Rush--New Leader of the GOP

(Charlie's Angels, circa 1974)

See, I am, like, totally omigod excited at the prospect, even though I must admit to being just a bit frazzled by the obtuse allegiance with the Elephants. Given their long history with all that is experimental in music, art, and literature, I honestly pegged Geddy, Alex, and Neil for liberals---in fact, socialists.

So you can imagine my surprise when they decided to lean right. I will allow them this strange mis-calculation, however, due to their advanced age and decades of drug use. And anyway, seriously. Everyone over fifty is Republican, right? Still...it will be good to see the boys from Toronto in the spotlight again, especially as the new mouthpiece for the Republican Party. I am very much looking forward to Neil's eloquent speeches and rebuttals, seeing how our new prez is young, pragmatic, sharp, and thought of by most as...GASP...an intellectual who eats the likes of Bobby Jindal for lunch. With some kind of green leaf vegetable called arugula. Fight muscle with muscle, baby:

When our weary world was young
The struggle of the ancients first began.
The gods of Love and Reason
Sought alone to rule the fate of Man.

They battled through the ages,
But still neither force would yield.
The people were divided,
Every soul a battlefield.
(Rush, Cygnus X-1, Book ii; Lyrics by Neil Peart)

I mean, seriously? Our prez is toast.

Neil's retort to Obama's articulate and elevated rhetoric, and Alex's and Geddy's abilities to weave an improvisational ditty around those words as they are being delivered, are exactly what the struggling Republican Party needs in order to boost its dwindling image (26% of voters with positive impressions of the GOP). Who else but a bunch of old white guys from the North to shake up a party made of a bunch of old white guys from the South?

I say Hallelujah. Pass the dutchie on the left hand side and the hell with Jindal and Barbour, the lousy stiffs!

Exit...stage left.

Coming Out With a Boiiiing-Boom-Tschak!

 
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was slated to have a grand coming out party Tuesday evening as the GOP's new, young gun delivering the response to the President's address before Congress. Instead, Jindall came across as an over-coached, over-rehearsed stiff spewing the same old tired rhetoric that the Elephants have been trumpeting now for what seems like eternity.

Jindal's speech garnered near instant criticism, including from those in conservative circles who have promoted the 36-year-old governor as the GOP's most likely advocate to bring the party back from the brink of irrelevance. Many conservatives admitted Jindal appeared at best off-balance and at worst buffoonish in his national debut.

From CNN Online:
"Some conservative needs to start a campaign to fire whoever wrote this cheesy response and coached him to talk like this," wrote conservative columnist Amanda Carpenter on the popular social networking Web site Twitter. "I can't watch."

"He should never be allowed near a teleprompter again!" declared the National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez on Wednesday, while noting the governor had a much stronger performance on NBC's "The Today Show" the morning after his speech.

And on PBS' "The Newshour," conservative columnist David Brooks described the speech and the ideology it represented as "insane," "nihilist," and "a disaster for the Republican Party."

Generally an opposition party's response rarely wins wide praise. The location itself is a gigantic setback. While the President stands before a chamber full of opinionated, if at times grumbling old hags, hacks, and various partisan stalwarts who go about their usual jack-in-the-box applauding routine, the opposition response comes out of an ultra-quiet, usually depressing, and somber solitary room. The rebuttal is delivered straight into (what I suspect is) a locked camera, and if we're lucky we get the occasional slow push-in or pull-out on the zoom lens. That is, if the camera operator is awake.

But Jindal may be a victim of overhype and unrealistic expectations. The governor's impressive resume and compelling background have been touted to make him a natural fit to compete against the oratorically-skilled Obama. And let's face it, the prez is a hell of a tough act to follow, no matter what a cunning linguist one may be.

However, Jindal can take solace in the fact that in politics, one often gets to move on to Act 2. Some of the most prominent politicians still making waves today floundered on their first attempt in the national spotlight. Among them, former President Bill Clinton, whose speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention was immediately deemed a disaster, with many political chatterboxes predicting the end of his political career.

Le Fabuleux Gouverneur-Morons!

 
Fuck Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and fuck Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina and fuck Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi. How's that for a cerebral, eloquent opening line to a column? Fortunately, top brass at S.E.I. is keeping me on a fairly long leash; in fact even encouraging profanity when profanity is warranted.

And profanity is warranted in this mind-boggling case of idiocy. For those still hanging in with us and following the circus that has again commenced in Washington, the aforementioned trio of bozos---all rising stars in the Republican Party---have sternly threatened to turn away federal (stimulus) aid rather than use the money to expand access to unemployment insurance programs in ways that many other states have already agreed upon.

These awful decisions are little more than political posturing reinforcing the terrifying conclusion that the Republican Party is more interested in ideological warfare than in working on policies that get the country back on track.

The GOP's attacks on the unemployment insurance portion of the stimulus package are disturbing. From The New York Times:

"States that accept the stimulus money aimed at the unemployed are required to abide by new federal rules that extend unemployment protections to low-income workers and others who were often shorted or shut out of compensation. This law did not just materialize out of nowhere. It codified positive changes that have already taken place in at least half the states.

