Shut your mouth

Unfortunately for any of us with any small sense of pride in our country's disgraced and rapidly crumbling governmental structure, George W. Bush is not going to go away. The President is in office until January 2009, and there's not a damned thing we can do about it.

But I don't think it's asking a lot for the President to simply stop talking. Seriously, Mr. President, with all the respect due to your title and office, please, for the love of Christ, shut the fuck up!

Once again, as he always does when he's up shit creek without a paddle or TP, the President has essentially called Democrats softies, as if the country would be less safe if they were in charge simply because they believe all people are due certain unalienable rights. What I can't get is why he's even opening his mouth at all.

First of all, if you are a Republican out there reading this, I beg of you, don't try to make the argument that President Bush has ever been a good speaker. I've seen the tapes of him when he ran for Congress, and I've seen the tapes of him when he was governor of Texas. I've heard him talk about baseball (a sport about which he obviously knows less than Andy MacPhail, which, really, is saying something), I've heard him talk about terrorism, I've heard him talk about marriage ... I've heard him talk and talk and talk, but never, never say a goddamned thing!

What I've realized in studying Mr. Bush's rhetoric over the last six-plus years is that the reason he sucks at speaking isn't because of the lack of talent and complete befuddlement when the bright lights are beamed down upon him. Rather, it's because George W. Bush is the Everybody Loves Raymond president.

How does that work? Well, think about it. Remember when the President had a 92% approval rating and seemed to be doing a surprisingly good job? Recall now what he was saying: exactly what everybody wanted him to say. In fact, that's all he ever does -- he repeats talking points that were stale when Ronald Reagan left office, he gives the impression that he might have some semblance of intelligence, and he acts like he has something profound to say. How is that any different than Everybody Loves Raymond?

I remember the first episode I ever wached of the Ray Romano sit-com. I was entertained, to a certain extent, by Peter Boyle, whom I've liked since seeing him on The X-Files. And Romano wasn't absolutely gods-awful, I suppose. But then I noticed something, as I watched a second, then a third, and finally (literally: lastly) a fourth episode: every single episode was exactly the same. I don't mean that it was formulaic; it was a sit-com, and sit-coms are generally formulaic by nature. I mean rather that nothing ever seemed to happen on it -- not in a Waiting for Godot way, but more in a "we just write stuff to make people watch" kind of way. The jokes were never any different. Brad Garrett always sounded like an inferior version of that big giant from the Bugs Bunny/Marvin the Martian cartoons that was always all like, "Which way did he go, George, which way did he go?" (an obvious send-up to Lenny, the big ol' idiot from Of Mice and Men, one of the greatest short novels ever written). By that fourth episode, I realized that the show, while occasionally funny, was devoid of any substance whatsoever -- I would've even preferred the false sentiment of Full House or the after-school-specialness of Officer Carl on Family Matters to the sterile, ultracorporate feeling I got watching Raymond.

But despite my protestations, of which very few took heed, audiences flocked to Raymond, which was stale by its third season, while leaving behind truly quality shows like Sports Night and Arrested Development -- two comedies that had more hilarity in five minutes than Raymond had in nine seasons. The reason was simple, literally: people don't like things to be complex. Although I believe that if offered the chance, people would choose quality over crap any day, I've been proven wrong so many times that my position has become indefensible.

George W. Bush, as candidate for president in 2000, represented the syndrome: things are too complex, and we need something simple. Fox News managed to shorten its news ticker into short, pithy bullet points that one can read if staring at the screen for half a second. Raymond managed to pull in some of the highest ratings in history despite never once taking a chance on doing anything truly interesting, one of my main qualifications in separating the good shows from great shows. Reality programming and biopics had replaced well-written dramas and intelligent fictitious films. Dan Brown was selling bajillions of copies of The DaVinci Code while Wharton and DeLillo sat on the back shelves at Barnes & Noble collecting dust.

That's the era in which George W. Bush was elected president -- and, I believe, the only era in which he could have been. When he opened his mouth to speak, he made it easy, speaking in short-and-sweet phases that fit well into the new Fox News model for the ticker. He didn't sound all stodgy and (gasp!) intelligent, like Al Gore did towards the end of that election cycle (I firmly maintain that the lockbox idea was genius and would have worked); he sounded like an average Joe, and gods know we love average Joes in this country.

After 9/11, the President began speaking even more, and most people, myself included, stood behind him. What most of us didn't realize, though, was that we'd played right into his hands. He was never a serious president, and likely only ever truly considered himself a one-term president until the attacks. He was never more than a bumbling buffoon, but we overlooked that because of what we wanted to see. And what we wanted to see, more than anything else, was a resolute leader staring defiantly into the face of an imminent threat.

