Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Quick Tip

Fantastic column today on The New York Times opinion page by one of my favorite writers, Bob Herbert.

There's the link. Read it. 'Nuff said.

Franken Wins? Coleman Wins? Either Way, Minnesota Loses.

The current, Judicial phase of Minnesota's Senatorial election recount continues on at its glacial pace. Who knows, my state might actually have a second sitting Senator by the time the seat comes up for reelection in 2014. Maybe.

In the end, one would of course hope that all properly-cast Senatorial ballots will be counted, and may the candidate with the most votes win. But that's just the problem: one of these two giant douchebags ultimately has to win the election.

We have satirist Al Franken, a singularly unlikable carpetbagger who, when he trailed preliminarily at the polls, believed that "all Minnesotans' votes should be counted." But now that he has a slim recount lead, that deeply-held belief seems to have evaporated into thin air, replaced by his self-serving argument that rejected absentee ballots should not be reconsidered.

And then there's Normie Coleman: former Democrat who turned Republican when he felt the political winds of Minnesota shifting slightly to the right, former Bush Administration lockstep lackey who then tried to remake himself into a bipartisan hero after Democrats regained congressional control in the 2006 elections. Needless to say, his views on both electoral challenges and absentee ballots similarly changed after the recount's first phase went against him. (I have often argued that the man has no actual beliefs other than the belief that he should have power over his fellow citizens while suckling endlessly at the public teat.)

No matter which of these odious characters emerges as the nominal victor of this recount process, his less-than-six-year term will be marred by a cloud of illegitimacy, by the belief of a substantial fraction of Minnesotans that the Senator does not deserve the office he holds, that the fix was somehow in.

Until 2015, Minnesota seems destined to be represented by one-and-a-half Senators, at the most.

Friday, January 23, 2009

WANTED!


Beyonce Knowles: For crimes against music.

Flipping through the channels on Inauguration night, I caught part of Beyonce's performance of the song "At Last," as the Obamas danced the first dance of the many, many Inaugural galas. I was blown away by the power and beauty of her voice in service of what is a truly timeless and well-crafted song.

That such talent should be wasted upon such drivel as... well, just about everything she's otherwise sung... is a travesty. Her voice is far too good to interpret dreck like "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)," a singularly annoying, tuneless and fatuous waste of three minutes and ten seconds -- time that I will never get back.

Sure, people listen to it... stupid people. To a certain extent, I would guess that some do so only because they can simultaneously think about what a hottie she is. My feeling, though, is that if you want to listen to music, then listen to music -- and if you want to see T&A, then go to a strip club. And never the twain should meet.

The Buggles were right: Video killed the radio star... and popular music.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

So Darn Cute!

Conservatives are just so precious! As Art Linkletter might put it, right-wingers say the darnedest things.

Their reaction to then-President-elect Obama's stimulus package proposal? Pure comedy gold! During their years in power, Republicans never met a spending bill they didn't adore. Expand government's scope drastically? Sure, why not? Squander our budget surplus upon giveaways for the ultra-wealthy, rather than paying down the national debt? Absolutely! An unnecessary and unfinanced war? What could be better?!

But now, with Democrats having been placed firmly in charge by the American people, righties have suddenly found religion on the subject of fiscal responsibility. After years of proclaiming (as Dick Cheney put it) that "deficits don't matter," Republicans are now awfully worried about all that darn money we collectively owe.

They essentially seem to be positing the notion that, during good economic times, government should spend like a drunken sailor, but, when the economy is performing badly, the Federal belt must be drastically tightened. See if you can get an economist to buy into that load of horse hockey.

*****

As of yesterday, the four-year right-wing whine concerning Barack Obama's Presidency began simultaneously with said Presidency, in the form of incredulity that any money would be spent on his inaugural gala. (The comical cognitive dissonance involved in decrying this expenditure after having embraced similar expenditures in 2001 and 2005 seems to have been lost on them.) And thus, presumably, begins the pattern that will dominate conservative "thought" for the next four years: "Whatever it is, I'm against it." (Thank you, Marx Brothers.)

*****

Today, I listened to the radio rantings of drug-addled Rush Limbaugh for a while. It was hilarious -- though unintentionally so. He spent well over an hour telling us, "his friends," that the end is near, that American democracy is doomed -- right up to the edge of warning us that the black helicopters were on their way.

And then he accused Democrats and their evil media conspirators of being purveyors of negativity!

I laughed so hard that I nearly wet myself.

*****

But, hey, no matter what may come, the next four years should be interesting, if only to watch the insulated and privileged on the right wallow in their own imagined victimhood, to listen to the endless whining.

Good times!

Monday, January 19, 2009

What Might Have Been

Imagine, if you will, a January 2001 in which President-elect George W. Bush reaches out to his political adversaries in an attempt to heal the nation's political divide. In the week prior to inauguration day, he attends a dinner with numerous left-wing newspaper columnists and commentators; on the night before his inauguration, he holds a ceremony to fete Al Gore, his just-barely-defeated electoral adversary.

What Barack Obama has done in the weeks since his election to the Presidency is nothing less than extraordinary. Be they altruistically bipartisan, cynically political, or somewhere in between, his actions are nonetheless a radical departure from those of his predecessors. They are the actions that I would hope for from a President-elect.

George W. Bush had two opportunities to make himself the President of all of the United States -- his first, upon his inauguration; his second, upon the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Instead, he chose to employ Karl Rove's "50% plus one" strategy. In the first instance, he chose to ignore his adversaries entirely and to enact the policies favored by his far-right base. In the second, he chose not to ask sacrifice and introspection from the American people, but to ask us to shop obliviously at the mall while he committed war crimes in our names.

I say these things not as an accusation of George W. Bush, but as a lamentation. What could have been, had Bush been a bigger man, a man better-equipped for the times in which he found himself? What could have been, were he only the man that I so desperately wanted him to be... were he the man that we, as a nation, needed him to be?

What might have been?

Monday, January 5, 2009

The Right Shows Its True Colors?

As an evil Lefty, I occasionally will jokingly refer to my right-winger friends as "fascist pigs." Just a little term of endearment, in the same way that they call me a "pinko commie bastard." All in fun.

That said, I had to laugh this week when I saw that some righties are very upset with the University of Washington for being the site of a memorial to the members of the Lincoln Brigade, Americans who fought against Francisco Franco's Fascist Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). You know the Nationalists -- they were the "bad guys" in the film Pan's Labyrinth; they were the ones who received overt material support from Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany; they were the ones who kept Spain from becoming a democracy until after Franco's death in 1975.

You see, it seems that some of the members of the Lincoln Brigade were members of the Communist Party. Not all, mind you; just some. But that is enough, in the twisted mentality of the Right, to make the memorial "a memorial to Communists." Never mind who truly comprised the Lincoln Brigade, nor who they fought. It is just more proof, in their minds, of how the intellectual and cultural "elites" are against American values, a bunch of commie sympathisers.

I do have to say that I find it rather amusing that the Right now seems to be in agreement with Hitler and Mussolini, just as they were back in the '30s and early '40s. Apparently, Fascism is a belief system whose spectre should be used as a bedtime story to frighten us into action against those pervasive "Islamofascists," but whose realities should be ignored or glossed over when convenient.

It's predictable, but still wonderfully and hilariously ironic.