Send Dick Cheney to Cuba

I was a child during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 but I remember it well because of the fear that it engendered; even little kids knew about nuclear war and its terrible consequences in those days. There are people today who ridicule Jack Kennedy for his somewhat over-active libido, but if Kennedy had not been President at this juncture it is dubious any of us would be here to discuss it.
Cuba generated a lot of hyper-ventilation back then: a communist state allied with the Soviets only 70 miles from Florida – freedom vs. tyranny -- Armageddon looms!
I didn’t learn until much later that we had a strategic military base at Guantanamo perched on Cuban soil all that time, a vestige of imperialism dating back to 1898. The bad feelings have not entirely dissipated, but the Cold War is past tense, the Soviet Union went out of business, and somewhat ironically we turned our last-defense-of-freedom bulwark against the global communist menace into a kind of stateless prison for “unclassifieds” where torture and indefinite detention without trial have been routine.
Dick Cheney and his right-wing allies fulminate against weakness and champion the waterboarding of terrorist suspects to keep America safe. Even though conservatives have reliably been on the wrong side of every major issue in American history over the latest 200 years (slavery, reconstruction, pure food and drug act, child labor laws, social security, confronting the Nazis, Marshall Plan, McCarthyism, Civil Rights, etc.) there are those on both sides of the aisle who are willing to listen to them.
Cheney and his cronies have used the politics of fear to justify despicable behavior every American should be ashamed of. If we need a Guantanamo, if we need to torture people in the light of day to defend freedom and human rights, then I believe we have lost the right to represent these ideals and perhaps deserve to lose them. Republicans claim they have kept us safe and strong. The safe and strong do not torture people, only the miserable and the weak and the cowardly. In 1962 we saw ourselves as a beacon of freedom. What in God’s name have we become to even lend credence to the words of fools and miscreants like the former vice-president?
I suggest we not only shutter the prison but also abandon the Guantanamo Naval Base entirely and score a symbolic victory by returning it to Cuban sovereignty. I have little use for Castro’s Cuba, but it is their territory, not ours, and the use we are currently putting it to only further casts a pall over our ideals.
Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s send Dick Cheney to Cuba, as well. Maybe Castro could use him: his convictions are more suitable to a dictatorship than a free society anyway.

George W. Bush: A Not so Fond Farewell

As President George W. Bush at long last takes his leave, he seeks to re-write the history of his disastrous presidency and to conjure up accomplishments in the empty spaces where these should lie. The President insists he should receive the most credit for protecting America, for keeping it safe against those who would do it harm.

Unfortunately, he fell short here as elsewhere, for the greatest threat to our nation’s well-being was not a two-bit terrorist like bin-Laden, nor a two-bit dictator like Saddam, but rather the President himself. At the end of the day, as they like to say on Wall Street – where now it is truly once and for all the end of the day – the greatest threat to America was the Bush Administration. In his eight uncertain years at the helm, the Bush regime managed to inflict more damage upon our country -- politically, socially, economically – than any foreign adversary could have hoped to achieve. It will no doubt be a generation or more before we can even calculate the full extent of the devastation.

Hiding behind the American flag, brandishing the politics of fear like some sort of prehistoric club upon an uncertain population, Bush and his unlikely team of right-wingers, evangelical Bible-thumpers, recidivist southern racists, anti-science kooks and charlatans, xenophobes and fringe loony-tunes formed a surprising alliance with wealthy Americans on Wall Street and dirt poor folks on Tobacco Road. This was to be the only true accomplishment of the Bush Administration, to – eerily similar to the defunct communist parties of the 20th century – achieve and maintain power, for better or worse.

And for us, it was to be the worse.

It was not just that the ideology he stood upon was a wobbly platform that was no less than an anathema to American ideals, but more critically that he wielded his authority with such consistent incompetence that he failed to deliver anything substantive even for those he purported to represent. And let us not forget the lives – thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives – that fell victim to his shaky hand on the wheel. Our collision with the twin menaces of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan more than sixty years ago made us a stronger nation in the end. We went up against far more feeble opponents this time around in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is we who have come out the weaker.

