Mind Your Own Business

Way back in 1928, Supreme court Justice Louis Brandeis referred to "the right to be let alone" as "the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men".  I agree.  We have, and ought to have, the right to be left alone - by the media, the government, and nosy people in general.

Of course, this right is not absolute.  I should not have the right to be left alone to beat my wife, molest little kids, start a dog fighting ring or other crimes that involve the direct harming of others.  But whatever I do that I want to keep to myself, that doesn't involve me hurting others, ought to be left up to me, without the interference of nosey parties.

With that said, we are a society obsessed with other people's lives.  When Charlie Sheen announced his mid-life crisis and desired to have endless coke parties with porn stars, the media couldn't get enough.  I addressed it myself on this blog, but mostly just to say nobody should care.  This isn't news, a rich middle aged guy having a very expensive midlife crisis. 

A few weeks ago, several of Sarah Palin's emails were made public.  Rather than hanging our heads in shame over this invasion of privacy, we celebrated it on TV and on the Internet.  I'm no fan of Mrs. Palin, but even the jerks in our society should have the right to reasonably expect some measure of privacy.  Unless her emails have her confessing to crimes, I'm not interested.

More recently, Congressman Anthony Weiner's private life of sexy text messages and PG-13 pictures sent to various women has come to light, and the predictable media feeding frenzy has engaged.  Arnold Schwarzenegger’s many mistresses and love children became public shortly after he left office, and we all dove into the buffet at the never ending trough of public shame.

The Washington versions of our obsession with all things private is just one chapter in our saga.  Visit sites like TMZ, PerezHilton, or scan the magazines at the checkout stands anywhere in America, and you will see two things: a society obsessed with other people's private lives, and an well-funded industry dedicated to enabling this addiction.  I don't find Anthony Weiner's activities nearly as obscene as our general attitude that we are entitled to know the details.  It has been suggested that we should find better ways to spend our time, both individually and collectively.  Will it happen, though?  Of course not. 

Like Pavlov's dogs, we have been conditioned to respond to the stimuli our masters have chosen.  How much weight has Kirstie Allie lost and/or gained back?  Do Tom Cruise and Katey Holmes have a happy marriage?  What about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? What are the stars of "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" doing off-camera?  What is the private life of your favorite celebrity really like?

I have to admit that I find myself cheering every time some celebrity beats the hell out of someone in the paparazzi for taking pictures of their kids or crowding them out so they can't successfully walk to their cars when they leave restaurants.  Without the paparazzi and the tabloids, we would have lost track of Lindsay Lohan and the Olson twins, and we probably would have no idea who Paris Hilton is at all.  And to me, those are good things.  In a perfect world, or at least a self-respecting one, we wouldn't bother to care.

Our obsession does not end with the private side of celebrity.  Our government makes it a policy to wage war waged on harmless stoners, under the flimsy pretext of a "war on drugs".  Tactically, financially, morally, our war on drugs is a colossal failure and needs to end.  And since I'm one of the people funding it through my tax dollars, I feel that I should get a say in this.  But to admit defeat in the war on drugs would be to acknowledge that it's okay to leave people alone sometimes.  And that is not a message that we as a society are ready to accept.

Ask people whether two gay people they don’t even know should have the right to marry, and suddenly everyone has an opinion.  Ask them if a gay couple who they’ve never met is fit to adopt and raise a child, and you’ll get even stronger opinions.  Whatever happened to “none of your business”?  Whatever happened to minding our own business?

I've said it before and I’ll say it again: we ought to have the absolute right to be left alone, provided we are not actively engaged in harming others.  But in agreeing to our own right to be left alone, we must also stipulate that right for everyone else as well.  And that means the end of tabloids, scandals involving politicians’ sex lives, and the right to decide on the validity of other people’s marriages.  What ever shall we discuss now?

Hate, Inc.

This weekend in Phoenix, Arizona there was an anti-immigration protest held, organized by "American Citizens United". I checked their web site, and behind the patriotic lip service is a clear message: we hate Mexicans. One wonders, as the organization is based in Arizona, if you hate Mexicans so much, why are you living in a state that borders Mexico? I mean, it's just unrealistic of you to not expect to see Mexicans, here legally or not, all around you. By my count, there are 34 states that do not border other countries. You can't move to one of them?

That aside, some neo-Nazis showed up at this rally, and a scuffle ensued. Tea-bagging Mexican haters apparently don't wish to include the Nazis in their protests. I mean, hating Mexicans is one thing, but when someone shows up at your rally waving a picture of Hitler, it takes away from their credibility.

It occurred to me watching that, that there's no shortage of anger today in America. Most of it is from white folks, red state patriots who are convinced that our country is circling the drain, and that their opinions aren't being taken into consideration, and they want their country back. Okay, but back from whom? Who "stole" your country? Back when Bush was (failing at) running things, liberals like myself had the same mantra: "what happened to MY America?" In the case of the anti-Bush crowd, we felt our economic and foreign policies had been usurped by small minority, bent on world domination, both militarily and economically, at the expense of the poor and the overall majority. Despite massive disapproval of the war in Iraq, they would not consider changing course. Why should they? They were getting rich off the back and blood of brown people and their oil, much like the settlers in the Old West and plantations owners of the South. And even though we thought we'd evolved beyond such imperialistic domination fixations, our leaders were intent on reverting from being a Republic to an Empire. Thus, Rome fell.

Ever since the 2008 elections, the losers (Republicans and the Right Wing in general) have been scrambling to define themselves. The unspoken understanding was that Republicans were the party of the white Christians in America, the gun owners, the religious, and usually the more affluent. Democrats were the ones who always suggested increasing the federal minimum wage, and Republicans were the ones fighting for the poor business owners who would be forced out of business when they could no longer exploit their workforces for such slave wages. Democrats (synonymous with liberals and progressives for the sake of this piece) are typically the ones to champion the rights of minorities - blacks, women, gays, you name it. Democrats introduce hate crime legislation, Republicans argue that it's unnecessary. (No shit, fellas, no one is lynching white christian straight men, of course you think it's unnecessary.) Democrats argue for gay marriage, Republicans argue that civil unions are the same thing. Of course they're not, but the message is clear - don't rock the boat.

White Christian men have run America from the beginning. All the signers of the Declaration of Independence were white men, most were Christian. Same for the Constitution. And with the exception of Barack Obama, all U.S. Presidents have been white men. Only one was never married. We were a nation for 140 years before we had a woman in Congress. We were a nation for nearly a century before non-whites were allowed to vote, and over a century before women were allowed. So there is a strong tradition in this country of white male leadership, and legislation that primarily benefited white straight Christian men.

It stands to reason that when women and minorities got the right to vote, and started showing up in Congress and the Supreme court, that our rules and laws would undergo a change as well. No longer do our laws only allow for the rights of white straight men to win. Now women have rights, minorities have rights, and the white straight Christian men have to get used to a nation in flux; a nation that isn't all about them anymore.

With the election of a black president, we've put the final piece in place. America is no longer White Man Land, officially. Now, granted, Obama is mixed race - his mother was white, but such distinctions are lost on those afraid of change. He's not white if he's not 100% white.

Which brings me to hate. Let me say first that hate is simply the fear of the unknown. We fear what we don't understand, and we instinctively feel separate from things and people that are different. We are encouraged to fear, which leads to distrust, which evolves into hate. And that hate gets perpetuated through the generations. When I see men calling Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton a bitch, I know what they're really saying is that they resent having a woman in a position of authority over them, or indeed any man. When I hear people saying "I want my country back", I know it's not that they want it back to Republican or conservative rule, they just want a white man in charge. Case in point: when Bill Clinton was president, no one was going around talking about wanting their country back. That's because he was white, he was a man, he was straight, and he was a Christian. The right wing disagreed with his politics, but they didn't claim to have had their country stolen out from under them.

