Michelle Obama

Quite a few Republicans I used to bicker with back in the day when saying anything against the president was tantamount to treason have told me that they are supporting Barack Obama. After eight years of Bush, everyone's not only ready to chuck party allegiences, but to chuck a lot of things, like prejudice.

As for me, I'm ready to trade in Laura Bush for a much cooler first lady. I love Michelle Obama. She's not just cool, she's real. When she gave a very impish grin to Maria Shriver's mention of Mitt Romney's good looks during the potential first wives forum, all I wanted to say was "You go, girl!" He might be a total downer on the political stump, and he never pushed the military onto any of his five sons, but damn, that man is good looking.

Black leaders seem to have a problem with Barack Obama. They ought to zone in on Michelle. She exemplifies everything cool about being an African American. She's smart, she's got attitude, she's got sass. She's all that.

I figure if Barack Obama was smart enough to marry this extraordinary woman, he's more than capable of making good decisions were he to become president of the United States. Moreover, I'm confident that should he falter, Michelle would be more than happy to let him know.

The American Flag

I send out packages to Japan every Christmas. We have Japanese friends and I try to buy them things that are specifically American. You have no idea how hard it is to do. Most of the junk we have here, you can find in Japan no problem. Thank you globalization.

I found a quilt on ebay which looked really cool and American. It had little flags on it and rather primitive looking log cabins. I won the bid and before I knew it, I was holding a plastic bag with a large "Made in china" label with the quilt neatly folded inside. Another thing I bought was a set of five really gaudy looking boxes, each with some American theme like The Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell. On each box was stamped a "Made in China" label.

I don't really know what to make of this. Yeah, it's fodder for jokes and cartoons, but in fact this isn't a joke or a cartoon. It's real life. I can't even peel those made in China stickers off. I'm sending my all American trinkets to Japan with label in tact. I give up. May as well fly the flag with a huge made in China stencil right across the middle stripe. It might not be patriotic, but it will be honest.

The Republican Debate

I have to confess, I didn't watch the CNN sponsored republican debate last night. I watched a Stephen King horror movie called Trucks. It was terrible. Killer trucks plowing into human being or objects containing human beings. If only Halliburton had those things in Iraq, what a better world this would be. The military wouldn't have to blow them up everytime they blew a tire. They could blow themselves up, maybe taking a few insurgents with them. Instead of blackwater security guards, the State Department could simply hire alien trucks to mow down local traffic. No one could sue a truck.

Very few people really care about Halliburton and their disposable trucks, or how Blackwater treats Iraqi nationals, least among them Republicans. From the debate recap on C-span this morning, it seems all Republicans care about is immigration, homosexuality, and abortion.

One featured highlight fromt he debate showed Rudy Giuliani accusing Romney of having illegals doing work around his mansion. Romney should have come back at Giuliani by asking him whether he had strawberries in his yogurt that morning, or lettuce in his salad, or whether he makes sure all his fruits and vegetables are imported from countries where foreigners are legal. But no, he just sputtered something about not having to ask his workers for their papers. Wild applause from the audience.

Homosexuality made for a fun evening. The Youtuber who asked a question about gays in the military happened not only to be in the audience, but also a member of the Hillary Clinton for president steering committee. How ironic that CNN, which some people refer to as The Clinton News Network, would allow this man to stand up and speak extemporaneously for two minutes. If I were Mitt Romney, I'd be thinking "And the Democrats refused to attend a Fox sponsored debate...why?" The whole episode made me think of male call boy Jeff Gannon being called on to ask questions by Ari Fleischer at White House press briefings. Or Larry Craig with his bathroom hand signals. Or that whole congressional page pedophilia scandal...

As for abortion, it's a bit hard to take the subject seriously while little Afghan kids are being blown apart in Afghanistan and Iraq, much as the alien trucks I mentioned earlier. I saw a TV show once about a woman giving birth in a hospital in Afghanistan to premature twins. Here, they would have slapped those two kids into an incubator, but over there, they just put them aside to die. I guess you would call this nature performing a late term abortion.

These issues are all retreads, but they make for lively debates and good television. And really, the whole point of being American is to stay entertained. It's that pursuit of happiness thing. The only part of the Declaration of Independence anyone seems to remember.

We've won the War on Drugs!

The magic realization that we've actually won the war on drugs came to me as I watched CNN the other Day. They showed a crude video of Barack Obama admitting he used illegal drugs in his youth. Naturally, as a follow up, they ran the famous "I didn't inhale" clip of Clinton's, followed by President Bush telling reporters that what he did in his past was no one's business.

