UPDATED BELOW
The free ride for Charlie Sykes continued this past Sunday in the Journal Sentinel, where book editor Geeta Sharma Jensen treated the small, thin book like a legitimate piece of homey literature. "And so, we have his rules," she gushes, "spawned by common sense, aimed at parents, and designed to give teens a dose of reality."
Golly, even I might want to read that. Too bad the book itself is a mean-spirited continuation of Sykes’ radio poison, having little of the "common sense" or "reality" proclaimed by Jensen. Sykes has created a world of his own manipulative design, featuring the usual straw-men, phoney assumptions and false "solutions" for problems that either don’t exist or that have since the beginning of time.
But, I guess, if you are a local high-profile media "personality", you get to put out a book and do the media tour without really being challenged for the substance of the product itself. It’s like coddling the local rock-n’-roller who really isn’t that great, but, hey, he’s our guy. Apparently, as long as Sykes shows up with the book, smiles and doesn’t get too smarmy like he does on his radio show, hey, a couple of books will be sold.
The 50 Rules, Sykes’ says, began with 10, then 14, then, whatever. At 50, the book is stretched as thin as the book’s 161 white-spaced pages. "Don’t forget to say thank you" and "look people in the eye" reads more like Miss Manners than the sanctimonious societal scold Sykes pretends to be. My favorite throw-away Rule is "learn to deal with hypocrisy". I think this means Sykes is not going away and we will have to learn to deal with him.
The most-discussed Rule is the one about that great wing-nut canard, dodgeball, which, according to Sykes, is more like life "than your gym teacher thinks". Leaving aside the cheap shot at teachers that Sykes knows nothing about – again, the premise of the book is based on a lie about schools in the first place – this idea that "dodgeball is life" is ludicrous. The kids who succeed in dodgeball are the same who succeed in sports generally – good hands, quick response, good arm. Combine the good athlete with a bully, and you have a pretty obnoxious situation in dodgeball, but those guys are out there acting like jerks anyway.
If you want to say "life is dodgeball", you might as well say "life is sports" (even more so with the dedication, practice and skill development in regular sports), and we know that’s not true. Some athletes succeed off the field and some don’t. Many athletes off the field are not on top of life, as much as they need to get one.
Because Sykes holds himself as some sort of get-over-it tough guy, I’m guessing what he is getting at with the whole dodgeball nonsense is that kids need to deal with over-powering, bullies. Well, sure, and so what? Dealing with bullies is only a part of life, not life itself. Bullies also will need to learn to deal with other types of people, eventually – even the corporate world trains for and demands teamwork and will get rid of punks, no matter how talented. Maybe Sykes, the radio bully with the government-regulated megaphone, thinks that everyone needs to get over his own mostly un-earned media position. "You are offended, so what," goes one of the Rules. But that’s what you’d expect to hear from a bully, isn’t it?
On the polite media tour, Sykes is able to spout the nonsense about dodgeball, coddling teachers and parents and all of the historical sins of youth without being challenged. The questioners nod their heads and take it all in, as if Sykes is only stating the obvious. He walks out of every media studio he enters unscathed, as if his wisdom has been received and acknowledged. Legitimacy is therefore brought for the price of a vanity book, and the rest of the media just plays along.
For his part, Sykes takes his enhanced intellectual heft to the microphone and continues to influence local elections and parrot daily talking points on behalf of Republicans everywhere. Mission accomplished.
UPDATE: In a comment on Tuesday, one Dr. Blogstein invited me to call in to his talk-blog when he was having a discussion with Sykes that night. I did, and here is the audio link. (Push the "play" icon next to Sykes; I start at 35:35). They kept me on for about 15 minutes. Any attempts I made to engage Sykes were rebuffed by Sykes and the hosts (I don't know where they were from -- out East, maybe) by claiming I was taking his words too seriously, apparently. Sykes talks and writes, like all wing-nuts, to reach the level of guys in a bar, and the Blogstein crew was more than willing to play along. Sykes' issues were "apolitical", according to Blogstein. I argued that Sykes sets up straw-men by pointing out anecdotes and extrapolating out to the whole teaching profession. They were having none of it -- they know what they know and, if they think kids are being coddled ("bubblewrapped", according to Sykes), well, that's what they think. It is (or should be) Sykes' motto: Never let the facts get in the way of a good argument. Anyway, I was basically advised to lighten up.
Anyway, this is the kind of free ride Sykes gets on his book tours. He knows that he is poisoning the well for future attacks on public education, but he poses like just some gentle soul commenting on known truths. When you challenge any of his false premises, hey, lighten up. The Blogstein crew couldn't put this in the context of his radio antics, but he knows what he's doing.
Interesting moment: early on, Sykes invited me to write my own book. I said I would, if I had the same kind of corporate support he gets from groups like the Bradley Foundation and the Wisconsin Public Policy Institute. Later, Sykes seemed to plead poverty as a reason to write the books. Ha.
The free ride continues, even on blog-talk-radio.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Sykes' 50 Rules: Small, Thin and Wrong
It has been said that I provide a particular service to the blog-reader community: I listen to talk-radio so you don’t have to. It is an ugly job, but someone has to do it.
As an extension of that, I also like to keep track of the wing-nuts away from the microphone. This includes attending debates that they have with people opposing their radical views in public forums. Hah! Gotcha! The right-wing-nuts wouldn’t be caught dead in a real debate that they don’t control in their sheltered studios with those expertly-timed mute and hang-up buttons for any caller who might manage to challenge the "arguments" of the self-righteous and happily-unchallenged radio "hosts".
Sometimes, wing-nuts choosing to pose as educated or erudite will get so full of themselves that they will actually commit to a book-writing exercise. So it is with local king-of-all-media Charlie Sykes, who we all know has written a book deceptively-titled 50 Rules Kinds Won’t Learn in School. "We all know" this because Sykes has been yapping about it on his show and everywhere else he can self-promote for the past month. I have always been amazed how WTMJ and other stations let themselves be used for un-paid Republican propaganda day-in-and-day-out without getting paid or at least reporting in-kind contributions. It’s the same thing when Sykes does something like write a book. Is Sykes’ publisher (St. Martin’s Press) being billed for all this free advertising? Shouldn’t TMJ management do something about this rampant hucksterism by its middle-age Boy Wonder?
Anyway, although I could have waited until 50 Rules hits the cut-out bins in time for Xmas, I felt it was my duty to seek it out, buy it and review it. So you don’t have to, see? I thought long and hard about this course of action – after all, it is indeed possible that $5 of my money will land in Sykes bank account. For instance, I refused to buy Christopher Hitchens’ interesting-looking God is Not Great screed because he is such a vicious idiot on the Iraq war. (Instead, I bought The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, which is a particularly horrible bit of writing.) So, to slightly assuage my (yes) liberal guilt about the Sykes purchase this morning, I made sure I went to a locally-owned bookstore with a humanitarian give-back program (Schwartz). I also bought a new book by someone who, unlike Sykes, really does know something about what is and isn’t going on in the schools, Jonathan Kozol’s Letters to a Young Teacher.
Sykes’ 50 Rules is a remarkably thin and small book – in more ways than one. It is almost a pamphlet at 161 pages, including what is known in the trade as a generous use of white space. Like most of what Sykes does on the air everyday, the book purports to knock down a straw-man of his own creation. In this case, the pretend-villain is a fictitious school system, which he claims, based on deliberately sloppy inuendo and falsehoods, somehow coddles our young and protects them from the realities of life. Never mind the inconvenient fact that many of Sykes’ supposed rules actually are discussed – often – in schools throughout the country.
Despite the hysterical title and the attempted demonizing of unstated and non-existent schools, Sykes seems just as concerned with what he sees as indulgent parenting, again creating parental anecdotes out of whole cloth to show how we got to this supposed nadir of teen-age existence.
Mostly, though, Sykes seems to hate the kids – how they behave, how they dress, how they insist on their dog-gone individuality and independence. In this, Sykes is just like any other parental scold through the ages, complaining about the tough adult life they have inherited and howling in jealousy about the indulgent sins of the young and the failed authorities who enable them.
The Rules themselves are tediously crafted and sloppily presented. Smug asides like "get used to it" and "stop whining" are tacked to the end of several, as if the Rule itself and its implications are not obvious enough. "Life is not fair" says Rule 1, and it’s all downhill from there. Claiming that "the average teenager uses the phase ‘It’s not fair’ 8.6 times a day", Sykes does not really say what is exactly new about this, even if it were true. Oh, "they got it from their parents", he says. In one of his longer Rule explanations (a whole 3-and-a-half pages), he goes off about Stephen Hawking, the severely-disabled physicist, who, apparently, has declined to utter the scurrilous phrase. That may be, but perhaps a certain level of brilliance and world-wide acclaim count for something.
Even in the very first Rule, Sykes fails to explain what the schools have to do with any of this and he certainly doesn’t admit in any of the Rules that teachers in the schools do, in fact, counsel about the fairness or lack thereof of the Cold Cruel World that Sykes embraces. Self-esteem, he proclaims in Rule 2, has become "an obsessive fixation", leading to – gasp! – a substitution of purple for red correction pens in some school somewhere. For this proposition, he includes a footnote to – wait for it – himself! (A dead link no less.)
Like most of the selective, isolated anecdotes masquerading as a trends in the Sykes oeuvre, if it happened somewhere, it is happening and charactorizes the teaching profession everywhere. Rule 30 informs us that "Zero tolerance = zero common sense" and relates as typical various fluky rule enforcement efforts, such as a 3rd grader suspended for having a butter knife in his lunch-box. Let’s see...5 incidents, over 100,000 schools in the U.S....yep, that’s a problem, alright.
I’ll write more about 50 Rules in the next couple of days, but, even for a quick lunch-time read (after you are done with the Onion, of course), it is disappointingly thin gruel. Sykes just goes off on various rants about the Sins of the Young and, in most of the pamphlet – er, book – doesn’t even bother to link any of this to the schools and what they supposedly are or are not teaching in the classroom. Sykes knows little and cares less about what actually happens in America’s schools. His phony stories and sanctimonious lecturing, like so much of wing-nut posturing, is simply designed to tear down institutions that are designed to give rich and poor alike a fair chance at the basic skills needed in a complex society. True equal opportunity is a threat to those feeding the wing-nuts their talking points. And Charlie Sykes is here to do his part to make sure that never happens.
As an extension of that, I also like to keep track of the wing-nuts away from the microphone. This includes attending debates that they have with people opposing their radical views in public forums. Hah! Gotcha! The right-wing-nuts wouldn’t be caught dead in a real debate that they don’t control in their sheltered studios with those expertly-timed mute and hang-up buttons for any caller who might manage to challenge the "arguments" of the self-righteous and happily-unchallenged radio "hosts".
Sometimes, wing-nuts choosing to pose as educated or erudite will get so full of themselves that they will actually commit to a book-writing exercise. So it is with local king-of-all-media Charlie Sykes, who we all know has written a book deceptively-titled 50 Rules Kinds Won’t Learn in School. "We all know" this because Sykes has been yapping about it on his show and everywhere else he can self-promote for the past month. I have always been amazed how WTMJ and other stations let themselves be used for un-paid Republican propaganda day-in-and-day-out without getting paid or at least reporting in-kind contributions. It’s the same thing when Sykes does something like write a book. Is Sykes’ publisher (St. Martin’s Press) being billed for all this free advertising? Shouldn’t TMJ management do something about this rampant hucksterism by its middle-age Boy Wonder?
Anyway, although I could have waited until 50 Rules hits the cut-out bins in time for Xmas, I felt it was my duty to seek it out, buy it and review it. So you don’t have to, see? I thought long and hard about this course of action – after all, it is indeed possible that $5 of my money will land in Sykes bank account. For instance, I refused to buy Christopher Hitchens’ interesting-looking God is Not Great screed because he is such a vicious idiot on the Iraq war. (Instead, I bought The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, which is a particularly horrible bit of writing.) So, to slightly assuage my (yes) liberal guilt about the Sykes purchase this morning, I made sure I went to a locally-owned bookstore with a humanitarian give-back program (Schwartz). I also bought a new book by someone who, unlike Sykes, really does know something about what is and isn’t going on in the schools, Jonathan Kozol’s Letters to a Young Teacher.
Sykes’ 50 Rules is a remarkably thin and small book – in more ways than one. It is almost a pamphlet at 161 pages, including what is known in the trade as a generous use of white space. Like most of what Sykes does on the air everyday, the book purports to knock down a straw-man of his own creation. In this case, the pretend-villain is a fictitious school system, which he claims, based on deliberately sloppy inuendo and falsehoods, somehow coddles our young and protects them from the realities of life. Never mind the inconvenient fact that many of Sykes’ supposed rules actually are discussed – often – in schools throughout the country.
Despite the hysterical title and the attempted demonizing of unstated and non-existent schools, Sykes seems just as concerned with what he sees as indulgent parenting, again creating parental anecdotes out of whole cloth to show how we got to this supposed nadir of teen-age existence.
Mostly, though, Sykes seems to hate the kids – how they behave, how they dress, how they insist on their dog-gone individuality and independence. In this, Sykes is just like any other parental scold through the ages, complaining about the tough adult life they have inherited and howling in jealousy about the indulgent sins of the young and the failed authorities who enable them.
The Rules themselves are tediously crafted and sloppily presented. Smug asides like "get used to it" and "stop whining" are tacked to the end of several, as if the Rule itself and its implications are not obvious enough. "Life is not fair" says Rule 1, and it’s all downhill from there. Claiming that "the average teenager uses the phase ‘It’s not fair’ 8.6 times a day", Sykes does not really say what is exactly new about this, even if it were true. Oh, "they got it from their parents", he says. In one of his longer Rule explanations (a whole 3-and-a-half pages), he goes off about Stephen Hawking, the severely-disabled physicist, who, apparently, has declined to utter the scurrilous phrase. That may be, but perhaps a certain level of brilliance and world-wide acclaim count for something.
Even in the very first Rule, Sykes fails to explain what the schools have to do with any of this and he certainly doesn’t admit in any of the Rules that teachers in the schools do, in fact, counsel about the fairness or lack thereof of the Cold Cruel World that Sykes embraces. Self-esteem, he proclaims in Rule 2, has become "an obsessive fixation", leading to – gasp! – a substitution of purple for red correction pens in some school somewhere. For this proposition, he includes a footnote to – wait for it – himself! (A dead link no less.)
Like most of the selective, isolated anecdotes masquerading as a trends in the Sykes oeuvre, if it happened somewhere, it is happening and charactorizes the teaching profession everywhere. Rule 30 informs us that "Zero tolerance = zero common sense" and relates as typical various fluky rule enforcement efforts, such as a 3rd grader suspended for having a butter knife in his lunch-box. Let’s see...5 incidents, over 100,000 schools in the U.S....yep, that’s a problem, alright.
I’ll write more about 50 Rules in the next couple of days, but, even for a quick lunch-time read (after you are done with the Onion, of course), it is disappointingly thin gruel. Sykes just goes off on various rants about the Sins of the Young and, in most of the pamphlet – er, book – doesn’t even bother to link any of this to the schools and what they supposedly are or are not teaching in the classroom. Sykes knows little and cares less about what actually happens in America’s schools. His phony stories and sanctimonious lecturing, like so much of wing-nut posturing, is simply designed to tear down institutions that are designed to give rich and poor alike a fair chance at the basic skills needed in a complex society. True equal opportunity is a threat to those feeding the wing-nuts their talking points. And Charlie Sykes is here to do his part to make sure that never happens.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Rove and Tommy: Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out
On a short trip to Washington D.C. this past week, we happened to come in on the same day that Karl Rove and Junior gave each other a goodbye man-hug on the White House lawn. As we tried to get within sight of the mansion that afternoon, there was little indication of any earth-shattering development earlier in the day – just a soulless, barricaded monument, still occupied (when not on vacation) by the same losers who have spent the last seven years taking us down, ever further. Rove the Architect left behind a political house of cards and toothpicks, a thin veneer of lies, poison and personal destruction that wobbled in the wind of ‘06 and will soon find itself well downstream when the GOP levee breaks in ‘08.
Like all Rove-ian schemes such as the gay-marriage hysteria of ‘06, the racist appeal to quash "illegal" immigrants of ‘08 will serve only to stem some of the damage and will ultimately further marginalize Republicans into a box of their own making. The anti-immigrant talking-point is Rove’s failed victory lap; a last, desperate effort to fire-up a base that can’t carry the party anymore. Let the increasingly-comical Mitt Romney run on a pandering platform of anti-immigrant, no stem-cell research, anti-evolution, pro-Gitmo and continued Iraq-quagmire. Does he even carry Utah with a program like that?
As they will before a storm, the dogs are howling and the rats are seeking higher ground. Even dim bulbs like former Delay-puppet Dennis Hastert know better than to stick around while the Democrats solidify their majority, bring sense and dignity back to the White House and start cleaning up the mess the elephants left in their disastrous wake. If toiling in the dark tunnels of a new permanent minority is not enough to send former power-mad congressmen on their way (are you listening, Jim Sensenbrenner?), there has never been a better time for Republicans to try to parlay their Washington connections into better paychecks. Well, I mean a better time post-Abramoff, that is – I mean, that was just too much fun, was it not?
