Happy New Year - Now Let's Take Out the Trash

I just heard that Rush Limbaugh was admitted to a hospital in Honolulu with chest pains. I want to wish him a speedy recovery, as he is so important for keeping progressives energized. I understand that a near tragedy was averted when vacationers were prevented from rolling him back into the ocean.

Anyway, this piece is all about what should have happened in 2009, and what I hope can still happen in 2010. It’s not too late, people.

1. Sarah Palin is apprehended by representatives of the Alaskan legislature and returned to that state in order to serve out the term to which she was elected. Ethical violations reviews are resumed, and she is found guilty of many. She is then kicked out of office.

2. The world gets to enjoy Dick Cheney being perp walked from his well-known location by federal officials following the open investigation of his unbelievably evil activities while Vice President. Too batshit crazy to go to regular lockup, he is incarcerated in a hospital for the criminally insane.

3. George W. Bush is tied to a tree in front of his library and is forced to watch as the keys to a brand new bulldozer are handed to Cindy Sheehan, who proceeds to knock that sucker over. A statue to Mollie Ivins is erected on the ruins.

4. Truth becomes the new black. An observer is assigned to Joe Wilson, whose sole purpose is to point out to him every time he is lying. Actually, a team of observers is assigned, since only one would grow hoarse before the first day was out. If the system works (and why wouldn’t it?), additional teams will be assigned to Michelle Bachman, John Boehner, Jim DeMint, most of talk radio, and all of Fox News. Full employment in the U.S. breaks out.

5. Congress realizes that in 2010 a kill-the-incumbents frenzy is about to take over. Seeing that they have nothing to lose, they decide to enact some actual progressive legislation:

a. Anyone carrying loaded weapons to public gatherings such as political rallies is subject to immediate arrest. Police are urged to tase the shit out of the perp.

b. Tough laws are enacted to bring finance CEOs & CFOs to justice. All of their possessions are auctioned off and the proceeds are adequate to return everyone one to their homes, fund Medicare and Social Security in perpetuity, and erase the national debt.

c. They pass a single payor option, thereby saving American businesses, large and small, eliminate 60% of all personal bankruptcies, and save 45,000 lives a year. The American people are so happy that they decide to leave them in office, after all.

6. Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Olympia Snowe and other blue dogs and fellow travelers are exiled to a distant island with all of the necessary amenities, but without any cameras. Also, there will be no health care.

7. The United States calls Rick Perry's bluff, and kicks Texas out of the union. All federal property must be returned, so among other things Ft. Hood will have to be relocated to another state. In addition, we’d like the billions we have spent building and repairing their roads and bridges, maintaining their national parks, and subsidizing their products, returned. I guess it also means that their NFL, NBA, and college teams will no longer be able to compete with American teams. Have fun being your own country. Can’t wait to see how your new constitution reinstates slavery.

8. The gate-crashing Salahis and the parents of the balloon boy are placed in a death match cage together. The survivors are interviewed by the national media. The interview never airs.

9. President Obama wakes up one day and realizes that maybe he ought to start following his principles, instead of the dead end pragmatism he has been practicing. The immediate closure of Guantanamo, end of rendition, end of don’t ask don’t tell, and the end of futile courting of Republicans follow, and the people get the guy they thought they voted for.

Those are my nine wishes. The tenth is for you. Enjoy. Happy New Year, one and all.

We're Not Going to Guam, Are We?

First, let me say that if you are not a fan (or fanatic) for the series “Lost”, you should just skip this one. Don’t worry - I’ll be whining again about politics soon enough. I just wanted a break from it for a while.

We got season 5 a couple of days ago in order to refresh our recollections and get psyched for the final season to come, and have burned through the first seven episodes in two days. I continue to be impressed with the level of respect that J. J. Abrams, Damon Lindelhof and Carlton Cuse have for their viewers. Rather than spoon feed you with the obvious, they make you work a little to understand where they are going with the series. Last year’s offering raised the bar by throwing in multiple periods of time travel for different groups of characters, making you wonder who was where and when, Hints dropped one week may only become apparent a few episodes (or years) later.

