America the Predator

America is a predator nation--an empire that lives off the lifeblood of other nations and also off the lifeblood of its own working people. As such, the same fate awaits our predatory empire as befell the other great predatory empires in history, including the British, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch and, of course of course, the Romans.

America has seven percent of the world's population and consumes twenty-five percent of the world's energy. For what purpose? In order to advance the cause of freedom and civilization throughout the rest of the world? Nah, mostly in order to buy cheap crap at the mall and drive giant vehicles and insure that our bright shiny objects are more expensive than the bright shiny objects owned by the Jones's.

We have exported our manufacturing jobs in order to minimize our labor costs. Any jobs that remain that require actual labor (in construction or meat processing for instance) we reserve for illegal aliens, again for the purpose of minimizing labor costs (low wages, no benefits). Working people in America the Predatory make less and less when compared to what our working-class parents made, and the gap between rich and poor widens every year. But no need to worry about that, because we must all unite around the three G's (god, guns, and gays).

Better to listen to some idiot demagogue somewhere (Beck, Palin, et al) than think too much about how our horizon of economic opportunity shrinks. Better to worry about the lifestyles of others than to fight against the plutocrats who own us heart, soul, and ass.

We are in thrall to an oligarchy that uses our petty differences to separate us from one another and thereby control and oppress us. We are slaves and whores to Wall Street and bankers and credit card companies and multinationals everywhere. We foul our own nests while the rich live in luxury and ease.

The Romans had a term for this, "panem et circenses". Bread and circuses. Give the people fast food and cheap entertainment and they'll leave the power-brokers alone to rape and pillage and enslave the rest of the world. We get reality television and they get wealth and power and sufficient private security to live the rest of their lives in a brilliant bubble of bling.

What a shallow, disappointing people we are. What fools and sycophants. We deserve everything that's about to happen to us, in particular the coming Republican takeover of congress. If you love the Great Recession--and hate that socialistic, secret-Muslim terrorist Obama (by the way that's a contradiction in terms, but never let logic interfere with prejudice, because then it's no longer prejudice)--then you're really gonna love what Boehner and Wall Street have in store for us (as Rushbo would say 'bend over and grab 'em').

The Republicans' War on America

Why do Republicans hate America? Mostly because they hate themselves and they project this hate outward onto their communities, their fellow citizens, and their country. It's Psychology 101, but psychodynamic simplicity does nothing to lessen the pure evil of its effect on our nation.

Right-wing politicians are busy fomenting hatred of Muslims by protesting the building of a Muslim community center in an old Burlington Coat Factory building in lower Manhattan. These politicians know fully well that this center is neither a mosque nor is it located on the "hallowed ground" of the World Trade Center. They also understand that televised scenes of Americans protesting Islam play right into the hands of the Muslim extremists who really do want to destroy America. So why do it?

Because it gives them short-term power and an opportunity to benefit in the midterm and 2012 elections. More importantly, they have learned through the years that there is not much downside in American politics to intolerance and hate.

The Republicans alienated black people through their "southern strategy" but built a massive coalition of mean white people that gave them electoral dominance for a generation. They are currently alienating Hispanics through race-baiting and xenophobia. Given that Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group why would they possibly want to do this (especially considering that many Hispanics are quite conservative on social issues like abortion and so would ordinarily be a natural constituency for Republicans)?

Because hate motivates voters more than "hope" or "change". Also, if they succeed in their efforts to overturn the 14th amendment they can dilute the demographic time bomb that awaits them.

Republicans are working feverishly to undermine and thereby destroy the fiscal health of America. Every time they have had power they have cut taxes on the rich while also exploding the defense budget. This has the effect of driving up the deficit and locking future generations into idiotic foreign military adventures. It distributes income upward to the rich while feeding the military-industrial complex.

Currently for instance the Republicans are fighting to the death over not letting the Bush tax cuts (that went almost exclusively to the top five percent of earners) expire as intended (by, among others, the Republican leadership when these tax cuts were enacted). Meanwhile they excoriate Democrats for any domestic spending that might stimulate the economy and provide jobs to working people because it might increase the deficit. This is utterly dissonant--how can they argue in one instance for fiscal irresponsibility while arguing in the other for fiscal restraint?

Easy--as Dick Cheney famously remarked "deficits don't matter". Republicans have learned that "fiscal discipline" is just a phrase to throw at voters and that acting on this legislatively is a no-win proposition. Let Democrats be the party of fiscal responsibility, Republicans just want to get elected so they can use their power to further damage America and then use that damage to campaign against profligate gay-marrying minority-loving tree-hugging SUV-hating Democrats. It's pettiness and xenophobia that win the day, not foresight and moral values.

