Lies I Was Told By My Right

Before I get into the subject of this blog, let me just say that I called Sen. Joe (aka “little joe”, aka “the senator of the 51st state, Israel”) Lieberman to say that I was counting on his vote in the pending Healthcare Reform debate. The voice mail on his phone was full. The voice mail on his minions’ line was full. Oh well, at least I had a number to call at his Hartford office. Its voice mail was full. Well played Joe. CI guess you can’t say that your constituents are pleading with you to do the people’s business, can you?

Anyway, on to them lies. I won’t even get into the most egregious, most insane examples. Those have been covered by folks more eloquent than I. These are just a few that happen to grind my gears.

For instance, there is the oft-enforced belief that unions are bad for the country, and that their greed is one of the reasons why we are in such bad shape today. After all, if they hadn’t been able to negotiate their bloated wages and benefits packages, the American worker would have been more affordable, and all of those jobs wouldn’t have been shipped overseas. Explain Europe to me, then. They retain a strong manufacturing base, yet their workers have far better benefits, a month’s vacation every year, robust, government-sponsored healthcare that they like very much, thank you. What’s wrong with our unions?

Well, for starters the government has been openly hostile to them since Reagan came along, and sought every way to reduce their effectiveness while demonizing their very activity. People forget: unions created the middle class in this country. They caused a profound surge in the working man’s income, gave us the eight-hour day, eliminated child labor, made employers provide health insurance, and so on. Since the big roll back on union gains, we have seen almost all manufacturing jobs leave these shores, benefits have shrunk and/or become less affordable, and everybody is working longer hours for less pay, if they are working at all. Meanwhile, these same actions have created a monied elite who have gotten richer each year, further separating themselves from the rest of us peasants. Who is the enemy here?

Second lie: “There are extremists on both sides.” Really? We’ve seen teabaggers and TV and radio hate mongers, not to mention militia nuts and armed thugs in their thousands, on the Right. Just who are their counterparts on the Left? All they can give us is Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. Extremists? They have opinions and are forthright about expressing them. Have they ever advocated the use of violence in the furtherance of their worldview? No. Have they been caught in lies? All they have done is use actual facts to make their points, something which is seldom used on the Right.Let’s stop trying to make this false comparison.

Next lie: “Our country is basically conservative to moderate.” Not as it ages. Every poll shows that the youth of our nation is more accepting than the last generation when it comes to social issues such as gay marriage, science vs. religion, a woman’s right to choose, comfort with minorities and their rights, etc., etc. Once the older generation dies off, these will cease to be issues at all. State by state, gay marriage is seeing greater tolerance. It’s only when special interest groups (read: churches and Republicans pursuing homophobia as a wedge issue) pump millions into television ad campaigns that the numbers migrate in the other direction. All it proves is that people are swayed by whatever they last watched on TV (surely a subject for another blog). I truly believe that we Americans are a live-and-let-live people who prefer that most find their own way to happiness, and that the government has no place in the bedroom.

Last lie (for today): “There’s a class war going on in America.” Actually, this one is partially true. But the war (undeclared) is being ferociously waged by the wealthy, on the poor and the middle class. You may define the wealthy as those who worship at the temple of Wall Street and who are served by their lapdogs in the Republican Party. Almost their every act is to enrich a small minority, shareholders, at the expense of the many. They started by taking most of the well-paying jobs and moving them out of the country, in the service of those shareholders, who did quite well in the bargain. (The Onion headline: “Everybody laid off - Wall St. reacts favorably”). As an increasing number of Americans became un-or-underemployed, they steadfastly refused to raise the minimum wage (it took a Democratic Congress to do that). Under Republican administrations (OK, Bill Clinton had a hand in some of this too), one tax cut after another was enacted, nearly every one benefiting the wealthy only. Meanwhile, the rich welcomed undocumented workers into the country to perform their jobs even more cheaply, accomplishing several things: they saved money on wages, did not have to pay a payroll tax or offer health benefits, and undercut unions. As an added bonus, they created an irrational fear of illegal aliens, providing an easy target for the working man to hate, rather than directing his anger at the real agent of his distress, the gilded class.

Yes, there is class warfare underway, but let’s not kid ourselves about who started it, or who’s been winning for the last few decades. The question is: why would anyone not already wealthy identify themselves with their heinous policies?

What's Your Excuse Now?

Okay, Joe Lieberman, what's your excuse now?

The Congressional Budget Office has just announced their take on the Senate Healthcare Reform Bill, and they peg it at $849 billion over 10 years (less than Obama had said he was looking for), and state that it will REDUCE the budget by $127 billion over the same period. You know the CBO, don't you Joe? That same body you have been quoting for months now, as the primary reason why you won't support reform? Because you couldn't stand the thought of passing on a huge debt to your (embarrassed) grandchildren? Because Healthcare Reform would only add to the deficit? And used them (the CBO, I mean) to give credence to your obstructionist ways?

Whatever are you going to use now to hold back the tide of public support, which has been crying for years (decades, really) for relief? It seems that the bill would cover 94% of Americans, which is a big improvement though not the best solution (see my blog of Oct. 27). What are you going to say now? Maybe that Healthcare Reform causes warts? Or are you afraid that a public option will "undermine the private insurance market' as Mary Landrieu has said? Let's all cry some crocodile tears for the underprivileged, private insurance market.