Like it or not, using illegal drugs has become a right of passage, especially among presidents, or potential presidents. I guess it really doesn't mean we've actually won the war, so much as we've called a truce. Much like the political posturing about North Korea, everybody pretty much just shrugs their shoulders because though we know they can kill you, it's just not worth making a fuss about.

Afghanistan is another indicator of our having won the war on drugs. With poppy production booming after liberation from the Taliban, Afghanistan's economy now depends on this flower of happiness. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you're stuck with the flower you have not the flower you wished you had. If an increased drug trade is the cost of freedom, so be it.

There are a few areas of the war which still need a bit of mopping up. I'm talking about mandatory sentencing, mostly involving the use of crack cocaine or metamphetamines. It's what's keeping poor niggers and white trash behind bars. That being said, it sure doesn't seem to be affecting the general middle class inhaling public, i.e. the voters, the people who count.

Moreover, winning the war on drugs gives me hope that the war on terror will someday be won as well. We'll know we've won that war when we elect a president who has admitted to planting a bomb...and I'm not talking about the little firecrackers Dubya used to shove up the orifices of little frogs when he was a kid either.... I'm talking something just short of nuclear.

Business wises up

Back a few years, after 9/11, we went on a business trip to Japan. It was a strange time. If even your deoderant hand an anti-Bush scent, you'd be pummeled by the true believers. Our fellow travelers, American businessmen, all had their sniffers out. "Don't you go there!" one screamed at me when I tried arguing that universal healthcare by simply existing would cut down on lawsuits.

But that was then, and now is now. The Wall Street Journal this morning ran an article entitled "Affluent Voters Switch Brands". I think the most telling line quoted the editor of the Denver Business Journal: "Colorodo already has low taxes and has always. And we began in the 1990's to start feeling the things like higher education and transportation, which coincidentally became more important as economic-development issues for the business community." The Bush administration non-support of infrastructure maintenance perhaps has perhaps slapped a few business leaders across the face.

Pundits on the television of the Republican persuasion are practically begging on their knees for government help in border control, tracking product from China, and so forth. However, the Bush administration has been busy forcing the government down the bath tub drain, as Grover Norquist advocated.

For the past eight years, the hard work of the Republican strategists like Karl Rove has cobbled together a strange coalition of fanatical right wing religious types, I'm talking Jewish as well as Christian, and ginormous corporations. In fact the article begins with a $39,000 a year hispanic Union member lamenting Guiliani as a candidate because of his abortion stance. But between the extremely rich and the extremely hoodwinked, there are millions of fairly practical Americans.

The proof is in the numbers. Currently, 51 per cent of people making $100,000 or more support the Democrats. In 2004, that percentage was 41.

What's best is that for the past six years, I've been labeled a pinko liberal because I thought Bush and his minions were a bunch of jerks. Now I'm back in the middle.

I am, however, very thankful for the Bush people in that they've defined the political extreme. Now maybe everybody can get off of their keisters and actually start doing something.

Good Times in Iraq

There's been a lot of good news coming out of Iraq. Less killings, less of our troops getting hit. One would feel perfectly positive if it weren't for the State Department.

Yes, the State Department is having difficulty finding volunteers for its Iraq assignments, so it's decided to force its employees to go. They showed the resultant hand wringing on TV. One guy got up and cried about what would happen to his kids. The State Department workers don't seem quite as sanguine about Iraq as the news media.

Someone should explain to them that Blackwater is there to protect them, much as the State Department protects Blackwater. I refer of course to immunity granted by the State Department to those Blackwater employees responsible for the Nissour Square killings of seventeen innocent Iraqis.

And besides, what about patriotism? I'll bet you many of those same cry babies were supportive of the Iraq War, and even the ones who weren't probably never said a word.

Iraq is beautiful these days anyhow. Bring the family. Have a picnic. Enjoy the view.

Economics...not

I was reading today about the problems Andrew Jackson had with the Second Bank. That was a long time ago. You probably don't remember. Jackson had a deep belief in hard currency, none of this fancy credit that gets people in trouble. His stubborness ended in the demand that all large transactions be paid for in shiny metal coinage as well as a bad depression handed to his successor, Martin Van Buren. No, credit is a good thing.

Our present economy runs on credit. Nary a single person saves money any longer. What's the point? If you max out one credit card, you pay it off with another. Hell, you can finance your entire retirement that way. Social Security? Bah. Visa or Mastercard. Walmart, Target, Sears, they all depend on our credit cards. They love our credit cards. They keep asking if I want more everytime I stand waiting for things to be scanned by the cashier.