Speaking of cashing in, our own (well, your own) Tommy Thompson was doing very well in the cashing in on his public experience in private sector before he decided to make a ridiculous run for president. I’m sure my friends in WPEC, the state-employee union I worked for in the ‘90s that represented the state’s IT workers, noticed that last year Thompson took in more than $1 million from Deloitte & Touche – the firm to which he farmed out much of the state computer work to during his mid-‘90s privatization push. No coincidence, I’m sure. Many of Thompson’s private connections involve medical companies, something he certainly had no connection with before he sat on Bush’s cabinet regulating just those companies. People like Tony Snow can complain all they want about the supposed poverty wages of government work, but they all get paid – and better – eventually.
Thompson continued to add clients and corporate board responsibilities during his quixotic run, making some wonder whether he was really a serious about running for president as he collected more potential conflicts along the way. Even former-chief-Tommy-handler Jim Klauser groused early in the so-called campaign that Thompson could not be considered serious as long as continued to carry six different cell phones to keep track of his business interests. Thompson learned the meaning of the word "loyalty" with Klauser, who had already signed up with Romney by the time he "got serious" in Iowa and didn’t give Tommy a dime for a phone call.
But run Tommy did, spinning his wheels in the gravel of all 99 counties in Iowa for months before his entirely predictable denouement last weekend at the Iowa pay-to-play circus, er, Republican straw poll. Thompson put all his eggs in this dubious basket and ended up coming in behind even anti-war protest candidate Ron Paul. It was a well-earned and just result for Wisconsin’s would-be "favorite son", who never belonged and showed himself to be clearly in over his head, even with this inept and doomed bunch of Republican candidates.
One week after the straw-poll, Journal Sentinel reporter Katherine Skiba, who was stuck on the Tommy-in-Iowa beat for most of the time, issued the obligatory obituary on the campaign, continuing the J-S’s oh-so-serious treatment of Thompson’s efforts. Amazingly declaring the straw-poll result "not predictable" (although I did), Skiba blames Thompson’s failure as a result of "too little money...too many gaffes". So, let me get this straight: if he had managed to get money out of someone other than Gerry Boyle and Mequon gas-station magnate Darshan Dhaliwal and not been such a buffoon during debate appearances, then we’d all be celebrating the Tommy Juggernaut, and he would be the one earning the privilege of being annihilated by a Democrat in November next year?
Um, no. I think it was a little more that money and gaffes that doomed Thompson to the dustbin of historical trivia answers (Q: Who is the former governor of a neighboring state that finished a humiliating 6th in the Iowa straw-poll in 2007?). For one thing, Thompson’s record as governor of Wisconsin was nothing to be proud of and never would have withstood the scrutiny of a national campaign. His time in office was rife with cronyism and pay-for-play rewards. His version of "welfare reform" was a miserable failure, serving only to create more poor people. Likewise, "school choice", which has not improved the education of inner-city kids in Milwaukee one bit and has only enriched private vendors like the Catholic Church, the Edison Company and various other charlatans. Like Ronald Reagan, he has benefitted by home-state affiliation, collective amnesia and revisionist history, treated in the newspapers like his years in office were sunshine, roses and fairness for all. No, no and no.
Also, it hasn’t really been mentioned (and I’m sure some will pull this out as the main point of this post, which it isn’t), but Tommy Thompson was the most physically unattractive candidate since Steve Forbes. He seems to have had some things buffed and tweaked – badly – since he was governor and still speaks like it’s all he can do to call up the words from somewhere below his diaphragm. His smile is pained and forced. Better that, perhaps, than the phony perfection of Robot Romney, but you still have to be able to look at the guy to take him seriously. I predict this same problem will ultimately doom the other Thompson, Fred, who looks like the kind of guy who your boss would assign you to work with only if he/she wanted to punish you.
I doubt the Journal Sentinel will be apologizing any time soon for dragging us through almost 40 articles in the past year, trying to convince us how oh-so-serious a candidate Tommy Thompson was. I’m still waiting for the inevitable editorial about how "proud" they are about his run and how the nation is worse off to reject the generous offer of his services. Despite hundreds of inches of free validation from the paper, Thompson actually had the nerve to complain just before the poll that "negative stories" in the J-S had "dried up the money". I don’t know what he was reading – every damn article in the newspaper during the campaign was excruciatingly deferential and blind to the doomed nature of his campaign.
Tommy Thompson will recover easily enough – there are more corporate boards to join, more money to be made. But it will take time for the Journal Sentinel to recover from this misplaced bit of homer-ism. Its editorial and political judgement has shown itself to be, shall we say, seriously wanting. Again.
Like all Rove-ian schemes such as the gay-marriage hysteria of ‘06, the racist appeal to quash "illegal" immigrants of ‘08 will serve only to stem some of the damage and will ultimately further marginalize Republicans into a box of their own making. The anti-immigrant talking-point is Rove’s failed victory lap; a last, desperate effort to fire-up a base that can’t carry the party anymore. Let the increasingly-comical Mitt Romney run on a pandering platform of anti-immigrant, no stem-cell research, anti-evolution, pro-Gitmo and continued Iraq-quagmire. Does he even carry Utah with a program like that?
As they will before a storm, the dogs are howling and the rats are seeking higher ground. Even dim bulbs like former Delay-puppet Dennis Hastert know better than to stick around while the Democrats solidify their majority, bring sense and dignity back to the White House and start cleaning up the mess the elephants left in their disastrous wake. If toiling in the dark tunnels of a new permanent minority is not enough to send former power-mad congressmen on their way (are you listening, Jim Sensenbrenner?), there has never been a better time for Republicans to try to parlay their Washington connections into better paychecks. Well, I mean a better time post-Abramoff, that is – I mean, that was just too much fun, was it not?
Speaking of cashing in, our own (well, your own) Tommy Thompson was doing very well in the cashing in on his public experience in private sector before he decided to make a ridiculous run for president. I’m sure my friends in WPEC, the state-employee union I worked for in the ‘90s that represented the state’s IT workers, noticed that last year Thompson took in more than $1 million from Deloitte & Touche – the firm to which he farmed out much of the state computer work to during his mid-‘90s privatization push. No coincidence, I’m sure. Many of Thompson’s private connections involve medical companies, something he certainly had no connection with before he sat on Bush’s cabinet regulating just those companies. People like Tony Snow can complain all they want about the supposed poverty wages of government work, but they all get paid – and better – eventually.
Thompson continued to add clients and corporate board responsibilities during his quixotic run, making some wonder whether he was really a serious about running for president as he collected more potential conflicts along the way. Even former-chief-Tommy-handler Jim Klauser groused early in the so-called campaign that Thompson could not be considered serious as long as continued to carry six different cell phones to keep track of his business interests. Thompson learned the meaning of the word "loyalty" with Klauser, who had already signed up with Romney by the time he "got serious" in Iowa and didn’t give Tommy a dime for a phone call.
But run Tommy did, spinning his wheels in the gravel of all 99 counties in Iowa for months before his entirely predictable denouement last weekend at the Iowa pay-to-play circus, er, Republican straw poll. Thompson put all his eggs in this dubious basket and ended up coming in behind even anti-war protest candidate Ron Paul. It was a well-earned and just result for Wisconsin’s would-be "favorite son", who never belonged and showed himself to be clearly in over his head, even with this inept and doomed bunch of Republican candidates.
One week after the straw-poll, Journal Sentinel reporter Katherine Skiba, who was stuck on the Tommy-in-Iowa beat for most of the time, issued the obligatory obituary on the campaign, continuing the J-S’s oh-so-serious treatment of Thompson’s efforts. Amazingly declaring the straw-poll result "not predictable" (although I did), Skiba blames Thompson’s failure as a result of "too little money...too many gaffes". So, let me get this straight: if he had managed to get money out of someone other than Gerry Boyle and Mequon gas-station magnate Darshan Dhaliwal and not been such a buffoon during debate appearances, then we’d all be celebrating the Tommy Juggernaut, and he would be the one earning the privilege of being annihilated by a Democrat in November next year?
Um, no. I think it was a little more that money and gaffes that doomed Thompson to the dustbin of historical trivia answers (Q: Who is the former governor of a neighboring state that finished a humiliating 6th in the Iowa straw-poll in 2007?). For one thing, Thompson’s record as governor of Wisconsin was nothing to be proud of and never would have withstood the scrutiny of a national campaign. His time in office was rife with cronyism and pay-for-play rewards. His version of "welfare reform" was a miserable failure, serving only to create more poor people. Likewise, "school choice", which has not improved the education of inner-city kids in Milwaukee one bit and has only enriched private vendors like the Catholic Church, the Edison Company and various other charlatans. Like Ronald Reagan, he has benefitted by home-state affiliation, collective amnesia and revisionist history, treated in the newspapers like his years in office were sunshine, roses and fairness for all. No, no and no.
Also, it hasn’t really been mentioned (and I’m sure some will pull this out as the main point of this post, which it isn’t), but Tommy Thompson was the most physically unattractive candidate since Steve Forbes. He seems to have had some things buffed and tweaked – badly – since he was governor and still speaks like it’s all he can do to call up the words from somewhere below his diaphragm. His smile is pained and forced. Better that, perhaps, than the phony perfection of Robot Romney, but you still have to be able to look at the guy to take him seriously. I predict this same problem will ultimately doom the other Thompson, Fred, who looks like the kind of guy who your boss would assign you to work with only if he/she wanted to punish you.
I doubt the Journal Sentinel will be apologizing any time soon for dragging us through almost 40 articles in the past year, trying to convince us how oh-so-serious a candidate Tommy Thompson was. I’m still waiting for the inevitable editorial about how "proud" they are about his run and how the nation is worse off to reject the generous offer of his services. Despite hundreds of inches of free validation from the paper, Thompson actually had the nerve to complain just before the poll that "negative stories" in the J-S had "dried up the money". I don’t know what he was reading – every damn article in the newspaper during the campaign was excruciatingly deferential and blind to the doomed nature of his campaign.
Tommy Thompson will recover easily enough – there are more corporate boards to join, more money to be made. But it will take time for the Journal Sentinel to recover from this misplaced bit of homer-ism. Its editorial and political judgement has shown itself to be, shall we say, seriously wanting. Again.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Plaisted Blogs Baltimore
My son and I have gone out looking for America again this summer, as we do every year, through the prism of baseball parks and the cities that host them. This year, a couple of games in Baltimore this weekend and, maybe, a game Tuesday night in Washington, D.C., where "hardball" has a different meaning.
As I write on Sunday morning, we are trying to put off as long as possible the 95-degree sauna that awaits us outside the hotel walls. Rooms in Baltimore this weekend are at a premium, as Red Sox fans have descended on the city to catch a glimpse of their beloved team. Our (relatively) moderately-priced breakfast-in-the-morning site is filled with people in "B" hats and red jerseys of all varieties.
Like Packer fans following their team on the road, the Sox faithful are friendly, fun-loving, sometimes drunk and enthusiastic. Although certainly male-centric, spouses and kids are often along for the ride. Like the Cubs visiting Miller Park, they have overwhelmed Orioles fans in number and volume in the stadium this weekend. Saturday morning brought much grousing in the breakfast bar about a blown opportunity (the Os won in the bottom of the ninth) and grousing about late-season addition Eric Gagne, the new set-up guy, who set up nothing by giving up most of a 4-run lead in the 8th. Relief of a different kind was evident last night after the Sox prevailed against the vastly over-matched Orioles.
A scarcity of tickets at Fenway and a huge market that includes all of New England compels them to make the 6-to-8 hour trip for a weekend series in the nearest American League city (New York doesn’t count, of course) with a beautiful newer-but-aging ballpark. Except when they are in the stadium, the Boston faithful swarm the restaurants and shops of Baltimore’s impressive Inner Harbor. Natives here tell me that it is the same when the Yankees come to town.
The Inner Harbor is a blessing and a curse for the out-of-towner, it being the only obvious place to hang out and everybody knows about it. Lines form everywhere – you can walk or swim anywhere faster than it takes to get on the usually-fun Water Taxis – and the broad walkways are often impassable.
Out here in Airport Land, we are imprisoned by a lack of amenities and dependence on the shuttle and light-rail that gets us from this Nowheresville to Somewhere. The non-Hilton or Marriott version of hotels around here are remarkably free of non-breakfast food and newspapers. Convenience stores – heck, convenience itself – appears to have been zoned out of the area.
At the airport light-rail station, hundreds of hotel-dwellers, plopped there by their respective shuttles (ours is the only one with a little Orioles hat on the top) line up to buy train passes at only two terminals – cash-only and exact-change required. On our first trip to the ballpark on Friday, this technological impasse caused everyone in line, even the law-abiding, to just get on the train when it came by. Conflict was avoided when no one checked for tickets after we got on. A clear conscious (and a murky lesson in situational ethics for my son) was achieved by buying a round-trip ticket once we got downtown. Nobody checked on the way back, either.
At Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the now-15-year-old stadium – the earliest entry in the recent trend of ballpark construction – the park is showing its age. The bright green paint that covers metal throughout the park has faded a bit and the concrete on the ramps is starting to crack and discolor. Electronically, fans of County Stadium will recognize the yellow-on-black lettering on the main scoreboard and the not-quite-Diamond-ness of the video screen. The park is also wonderfully bereft of the video "ribbon" that runs under the upper-decks of most stadiums these days. The park maintains my favorite area in and ballyard anywhere – the concourse of concessions that runs under the warehouse along the outfield wall. It is also the best-smelling ballpark in the Major Leagues, depending on how you feel about pork products.
Tomorrow, it’s off to our nation’s capitol. Junior Bush made a point of fleeing from the city last week, on another one of his record-setting vacations. I think he knew we were coming. Wimp.
As I write on Sunday morning, we are trying to put off as long as possible the 95-degree sauna that awaits us outside the hotel walls. Rooms in Baltimore this weekend are at a premium, as Red Sox fans have descended on the city to catch a glimpse of their beloved team. Our (relatively) moderately-priced breakfast-in-the-morning site is filled with people in "B" hats and red jerseys of all varieties.
Like Packer fans following their team on the road, the Sox faithful are friendly, fun-loving, sometimes drunk and enthusiastic. Although certainly male-centric, spouses and kids are often along for the ride. Like the Cubs visiting Miller Park, they have overwhelmed Orioles fans in number and volume in the stadium this weekend. Saturday morning brought much grousing in the breakfast bar about a blown opportunity (the Os won in the bottom of the ninth) and grousing about late-season addition Eric Gagne, the new set-up guy, who set up nothing by giving up most of a 4-run lead in the 8th. Relief of a different kind was evident last night after the Sox prevailed against the vastly over-matched Orioles.
A scarcity of tickets at Fenway and a huge market that includes all of New England compels them to make the 6-to-8 hour trip for a weekend series in the nearest American League city (New York doesn’t count, of course) with a beautiful newer-but-aging ballpark. Except when they are in the stadium, the Boston faithful swarm the restaurants and shops of Baltimore’s impressive Inner Harbor. Natives here tell me that it is the same when the Yankees come to town.
The Inner Harbor is a blessing and a curse for the out-of-towner, it being the only obvious place to hang out and everybody knows about it. Lines form everywhere – you can walk or swim anywhere faster than it takes to get on the usually-fun Water Taxis – and the broad walkways are often impassable.
Out here in Airport Land, we are imprisoned by a lack of amenities and dependence on the shuttle and light-rail that gets us from this Nowheresville to Somewhere. The non-Hilton or Marriott version of hotels around here are remarkably free of non-breakfast food and newspapers. Convenience stores – heck, convenience itself – appears to have been zoned out of the area.
At the airport light-rail station, hundreds of hotel-dwellers, plopped there by their respective shuttles (ours is the only one with a little Orioles hat on the top) line up to buy train passes at only two terminals – cash-only and exact-change required. On our first trip to the ballpark on Friday, this technological impasse caused everyone in line, even the law-abiding, to just get on the train when it came by. Conflict was avoided when no one checked for tickets after we got on. A clear conscious (and a murky lesson in situational ethics for my son) was achieved by buying a round-trip ticket once we got downtown. Nobody checked on the way back, either.
At Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the now-15-year-old stadium – the earliest entry in the recent trend of ballpark construction – the park is showing its age. The bright green paint that covers metal throughout the park has faded a bit and the concrete on the ramps is starting to crack and discolor. Electronically, fans of County Stadium will recognize the yellow-on-black lettering on the main scoreboard and the not-quite-Diamond-ness of the video screen. The park is also wonderfully bereft of the video "ribbon" that runs under the upper-decks of most stadiums these days. The park maintains my favorite area in and ballyard anywhere – the concourse of concessions that runs under the warehouse along the outfield wall. It is also the best-smelling ballpark in the Major Leagues, depending on how you feel about pork products.
Tomorrow, it’s off to our nation’s capitol. Junior Bush made a point of fleeing from the city last week, on another one of his record-setting vacations. I think he knew we were coming. Wimp.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Tommy Plays the Empty Room
Tommy Thompson walks into the conference room of the Super 8 off I-29 in Onawa, Iowa like a man astride the world.