Our nation is in ruins. Our infrastructure is crumbling but we spend trillions making war in other countries. Bankers have Americans strung out on more debt than can ever be paid off--we are serfs to Wall Street. We have polluted our planet and are now in the midst of catastrophic (and irreversible) climate change. Working people now try not to look past the next day, while the rich (the true constituency of the Republican party) complain about how hard it is to get good help.

This is exactly in keeping when the plan the Republicans put into place at the beginning of the Reagan era, and which they keep to faithfully to the present day. Ultimately though it is ourselves we have to blame for letting them do this to us.

The hatred of Republicans for America is pathological, but so is our enabling of it. We're like a codependent spouse who can't bring herself to leave a vicious, oppressive asshole. After all, some times he says he loves us, right?

America Takes A Massive Dump

In the Gulf of Mexico that is. The oil currently spilling from a deep water well into the Gulf is a massive disaster--gigantic and profound, difficult to get one's head around. The main thing each of us needs to remember and understand though is that each gallon, each barrel, each poisoned fish or shrimp or other form of aquatic life, belongs to us--to each and everyone of us.

Sure we can blame BP, and the deregulatory frenzy of three decades of Reaganism (I predict that Ronald Reagan will go down as the worst president in history--worse even than GW Bush-- the anti-FDR.), and these were certainly factors, but the main factor rests in the heart and the hearth of each and every American: our insatiable desire for cheap energy. Sure, our politicians have been corrupted by the massive amounts of money that the energy industry has poured into Washington and state houses from Maine to California, but all the politicians were doing was enabling the addiction of the American people to cheap oil-based crap. Big cars? Gotta have 'em. McMansions? How could one do without all that closet space? Cheap food and plastic stuff and beauty products and worthless mall stuff? Absolutely essential to the lifestyles of the superficial and financially incontinent (i.e. to all Americans).

British Petroleum can and must be held accountable for the profound sin against the earth and all its people that it has committed. But such accountability does nothing to expiate the sin that stains the soul of each and every American. We are the ones who enabled these rat bastards. And this latest outrage is merely one of many, and mainly distinguished by the fact that it succeeded in getting our attention. The fouling of our planet has been going on for a long time and with our consent (if also with our willful blindness). We are small evil people who are only beginning to pay for our perfidy.

Even if the current oil disaster could be cleaned up (and it cannot be) our earth has already been ruined for future generations. Our love of petroleum has fundamentally changed our environment and our climate and it's too late to turn it around , though we might be able to affect it a bit at the margins if we were willing to alter our lifestyles, which we are not.

We had an opportunity to change, back in the '70s. After the oil shocks of that decade the president (Jimmy Carter, who may have lacked the charisma of Reagan but at least understood policy) and the congress actually invested in alternative energy in order to try and wean us off oil, Middle East oil in particular. The American people fixed all that though--we elected Reagan and voted for less regulation and cheaper stuff and the right to put ourselves in thrall to banks--we gave control of our economy and our politics to the oligarchs ('business') who understand how to get things done. And boy did they get some stuff done.

Our planet has been ruined, irrevocably so. Those of us alive today may not notice it so much, but two or three generations from now I promise you our grandchildren will look back on those who are alive today with dismay and disgust. Those to whom we will hand over control of the earth will never have the opportunity to live the cheap and easy lifestyles we live today. They will know the truth about us that we refuse to admit to ourselves: we are pigs, selfish stupid pigs, snouts deep in the trough of worthless material ephemera.

And what of the Tea Party? Where are the tea baggers now? All across the Gulf States of the South (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas), land of the Tea Bagger, home of the extreme right, where are the cries of "get out of our bidness, big guv'ment!"? No, all one hears from the Republican governors who run the South is "we need mo' o' that big guv'ment! Help us clean this mess up--we didn't have nothin' to do with it!"

What utter and complete hypocrites. What selfish liars. What perfect Americans.

Only The Left Can Solve The Problem Of Illegal Immigration

When it comes to the illegal immigration conundrum, the right and the left dance around one another in a celebration of self-fulfilled prophecy. Both sides huff and puff and bloviate and protest but at base each side understands the deal they have made with the devil (i.e. each other), because of which deal nothing substantive will change regarding illegal immigration because ultimately neither side wants it to.