It makes each of us a de facto millionaire, this access to as much money as we can possibly desire. But no, it doesn't work that way. I don't know why, because theoretically it should. Imagine how the economy would hum along if all of us just bought whatever the heck we wanted. Some banker should think of that. If we were all millionaires, the economy would be jazzed beyond description. We wouldn't need welfare or socialized health care. We could be free market all the way, baby. We could invest with impunity. If our investments dry up, we just pull out the old credit card and invest in something else. No worries, no cares. We'd all be republicans.

Idiots

I watched Jamie McIntyre on CNN reporting on a bombing in Iraq. How anyone can do this with a straight face, I don't know, but he matter of factly added that a brigadier general named Dorko was wounded and that he was being guarded by private security forces which "weren't Blackwater."

When he did the usual back and forth with Lou Dobbs, the name of the security firm came out...Erinys. Then came the moment I wait for, the reason I sit through all the constant drivel about illegal immigration which drips like Chinese water torture every evening between six and seven on CNN, Lou Dobbs saying "What idiots!

If Jamie had done a Google search on Erinys, he'd have found out that the polonium trail of dead Russian Litvenko lead to the Erinys Office in London, and that a good deal of the company cut their millitary teeth as part of apartheid era South African forces.

That's not what Lou Dobbs meant by "idiots". He meant something like "Why does the military need to be guarded by an expensive security firm when we've got our own on the government dole?"

Jamie McIntyre picked up on this and said something about this proving how stressed our regular forces are.

Reporters really ought to be steeping themselves in the morass of mercenary culture as it seems these are the pod people posing as our military. But then, this would mean acknowledging an alien invasion far insidious than Lou Dobbs' Mexican illegals, and far harder to deal with. I mean, these mercenaries come with guns. Big guns. And helicopters.

Fortunately, except for the few who make it to danger zones like New Orleans, companies like Erinys and Blackwater operate far far away, where we can't see them. And with this thought, let me leave you with the words of a Neil Innes song:

"How sweet to be an idiot,
And dip my brain in joy,
Children laughing at my back,
With no fear of attack,
As much retaliation as a toy.
How sweet to be an idiot. How sweet."

Torture

Last week, David Rivkin and somebody else had an op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. In it, they called for a public discussion of torture.

Immediately, I thought why a public discussion, why not a game show? There was already Fear Factor, which pretty much forced contestants to engage in fairly horrific acts. Why not just take it a step further. Every week, the viewing public could watch contestants undergo a series of grueling physical trials and just as in American idol, the viewing public could vote on which act they considered to be torture.

Of course, you couldn't just torture anyone. The contestants would all have to be foreigners. I would suggest mostly Mexicans. Swarthy men, mostly. I would really refrain from female contestants, although I think Ann Coulter would make a great host.

Perhaps every so often, the show could open itself up to suggestions from the audience as to what types of creative methods might be used in future programs. Perhaps if someone's particular method of torture is chosen, they could win a fabulous prize like a year's worth of Bubba's Shrimp or a week's stay at the Trump Plaza in New York City.

You're probably thinking that, right, how can you suggest that someone go and make money on someone's suffering? How easily we forget Abu Ghraib, where the private security firm CACI was involved in the goings on. Or Boeing, whose airplanes were used in rendition flights. Torture has a fine track record of boosting the bottom line of quite a few companies.

By advertising on such a program, a company could wax patriotic. There would be no question about "If a guy new that a million people would be blown up, would you torture him to get the information?" Why yes, yes we would, and while we were doing so, we'd be driving our Jeep Cherokees and gulping heaps of Cialis while downing the contents with Mountain Dew. And the methods used would be the very same one's we invented for T.V.

Who knows? If the show is successful, there could be spin offs. Torturing Democrats, for example. Torturing local unions. Torturing welfare queens. The sky, as they say, is the limit.

An Unexplained Diet

I've been scouring the internet trying to figure out if the administration plans on using some of its remaining 15 months to invade Iran. I figure it might be good if I were somewhat prepared for World War III. I came across a video of Wesley Clark explaining that he had been told by someone working for the administration that after the invasion of Afghanistan, we were in fact planning on going on an invasion binge. Besides Iraq, I believe Syria was on the list, and Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan, and Iran, naturally.

What happened?

You'd think after all the hard work to legally make the president accountable to absolutely no one, the administration guys would have been rewarded with at least one more pre-emptive war.

Values Voters

There's a convocation of so called Values Voters in Washington, DC. By and large, these are your far right republicans who can be characterized by being fanatically against abortion, but steadfastly for the war.

Except Rudy Giuliani, who fairly well concedes to having no chance with these people and sat this one out, the Republican candidates worked these crowds with the piousness of carnival barkers. With the exception of Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, these are divorced white men. Romney, as a Mormon, might as well have horns on his head, or be black. I don't know WHAT he's thinking. He should accept Christ as his Savior and watch the support and the money roll in.

