"Fiscal Cliff"'s Notes

And a bunch of other stuff.  Hi again, gang, and welcome back.  Or am I not supposed to be the one saying that?  When I realized that Tom had more posts on my blog than I did in recent weeks, I figured I'd better weigh in some, too.Thanks for writing, Tom; your responses have triggered many thoughts in me; I was actually going to write about Rudman, f'rinstance, even before you brought him up.

While it is certainly true, as Tom notes, that this is "their" country, too (see the Nov 4 post, and Tom's response), I think that "they" see it as, literally, their country.  Or want to see it that way, at least; as Don points out in his response, "we, the people" didn't allow that to be true, much to Republican insiders' shock.  But I think very strongly that we delude ourselves if we see the one percent as somehow having the same wishes, hopes, and views of the country as the "great unwashed" do.  And here I must go off on one of those digressions to which I am prone, and which will probably blow the whole point and tone of this piece, but what the hell, I'm'a do it anyway.

The phrase "the great unwashed," used to describe the lower classes, whatever that may mean to anyone in particular, was coined by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a British (obviously, what-ho?) novelist of the mid-nineteenth century.  He is also the coiner of "pursuit of the almighty dollar," "the pen is mightier than the sword" and, perhaps most famously, "It was a dark and stormy night," which last has led to much derision (Snoopy always used it to start his novels in the "Peanuts" strip) and has given rise to an annual contest to write the best opening line for the worst (prospective) novel ever written ( This year's winner: "As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.") .  So the poor guy gets made fun of for the one thing, but doesn't get recognition for the other great lines that become standard parts of the lexicon.  Jeez, wonder if that's true for everyone--they've got shit we can deride, but they've also got lots of wonderful things to offer ...?  Nah, can't be.  Never mind.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, "their country."  I believe that their country and mine are geographically the same, or at least similar, but emotionally or attitudinally worlds apart.  I believe that my country is open, welcoming, ready to accept and aid people of every race, gender, creed, persuasion and stripe, while theirs is reactionary, exclusionary, all about consolidating and amplifying what they have, repressing, oppressing and suppressing The Other, because, of course, The Other can eventually threaten them.  In spite of Romney's "47%" comments, I, sap that I am, thought that he was basically a decent guy who, unfortunately, would say or do anything, or the opposite of anything if necessary, to get elected.  Then, in his post-election comments he revealed himself for the self-aggrandizing and -accreting greedhead (thank you, Hunter S. Thompson) he is and longed to represent.  Obama won by giving "gifts" of aid and food and support to those in need?  That's called being a leader, a President, Mitt; those aren't gifts or bribes, as your type might see them; they are the way that a responsible and compassionate leader carries out his or her (and there are women leaders, Mitt:  who the hell knew that New Hampshire was so progressive that we'd have 5 of them?) responsibilities and obligations.  Maybe a conversation with that traitor Chris Christie is in order.  Jesus, what would Jesus do?

Mention of Christie brings me to Warren Rudman, who Tom referred to in another post (and yeah, I know I'm the one who mentioned Christie, but if I had to wait for you guys...).  Christie was entirely partisan, it seemed, one of Romney's biggest (in many senses of the word) and most-noticed cheerleaders.  Then Sandy hit, and Christie put leadership and compassion above partisanship; to his great credit, he recognized and praised what Obama and the Federal government, that conservative boogeyman, were actually all about and could do.  Warren Rudman, former senator from NH who died last week, was like that, too.  He was a Republican insider who became an outsider when he became more open-minded,  fair and bi-partisan, working for the best interests of the people, rather than hewing to the party line.  He was most instrumental, for instance, in slipping David Souter past the GOP Guardians Of Morality and onto the Supreme Court.  As NH attorney general he was pretty reactionary and oppressive (see Mayflowers, when Abbie and Jerry, et al came to UNH--right, Carolyn B.?), but he grew and  became a mensch (a Jew from NH in power? Oy vey.). 

Unlike, for instance, a still-living relic of that era, John Sununu.  He was governor of NH in the '70s, went on to be chief of staff for Bush 1, and delivered the official nomination speech for Romney at this year's Convention.  He was always an arrogant, combative, mean-spirited little prick, and has not changed an iota.  I heard him being interviewed by Brooke Gladstone on NPR's On the Media in August, on the subject of fact checkers and truthfulness in political advertising.  In the course of the interview he went from testy to full-out angry as Ms. Gladstone pursued her line of questioning.  Just before he hung up on her on air he said something about the elite liberal media, especially NPR, always covering the President's butt, and "you're going to lose in November."  You should listen to it.  Good to see that he's every bit as good a political prognosticator as he is a human being.  There's a reason the GOP presidential nominee has won the popular vote once--yes, that's "once"--since 1988.  Dinosaurs like Sununu could ensure that it stays that way.  While part of me-- not my higher self, but the immature, self-serving, venal part which, admittedly, is about 90%--wishes that would be the case, most of me knows it shouldn't--we face an overriding issue which needs all of us working together to fix.