As Wisconsin’s Favorite Governor™ bounds to the podium, his ear is trained to one of many cell phones he carries to keep track of his many real-world business interests. "OK, no. When that item comes to a vote, I’ll vote no, right? What? The majority of the board will support it? Yes, then. Certainly yes!" He flips the phone closed with the authority of a confident executive slamming the black dial phone into its cradle.
His volunteer advance man pulls him aside. "Listen, sorry about the turnout. We made all the calls and even promised cupcakes, but..." Thompson brushes him aside with the unworried look of a ship captain. "Relax, Skippy," he says. "This is fine, just fine."
After taking a swig of bottled water (oh, for the beer of the endless Wisconsin campaigns of yore...), the Man From Elroy steps up to the podium and takes his first good look at the banquet hall that will play host to the long-anticipated Hoffman-Meyers reception later this weekend. Looking up from his notes, he sees rows of empty seats and just one occupant in the front row, smiling, reporter’s notepad at the ready.
"Uh, hi there," he says sheepishly.
"Hi, Governor," says the reporter, with a gleeful, hey-he-knows-me tone. "How’s the campaign going?"
"Great. It’s going remarkably well. But this isn’t a press conference, so..." The reporter breaks out in peels of laughter. "Right, right," he says, still stifling the chuckles. "Go ahead, don’t mind me." More laughs.
"Well, we have a busy schedule, so I’ll get started," he announces to the otherwise empty room. "You know, this reminds me of the time when I bought an old Ford for my first campaign, so rusted out, you could see the road under the floorboards." The reporter scribbles furiously. "Back then, if I saw a wedding, I stopped in, kissed the bride and got in the picture."
"Really?" says the reporter, clearly inspired.
"Well, yeah," says Thompson. "I mean, we were all over the place and, sure, we’d see a crowd and we’d go in there..."
"No, but, really, you’d kiss the bride?"
"Well, depends on the bride."
More guffaws and scribbled notes. "Hey, do me a favor, will ya? Could you not write that down?"
"Gothcha, guv," says the reporter, with a sly smile. In the corner of the room, the C-Span cameramen roll their eyes.
Thompson continues, undaunted by the lack of attendance on an obviously busy Tuesday night in Monona County. He runs through his experience as a chief executive, cabinet secretary and, now, successful board-member-for-hire. Late in the speech, he finds hope in a older man in work clothes who stands in the back of the room, apparently paying rapt attention. After the speech, Thompson invites him up to get his picture taken with him. "No thanks," says the man. "Just waitin’ to clean up."
As he takes another drink of water and gathers his notes, Thompson winks knowingly at the reporter from the largest newspaper in his home state. "Runnin’ something on Sunday?" he asks. "Yes, sir, of course. Good luck, sir!"
---
It was to be at least the 38th article committed to the Thompson campaign by the Journal Sentinel; almost one article for each committed Thompson voter in Iowa – or anywhere, really. One wonders, for instance, if the Arkansas papers are going quite that ga-ga over the only-slightly more legitimate bid of their former governor, Mike Huckabee. With Thompson’s self-appointed run-in with reality in the form of the straw poll in a couple of days, the Journal Sentinel will have to find another way to work out its ludicrous Tommy obsession. Coming next week: What’s Next For Tommy?, featuring speculation about running for Senate, Governor, blah-de-blah-de-blah-blah.
This Sunday, Thompson appeared with other Republican candidates at a "debate" on ABC television. Thompson, who previously had to apologize for saying making money was a "Jewish tradition" and for supporting workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation, decided to play doctor. According to the J-S (and only the J-S bothered to report anything Thompson had to say in the televised cattle-call), Thompson promised "right now to end breast cancer by the year 2015 for all the women in America". Quite a claim. Does he know something we don’t know?
The fact is that the Tommy Thompson campaign had legitimacy in only one place in the world – on the pages of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The J-S’s fealty to all things Thompson is a mystery, and Thompson’s performance on the small, brief national stage was an unqualified embarrassment.
As Wisconsin’s Favorite Governor™ bounds to the podium, his ear is trained to one of many cell phones he carries to keep track of his many real-world business interests. "OK, no. When that item comes to a vote, I’ll vote no, right? What? The majority of the board will support it? Yes, then. Certainly yes!" He flips the phone closed with the authority of a confident executive slamming the black dial phone into its cradle.
His volunteer advance man pulls him aside. "Listen, sorry about the turnout. We made all the calls and even promised cupcakes, but..." Thompson brushes him aside with the unworried look of a ship captain. "Relax, Skippy," he says. "This is fine, just fine."
After taking a swig of bottled water (oh, for the beer of the endless Wisconsin campaigns of yore...), the Man From Elroy steps up to the podium and takes his first good look at the banquet hall that will play host to the long-anticipated Hoffman-Meyers reception later this weekend. Looking up from his notes, he sees rows of empty seats and just one occupant in the front row, smiling, reporter’s notepad at the ready.
"Uh, hi there," he says sheepishly.
"Hi, Governor," says the reporter, with a gleeful, hey-he-knows-me tone. "How’s the campaign going?"
"Great. It’s going remarkably well. But this isn’t a press conference, so..." The reporter breaks out in peels of laughter. "Right, right," he says, still stifling the chuckles. "Go ahead, don’t mind me." More laughs.
"Well, we have a busy schedule, so I’ll get started," he announces to the otherwise empty room. "You know, this reminds me of the time when I bought an old Ford for my first campaign, so rusted out, you could see the road under the floorboards." The reporter scribbles furiously. "Back then, if I saw a wedding, I stopped in, kissed the bride and got in the picture."
"Really?" says the reporter, clearly inspired.
"Well, yeah," says Thompson. "I mean, we were all over the place and, sure, we’d see a crowd and we’d go in there..."
"No, but, really, you’d kiss the bride?"
"Well, depends on the bride."
More guffaws and scribbled notes. "Hey, do me a favor, will ya? Could you not write that down?"
"Gothcha, guv," says the reporter, with a sly smile. In the corner of the room, the C-Span cameramen roll their eyes.
Thompson continues, undaunted by the lack of attendance on an obviously busy Tuesday night in Monona County. He runs through his experience as a chief executive, cabinet secretary and, now, successful board-member-for-hire. Late in the speech, he finds hope in a older man in work clothes who stands in the back of the room, apparently paying rapt attention. After the speech, Thompson invites him up to get his picture taken with him. "No thanks," says the man. "Just waitin’ to clean up."
As he takes another drink of water and gathers his notes, Thompson winks knowingly at the reporter from the largest newspaper in his home state. "Runnin’ something on Sunday?" he asks. "Yes, sir, of course. Good luck, sir!"
---
It was to be at least the 38th article committed to the Thompson campaign by the Journal Sentinel; almost one article for each committed Thompson voter in Iowa – or anywhere, really. One wonders, for instance, if the Arkansas papers are going quite that ga-ga over the only-slightly more legitimate bid of their former governor, Mike Huckabee. With Thompson’s self-appointed run-in with reality in the form of the straw poll in a couple of days, the Journal Sentinel will have to find another way to work out its ludicrous Tommy obsession. Coming next week: What’s Next For Tommy?, featuring speculation about running for Senate, Governor, blah-de-blah-de-blah-blah.
This Sunday, Thompson appeared with other Republican candidates at a "debate" on ABC television. Thompson, who previously had to apologize for saying making money was a "Jewish tradition" and for supporting workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation, decided to play doctor. According to the J-S (and only the J-S bothered to report anything Thompson had to say in the televised cattle-call), Thompson promised "right now to end breast cancer by the year 2015 for all the women in America". Quite a claim. Does he know something we don’t know?
The fact is that the Tommy Thompson campaign had legitimacy in only one place in the world – on the pages of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The J-S’s fealty to all things Thompson is a mystery, and Thompson’s performance on the small, brief national stage was an unqualified embarrassment.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Milwaukee’s Parking Meters...Not Fade Away
Technology is advancing all over downtown Milwaukee these days, stomping the old and stodgy like so much forgotten sausage. Bright blue steel undergirds the new long ramps of the Marquette Interchange 2.0, replacing the crumbling grey concrete of a more dangerous era. The outside of City Hall is covered head to foot with a cloak of scaffold, as the old bricks of the historic building are replaced with newer and, we assume, better bricks. All over town, more and more public places are under the steady gaze of silent video sentinels, watching our every move like mysterious owls, ready to sweep down the moment lines are crossed or improper proposals are made.
And, on the main and side streets of downtown, where the rubber meets the road and the commuter/visitor looks for a wayside to enable his/her temporary stay, not-so-old digital parking meters are being replaced by numbered signs. The signs – caste in a classic font, as if your car is not so much in a parking space as in a temporary address – bear no explanation of how to rent the formerly-metered space. But with a glance left or right on the adjoining sidewalk you will find a kiosk of hope; an enabling receptacle for your coins, bills or, god help us, credit cards.
This is progress, or so they say. Parking meters existed at the head of your car. If there was time left from the last parker, it said so. Upon successful insertion, the meter provided the instant gratification of time (precious time!) added in increments of 3, 6 or 15 minutes (6, 12 or 30 west of the freeway) for your hard-earned nickel, dimes and quarters, respectively. Just the tactile sensation of the light button on the side of the slot and the coin falling through brought a sense of accomplishment with the real reward of civic contribution and guaranteed ticket-free stop-time.
Trips to downtown – especially around the Courthouse, my regular haunt every morning – seem stressful enough for those who are, sadly, not as familiar as some of us with the ins-and-outs of downtown living. The precious parking spot next to the library on 9th Street secured, the Courthouse visitor can usually be found at the head of the car, searching through pockets for change (no pennies!) and discovering, like a cheap-ticket customer at Miller Park reeling at concession prices, that a quarter only gets you 15 minutes. You pay what you have, you hope, you pray.
Now the irregular visitor will have to deal with the radically-changed paradigm of mysterious number signs. What to do, what to do?
I had my first experience this week with my soon-to-be meterless world. Although usually confident at doing the Downtown Park, I pulled into my first numbered rental space like a novice – somehow, I even had trouble with what is otherwise a fairly routine parallel-park. After three tries, I was in and strangely unsteady.
The first thing I realized is that I had no idea if I had to give the City any money at all for what would be a fairly brief stay in space 1146. At a meter in the middle of the day, it was a better than 50% chance that I would be able to ride the coattails of the previous parker – who has not felt the heart-lifting feeling of "time on the meter"? No more. Even though the previous parker may have paid for two hours and left after 10 minutes, there was no way of knowing that. I approached the ATM-like pay station several spaces over and got ready for the New Way.
The box consisted of a small digital screen and a keypad. Nothing seemed to be activated. A sign on the box advised me to "touch any key to start". Decisions, decisions. I chose the 3 key, hoping for the best. Sure enough, the screen lurched to life and what I’m sure was a lovely panorama of the City appeared on the digital screen for about 5 seconds as the machine got its bearings. I couldn’t really see it, since it was hardly my eye level – the machines are meant to be accommodating, as they should be, and the height accommodated appears to be 4'6" ("Daddy, Daddy, let me do it!"). Anyway, after the unnecessary advertisement for the City (like ads running on the monitors at Target – hey, I’m here already!), I was asked for my space number. OK, easy enough for me, but I worry about those possibly forgetful people at the end of the block – do we have to take notes coming out of the car now? Is it a defense to a ticket that I got the number wrong and rented a space somewhere ten blocks away?
The space number successfully entered (I hope), the robot box has a question: do I want to add time to whatever is there already or buy fresh time? Well, how would I know? Is there time already on the damn thing (see above)? Maybe there was an answer available, but I didn’t feel like looking for it. I chose "new time" and fed the box the same quarter I would have jammed into the meter 5 minutes ago.
It recognized the coins just fine and I pushed "end" or whatever I had to do to get out of this digital transaction. "Receive receipt below", except there was no receipt forthcoming. Ooops, must be out of paper. I left having no idea whether I had accomplished anything of value at the kiosk. I tried to imagine how these probably fragile machines will do in the dead of winter. I came back in ten minutes fully expecting to see a ticket on the car.
Look, I’ve seen those guys who run around emptying the meters once a week. I know it is cheaper for the city to have those (no doubt fewer) workers have to hit only 2 machines on a block rather than 50. I’m sure the machine has some sort of wireless read-out so the ticket-writers don’t even have to squint at the meters to see if it’s expired. Efficiency in city services is a wonderful thing and I’m sure the company who pitched this to the city will be patted on the back by someone somewhere for a job well done.
But, sometimes, progress ain’t worth it. We lose something of the city’s soul when we lose the parking meter to the supposedly better angels of effectiveness and cost-saving. Would it kill us to hang on to the individual meters and all the inefficiencies that surround them for the sake of a few more jobs and a more human downtown experience? When a meter fails or doesn’t take the coins, you can kick it and hammer on it until it works (not that I’d ever do that or anything...). Kick one of the new pay stations, and you’ve just wiped out the parking memory for hundreds.
Bob Dylan famously wrote: Don’t follow leaders/Watch the parking meters. Well, too late for that. What do we do now?
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Gonzo Goes to Congress
Really. How much of a dick is Alberto Gonzales?
I’m serious. There has been no one in United States history who has dared to stick a finger in the eye of members of both parties in Congress on a regular basis quite like Gonzales. His "performance" before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday was an incredible display of smug arrogance and contemptuous, carefully-designed stonewalling. Gonzales represents everything wrong with the Bush administration, all delivered behind a sly, uncaring smile and the false confidence of unilateral power that could only exist in the rarified air of the Bush/Cheney White House.
Like all the functionaries of the Imperial Bush presidency, Gonzales does not think that anyone – much less members of Congress – has any business digging into the activities of this most disastrous of administrations. Those who dare to question are considered bugs to be swatted, pests to be eradicated, obstacles to be overcome. After several appearances since the U.S. Attorney scandal erupted earlier this year, Gonzales has staked out a unique sort of useful personna for the process and for the Senators and Congressmen involved. He doesn’t care because he doesn’t have to. Oversight is for suckers. Get over it.
Hell, his very existence in the job is a giant middle-finger to the self-respecting senators on the panel (a group that does not include die-hard Bush-excusers like the reprehensible Orin Hatch). Senators of both parties decided long ago that the sooner his White House-directed running of the Justice Department ended, the better. But Bush decided to keep him there, and what are you going to do about it, bub? While every other president in the history of the republic has at least tried to appear accessible and responsive, these guys see such pre-9/11 thinking as a sign of weakness. They "get to", so they do. Next question.
In the quaint pre-Bush era, the game for executive branch officials with something to hide was to play the game of "ask the right question". Like well-trained defendants in a legal deposition, they would answer only the question asked and not volunteer anything of substance that could be used against him. But, when the going got tough, even Nixon’s (then-former) AG John Mitchell had to answer the questions put to him in the Watergate hearings that glorious, democracy-affirming summer 31 years ago. By contrast, Gonzales appears with a script and will not let silly things like good questions get him off track.
And it’s not like it's hard to put together important questions for Gonzales. A simple question like "how many U.S. attorneys were fired" in the political purge caused Gonzo to claim not to know. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the Bushies fired five more U.S. attorneys tomorrow and came to Congress with the same "what’s your problem" attitude. Far from being chagrined that his hospital-bed sandbagging of John Ashcroft was exposed, Gonzales professed pride in the outrageous behavior, lied about what surveillance program they were trying to get approved, and blamed the whole thing on the Gang of Eight senators. How bad can you be if you make John Ashcroft look good?
Gonzales pretended to listen to the questions and then gave whatever damn answer he wanted to, responsive or not. What does he care? While his manner was mild-mannered and almost polite – except for that smug half-smile on his face – the substance of his answers dripped with designed contempt for the senators and the process.
After the Nixon debacle, it became far less likely that we would end up with the same kind of psychological nutbag as president, who would be able to use his office to punish his enemies, real or imagined. Such a person may try, but he would find himself without the enablers Nixon had to carry out his nefarious designs. Now, we have a different kind of "let’s not do it again" presidency; a power-mad secret society that uses crimes and tragedies like 9/11 to declare a phony "war" so that they can claim to operate in an extra-Constitutional nether world, where they can’t be touched and can’t be bothered with checks, balances and other niceties of government that they choose to declare obsolete.
Once the Bushies hit the door, that will be the end of that. Anyone who tries to recreate this kind of poison atmosphere will be sent packing to the same political hell Gonzales and his ilk will be resigned to, starting in January, 2009.
I’m serious. There has been no one in United States history who has dared to stick a finger in the eye of members of both parties in Congress on a regular basis quite like Gonzales. His "performance" before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday was an incredible display of smug arrogance and contemptuous, carefully-designed stonewalling. Gonzales represents everything wrong with the Bush administration, all delivered behind a sly, uncaring smile and the false confidence of unilateral power that could only exist in the rarified air of the Bush/Cheney White House.
Like all the functionaries of the Imperial Bush presidency, Gonzales does not think that anyone – much less members of Congress – has any business digging into the activities of this most disastrous of administrations. Those who dare to question are considered bugs to be swatted, pests to be eradicated, obstacles to be overcome. After several appearances since the U.S. Attorney scandal erupted earlier this year, Gonzales has staked out a unique sort of useful personna for the process and for the Senators and Congressmen involved. He doesn’t care because he doesn’t have to. Oversight is for suckers. Get over it.
