The Question, Part II

Calhoun’s Cannons for Nov 7, 2012

Ah, blessed silence.  No more political ads.  No more robocalls.  Silence. 

No, wait.  I spoke too soon.  Can you hear it?  That awful moaning, that eerie muffled shrieking, the boiling, rumbling, growling rage thundering almost, but not quite, out of hearing range. It’s the minions of Rush Limbaugh, old white guys, radical anti-science, anti-modernity, anti-government wing nuts who have hijacked the Republican party, plus the near entirety of the white South (and who said the Confederacy was defeated?).  And I don’t think they’re very happy.

I can certainly understand that fury.  When you live in a Fake Fox News/Rush Limbaugh/Frank Luntz/Donald Trump created bubble long enough, pretty soon you get to thinking that’s reality.  Then something like this comes along and it’s all, Woa! You mean the rest of the country doesn’t think President Obama is the Anti-Christ Muslim Kenyan Socialist Hitler who’s going to turn all our children gay, kill all our grannies in his ObamaCare “death panels,” and then declare America to be a colony of surrender-monkey France?

Guess not.  Quel shock.  But Democrats shouldn’t be going all giddy and waving big foam #1 fingers in the air.  Winning an election is one thing.  Governing is quite another.  And there remains one HUGE question to be answered.

In his concession speech, Governor Romney called on Americans to “pray” for the re-elected President.  While prayers are always nice, what went missing from that speech was the exhortation to his fellow Republicans to stop their mindless stonewalling and get back to the work they were elected to do. 

Which means that there remains One Key Question that this election has still left unanswered:  Will the Republican leadership, Mitch McConnell and the various Young Turks, Paul Ryan, included, once again meet behind closed doors to swear to one another that their one overriding agenda for the next four years is to once again block anything the President and their Democratic colleagues propose? 

In short, will the Republicans in Congress double-down as Rocks in the Road once again or decide to sniff the (real) air, read the (reality-based) tea leaves, and start to engage in the hard, messy work of actually governing?

Which involves compromise, pragmatic hold-your-nose deal-making and, above all, requires that politicians stop believing their own fake PR, made-up wishful thinking, and reality-free ideology. I mean, if hurricane Sandy had one lesson to deliver it was this:  Magical thinking and reality-free ideology doesn’t stop storm surges and howling winds.  

Here in California, there are some signs that reality is modestly returning while Grover Norquists’ blood-oath, evil-grip siren-song (We don’t need to raise taxes to pay for anything.) seems to be lessening.  As of this writing, Governor Brown’s initiative to vote to actually tax ourselves in order to keep our schools from bleeding out looks like it may well pass. Amazing.

And prompts another question: Is it possible that Battered Wife Nation, Suicide Nation, a country that somehow allowed itself to be convinced that it didn’t deserve to live in a decent society, that it was o.k. to gut its middle-class and move its jobs offshore in order to move all that nice profit up to the 1% while leaving the 99% with crumbs, that its kids didn’t deserve a future, that its working poor and most vulnerable should be tossed to the wolves since they were nothing but freeloaders and bums, has suddenly decided that they deserve better after all?

If so, then late being better than never, maybe prayers are in order.  Prayers of thanks

       

Oh, Nooooo . . .

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for May 31, 2012

            No, Mitt, No. You don’t know what you’ve done. You’ve still got time to get away. Look, I know why you went to Las Vegas.  You needed the money.  It’s politics.  You gotta get that 50.1%, so do what you have to do, say what you have to say, but you don’t understand.  You’re a nice guy.  I know you’re trying to look tough, Bomb Iran! Bomb Syria! Bomb Everybody!  But that just tells me you’ve been listening to poor old grumpy John McCain too long.  Conservatives love that kinda stuff.  They’re always playing Crazy Dare Me with one another.   

            But that isn’t you. You’ve led a sheltered, privileged life.  The Golden Boy. Thinks he can get away with anything. That’s why you don’t understand what you’ve done.  You’re like the handsome high school football captain who, as a prank, just invited the school’s Ugly Girl to the Prom.  You all know who she is, that tubby body, that bad skin, those lips, the goofy laugh, the pasty face, the hair . . . the terrible hair.