With Obama in the Oval Office, Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Nancy Pelosi in charge in the House, it's apparent to all straight white men that their reign of power has come to an end. And this has a lot of the Old Guard uneasy: does this mean the end of an era, referred to in hindsight as the Caucasian Men's Period of American Power? Or is this simply a reaction to the anti-Bush sentiment borne of eight years of failed leadership? When will we have another black president? When can we expect a female president? How about a First Couple of mixed race? For that matter, when can we expect a gay or lesbian president? The first overtly non-Christian president? Surely the election of Barack Obama has many of us on the left and right wondering if the mold has truly been shattered, or what's next.

It's Torture. How Is This Even a Discussion?

Did the Bush Administration torture people? Of course they did. Even they don't bother denying it. Of course, they call it "enhanced interrogation techniques". Right...

What I want to know is, who cares who knew? I mean, we can figure that out eventually. This is the Information Age, after all, and the days of secrets are pretty much dead. Try being a Congressman and having an affair if you don't believe me. Did Nancy Pelosi know? Yeah, probably. Was she in a position to do anything to stop it? Probably not, other than go to the press. And in Washington, you want to be very careful before you start whistle blowing on your fellow politicians. Odds are if you have some dirt on someone, then someone else probably has some dirt on you. That's my theory: Pelosi knew, and was somehow leveraged into silence. I could be wrong.

But apart from the whole "who knew what and when did they know it" sideshow is the heart of the matter. We have people who ordered torture, and that order filtered down through a succession of lawyers. The wording cleansed in such a way as to make it all nice and legal, and then it was passed to the people who actually had to carry it out. The government employees, the CIA, the military, all got their hands dirty. At any point, someone could have gotten an attack of acute decency. They could have refused to participate, they could have gone to the press, any number of things could have happened to stop the process.

But no one succeeded in stopping it, and it happened. We tortured. Us, the good guys, we tortured people. Against every instinct of decency, against all the logic that suggests information obtained during torture is unreliable at best, against every international treaty we ever signed, we tortured. Whether you call it "enhanced interrogation" or some other abuse of the English language, it matters little to the guy on the receiving end.

And now that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have left office, it falls on the new administration to decide what to do. First and most obvious, we stop the torturing. Not only is it illegal, it is pointless. We could round up every member of the Taliban and al Qaeda and torture them until the cows come home and it won't bring back the people who died on 9/11. It won't bring back the Twin Towers. It won't guarantee we'll be safe from future attacks. Quite the opposite: if anything, it's more likely to foment hostility towards the United States.

So what to do? I'm sorry; maybe the answer is obvious to me because I'm not in politics. We round up every person involved, from the people who made the decision to torture, through all the buffer levels of people who cleaned up the wording, to the people who actually performed the torturing. We round them all up, regardless of political affiliation, and we charge them with war crimes. We charge them with crimes against humanity. We charge them with violations of the Geneva Convention. If necessary we turn them over to the World Court in The Hague, where politics cease to matter. We try them in the courts. And if we find them guilty, we punish them. We incarcerate them. We have them executed if need be.

This isn't about the war on terror. As I've said before, there IS no war on terror. This is about something much simpler and at the same time much more profound. It is about right and wrong. We cannot strut the world's stage in the guise of "the good guys" without stopping periodically to look around and ask ourselves what the right thing is. We have a choice here, whether to hold those people accountable for embarrassing our nation as they have. We have the opportunity to claim the mantle of "hero" on the world's stage and take a stand for what is right, even if we end up throwing people from both parties under the bus in the process.

And make no mistake, the world is watching. The decisions we make will go a long way towards forming opinions abroad. And if we fail to do the right thing here, if we fail to hold those people accountable, then the next time we are attacked, we dare not ask "why do people hate Americans?" This is why. Because we commit atrocities and then we fail to hold those people to the rule of law. It is simple.

The Nutty Irishman Solves Everything! (Part One)

That's right folks, yours truly is going to give you the solutions to all the ills that plague us, and I'm going to do it simply, effectively, and cost-efficiently. Then, I'll tell you why my practical solutions will never see the light of day. Ready?

Problem #1: Illegal Immigration. Conservative types love to spout off at illegal immigrants, and will miss no opportunity to hitch onto whatever is happening in the news and somehow contrive a way to make it the fault of illegal immigrants. The most recent example is this swine flu thing. Apparently, according to the fringe right wing hacks, Mexicans have deliberately and knowingly brought swine flu to the U.S. when they came here illegally. Bad enough they steal all our jobs, now they want to kill us. Not paranoid enough for you? Try this one: allegedly al Qaeda manufactured this latest epidemic of swine flu (in their super-secret chemical labs, hidden deep in the mountainside caves of Afghanistan). Then, instead of using one of a million possible ways to import it directly into the United States, they chose instead to infect Mexicans (with whom they have no quarrel, incidentally), knowing that they would, in turn, sneak into America and infect the lot of us.

Solution #1: Jail Time for Employers, Not Employees: Okay, so if we are going to address illegal immigration in this country, we need to go after the two things we know the immigrants do: work and sleep. Despite what you may have been told, they don't tunnel under our border fences and emerge, only to immediately give birth to babies, collect food stamps and welfare. We know they get jobs, and we know that without jobs available to them, they'd have very little reason to come here. In the drug trade, law enforcement is much more interested in nabbing the dealers than the buyers. We simply apply the same rationale here. So, we pass a law. Any company that is found to have illegal immigrants in their employ, they're the new targets of law enforcement. Any business, from your local restaurant all the way up to Wal-Mart, the owners, presidents, chairmen of the board, get sentenced to 30 days in a federal prison for each illegal immigrant they hire. No fines, no community service – go directly to jail. Imagine seeing the owner of Wal-Mart taken away in shackles, live on CNN. Watch how quickly employers would then start insisting on documentation for their employees.

Solution #2: Jail Time for Landlords Who Rent to Illegals: The second part of the solution has to do with where they stay. In most cases, they live in apartments, and those apartments are being rented out by landlords. So, we get law enforcement to go after the landlords. We make them responsible for who rents their apartments, pure and simple. If an illegal immigrant is found to be residing in an apartment (whether they're on the lease of not), the landlords or owners spend 30 days in federal prison for each illegal found there.

Why it will never happen: My solutions sidestep the notion of fining the companies. Most of the bigger companies keep tons of cash in reserve for such legal issues and would not be deterred by fines. Or if they are fined out of existence (like a restaurant), another similar business would just come along and take its place, likely hiring the same batch of illegal immigrants. No, fines are not the solution. Take some of the seven-figure salaried elites and put them in general population for a few weeks, see if that changes their perspective. But we all know even if such legislation passed, it would be rotted with loopholes that would allow their lawyers to get exceptions in almost every case, making the law moot. Besides, these business owners are known for making contributions to candidates at election time, and money talks. Even if they don't donate to the candidate directly, they can still pump lots of money into both major political parties, pretty much ensuring that whoever gets elected will remember who got them there. If I sound cynical, it’s because I am. I believe that when big business and government get together, the one thing you can count on is the average American getting screwed. Unless you own their stock, most companies will not do anything to acquiesce to your demands. Don’t like Wal-Mart’s policies? Shop somewhere else, it’s a free country. Don’t like the fact that Candidate “A” gets his ass kissed by big business? Okay then, vote for Candidate “B”. But don’t fool yourself for a second into thinking that it makes a difference to Big Business. They have both bases covered.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Next topic? Comment on this blog with your suggestions.

Doomed from the Start?

I sincerely hope not.