Example: When Ben and Jack are in Eloise’s church discussing their pending flight to the Island, Ben talks about a print of Caravaggio’s Doubting Thomas (1602) hanging in the church and stresses resurrection. Yet, at the same time he is driving around in a van with Locke’s body inside and the words “Canton-Rainier” printed on the outside. That’s an anagram for Reincarnated. Until the last episode of season 5 you might think that Locke has been resurrected on the Island, but it becomes clear that he has been reincarnated as another being, the black counterpart to Jacob. That’s the kind of layered subtext that’s out there but only realized when you put in the effort to find it.

I also like their willingness to knock off pretty main characters: Boone, Shannon, Charlie, Clair, Michael, Charlotte, Faraday, Jacob. The list goes on.

The black/white dichotomy between Jacob and his eternal nemesis is played out by lesser beings as well: Ben and Locke, Ben and Jack, Young Ben and Mature Ben. Okay, Ben is a bad guy. But he’s also about the most compelling villain in television history. Here’s a bit of trivia for you (and Lost fans are nothing if not trivia-driven): who has had the shit beaten out of him more: Ben or Sawyer? And why is Sawyer, the most buff guy on the Island, getting knocked around so much?

Another prominent theme in the series (and there are scores of themes to choose from): sacrifice, up to and including martyrdom. Charlie dies so that the other survivors have a chance at escape from the Island. Kate gives up Aaron. Sawyer jumps out of the helicopter. Desmond turns the key. Locke dies in order to bring the others to the point of agreeing to return to their exile. Jack will give anyone anything. Anytime. Jacob becomes a willing sacrifice.

So many questions: When will Ben realize that he has been played? What is Jacob’s greater plan? Is his dark opposite in control, or is it only temporary? What changes will he wreak? Will Widmore get back to the Island? How will the final season begin? Will they all be back at the airport in Sydney, or in Los Angeles, as though nothing had happened? Will they not know each other? Will Richard Alpert run out of eyeliner? And who will be called upon for the ultimate sacrifice at the show’s conclusion, for someone must make it. My money is on Jack.

Though Egyptian symbology abounds on the show, so do Christ figures. Someone’s going to go out big as a martyr. Hell, it could even be Ben.

A final thought: Each of the last two seasons has ended with Locke in a box. Do you suppose that they're trying to tell us that Locke is dead?

A Modest Proposal

I haven’t blogged in a while. It’s just been too depressing, with Healthcare Reform being picked apart until it no longer represents reform in any meaningful sense. Most disturbing about the whole circus has been the manipulative, self-serving performance of Joe Lieberman. His preening before the cameras, his convenient memory lapses (touting a Medicare buy-in in Sept., only to fight against it in December), his vicious vindictiveness, have all made it nearly impossible to watch this human train wreck in action, It certainly has made it tough to comment on his disgusting behavior.

It has been said by those who are close to him that, having lost the Democratic primary the last time out, he has been hell bent on revenge on progressives ever since.

It’s hard to deny it after witnessing his fawning over John McCain and the woefully under qualified and dangerously radical Sarah Palin. And he used to call himself a liberal Democrat. Virtually every position he has taken since 2006 has been far right of center, from war-mongering and torture-friendly, to denying the most basic of rights to the citizens he is supposed to represent. Having had it demonstrated to him convincingly that the Senatorial version of Healthcare Reform would actually reduce the deficit, he persisted in stating the opposite. Well, he seems to have learned well from his Republican masters.

Since Little Joe has been so instrumental in creating the anemic reform that is before us now, I would like to propose the following measure; that it be named the Joe Lieberman bill. That way, when the pathetic, meaningless, desiccated husk of a bill that is Healthcare Reform is passed, it will have an appropriate name attached to it, representing the one who, as much as anyone, is responsible for its existence.

Plenty of Blame, addendum

What I hadn't heard yet when I wrote my previous post is that there is consideration being given to replacing the public option with an expansion of Medicare to folks over age 55.

Yes, this ignores those under that age, though older people have the most trouble getting covered (assuming they have jobs). But - it could be a bigger deal than the current, emasculated version of the public health option, because Medicare is better, people.

It will all depend on whether it is made available to all people over age 55, or just those who don't have coverage currently. It's my assumption that it will be the latter. The debate is being framed by the blue dogs, after all.