            You gave her a shining moment in the spotlight, the cameras rolling, the music playing, it was all her dreams coming true, to be up there with you, Mitt.  Gorgeous, beautiful, popular you! 

            And now you’ll never get rid of her!

            From now on every time you turn around, there’ll she be, at your elbow, at your knee, in your face.  It’ll be, Yooo hooo! Mitt, Mitt, why haven’t you called me.  You never write, you never text.  Don’t you love me, Mit? Huh? Huh?  Can I come to your house and hang out? OMG! OMG! You’re soooo cool.

            Yet there you were in Vegas with Donald Trump, your big plane snugged up next to his big plane. You stood on stage with him, all huggy-huggy, kissey-kissey.  Which caused conservative columnist George Will to observe, “The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious, it seems to me.  Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your I.Q. can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics.” 

            You’re palling around with an ignoramus, Mitt, one of the original Meister Birthers. I know you think you can use him as a cat’s paw to keep the race-baiting dog whistle music going while keeping your own hands clean  – Obama’s not an American, he’s not One of Us, he’s a Muslim, maybe even one of those Hawaiians, but he’s not a citizen.  He shouldn’t even be president.  

            But you don’t use La Donald, Mitt.  He uses you.  And you’ll never get rid of him now.  It’s like that vampire movie “Let the Right One In.” You let him in.  And now he’ll never go away.  All through the campaign, there he’ll be, waddling up on stage to grab the mic from you, elbowing you out of the way so he can announce an upcoming episode of “The Apprentice.”  Making you sheepishly play second banana for his traveling clown show: “Who is this guy? Presidential candidate, my ass. Get him outta here.  You’re fired.”   

            And you’ll just have to smile that sick smile and shuffle and tug on your forelock and do nothing because now he’s got you, lock, stock and fatuous barrel.  Like clockwork, at every news cycle, you’ll try to craft some swell presidential sounding bites and they’ll be trumped by Trump barging into the day’s top stories with more ugly, crazy-ass crap to keep the base riled up and Trump’s mug on TV – “Where’s the Congressional Investigation into Obama’s school records? Did he even go to Harvard?  People are saying he’s got horns.  I’ve got people investigating this and you won’t believe what they’ve found. It’s huge, Huuuuuge!”

            And the press will eat it up.  They’ll unceremoniously shove you aside to cover La Donald.  They know TV.  They know he’s the next American Idol, not you, because that’s where the ratings are, Baby Cakes. 

            Even if you win the White House and you’re sitting in the Oval Office that first evening contemplating your great fortune, you’ll hear the scritch-scritch on the window pane and there he’ll be, peering in.  Those lips, that skin . . . that hair.  And in a split second he’ll be scuttling across the ceiling, orange comb-over flying, hissing dangerously at you, “I’m a smart guy, Mitt.  You shudda invited me to the Inaugural Ball.  That was huge, HUUUUGE. I’m not feeling the love, Mitty Baby.  C’mere.  Let me bite your neck.”

            Sure, you thought you could dabble with La Trump.  Take his money then kick him to the curb.  But you don’t curb-kick The Donald.  He curb-kicks you.  That’s what you don’t understand.  Lay down with dawgs, git up with fleas.  But in this case, Mitt, you’ll get up with long, ginger colored hair strands all over your nice suit. 

            That’s not dignified, Mitt.  That’s not presidential. It’s embarrassing.  Plus, it’ll make one of your many wives ask you where you've spent the night. (I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’ lots of people are sayin,’ is all.) Not good, Mitt.  Not good.

            And worse yet, your willingness to cozy up to and pal around with and attempt to play the fool with this fool does not speak well of your character.

            Or maybe it does. Maybe that’s the problem.

            Which is why I say, Don‘t do it, Mitt.  Step away before it’s too late, before everybody else starts to notice.  

  

Palinov's Dogs

Calhoun’s Cannons for June 3, 2011 

Humans are the only animals who will follow unstable pack leaders
                                             Cesar Milan, The Dog Whisperer

The political silly season – summer – started early. First we got the full-throated press pack baying after Donald Trump every time he popped his fox-red furry noggin up past the petunias. La Donald was flogging his TV show by pretending to run for the Republican presidential nomination. “ I’d be yOOOge, yuOOOge!” promised the Donald. But the only thing yOOOge was La Donald’s ego, his hairpiece and, as most people guessed, his 60-million dollar “Celebrity Apprentice” salary which trumped even fake political ambition.