The right loves to demagogue the immigration issue because it stirs up its racist xenophobic base. Conservative politicians are full throated in their calls for a "secure" border (i.e., a Berlin wall across the bottom of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California). But the plutocrats who finance the right need a porous border. They want nothing so much as plenty of continued illegal immigration because it gives them cheap labor for their meat factories and construction sites and restaurants and mansions. The right wing elite can never admit this to is base, but it doesn't really matter because the base is too full of fear to really care--it just wants to be able to vent its anti-immigrant hate in as public a manner as possible.

The left does not want any substantive action on illegal immigration because it cares about human rights. If the border were truly closed or laws passed and enforced limiting the ability of illegal immigrants to maintain themselves in this country then millions of poor people throughout the Americas would lose their one chance of making their lives better by moving north.

Both sides know that if you really wanted to stop illegal immigration you could do it with one single action: criminalize not just illegal aliens but, more importantly, those who hire them. Make it absolutely illegal to hire someone who is not in the country legally, and enforce it with substantial criminal and civil penalties (rather than the tiny fines and lax enforcement that exist currently). Then all the work currently being done by illegals would soon dry up and with it the impetus to cross into the country without permission.

But of course this will never happen because big business needs cheap labor in order to continue the obscene profits that the plutocrats rely on to fund their lavish lifestyles. The politicos who run the Republican Party and enable the tea baggers need the racist resentment the issue stirs up in order to keep the old mean white people showing up at the polls. If there's going to be any real movement on the issue it's going to have to come from the left.

As progressives I don't think that it requires that we give up our committment to human rights to also acknowledge that we have to do something substantive about illegal immigration (and something that involves more than amnesty but which is also about the rule of law). Working American pay a price for illegal immigration, a price that is increasingly difficult for us to bear and for which progressives must acknowledge some responsibility.

A vast pool of easily accessible illegal (which means, among other things, without legal protection) labor works to suppress wages and benefits for all of us. Of course this is most acute for unskilled workers, but the overall effect of illegal wages puts a downward pressure on wages for the entire economy, including wages for the skilled. Enabling the plutocrats to exploit the status of illegal immigrants for the purpose of lining their own pockets--to siphon off wages that would go to working Americans so that the corporate fat cats can vacation in the south of France every year--insults and degrades the ability of working people everywhere to make a better life for ourselves. Illegals are exploited, and working Americans are oppressed: it's a lose-lose situation for everyone but Wall Street.

The USA has long acted as a safety valve for Central and South America--in particular for Mexico. I'm not so sure anymore that we should or could continue to do this. Mexico is approaching failed state status. It is increasingly a nation divided between oligarchs and everyone else. A significant portion of the nation's economy (a fourth or more according to some estimates) consists of remittances sent back to Mexico from family members living in our country illegally--money that props up Mexico but will never be spent in the USA (where our own economy needs it). The government of Mexico is corrupt and incompetent to the core. The military and police have been bought by the drug cartels. Mexico is collapsing in on itself and my personal prediction is that there will be a revolution there within the next ten years.

By allowing the poor and dispossessed of Mexico to pour across our border and work here illegally we allow the corrupt oligarchs of Mexico to escape the consequences of their own behavior. We delay the inevitable--social revolution--and we do so at enormous cost to our own working people: we suppress our own wages; we stoke the fires of racism and xenophobia; and we see our civil liberties eroded as they have recently been in Arizona.

The wingnuts of the right will never initiate true immigration reform--they prefer rage and racism to solutions. It is up to the left to push for reform that includes sensitivity to human rights but which also acknowledges that we can no longer allow those who hire illegal immigrants to go unpunished. We must push for economic development in Latin America that actually helps workers rather than just enriches oligarchs--and we must prepare for the coming revolution in Mexico. We must push back against the plutocrats and demagogues who pleasure themselves with hatred for "the other" while caring not one whit for the working people in their own community.

And we must do all of these things immediately, because the longer we wait the greater the costs and the consequences of the devil's deal between the left and the right.

What's With All These Immigrants?

Baby Fatt's scared. Bad scared.

I live in New Mexico (land of mi chante), and I'm frightened about our unsecured border--the one we have with Arizona. What's with these Aryans from Arizona (Aryanzonans?)? Me skerred.

Have you ever been to Arizona? I have, and it sucks. The "Mexican food" is terrible (by the way, if the cops are going to start interrogating Mexicans are the food inspectors going to start showing up in Mexican restaurants and fining the cooks for authenticity?). The climate--don't believe what they all tell you about "but it's a dry heat"--is horrible for human beans. And the culture, as exemplified by Phoenix and personified by Sheriff Joe Arpaio, reminds one of a desert Munich circa 1932.