And I don't mean the stupid "Fiscal Cliff" although, like the real problem, it too is manmade.  Obama and the Dems actually stand to benefit from this so-called cliff: let the Bush tax cuts expire, then enact new legislation which raises taxes on the rich while lowering those of the middle class.  Let there be huge cuts in defense spending-- and it's about fucking time-- and then fund according to priorities, although Obama would want far more killer drones than I'm comfortable with, which is about zero.  Let the GOP vote against these measures and then see how they do in 2014 or against Hillary in 2016.  However:  We can discuss all of these financial minutiae, but Rome is burning--and melting.

Sorry, gang, to keep on about this, but we're killing the climate, and that's going to kill us.  We want to see events like Irene and Sandy, droughts in Africa and Kansas, as anomalies.  They were, once; now they're commonplace, exacting huge human (hear that, Dems?) and financial (hear that, Reps?) tolls, which are only going to grow.  But when was the last time you heard any of our  "leaders" raise the issue of climate change in public discourse, other than to to downplay or outright dismiss and disparage it?  Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert, among many other smart, brave and informed people, are there, but elected officials?  Nope--the Force-10 winds aren't blowing in that direction yet, and when they finally do it'll probly be too late.

Turns out you didn't really miss this shit, did ya?

Forward...Into The Past?

Earl Weaver,  longtime manager of the Baltimore Orioles, Hall-of-Famer, inarguably one of the greatest managers in baseball history, was shrewd, smart, and eminently quotable.  His Orioles teams were invariably in the thick of the pennant race every September, and Earl used every tactic he could to psych out his opponents.  In September, 1975, as the O's were in Boston trying to catch the Sox, and all of Red Sox Nation held its breath anticipating another collapse, Weaver said "We've climbed out of more coffins than Bela Lugosi." 

In 1966, the US Supreme Court struck down, once and for all, we thought, the poll tax, perhaps the last of the Jim Crow laws, clearly intended to suppress the ability of poor and minority, especially black, voters to exercise their right to vote.  In 1973, the Court's decision in Roe v. Wade finally, once and for all, we thought, gave women the right to control their bodies and to make their own decisions regarding fundamental human rights.  In 2008, we elected a black man (well, half-black; why is it that we characterize such mixed-race people as "black?"  They're equally white.  But I guess it's better than two alternatives that come to mind: ""blite" or "whack," and oh shit I've just given those "non-racists" fodder) to be President of the US, an act that was unthinkable when I was a kid and, we told ourselves, was clear evidence that the country had finally, once and for all, overcome its heinous past and was no longer virulently and institutionally racist.

Comes now Election 2012,  and so many of the issues we thought were buried and behind us are being pulled back out of their coffins by the Grand Old Party.  Jim Crow, meet Voter ID, a straw man used by Repugnicants countrywide in an attempt to disenfranchise generally Democratic demographics, in the name of preventing voter fraud.  That there is no evidence anywhere of significant voter fraud (except for, in one of life's grand ironies, a voter-registration firm hired by Repugs in FLA to increase their voter registration, and which was found to be fabricating names on their rolls) matters no more to the Right-Wing Elites than the overwhelming evidence that there is climate change happening.  Women's right to choose, meet "Life begins whenever one man thinks lustful thoughts about one woman, and rape is just God's way of saying 'Um, are you sure?'"  Barack Obama, meet the New America, same, in way too many respects, as the Old America.  I heard recently from a resident of Houston that the local PD there refers to African Americans as "Mondays" because "everyone hates..."--yup.

It seems unfortunately appropriate that the election comes so soon after we've turned back the clock;  Romney/Ryan, Inc. and their assorted partners, puppetmasters, sycophants and toadies are trying to turn the calendar back to, say, 1957, when white men ruled, as god intended, and if you didn't like the way they did things it was too bad, because they couldn't really see or hear you anyway.  And it almost wouldn't be quite so bad if that's all it was; after all, we survived Nixon, Reagan, and W.cheney, Inc.   But the GOP now is venal, virulent, and vehement in its outlooks and proposed policies.  They're turning their backs on infrastructure, healthcare, education, science, for chrissakes, the poor, the downtrodden, the elderly, their very own citizens and constituents.  If the French had any balls (sorry--stooping to a stereotype for a cheap laugh) they'd ask for the Statue of Liberty back, or at least to have its motto sandblasted off: it will no longer pertain even to natives, let alone immigrants.  "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" need not apply.

We are told that every election is (imagine the stentorian tones of John Facenda, the voice of NFL Films, the new Voice of God)  "The Most Important Election Of Our Lifetime," but damn, this one might be.  I dimly remember a Paul Simon quote about rap from the ('80s?)--and this surely says something about his and my biases-- to the effect that " Rap is like dropping an atomic bomb on the history and evolution of popular music--I mean, how long will it take us to get back to Charlie Parker?"    If RomRyan, Inc. gets elected, how long will it take us to get back to basic humanity, to the fundamental responsibilities and trust intrinsic to government and civilized society, to pull ourselves, if not out of the coffin, at least back out of the subprimordial slime?

What The Fuck is happening to my country?  Please make it stop.

BTW:  the titular (I obviously love that word) quote comes from Catherwood, the duplicitous butler in Firesign Theater's "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger (Third Eye)."