If there's any group of people who think the way these Values Voters do, it's those Taliban guys in Afghanistan. Once you get down to basic values, it's the value of being able to squeeze the life out of every idea different from your own which is paramount.

Ironically, the only true values candidate dropped out at the same time as everyone was gathering in Washington. Senator Brownback is one of them, a Values Guy, right wing, Christian, anti-abortion, pro-war. However, his campaign languished from lack of money and support. What it comes down to, Values Voters don't want to support just any values candidate, only one who could actually win.

World War III

The other day at his press conference, President Bush made it seem as though if we have a Third World War, we can all blame it on Iran. It's just like the Iraq War was the fault of Saddam Hussein. You wonder, what's a pre-emptive war at a nuclear level? I guess it sort of makes the search for weapons of mass destruction moot if they're all vaporized.

A television program aired on PBS examining the legal efforts of Cheney's men to establish a unitary presidency, giving extraordinary powers to this man who threated Iran with a Third World War. I don't know about you, but I think it's sad when all that time and effort comes down with the guy you've been empowering doing a diplomatic stick out your tongue at a country which I think still fits in the third world category. But I guess it is a nuclear tongue.

Bush also made the usual remarks about diplomacy. This argument is astounding, given the fact that our country doesn't have diplomatic relations with Iran. We don't have diplomacy, but we do have the bomb. How gullible are we that we're supposed to think that we're going to use what we don't have, when we have a perfectly usable arsenal.

Ironically, around the same time as the press conference, Bush met with the Dalai Lama.

Lou Dobbsorama

I have an addiction to the Lou Dobbs Show on CNN. I was told today that he's an old nativist. I didn't know what a nativist is. Like me, you can look it up on Wikipedia.

It drives my husband crazy. It's like watching the same show every night. It begins with a rehash of stuff happening as a result of our incursion into Iraq, and then it's a litany of bad things about illegal immigrants, overwhelmingly Mexican immigrants. As if one invasion parallels the other.  One is good, because we’re doing the invading (with big guns), the other is bad, because it’s a bunch of Mexicans (unarmed).   Wow, I think I've just defined nativist.

Being a conservative myself, I get very nervous when a guy like Lou Dobbs touts expanding government. According to Lou Dobbs, we need more border patrol agents, a big old fence, some kind of oversight to prevent defective product from entering this country, and so forth and so on. More, bigger, better. That's all socialist stuff.

But I still watch the show. I think I like the fantasy of Lou Dobbs. Maybe, just maybe, if we throw out every illegal alien and exand the government threefold, we'll live in paradise and never have to worry about crime again. We could safely walk through the streets late at night, like they used to do in Baghdad before the fall of Saddam, or in the Soviet Union before it fell apart. It's beguiling. It's austere. It's creepy.

The Children of Blackwater

As I mentioned in a previous blog, children exemplify the world view of those who follow Ayn Rand. They are totally selfish, self-centered and interested primarily in themselves. Fortunately, they have parents so they don't go ahead and kill themselves. Corporations contracted by the United States, alas, lack the loving oversight of a concerned adult.

Take, for example, a company like Blackwater. Were it not for the generosity of the United States tax payer, this company would barely eke out an existence. Our governmental largesse has bestowed upon this company and its 1000 contract workers in Iraq one billion dollars. However, the company's goals have nothing to do with the greater good of the United States. Their job is to protect individuals and make a profit in the process. Period.

Now after running roughshod over Iraqi drivers who would dare impede a Blackwater protected motorcade, the company finds its behind being spanked not by the U.S. government, but by the Iraqis. American diplomats can't function, however, without this company. It's a dilemma caused, I'm afraid, by parental negligence on the part of our government. You can't give the keys to your diplomats' security to a bunch of selfish kids without setting some kind of ground rules.

Another example of this happened during the last meeting between Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, and the Russians. The Americans got a dressing down by the Russians over missile defense. Like Blackwater, missile defense consists of companies getting billions of dollars from the United States. The Russians are like that guy in your private gated community bringing you in front of the collective board because your kid has a car on concrete blocks in the driveway and it's bringing down the property values.

On the other hand, there's the problem of schip, and the horror of funding real kids and their health problems out of our government coffers. It's ironic that the teat of government largesse can't touch the mouths of real children, but only these overblown corporations who are irritating the heck out of all of our worldly neighbors. Blackwater chairman Erik Prince's multi-million dollar salary comes mainly out of taxpayer pockets, but god forbid a family making $80,000 a year be freed of the multi-thousand dollar cost of children's health insurance.