Arizona has passed a terribly racist, terribly xenophobic law--that allows police to question citizenship--out of ethnic resentment and class rage. I understand that the gringos of Arizona are bereft, alienated, and angry at the powers that be. But their problem is not immigrants--illegal, legal, or extraterrestrial--it is the America that has quashed their dreams in service to Wall Street, the nation that stagnated their wages while the elite get tax cuts. Arizonans should not be angry at immigrants, they should be angry at the oligarchy that has destroyed their aspirations and shackled them to a lifetime of service to various credit card companies.

Meanwhile the Aryans of Arizona have given their Gestapo the power to stop anyone who does not look quite 'merican enuff and ask them to show their papers. "Show me your papers"--isn't that the one line that unites every movie about the Nazis ever made? The people of Arizona are proud of this? WTF?!

New Mexico is mostly Hispanic. Hispanics are about 45 percent of the population; gringos about 41 percent; and the rest Native American, African American, and Asian (in that order). In other words, people who are less than pale are the minority in my beloved state--one of the reasons this is such a great place to live. And the Aryans of Arizona give their police the power to question mi compadres regarding their citizenship?

Many Hispanics from New Mexico have been here since the 16th century--a couple of hundred years before there even was a USA. And the Native Americans have been here for innumerable eons. The oldest continuously settled community in the USA is the Pueblo at Acoma--it's been here for nearly a thousand years. And now some "immigrant" from New Jersey or California thinks that the Pueblo di Mi Chante should be required to show their papers in Arizona? Gimme a break!

Time to just say "no!" to Arizona. Enough of these racist dolts and their shallow pseudo-patriotic worldview (by the way, where are you Tea Party--one would think that when a government oversteps its power the way the State of Arizona has the Tea Party would be the first to arise in libertarian rage and say not only 'no' but 'hell no'?). Time to give these idiots a taste of their own medicine.

Not only should we all boycott Arizona and any products made in Arizona, we should also confront any Arizonans seen outside their little fascist wonderland with the taunt "show me your papers!". Let the gringos of Arizona feel what it's like to have their citizenship and patriotism questioned--just because someone has a white face does not mean he or she is 'merican--let's examine their papers closely first. A failure of vigilance means that the terrorists win. I don't want that, do you?

I thought so. 'nuff of them Aryanzonans.

Tea Bagged!

Now the worm turns. Soon we'll see just how much government the tea baggers can really live without. The Bush economy is doing everything the extreme right could never get done at the ballot box. Good luck to all of us.

All over the country state and municipal governments are cutting budgets. Here in the land of mi chante schools are being closed (and class size increased in the ones remaining open), public employees are being laid off or involuntarily furloughed, services are being cut. The state is proposing closing half of its highway rest stops (tea baggers don't need no restrooms) and it will be fun seeing how tea baggers enjoy waiting in line all day to get a driver's license (or bass fishing license!) or to pay a traffic ticket. This is just the beginning, of course--if you want to see tea bag paradise just go to California, which may soon rival Mississippi in terms of standard of living as government there continues to shrink.

One suspects that the tea baggers are just as reliant upon government as the rest of us. After all, they transport themselves to their little rallies on taxpayer subsidized roadways; many of them are retired (or looking forward to retirement) and receive Social Security (i.e., the most socialized--and effective--government program in the history of humanity) and Medicare (best poster ever from a tea bag rally: 'Keep the government out of my Medicare!'); public employees pick up their trash and clean their streets, etc. So whence do they think comes the infrastructure that makes our economy possible--fat cats on Wall Street? Not, it's the government, acting in service to citizen-taxpayers, that's providing the services responsible for our quality of life.

If tea baggers had either courage or intellectual honesty they would eschew all government in order to live a life that is pure and unadulterated by the taint of big guv'ment. They would live far from any taxpayer subsidized municipality; return any government benefits (just shred those Social Security checks!); and bury all their own trash (who needs those taxpayer funded trash dumps?).

But of course they have neither courage nor honesty. All they have--the essence of their political being--is resentment: an inchoate rage in reaction to a world that is changing all around them (black people get to president? gay people get to marry? WTF?!) and over which they feel they have absolutely no control (it is only on this last point that they are correct). The true target of their anger is not the government--that's a mere surrogate--it's demographics. They cannot accept that their pale skins and old timey white bread views no longer constitute the majority in the diverse nation that the USA has become.

Get used to it tea baggers. It only gets worse from here. You are a shrinking minority and in a generation you'll be to the twenty first century what the Whigs were to the nineteenth. Meanwhile, beware answered prayers, and enjoy your time at the motor vehicle office.