Maybe it's time to get the insurance industry dick out of your mouth and say "yea" when the vote comes up.

I'm also talking to you, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, and Blanche Lincoln.

How to Get Fooled Again

In the late eighteenth century and halfway through the nineteenth, southern preferences took precedence over that of the majority of American people. While not sympathetic to the rights of enslaved Africans, most still thought of the institution as an evil unnatural practice, and in varying degrees wished it to be banished from our shores. Their opinion mattered not a bit, because Southerners and Southern principles held sway. Nine of the first twelve Presidents were Southerners, and slave owners.

Though the South had far fewer people, including people eligible to vote, than the Northern section of the country, Congress allowed them to treat slaves as three fifths of a white person, for purposes of representation. This gave them an outsized influence in determining the course of the country, despite the fact that more people, more industry, more railroads, more schools, more libraries, and more personal freedom, existed in the North. Laws were passed which made it impossible even to hear an antislavery discussion in Congress. The ruling class in the South became violently opposed to any accommodation in the sphere of slavery, even though their predecessors in the generation that sought freedom from Britain had hoped and expected that the peculiar institution would somehow fade away by the time of their grandchildren.

This privileged class, the aristocratic planters, shunned higher education (there were almost no legitimate universities in the Southern states), and held to a take-no-prisoners approach to any attempt, however indirect, to remedy the plight of the enslaved. Rather than face an unthinkable civil war, the North again and again gave in to the demands of the South, shamefully surrendering at the expense of the helpless, rather than chance that the rich planters would go through with their threats. In retrospect, it seems crazy that they remained so inflexible in the face of basic humanity.

Last week an amendment was rammed through as a last-minute dingleberry to the Healthcare reform bill of the House, denying coverage for voluntary abortions. They have told us that it is the same thing as the Hyde amendment, in place since the 70’s. That is a lie. It is a significant step backward for women’s reproductive rights, and will mean that many of the situations now covered by insurance companies will be outlawed going forward. It is a sneaky Trojan horse and no one should be fooled by it.

In their eagerness to reach accommodation and avoid an internecine fight, Democrats went long with this execrable amendment. Some have said that the Senate would not allow the bill to go forward with the amendment intact. Let us hope that they are right, rather than endure another surrender in the face of reaction, a surrender that would have to be paid for once again by the powerless.

One of Those Dreams

“I had one of those death dreams last night.”

“What was that? Oh, you mean where you die at the end?”

“Yeah, except that you always wake up before death actually occurs.”

“I’m glad I never get those.”

“Anyway, it started with me driving, only I was still sort of asleep, so I was in a reclining position with the seat all of the way back, and I could barely reach the steering wheel. I tried to sit up, because I couldn’t see over the dashboard, and we were going really fast. It was on the highway, at night.”

“Was I yelling at you?”

“You’re always yelling at me when I drive, so yes. It was hard to sit up. It felt like trying to do sit ups with an anvil on your chest. I could finally see a little, but only a little, over the steering wheel, and it was very dark out, and the highway was wet. I wanted to stop but we needed to get off an exit first.”

“So then what happened?”

“I pulled off of the first exit that came along. We had to be doing eighty, and I could see that at the end of the exit was some kind of embankment, made of earth or stone. It was at least ten feet tall and right across our path, in back of a road that was perpendicular to the exit. I tried to apply the brakes, but the other thing about driving in a dream is that brakes only work when they’re pressed practically through the floor boards. I’m trying to get the car to slow down and it’s not really going slower at all, really like it’s speeding up.”

“Maybe you were like an old person who thinks that the gas is the brake.”

“Maybe, but I can see that I’m not going to make it. I’m going to go right into the embankment, so I turn hard to the right. The car fishtails, totally out of control. The driver’s side rear end hits a chain link fence that’s somehow there and we go right through. Now we’re going backwards, kicking up all of this dust and dragging chain link, and suddenly the car tilts backward with its nose in the air, and I can’t feel the ground any more.”

“Why?”

“Well, I realize that we’re falling, like we’ve gone over a cliff. A couple of seconds go by, and it hits me that we’re falling a long way and that we’re going to hit really hard. I say, my God, we’re going to die! I turn to you and I say, because I realize that it’s the last thing I’ll ever do or say, and I say, I love-, and then I woke up. I felt like I was actually starting to say the words, and the noise of the panic just woke me up.”

“You have some pretty fucked up dreams.”

“It has to be a real vivid one, like that, in order for me to remember them.”

“But it was nice, that you wanted to tell me you loved me, as your final thought.”

“Hey it’s the least I could do. After all, I killed you, right?”

“Yeah, that does take a little of the romance away. So, if you were to die before me, would you wait for me?”

Wait for you? Wait where?”

“You know, on the other side.

“Okay, first of all, I don’t believe in an “other side”. Second, even if there were one, how do I know what I would be capable of? How do I know if I still have free will, or the capacity to remember anything that happened in my prior life? I might not be able to “meet you”, or know who you are if I did.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Look, Ben, all I’m saying is I can’t answer a hypothetical like that. I’d be lying if I gave you a definite answer on a hypothetical like that.”

“No, Jack. You’re an asshole, because I would wait for you, and now you’re making me think that you don’t love me like you say you do.”

“Jerk, I told you I loved you with my dying breath.”

“Yeah, right after you killed me. Asshole.”