President-elect Obama has had more face time with the press than the actual President over the last two weeks. Bush set new records for most vacation time ever taken by a President. So now that we're basically just watching clock waiting for him to be on permanent vacation, he raises the bar on Lame Duckery. Honestly, does he know we're still paying his salary? It seems like between Bush abdicating his duties as President and Obama officially restrained from doing anything, we are a nation without a president.

It's just as well, as far as I'm concerned. A nation with no President at all is infinitely better than a nation with George W. Bush in charge. I've made no secret of my opinions here. I believe George W. Bush's presidency to be the worst thing to happen to our nation since the assassination of John Kennedy. Worse than 9/11, worse than Vietnam, worse than Watergate. Every day we inch towards the post-Bush era I breathe a little easier and become a little more optimistic about our nation's future.

So when it comes to President-Elect Obama, I cannot help but be optimistic. Bush lowered expectations across the board, and we not only tolerated it, we re-elected him. I have a theory that in years to come historians will refer to this as the Era of Mediocrity. We allowed ourselves to be led by a C-student, and we totally abandoned our quest for excellence as a nation. In doing so, we now have an economy that is circling the drain. We have a list of nations that hate us far outnumbering our allies. We have debt unimagined. We are, as a nation guilty of war crimes so multiple and egregious that we may never be the Good Guys again. We have collectively gone rogue from our own founding principles of liberty and freedom, let alone prosperity.

All Obama has to do to achieve greatness in the wake of the Bush Years is not screw up any worse. And screwing up worse than Bush did would require a lethal combination of creativity and psychosis. Obama, it seems, is only creative. Alas.

The thing is, Obama is getting roundly criticized by the Collective Right Wing Peanut Gallery (CRWPG), the same group that managed to stick its fingers in their ears for the past eight years and drown out any valid criticisms of Bush. Watching Fox News handle Bush's many blunders essentially boiled down to "LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA". Anyone not willing to swallow the Kool-Aid was deemed to be part of the liberal media conspiracy. Watching Fox News was like the cop waving people past a scene of carnage and assuring us "move along, people - nothing to see here".

These same "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" acolytes have uncorked their collective suspicion and turned it to a man who isn't even in charge yet. Believe me when I tell you there is already a website called ImpeachObama.com - weeks before he's had a chance to do anything remotely impeachable. Now, I can appreciate cynicism and I've often confused pessimism with being realistic, but this is too much. The more Obama's people talk about hope, the less his opponents seem to have.

In terms of Obama's cabinet picks, he gets criticism in both fresh faces he chooses (inexperienced newbies bound to screw up with rookie mistakes) and the more experienced people he picks (corrupt insiders that prove Obama never really meant to bring change anyhow). When Obama chose L.A.'s mayor Villaraigosa to be a part of his economic advisory team, people who already didn't like the Mayor said that this was proof that Obama was out to destroy our nation's economy. I saw it as a validation of Villaraigosa's job as mayor.

The point: There's always two ways to look at things, and in the case of President-elect Obama, I say this: the guy isn't even running things yet. He hasn't signed one bill into law. He hasn't addressed Congress or the American People as their President. He is using the time after the election to get his act together so that once he take the Oath of Office he can get to work immediately. And perhaps, just perhaps, we ought to suspend criticism of him until he's actually done something as President.

Fair Warning to President Obama

I've been in such a good mood lately, and with good reason. First off, my Phillies are leading three games to one in the World Series, and tonight's game gives them the home field advantage. Anyone who has ever attended a major sporting event in Philadelphia can attest to the zeal of the Philly fans. And that's putting it mildly - Flyers games include an unwritten rules allowing fans to spill beer on anyone wearing the other team's jersey. Eagles fans once booed Santa Claus off the field. And pity the poor sap in the stands tonight cheering for Tampa Bay. I could be mistaken but I believe there is an obscure rule on the books in Philadelphia that allows the people are him to kill him, cook him and eat him. I may be wrong.

Go Phils.

So the election draweth nigh, and every poll out there predicts a McCain defeat. Don't take it too personally, Senator. It's not about you, or your POW status, or even your policies. The simple fact that there is an "R" after your name pretty much dooms you. Americans are a fickle lot, and eight years of one party running the railroad is enough. Let's leave out of it the fact that George W. Bush (R) has set the controls for the heart of the sun. Even with the good that Bill Clinton had achieved after eight years, the American voting public demanded a game of musical chairs. Despite Al Gore's being overwhelmingly better suited for the job, Bush the Son skated into the job largely based on the American voting public's desire for something new and different. No matter how cataclysmically bad that choice was, at least it wasn't boring.

We liberals have had eight years to get good and mad about things. There isn't much going on in government that isn't going to get adjusted, if not reversed outright. Domestic policies, foreign policies, fiscal policies, economic, trade, you name it - there will be a new sheriff in town come January, and we're all champing at the bit to see how he's going to fix things.

Obama will have the benefit of a House and Senate that are controlled by the same party - his. And barring the occasional filibuster, we can reasonably expect the Federal government to function according to Democrat Party standards.

Even still, I already feel sorry for Obama. It's not a reflection of how I view his competence. It's not my pervasive pessimism either. It's simply this: Between eight years of Republicans running the Executive Branch and six years of them running the Legislative branch, we've gotten ourselves into a mess. You know how when you dig the Christmas lights out for decorating and untangling them takes longer than hanging them? I suspect Obama will feel like he's untangling the mother lode of all tangles come January, and I do not envy him.

Even so, he should know that about ten seconds after this throng of change-hungry liberals carry him across the goal and into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that same crowd, in all its fickle glory will begin to pick him apart. Obama will be roundly criticized by both sides. It''s not him - we just do it to our Presidents. They go from savior to goat pretty quickly. When Republicans criticize him for being a liberal, we'll circle the wagons, but we're defending the ideals, not the man. Bill Clinton took a lot of heat from both sides too. It's nothing personal.

So President Obama, if you're reading this, allow me to offer a few suggestions for your first 100 days in office. If you can stick to this list, you'll go a long way towards staving off criticism:

• Give us a deadline for ending the war in Iraq. We want to know the details, and we want you to keep your word. This war, and its inability to limit itself, had a lot to do with getting you elected. We vote for you in hopes of ending it, so let's make it a priority.
• Draft a bill, or ask Congress to draft it, introducing a Constitutional Amendment that the Federal Budget must be balanced.
• Get the ball rolling on national health care. Either draft legislation, or demand it from Congress, to get the damn process started already.
• Figure out a way to address the economic crisis that won't force the government to raise taxes.

Let's start with that. And know, sir, that even though I support you and rally others to do the same, I will be one of your harshest critics if you drop the ball. We've had eight years of idiotic leadership, and we're expecting quite a lot from you. I do not envy you, but I cannot bring myself to pity you either.

Godspeed to you, sir.

McCain Paints himself Into A Corner

With less than a month to go before Election Day, the polls are trending if not heavily, then consistently towards an Obama/Biden victory. Even Fox News, the last great bastion of right-leaning politics punditry, has succumbed to what looks like the inevitable: Obama will win and McCain will lose.

Not to be one to let the grass grow under my feet, I'd like to get the post-mortem started a little early. What went wrong for McCain? There's many factors that spelled defeat leading up to the election. Let's look back on some of the telling signs leading up to now, shall we?

• Certainly McCain was never Mr. Popularity among those on the right wing. Seen as too much of a moderate by fellow Republicans, he dared to cross the aisle to co-author legislation in a time where the Republicans enjoyed such a majority in both houses of Congress that compromise seemed an unnecessary evil.
• McCain was tainted by scandal, forever linked to the Keating Five. For those too young to understand... ah hell, just Google it. I'm long-winded enough as it is.
• McCain never quite clicked with the extreme religious right. To Bush's credit, he knew to play Mr. Born Again when the situation called for it.
• McCain relied too heavily on his status as a P.O.W. bad ass giving him the edge over us sissy liberals. It plays well in most cases, but this is a nation bone weary from an endless war.

