenger side kept his rifle pointed at the entrance of the store.

A few seconds later the store manager comes out, and it’s obvious he’s an employee because they all wore these brown polyester shirts with pictures of coral on them (they looked like big, over-sized bowling jerseys). He called down that he was the manager of the store and everything was fine, that the alarm went off by mistake. So the bullhorn cop waved him over. As he did so, he said to his partner, who was still aiming his rifle at the guy, “It’s okay, he works here. He’s the manager.”

And the partner, still aiming, snickered and said, “Oh yeah? Should I shoot him anyway?”

And they both laughed.

That’s a true story. That’s when my political views, which were just then forming, began to veer left. It was my first (not last) glimpse into how cavalierly our boys in blue view the use of force and how low their respect is for common citizens. So when I hear stories about the police shooting in Oakland, I’m not a bit surprised. Most cops I’ve encountered are about as smart as high school football players who got their rocks off by wrapping up a freshman’s balls with masking tape and slamming his head into a locker. Replace their football pads with police uniforms, convince them they’re the thin blue line, and train them to think of everyone else as a potential “bad guy” and you have soul of American law enforcement today. It’s really that simple. They’re good at brute force and simple commands. Everything else is hazy. Stupidity (not racism) is the key to their psyche.

Bring Back The Ottoman Empire

I have a solution to the problems in Gaza. Give the Holy Land back to Turkey. Bring back the Ottoman Empire and let them deal with the whole mess. Why not? Nothing else has worked.

While we’re at it, let’s sell Alaska back to the Russians (we’ll throw in the Palins for for free) and Florida back to Spain.

I see a win-win situation all around. It’s called synergy.

It’s time to think outside the box, people. We need solutions.

They Never Sleep

Just when I tell myself to look on the bright side, I read something like this:

WASHINGTON -- Former President George H.W. Bush said on Sunday he’d like to see his second son, Jeb, become President of the United States some day.

Interviewed on Fox News Sunday, Bush said his second son, a former Governor of Florida, had all the qualifications to serve in the White House.

Jeb Bush, 55, has said he was considering running for a U.S. Senate seat representing Florida in 2010. The current incumbent, Republican Mel Martinez, has announced he is stepping down.

“I’d like to see him run. I’d like to see him be president one day, or senator, whatever, yes I would,” said Bush, who served as president from 1989-1993.…

Sigh. We’ll never escape them. I suppose it won’t be long before terms like ‘Senator Jenna’ or ‘Governor Barbara’ make their debut on the compost heap of American political discourse. I can see the spittle flying out of Chris Matthew’s mouth even now: “Jenna’s party-girl reputation gives her the common touch.”

Oh, God. Gimme my passport.

What makes this all so terrifying is that it’s so plausible. If the Republicans can’t field a better batch of candidates in 2012 than the bumbling clowns on offer last year, why not Jeb? If he hits the Senate in 2010, he’ll have two years to massage the media and convince everyone that he’s not a hothead like W. We, the American people, will be coaxed into accepting another Bush as president as if it’s part of the natural, organic scheme of things, and the aristocratic principle will be permanently nailed into our national life.

My fears might be premature, but make no mistake about it: President Jeb is a working concept in its research and development phase. The only thing that could prevent this travesty from coming to fruition is a successful Obama presidency. But here W. may have done his family duty more effectively than we give him credit for: George W. has screwed everything up so completely beyond recognition that his successor can’t possibly succeed. It’s likely that the full extent of the damage won’t become apparent until the third of fourth year of Obama’s term, by which time Jeb, rested and ready, will be able to claim that the disasters just then coming into full bloom are Obama’s fault. You can bet they’ll get a noisy assist from Messrs. Limbaugh, Hannity, et al.

“Nicaragua is my farm,” said Anastasio Somoza, long time dictator of that country. The Bushes can say the same thing about the United States. America is their farm. Reasons of state require than an occasional plebian like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama be promoted to (temporary) overseer in order to keep the serfs quiet, which gives the true masters of the plantation time to regroup and conjure up better, more subtle strategies for funneling all of its remaining wealth into their bank accounts.

Ask yourself, what has any Bush ever produced? Where does their money and power come from? Where? Did a Bush invent the assembly line, or plastic, or aluminium foil, or, hell, even a better pair of golf shoes? Has a Bush ever solved an equation, written a poem, a novel, an essay, or filmed a movie, anything? What the fuck have the Bushes ever done to deserve their status and power? What? Even Howard Hughes, in between bouts of insanity, managed to design a freakin’ airplane (albeit one that didn’t fly, but that’s still more than any Bush ever did). The Bush’s contribution to humanity has been a big fat zero, unless you count corpses or debts, in which case the numbers rise into the billions. These parasites haven’t even bothered to learn how to speak our fucking language properly.

Yet their names keep popping up during election season, and all right-thinking Americans are enjoined to consider their wisdom and ‘experience’ as if they’re legitimate candidates or wise statesmen, instead of the head lice they truly are.

I’m still going to drink that bottle of champagne marked “20 January, 2009,” and so should you. Just remember that while normal people like us are are drifting off to happy sleep, our aristocracy is wide awake and waiting.