What we actually saw, however, was something completely different. Go back, look at the tapes, and see how much different Bush was then than he is now. Okay, granted, he looked a heckuva lot more secure back then, and his hair wasn't stark raving white, but his rhetoric hasn't wavered, even in the face of mounting criticism against his policies and his party. And we've done nothing but stay the course for five years.

That's why it's time for Mr. Bush to simply stop talking. He's been saying the same thing since late '99, and it's... it's over now. TV shows are starting to become better, and, as I've told my friends on several occasions, I think we're on the brink of a television renaissance. While Dan Brown and Danielle Steele are still writing novels, and while bestsellers continue to be a drag, it makes me kind of happy that James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia, a book so far superior to its movie form that it's actually kind of ridiculous, is selling lots of copies in paperback due solely to the movie's existence. Bob Dylan, rather than Beyonce, had a #1 record a few weeks ago (not to mention, who'da thunk that Justin Timberlake could release a record that was not only surprisingly good, but about as artistic as a Michael Jackson record was in the '80s?).

We're turning a corner artistically in this country, and the Bush neophytes are going to be left behind. So, Mr. President, you have two options. The first, which I know you are unlikely to take, is that you need to change your rhetoric to stop reflecting your own pre-9/11 thinking -- the attack-attack-attack mentality that won you several elections. The other, which I know you are, if possible, less likely to take, is to simply shut your mouth. If you do neither of these, get ready to be remembered as the president who destroyed the United States of America. Thanks a lot, Mr. Nero.

There is a light that never goes out

When the hell are my fellow Americans going to start taking responsibility for their own lives?

For years, lawyers and judges have been telling us that tobacco companies are to blame for the cancer that smokers get, that cigarette companies are the ones who lied to us, that Big Bad RJ Reynolds is to blame for our lot in life. While jacking up the taxes on packs of cigarettes, cities, towns, states and municipalities have tried to outlaw smoking everywhere from public sidewalks to private cars, claiming the defense of second-hand smoke being a major killer in this country.

This all from a culture that allows Burger King and McDonald's to advertise during children's programming.

Now, I'm not saying that Burger King and McDonald's shouldn't be allowed to advertise during children's programming (although I wish we, as a society, would stand up with one voice and give out a big "Fuck You" to fast food in general); but it seems that tobacco has become the biggest scapegoat in history for the stupidity of people.

Take the latest example of people's stupidity. I think the headline on Yahoo! News says it all: "'Light' cigarette suit" etc., etc. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, people are suing tobacco manufacturers because "light" cigarettes -- amazingly! -- can give you cancer, which, in turn, can kill you, or at least give you a really nasty lump on your lung, causing you to need special therapy that makes you as bald as a twelve-year-old with alopecia and O.C.D.

Come on! Okay, when Camel cigarettes advertised that 9 out of 10 doctors smoked their particular brand of cigarette ... yes, that was quite misleading. But if you, in the past twenty-five years, have been (as many of us have) stupid enough to pick up a cigarette and smoke it, you goddamn well better have known the dangers!

Besides, in what universe does light equal safe? Low-fat yogurt can be called light, as can anything that's reduced in fat (ever seen "light" potato chips? Guess what? They can still give you a gut that would put John Candy to shame if you eat nothing but them for dinner nonstop for seven years!).

This gets down to something deeper that I feel is imbedded in our country's psyche: we want to blame somebody else for all our troubles. We get cancer from forcing smoke into our throats and lungs, so we blame the manufacturers rather than ourselves. We're thirty pounds heavier now than we were in college, so we blame McDonald's rather than the fact that we eat like shit and don't exercise. We elect a retarded chimp to the highest political office in the land and blame Evangelical Christians rather than ourselves for not standing behind a better candidate; and even if we did stand behind a better candidate, we blame everyone but ourselves for not getting out the vote (hey, I'm standing behind this one -- it's my fault as much as anyone else's that John Kerry was the nominee for president, and it's my fault as much as anyone else's that George W. Bush is still in office). We allow a farce like what's going on in the Iraq War (scroll down to the second bullet point to see what I'm talking about) to happen, then blame George Bush rather than ourselves for not pushing the point against the war as hard as we could. Hell, we see morally despicable stuff on TV and blame television, sponsors, writers, etc., for the sewage rather than ourselves for not just turning the crap off.