Rielle Hunter Is The Perfect Woman

Have you read the interview with Rielle Hunter in GQ? Wow, she's like the perfect babe. First of all, she did the whole interview with no pants on (at least that's how it appears in the pictures). Secondly, she explicates her philosophy of male-female relationships, which is essentially that a woman's role is to put the man front and center, always defer to him, always walk two steps behind him, cool stuff like that. For instance, when asked about why she didn't put more pressure on John Edwards to tell the truth about their relationship, she said she wanted to be sensitive to his needs and not force him to do something he really did not want to do out of fear of possibly "emasculating" him (her word). What a sweetie!

Actually, what a bunch of bunkum. Rielle Hunter is an annoying fem-bot, a willing Stepford wife whose philosophy would return adult relationships to the Victorian era. She tries to dress up her retrograde worldview in all sort of new-age hooey but at its essence it's clear what sort of relationship she's been searching for all her life: she wants to be taken care of; she wants to have someone come into her life and make everything peachy-keen and, you know, less hard. She's willing to subvert her own identity in order to be personal assistant-concubine to the stars--she's willing to be something less than herself in exchange for a life of luxury and ease. Beware answered prayers, Rielle, at some point you may grow tired of your golden cage.

In her own wheezy breezy way the air-headed (great name for a band, BTW) Miss Hunter gives voice to what is an inchoate longing across great swaths of our society. What most people are seeking today--in relationships, in careers, in life--is to be taken care of, to be rescued from their misery and swept away to Happy Land. They chase a chimera, a will-o'-the wisp--they worship a popcorn fart--all the while wondering as to the cause of their unhappiness.

Let's be frank: life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (Hobbes). The modern era may have provided us with a bit more material comfort--and lengthened our lifespan by a small increment or two--but overall things are not much different than they were in Hobbes' time. Indeed, in some ways they may even be worse: people fly planes into buildings (on purpose!); shoot others at random; lie, cheat, and steal; and just generally do mean and evil things to each other, often for no discernible reason. And of course there's always nature, with a hurricane or tornado or other manifestation of global climate change, to remind us just how insignificant we really are in the big scheme of things. If we survive all of that we get to watch ourselves age into oblivion while fighting--with all due pain and suffering--various physical maladies.

In other words, our lives are circumscribed by brutality and chaos, so it's no wonder most people want to be rescued, but in seeking rescue they waste the only chance they have at real meaning: grace, relationships, and love. Out of a desperate desire for redemption at any cost too many people are willing to obliterate the only identity they will ever have. Rielle Hunter may very well be the poster child for the deluded, misguided, incompetent narcissism of the modern age.

Baby Fatt's been around the block a time or two (understatement), and let me tell you the wonderful world of middle-aged dating is nothing if not harsh. People today don't have baggage they have cargo containers full of bitter exes, sullen children, crappy credit scores, and a lifetime of PTSD issues. And whether you're gay or straight, seeking women or men (or whatever--once again, no one cares), most folks are seeking the same, sick sort of redemption through interpersonal relationships as Miss Hunter (from which behavior comes even more bitter exes, sullen children, crappy credit scores, and PTSD issues).

Thing is, even in this crazy "mixed up muddled up shook up world" (Kinks) there are still people who are grounded in reality and who want relationships that are mutually affirmative, positive, and constructive. Lots of folks are looking for someone who wants to help pull the wagon, not just someone who just wants to ride in the back eating bonbons--they seek a helpmate, companion, fuck buddy, and friend (who says the romance is dead?). You can find these people, you really can (I have--the exquisite Lady Eleanor, La Reyna De La Nuevo Mexico) you just have to let go of certain delusions of romance. You have to quit chasing clouds and rainbows. You have to be willing to be co-equal, which means asserting yourself and also allowing the other person to assert him or herself all the while being civil and respectful. Tough stuff, admittedly, but consider the alternative (which is death by loneliness).

With regard to emasculation, it has been my pleasure and opportunity to experience a lifetime of women--from two tough, strong grandmothers, to my mother and my sister, to serial paramours--who never had any compunction about "emasculating" me when it came to telling me the truth, and I am the better man for it. It's absurd for Rielle Hunter to think that she has to subsume her identity to the ego of her well-coifed out of a boyfriend just to find happiness. Both she and he could use a "heaping helping" (Henning, Flatt, Scruggs) of unvarnished truth.