The list goes on, but the one that caught my attention most recently was at a campaign event where he spoke with a woman who said she feared Barack Obama because he's an "Arab". The implication was clear - Obama wins, wraps his head in a turban , declares himself the Twelve Imam, and imposes Muslim laws. Any Christian holdouts refusing to convert to Islam get beheaded and the Inaugural Dinner is attended by the President of Iran.

McCain, to his credit, corrected the woman, saying Obama is not an Arab, and that he is a fine and honorable man. The crowd immediately booed. Booed! Watching McCain try to regain control of the crowd was just plain sad. Republicans are now booing their own candidate for refusing to propagate lies.

We're supposed to be electing the candidate based on the issues, or so I thought. But as McCain is falling behind in the polls, we've seen the names William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright trotted out once more, dusted off from their months of irrelevance. Republicans insist that these "associations" matter, because they reveal much about the man himself. I say, be very careful when attempting to besmirch Obama based on his associations. In the effort to get McCain elected, and in the past going back to the early 1980's, McCain has had a rogues' gallery on his speed dial, including Charles Keating and a few evangelists that would have us believe that Hurricane Katrina was God's righteous wrath borne against New Orleans for planning a gay pride parade. Scary stuff, that. To have a man in charge who keeps as spiritual counsel men with such Charlton Heston-esque notions of the Almighty makes you wonder how long it would take before we transitioned into a full-blown theocracy.

William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright - let's just admit it - are red herrings. Nothing in Obama's dealings with either of these men tells us anything about what kind of a job he would do as President. Their names are supposed to make you fearful and suspicious. And in your fear of Obama, you're supposed to vote for the safe candidate. But here's a thought - a safe candidate wouldn't employ fear as a tactic to make himself more attractive than the other guy. The safe candidate wouldn't want America to be afraid of anything, would they? It just seems to me that "safety" and "fear" would be mutually exclusive concepts - is it me?

Why are the Republicans losing so badly?

Because they WANT to.

The mess the Republicans have made being in charge over the last eight years has finally come to fruition. Wall Street is melting down, Banks are collapsing, and all because of the Republican de-regulation. Instead of a free market, instead of capitalism, we have seen rampant greed, golden parachutes for CEO's of failed institutions, jobs sent overseas, inflation on the rise, gas prices have skyrocketed while Bush's oil buddies got obscenely wealthy, and now we have growing unemployment, foreclosures like we've not seen in decades, and we're on the brink of war with Iran and Russia.

You've got to give the Republicans credit for having enough sense to realize the ship is sinking. They know that whoever is in charge when the roof actually does collapse will shoulder the majority of the blame. Republicans, having created this house of cards, can slink away after the election and then when it all comes crashing down say, "see what happens? Democrats in charge and it all goes to hell."

They'll neglect to mention that they're the ones with their market deregulation that got us here. They'll have us forget that when the Republicans ran the White House and Congress, that gas doubled and tripled in price. They'll have us forget they committed hundreds of billions of dollars to an unnecessary war. They'll have us forget how they bankrupted the Treasury and destroyed a budget surplus only to plunge us, and now Wall Street, into the biggest financial meltdown in our lifetimes. They'll shrug off the blame to Clinton, even though he had us going in the opposite direction. They'll pass the buck to Obama and Biden in 2009, abandoning the problem to the next generation.

That's okay though, Republicans. Don't worry about it. We're used to this from you. You did it with Reagan and Bush the Father, and now you've done it with Bush the Son - you screw the country royally, get your fatcat friends even richer, and leave this country like hooker in a ditch.

Come next year, you'll be playing golf in Dubai and laughing over how you fooled the American people into letting you get away with it, and how you got Obama to take the rap. But just like Clinton put our Humpty Dumpty economy back together again after twelve years of GOP omelets, so will Obama and Biden repair the damage this time.

That's why you nominated the least popular Republican you could find, and had her pick a hockey mom from Podunk Alaska as his running mate. You were never serious about winning in the first place. You WANT to lose this election, and bail out just in time. You know you've screwed us, and you know you haven't got the first clue how to fix it. So when Obama wins handily next month, if it fails you can blame him, and if he miraculously rescues us from the brink of the abyss, you can say he benefited from policies Bush the Son set in motion.

You've got all your bases covered.

My Two Cents on Abortion

Is it me, or is the abortion thing just another distraction? I mean, not to take anything away from the validity of either side... Do we really think whichever President gets elected is going to have any kind of drastic impact on abortion?

First off, of the three branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial), it will be the judicial folks that make the choices that impact abortion. Even if a President or even a Congress make laws restricting abortion, you have to know those decisions will be challenged eventually, and ultimately it will be the Supreme Court that gets the last word.

Now I know what you're going to say - who ever is the next president, for the next four or eight years, will probably be in charge of nominating replacement judges. We're looking at the strong possibility of 2-3 of the nine retiring in the near future. And when that happens, pundits will wag their tongues as to the significance of everything that happens.

But let's cut to the chase, shall we? Say a justice retires. The President nominates a replacement. Predictably, this nominee is in close lockstep with the President on issues like abortion. Then the nominee goes before Congress and gets every decision they've ever made re-examined and a few decisions they might hypothetically make in the future. Assuming the Congress approves this person (which is by no means guaranteed) they may or may not tip the scales in the Supreme Court towards the left or right.

So fast forward a few years. We replace two justices and now the Court is leaning heavily towards one side (pick one). Laws get passed having to do with abortion, and those laws get challenged, eventually making their way to the Supreme Court. Regardless of what is decided in the future, decisions from previous sessions stand, like... Roe V. Wade.

Now, I know this is a personal issue for many. Some have more first hand contact with life and death than others, like healthcare providers. To the rest of us, this is an interesting academic debate, and we have the luxury of distance. But I would respectfully submit that even the pro-choiciest of the pro-choice army does not enjoy the idea of abortion. Certainly, to those who have the procedure done, it is a traumatic and painful process. The doctors who perform abortions, I would guess, take no joy from terminating a pregnancy. Every fetus aborted weighs on their conscience. Why do they do it then? I can't be sure. I suspect that in the context in which it is presented, it seems at the very least, a reasonable alternative. Those of us who have never dealt with an unwanted pregnancy ourselves can only suppose the circumstances, but one thing I can safely assume - that this is not a world that exists in black and white, and we all find ourselves in some shade of gray. All of us make decisions we question later. All of us wonder about what could have been.

My point is, the decision as to whether a woman should have an abortion is one best left to healthcare professionals, and the mother. As a man, I have to remind myself that despite any opinions I have, if a woman was pregnant by me, regardless of how involved I am, this will affect her more profoundly than it will me. So having my say excluded from the final decision is a bitter pill, but one I have no choice but to swallow. And if I, as the father, only get a consulting vote, how much less should 535 men and women who don't even know us? This is a medical issue first, a moral one to be sure, but even so, it is not the government's place to mandate morality. In a country where our tax dollar goes to subsidize auto industries that pollute our air, in a country where handgun violence rivals even the most war-torn regions of the world, in a country with a multi-billion-dollar tobacco industry, in a country that devoted billions of dollars every year to building tanks and missiles, it seems a little disingenuous to suddenly cherish life when it comes to unborn babies.

I'm not saying life isn't sacred. I'm not saying our elected officials aren't entitled to their opinions. I'm just saying that decisions this personal, decisions no doubt tempered by personal mitigating circumstance, should not be left to anyone except the parties directly involved. If abortions ceased tomorrow and forever, I would celebrate along with the neoconniest of the neocons. But only if the choice to carry the pregnancies to term were made by the mothers and not the government. I just cannot accept that our government has the moral authority to dictate terms to the citizenry on this highly charged and personal issue. I close by saying that this issue has been trotted out to get the partied worked up, and nothing else. Next, we'll talk about some other irrelevant topic, like flag burning or gay marriage.