Hey, I'm not saying I don't blame other people sometimes, but I'm trying not to, folks, I really am. The more we blame other people for our lot in life, the less happy we're going to be. We need to cut the crap here for a change, buck up, and take responsibility for our own actions. Sure, we can't control everything; but I swear to gods, if I here one more person bitch about the evils of smoking, I'm going to personally see to it that that person gets lung cancer.

Oh, and by the way... Smoking is still really, really bad for you.

This is the morning after

Sometimes, I really hate the Swedes.

Okay, I don't mean that in the way you, my faithful readers, might think. I've always been impressed by Sweden's "cradle-to-grave" welfare state. But yesterday, Sweden's Moderate Party won the country's general election. That's not why I hate the Swedes. Read this quote by outgoing Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson of the Social Democratic Party:

"We have lost the election, but we are not a beaten party. We will never accept the right's change of system; we will hit back!"

Now, while I was studying in Spain (actually, a year ago this December), I traveled to Stockholm on a random vacation idea. Sweden is a beautiful, cold, dark, and wonderful country, full of happy, helpful, educated people. And a lot of that is due to the rule of the Social Democrats. However, the Socialists have been in power for a very long time -- seventy-nine of the last eighty-nine years, to be exact. And it's never good for a country to always have one party, one ideology, in power for too long, even if that country has created a veritable paradise, such as it can be in a country wherein winter brings 3:00pm darkness.

But back to why I hate the Swedes.... I suppose it's not really that I hate them, per se; it's more like I hate their party system. No, that's not really true either. What I really hate is that this Social Democrat, a Prime Minister who has contributed to one of the most progressive and human-rights-friendly societies in all of the world, can call a Moderate, something most politicians in our country strive to be, a "Rightist."

Can you imagine that? A Rightist? It's incredible. If we were to call any Moderate a Rightist, people from the somewhat conservative Senator John McCain to the mostly progressive Senator Barack Obama could be generally called a Rightist!

But that's the incredible culture of Europe. Europe has long since surpassed our progressive tendencies, and now we're at a point where every Western European country not named Britain has Progressive Conservatives and Ultra-Progressive Liberals. I find the whole idea breathtaking, especially considering the state of politics in our own country.

Now granted, the Socialists don't necessarily have the best ideas about everything. With Socialism comes an inherent load of bureaucracy. With the liberal tendency to initiate reforms right away comes the inevitable backlash from those who would prefer to keep things the way they are (usually, these are the rich and powerful, which explains even more about our country).

But why is it that Western Europe has left us behind in the first place? I mean, seriously, we're the frickin' greatest country in the world -- well, us and Ireland, but I say that purely as a homerist. The U.S. is an amazing place, it truly is; so why on earth would we have fallen behind those European bastards who, up until very recently, couldn't even get along with each other?

I've got a simple hypothesis: it's because all the people in each country look the same. Oh sure, there are minorities in every country -- Indian Subcontinentals in Ireland, Blacks in England and France, Muslims and Jews in Spain -- but for the most part, Europe is made up of a heckuva lot of same-looking people. Most I saw in Spain had brown eyes and black hair (usually in mullets, but that's beside the point); most in Sweden were blonde with blue eyes (duh); and show me an Irishman's extended family that doesn't have at least three freckled redheads, and I'll show you a family that's not really Irish.

My point is that we don't have that luxury here. It's all fine and dandy to take care of the poor when there aren't that many poor who don't look like you; in our country, though, it's a-whole-nother story. We fed off the disparity between peoples in this country for a very long time, from the slave trade through the race riots (which could almost be said to still be going on, since it hasn't even been two decades since the L.A. riots).

And it hasn't gotten better, only different. I've said before that Arabs are the Millennial Niggers (pardon my use of the word, but it's totally true). One could easily lump Latinos into the same boat, since they've become the scapegoats for illegal immigration problems in this country (bullshit if I've ever heard it; I know plenty of Irish citizens, some of whom are related to me, who're here illegally or have been illegals in the past). Where once upon a time the Jive-Ebonics street talk was the language of the bad ones, the language that all those dirty bastards from the ghetto used, the language that told you to keep your kids away, now there is Spanish and Arabic -- and it should come as no surprise that these are also the two most studied languages in American universities, because despite our populus' general fear of these strangers, we also have a weird fascination with them.

It all comes down to this, then: who are we going to help? Are we going to sit idly by while learning nothing from Hurricane Katrina, choosing instead to pump all our money into a region that will never, ever like us, no matter what we do (that is, unless we blow up Israel -- a proposition I am nowhere near advocating, though I do hate every single government Israel has ever had), or are we going to take care of the least fortunate in our country?