John Edwards is a heel and a cad. He is the exact opposite of a gentleman, most especially he is the absolute antithesis of a "fine Southern gentleman" (the distinctive characteristic of which is a respect for women). I know progressives who supported him because at the time he seemed to speak with passion about the lives of working people and he had a compelling life story. It was all just a sham, a well-scripted commercial for an empty-suited pompadoured boor. He and Rielle Hunter seem made for each other--two desperate empty people struggling to scrape up a soul between them. I pity them, and I feel for their children.

What an ugly, thoroughly modern, cautionary tale. Put your pants back on, Rielle.

Want Me To De-Friend You From Facebook? Just Post A Bible Verse

If you want me to de-friend you from Facebook, it's quite easy: just post a bible verse. I'll put up with a lot of crap from a lot of different folks--some of whom I have not seen since high school--but I'm not taking any crap in the form of a bible verse.

One of the interesting things about Facebook is that it allows one to connect with so many people from the past: high school and college chums, former work colleagues, former girlfriends, lots of people one never imagined one would have contact with again. I do enjoy it for that reason. Sometimes, however, it can all become a bit too tedious.

I don't mind the videos of cute kittens (those are kind of nice) or links to funny bits in the news (love those), or the ongoing updates about someone's vacation or how someone did on his favorite video game last night. Hell, even the occasional anti-Obama rant I can take (though there's a limit with that too). But bible verses? Give me a break.

It's not that I lack familiarity with bible verses--far from it. I grew up in Abilene Texas, sometimes referred to as "the buckle on the bible belt. Abilene is a virtual theocracy in which three primary religious groups are constantly at war over the issue of eternal salvation: the Southern Baptists, the Church or Christ believers (not the liberal version of the Church of Christ, but the sect that came out of the Restoration Movement associated with Alexander Campbell, or those we refer to in Abilene as 'Campbellites'--I realize this this is an obscure theological point to most but believe me, in Abilene everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about), and the Methodists. The Methodists counted for much less than the Baptists or the Campbellites because the Methodists were something less than fundamentalists, and in religious wars it is always the fundamentalists who win, and so the real battle was between the Baptists and the Campbellites.

Both the Baptists and the Campbellites each believed that everyone but their own group was headed straight to hell. Families like mine, which were Methodists, were believed to be headed for the hottest most uncomfortable part of hell because Methodists had the temerity to believe that it was possible to drink or dance and still make it to heaven (not that drinking and dancing were good things--heavens no!--just that it might be possible to do them and not be absolutely precluded from heaven). And so growing up in Abilene one was constantly bombarded by proselytizing by the competing fundamentalist factions.

Suffice it to say that I ran from Abilene as one might escape a burning building the day after I graduated from high school. I moved to Austin to go to college and never looked back. Now, on Facebook, some of the old gang from Abilene have reached out to me and I've included them on my friends list. So for, so good, but believe me brothers and sisters once you post that first bible verse I'm done with you.

Maybe it's PTSD. Maybe it's that I've spent my adult life making sure to associate only with progressive, free-thinking, non-cultish, life affirming people who do not take as a holy cause making others feel badly about about themselves because of lack of some idiotic religious belief (which is to say: pretty much any religious belief).

Nietzsche was right about Christianity: it is nihilism par excellence. It denigrates life as it is--the only life there is--and values instead an imagined life that will never be. Christianity arises out of weakness and fear--fear of living life and facing up to reality. Out of fear Christians posit an imaginary eternity ruled over by Space Jesus in order to cure their anxiety about the present.

Christians then use their imagined eternity with Space Jesus to gloat and raise themselves above those of us who live in the here and now (what Republicans refer to derisively as 'the reality-based community'). The truth is christians are just sad--sad and boring.

So if you believe in Space Jesus please keep your sad old boring faith to yourself. I don't have the time to deal with your pitiable, crippled spirituality. Leave me alone with that shit.

Death to Daylight Saving Time--And Why The Tea Party Sucks

There are few modern cultural phenomena that are as completely useless, pernicious, ineffective, and yet resistant to change as daylight saving time. It makes no sense whatsoever. It disrupts sleep cycles (leading, or so the medical data suggest, to increased rates of heart attacks and suicides); it causes enormous personal disruption--at work and at home--while people try to adjust to it; and it brings no real positive advantage to anyone (or at least almost anyone). So why does it persist.

Easy: because the Chamber of Commerce wants it to. Business believes that the more daylight people have after work the more likely they are to go out and buy useless crap. This may or may not be true--the data are contradictory on this point--but what is true is that any extra money made by businesses is not nearly sufficient enough to outweigh all the negative costs associated with DST. It makes no difference how unhappy DST makes the public, so long as the business community believes it to be advantageous to its profit margin, it ain't goin' nowhere.