I remain puzzled by the 22% of Americans who retain support for George W. Bush and claim to miss him when he goes. This is much like a recovered cancer patient who has nostalgia for the excised malignancy. Instead, those of us who have survived partially intact from eight years of the Bush Presidency should look ahead, certain in our conviction that whatever obstacles and pain may lie over the horizon, nothing can exceed the horror that was our recent past.

Congratulations to the United States of America

McCain's concession speech was gracious and uplifting as he offered his support to President-elect Obama. He demonstrated with his character that he deserves the respect and honor all of us feel towards him, even those like myself who voted against him. I hope his supporters truly follow his lead.

Obama's speech in Chicago was a stirring tribute to our nation, first and foremost. I thought of Jack Kennedy, FDR, and yes, of Abraham Lincoln. I sat there watching him speak on this historic occasion and thought to myself how very proud I was as an American witnessing the launch of what will truly be a new era for my country. I am certain that there will be many bumps in the road. I only hope that our political opponents really do put aside their bitterness and stand with us as fellow Americans as we try to repair our deeply damaged nation and put us back on the road to greatness that we were born to believe was our destiny.

Congratulations to the United States of America. Now let us go forward and be proud again.

Defeat Will Translate into Victory for the Republican Party

With the election just around the corner, I am cautiously optimistic that not only will the Obama-Biden team prevail, but that there will be a defining realignment that will transform American politics for decades ahead.
Such an outcome is not only critical for the healthy future of a badly tarnished America, but also an essential catharsis for the Republican Party so it can rebuild itself from the ashes as the moderate party of the center it once represented.
Republicans, who at one time championed smaller government, lower taxes, fiscal responsibility and a strong national defense, have seen their party hijacked by neoconservative extremists (many on the religious right) who have framed government itself as the enemy, undermining the legitimacy of constitutional law that is the fundamental basis for secular civil authority.
The once respected Republican Party saw itself transformed into an anti-science, anti-intellectual, rigidly dogmatic party guided from its fringes to promote religion in government and to tout some vague notion of “traditional values” that sought to mandate conformity for the rest of us. Common sense and pragmatism were pushed aside in favor of ideology and the very language of Republicans became something akin to the jargon we used to hear from communists, where reality was regularly skewed to accommodate the iron-fisted vision of the politburo.
As Americans who love our country more than those who would subvert it while waving flags and Bibles at us, we can be grateful to the oversize incompetence of the Bush Administration for exposing that dark underbelly by mishandling virtually every significant domestic and foreign policy issue over the last eight years, even while broadcasting their fictional successes (“Mission Accomplished!”) through the prism of media hacks like Sean Hannity.
Thankfully, it is the very consistency of their colossal blundering that has exposed the bankrupt ideology at the root of the Republican Party. And fortunately too, their talent for marketing hate, fear, lies and deception has at last been overcome by the incontestable evidence of disaster that is the legacy of their misrule.
I have rarely pulled the lever on a strictly party basis, but this time around I am urging all voters on the 4th to vote against every Republican on the ballot, even if it is for the office of dog catcher and the candidate is your brother-in-law. Only by a painful resounding defeat will the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt redeem itself from the center in the twenty-first century.