This delightful romp was followed by the next distraction: the mystery of who hacked his Twitter account and publicly posted a photo of a crotch that may or may not be Congressman Anthony Weiner’s weenie. (Oh, Dear God, plueeeze don’t tell me we have another Pesky Political Penis running amok again. Are we going to have to only elect eunuchs in order to get anything done in Washington?) Well, the vital national security issue of Weiner’s Weenie will carry the 24/7 news cycle for a few days until it’s time for the Next Pointless Thing to distract and amuse an ADD nation.

And that rumble you hear comin’ over the hill, diesel fumes in the mornin,’ fumes that smell like . . . Victory, by golly!, well that would be the Queen of Silly, who has and will continue to top them all: Sarah Palin’s Yes I’m Not Running For President ‘12 tour is on the road in a ginormous bus with a huge “One Nation” and a flag painted on it, with the press pack, like Pavlov’s dogs, tongues running out, baying right behind it. And already La Palin’s faux complaining that the press is harassing her, that she and her family are on a little vacation, just like any other heartland family.

Oh, absolutely. You see those heartland “real” Americans all over the road during summer: Dad, who’s been out of work for a year and Mom, who is working two jobs to keep their underwater house afloat, regularly rent a huge, incredibly expensive bus and then have it hand-painted with a flag so they can then take the family on a meet-‘n-greet celebrity photo-op tour vacation to eat pizza with La Donald in New York and make little impromptu stump speeches at various historical American sites. Just like all hard-working real American families do when they go on vacation, you betcha!

All of which, in Palin’s case, is reminiscent of Marie Antoinette who costumed herself and her ladies-in-waiting to look like milkmaids so they could all troop off to a newly created faux farm on the grounds of Versailles to play at being peasants.

And so the Silly Season Summer dance begins, as structured as a pas de deux: Palin pops up, the media bays. They can’t help it. Their jobs depend on it. To their corporate masters, La Palin is pure ratings gold. And to La Palin, those ratings translate into real gold as well. Fake political campaigns, as La Donald and La Huckabee and La Gingrich and the other assorted well paid La Pols on Fox News have discovered, pays waaaayyyy better than public service.

As for the public, well, they demand their daily dose of celebrity as well. It now seems hard-wired into our popular-culture psyche and we are helpless in its grip since the human eye is programmed to scan for and focus on novelty – that unexpected movement in the shrubbery that demands attention.

You see the phenomenon at work every time a TV camera is doing an on-the-street interview, for example. Invariably, somebody will pop into view making a face or yelling something or holding a dumb sign. And try as you might, it’s impossible to ignore that action. La Palin has that pop-up strategy down to a fine art form. Nobody knows how to effectively surf the 24/7 news cycle schedule better than she and her handlers do. Masters at the game.

Is our country on the brink of financial ruin? Default only weeks away? Are the effects of climate change already upon us and because we have dithered, we are totally unprepared and will pay a fearsome price for our folly? Is a nuclear-armed Pakistan riding the Taliban tiger and now can’t get off? Is an Al Qaeda-infested Yemen now on the brink of chaos and civil war?

Well, pay no attention. It’s not important. What’s important is fake news, Dancing With The Stars, missing wieners and now the constant novelty of pop-up, Wack-a-Mole celebrity political theatre. That’s what Americans want, and what Americans want, they get.

Meanwhile, Democrats, comedians and pundits are praying – praying – for a Palin/Bachman GOP presidential ticket. It couldn’t possibly get any better than that: Politics as Farce.

Quick, Grab the Garlic. And a Mirror. Cross? Wooden Stake?

Well, there’s good news and bad news. First, La Donald has decided he likes show business better than being President so he’s out of the race. His announcement was all very anti-climactic. For a while there, you couldn’t turn on the television or open a paper without La Donald bloviating about some ridiculous topic or another. Hilariously, he ended up being hoist by his own “birther” petard when the President produced his long form birth certificate, (topic over), then at the Washington Press Corps Dinner, Obama stuck a few pins into the Comb-over King and SNL Weekend Update’s Seth Meyers went in for the coup de grace. La Donald was not amused.