This speaks once again to the utter speciousness--the facile shallow understanding of all things political--of the so-called "Tea Party". If the tea baggers really wanted to rally the populace around an issue that would crystallize public outrage and establish a political base across a great swath of Americans, it would use an issue like DST to organize. Rather, of what does the tea baggers' platform consist? A general hatred of all forms of government, always protested vigorously after, of course getting to the tea bag rally using the publicly financed infrastructure (roads, bridges) graciously provided by the taxpayers, and after duly checking one's bank account to make sure the Social Security check has been deposited on time and automatically by those mindless public employees tea baggers so love to hate.

Meanwhile, the tea baggers allow themselves to be punked and punked again by big business and the Republican party. If tea baggers really had the courage of their so-called convictions they would eschew all forms of government (for instance, they would walk everywhere and send back those socialist Social Security checks or Medicare benefits). As it is they will instead continue to allow themselves to be tools of the oligarchy that runs this country--that has always run this country and that always will run this country so long as citizens allow manufactured outrage over sundry social issues or big guv'ment to split them from one another and from facing the things that really do ruin our quality of life. Things like daylight saving time.

God I hate daylight saving time.

Dennis Kucinich--Follow Him At Your Peril

Dennis Kucinich hates working people. Dennis Kucinich cares about political and ideological purity as defined by Dennis Kucinich. He talks a good game, but when it comes to an opportunity to actually affect the lives of millions upon millions of working people for the better, well, Dennis Kucinich is more concerned about what is pure and perfect and correct than with what is practical and doable. How dare you Dennis Kucinich. For the good of humankind get together with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and just go away.

Dennis Kucinich has no conscience and is just another old time pol trying to get on TV. While the Democrats of Congress are working diligently toward compromise on healthcare reform--something akin to sausage-making--demagogues like Dennis Kucinich use faux resistance to the political system (imagine that politicians make deals with various constituencies and interest groups in order to produce legislation--oh the horror, the horror!) to assert that somehow the system is corrupt (no kidding) and that the only one who could lead us out of this terrible morass would be... well ... Dennis Kucinich.

With regard to healthcare reform, Dennis Kucinich has now stated publicly (after inquiring about the location of the camera) that he will oppose any version of a healthcare reform bill that does not meet his own standards of acceptability. Hell, I oppose, on political and philosophical grounds, any version of healthcare reform but my own (by the way, I cannot understand why the American people are not clamoring, shouting from the rooftops, 'but Baby Fatt what do you think about how we should solve this problem? Please, please lead us; please tell everyone about the public option. Also, where's the keg?'). Once again, the American people have let me down.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, without healthcare reform another forty five thousand people will die this year for lack of health insurance (the stain of each of their souls poisons the being of each and every person who has ever voted for a Republican). But Dennis Kucinich holds out for perfection--perfection and face time.

No one cares Dennis. Go away. Take Ralph Nader with you.

Rum, Buggery, and Eric Massa

"The real traditions of the British Navy are rum, buggery and the lash."

--Winston Churchill

Nothing's been quite so entertaining of late than the spectacle of Eric Massa, recently resigned congressman from New York, trying to run away from his pitiably repressed sexuality. Massa, an apparent serial groper of unwilling men, has been all over cable television detailing his long history "in the navy" and how normal it is for "a salty old sailor" to get drunk and find a guy to grope. But of course, as he continues to insist, this does not mean that he's gay--nothing like that. He just a prankster, a jokester, a fun guy. Come on America, where's your sense of humor?

Well, Eric, first of all, when you grope someone who doesn't want to be groped, the legal term for that is sexual harassment (and if you're not sure whether or not the other person wants to be groped, you really should ask first). Secondly, if the target of all your groping is your same gender, then you're gay--not that there's anything wrong with that, but wake up and smell the poppers.

Also, quit blaming the Navy. Poor Navy: just as those folks finally start to live down a Village People song, Mr. Massa has to go on Glenn Beck and Larry King and explain how the Navy is really one big naked oiled-up sweaty tickle party. With lots of wrestlin' and drinking and manly men doing manly things to each other and... well... you get the idea. Leave the Navy out of it, Eric, you're just a hideously, sadly oppressed jerk (off) idiot who wouldn't know "insight" if you sat on it.

Of course one really has to feel sorry of Massa's family. Apparently he's happily married and with kids. Wow, that's gonna make for some awkward times on the old playground--"how many men did your daddy tickle nekkid this week, huh?"