The Bush Legacy

For those who would condemn the Bush Administration for lacking a single accomplishment during their long tenure, I would counter that we can thank George W. Bush and his minions for demonstrating incontrovertibly that the movement conservatism he championed is a bankrupt ideology, to be relegated to the dustbin of history with the other discredited twentieth century “–isms” such as Marxism, imperialism, communism, fascism and national socialism.
The neo-con underpinnings of movement conservatism rest upon the populist illogic that government is a negative element in society, that all taxes are too high, and that any regulation is a barrier to a profitable free market. History and common sense were paved over with simpleminded aphorisms, like the moronic quips of Ronald Reagan, who is the grandfather of all of the political, social and economic pain we Americans suffer today.
Reagan dreamed himself into an America that never existed outside of a grainy black-and-white Hollywood movie, and then preached that fantasy to the wider world. He said stupid things like “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem” and ordinary people cheered at this idiocy. Yet, George Washington did not think government was the problem. Abraham Lincoln did not think government was the problem. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not think government was the problem.
Smart people who remembered quotes by intellectual giants like Oliver Wendell Holmes such as: "I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization" were accused of elitism. If you understood that the government’s role was to preserve the twin pillars of freedom and order, and that government required taxes to pay the bills to deliver that sacred duty, you were denigrated as a liberal or a traitor or a fool. Cowboys ruled and most Americans were happily herded like cattle into a political culture governed by nothing less than nonsense.
Fast forward more than twenty-five years since the Reagan Revolution brought to power those who would undo our country’s greatness with inflated rhetoric and demagoguery and we sit perched on the brink of disaster that is uncommonly surprising for most Americans. How is it possible, many would query, that our superpower status has faded, that our national infrastructure is crumbling, that our economy is on the edge of catastrophe? How could this happen?
Well, some might suggest, republics are fragile. They can be damaged by neglect and missteps. There is no doubt that the trail of incompetence in the Bush regime, in matters high and low, has played an immeasurable role in our unraveling. But it goes deeper than simply the ineptitude of an administration comprised of unqualified ideologues. It goes right to the heart of the neo-conservatism that is the platform these bunglers rode in upon.
We have heard much in this electoral cycle about lipstick on a pig. We have heard too little about a bunch of backwoods fringe loonies who tried to sell America on the notion that pigs can fly. I expect we will hear a big thud soon, and that will be the echoing squeal of one discredited pig called movement conservatism bouncing off the pavement. Watch too as the American people consume the scraps of that pig until it will be nothing but a bad memory, though the smell of the cook fires may linger for some time to come.
As we suck the marrow out of the bones, let’s be grateful that President Bush stubbornly pursued the fundamentals of his political philosophy to their logical conclusion: abject disaster. It will no doubt take us a generation or more to get past the damage he and his followers laid upon our country, but at least we will have learned never to tread upon that misguided path again.