I don't mean to sound like an isolationist, of course. Isolationism almost killed this country's growing economy, and that was back in the days of the agrarian society. With world commerce being what it is, we really need to engage in fair trade with countries that respect human rights (I don't care if they are our biggest trade partner, China can still generally kiss my white ass). But before we start fixing other countries that are pretty much broken beyond repair, we need to fix ours before we go the same way.

As just a side addendum, does anyone else love the irony that our president and governing party are supposedly ruled by Christian values, yet they disregard Jesus' command to not worry about the speck in their brother's eye while they have a log in their own?

Maybe it's Colin Powell, to right what he's done wrong

Colin Powell, your table is ready.

For the last two years, I've been trying to convince my politically-minded friends that Colin Powell actually wasn't as bad as we thought he was. Sure, he's a Republican and a Conservative, but neither of these makes him inherently bad. Sure, he bungled the entire lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, but let's face it, he was working with the information passed to him by Donald "Oh Shit" Rumsfeld and the idiot neocons who make up the majority of the Bush government.

Now, the former Secretary of State, who, as anyone with any semblance of political IQ knows, quit his post in the Bush Cabinet because of the President's own idiocy, has once again gotten teed off at his old boss. See, Powell has now written a letter to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) opposing his military tribunal idea for the suspects recently sent from secret CIA prisons overseas to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

While the President is trying to convince his GOP buddies that his tribunals, which would redefine Article III of the Geneva Conventions, Powell is trying to convince them otherwise. Seriously. Read the letter: it's eloquent, well-thought-out, and well-reasoned.

Now, I'm not one who believes that military service is a prerequisite to serve as President of the United States. However, I do indeed believe that it is absolutely ludicrous to call oneself a "War President" when one has never actually served overseas at all, let alone in a war. That being the case, President Bush shows his absolute ignorance of war by pushing for these tribunals, and anyone supporting them I believe is downright treasonous. Yes, I'm making the Ann Coulter claim here, but for a good reason: there is nothing, nothing, that more contradicts the true fighting spirit of the United States than to disregard respected war veterans to further one's ridiculous ideas of how to keep this country safe.

Furthermore, does anyone out there in Blogland who watches good TV see the parallels between George W. Bush and Gaius Baltar on Battlestar Galactica? Seriously now, stay with me. Both Bush and Baltar are completely out of touch with their people. Neither listens to any real military advice, prefering to stay locked up alone. Neither is fully trusted by his people. And neither seems to know when to start a war and when to end it.

I've mentioned here before that this War on Terror has eerie parallels to Season 4 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as well. The only reason I say all of this is because television has already seen how these types of things play out, and while humanity always survives, there is no question that the devil gets his day of trial. I'm hoping upon hope that one of these days, President Bush gets his as well.

That's why we have no choice, true conservatives (none of this nocon bullshit anymore) and liberals alike: vote Democrat in 2006! I hate to say it, because the Democrats fall down on the job more often than not, but nothing, and I mean nothing will change if Republicans keep control of the Congress until 2008. We need change, and we need it now. Then, and only then, can we get rid of this neoconservative revolution, suppress the Christian Right (yes, those fuckers deserve to be suppressed...and repressed. Anyone who advocates for government-sponsored prayer in schools, government legislation prohibiting abortion, or Constitutional amendments banning gay marriage is not only the antithesis of Conservative; he or she ought to be shot. No, I don't mean that literally, but sometimes, I wish I did), and bring about a true era of change in this wonderful country we call home.

I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies

Sheldon Whitehouse is a Democrat, and Lincoln Chafee is a Republican. Strictly speaking, because I'm tired of what the incumbents in both houses of the Congress have done, I should be backing Mr. Whitehouse over Sen. Chafee. I'm not, but only by a hair; I think Whitehouse would probably make as good of a senator as Sen. Chafee.

But let's put aside for the moment that Lincoln Chafee, one of the few remaining truly conservative Republicans in the Senate, is consistently polling lower than Sheldon Whitehouse. No, let's instead see that this hotly-contested race, wherein two worthy candidates are going after a single spot, may not even happen.

I'm speaking, of course, about the current mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, Stephen Laffey. Mr. Laffey is, of course, a Bushophite, a Republican who, though not realizing it, is pissed off at Chafee for being too conservative.