A few days later the news came of Osama Bin Laden’s death and La Donald was heard no more. And who says God does not listen to prayers?

Mike Huckabee, another birther, decided God didn’t want him to run. More likely, it was God and Mamon now that he’s one of the well-paid Faux News Fellows.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is running around doing his version of I Voted For It Before I Voted Against It, declaring that the Massachusetts health care plan, which apparently is working very well and liked by most people in the state, is o.k. for them, but the nearly identical ObamaCare means the death of the republic and can’t be allowed for other people in other states.

And finally, we now have Newt Gingrich. Really. Newt? Seriously? He wants to be president because, well, he wants to be president. And once people see the wonderfulness of Newt in all his glorious bloviating gas-baggery they too will flock to bask in his breathtaking gloriousness.

Really. Newt. Dear God in Heaven.

Two? Now there’s TWO?

Recent headline announces that there has been a “second rape in less than a week involving Cal Poly students,” both victims “reportedly intoxicated and unconscious during the attack.”

I don’t know why they bother putting these stories on the front page. Clearly when it comes to some students and booze, Nobody Learns Anything. These young women are lucky they didn’t die of alcohol poisoning, and if they don’t end up pregnant or with an STD (or worse) they should consider themselves lucky. The young men, if they get caught, will find out how changed their lives will become, and not for the better. And the whole thing will Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Which is why Mother Calhoun can’t even get worked up over the whole issue.

But two? Really? That goes from Unfortunate Incident to, Aw, Just How Dumb ARE these Girls, Anyway?

Speaking of Dumb

The May 13 Tribune got around to writing about the May 5-6 Regional Water Quality Control Board Ag / Atascadero water pollution issues (reported here on the May 6 entry). If reporter Tonya Strickland attended the meeting, she clearly missed Chairman Young’s dog-whistle message. The City of Atascadero missed it, that’s for sure. The story quotes City Council-woman Roberta Fonzi as saying, “We’re not happy with the way the decision went. Their rules will be very expensive for us, and we don’t see the need for them.”

Hahahahahah. Councilwoman Fonzi doesn’t understand the game she’s now trapped in. When the State Water Board approves the stealth rule changes, the trap will be set.

In my blog report on this topic, I had two words for the dear Aggies and Atascadero: Los Osos.

Both Chairman Young and the Board’s attorney gave the game away but clearly nobody in the room was listening. And the Tribune missed the real story. As usual.

Freedom Riders

Don’t know if any of you had a chance to watch PBS’s “American Experience” program last night on the Freedom Riders, young black and white college students, many members of CORE (Congress on Racial Equality) who were trained in the principals of non-violence and set out to challenge Jim Crow laws in the south as they applied to interstate travel. In the late 40’s the Supreme Court had ruled that interstate travel could not be subject to segregation, a ruling that was utterly ignored in the south, which meant Whites-Only and Colored-Only bus station facilities throughout the state.

It was this situation the kids set out to challenge by riding on Greyhound and Trailways busses into the 1961 heart of darkness. And dark it was. The KKK-fueled mobs met the kids at their stops. One bus was fire-bombed, the riders nearly burned to death, other bus stations were scenes of riots, the kids severely beaten while local police stood by and/or arrested them (not the men assaulting them) and in the case of Mississippi, betrayed by a “deal” cut by the Feds and the Mississippi Governor, sent them not to city jail, but to prison. All of it documented by some equally brave newsmen.

The two-hour documentary is riveting, the bravery of those young students absolutely breathtaking (Imagine talking back to Birmingham, Alabama’s Commissioner of Public Safety, “Bull” Conner, an out-of-control psychopath who was even feared by the state’s governor. Astonishing.) The footage is often sickening in its accurate portrayal of the hatred and bigotry that was part and parcel of the “southern culture.” (And found in a more polite form outside the south.) And in the willing to face this danger in order to change the world, the documentary echoes events in Egypt’s Tarhir Square: Young kids, fearful, at terrible risk, who still go on, determined to change their world.