The Biden-Palin Debate

I watched the Joe Biden-- Sarah Palin Vice-Presidential debate with fervent interest and have come to the following conclusions:
"Klondike Barbie" Palin exceeded the expectations of all, within her party and across the nation, with a strong comeback after a series of faltering interviews that made her somewhat resemble the bumbling Miss South Carolina who began her confused reply to a geography question with the words: "I personally believe that most U.S. Americans cannot do so because they do not have maps ..." Yet, although she came across more confident and articulate than previously in exceeding those expectations, we have to acknowledge that the bar was set remarkably low. She often appeared as if she had hundreds of index cards stored in her brain that she sorted through quickly in order to regurgitate the memorized reply to the question she anticipated. Sometimes, she winked and got girlie, which brought me back to the Miss South Carolina metaphor. She also annoyed me with her Fargo-accented attempts to get folksy with the working class, peppering her frequently superficial commentary with references to "Joe Sixpack" and "Hockey Moms", while dropping irritating down-home slang like "you betcha" and "doggone it". It is interesting that as the whole political and economic structure erected by the neo-con Republicans going back to 1981 is imploding with a deafening roar that is too loud to ignore even by the most apathetic Americans, the Republican Party with its incongruous McCain-Palin ticket is desperately attempting to re-invent itself as a party of change and a party of compassion for the have-nots and the have-not-so-much's on Main Street. When Joe Biden -- who delivered a cautious, conservative, gaffe-free and solid performance last night -- mauled the disastrous policies of the Bush-Cheney regime, Palin countered by blaming nothing but Wall Street greed and reminding us that she and John McCain are mavericks who will deliver change. Really? Was anyone convinced? Palin distanced herself from Bush as if he was a figure from the distant past -- as if, according to one pundit, he was Millard Fillmore or someone else equally ancient in our political culture. By most scorecards, Biden won the debate hands down and convinced most who watched that he was presidential timber. I have long been a Biden fan and I supported him early in the Democratic primaries until it was clear he would never catch on. His weaknesses -- verbosity, arrogance and a tendency towards gaffes -- did not beset him last night. He had many strong cards he did not play, probably because of the fear that he would be accused of bullying poor, vulnerable, sheltered Sarah Palin. He held back and it worked for him, although it also denied him the kind of fiery knock-out performance he might have delivered had he been up again the morose Joe Lieberman or the “ken-doll” Mitt Romney that no audience would have pitied after the bell rang. Sarah Palin deserves credit however for ... well, for not failing, (or "cratering" as another pundit put it) which we all expected her to do. She showed she could hold her own on a national stage and deliver memorized lines and look convincing doing it, which is worth some points. She hasn't convinced many people, even in her own party, that she is presidential material, but less people think she's a complete idiot this morning. (I remember the first Bush-Kerry debate in '04, when the president actually looked like he was mentally retarded, but Americans seemed okay with that for some reason. . .) This may help stanch the vote hemorrhaging of the McCain-Palin ticket a bit, although it is unlikely to make a real difference. The gap in popular and electoral votes looks too wide for any dog-and-pony show to surmount, so the remaining two Obama-McCain debates may be beside the point.I have been convinced for weeks now that an Obama-Biden victory is assured and it is just a question of how big the margin will be. The looming financial catastrophe, McCain's uneven performance on the stump and Palin's lightweight resume have only doomed him further. I believe that whatever occurs, an Obama victory will be a victory for the country. And perhaps no Republican would anticipate this, but I have a firm conviction that the defeat of John McCain (a pitiful surrogate for the last gasp of the neo-cons) will be a huge win in the long term for the Republican Party. Republicans -- who used to be a solid moderate political party with roots that stretch back through Teddy Roosevelt to the great Abraham Lincoln -- can reinvent themselves for the 21st century after shedding the bankrupt neo-con ideology and the fringe loonies that have been such major players in the current administration, especially the extreme Christian right that hijacked the party and have used it as a platform for their anti-evolution, anti-science, anti-intellectualism, while waiting breathlessly for the rapture of Armageddon. We must not forget that the sometimes charming (wink-wink) beauty-pageant queen Klondike Barbie rises from that misguided milieu, and after an Obama victory I for one will breathe a huge sigh of relief that someone who thinks the earth is 6000 years old won't be 60 seconds from assuming the presidency of the United States.

Lipstick On an Ass

I doubt Barack Obama was deliberately alluding to Sarah Palin during the famous “lipstick on a pig” comment, but perhaps it was a Freudian slip. Does McCain’s trophy VP wear a slip? I don’t think so: it would get in the way of her flashing her legs at us, while her outraged handlers scream sexism to a numb audience busy admiring the frames of her glasses.
White women who formerly supported Hilary seem to be the most susceptible, according to preliminary polls, which indicate a double digit switch in allegiance to the “phonier-than-thou” hockey mom, a fierce right-winger who beseeches the lord for pipelines and such. Did somebody slip a pod under these ladies’ beds when they were sleeping? Or were they napping during the primaries? Didn’t they notice that Clinton & Obama were not only on the same page on every critical issue but nearly on the same paragraph? Sarah Palin is diametrically opposed to every position Hilary has championed during her political life. This would be like doddering old white men voting for McCain just because he’s a doddering old white man too!
I know we’ve become a celebrity culture, but falling for the star status of this newly-minted over-the-hill cheerleader is simply ludicrous. Is the impressionable electorate aware that Palin not only discounts global warming, but she is reportedly a creationist who thinks the earth is only 6000 years old? Forget about the “bridge to nowhere,” how about the brain to nowhere? And speaking of that infamous bridge, she would like us to forget about the federal funds for that project that she pocketed for her state. Perhaps if she waves her faith and her kids in our face enough times we’ll get distracted and overlook it: stretch marks beget earmarks, I suppose.
In any event, I wouldn’t liken Sarah Palin to a pig. I think an ass is a more appropriate barnyard metaphor.