In fact, I think the Laffey-Chafee contest is going to be as indicative of the state of the Republican Party as the Lamont-Liebermann was of the Democrats. You see, the Democratic Party is becoming increasingly controlled not by liberal Bush-haters, as many Republican Party hacks and Fox News associates might have us believe, but by an anti-war, anti-discrimination, anti-idiocy plurality (and even though I think Connecticut can do better than Ned Lamont, it can do far better than Joe Liebermann).

If the New Hampshire GOP decides to go with Mr. Laffey over Sen. Chafee, it will all be certain: Conservatism is all but dead in this country. Chafee is one of the few Roosevelt Republicans in existence today, and he's doing quite the good job at least attempting to defend the true nature of the Constitution rather than using it as guidelines like the Administration and its Congressional cronies do. Laffey, however, is a true Modern Republican, modeled less on traditional conservative values than traditional Puritanical values. It's pretty gross.

So I'd like to take this opportunity to wish Sen. Chafee the best of luck in the Rhode Island primary. If he doesn't win (and believe me, I think there's a good shot that he won't), I ask him to step quietly to the side and allow Mr. Laffey to run. Mr. Laffey will be summarily slaughtered by Mr. Whitehouse, but Sen. Chafee will probably sleep well with the knowledge that, at the very least, his seat isn't being filled by a total moron.

She moves in mysterious ways

Bob Dole must be rolling over in his grave.

Oh, right, he's not dead yet, just retired. My bad. No, but seriously, I remember a time when Republicans had a message. I remember when Newt Gingrich, as Speaker of the House, was a guy I could despise politically without despising personally. I remember when Bob Dole was the opposition nominee, not the retarded nominee. And I remember, most of all, when Republicans didn't just blindly support people who obviously hate most Americans.

But now, Sen. Elizabeth Dole is doing exactly that. I'll be honest: for years, I've liked Sen. Dole. Not loved, mind you; she's no Arlen Specter or Chuck Hagel. Yet Sen. Dole has been a stalwart Republican conservative in an age of flimsy Republican neoconservatives (and thus, as I always love saying, neoliberals). Why, then would she have said the following?

"[The new court appointees from the Bush administration show] that Karl Rove is on the ball and wants judges back on the front burner in the Senate."

In what part of the multiverse does a good conservative like Elizabeth Dole agree with a rabid neodouchebag like Rove? Rove is literally everything against which Republicans spent the first half of the 20th century railing. Rove believes in a centralized government; his leadership has helped increase the size of that centralized government. Rove believes (or, at the very least, pretends to believe) in amending the Constitution, the most sacred document in our land, the one that conservatives are supposed to revere more than life itself, the one most conservatives want to keep exactly as is (just ask Antonin Scalia, who, despite our general disagreement on what the Constitution means, has often impressed me with his judicial opinions -- that's right, Libs, y'all're just gonna have to get over the fact that Scalia isn't a bad judge, as far as strict Constitutionalists go. But we won't talk about Clarence Thomas). Rove believes in stomping on liberties, liberties conservatives are supposed to believe are as vital as air -- I mean, didn't we fight the Revolutionary War to increase our liberties, and wasn't the grand rally cry of the colonies, "Give me liberty, or give me death?"

The point, dear friends, is that once again, we've found yet another party sell-out in the Republican Party (to any of my conservative readers out there, please don't think that I'm unfairly singling out the GOP, since the Dems have their sell-outs, too. I do indeed take the Democrats to task when they sell out. The difference here is that Democrats and Republicans seem to sell out to the same group of people: the nutjob neoconservatives who think Ann Coulter is a serious -- and seriously good -- writer, who think that all the president does is right, who think that the Bible is seriously -- seriously -- more important to America than the Constitution, who think that invading Iraq, especially in light of what's going on in Syria, Iran, North Korea, Lebanon, and pretty much every African nation, was a good idea simply because it was rubber-stamped. I simply am going after the Republicans because whereas the Democrats have allowed the neoconservatives to dominate the political debate in Washington, Republicans have allowed these anti-American bastards to dominate their own fucking party). Madame Senator, with all the utmost respect due to your position, for the love of Christ, cut the bullshit. If you're going to be a party hack, can't you do it as a chairwoman or something like that? That's where we sent Uncle Howie, who, though right on a lot of issues, is still akin to Josh Malina's character on The West Wing -- a good and loyal Democrat, but not necessarily as maverick a guy as it takes to be "The Guy."

Look, Sen. Dole could've been a legitimate presidential candidate, since the race is wide open on both sides. But once again, it's looking more and more like the Republicans are going to sell out to the Religious Right and the neoconservative movement. It's a shame, because once upon a time, Republicans saved this country from the doldrums of the 19th Century; too bad they fucked up the 20th so badly.