To qualify for the first one-third of federal aid, the states need to fix arcane eligibility requirements that exclude far too many low-income workers. To qualify for the rest of the aid, states have to choose from a menu of options that include extending benefits to part-time workers or those who leave their jobs for urgent family reasons, like domestic violence or gravely ill children.

Data from the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit group, show that 19 states qualify for some of the federal financing and that a dozen others would become eligible by making one or two policy changes. Unemployed workers are worst off in the Deep South, where relatively few people are eligible to receive payments. Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas stand out."

The governors have complained that the federal unemployment aid would lead directly to new state taxes. This is not complete horseshit, but very close to it. Fact is no one really knows what the economic situation will be several years from now when the federal aid has been used up. But dumping billions of dollars into shrinking state unemployment funds puts money into the hands of people who will spend it quickly on food and shelter. The immediate injection of capital could help the states through the recession and into a time when unemployment trust funds can be replenished. In other words, the stimulus could make a tax increase less likely.

Governors like the young, ambitious, and up-and-coming Mr. Jindal should be worrying about how to end this recession while helping his constituents put food on the table and keep their houses, not about finding ways to resuscitate tired old election-year arguments about big spending versus small government.

The ANTIs

 
And oh how the mighty have fallen, as Lincoln's Grand Old Party ain't looking so grand lately, its leaderless power vacuum apparently now being filled by that insufferable ogre, Rush Limbaugh. "I WANT the new president to fail," he told listeners on his show recently. Hear it again in case you missed it: he wishes the administration to go down in flames. Did that sink in properly? As you struggle to pay your mortgage, if you haven't already foreclosed, or as you pump down the heat to save a fistful of bucks, or stretch that loaf of bread you've had frozen for a couple of weeks now. Why, not too long ago under the leadership of another administration, those words constituted near treason; they were un-American...perhaps even "terroristspeak."

What disgusts me to no end at a time like this is the GOP partisan bickering and refusal to support the new stimulus package which passed the House a few days ago. Are Republicans that out of touch with reality that in their delusionary state they honestly believe we need more tax cuts for the rich and corporations? The very things that got us to this deplorable state?

"I WANT the new president to fail..."

Maybe the Republicans don’t think there is an emergency. Remember now, it was Phil Gramm, John McCain’s economic guru, who told us last summer that the pain was all in our heads, that this was a “mental recession.” And so the 20,000 jobs Caterpillar has announced it's eliminating, the 8,000 cut by Sprint Nextel, and 7,000 axed by Home Depot, all within the last two days...all of this is in our heads.

The Republican answer? Tax Cuts! Jesus, these people need to be committed. It's infuriating to stand by and listen to this decades-old rhetoric, which has somehow brainwashed reasonable Americans into thinking that as of Tuesday this country is being led into the realm of Communism. Are you kidding me? Wake up! You're getting ready to be evicted and you're worried about two gay men marrying. Or from out of the suspended unknown that is space-time continuum, through a hidden wormhole, some colonialist redcoat will materialize, break down your front door, and take away your beloved guns.

If anything, the stimulus package is not large enough. But the GOP won't stand to hear it. It's complaining that Republican members are being pressured into accepting the deal. Pressured! Imagine that, actually holding politicians accountable for making a ballsy decision without pussyfooting around and working backroom deals with influential businesses back home.

Imagine a political system in which decisions are being taken without consulting with parasitic lobbyists and hangers-on offering comp-ed packages of all-inclusives in the Caymans.

The GOP has become the party of Anti. Anti-abortion, Anti-immigration, Anti-gay marriage, Anti-union, Anti-anything that the rational mind of a hard working American can fathom to do in order to help himself and his fellow human being.

This is the party that preached fiscal discipline and then cut taxes in time of an un-ending war with a phantom enemy. This is the party that still wants to decimate Social Security and Medicare. This is a party that, given a choice between Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, would choose Ronald Reagan in a heartbeat.

"Barack the Magic Negro"

 
I wasn't initially appalled when I got word of this piece in the NY Times a couple of days ago. After all the garbage that was slung on the campaign trail by the McPalin consortium, this sort of radical, racist horseshit was par for the course from conservative extremists. I was, however, absolutely flabbergasted that the GOP would give this racist bullshit mixed reviews.

It's unfathomable to me, now almost a decade into the 21st century, that this despicable act is not unanimously condemned by all. "Barack the Magic Negro" (sung to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon") was distributed by Chip Saltsman, a candidate for GOP party chairman from Tennessee. The offensive jingle was of course broadcast on Rush "Is a Big Fat Idiot" Limbaugh's radio show.

Speaking to The Hill newspaper on Friday, Saltsman described it as a “light-hearted” gift that would be received in “good humor” by members of the Republican National Committee.

