Sarah Takes a Hike

So much for “stay the course”, the (faux) tough-guy GOP mantra of Bush era vintage. Sarah’s tag is “cut and run” (for the money). Is there anyone left in the GOP leadership who retains even the lowest standard of personal ethics and responsibility?

Tawdry, thy name is Palin.

Mark Sanford: Family Man, Republi-Can

That Guv’nor, he’s a family man
Spouts “family values” whenever he can
But rules are for the common man
Not a genuine, bona fide Republi-can!

And now, amidst revelations of other liaisons, will Sanford cop the Clinton plea that he didn’t have “sex” (read: intercourse) with those other women? This is just too, too rich!!!

IranAmok: A Bush in Tehran

Amongst all the tweets emanating from Iran during the recent post-election uprising, my favorite was one decrying Ahmadinejad as “Iran’s George W. Bush” (this remark becoming a headline in Newsweek). Indeed: both are beady-eyed, willfully ignorant and belligerent. I predict Iran will end up in the same sorry shape after 8 years of Ahmadinejad as the US has after 8 years of stunningly incompetent rule by W. My sympathies to the people of Iran.

Socialized Medicine: Good Enough for Congress, Good Enough for Me

Amidst all the tiresome, mindless soundbites (”Socialized Medicine!” “Single-Payer Neo-Communist Healthcare State!” “The End of America As We Know it”) spewing from GOP “leaders” and their media foghorns on the subject of the public option in healthcare reform, let us not for a second forget that those same attack dogs are the beneficiaries of one of the most generous, taxpayer-funded healthcare plans in the country – the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan: no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, immediate coverage, 75% US Government (i.e., taxpayer) funded, a rich menu of choices with much lower premiums than John Q. Public (and yours truly) has to shell out for coverage, etc. etc., a.k.a. “SOCIALIZED MEDICINE”. And hearing the predictable screeching from private health insurers, drug companies, doctors and private hospitals that are, collectively, vacuuming the life savings out of the wallets of hundreds of millions of American citizens, I search in vain for a leader who has the guts to tell all of these leeches to stick it where the sun don’t shine, and craft a healthcare solution that really is about better, more affordable healthcare for we, the people, who pay for it. But wait! There is such a leader: President Obama! And I only hope he has the steel to stand up to the vested interests who want only to protect the unbelievably lucrative monopoly they have concocted over the decades.

One final point: the sneering remarks from the likes of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell et al about the “slippery slope of European-style socialized medicine” reveals the abysmal ignorance embedded in those comments. What value can one place on the freedom from the daily terror of financial ruin/bankruptcy from healthcare costs that is enjoyed by the citizens of developed nations all over the planet- everywhere but the good ol’ USA?

Polls show overwhelming voter support for some sort of public option to reduce, if not totally eliminate, that terror. Once again, the GOP, and its industry cronies, are on the wrong side of one of the most important social/economic issues of our time.

Of Mustard and Ignorance: The GOP’s Fatal Affliction

In “normal” times, the obsession in the right-wing blogosphere and media over President Obama’s request for “Dijon” mustard on his burger would have raised a few chuckles and then faded into oblivion. But one can easily see in this play the fatal affliction of the Republican party and the conservative electorate: the celebration of ignorance. Sarah Palin was the poster-child for the movement during the 2008 campaign; Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly et al are the media bomb-throwers for the (thankfully diminishing) segment of the US electorate who mock knowledge and education as “elitist”.

The Republican party will not regain its position as a major political force in America until it disavows the muscular stupidity of its principal supporters in the media. I can’t think of a single Republican leader who has the courage to take on that task.