Hell, his very existence in the job is a giant middle-finger to the self-respecting senators on the panel (a group that does not include die-hard Bush-excusers like the reprehensible Orin Hatch). Senators of both parties decided long ago that the sooner his White House-directed running of the Justice Department ended, the better. But Bush decided to keep him there, and what are you going to do about it, bub? While every other president in the history of the republic has at least tried to appear accessible and responsive, these guys see such pre-9/11 thinking as a sign of weakness. They "get to", so they do. Next question.
In the quaint pre-Bush era, the game for executive branch officials with something to hide was to play the game of "ask the right question". Like well-trained defendants in a legal deposition, they would answer only the question asked and not volunteer anything of substance that could be used against him. But, when the going got tough, even Nixon’s (then-former) AG John Mitchell had to answer the questions put to him in the Watergate hearings that glorious, democracy-affirming summer 31 years ago. By contrast, Gonzales appears with a script and will not let silly things like good questions get him off track.
And it’s not like it's hard to put together important questions for Gonzales. A simple question like "how many U.S. attorneys were fired" in the political purge caused Gonzo to claim not to know. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the Bushies fired five more U.S. attorneys tomorrow and came to Congress with the same "what’s your problem" attitude. Far from being chagrined that his hospital-bed sandbagging of John Ashcroft was exposed, Gonzales professed pride in the outrageous behavior, lied about what surveillance program they were trying to get approved, and blamed the whole thing on the Gang of Eight senators. How bad can you be if you make John Ashcroft look good?
Gonzales pretended to listen to the questions and then gave whatever damn answer he wanted to, responsive or not. What does he care? While his manner was mild-mannered and almost polite – except for that smug half-smile on his face – the substance of his answers dripped with designed contempt for the senators and the process.
After the Nixon debacle, it became far less likely that we would end up with the same kind of psychological nutbag as president, who would be able to use his office to punish his enemies, real or imagined. Such a person may try, but he would find himself without the enablers Nixon had to carry out his nefarious designs. Now, we have a different kind of "let’s not do it again" presidency; a power-mad secret society that uses crimes and tragedies like 9/11 to declare a phony "war" so that they can claim to operate in an extra-Constitutional nether world, where they can’t be touched and can’t be bothered with checks, balances and other niceties of government that they choose to declare obsolete.
Once the Bushies hit the door, that will be the end of that. Anyone who tries to recreate this kind of poison atmosphere will be sent packing to the same political hell Gonzales and his ilk will be resigned to, starting in January, 2009.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Mark Green: Let Him Wait
Sen. John Kerry is standing up against rank cronyism and political payback by temporarily blocking soundly-thumped GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Green from being an ambassador to Tanzania. His action putting a senatorial hold on the nomination has blocked the reward-for-running action for now, but Junior Bush, whose handlers never really cared much for advice-and-consent, will just appoint him during the August recess anyway. Although the Green appointment has somehow won the support of the entire Wisconsin congressional delegation (in a typical display of Democrat-only bipartisanship), Green presided over the most negative campaign in Wisconsin history and hardly deserves to be rewarded for his down-and-dirty efforts. But Kerry’s courageous use of his senatorial privilege at least delays the Greening of Tanzania for a couple of weeks, after which Green can return to Wisconsin, with extra unearned credentials, to poison our political environment again.
Having written that temporarily abandoned paragraph this weekend, it was interesting to see John Nichols coming out four-square for Green's nomination in the Cap Times Monday morning. Nichols is one of the most effective and important progressive voices, not only in Wisconsin, but nationally through frequent columns in The Nation and elsewhere and his service as a too-little-used talking head on cable TV shows. I can’t remember ever disagreeing with anything he has written and I’ll assume that he has some cocktail-circuit contact or knowledge about Green personally that somehow overcomes his appalling public record. But Nichols is still wrong about this. Mark Green is an empty suit who should remain in the closet.
Mark Green’s public career has consisted of being a useful idiot for others with actual (bad) ideas. He was Felon (yet, still free) Scooter Jensen’s lapdog in the State Assembly. He was Bush and Delay’s lapdog while in Congress for eight years. And, finally, he was the willing shill for the WMC and the state GOP as the figurehead for most negative campaign for governor in Wisconsin history.
Green, according to Nichols, "got very serious when the discussion turned to issues relating to Africa". So what? If he was really serious about African issues before or coming out of law school, there were numerous areas of legal and other work that he could have gone into to put that supposed commitment to work instead of being a useful political stooge for people like Jensen and Delay. According to Nichols, Green is graciously passing up a chance to take his House seat back in ‘08. I don’t know why Nichols thinks that return to Washington is such a sure thing, but I can’t think of anyone who would pass up a cushy resume-enhancer like "ambassador" to anywhere over the much-harder work and schedule of a congressman – especially a cipher like Green, who was a do-nothing boot-licker last time he was there and would return with the GOP in the minority and a Democrat in the White House.
Amazingly, Nichols thinks Green would actually have some impact on Bush administration policies not in Tanzania, but in Darfur, Sudan. Wha? Bush has done nothing about the crisis for years and now Ambassador Green is going to charge in to save the day? Even if he wanted to (which he might) or he was capable of it (doubtful), what ambassador in the history of the top-down Bush administration has even had a significant impact on any policy, anywhere? Nichols knows better than most how the Bush administration works. Why he thinks anything would be different with Mark Green in Tanzania is beyond me.
Let’s assume that Mark Green is a wonderful guy on the subject of Africa. Fine. But the role he has played as a partisan hack should disqualify him from anything "diplomatic", much less a politically-rewarded ambassadorship. If Mark Green wants to work in the foreign service, he can get the training and pay his dues like the many other talented, dedicated people in that field.
John Nichols supporting Green’s appointment is sort of like Cal Thomas praising a Democratic president for nominating, oh, say, Howard Dean as ambassador to...anywhere. The difference is that Thomas would never do it and a progressive like Nichols would and did. Like Al Gore graciously acceding to the theft of the Florida vote in 2000, we sometimes give Republicans more credit than they deserve. In Green’s case, he has done nothing publicly to deserve the sort of bipartisan support he has received.
He’ll get his damned ambassadorship when Bush once again flaunts the will of Congress and does the recess appointment. Let him wait.
Having written that temporarily abandoned paragraph this weekend, it was interesting to see John Nichols coming out four-square for Green's nomination in the Cap Times Monday morning. Nichols is one of the most effective and important progressive voices, not only in Wisconsin, but nationally through frequent columns in The Nation and elsewhere and his service as a too-little-used talking head on cable TV shows. I can’t remember ever disagreeing with anything he has written and I’ll assume that he has some cocktail-circuit contact or knowledge about Green personally that somehow overcomes his appalling public record. But Nichols is still wrong about this. Mark Green is an empty suit who should remain in the closet.
Mark Green’s public career has consisted of being a useful idiot for others with actual (bad) ideas. He was Felon (yet, still free) Scooter Jensen’s lapdog in the State Assembly. He was Bush and Delay’s lapdog while in Congress for eight years. And, finally, he was the willing shill for the WMC and the state GOP as the figurehead for most negative campaign for governor in Wisconsin history.
Green, according to Nichols, "got very serious when the discussion turned to issues relating to Africa". So what? If he was really serious about African issues before or coming out of law school, there were numerous areas of legal and other work that he could have gone into to put that supposed commitment to work instead of being a useful political stooge for people like Jensen and Delay. According to Nichols, Green is graciously passing up a chance to take his House seat back in ‘08. I don’t know why Nichols thinks that return to Washington is such a sure thing, but I can’t think of anyone who would pass up a cushy resume-enhancer like "ambassador" to anywhere over the much-harder work and schedule of a congressman – especially a cipher like Green, who was a do-nothing boot-licker last time he was there and would return with the GOP in the minority and a Democrat in the White House.
Amazingly, Nichols thinks Green would actually have some impact on Bush administration policies not in Tanzania, but in Darfur, Sudan. Wha? Bush has done nothing about the crisis for years and now Ambassador Green is going to charge in to save the day? Even if he wanted to (which he might) or he was capable of it (doubtful), what ambassador in the history of the top-down Bush administration has even had a significant impact on any policy, anywhere? Nichols knows better than most how the Bush administration works. Why he thinks anything would be different with Mark Green in Tanzania is beyond me.
Let’s assume that Mark Green is a wonderful guy on the subject of Africa. Fine. But the role he has played as a partisan hack should disqualify him from anything "diplomatic", much less a politically-rewarded ambassadorship. If Mark Green wants to work in the foreign service, he can get the training and pay his dues like the many other talented, dedicated people in that field.
John Nichols supporting Green’s appointment is sort of like Cal Thomas praising a Democratic president for nominating, oh, say, Howard Dean as ambassador to...anywhere. The difference is that Thomas would never do it and a progressive like Nichols would and did. Like Al Gore graciously acceding to the theft of the Florida vote in 2000, we sometimes give Republicans more credit than they deserve. In Green’s case, he has done nothing publicly to deserve the sort of bipartisan support he has received.
He’ll get his damned ambassadorship when Bush once again flaunts the will of Congress and does the recess appointment. Let him wait.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Bonds, Ruth and Aaron
I love Hank Aaron.
When I was very young and my family was living in Wauwatosa, I was convinced that he lived in the same neighborhood as my baby-sitter when he was with the Braves. I remember watching him hit 715 on a small TV in my first college dorm room. I went to Opening Day in 1975 to see his return to Milwaukee. I am glad my son will get a chance to meet him someday during one of his many dignified appearances around town. On our way into every game at Miller Park, we touch the front foot of his statue for luck.
I also will enjoy seeing Barry Bonds break his record in this week.
Bond’s has issues, to be sure, that Aaron never had. While Aaron was Mr. Clean, Bonds, for about five years there, was certainly Riding Dirty. Bonds grew up in a decidedly different baseball era, where even gifted players were made, not born. Conditioning, weights, diet, supplements – athletes are now evaluated for basic makeup almost at birth and then designed for speed, for power, for strength. Bonds was born with exceptional skills, but much of him was built and designed by experts. Aaron just sort of happened.
Aaron was likewise of a different generation than Babe Ruth. Where Ruth was often slothful, Aaron was disciplined. Ruth could sit in the dugout, eating hot dogs and smoking cigarettes. Aaron, as a Negro League veteran, had to be perfectly behaved. Ruth also played in an all-white league and therefore avoided facing some of his era’s best players.
Bonds breaking Hank’s record won’t diminish Aaron’s accomplishments any more than Aaron diminished Ruth’s. Baseball will then have three different home run kings for three different eras. Ruth will always be the king of white-era baseball. Aaron will be the king of the middle passage, when baseball integrated and became big business. Until A-Rod passes him in six or seven years, Bonds will be the king of the designed ballplayer era, where skills are still taught but bodies, for good and ill, are sculpted and built for maximum impact (and income). Bonds, like an offensive line with an average weight of 350 lbs., is the epitome of cynical manipulation. Aaron may have been our last vestige of spontaneous magic.
Ken and I are going out to the Park today, and I won’t boo him (Ken will). Bonds is a Hame-of-Famer who also would have been one of the great players in Aaron’s era, even (especially) if he left his body alone. I hope the Brewers get ahead early and then I hope he pops one, maybe two. I’ll watch history on TV from San Francisco this week, and I hope he gets his due. Bonds did it dirty and ugly. But that’s the athletic entertainment world he (and we) are living in. He shouldn’t be punished just because he gave us the artificial fireworks we demanded.
When I was very young and my family was living in Wauwatosa, I was convinced that he lived in the same neighborhood as my baby-sitter when he was with the Braves. I remember watching him hit 715 on a small TV in my first college dorm room. I went to Opening Day in 1975 to see his return to Milwaukee. I am glad my son will get a chance to meet him someday during one of his many dignified appearances around town. On our way into every game at Miller Park, we touch the front foot of his statue for luck.
I also will enjoy seeing Barry Bonds break his record in this week.
Bond’s has issues, to be sure, that Aaron never had. While Aaron was Mr. Clean, Bonds, for about five years there, was certainly Riding Dirty. Bonds grew up in a decidedly different baseball era, where even gifted players were made, not born. Conditioning, weights, diet, supplements – athletes are now evaluated for basic makeup almost at birth and then designed for speed, for power, for strength. Bonds was born with exceptional skills, but much of him was built and designed by experts. Aaron just sort of happened.
Aaron was likewise of a different generation than Babe Ruth. Where Ruth was often slothful, Aaron was disciplined. Ruth could sit in the dugout, eating hot dogs and smoking cigarettes. Aaron, as a Negro League veteran, had to be perfectly behaved. Ruth also played in an all-white league and therefore avoided facing some of his era’s best players.
Bonds breaking Hank’s record won’t diminish Aaron’s accomplishments any more than Aaron diminished Ruth’s. Baseball will then have three different home run kings for three different eras. Ruth will always be the king of white-era baseball. Aaron will be the king of the middle passage, when baseball integrated and became big business. Until A-Rod passes him in six or seven years, Bonds will be the king of the designed ballplayer era, where skills are still taught but bodies, for good and ill, are sculpted and built for maximum impact (and income). Bonds, like an offensive line with an average weight of 350 lbs., is the epitome of cynical manipulation. Aaron may have been our last vestige of spontaneous magic.
Ken and I are going out to the Park today, and I won’t boo him (Ken will). Bonds is a Hame-of-Famer who also would have been one of the great players in Aaron’s era, even (especially) if he left his body alone. I hope the Brewers get ahead early and then I hope he pops one, maybe two. I’ll watch history on TV from San Francisco this week, and I hope he gets his due. Bonds did it dirty and ugly. But that’s the athletic entertainment world he (and we) are living in. He shouldn’t be punished just because he gave us the artificial fireworks we demanded.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Fred Thompson To the Rescue
My favorite Fred Thompson moment is in his most recent movie gig. In Albert Brooks’ mildly-subversive movie, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, Thompson plays himself as the head of a commission that sends Brooks to India and Pakistan to find out what makes Muslims laugh. "Are you back in politics?" asks Brooks. "I thought you were acting now." Thompson slumps over the conference table and pronounces "Once you’re back in politics, you never really escape." The other flunkies on the fake "commission" chuckle in deference to the chair, as Thompson works his substantial charms on the out-of-work Brooks character, eventually convincing him to take on the effort, supposedly dreamed up by W. himself who, Thompson claims, "has a pretty darn good sense of humor". Yeah. Funny like a heart attack, or a suicide bomb in Falusia.
After years of pretending to be a tough guy, dropping F-bombs and drinking brown liquor in the movies and on TV, Thompson is bizarrely being held out as the last remaining hope of a desperate Republican party. Saddled with a dreadful president and an out-of-touch agenda that includes the continued slog in Iraq, racist immigrant bashing and anti-science denial from evolution to stem cells, the GOP is facing the stark reality of its own irrelevance, if not its pending extinction. Staring blankly at a Law and Order rerun some months ago, someone in Rove’s office got the bright idea: Why not Thompson?
No less than ten "candidates" have stepped forward to offer their services as the Republican presidential offering for 2008, resulting in a wave of indifference and yawns throughout the land. Giuliani? The self-declared Mr. 9/11 has some, er, personal issues and his positions on social issues are at odds with the nut-right base. Oh, and, by the way, some firefighters would like to talk about what he did or didn’t do on and around 9/11, if you have the time. Romney? A little anxious to please, don’t you think? His perfect hair and teeth (talk about your Breck girls) lurch ahead of his face as he enters each room, pander-ready. OK for GOPers who want to love themselves, but he will have the smell of death in ‘08 (not to mention the rancid stench of his desired doubling of the population at Guantanamo) as he tries to find those in the enraged general populace to love him while he’s wrong on every issue imaginable – at least this week. A minor player like Tommy Thompson? What do you do with someone who is only taken seriously by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel? Run him for county executive, perhaps? John McCain? Sounds familiar...who was that, again?
And so, as America struggles to build a new start after the disastrous and corrupt Bush/Cheney years, the Grand Old Party reaches into its past to find its future. Once again, a decidedly B-actor steps forward to read the script. A typical character played by Fred Thompson in one of his movies would look dourly at the proposed candidacy outline on his cherry-maple desk while clinking the ice cubes in his ever-present glass of scotch, chuckling mildly as he turns the page. Eventually, he’d take the Rove-written proposal, crumple it up and throw it into a wastebasket across the room. "That’s a three-pointer," he would say, to no one in particular, about his waste-shooting skill. "F*#k that."
But, like Ronald Reagan, the phony hero, the real Fred Thompson is not made of such strong stuff. If you want to love him, he will make himself available to be loved. In fact, if the money is right, Thompson the lobbyist will tell you anything you want to hear and lean on the rope-line to receive your hugs. Reagan, his supposed brother-in-bullshit, had his price to carry the water of the moneyed interests and I’m sure Thompson has his. Maybe he’ll just charge them at his going rate of $500 per hour. Let’s see, this president thing is a 24/7 job...365 times 4 years, paid in advance, of course...hey, he’s yours – phony red pick-up truck and all. Oh, and by the way, his sons would like to talk to you about commerce in Uzbekistan...