My Theory on Sarah Palin

I should preface this by saying I'm not as well-versed on her as I should be. I only know what the mainstream media tells me. She has been a governor for two years, which makes her the only one of the four with any executive experience, albeit brief. Before that, she was mayor of a small town in Alaska. All told, her experience in politics goes back to 1992. I think you'd agree that Republicans are in no position at this point to criticize Obama's "lack of experience".

If Republicans win the White House in November, Palin will almost certainly ascend to the presidency. McCain is not long for this earth, and I think it is telling that he chose a woman to be his running mate. My initial reaction was that McCain is trying to gather up the disaffected Hillary supporters to his cause. But in politics, it helps to be able to look beyond the obvious. Certainly, some will flock to vote for any woman in high office, regardless of qualifications, principles or policies. As a liberal, I had to laugh when conservatives crowed about the Palin decision as demonstrating the chauvinism of the Democratic Party. Parenthetically speaking, I have to wonder how many anti-Hillary Republicans will jump ship to Obama rather than vote for a woman.

I can see the strategic value in Republicans nominating in a woman, especially in light of Hillary not getting the Democratic nomination. I wonder though if it won't backfire. Republicans have made much of Obama's lack of experience, and there were many who scoffed at the idea of Hillary being President on general principle (i.e., her gender). Now McCain has forced them to either eat crow in the name of party loyalty or jump ship.

November will see a lot of people on both sides of the fence crossing over - women who supported Hillary for no other reason than her gender will throw their lot in with McCain. Misogynists in the Republican party who are loathe to see a woman in the Oval Office may well send a message on election day by either not voting at all or voting for the all-male ticket. But what's good about this election is that is going to be very telling about the motivations of voters. We'll see if the issues trump all, party loyalties call the shots, or we just wind up voting within our comfort levels and nothing else.

I do think Obama is going to win, though. Of course I do - I'm a Democrat. But I see the Palin question throwing the GOP into an ideological tailspin. Back in 1984, Walter Mondale took Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, and it seemed to symbolize the left's willingness to include women in all its reindeer games at all levels. It cast the GOP as the Archie Bunkers of modern politics, and it also seemed like blowback for the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment some years earlier. But I always secretly wondered if the Ferraro choice was made when Mondale realized that it wouldn't matter who he picked - Reagan fever was running high in America in 1984, especially in the wake of the Los Angeles Olympics. Reagan seemed to embody not just the GOP, but American pride in general. In light of what had to be an obviously hopeless cause, I suspect Mondale chose to attach himself to a running mate that would at least serve notice that the Democrats were going to be the first to crack the glass ceiling.

I have to wonder, in light of the general attitudes towards Bush in this country, if McCain isn't borrowing a page from the Mondale playbook. He knows he's going to lose, not because of anything about him per se, but because the country is going shift left after eight years of Republicans in the White House. And if he's going to go down in flames, he can at least serve notice that Republicans are every bit as progressive on gender issues as Democrats, even if it took them 30 years to catch up. So in the short term, Republicans lose the White House, but this decision to include a woman on the ticket begins to repair the reputation of the GOP as misogynists, a message which will blossom in time for the GOP to woo the feminists back into their camp for 2012.

Party Unity My Ass, or my plea to Hillary's supporters

So Hillary Clinton addressed the Democratic National Convention last night and stated her support for Barack Obama. She stated her belief that in order to prevail in the general election in November, we must unite as a party. It's a pretty simple message, and it's hard to deny her logic.

Ever since Hillary dropped out and Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee, there have been rumblings. Those committed to Hillary's campaign found themselves in a tight spot. Most of the Democratic primary process was focused on choosing between the two. All others dropped away, leaving Democrats with those two.

For my own part, I was not in either one's camp in the beginning. I was not an Obama guy or a Hillary guy when this started. I liked Biden (and I'm delighted he's the VP candidate) in the beginning. But then he dropped out early, and I went for Richardson. I picked Richardson mostly for his experience with foreign relations. But then Richardson figured out he wasn't going to get the nomination, and he dropped out.

My point here is that with each candidate, there were supporters. Those supporters, for one reason or another, felt their candidate was the best pick. And when those candidates bowed out, they left their supporters looking for the second best pick. Many of us, whose first (and second, and third) choice didn't win have had to trade out loyalties several times. It's clear to me, as someone who has bounced from one candidate to another in the primary process, that the bottom line is to get a Democrat, ANY Democrat in the White House.

We Democrats have seen the damage inflicted on this country by George W. Bush. And if there was a candidate on the Republican side who was willing to admit that Bush had been bad for our country, if there was one single Republican candidate who had the courage to distance himself and commit to reversing Bush's course, I might have considered voting for him (or her). I'm not saying I would have, but it would have impressed the hell out of me to see someone willing to break ranks.

What Hillary's supporters need to keep in mind is this: easily 95% of the positions Hillary takes on the issue are mirrored by Obama. John McCain's voting records mirrors George W. Bush's 90% of the time. If a person supported Hillary Clinton because of her policies, it's not to late to see those policies win. And Hillary isn't going anywhere. She's still a Senator from New York, and she'll continue pushing her ideals through, whether Barack Obama wins in November or not. They also need to understand that without support from Hillary's people, Obama will lose - it's that simple. And if that happens, it means another four years of deficit spending, another four years of pointless war in Iraq, it means going to war with Iran in all likelihood, it means four more years of how things have been. I, for one, shudder.

We need to get a Democrat in the White House, for the good of the nation and the good of the world. We need to have someone who embraces the principles of the Democratic Party in a position to reverse the course that George W. Bush has set our nation on. We need to rebuild our infrastructure as well as our standing on the world's stage and we need a Democrat in the Oval Office to make that a reality.

If someone supported Hillary because she is a woman, and now won't support Barack Obama, then that person is, by definition, a sexist. There, I said it. And yes, women came be sexists just like men. When you decide to choose someone for a job based solely on their gender, that is sexist.

Hillary did not deserve to be in the running because she is a woman, or because of her last name. She deserved to be in the running because she was qualified and she would have made a good Democratic President. And like Obama or not, he is the nominee. And now the job is up to us Democrats to vote him into office. And we can still support Hillary Clinton. We can be proud that she got as far as she did. We can hope that if elected Obama may appoint her to a cabinet position. If all else fails, she is still the Senator from the great state of New York, and she will work with President Obama and no doubt advise him on many issues.

Maybe Hillary will run in 2012 if Obama loses. Maybe she'll succeed him in 2016. Maybe she will become the Senate Majority leader. No one is counting her out yet. But we are now in the phase of the political process where we vote for the President, and Hillary isn't an option. Please know that Hillary would not want John McCain in the White House, and if you call yourself a Democrat, I can't imagine why you wouldn't do everything in your power to keep him out as well.

Why We Will Always Have Illegal Immigrants

RENO, Nev. — Two executives and the corporate owner of 11 northern Nevada McDonald's restaurants pleaded guilty to felony immigration charges and agreed to pay $1 million in fines.

And so it goes... red-staters crowed this morning over this report on Fox News - where else? This is, no doubt, evidence that we're taking meaningful steps to address the problem of illegal immigration in our country.

I submit to you that it's not.

I say, if we REALLY wanted to do something about illegal immigration, we wouldn't waste our time congratulating ourselves that 30 people got deported here. Do you honeslty think McDonald's cares about a million dollar fine? It's MCDONALD'S, dumbass. They'll make that million back before midnight tonight. It's chump change to them. We see that number and we ooh and ahh as if the mighty hand of justice actually DID something meaningful. Wrong. It's a token gesture, and that money means nothing to McDonald's. Hell, fine them TWO million. See if they care. Fine them TEN million. It won't matter. When you're dealing with a company the size of McDonald's, a million dollars is NOTHING.