Thankfully, more than a couple of important party handfulls---Newt Gingrich and RNC party chairman Mike Duncan among them---have condemned the parody, declaring themselves shocked and appalled. However, on Saturday, black candidate for RNC chairman, J. Kenneth Blackwell (a former Ohio secretary of state) dismissed the hoopla as “hypersensitivity.”

“All competitors for this leadership position are fine people,” he wrote in an e-mail message.

Are they now? I bet they brush their teeth with Darkie Toothpaste and get served breakfast by Mamie The House Negro every morning before they head out to that sacred institution on the Hill to pass their legislative, racist nonsense.

For a party that had huge losses this year among minority voters, this ought to be the last, revolting straw that brings down the house. But fine, call me a humourless twit. I can get down with the best of the cockroaches and play that game too. I move for a counter-version titled "God The Magik Cracka" sung/rapped by Chuck D. from Public Enemy. That ought to take care of all GOP-ers and evangelicals alike, and ensure all-out, Bible-thumping riots throughout this great virtuous land of ours.

From The Grave: Lee Atwater

 
I watched Tuesday night, fueled by a couple of thimblefuls of Courvoisier, the delineation of Lee Atwater’s Machiavellian short life on PBS’ “Frontline.” The film was helmed by Emmy-nominated director Stephan Forbes, known for his documentary “One More Dead Fish,” about renegade anglers in Nova Scotia struggling to survive globalization.

I was quite familiar with Mr. Atwater’s controversial, sometimes racially-charged political tactics that helped elect H.W. Bush and inspired protégés like Karl Rove and Robert Edgeworth. Atwater’s fierce methods transformed politics into ultra blood sport, and his blueprint was perfectly, albeit unsuccessfully, carried on by the McCain/Palin campaign just recently. What I didn’t realize, after having been exposed to twenty-plus years of unfair and dirty Republican vitriol toward progressive adversaries, was the absolute, almost perfect Dickensian tragic flow to Mr. Atwater’s life. In fact, before last night I wasn’t even sure he had died. Shame on me, I know.

Disgusted by Atwater’s tactics, I truly believe I relegated him to the cellars of my political and social consciousness, refusing to follow any subject related to him or his life. But something odd happened to me. During the ninety minutes that outlined his meteoric rise and deplorable demise, I went from visibly flashing the middle finger to the screen, several times calling him a despicable parasite and a first-class dick, to a deliberate pause and reflection on the always personal tragedy that is one’s life. There is no doubt he was a complicated man---as most successful political operatives are---and I realized that banishing him to a one-dimensional monster would only confirm a personal blind allegiance and heavy bias.

In his last days, pumped and swollen to an unrecognizable cyclopean appearance by steroids and chemicals used to treat a malignant brain tumor, Lee Atwater renounced his aggressive, mud-slinging tactics, and sought repentance. Some (like me, initially) will say this request for providence may have come too late. In fact, mercy from above via men and women of cloth is almost always sought on deathbeds, but more reflection upon an individual life is needed in order to pass final judgment. Personally, the single most eye-opening realization came when Ed Rollins, former Reagan campaign director and long time Republican political advisor, described how a dying Mr. Atwater asked for a copy of the Bible---to the surprise of all who knew him. But how, in the hours following his death, gathering up his personal belongings and items, they found the holy book untouched, still wrapped in sealed plastic. In the end, Lee Atwater was true to his religious beliefs (or lack thereof).

I felt the same strange, forgiving sensibility watching the execution of Saddam Hussein, as well as the demise of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu before the firing squad in December of 1989. Without argument these three were despicable human beings who ruthlessly murdered hundreds of thousands---if not millions, yet I somehow felt melancholic and sullen watching their final moments of life taken by perhaps equally-flawed judge penitents. I suppose a fundamental sadness and sorrow for humanity’s fierceness either way will always be present within me. I suppose in a strange way I should rejoice at that---it proves I still have a heart. And hope for an advanced civilization.

"Lee Atwater made himself a figure of demonology to psych out his opponents and anesthetize people to his tactics. And the sad part -- some people would say the justified part -- was that the role that he made for himself literally ended up imprisoning him."
--Howard Fineman, Senior Editor, Newsweek.

Operation Leper

 
Taking a good look at the several post-election, interactive maps available online, there's strong evidence that the Republican party is becoming a regional one. Certainly it's in dissaray and pointing fingers, now making Palin the scapegoat for its failure to...communicate? If the GOP is smart, it will split and send the fundemented packing, and bring in a more moderate element like Schwarzenegger or Bloomberg, making the party what it once was: a collective of rich guys dedicated to financial conservatism and smaller government - not a pack of rats borrowing and spending while trying to muscle into the Middle East or infringing on citizens' civil rights, dictating personal lifestyle decisions (Hi there Prop. 8; ciao bella Roe v. Wade!).

It's highly unlikely that will happen, however. Already a censuring movement has been initiated, in which members of the GOP plan to prevent anyone who speaks out about Sarah Palin from working in Republican politics again. Ladies and gentlemen, will you help me please in welcoming-ing: "Operation Leper."

Quite ironic, considering how Jesus treated lepers.