Although he and those around him will spend untold hours and millions of dollars trying to define him in a glowing, aw-shucks light, Thompson will not be able to hide from how he first came to national attention – as the 30-year-old chief Republican counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee during the hearings that gripped the country’s imagination 34 summers ago. While Sam Ervin and even his then-boss Howard Baker were tying to find out what the hell was going on in the cesspool otherwise known as the Nixon White House, young Fred was sneaking behind their backs, leaking all kinds of inside information about the investigation to Nixon’s henchmen. Not that it did them any good. But it says something about the desperation of the 2008 GOP that they would turn to a veteran of secret Nixonian intrigue to help them recover from these somehow even darker years of secret Bushian nonsense.
Thompson’s other "issues" are nothing compared to him plotting with Nixon to subvert the historic work of the Watergate Committee. He has the kind of issues that would be death to any Democrat, but that just cause knowing nudges in a well-connected Republican. Lymphoma in remission? Hey, has anyone seen Cheney’s medical charts lately (Treated as Secret/SCI)? Divorce and second marriage to a 24 years younger trophy wife? A mere piffle – Rudy’s got one marriage on him, not to mention the Rage of the Second Wife, and he’s in the lead. Active in the Scooter defense fund; no doubt the successful lobbyist for that particular subversion of justice? Well, the whole thing was silly and, besides, juries are for suckers. Asbestos and abortion-rights lobbyist? Hey, a guy’s gotta eat.
In the end, Fred Thompson is stuck in a no-win situation. If he runs, he’ll be the doomed front-man for a miserable Republican party that has itself boxed-in and wrong on so many issues, from Iraq to health care to immigration to stem cell research. Somebody has to have an "R" next to their name as the loser in the history books, so it might as well be a mediocre actor in a dumpy brown business suit. If he doesn’t run, he will be the Man Who Wouldn’t Come, someone the GOP can blame their many failures on as they lose 30 more seats in the House, 5 more in the Senate and 100 more votes in the electoral college. They’ll need someone to blame – looking in the mirror after imposing the Bush Regime on the world will just be a bit too painful.
After years of pretending to be a tough guy, dropping F-bombs and drinking brown liquor in the movies and on TV, Thompson is bizarrely being held out as the last remaining hope of a desperate Republican party. Saddled with a dreadful president and an out-of-touch agenda that includes the continued slog in Iraq, racist immigrant bashing and anti-science denial from evolution to stem cells, the GOP is facing the stark reality of its own irrelevance, if not its pending extinction. Staring blankly at a Law and Order rerun some months ago, someone in Rove’s office got the bright idea: Why not Thompson?
No less than ten "candidates" have stepped forward to offer their services as the Republican presidential offering for 2008, resulting in a wave of indifference and yawns throughout the land. Giuliani? The self-declared Mr. 9/11 has some, er, personal issues and his positions on social issues are at odds with the nut-right base. Oh, and, by the way, some firefighters would like to talk about what he did or didn’t do on and around 9/11, if you have the time. Romney? A little anxious to please, don’t you think? His perfect hair and teeth (talk about your Breck girls) lurch ahead of his face as he enters each room, pander-ready. OK for GOPers who want to love themselves, but he will have the smell of death in ‘08 (not to mention the rancid stench of his desired doubling of the population at Guantanamo) as he tries to find those in the enraged general populace to love him while he’s wrong on every issue imaginable – at least this week. A minor player like Tommy Thompson? What do you do with someone who is only taken seriously by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel? Run him for county executive, perhaps? John McCain? Sounds familiar...who was that, again?
And so, as America struggles to build a new start after the disastrous and corrupt Bush/Cheney years, the Grand Old Party reaches into its past to find its future. Once again, a decidedly B-actor steps forward to read the script. A typical character played by Fred Thompson in one of his movies would look dourly at the proposed candidacy outline on his cherry-maple desk while clinking the ice cubes in his ever-present glass of scotch, chuckling mildly as he turns the page. Eventually, he’d take the Rove-written proposal, crumple it up and throw it into a wastebasket across the room. "That’s a three-pointer," he would say, to no one in particular, about his waste-shooting skill. "F*#k that."
But, like Ronald Reagan, the phony hero, the real Fred Thompson is not made of such strong stuff. If you want to love him, he will make himself available to be loved. In fact, if the money is right, Thompson the lobbyist will tell you anything you want to hear and lean on the rope-line to receive your hugs. Reagan, his supposed brother-in-bullshit, had his price to carry the water of the moneyed interests and I’m sure Thompson has his. Maybe he’ll just charge them at his going rate of $500 per hour. Let’s see, this president thing is a 24/7 job...365 times 4 years, paid in advance, of course...hey, he’s yours – phony red pick-up truck and all. Oh, and by the way, his sons would like to talk to you about commerce in Uzbekistan...
Although he and those around him will spend untold hours and millions of dollars trying to define him in a glowing, aw-shucks light, Thompson will not be able to hide from how he first came to national attention – as the 30-year-old chief Republican counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee during the hearings that gripped the country’s imagination 34 summers ago. While Sam Ervin and even his then-boss Howard Baker were tying to find out what the hell was going on in the cesspool otherwise known as the Nixon White House, young Fred was sneaking behind their backs, leaking all kinds of inside information about the investigation to Nixon’s henchmen. Not that it did them any good. But it says something about the desperation of the 2008 GOP that they would turn to a veteran of secret Nixonian intrigue to help them recover from these somehow even darker years of secret Bushian nonsense.
Thompson’s other "issues" are nothing compared to him plotting with Nixon to subvert the historic work of the Watergate Committee. He has the kind of issues that would be death to any Democrat, but that just cause knowing nudges in a well-connected Republican. Lymphoma in remission? Hey, has anyone seen Cheney’s medical charts lately (Treated as Secret/SCI)? Divorce and second marriage to a 24 years younger trophy wife? A mere piffle – Rudy’s got one marriage on him, not to mention the Rage of the Second Wife, and he’s in the lead. Active in the Scooter defense fund; no doubt the successful lobbyist for that particular subversion of justice? Well, the whole thing was silly and, besides, juries are for suckers. Asbestos and abortion-rights lobbyist? Hey, a guy’s gotta eat.
In the end, Fred Thompson is stuck in a no-win situation. If he runs, he’ll be the doomed front-man for a miserable Republican party that has itself boxed-in and wrong on so many issues, from Iraq to health care to immigration to stem cell research. Somebody has to have an "R" next to their name as the loser in the history books, so it might as well be a mediocre actor in a dumpy brown business suit. If he doesn’t run, he will be the Man Who Wouldn’t Come, someone the GOP can blame their many failures on as they lose 30 more seats in the House, 5 more in the Senate and 100 more votes in the electoral college. They’ll need someone to blame – looking in the mirror after imposing the Bush Regime on the world will just be a bit too painful.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Laments and Laurels
A weekly parody of a weekly editorial.
This Scooter Libby fellow seems to have made quite an impression on President Bush. Although he was convicted by a federal jury of lying to investigators and a federal grand jury, the President stepped up to correct a slight flaw in the judge’s sentencing structure. It seems the judge got a bit carried away with this inconvenient "following the law" business we’ve all heard so much about and threw the federal sentencing guideline book right at poor Scooter’s solar plexus. Like a soccer goalie reaching to the corner of the net, our athletic president reached high and saved the country from seeing one of its finest public servants eating bad food in drab housing for several years. The score remains: U.S.A. - 5; Injustice - 0!
Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame played Summerfest this week and rocked the Amphitheater with tales of Time, Money, Dark Sides of Moons and Bricks in Walls. We hear he also had some choice things to say about the president, Dick Cheney and some guy named Stalin. We are all in favor of artistic expression, as far as it goes. But some of Waters’ diatribes came at the expense of our suburban sensibilities and our desire to listen to meaningful songs from our past, devoid of uncomfortable meaning. Sure, the lyrics have always said "Money/It’s a crime". But now that we have some, we would rather not be flogged with the actual words of that "groovy" tune, thank you very much. The British singer also seems to have some issues with America and it role in the world. If he is giving out breaks, we wish he would give us one.
Forward-thinking members of the Milwaukee Common Council are considering covering much of the city in a blanket of security by putting video surveillance cameras on many street corners. Bravo! That which makes us feel safer certainly does. No-do-gooders will now think twice before taking their crimes out of their homes and into the streets, where we can see them. The Council should also consider putting video cameras in every home – where, after all, most crime is committed. Perhaps such a system could have two-way capability, so that the city could let its citizens know about important events and remind them of the Way of Right Thinking. Why not a separate two-way video screen installed in the corner of every living room, a watchful eye for you on the community – and of the community on you? Cranky "civil" "libertarians" may "complain" about the "invasion" of "privacy". But, remember – even though He might be Big, He’s still your Brother.
This Scooter Libby fellow seems to have made quite an impression on President Bush. Although he was convicted by a federal jury of lying to investigators and a federal grand jury, the President stepped up to correct a slight flaw in the judge’s sentencing structure. It seems the judge got a bit carried away with this inconvenient "following the law" business we’ve all heard so much about and threw the federal sentencing guideline book right at poor Scooter’s solar plexus. Like a soccer goalie reaching to the corner of the net, our athletic president reached high and saved the country from seeing one of its finest public servants eating bad food in drab housing for several years. The score remains: U.S.A. - 5; Injustice - 0!
Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame played Summerfest this week and rocked the Amphitheater with tales of Time, Money, Dark Sides of Moons and Bricks in Walls. We hear he also had some choice things to say about the president, Dick Cheney and some guy named Stalin. We are all in favor of artistic expression, as far as it goes. But some of Waters’ diatribes came at the expense of our suburban sensibilities and our desire to listen to meaningful songs from our past, devoid of uncomfortable meaning. Sure, the lyrics have always said "Money/It’s a crime". But now that we have some, we would rather not be flogged with the actual words of that "groovy" tune, thank you very much. The British singer also seems to have some issues with America and it role in the world. If he is giving out breaks, we wish he would give us one.
Forward-thinking members of the Milwaukee Common Council are considering covering much of the city in a blanket of security by putting video surveillance cameras on many street corners. Bravo! That which makes us feel safer certainly does. No-do-gooders will now think twice before taking their crimes out of their homes and into the streets, where we can see them. The Council should also consider putting video cameras in every home – where, after all, most crime is committed. Perhaps such a system could have two-way capability, so that the city could let its citizens know about important events and remind them of the Way of Right Thinking. Why not a separate two-way video screen installed in the corner of every living room, a watchful eye for you on the community – and of the community on you? Cranky "civil" "libertarians" may "complain" about the "invasion" of "privacy". But, remember – even though He might be Big, He’s still your Brother.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
And Don’t Come Back
The Waukesha Freeman has published an outrageous attack on Milwaukee in the form of an opinion column by a former editor. Has it really gotten this bad that people in the suburbs think they can just throw bombs at the City and still expect to benefit from all the good things the City does and can bring to them?
Pete Kennedy is the apparently otherwise undistinguished former editor. Given the (lack of) quality in Kennedy's work -- at least in this example -- maybe it’s not that big a deal to be an editor at the Freeman. After all, how hard can it be to edit literary heavyweights like Mark Belling and Jessica McBride?
Anyway, Kennedy of Waukesha has decided that "Milwaukee sucks". You can tell he thinks it – the clever phrase both opens and closes his column. Proclaiming himself a former defender of the city, a battery of exaggerated bad news having nothing to do with him has led him to this dire conclusion. Let us bow our heads in reverence as the suburbanite casts his final judgment. My god, how could we have gone this far astray?
In doing so, Kennedy joins the ranks of Sykes, McBride and other adult suburban brats with a media forum to bash the City. I wonder – is this going on amidst a significant portion of the (relatively) young adult suburban population that don't have a column, a blog or a radio show? Have they really gone south on the city that some of them grew up in and most of them come into every week to drink, eat, recreate and shop, if not work? Are they really going to hole up in their subdivisions and shut out the rest of the world?
I hope not. I hope these sentiments are limited to the small-minded media dim-bulbs like Kennedy, Sykes, etc. They must know that, without Milwaukee, Waukesha is Wausau. Without Milwaukee, they’d have to go a long way to get any big-city culture – theater, music, restaurants. Hey, when is Waukesha Night at the Brewers this year? Can we expect anyone to come? Anyone at all? Does Kennedy have his playoff tickets lined up? Should we let him?
You would think, given this drastic verdict, that something horrible has happened to Pete Kennedy in the City. But, no. A family member or friend, perhaps, put in mortal danger while waiting at a stoplight? No. Hell, there must have at least have been an uncomfortable moment in the company of black teenagers on the second floor at Mayfair. No, again.
Instead, Kennedy says he has been persuaded by things he knows nothing about, but about which he has read and heard a lot. From what he has heard about various well-reported and over-hyped incidents in the City, he extrapolates like crazy. "How many people visit Milwaukee to take in a game or have dinner, only to have their cars broken into?" he asks, I’m guessing rhetorically, although it’s hard to tell. "How many people work in Milwaukee and suffer the same fate?".
Those answers are not hard to come by, if he really wants to know. A couple of clicks on the Milwaukee Police web page gets you to a fairly comprehensive crime data compilation, the last available from 2004. Let’s see: in 2004, motor vehicle thefts were down from the year before – all property crimes down an impressive 15.2%. I am in the criminal courts everyday and I haven’t seen any sort of increase in vehicle theft cases – what is he talking about? Like all wing-nuts, Kennedy believes what he wants to believe, facts be damned. He says right-wing media hound Sheriff David Clarke has advised people "not to leave anything of value at park and rides heading into Summerfest". Good advice, anyway, but at the park-and-rides? Is the problem in Milwaukee or Goerke’s Corner in Kennedy’s own Waukesha County?
Kennedy is outraged, apparently, by 46 murders in the City this year so far, about on a pace for 2004's 88 and certainly less than 122 a decade ago. "And that doesn’t count the mob beating, or the gang rape, or the break-ins or the sewage," he exclaims. Well, no. Let’s see – one mob beating, one gang rape...hardly seems like a trend to me. Problems, yes. But Milwaukee as "ground zero of the apocalypse"? "A rotten excuse for a city"? Is he more likely to be the victim of a "mob beating" "than any other place in the United States"? This is crazy talk.
Kennedy says he’s done with Milwaukee, and that’s fine. Although we appreciate the diversity that a vibrant city brings, we can probably do without another smug suburbanite in an alligator shirt talking loudly at LaFuente about how miserable we are.
But, for all his righteous lecturing to the city he knows nothing about, Kennedy and his fellow Waukesha County residents will be back. It’s a long way to get around Milwaukee to get to that beautiful Lake Michigan water. And that smug white enclave in Waukesha does need the water. And, whether they know it or not, they also need the vibrant, imperfect city that lies just to the east.
UPDATE: I was so incensed by this ridiculous column, I missed Xoff's more expert and economically-based response.
Pete Kennedy is the apparently otherwise undistinguished former editor. Given the (lack of) quality in Kennedy's work -- at least in this example -- maybe it’s not that big a deal to be an editor at the Freeman. After all, how hard can it be to edit literary heavyweights like Mark Belling and Jessica McBride?
Anyway, Kennedy of Waukesha has decided that "Milwaukee sucks". You can tell he thinks it – the clever phrase both opens and closes his column. Proclaiming himself a former defender of the city, a battery of exaggerated bad news having nothing to do with him has led him to this dire conclusion. Let us bow our heads in reverence as the suburbanite casts his final judgment. My god, how could we have gone this far astray?
In doing so, Kennedy joins the ranks of Sykes, McBride and other adult suburban brats with a media forum to bash the City. I wonder – is this going on amidst a significant portion of the (relatively) young adult suburban population that don't have a column, a blog or a radio show? Have they really gone south on the city that some of them grew up in and most of them come into every week to drink, eat, recreate and shop, if not work? Are they really going to hole up in their subdivisions and shut out the rest of the world?
I hope not. I hope these sentiments are limited to the small-minded media dim-bulbs like Kennedy, Sykes, etc. They must know that, without Milwaukee, Waukesha is Wausau. Without Milwaukee, they’d have to go a long way to get any big-city culture – theater, music, restaurants. Hey, when is Waukesha Night at the Brewers this year? Can we expect anyone to come? Anyone at all? Does Kennedy have his playoff tickets lined up? Should we let him?
You would think, given this drastic verdict, that something horrible has happened to Pete Kennedy in the City. But, no. A family member or friend, perhaps, put in mortal danger while waiting at a stoplight? No. Hell, there must have at least have been an uncomfortable moment in the company of black teenagers on the second floor at Mayfair. No, again.
Instead, Kennedy says he has been persuaded by things he knows nothing about, but about which he has read and heard a lot. From what he has heard about various well-reported and over-hyped incidents in the City, he extrapolates like crazy. "How many people visit Milwaukee to take in a game or have dinner, only to have their cars broken into?" he asks, I’m guessing rhetorically, although it’s hard to tell. "How many people work in Milwaukee and suffer the same fate?".
Those answers are not hard to come by, if he really wants to know. A couple of clicks on the Milwaukee Police web page gets you to a fairly comprehensive crime data compilation, the last available from 2004. Let’s see: in 2004, motor vehicle thefts were down from the year before – all property crimes down an impressive 15.2%. I am in the criminal courts everyday and I haven’t seen any sort of increase in vehicle theft cases – what is he talking about? Like all wing-nuts, Kennedy believes what he wants to believe, facts be damned. He says right-wing media hound Sheriff David Clarke has advised people "not to leave anything of value at park and rides heading into Summerfest". Good advice, anyway, but at the park-and-rides? Is the problem in Milwaukee or Goerke’s Corner in Kennedy’s own Waukesha County?