Apparently, some kids are loved better than others.

Coulter is a Four Letter Word

Ann Coulter's insufferable essays have appeared for years on the website of the Jewish World Review. David Horowitz's Front Page also has carried her work. They kept her on even after she claimed the entire Middle East should be Christian, and after her famous "fag" remark regarding John Edwards. Rabbi Daniel Lapin wrote an article once assuaging Orthodox Jews that wearing a miniskirt and a large cross does not make Coulter a bad person.

Of course, this past Monday, Coulter went on the Donnie Deutsch Show on CNBC and proclaimed that everyone ought to be Christian: "We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say."

My previous essay was about secrecy, but this one is about stupidity.

Jews perfected? Like, how?

It's not been any big secret that Coulter's essays have reflected a Dominionist perspective. Establishing a Christian Theocracy has always been a big part of her point of view. However, until she essentially wrote it out in big letters, until she said it V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y, it never quite telegraphed itself to a certain segment of her supporters.

Anyhow, the nazis used Eugenics as a roadmap to perfection. If only Deutsch had pressed her for details...

What's that You're Hiding behind your Back?

The Supreme Court refused to hear a case featuring Khaled el-Masri and his litany of woes. Back in 2003, this poor German shmuck was confused with bad guy Khalid al-Masri and subsequently "disappeared" into one of our foreign detention centers where he was kept from his family and generally disrespected until someone realized they were waterboarding the wrong man.

The Supreme Court, I may point out, can be called "The Catholic Court", as the five most conservative members are Catholic. That the current Pope had been head of the office of Inquisition rather makes the decision of this court not to hear this case either very ironic, or very conspiratorial, depending on your political point of view.

In any case, the refusal is based on a state secrets rule which was issued back in the days of the cold war. The ruling came as a result of a suit brought on by the widows of group of Air Force pilots. A plane crashed on a secret mission in the early fifties. The nature of the mission was deemed inadmissable as evidence due to security concerns.

I suspect that the overuse of this ruling in subsequent years might hinge on not quite being able to define "state secrets". It's kind of a broad little phrase, imprecise, and kind of yummy if you happen to be someone in power. Secrets can be kept for a variety of reasons. You have an affair, you don't want to upset your wife. You coach a football team, you don't want the other team to learn your signals. You have a bad case of diarrhea, you don't want your dance partner to know.

There's a secret about Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts which I've been curious about. He adopted two six week old, blonde, blue-eyed babies within six months. This is quite impressive, considering a good friend of mine just unsuccessfully spent two years trying to adopt a red haired blue eyed Russian kid. Exactly how does one get not just one six week old blond haired, blue eyed baby, but two? What is Justice Roberts' secret? More bluntly, did he pay for the kids?

But this is Justice Roberts' secret. If it's important to have a guy on the Supreme Court who plays it square, who doesn't bend the rules for his personal benefit, then we might just have to waterboard the guy in order to get any answers. Otherwise, we just just have to trust him.

That's all pretty stupid, isn't it, waterboarding a Supreme Court Justice in the same way that Khaled el-Masri had been mistreated, just to find out whether or not he obtained a couple of kids illegally? Some things just ought to stay secret.

Shatlas Gragged

Wall Street Journal's editorial page is always good for if not a few good laughs, then certainly a "Whaaaa?!"

Today, David Kelley, founder of the Cato Institute, wrote in praise of Ayn Rand: "She was notorious as an advocate of "the virtue of selfishness..." Then he goes on about her potrayal about the "passion and glory possible in business enterprise." And so forth and so on.

As a mother of four, I'll tell you about the virtue of selfishness. The only defensibly selfish human is a kid. As every new parent will tell you, when you bring that baby home, you've gained possession of a tiny little tyrant. He will cry, he will demand attention, and he will achieve these goals only at the expense of two very haggard parents. If Kelley feels selfishness is a virtue in corporate values, then in my narrow mother focus, business must be pissing on someone...consumers, governments...just like a kid.

I don't mind selfishness, but given that an undisciplined kid turns into a huge pain in the neck teenager, I'd advise unselfish types to start acting a little like parents. Give the corporation a time when it has to bring home the family car. Give the corporation a tax rebate type allowance, but make sure it does the chores. If you catch the corporation sneaking a few illegal deductions, ground it for a while. Make sure the corporation calls the old folks from time to time. When they make a mess, make sure they clean up, and on each and every Thursday, make sure they take out the trash. Oh, they'll scream and curse and make a fuss, sure. But for the sake of the future, you have to be strict.

I'm all for business and corporations, but Ayn Rand was never a mother.