For someone born in the ‘70s or later, the documentary would likely look like ancient history that happened on some other planet occupied by ignorant, evil troglodytes. But for me, the film brought back so many memories of how the world was within my lifetime. I remember reading of the Freedom Riders, seeing the shocking images of “Bull” Conner and his police dogs attacking protesters, cringed at the ugly racial stereotypes, the easy use of the N-word, the hatred that usage implied. That was the given reality of the world the film so beautifully depicts; a world where, in many states, black people couldn’t get a cup of coffee in a J.J. Newberry’s, couldn’t use a “white” restroom in a Greyhound bus station, couldn’t even vote, let alone get elected dog catcher. And now, a black man sits in the White House.

Thanks to the young Freedom Riders, thanks to so many extraordinarily brave people willing to risk their lives to make the Constitution a living reality, that world changed utterly. And changed almost beyond recognition within my lifetime.

Which is what made watching the “American Experience” documentary so amazing; as a child and young adult, I lived in one world. Now I live in another world altogether.

That’s how quickly things can change when good people stand up.

The Prez is an American?

OMG! President Obama was born in Hawaii?  Like, he's an American?  OMG! OMG!

Well, not to worry.  The Donald is on the case, taking credit for being the moving force to get the President to release the "long form" birth certificate to "prove" he was born in Hawaii, not Kenya.  And, right on target, he immediately brought up the idea that this long form birth certificate might not be legitimate, like it could be forged, faked, after all the CIA can create any kind of document you want, documents that look real as can be. Which gave all the looney birthers more talking points to keep the whole silly game afloat for another news cycle.

And La Donald also made sure to also shift the talking point quickly  to Obama's other documents, like Obama's college papers, thereby tossing in the dog-whistle question of whether Obama deserved to get into Harvard or was he just another quota black guy taking unfair advantage, and a crummy student, to boot, because everyone knows blacks couldn't possibly be smart enough to get to Harvard on their own merit.  And La Donald should know, he's already made it clear that he's on great terms with "the blacks."

La Donald, according to recent polls, is leading the pack as a presidential contender among Republicans, the party that gave you Sarah Palin as Veep.  Seriously.  Sarah Palin as Veep, one heartbeat away from the presidency. Those poll numbers on La Donald speaks volumes about what the Republican Party has become, with only questions left:  Was this Republican racist stupidity caused by an infectious agent that spread like wildfire, killing off sane Republicans like some awful Black Plague?  Or was it some kind of degenerative genetic problem inherited from, say inbreeding too closely with John Birchers?

And if it's an infectious agent, spread from infected Republican politicos, Fake News talking heads and K-street lobbyists via corporate media and the internet, how badly has it infected normal Americans?  20%?  30% ? Past a certain tipping point, stupid societies simply can't stand.  They suffer what might be called "colony collapse."

So, there's the question: How far has venal stupidity spread throughout this great land of ours?  From the numbers I'm looking at, it doesn't look good.  Well, thank God we have La Donald on the case.  He'll save the Republic!

How Do You Spell Chutzpah?  

Tribune headline story yesterday:  "Parents file wrongful death suit."  Twenty-one year-old Cal Poly student wandered out on Highway 101 at 1 a.m. near the Santa Rosa St. intersection and gets hit by a car and killed.  It's later found that the kid's system was loaded with marijuana, alcohol and cocaine.  So his parents sue the city and the highway and (more sensibly) the Doctor who "prescribed" the marijuana.

Kid gets stoned, gets killed, parents sue the road.

Here's who should sue somebody or other, including the parents of the kid who wandered out in the highway: The poor man who hit the stoned kid appearing suddenly in the middle of the night in the middle of the highway where no kid should be at any time, night or day.  If anybody was permanently injured, it's that guy.  For the rest of his life.  If somebody's looking for a victim, that's the guy.  

Speaking of Chutzpah

"Hey, Pre-Paid Los Osos Sewer Assessment Folks?  How's THIS taste?" asks Ron Crawford over at http://www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com/.  Insult to grave injury to poor Lososians.  A disaster that didn't have to happen, for which they will pay repeatedly and excessively, while the architects of this disaster either walked away scott free, or are once again in charge and are, uh, charging everything twice, while the watchdogs snooze at their post.  Amazing, all those little dots, while those who should be making this right, blandly turn away. Talk to the hand.  It's Chinatown.