Kennedy is outraged, apparently, by 46 murders in the City this year so far, about on a pace for 2004's 88 and certainly less than 122 a decade ago. "And that doesn’t count the mob beating, or the gang rape, or the break-ins or the sewage," he exclaims. Well, no. Let’s see – one mob beating, one gang rape...hardly seems like a trend to me. Problems, yes. But Milwaukee as "ground zero of the apocalypse"? "A rotten excuse for a city"? Is he more likely to be the victim of a "mob beating" "than any other place in the United States"? This is crazy talk.
Kennedy says he’s done with Milwaukee, and that’s fine. Although we appreciate the diversity that a vibrant city brings, we can probably do without another smug suburbanite in an alligator shirt talking loudly at LaFuente about how miserable we are.
But, for all his righteous lecturing to the city he knows nothing about, Kennedy and his fellow Waukesha County residents will be back. It’s a long way to get around Milwaukee to get to that beautiful Lake Michigan water. And that smug white enclave in Waukesha does need the water. And, whether they know it or not, they also need the vibrant, imperfect city that lies just to the east.
UPDATE: I was so incensed by this ridiculous column, I missed Xoff's more expert and economically-based response.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
What If A Democrat Did It: The Home Version
Junior Bush had his moment to show what he’s really made of, and came through for his puppeteers in grand fashion on Monday afternoon. His hand no doubt forced by his primary handler, Dick Cheney, Bush took a break from his boat party with Putin to commute Scooter Libby’s sentence, meaning that one of the driving forces of his disastrous regime has been spared the petty indignities and bad bedding of prison life. Libby’s outright lies to a federal grand jury are as good as forgiven. The only thing left to do is the complete pardon on Bush’s way out the door and, what the heck, how about a Medal of Freedom?
Despite the latest outrage and the threat to our democracy, not to mention law and order, by the always imaginative Bushies, the timing of this could not be better for me personally. Some of you don’t know that I am at heart an entrepreneur. I have in development a board-game that should be ready in time for the holiday season. It will be called: What If A Democrat Did It? WIADDI will be a revolutionary board-game – more educational than Trivial Pursuit, more tricky than Jenga, more mysterious than Clue. There are no wrong answers in WIADDI. The only limit is your – imagination!
As you play WIADDI, you progress through four levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Expert. As a Beginner, you are presented with simple, easily-managed problems. At this level, you should be able to determine what would happen If A Democrat Did It without too much trouble. For instance, Bush selected a losing Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate and political hack who presided over the most negative campaign in Wisconsin history to an ambassadorship in Tanzania. Now – altogether – What If A Democrat Did It?!? (This phase is meant to be shouted by everyone in the room and everyone has to take a drink.) Points are given for each keyword hit, for which the moderator rings a bell. The obvious answer: Radio wingnuts (ding!) would accuse Democrats of blatant cronyism (ding!) and political payback (ding!). Three bells means a perfect score. See? It’s easy – and fun!
Higher levels present more challenging facts to really get your Cranium cranking. Let’s say a wealthy Democratic contributor and lobbyist for mining interests is put in charge of the Mine Safety Administration. The fox watching the chicken coop! Kickbacks no doubt expected! Contributor probably sleeping his way to the top! Can the head of EPA be far behind? You get the idea.
Here is a secret tip for success at all levels of WIADDI: All you have to do is think of everything that the mainstream media hasn’t done in response the Bush Outrages and assume they would do what they should have been doing all these years If A Democrat Did It. Given everything the lapdog media has failed to do in the Bush Years, you have thousands of options to choose from.
At the higher levels, the stakes get greater for the Hypothetical Democrat. Imagine a Democratic Vice President locks all his routine daily work in a man-sized safe every night, scrubs the Secret Service records of who has visited his mansion and, ultimately, declares himself a member of the legislative branch, untethered by executive branch requirements. WIADDI? Public flogging? Impeachment, surely, but that would be too good for him.
At the Expert level, the mind reels over what would happen If A Democrat Did It. The first problem at that level is a classic – the shutting down of the recount in Florida in 2000. This answer requires a thousand-page essay not about whether, but how the Republicans and the media would prevent the Democrat from taking office. What if a Democrat, after 9/11, used the tragedy as a bludgeon to grab power for himself, start a phony war in the fragile Middle East, wiretap phones without a warrant, and even hold people in a sun-baked prison, incommunicado for more than five years, complete with torture and secret renditions to countries who really know how to "get the job done"? You can almost hear the reporter outside the White House: "A delegation of Democratic congressional leaders went to the White House today to tell the President that the time has come to step down..."
At this level, it will be tempting for you to leap immediately to impeachment for such a lawless regime. But, remember, points are given for creativity. You have to let go of your disbelief about what Bush has managed to get away with. Forget also that a Democrat would never even think of pulling stunts like any of the Bush Horrors. Remember that, whoever the Democratic nominee and eventual president will be in ‘08 and ‘09, they will be run through the personal and professional wringer and held to a higher standard than the Republican, as they always are. Mountains will be made out of molehills, and, no matter who it is, you will feel icky marking the ballot for them. But, in WIADDI, you get to imagine what would happen if the Democrats really did elect a lawless dolt. The ultimate WIADDI challenge: What if it was the Democrats who nominated George W. Bush? Talk about an ass-kicking!
After the board-game takes hold, I plan to syndicate the game on the comics page, like the old There Oughta Be a Law or Sudoku, with problems ripped from the day’s headlines.
Today’s WIADDI: What if a Democratic president commuted the sentence of a key aide who was convicted of lying to investigators and a federal grand jury about his involvement in a political smear job that resulted in the outing of a CIA operative?
Answer: What, are you kidding me? Maybe we should just take bets on how long it would take an administration like that to be run out of town on a rail.
Despite the latest outrage and the threat to our democracy, not to mention law and order, by the always imaginative Bushies, the timing of this could not be better for me personally. Some of you don’t know that I am at heart an entrepreneur. I have in development a board-game that should be ready in time for the holiday season. It will be called: What If A Democrat Did It? WIADDI will be a revolutionary board-game – more educational than Trivial Pursuit, more tricky than Jenga, more mysterious than Clue. There are no wrong answers in WIADDI. The only limit is your – imagination!
As you play WIADDI, you progress through four levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Expert. As a Beginner, you are presented with simple, easily-managed problems. At this level, you should be able to determine what would happen If A Democrat Did It without too much trouble. For instance, Bush selected a losing Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate and political hack who presided over the most negative campaign in Wisconsin history to an ambassadorship in Tanzania. Now – altogether – What If A Democrat Did It?!? (This phase is meant to be shouted by everyone in the room and everyone has to take a drink.) Points are given for each keyword hit, for which the moderator rings a bell. The obvious answer: Radio wingnuts (ding!) would accuse Democrats of blatant cronyism (ding!) and political payback (ding!). Three bells means a perfect score. See? It’s easy – and fun!
Higher levels present more challenging facts to really get your Cranium cranking. Let’s say a wealthy Democratic contributor and lobbyist for mining interests is put in charge of the Mine Safety Administration. The fox watching the chicken coop! Kickbacks no doubt expected! Contributor probably sleeping his way to the top! Can the head of EPA be far behind? You get the idea.
Here is a secret tip for success at all levels of WIADDI: All you have to do is think of everything that the mainstream media hasn’t done in response the Bush Outrages and assume they would do what they should have been doing all these years If A Democrat Did It. Given everything the lapdog media has failed to do in the Bush Years, you have thousands of options to choose from.
At the higher levels, the stakes get greater for the Hypothetical Democrat. Imagine a Democratic Vice President locks all his routine daily work in a man-sized safe every night, scrubs the Secret Service records of who has visited his mansion and, ultimately, declares himself a member of the legislative branch, untethered by executive branch requirements. WIADDI? Public flogging? Impeachment, surely, but that would be too good for him.
At the Expert level, the mind reels over what would happen If A Democrat Did It. The first problem at that level is a classic – the shutting down of the recount in Florida in 2000. This answer requires a thousand-page essay not about whether, but how the Republicans and the media would prevent the Democrat from taking office. What if a Democrat, after 9/11, used the tragedy as a bludgeon to grab power for himself, start a phony war in the fragile Middle East, wiretap phones without a warrant, and even hold people in a sun-baked prison, incommunicado for more than five years, complete with torture and secret renditions to countries who really know how to "get the job done"? You can almost hear the reporter outside the White House: "A delegation of Democratic congressional leaders went to the White House today to tell the President that the time has come to step down..."
At this level, it will be tempting for you to leap immediately to impeachment for such a lawless regime. But, remember, points are given for creativity. You have to let go of your disbelief about what Bush has managed to get away with. Forget also that a Democrat would never even think of pulling stunts like any of the Bush Horrors. Remember that, whoever the Democratic nominee and eventual president will be in ‘08 and ‘09, they will be run through the personal and professional wringer and held to a higher standard than the Republican, as they always are. Mountains will be made out of molehills, and, no matter who it is, you will feel icky marking the ballot for them. But, in WIADDI, you get to imagine what would happen if the Democrats really did elect a lawless dolt. The ultimate WIADDI challenge: What if it was the Democrats who nominated George W. Bush? Talk about an ass-kicking!
After the board-game takes hold, I plan to syndicate the game on the comics page, like the old There Oughta Be a Law or Sudoku, with problems ripped from the day’s headlines.
Today’s WIADDI: What if a Democratic president commuted the sentence of a key aide who was convicted of lying to investigators and a federal grand jury about his involvement in a political smear job that resulted in the outing of a CIA operative?
Answer: What, are you kidding me? Maybe we should just take bets on how long it would take an administration like that to be run out of town on a rail.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Lament & Laurels
A weekly parody of a weekly editorial.
The Washington Post had an interesting four-part series this week about the role that Vice President Cheney has played in the Bush administration. While the Vice President has taken heat from some on the left for his megalomaniacal style, paranoid secrecy, power-grabbing legal obfuscation, his role as puppet-master to Bush the sock-puppet, helping Scooter Libby out Plame and obstruct justice, shooting an old man in the face and his hypocritical proud-grandfather gay-bashing, we think he might be getting a bad rap. With the world changing after 9/11, we think Cheney may have been just the person to help President Bush guide the ship of state in uncharted waters. Or not.
Ann Coulter, the leggy agent-provocateur of the conservative movement, may want to take a step back from her tough language when discussing the sexual proclivities of a certain Democratic presidential candidate. Although she often entertains us with her colorful challenges to the political status quo, she may have crossed a line when she said on a cable show this week that John Edwards and his ailing wife, Elizabeth, hosted weekly meetings of a satanic swingers club in their palatial home. She did not make things better when – after Mrs. Edwards called the show to complain that the couple’s weekly bridge club was, at least, misunderstood – Coulter accused the Edwards of using the memory of their tragically dead son to distract the other bridge players for unfair advantage. We can only hope that Coulter would take better advantage of her still-unexplained media access in the future to poison the national political debate with, perhaps, a little less vinegar.
Alderman Michael McGee Jr. had the bail on his state criminal charges reduced and eventually posted by community supporters this week. This is good. After being transferred to federal court, it was determined that he would be held without bail. This is good. He is being held in the same place (the Milwaukee County Jail) that he was before his state bail was posted. It is hard to argue with this, as it is with the fact that he made bail on the state case. The bottom line is that he will be held, or not held, as appropriate. It seems this would go without saying, but it doesn’t, since we just said it. We wish both McGee and his prosecutors the best, and we’re sure each of them knows what that is. The wheels of justice turn, well-oiled by the citizenry that has greased the gears with the blood of patriots. We wish both sides well, except the side that is eventually proven wrong. Shame on them.
Summerfest celebrates its 40th anniversary this week with another fun-filled 11 days of music on the lakefront. Since this paper has spent an incredible amount of (multi-colored) ink and killed thousands of trees promoting it and has sponsored the event every year since it’s inception, we don’t have to tell you that we think the festival is just peachy. In fact, we have decided to mail this one in. Knowing that many of our readers doze off at about this point in this editorial every Saturday morning, we will pad the rest of this paragraph with phrases from other L&Ls...Again, the music unites us...Good things do come to those who wait...They all merit applause...Good show, [insert name of current or former Summerfest director here]...Sounds as though they deserve a plaque...And the rest, as they say, is history.
The Washington Post had an interesting four-part series this week about the role that Vice President Cheney has played in the Bush administration. While the Vice President has taken heat from some on the left for his megalomaniacal style, paranoid secrecy, power-grabbing legal obfuscation, his role as puppet-master to Bush the sock-puppet, helping Scooter Libby out Plame and obstruct justice, shooting an old man in the face and his hypocritical proud-grandfather gay-bashing, we think he might be getting a bad rap. With the world changing after 9/11, we think Cheney may have been just the person to help President Bush guide the ship of state in uncharted waters. Or not.
Ann Coulter, the leggy agent-provocateur of the conservative movement, may want to take a step back from her tough language when discussing the sexual proclivities of a certain Democratic presidential candidate. Although she often entertains us with her colorful challenges to the political status quo, she may have crossed a line when she said on a cable show this week that John Edwards and his ailing wife, Elizabeth, hosted weekly meetings of a satanic swingers club in their palatial home. She did not make things better when – after Mrs. Edwards called the show to complain that the couple’s weekly bridge club was, at least, misunderstood – Coulter accused the Edwards of using the memory of their tragically dead son to distract the other bridge players for unfair advantage. We can only hope that Coulter would take better advantage of her still-unexplained media access in the future to poison the national political debate with, perhaps, a little less vinegar.
Alderman Michael McGee Jr. had the bail on his state criminal charges reduced and eventually posted by community supporters this week. This is good. After being transferred to federal court, it was determined that he would be held without bail. This is good. He is being held in the same place (the Milwaukee County Jail) that he was before his state bail was posted. It is hard to argue with this, as it is with the fact that he made bail on the state case. The bottom line is that he will be held, or not held, as appropriate. It seems this would go without saying, but it doesn’t, since we just said it. We wish both McGee and his prosecutors the best, and we’re sure each of them knows what that is. The wheels of justice turn, well-oiled by the citizenry that has greased the gears with the blood of patriots. We wish both sides well, except the side that is eventually proven wrong. Shame on them.
Summerfest celebrates its 40th anniversary this week with another fun-filled 11 days of music on the lakefront. Since this paper has spent an incredible amount of (multi-colored) ink and killed thousands of trees promoting it and has sponsored the event every year since it’s inception, we don’t have to tell you that we think the festival is just peachy. In fact, we have decided to mail this one in. Knowing that many of our readers doze off at about this point in this editorial every Saturday morning, we will pad the rest of this paragraph with phrases from other L&Ls...Again, the music unites us...Good things do come to those who wait...They all merit applause...Good show, [insert name of current or former Summerfest director here]...Sounds as though they deserve a plaque...And the rest, as they say, is history.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Missing the Point
This week has been pretty interesting, blog-wise. My last post was noticed, discussed and linked-to by Eugene Kane and Patrick McIlheran at the Journal Sentinel, which lead to Charlie Sykes linking to both of those. Even defrocked radio priestess Jessica McBride decided to get into the "act", putting her (barely) two cents in. Most interesting was that the exposure there led mostly anonymous people to post comments here – 93 and counting.
I engaged with the various name-calling, hostile Anonys, trying in vain to coax them into some sort of discussion about what the issues in Milwaukee might be and how they would suggest dealing with them. But, since they appear incapable of serious discussion, they were easily led into wing-nut foolishness. I was honored that they thought enough of me that they would attack me personally. I was called closed-minded, pathetic, an idiot, a socialist, a moron and a couple noticed I was – gasp! – a defense attorney (and you know what that means). They had great fun (they thought) putting words and ideas in my mouth and in my head, such as: support for income redistribution (no); I was " a marionette for the likes of Kane/McNally/McGee" (nice grouping, that – didn’t know McGee had a column); I deny there are any problems in the inner city (hardly); and, my favorite, a controlling liberal who wants the poor and minorities in "liberal prison camps". No kidding.
There were various riffs and sidetracks all week on the comments. An apparently African-American fellow named Trevin got into it with some blockhead named Seve who said he moved to Tennessee after living in Riverwest and had a few stupid things to say about black men and white women. Some ignorant souls chose use my comment section to heap more unearned abuse on Eugene Kane, threatened as they are by any unintimidated black perspective. The comments (and McIlheran and McBride) also fulfilled my prediction that, if they talked about Oshkosh at all, they would minimize and excuse the type of violence that would have them dancing all over their keyboards for weeks if it happened in Milwaukee.
In the end, the amateur wing-nuts were cornered into a declaration of Social Darwinism – only the fittest deserve to survive and we should leave the rest to their own misery. We worked so hard to get where we are (how that is or where that is necessarily unstated), how dare the poor try to use their food stamps? Whatever. My advice to them was to give it a try – pull what’s left of the safety net and see how safe your community is then. No takers on that one, so maybe they really do have a modicum of sense after all.