If we really wanted to end illegal immigration, we'd be going after the EMPLOYERS, the ones who make illegal immigration happen - we'd be boycotting McDonald's, we'd be boycotting Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, and any business busted for having illegals on the payroll.

But we won't. I know we won't. How do I know? Because - only white trash people bitch about illegals, and no way a white trash person would last a week without McDonald's and Wal-Mart. They don't have the stomach for it. They bitch about the illegals between your mouthfuls of Big Macs and french fries, while making their weekly trips to Wal-Mart. They complain, but they aren't willing to back up their ideas with meaningful action. They won't boycott. They won't picket. They won't circulate petitions or organize letter-writing campaigns. They'll sit on their asses and bitch on Craig's List, as if their opinion meant ANYTHING, all the while patronize the very buinesses that hire most of the illegal immigrant labor in this country, and all the while complaining that their government isn't doing enough about the problem.

And that's why we will always have illegal immigrants in this country. Because an opinion without meaningful action to back it up is just that - an opinion. And as long as we continue to support those businesses, nobody cares what our opinion is. Nobody ever changed the world with just an opinion.

Personally, I have no plans to boycott either. I'm not the least bit interested in ending illegal immigration. I think it serves two valid and important needs. One, it gives people the opportunity to come to this country and help it grow. In other words, to live out the American Dream. Secondly (and here's where the selfish bastard in me comes out), I love a bargain - what can I say? I'm not paid to blog, so I'll take my bargains wherever I can get them. And if companies like McDonald's can afford to give me my double cheeseburgers for a buck because they're paying their employees slave wages, that's between them and their workers. Someday, the glorious revolution will comes, comrades, and the rich fat robber barons that oppress the proletariat will be crushed under the heels of the working man. Fairness and equality will be the order of the day, and on that day I imagine I'll have to pay more for my greaseball burgers. And I will, gladly. Because nothing satisifies more than two all-beef patties, unless it's seeing these corporate fat cats get what's coming to them.

Bon appetit.

THEY'RE *ALL* FLIP-FLOPPERS!!

Sorry for the absence, gang. All the summer hoopla has commandeered the majority of my free time. Plus, with the two major parties all but decided on their sacrificial lambs, I mean nominees, there seemed to be precious little to blog about. We know who the players are, we know what the stakes are, and from this point on it's just a matter of comparing campaign rhetoric to voting records, and choosing which candidate is less likely to provoke the Apocalypse.

For my part in this little passion play we call democracy, my loyalties are with Obama. I do like the Bobby Kennedy-esque aura, even if I doubt that even Bobby Kennedy could have lived up to the hype. These are cynical times, my friends, and voting seems less and less about picking the best man for the job than it does about choosing the lesser of two evils.

But in my research, my endless channel surfing of all the news programs (including the erstwhile Fox News), I'm starting to hear more and more the long-expired term "flip-flop". You veterans of the red state/blue state wars will remember this term as the nugget that very well may have cost Kerry the presidency in 2004. Karl Rove, Nazi douche bag extraordinaire orchestrated the notion that Kerry was far more malleable on the issues than Bush. This, to the Red State Kool-Aid crowd, signified that he could not be trusted to keep his word. He would promise one thing and then later glibly abandon his convictions to acquiesce to the prevailing winds of our fickle political landscape. Evidence, no doubt was to be found in Kerry's willingness to go to war in Vietnam, only to come home and speak out against it later on.

The Democrats accuse McCain of flip-flopping, the Republicans accuse Obama. Not since the recent Wimbledon have we seen such endless back and forth. They point to incident after incident where each candidate has changed their position. In the end, what does it all mean? If both major party candidates are both guilty of changing positions, NEITHER party can hold it out there to try and make the other guy look bad.

The sad truth is, they're politicians. They're liars and cheats. I'm reminded of the scene in the Hunt for Red October where the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs privately confides to Jack Ryan: "I'm a politician - which means when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options open." These guys want to be elected, it's no secret. And that means they're BOTH going to try to appeal to as many people as possible. Abraham Lincoln famously said "you can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Wise words, considering he was a Republican. And yet every election we see candidates try to prove Honest Abe wrong. Perhaps it's enough to fool 51% of the people, at least until November 3rd.

When it comes to this question of "flip-flopping", I think we need to research it before judging it. Elected officials change their minds all the time on issues - it's not just the domain of the Democrats, nor is it the domain of republicans. Why do candidates change their views on issues? Is it just to get elected? Possibly, but I suspect this is a pretty simplistic viewpoint. When a candidate says something in a speech, odds are it's been filtered through a number of campaign workers, from the speechwriter to the handlers, so that by the time the candidate says it into a microphone, it's been scanned for any potential blowback. Even if a candidate forgets how he may have voted on some bill years back, his staff is paid to remember for him, and to not let him contradict a previous voting record. That is, unless the situation has changed...

One could argue that in 2000, Bush never had intentions of sending troops into Afghanistan. But then 9/11 happened, and the rules changed. Did Bush flip flop? No. The situation changed, necessitating a change in view. Circumstances can radically alter a candidate's view. Now far be it from me to defend Bush; I think he's a war criminal, and I've made no secret of it. But it bears mentioning, if only to remind our neocon friends that flip-flopping can, and often does, have totally legitimate reasoning behind it.

Remember, Reagan (the poster child for all things conservative) used to be a Democrat. Does that make Reagan the king of all flip-floppers? Watch the howls of righteous indignation come pouring in from the right wing when you ever *suggest* such a thing. Things changed, candidates change along with them.

In the 1980's our government was cozying up to people like Saddam Hussein, because we wanted Iraq to go to war with Iran. We gave them money, weapons, we even sent experts to train their soldiers. There is a famous picture from the late 80's showing Donald Rumsfeld happily shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. It seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess. Did we flip-flop since then? By Karl Rove's standards, we absolutely flip-flopped. Same Saddam, same Rumsfeld, total reversal in policy. That's how you define a flip-flop, yet no one points it out. At least no one on the Republican side...

Also in the 1980's, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, we supported the "freedom fighters" who eventually repelled the Soviets. Among those freedom fighters was a guy named Osama bin Laden. That's right gang, our government gave weapons, money and training to Osama bin Laden in the 1980's because it served our needs at the time. Did we flip-flop since then? The same Republicans that were in charge then are in charge now, and both Saddam and bin Laden quickly got moved over from the "Friends" list to the "Enemies" list. Things changed.

Another one: John Kerry went to war in Vietnam when his powerful daddy could have prevented it with one phone call. Lots of powerful Washington people kept their kids out of harm's way in war time by using their influence. John Kerry went - we felt it was his patriotic duty to fight. Then after seeing what went on firsthand, he came back and publicly spoke out against the war in Vietnam. Was he flip-flopping? Republicans would have us believe he was. But the simple truth is, his viewpoint changed based on his experience.

And so it goes. As the facts change, as situations evolve, we all come to view things differently over time. Something that once seemed like a good idea can quickly look like a bad one. This isn't just true for politicians, it's true for the rest of us as well. In any case, both candidates have changed their stance of more than one issue over time, so this term "flip-flop" has become a meaningless term. If they're all guilty of it, then no one gets to accuse anyone else of it.

Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright vs. Geraldine Ferraro

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another..." so begins the Declaration of Independence. Our first step towards greatness as a nation was to recognize that some relationships had become more of a hindrance than a help, and it was time to distance ourselves from those who would hold us back.