Plenty of Blame to Go Around

We continue to see the evisceration of the public option by the Senate, and this time they are getting plenty of help.

First, the President gives them a "pep talk" behind closed doors and fails to mention either the public option itself, or the looming threat of the anti-abortion amendment movement in the bill.

Then, Ben Nelson compounds the danger of the Stupak amendment from the House by duplicating it on the Senate side. This is classic Republican strategy: introduce a wedge issue having nothing really to do with the issue at hand, and use it to distract people from what they are trying to accomplish. In most cases it has to do with trying to win election by addressing the issues. Here, it is trying to pass healthcare legislation that is about a century overdue. But no, instead we're debating abortion (which, by the way, is constitutionally guaranteed. But then, the Right is all about legislating away our rights, not in enhancing them).

You know, the right-to-lifers like to hold up pictures of dead fetuses at their rallies. If this abomination goes through, maybe the body of every woman who dies because she was compelled to get an illegal abortion (just like in the good old days) should be delivered to the office of Ben Nelson. No? Not enough room there for the expected mountain of coffins?

Finally, the so-called "public option" being touted these days (if Olympia Snowe deigns to come down from her mountain to give it her approval) looks like this: the fed gives buckets of money to the uninsured to allow them to buy coverage from the same old bloodsucking insurance companies at whatever rates they see fit to charge. This will be called a "nonprofit" plan, though how that will work out is profoundly unclear.

What it means in reality is that it will mean another sloppy wet kiss to the same companies who are the source of the problem. Their profits will reach even higher heights, allowing them to "donate" even more to their favorite whores, namely; Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, and of course, our little Joe, to ensure that real reform will not threaten them again for at least this generation, and probably the next.

Further Adventures in Central Asia, contd.

So the decision has finally been made, the die cast. We’re going into Afghanistan with both feet. Well, with an additional 60,000 feet. And at a cost of $1 million per soldier per year. There is a lot of commentary afloat right now, falling about where you would expect it to fall.

The liberal side of Congress is opposed to our further involvement, and would like us to withdraw as soon as is seemly. The Right is saying that they applaud the commitment, but are upset that Obama has set a timetable to our escalation. So what are we to make of the President’s decision?

He continues to operate in a predictable pattern. Desperate not to outrage anyone, he attempts to hold to a middle course. The escalation seeks to appease the hawks, by increasing our effort. It wants to assure the doves, by stating that we have a plan to get out, and relatively soon. As with most hedged bets however, it accomplishes little and pleases no one. If you’re going to go in, go all in. If you’re going to leave, do so now and avoid further bloodshed and needless cost. He has satisfied no one with the possible exception Karzai, and even he must be pissed at being spoken to like a truant schoolboy. And did he refer to the recent Afghan election as flawed or a fraud?

Our President has major intellectual chops and despite his tendency to prevaricate, I have to say that I love the guy. I want him to be the leader we expected him to be. I want him to be a man of convictions, not a poster boy for pragmatism. Sometimes you have to hold to a position because it is the principled thing to do, regardless of the political fallout.

Because, let’s face it. The Republicans are going to cream him no matter what course he adopts, or what the outcome. They need to praise him faintly right now, in order to appear to be supportive of the troops, but will continue to condemn a scheduled pull out, and anything that goes awry (anything) will be blamed on him. There is no winning with a group who thinks that the surge as practiced in Iraq can be transplanted into Afghanistan. In the former country the surge met with success solely because we paid Sunni leaders who ran towns not to fight against us. There is no anomalous situation among a polyglot of hilltop, illiterate warlords scattered across numerous mountain ranges.

The fact is, Afghanistan no longer represents a haven for Al Qaeda. That would be in Pakistan. And if the Pakistani leadership gets real serous about evicting them, they’ll somewhere else. Like maybe to Saudi Arabia, where most of them are from. Why do we continue to pursue the insane policy of going after these people with a conventional army?

This is one of those times when a truly brave leader will do the very thing that is unpopular because it is the right thing to do. Contemporaries may criticize, but history would laud him for it. I’m afraid that instead, he will do the apparently expedient thing for which no one will thank him, leaving those of us who support him to wait that much longer for him to grow into greatness.