This all started in my last post, when I challenged the radio and blog wing-nuts for not making a big deal out of the shootings in Oshkosh as they do anytime someone jaywalks in the inner city (yeah, I know it’s worse than jaywalking, but if that’s all they had, they’d use that too). They all missed the sarcastic point – the fact is I think any sensationalist exploitation of near-tragedy is ridiculous. But, if they are going to play that game – and, boy, are they ever – violence in violence, police calls to Mayfair are the same as police calls to Bayshore and Brookfield Square (pretty much equal) and high school dust-ups go on all over the place. But, everyday, wing-nuts like Sykes, Belling, etc. scour the police blotter to find something that went wrong in the inner city the night before, so that they can continue their campaign of convincing all of us how hopeless any problems there might be.
That’s their game, and it’s easy to see through if you realize that they have really no interest in whether the inner city is safe or not. They just want to create racial tension by the self-righteous and, ultimately, racist notion that "we" have no responsibility for those who, they say (over and over and over), are too stupid and/or lame to help themselves. It is not a serious political position – it’s a ratings ploy. Listen to their (always friendly) seminar callers, saying things like "You know, I’ve had it with these people." We’ll be right back with more hate after a word from our sponsors...
I engaged with the various name-calling, hostile Anonys, trying in vain to coax them into some sort of discussion about what the issues in Milwaukee might be and how they would suggest dealing with them. But, since they appear incapable of serious discussion, they were easily led into wing-nut foolishness. I was honored that they thought enough of me that they would attack me personally. I was called closed-minded, pathetic, an idiot, a socialist, a moron and a couple noticed I was – gasp! – a defense attorney (and you know what that means). They had great fun (they thought) putting words and ideas in my mouth and in my head, such as: support for income redistribution (no); I was " a marionette for the likes of Kane/McNally/McGee" (nice grouping, that – didn’t know McGee had a column); I deny there are any problems in the inner city (hardly); and, my favorite, a controlling liberal who wants the poor and minorities in "liberal prison camps". No kidding.
There were various riffs and sidetracks all week on the comments. An apparently African-American fellow named Trevin got into it with some blockhead named Seve who said he moved to Tennessee after living in Riverwest and had a few stupid things to say about black men and white women. Some ignorant souls chose use my comment section to heap more unearned abuse on Eugene Kane, threatened as they are by any unintimidated black perspective. The comments (and McIlheran and McBride) also fulfilled my prediction that, if they talked about Oshkosh at all, they would minimize and excuse the type of violence that would have them dancing all over their keyboards for weeks if it happened in Milwaukee.
In the end, the amateur wing-nuts were cornered into a declaration of Social Darwinism – only the fittest deserve to survive and we should leave the rest to their own misery. We worked so hard to get where we are (how that is or where that is necessarily unstated), how dare the poor try to use their food stamps? Whatever. My advice to them was to give it a try – pull what’s left of the safety net and see how safe your community is then. No takers on that one, so maybe they really do have a modicum of sense after all.
This all started in my last post, when I challenged the radio and blog wing-nuts for not making a big deal out of the shootings in Oshkosh as they do anytime someone jaywalks in the inner city (yeah, I know it’s worse than jaywalking, but if that’s all they had, they’d use that too). They all missed the sarcastic point – the fact is I think any sensationalist exploitation of near-tragedy is ridiculous. But, if they are going to play that game – and, boy, are they ever – violence in violence, police calls to Mayfair are the same as police calls to Bayshore and Brookfield Square (pretty much equal) and high school dust-ups go on all over the place. But, everyday, wing-nuts like Sykes, Belling, etc. scour the police blotter to find something that went wrong in the inner city the night before, so that they can continue their campaign of convincing all of us how hopeless any problems there might be.
That’s their game, and it’s easy to see through if you realize that they have really no interest in whether the inner city is safe or not. They just want to create racial tension by the self-righteous and, ultimately, racist notion that "we" have no responsibility for those who, they say (over and over and over), are too stupid and/or lame to help themselves. It is not a serious political position – it’s a ratings ploy. Listen to their (always friendly) seminar callers, saying things like "You know, I’ve had it with these people." We’ll be right back with more hate after a word from our sponsors...
Monday, June 25, 2007
Gun Play in the Outer-City: Where’s the Outrage?
The sound of gunshots shut down a local festival on Saturday. Five people have been arrested; one charged with trying to grab an officer’s gun.
Sure, you say, probably just another sad story from some ironically-titled "Jam for Peace" rap-fest at the Ampitheater or the Rave or something. And this, after the shocking aftermath of the Juneteenth celebration. What is wrong with these people? Let’s get Charlie Sykes to run another e-mail from David Clarke so we can get on with the solution to this vexing problem.
But, no. It happened at the Country USA Music Festival in Oshkosh. Violence at the whitest music event in Wisconsin in one of the many whitest parts of the state.
I have searched high and (really) low on the wing-nut blogs to find any reference to this outrageous criminal behavior. No sanctimonious clucking about values and broken homes. No call for action to Stop the Violence and save the broken community. No lashing out at Journal Sentinel columnists who are insufficiently demanding of family values, reform and tough law enforcement in their constituent community. Mike Nichols – come out, come out, wherever you are!
But, nothing. Not from Sykes, McBride, Robinson – even the often-thoughtful Esenberg. Forget the weekend – if this had happened with black people in Milwaukee on Saturday, they would have all left their Sunday picnics to wring their hands over their keyboards about the sad community in which they don’t live. All of the above had a field day over the attack on a motorist by stupid kids after the Juneteenth celebration on Thursday. That unfortunate event played right into their – yes – racist tripe about how bad things are in the City and how only Clarence Thomas wannabees like Sheriff Clarke and the newly-anointed OK-black-guy James Harris can save us, er, them.
But white gun-play outside the City? If they talk about the Oshkosh violence at all this week, the radio and blog wing-nuts will make excuses for the landowner next-door to the festival, talk about Second Amendment "rights", blame the concert promoter for not making peace with the guy before the event. It will be portrayed as an isolated incident in an otherwise law-abiding community. The only Milwaukee TV cameras pointed that way will be those looking to see if the corn really is knee-high this July 4th.
Both the Juneteenth and the country music festival had this in common: Both were overwhelmingly positive and peaceful. Both were marred by unfortunate violent events by bad actors. The vast majority of those attending both events were law-abiding and meant nobody any harm.
But, there is a double-standard for the agenda-driven wing-nuts, who will pretend to get hysterical about violence in one place and ignore even worse violence (there were no guns fired in the Juneteenth incident) in another. Remember Mayfair? Last I heard, there were just as many police calls to Bayshore and Brookfield Square. But that doesn’t fit in their small box, so, never mind.
The fact is that much more of society is broken-down besides Milwaukee’s Inner City. Jobs have been lost, the health care system is broken and rural frustration is as real as any other kind. As long as we fall into the phony Us v. Them mentality of the right-wing crisis-mongers, nothing will be solved. But they’re not looking for solutions. The wing-nuts thrive by division. They could care less about what is really going on in the Inner City. It is just something they drive by. Talk about your "drive-by" media...
Sure, you say, probably just another sad story from some ironically-titled "Jam for Peace" rap-fest at the Ampitheater or the Rave or something. And this, after the shocking aftermath of the Juneteenth celebration. What is wrong with these people? Let’s get Charlie Sykes to run another e-mail from David Clarke so we can get on with the solution to this vexing problem.
But, no. It happened at the Country USA Music Festival in Oshkosh. Violence at the whitest music event in Wisconsin in one of the many whitest parts of the state.
I have searched high and (really) low on the wing-nut blogs to find any reference to this outrageous criminal behavior. No sanctimonious clucking about values and broken homes. No call for action to Stop the Violence and save the broken community. No lashing out at Journal Sentinel columnists who are insufficiently demanding of family values, reform and tough law enforcement in their constituent community. Mike Nichols – come out, come out, wherever you are!
But, nothing. Not from Sykes, McBride, Robinson – even the often-thoughtful Esenberg. Forget the weekend – if this had happened with black people in Milwaukee on Saturday, they would have all left their Sunday picnics to wring their hands over their keyboards about the sad community in which they don’t live. All of the above had a field day over the attack on a motorist by stupid kids after the Juneteenth celebration on Thursday. That unfortunate event played right into their – yes – racist tripe about how bad things are in the City and how only Clarence Thomas wannabees like Sheriff Clarke and the newly-anointed OK-black-guy James Harris can save us, er, them.
But white gun-play outside the City? If they talk about the Oshkosh violence at all this week, the radio and blog wing-nuts will make excuses for the landowner next-door to the festival, talk about Second Amendment "rights", blame the concert promoter for not making peace with the guy before the event. It will be portrayed as an isolated incident in an otherwise law-abiding community. The only Milwaukee TV cameras pointed that way will be those looking to see if the corn really is knee-high this July 4th.
Both the Juneteenth and the country music festival had this in common: Both were overwhelmingly positive and peaceful. Both were marred by unfortunate violent events by bad actors. The vast majority of those attending both events were law-abiding and meant nobody any harm.
But, there is a double-standard for the agenda-driven wing-nuts, who will pretend to get hysterical about violence in one place and ignore even worse violence (there were no guns fired in the Juneteenth incident) in another. Remember Mayfair? Last I heard, there were just as many police calls to Bayshore and Brookfield Square. But that doesn’t fit in their small box, so, never mind.
The fact is that much more of society is broken-down besides Milwaukee’s Inner City. Jobs have been lost, the health care system is broken and rural frustration is as real as any other kind. As long as we fall into the phony Us v. Them mentality of the right-wing crisis-mongers, nothing will be solved. But they’re not looking for solutions. The wing-nuts thrive by division. They could care less about what is really going on in the Inner City. It is just something they drive by. Talk about your "drive-by" media...
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Right-Wingers Hanging on a Limb
I stand accused by some of my comment-ers of being too optimistic about the chances for a complete Democratic super-thumping – including the presidency this time – in 2008. Believe me, I have a lot of dark respect for the mechanizations of Karl Rove, who, as we speak, is working hard to finalize the deal on what’s left of Mitt Romney’s soul so he can get cracking on the next chapter of his historic run of morphing laughable empty suits into allegedly presidential timber.
But this year, the GOP message managers are having to dig so deep into the pit of right-wing-fringe quackery just to get a pulse, I don’t think there is any way they can come back with a mainstream message that would satisfy a majority that is openly rolling their eyes at stale Republican tactics. If the theme song for 2004 was (or should have been) the Who’s "Won’t Get Fooled Again", the song for ‘08 (if it wasn't so obscure) may well be "Clown Strike" by Elvis Costello: "Even a clown knows when to strike."
As usual, the GOP message is driven by talking-points sent out to pathetic lackeys on wing-nut radio and their thin-shadow blogger-buddies. The message having been driven like a spike into the heads of the wrongly-faithful, the pitiful bunch of Republicans running for president can only sign on to the warped agenda and hang on for dear life. Here are some of the "winning" issues the GOP has chosen to highlight in the twilight of its relevance and existence:
But this year, the GOP message managers are having to dig so deep into the pit of right-wing-fringe quackery just to get a pulse, I don’t think there is any way they can come back with a mainstream message that would satisfy a majority that is openly rolling their eyes at stale Republican tactics. If the theme song for 2004 was (or should have been) the Who’s "Won’t Get Fooled Again", the song for ‘08 (if it wasn't so obscure) may well be "Clown Strike" by Elvis Costello: "Even a clown knows when to strike."
As usual, the GOP message is driven by talking-points sent out to pathetic lackeys on wing-nut radio and their thin-shadow blogger-buddies. The message having been driven like a spike into the heads of the wrongly-faithful, the pitiful bunch of Republicans running for president can only sign on to the warped agenda and hang on for dear life. Here are some of the "winning" issues the GOP has chosen to highlight in the twilight of its relevance and existence:
- WAR: Even Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda whackjobs don’t hold a candle to the wing-nuts in their lust for more blood to be spilled by American soldiers. If it takes 5 – heck, 10 or ("like Korea") 50 – more years of death, mutilation and tears to justify the deadly bad judgement of Junior Bush, they’ll do it – or, rather, they’ll have you do it for them. While anyone with any sense turned against the worst foreign policy blunder in American history years ago, the wing-nuts want our sitting-duck soldiers to be there longer; at risk for no good reason. Adding intellectual insult to haven’t-you-had-enough injury, the same people who brought you the Iraq fiasco are now beating the drums to invade – or, at least, bomb the hell out of – Iran.
The GOP candidates are all on this one-wheeled bandwagon to some degree or other. John McCain is busy putting the final nails in his political coffin by declaring himself ready to be "the last man standing" for the failed Iraq mission, whatever it is. Draft-dodger Rudy Giuliani is also not shy about putting more young lives at risk. Nominee-to-Be Romney at least has an issue he hasn’t had the chance to flip-flop on, cheerily announcing that the population of the institution that is the symbol of our international pariah-ness – Guantanamo – should be "doubled". No kidding, he really said it should be doubled. With opponents like these, who needs supporters? - IMMIGRATION: About a year ago, it dawned on the GOP message-designers that they had to throw a hail-mary pass to get traction with their deep, back-woods base. So they got senior TV/radio wing-nut Sean Hannity to celebrate and publicize the "Minutemen", a bunch of racist thugs in SUVs who were conducting a private campaign to chase and harass poor border-crossers in the Southwest. This led to the declaration of a "crisis" in immigration. Apparently, there were just too many brown-skinned, foreign-languaged people showing up for work all across America. The trumped-up "crisis", not coincidentally, led to the first increase in years for membership in the Klu Klux Klan and other "organizations" who know how to make the most of xenophobic hysteria.
Again, the GOP candidates have heard the siren sound of their nut-base and, instead of volunteering for the next Habitat for Humanity project, will be out there with the suddenly-enriched private contractors (check for Minutemen to make the most of their opportunities here), building giant double-fences to keep Them out. Meanwhile on the northern border, Canadians will continue to come and go with impunity, their white skin shining in the sun of continued opportunity. - STEM CELLS: Opposition to stem cell research is the new measure of how whack a politician is. Thousands of frozen embryos are tossed out every year, as the couples who save their possible futures in a jar conceive on their own, change plans or simply move on. Some of those embryos headed for the dumpster can be used to search for possible cures for various ailments and conditions. But, from the people who bought you the Terry Schivo tragedy, we have irrational opposition to such research.
Again, the bunch of minor figures calling themselves Republican presidential candidates genuflect at the altar of the right-to-"life" crowd (their version of life, not yours, thank you), facts and common sense be damned. They do an elaborate dance and pretend that there are alternatives (like the recent diversion about getting usable cells from the skin of mice, or something like that), but its all just pandering. Cue up Monty Python musical number from The Meaning of Life: "Every sperm is sacred/Every sperm is good..." - NO-TAX PLEDGE: Here in Wisconsin, we have a bunch of Republican and a Democrat or two who have signed on to a "no new tax" pledge circulated by helpful GOP blogger Owen Robinson and driven by the usual talk-radio mouthpieces. The result is now chaos in the statehouse, where reasonable compromises made during the usual state budget process have been thrown out the window by the GOP-controlled Assembly. Never mind that no one has come forward with an alternative way to fund state programs without the fee and tax increases proposed by Gov. Doyle and massaged by both Dems and Reps on the Joint Finance Committee. The Sin of Tax has been committed and the pure will force the hand of government to righteousness, or so the line goes. Today’s hardliners will be tomorrow’s tail-between-leggers, declaring victory over minor concessions and living on to poison some other debate some other day.
Again, it’s hard to see how the national or state GOP escapes responsibility for any of this radical fringe posturing. Will U.S. voters really vote in a president who has pledged to continue the disaster in Iraq? Will they really return a party to power that is committed to preventing valuable stem cell research and one that beats up on the immigrants we know to be a valuable resource to our national economy? Will they really support lawmakers who make ridiculous no-tax pledges, tying the hands of the government to do important things, like provide health care for those without insurance?
I think people have had it with the lies, the posturing and, ultimately, the goals of the Republican party. They have shown themselves to be indifferent to what matters and incompetent in providing basic services without corruption. I’ve never had much use for them, but now most of America is so done with Bush and anyone who looks like him. Read any poll you want – the country has not only decided to turn the page – they are looking people reading from a different book.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Bush Goes To Albania
In the darkest days of his presidency, Richard Nixon escaped to foreign countries. As the noose tightened around his political neck, he felt much more comfortable in the company of Leonid Brezhnev than with anyone in his own government; happier reveling in the contrived public celebrations of the dutiful Soviet citizenry than daring to darken his own American streets.
It is much more of a stretch for Junior Bush to come up with a friendly foreign place. Say what you will about Nixon (and I will if you don’t), he knew the difference between diplomatic delicacy and the kind of dangerous ham-fisted international brinkmanship practiced by Bush and his team. Even with a superior doomsday nuclear arsenal pointed at the Soviets, Nixon knew not to make too much of it. He didn’t bluster; he negotiated as best he could with a more dangerous "enemy" than al-Qaeda will ever be. The result was an uneasy but effective detente and, more importantly, a place for Nixon to hide when he needed a warm-welcome pick-me-up.