Cheney’s Revisionist History: No Sex or Videotape, But Endless, Endless Lies

Let’s all forget about the “little guys” that ex-Veep Dick Cheney claims he is trying to protect from the vengeful partisans in the Obama Justice Department. This is all about covering his own posterior, and posterity. “Only following orders” is – post-Nurenberg- not an excuse for the deliberate crafting by Bush administration toadies of policy memoranda that tortuously rationalized torture. The real outrage here is the deliberate and cynical actions of the Bush administration to fabricate/falsify “evidence” to justify the invasion of Iraq, duping Congress and American public into an unnecessary war. The sole purpose of that ill-conceived invasion was to impart John Wayne/Macho Man street cred to a weak and cowardly President in the wake of 9/11. Cheney and Rumsfeld were dead certain that the Iraq adventure would be a cakewalk, and that George W. Bush would get to strut like a hero in front of an admiring world. The lives of 5000 American soldiers and, by now, several Trillion dollars, have been squandered in that debacle, one that historians will surely describe as the most egregious – and criminal – blunder by any administration in the history of the US. John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Stephen Bradbury et al are mere chumps in the bet-the-country game played by Bush, Cheney, Rummy and their sycophantic mouthpieces in the media. These are the guys I want to see frog-marched down Pennsylvania Avenue on their way to the stocks on the Mall.

Screeches from the Right: The Pathology of Torture Apologists

The predictable screeching from the heroes and patriots on the right about the release of the “torture memoranda” reveals the disturbing pathology of those who authored the memoranda, their superiors, and their apologists in the media. It is a pathology of rank cowardice: not a single one of these individuals who loudly advocate the use of torture ever summoned the personal courage to serve their country in uniform, and thus subject themselves to the risk of capture and torture by our enemies. The list is virtually the pantheon of conservative, Republican “leadership”: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, John Kyl, Roy Blunt, John Cornyn, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and on and on through the ranks of Republican “patriots”. The torture memo authors (John Yoo, Steven Bradbury, Jay Bybee) and media sycophants (Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck et al) who decry the “soft” approach of the Democrats are even worse: plump, blow-dried girlie-men who would pee their pants at the mere threat of waterboarding. Limbaugh, who is possibly only trumped by Dick Cheney in his quest to escape military service, is the most egregious offender: the pilonidal pussy with the patriot pin, who dared to suggest that “torture works because it broke John McCain”. These men shame America.

Vacuous Vatican: Pope on a Rope

So the Vatican has rejected several candidates proposed by the Obama administration as US Ambassador, because of the candidates’ progressive views on abortion. One must ask why we bother to even appoint an ambassador to this anachronistic “sovereign” entity, ground zero for magical thinking in a world that – one hopes – has evolved beyond the mindless, faith-based ignorance of organized religions. Do we have, e.g., ambassadors to Buddhism, Islam, Bahai, Hindu or Zoroastrian principalities? Of course not. Thus, I propose we follow old Josef Stalin’s pithy challenge to the pope of his era: “How many divisions does he have?”. Would a US ambassador to the Vatican be able to secure a battalion of Swiss Guards to join the fight against Al Queda terrorists in Afghanistan? If not, then let’s focus our energies on sovereign entities/allies that can carry their weight in a dangerous world. Let some junior deputy assistant undersecretary of state for cultural and religious affairs engage with the Vatican. No need for an ambassador here.

O’Reilly Trashed

Roger Ebert’s skewering of the blustering, bloviating bonehead of Fox News, Bill O’Reilly, is just too perfect.

O’Reilly is the worst kind of coward: the kind that struts.

Unplugging the Cable: Sayonara CNN

Having had the cable news IV plugged into my cerebrum since the birth of CNN more than 20 years ago, I have finally pulled the plug, relying now only on broadcast TV channels. A minor factor in my decision was the out-of-control monthly rates for a basic cable package. The principal factor, however, was the depressing, and seemingly irreversible descent of cable news shows into the worst kind of tabloid “journalism”; devoid of substance or thoughtful insight, and presented by a cadre of carnival barkers who wouldn’t know Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite from Paris Hilton. Saddest of all, to me, is the decline of CNN, which used to be the gold standard, now reduced to People Magazine in video form. Last Tuesday, a few days after cutting off my cable service, I watched on a broadcast channel as CNN’s Ed Henry demeaned what was once the honored, and honorable profession of journalism with his infantile attack on President Obama on the subject of AIG bonuses. This confirmed the wisdom of my decision to pull the plug. Henceforth, I’ll get my daily dose of serious journalism from the BBC, NPR, New York Times and a host of left/right/center web services, all of which put the major cable news programs to shame. For comic relief, and as a daily reminder of how blessed I am to be a liberal, I read the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.
Sayonara, CNN.