Such a time is now for the Democratic nominees for the Presidency. As bets are placed and candidates maneuver for votes, we can expect the inevitable parade of supporters. It is a symbiotic relationship, with the supporters getting to share the spotlight and the candidates getting to bask in the adulation of Important People.

The problem becomes when the media confuse the candidate with their supporters. The first blip on the radar came when Louis Farrakhan endorsed the candidacy of Barack Obama. You could almost hear the collective cringe from Obama's white and Jewish supporters, as the situation was defused with the delicacy of a time bomb. The candidate morphs and becomes one with the supporters in the eyes of the media, and we can almost imagine Farrakhan's hateful diatribes coming from Obama himself. Obama deftly sidestepped the issue, saying that while he was happy as a candidate to get an endorsement, he wanted everyone to know that he rejected the message of Farrakhan.

Then from the mist of time immemorial, Geraldine Ferraro emerges. Unless you were paying attention in the early 1980's, Geraldine Ferraro qualifies as little more than a Final Jeopardy answer. The question? Who was the first woman to run for Vice President of the United States for one of the two major political parties? Even today, the candidacy of Ferraro raised speculation: was it a stunt? A dare? Were Democrats, sure that they were unable to thwart Reagan's re-election in 1984, trying to simply make a statement that they were the party of Women's Liberation? After her and Walter Mondale's defeat, she had her brief foray on the lecture circuit, and from there retreated into the mist.

Then with Hillary running, and winning Texas and Ohio, it seemed entirely plausible that we would see a woman taking the Oath of Office next January. The time was right for Ferraro to emerge from obscurity and cast her lot for Hillary. The only problem is, Ferraro has a big mouth, and a bit of a chip on her shoulder. Politicking is a delicate dance, and all it takes is one botched do-si-do to get voted off the stage. So, Ferraro shoots her mouth off in ways that came off as pretty racist against Obama, saying he wouldn't be a candidate if not for the fact that he's black. Wow, not even "African-American"? So much for that famous liberal sensitivity. Hillary, who remained loudly silent in the aftermath, probably did her campaign more harm than good as a result. The fact that she insisted that Obama both "denounce and reject" Minister Farrakhan's anti-Semitic comments was spot on. It is important that the leader of the United States to show no bias towards or against any group. Obama did the right thing in distancing himself from Farrakhan's hate speech, and for the life of me I can't figure out why Hillary wasn't as prompt to do the same.

Finally, we have Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright. Born in Philadelphia, Rev. Wright spent 36 years as pastor to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. This is the same church Obama attended. So what did the good Reverend say that is so horrible as to incur the wrath of mainstream media and cast aspersions on the candidacy of the Democratic Senator from Illinois? Simply this: "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color." He also said that Americans are "selfish, self-centered egotists who are arrogant and ignorant,". America is also said to have, "put Nelson Mandela in prison", to "believe in white supremacy", and to have, "supported Zionism shamelessly."

Ouch.

Whether Obama believes this or not is not the issue at this point. The good things the Reverend has done for his community will not be considered here. It's a shame too, because on the merits of the aforementioned quotes, it's hard not to lump Reverend Wright in with Minister Farrakhan. But regardless of how this boils down one lesson is already emerging: be careful who you count as your friends, especially in politics when everyone wants to be your friend. Whatever asinine stunt they pull becomes your stunt. Whatever invective spewed in a moment of anger becomes your new campaign slogan.

Hillary and Barack have done themselves and one another a good deal of harm in this "I hate your supporters" tiff. I do believe that they would both love to get back to the issues of the election and let this other stuff slide. I mean really, just because Geraldine Ferraro is a closet racist doesn't mean Hillary Clinton has to be one too. Just because Louis Farrakhan is gong to vote for Barack Obama doesn't mean that Obama hates Jews too. But even the fact that we have to pause to remind ourselves of that is a bad thing.

Hillary being "Vetted", whatever that means

So Hillary won in Ohio and Texas. Her campaign has been declared dead more often than Jason Vorhees, and like that hockey-masked heartbreaker, the campaign has risen from the dead to claim major victories this past Tuesday. They said it couldn't be done, but then "they" said a woman would never be President.

I like Hillary, and I really liked Bill Clinton. His accomplishments as President should serve as the litmus test for all future presidents. Our current President can only hope that future generations look with pity on him; it's his only hope. That's not to say she's my pick among the Democrats, but if she is the nominee she can expect my unwavering support.

But the latest offering from the "Anybody But Hillary" camp is to attack her for not being "vetted". I looked up the term on dictionary.com and it shows one of the definitions to be "to subject to thorough examination or evaluation". This is what they claim Hillary has yet to be subjected to. Personally, I think anyone who suspects that Hillary Clinton has yet to be subjected to intense public scrutiny must have just woken from a 16-year coma. All throughout Bill Clinton's presidency and Hillary's two terms as a U.S. Senator, and especially in this campaign, she has been scrutinized by the right wing and accused of everything but kidnapping the Lindbergh baby.

Now they are calling into account her and Bill's alleged association with, contributions from and various other dealings with people suspected of contributing to her campaign under dubious circumstances. I do think this needs to be addressed, but maybe not in the way others are. Let me state, for my part:

Personally, I don't care if Bill and Hillary raised money by sacrificing children to ancient Sumerian gods.

I don't care if they raised money but selling the organs of nuns and orphans.

I don't care if Adolf Hitler rose from the dead and funded her campaign with Nazi gold.

I don't care if they beat up every school child in America and took their lunch money to fund her campaign.

There is no source of income, no nefarious character performing fundraising, no scheme so evil as to eclipse the horrors of George Bush and Company.

• They have gutted our nation's surplus.
• They have allowed the family of Osama bin Laden safe passage out of the country before the dust from the Twin Towers was even settled.
• They have waged war under false pretenses, and killed thousands of loyal American soldiers in the process.
• They have plunged our nation into debt never imagined by our founding fathers.
• They have spearheaded legislation like the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act specifically to usurp our basic liberties and silence the opposition.
• They have conducted torture and befouled the good name and standing of our proud nation on the world's stage.

And you think a few shady deals from Hillary are going to turn her into the villain here?

You make the mistake of assuming we haven't been paying attention to the abuses of George W. Bush.

WE HAVE.

And no matter what sins you pin on Bill and Hillary Clinton now or in the past, they are comparitive SAINTS next to this corrupt and evil administration. And before I vote for another Republican presidential candidate, I will happily endorse any fund-raising deal Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama make with Satan himself.

A Thank-You to Our Republican Leaders

I heard the news today, oh boy.

According to a news story on MSNBC, we can expect as a nation to pay over $4.00 per gallon for gasoline this summer. As anyone who lives in California knows, that translates into about $5.00 for us.

I think it's time I showed my gratitude to the leadership of our nation for making this a reality.

Thank you, Republican leaders, for the last seven years of leadership.

Back in 1999, when our country was paying an average of $1.36 a gallon for gasoline, we needed to be saved. Kudos.

Back in 1999, we had a balanced budget and a surplus. Thanks for giving it all away. I guess you guys really are the fiscally responsible ones.

Between 1993 and 2000, we lost 59 American lives to Middle Eastern terrorists. In your first year in office after that, we lost 2,992 civilians to them. Thanks for keeping us safe.

Thank you, Republicans for leadership that was bold enough to ignore memos that warned you of Osama bin Laden's determination to "follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and 'bring the fighting to America'".

Back in 1999, we were letting Saddam Hussein live, silly us. You showed us how it was important to kill 4,000 American soldiers to make sure we got rid of him. I feel much safer now.

And we really didn't need our civil liberties. Thanks for relieving us of that burden.

Today we are a little more secure because you can listen in on our phone calls. Brilliant.

And even though we're in the biggest debt our nation has ever seen, you've convinced me that Republican are the ones we can trust with leading our nation.