If Junior has any thought of ditching to "friendly" countries as he winds up his disastrous tour as president, the pickings will be slim indeed. Sure, he could always find a cozy desert tent in Saudi Arabia, as long as he and the unpopular king don’t try to walk around in public. If he wants a friendly reception in Old Europe, he better haul ass over to Britain before Blair hits the road. All told, there are many more counties in this pissed-off world that would just as soon arrest George Bush as invite him to dinner.
But, according to press reports, our Boy President seems to have bought a friend in Albania. A charter member of the Coalition of the Shilling, Albania cleaned its drab streets, brought out red-white-and-blue bunting and even put out a commemorative stamp of Junior’s face, certainly a first-and-only for the soon-to-be trash-bin-of-history embarrassment. "Bush is the president of the world. He is like a king to me," gushed a confused 18 year-old Albanian, no doubt reading Cheney's press releases and trying a bit hard to please. Bush complied with the near-child’s lofty view of himself, proclaiming that his support for the independence of Kosovo (an important issue because that country has a majority of ethnic Albanians) in terms familiar to Americans who have had to tolerate his unearned arrogance for over 6 years: "The question is whether there's going to be endless dialogue on a subject we've already made up our mind on," proclaimed Bush, making me want to take the other side immediately. What’s all this mindless chatter? So it is written, so let it be done.
It’s hard to see why Albania would want to become (even more of) an international laughingstock by joining the George Bush Fan Club (membership: one). They have a goal of joining the European Union – yeah, like that’s gonna happen now. Apparently, the post-Cold War Albanians got close to the U.S. after Bill Clinton intervened in Serbia. Nobody told them, I suppose, that Bush is the Anti-Clinton, both by design and by destroying everything that Clinton – and the 41 presidents before him – built up over the years in international respect and influence.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha said Bush was Albania's "greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times." Wow. Doesn’t say much for Albania, does it? Maybe they should start inviting some Hollywood stars over – you know, liven the place up a bit.
But, hey, even bad presidents need a place to get away once in a while. Albanians can look forward to seeing a lot of Bush in 2008 since he won’t be needed around here much – he certainly will not be campaigning for GOP candidates, who would just as soon make his ticket to Albania one-way.
It is much more of a stretch for Junior Bush to come up with a friendly foreign place. Say what you will about Nixon (and I will if you don’t), he knew the difference between diplomatic delicacy and the kind of dangerous ham-fisted international brinkmanship practiced by Bush and his team. Even with a superior doomsday nuclear arsenal pointed at the Soviets, Nixon knew not to make too much of it. He didn’t bluster; he negotiated as best he could with a more dangerous "enemy" than al-Qaeda will ever be. The result was an uneasy but effective detente and, more importantly, a place for Nixon to hide when he needed a warm-welcome pick-me-up.
If Junior has any thought of ditching to "friendly" countries as he winds up his disastrous tour as president, the pickings will be slim indeed. Sure, he could always find a cozy desert tent in Saudi Arabia, as long as he and the unpopular king don’t try to walk around in public. If he wants a friendly reception in Old Europe, he better haul ass over to Britain before Blair hits the road. All told, there are many more counties in this pissed-off world that would just as soon arrest George Bush as invite him to dinner.
But, according to press reports, our Boy President seems to have bought a friend in Albania. A charter member of the Coalition of the Shilling, Albania cleaned its drab streets, brought out red-white-and-blue bunting and even put out a commemorative stamp of Junior’s face, certainly a first-and-only for the soon-to-be trash-bin-of-history embarrassment. "Bush is the president of the world. He is like a king to me," gushed a confused 18 year-old Albanian, no doubt reading Cheney's press releases and trying a bit hard to please. Bush complied with the near-child’s lofty view of himself, proclaiming that his support for the independence of Kosovo (an important issue because that country has a majority of ethnic Albanians) in terms familiar to Americans who have had to tolerate his unearned arrogance for over 6 years: "The question is whether there's going to be endless dialogue on a subject we've already made up our mind on," proclaimed Bush, making me want to take the other side immediately. What’s all this mindless chatter? So it is written, so let it be done.
It’s hard to see why Albania would want to become (even more of) an international laughingstock by joining the George Bush Fan Club (membership: one). They have a goal of joining the European Union – yeah, like that’s gonna happen now. Apparently, the post-Cold War Albanians got close to the U.S. after Bill Clinton intervened in Serbia. Nobody told them, I suppose, that Bush is the Anti-Clinton, both by design and by destroying everything that Clinton – and the 41 presidents before him – built up over the years in international respect and influence.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha said Bush was Albania's "greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times." Wow. Doesn’t say much for Albania, does it? Maybe they should start inviting some Hollywood stars over – you know, liven the place up a bit.
But, hey, even bad presidents need a place to get away once in a while. Albanians can look forward to seeing a lot of Bush in 2008 since he won’t be needed around here much – he certainly will not be campaigning for GOP candidates, who would just as soon make his ticket to Albania one-way.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Green Goes to Africa
UPDATE BELOW
Those held breathless since November can now finally exhale upon news of the near-term political future of last year’s GOP gubernatorial wanna-be/won’t-be. Yes, your prayers have been answered: Mark Green is going to Africa.
No deed or perceived sacrifice goes unrewarded in the Republican circle of cronyistic backrubs and post-political payoffs. After all, Republicans are always whining about how much they sacrifice by going into government "service", since they could always make more money raping-and-pillaging in the private sector. After he played the part of President back in the ‘80s, Ronald Reagan and his "Mommy" were paid for his efforts by the "gift" of a $3 million ranch from unnamed wealthy contributors. No doubt Junior Bush will get his after he hits the road – and not a moment too soon – in 2009. Adjusting for inflation, well, I hear the Neverland Ranch is available.
But Junior was a failure, you say. And how. But, despite the revisionist bullshit of recent years by those who know better, Reagan wasn’t much better. You always get the sense of pre-arrangement in these matters. "A deal is a deal," my contracts professor would say. "You pays your money and you takes your chances."
For the, er, lesser lights of the Republican would-be Revolution, the reward sometimes depends on availability and, more important, who is (still) in power. Back in the glory days, the Bushies slipped long-time Wisconsin GOP party chair Rich Gruber into a cushy ambassadorship. Now, with their power in shambles and time running out, they looked around for some way to reward that Green guy who ran that lousy campaign in Wisconsin – thumped convincingly, even with all that help they gave him by going after poor Georgia Thompson – and found the need for Green’s small talents in Tanzania.
It’s hard to tell what Green brings to the project, if there is such a thing, in the small, no doubt needy African country. Sure, he spent time in Africa while a young sprout as a teacher in Kenya with a noble project out of Harvard. Perhaps he can help Bush bring his false dream of abstinence to the fight against AIDS. If there are criminal elements in the government or on the streets, he could surely help relate, having worked hand-in-glove with remarkably-still-free convicted felon Scooter Jensen while in the statehouse and with Tom Delay and Mark Foley after being sent up to the big leagues. If memory serves, he even had an aide close to Jack Abramoff – this is a guy who knows how to get things done, the law be damned.
But ambassadorships to politically-irrelevant countries are the last vestige of an ancient spoils system, a harmless resume-padding device for those who have run for office, contributed or happened be old college frat buddies of presidents – accidental, appointed or otherwise. I doubt Green will spend much of his brief tenure in-country, fixing visa problems by day, beach-walking by night (with security detail, I assume). You wouldn’t want something like this to get in the way of his rain-making legal work or what I assume will be a continued period of post-election whining about that $468,000 he eventually agreed he couldn’t spend on his would-have-failed-anyway campaign. It’s a dead issue, but it’s all he’s got.
UPDATE: The Journal Sentinel weighs in on Green's political payoff this morning as a note in the insipid "Laurels and Laments" section that it runs on its Saturday editorial page (Usual sample: "We saw this week that the traffic lights on Wisconsin Ave. were adjusted to allow a better flow from east to west. This is the kind of bold action that makes our city a great place in which to live.") Apparently, the perk does not merit a whole editiorial of its own. However, Green gets a few props he hardly deserves: "He is generally possessed of uncommon good sense and has superb people skills," claims the J-S.
Oh, really? "Uncommon good sense"? You mean like trying to transfer his complete federal campaign fund, knowing it was against state law, filing a frivilous lawsuit just to cover his ass and ultimately agreeing that the Elections Board got it right, and then still whining about it? You mean like that? You mean like opposing stem cell research? Like proposing a move of the entire state Department of Workforce Development to Milwaukee? Like being Junior Bush's lapdog while he was in Congress? Uncommon, maybe? But uncommon good sense? Quite the opposite.
"Superb people skills"? "Green walked away from reporters pressing him for details on just how he thinks he would fix the state budget deficit." Yep, Mr. Common Man, alright. Superb skill with his buddies like Felon Scooter Jensen, Mark Foley or Tom Delay, maybe. For what that's worth.
Those held breathless since November can now finally exhale upon news of the near-term political future of last year’s GOP gubernatorial wanna-be/won’t-be. Yes, your prayers have been answered: Mark Green is going to Africa.
No deed or perceived sacrifice goes unrewarded in the Republican circle of cronyistic backrubs and post-political payoffs. After all, Republicans are always whining about how much they sacrifice by going into government "service", since they could always make more money raping-and-pillaging in the private sector. After he played the part of President back in the ‘80s, Ronald Reagan and his "Mommy" were paid for his efforts by the "gift" of a $3 million ranch from unnamed wealthy contributors. No doubt Junior Bush will get his after he hits the road – and not a moment too soon – in 2009. Adjusting for inflation, well, I hear the Neverland Ranch is available.
But Junior was a failure, you say. And how. But, despite the revisionist bullshit of recent years by those who know better, Reagan wasn’t much better. You always get the sense of pre-arrangement in these matters. "A deal is a deal," my contracts professor would say. "You pays your money and you takes your chances."
For the, er, lesser lights of the Republican would-be Revolution, the reward sometimes depends on availability and, more important, who is (still) in power. Back in the glory days, the Bushies slipped long-time Wisconsin GOP party chair Rich Gruber into a cushy ambassadorship. Now, with their power in shambles and time running out, they looked around for some way to reward that Green guy who ran that lousy campaign in Wisconsin – thumped convincingly, even with all that help they gave him by going after poor Georgia Thompson – and found the need for Green’s small talents in Tanzania.
It’s hard to tell what Green brings to the project, if there is such a thing, in the small, no doubt needy African country. Sure, he spent time in Africa while a young sprout as a teacher in Kenya with a noble project out of Harvard. Perhaps he can help Bush bring his false dream of abstinence to the fight against AIDS. If there are criminal elements in the government or on the streets, he could surely help relate, having worked hand-in-glove with remarkably-still-free convicted felon Scooter Jensen while in the statehouse and with Tom Delay and Mark Foley after being sent up to the big leagues. If memory serves, he even had an aide close to Jack Abramoff – this is a guy who knows how to get things done, the law be damned.
But ambassadorships to politically-irrelevant countries are the last vestige of an ancient spoils system, a harmless resume-padding device for those who have run for office, contributed or happened be old college frat buddies of presidents – accidental, appointed or otherwise. I doubt Green will spend much of his brief tenure in-country, fixing visa problems by day, beach-walking by night (with security detail, I assume). You wouldn’t want something like this to get in the way of his rain-making legal work or what I assume will be a continued period of post-election whining about that $468,000 he eventually agreed he couldn’t spend on his would-have-failed-anyway campaign. It’s a dead issue, but it’s all he’s got.
UPDATE: The Journal Sentinel weighs in on Green's political payoff this morning as a note in the insipid "Laurels and Laments" section that it runs on its Saturday editorial page (Usual sample: "We saw this week that the traffic lights on Wisconsin Ave. were adjusted to allow a better flow from east to west. This is the kind of bold action that makes our city a great place in which to live.") Apparently, the perk does not merit a whole editiorial of its own. However, Green gets a few props he hardly deserves: "He is generally possessed of uncommon good sense and has superb people skills," claims the J-S.
Oh, really? "Uncommon good sense"? You mean like trying to transfer his complete federal campaign fund, knowing it was against state law, filing a frivilous lawsuit just to cover his ass and ultimately agreeing that the Elections Board got it right, and then still whining about it? You mean like that? You mean like opposing stem cell research? Like proposing a move of the entire state Department of Workforce Development to Milwaukee? Like being Junior Bush's lapdog while he was in Congress? Uncommon, maybe? But uncommon good sense? Quite the opposite.
"Superb people skills"? "Green walked away from reporters pressing him for details on just how he thinks he would fix the state budget deficit." Yep, Mr. Common Man, alright. Superb skill with his buddies like Felon Scooter Jensen, Mark Foley or Tom Delay, maybe. For what that's worth.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Remembering the Unnecessary Dead -- Again
Memorial Day in 2003 came a mere three months after disastrous invasion of Iraq. I wrote then on my old blog about the destroyed lives of the soldiers recklessly sent into harm's way by Junior Bush and his various enablers. Back then, the deaths were relatively few and more traditionally battle-related, as opposed to the continuing crisis, where our troops -- when they are not walking targets for those still avenging the violation of Iraq's sovereignty -- are getting caught in the crossfire of a civil war.
Here is a re-print of my May 26, 2003 post:
Every Memorial Day, I think about the Unnecessary Dead. This year, more than ever, it is important to remember those who have been put in harm’s way by vapid politicians in unworthy and undefined causes, in the pursuit of only power and wealth. The number in the Iraq invasion is 162 (and counting – more deaths today). And, this Memorial Day, I am celebrating the life and family of one of the first to die in this most-recent stupid war – Kendall David Waters-Bey of Baltimore, Maryland.
Kendall, an African-American and a Muslim, died in a helicopter accident on the first day of the invasion. It’s the kind of accident that happens when fragile equipment meets desert wind and sand. Acceptable collateral deaths, no doubt, by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and G.W. Bush.
Not so to Kendall’s father, Michael Waters-Bey. Holding a picture of his son for TV cameras at the time of his son’s Unnecessary Death, he said: "I want President Bush to get a good look at this, really good look here. This is the only son I had, only son." Asked what he say to Bush, the boy president, if he had the (unlikely) chance, he said: "This was not your son or daughter. That chair he sat in at Thanksgiving will be empty forever."
Kendall’s sisters were even more clear: "It's sad that this war is going on and that we have to lose so many people over nothing...This war is all about oil and money. But he [Bush] has already got oil and money. It's about greed. ... He ought to send his daughters over there to fight. See how long they'd last over there."
Whoa. Those of you reading this for the first time – over two months after these statements were lightly and, mostly, only locally reported – now can understand why you might have missed it. The justifiable rage of the Waters-Bey family and their poignant comments were completely ignored by the mainstream media, which opted for the more predictable, banal and (most-importantly) war-supporting "he died doing what he wanted to do" comments of the more traditional, er, white families.
You wonder what happened later to the Waters-Bey family. I think I remember Bush staging a photo-op with the families of the Unnecessary Dead. Didn’t exactly notice whether the Waters-Beys were in front of the line. Or invited at all.
So here is to the memory those American soldiers who died in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq and all the dirty little secret and not-so-secret wars before and since. No one supports the troops more than those who try to stop the Unnecessary Deaths.
Here is a re-print of my May 26, 2003 post:
Every Memorial Day, I think about the Unnecessary Dead. This year, more than ever, it is important to remember those who have been put in harm’s way by vapid politicians in unworthy and undefined causes, in the pursuit of only power and wealth. The number in the Iraq invasion is 162 (and counting – more deaths today). And, this Memorial Day, I am celebrating the life and family of one of the first to die in this most-recent stupid war – Kendall David Waters-Bey of Baltimore, Maryland.
Kendall, an African-American and a Muslim, died in a helicopter accident on the first day of the invasion. It’s the kind of accident that happens when fragile equipment meets desert wind and sand. Acceptable collateral deaths, no doubt, by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and G.W. Bush.
Not so to Kendall’s father, Michael Waters-Bey. Holding a picture of his son for TV cameras at the time of his son’s Unnecessary Death, he said: "I want President Bush to get a good look at this, really good look here. This is the only son I had, only son." Asked what he say to Bush, the boy president, if he had the (unlikely) chance, he said: "This was not your son or daughter. That chair he sat in at Thanksgiving will be empty forever."
Kendall’s sisters were even more clear: "It's sad that this war is going on and that we have to lose so many people over nothing...This war is all about oil and money. But he [Bush] has already got oil and money. It's about greed. ... He ought to send his daughters over there to fight. See how long they'd last over there."
Whoa. Those of you reading this for the first time – over two months after these statements were lightly and, mostly, only locally reported – now can understand why you might have missed it. The justifiable rage of the Waters-Bey family and their poignant comments were completely ignored by the mainstream media, which opted for the more predictable, banal and (most-importantly) war-supporting "he died doing what he wanted to do" comments of the more traditional, er, white families.
You wonder what happened later to the Waters-Bey family. I think I remember Bush staging a photo-op with the families of the Unnecessary Dead. Didn’t exactly notice whether the Waters-Beys were in front of the line. Or invited at all.
So here is to the memory those American soldiers who died in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq and all the dirty little secret and not-so-secret wars before and since. No one supports the troops more than those who try to stop the Unnecessary Deaths.
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