I think I speak for everyone when I say we can't wait until November to show you just how grateful we all are.

Til then, I remain you lifelong admirer,

The Nutty Irishman

Gays vs. The Sanctity of Marriage

My marriage license was distributed by the state of New York. Nowhere in that document does it mention the church, Christianity, God, Jesus, Yahweh, Mohammed, Allah, or the flying spaghetti monster. That's because marriage is a secular institution.

Let me say that again: Marriage is a secular institution.

That means that it exists outside the authority of the church. My wedding did not take place in a church, it was not done with the church's permission, and it was not presided over by a minister or a priest.

So when I hear about same-sex marriage and the church's disapproval, I am forced to wonder: who asked them? Since when does a couple need to seek the approval of the church? If two people wish to be married in a church, by a member of their clergy, then by all means get the endorsement of the church. But apart from that very specific scenario, I have to think that the church, and religion in general, should sit this one out.

Weddings can be performed by judges, ship captains, and a host of other officials that exist outside the controls of any organized religion. So if same-sex marriage were to be legalized, and certain clergy were squeamish about officiating a gay wedding, I have no doubt that the couple could seek out a whole host of alternative officials.

Then we come to the argument about "preserving the sanctity of marriage". This old chestnut gets trotted out by evangelicals as though they hold the line against the incursion of invading hordes, hell-bent on destroying the sacred. But let's do a little math here. According to most polls, about 75% of Americans profess to be Christian, of some denomination. Of that 75%, a little less than half fall into the category of evangelicals. So, essentially, we're looking at one in three Americans affiliated with some degree of Protestant evangelical Christianity. Several studies have rated these same evangelicals have higher divorce rates that Catholics, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, etc.

When I got married, I knew that I was bonding my life to my wife's. I knew that this was not a commitment to be taken lightly, because it was intended to be a lifelong commitment. This is not news that was exclusive to me. The traditional wedding ceremony makes mention of this, so anyone who has ever been to a wedding has a pretty good idea that it's a long-term commitment. The expressions "'til death do us part" and "as long as we both shall live" are so ingrained in our understanding of wedding litanies that to not hear it would cast an awkward moment into the vows.

And rightly so. So it begs the question, if evangelicals are so concerned with preserving the sanctity of marriage, why do they perceive the biggest threat coming from the homosexual community? It should be clear that they are doing more harm to their own cause than any gay couple could.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: marriage, gay or straight, is an issue that ought to be decided by the states, not the federal government. This is truly the best compromise on an issue that is so divisive. The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Each state issues marriage licenses, and should be trusted on how to define a marriage. If the state you live in allows gay marriage, it should not be the right of the federal government to challenge or interfere. And if your state's marriage laws do not reflect your own personal moral code, you are entitled to move to another state.

I would love to see a study done in the coming years comparing how gay divorce rates stack up against their straight ones. I wonder if part of the straight community's fear of allowing gay marriage is that gays might be able to make it last better. Time will tell. Since there will likely be fewer children in a gay marriage it would make divorces a little less complicated. But that's a whole other discussion.

Ultimately there will come a day, after this business has been settled and we collectively decide that the right to marry belongs to all Americans, when we look back and wonder: why we were so obsessed with denying our fellow citizens their basic rights? Certainly being happy and in love is a right we all have. I think it will hearken back to the Civil Rights movement when white sincerely believed that to allow blacks equal rights would unmake the fabric of society. The bigots were wrong then, and they are wrong now. To insist on gay people having "civil unions" instead of "marriage" is just the latest version of seperate drinking fountains. We cannot expect the homosexuals to forever sit at the back of the bus. We cannot continue to call ourselves the land of the free when some of us are freer than others.

Evangelicals and the Vote

For much of the last twenty years, if you are a Christian in America (and statistically speaking, you probably are), politics has probably been a way for you to exercise your faith in action. Whenever an election year rolls around, we find ourselves bombarded with candidates looking to appease the vast number of evangelical christians, champing at the bit to realize the vision of a "Christian nation". And evangelicals, for their part, were more than happy to tell the candidates exactly which issues mattered to them most.

For example, any candidate for any office, regardless of their ability to affect the issue would be shot down by the collective religious voting bloc for being pro-choice. Look how many self-proclaimed athiests and agnostics curently hold congrssional seats to see how large a role religion plays in getting elected. Prayer in schools, funding for controvertial art, the appointment of conservative judges, abortion, constitutional amendments to "protect" marriage, leaving mentions of "God" in the Pledge of Alliegance and on the currency, these are all topics that Christians lauded as some of the most important issues facing our nation. They were not afraid to cast a vote for candidates based on their stands on these issues, and for the most part, Republican candidates were happy to offer themselves as the most acceptable choices.

In 2000, George W. Bush was happy to tell the conservative christian movement that, despite having binged on alcohol and cocaine in the 70's and 80's, he was now fully in the Jesus Camp and ready to represent them when he became President. They accepted this, and it played no small part in his victory in 2000. Well, that and a lot of voter fraud. But I digress...

Once in office, Bush went on the offensive, flying the religious right's flag into battle like a latter-day Joan of Arc. From faith-based initiatives to nominating Supreme Court judges eager to overturn Roe V. Wade, Bush cut a wide swath across many social issues. When the Democrats nominated an unapologetic Catholic as the 2004 replacement for Bush, evangelicals went into Belfast mode, drawing voting lines along their faith. In America, Protestants outnumber Catholics, and Kerry lost. Again, voter fraud played its role in the 2004 passion play, but that's another blog for another day.

The other day I read a story on NPR's site about how evangelical voters may not be voting like they used to vote. The death of Jerry Falwell last year has allowed the torch to be passed to newer evangelicals, and simply put, things have changed. Once, they rallied against gay marriage and abortion. Now they may be turning their focus instead to issue like poverty and the environment.

It makes sense that Christians would be focus on these issues instead. Indeed, it begs the question: why weren't these the core issues from day one? Now, let me qualify here: I'm not a Christian. But that isn't to say I'm an emeny of the christian church, or even christian principles. I was raised as a Christian, and I've read the Bible more than once. My understanding of Jesus' teachings seemed to focus on the concept that the Kingdom of God was within all of us. In the book of Matthew, Jesus tells the story of the sheep and the goats, wherein the Judgement Day is described. On one side, God lines up the "sheep", those going to heaven, and on the other side we have the "goats", those going to hell. As God welcomes the sheep into paradise, he lists their good deeds, and this passage alone reads like the Liberal Playbook: "...for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." When the sheep fail to remember having performed these deeds for God, he reminds them: "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." To me the translation is crystal clear: how we treat the poor, the sick, the convicts, to the degree that we are willing to fight for the underdogs in the world is the measure of our love for God.

The truth is that is has always been the liberals in our government that have fought for a decent minimum wage for the poor. It is the liberals that fought to make education possible for all, regardless of race. It is the liberals that are pushing now to turn our country's attention away from the business of war and instead focus on giving quality healthcare to those who cannot afford it. When the school lunch programs were in jeopardy in the 80's, it was the Democrats that fought to make sure our children had food. Democrats are often stigmatized for creating a welfare state, which as far as I can tell, means that we make it the business of government not to let poverty destroy any american lives.

Gay marriage and abortion are ultimately going to be issues settled state-by-state. National politician recongize that after all the posturing is over, these are simply too divisive to ever reach a national concensus. In the end, the only things politicians are going to be remembered for are what they did, not what they believed. Poverty and healthcare are issues that can be successfully addressed, and no one group, not conservatives nor liberals, need be against it. I say that if the Republican party wishes to truly identify itself as the party of christian values, it read the parable of the sheep and goats. In the end, all we will be remembered for is how we treated people.