But what really fascinates me is that fact that Massa is a Democrat. Usually these repressed gay homophobes with plushly appointed closets who love to get naked with other men are Republicans. Republicans hate gay people, so if you're gay and love Jesus but don't believe in government you have to make a deal with the devil and deny yourself to yourself in order to get to congress. The nice thing (one of many) about being a liberal Democrat is that we love the gays, and if you come out of the closet you might even get more votes. Why go to all the trouble of being liberal politically but in the closet sexually? It just doesn't get any more weird than that. Weird and sad.

How well, one suspects we've only seen the beginning of Mr. Massa--the camera loves him too much

Mr. Mellencamp Goes To Washington?

So John Mellencamp is considering a run for US Senate--you gotta be kiddin' me, right? Actually I don't care much either way--he certainly could not be any worse than any of the other idiots Indiana has sent to Washington, like Dan Quayle or the empty-suited Evan Bayh. Also, I hail from the state that gifted George Bush to the nation so it's hard for me to criticize (and if you liked George Bush you're really gonna love Rick Perry--coming soon to a White House near you). But let's be clear about one thing: John Mellencamp is a punk.

I remember back in the day when he first started coming out with records. At that time he went by "Li'l Johnny Cougar" or some such non-sense, and I guess he had some minor hits but nothing much to speak of. Then along about 1982 he came out with his first hit album and it was then that I got to observe his punk attitude in full flower.

That was when I was working the graveyard shift at a mental hospital in Austin. After about midnight there was nothing on television except the local broadcast of the PTL Club (with which I soon became quite obsessed). For a while however CBS ran a late night news show called (best I can recall--it's been nearly 30 years and many brain cells ago) "Nightwatch". One night on Nightwatch Li'l Johnny Cougar stopped by for an interview. The interviewer (once again to the best of my recollection) was a really savvy woman journalist named Felicia Jeter.

The interview started well enough, with L'il Johnny Cougar talking about the recent birth of his daughter and how proud he was of her and how he wanted everything in his career to honor his family and his children. Then they showed some of his recent music video "It Hurts So Good". The video showed hot babes in bondage gear dancing around with make-up bruises and lip syncing "It hurts so good."

Li'l Johnny Cougar was understandably proud and puffed himself up like a little toad when showing off his video. Ms. Jeter then asked the question any thinking person watching wanted asked (this was back in the day when journalists still asked thoughtful questions), which went along the lines of: you just talked about how much you honor women, how can you square that with a music video that shows women as sex objects who have been beaten and abused?

Well, Li'l Johnny Cougar didn't like that one bit. He stuck out his lower lip and hemmed and hawed and tried to say that he was sure he didn't know what she was talking about. Ms. Jeter followed up with: would you want your daughter--whom you honor so much--to be portrayed like the women you have portrayed in this video?

Li'l Johnny Cougar got mad! Real mad! He looked off stage and yelled at some personal assistant or something and then stood up and ripped off his mike and stormed away. It was sweet.

Remember, this was back in the day--at the very beginning of the dark age of Reaganism from which we have yet to fully emerge back into the sunlight--when feminism was not a term of derision and a smart journalist (remember what those were?) could call out some wannabe pop idol's idiot misogyny on national television. It was sweet, real sweet, and a nice look into Li'l Johnny Cougar's shallow thought-bereft soul.

Li'l Johnny dropped the "Cougar" from his name and went on to produce multiple albums of vapid "heartland rock". "Heartland rock" means singing paeans to small towns and old cars and Dairy Queen waitresses--stupid shit like that. He sold plenty of albums and is now probably the richest guy in Indiana (nothing like being richer than god to burnish your working class credentials--just ask that other mass marketer faux populism Bruce 'Stumpy' Springsteen).

Of course he also made a name through his efforts to help save family farms through a bunch of geezer Farm Aid concerts. He teamed up with Willie Nelson and some other craggy old white guys to put on little shows and rail against all the terrible things that were happening to farmers.

Let's be frank: the only farmer Willie Nelson or John Mellencamp ever helped was a pot farmer. What happened to Farm Aid? Were family farms really saved due to the actions of some old fart multi-millionaire entertainers? Nah. Family farms are being lost to industrial agriculture for the same reasons that family stores were lost to Walmart or, in the previous century, dry goods stores were lost to the Sears catalogue--economies of scale. But there are still plenty of farmers who make good money because they're smart businessmen and they know better than to get all strung out on credit to the bank just for sake of a new tractor (yes, Baby Fatt is also an expert in agriculture, being the proud owner of two wheat farms, and if you've every considered being a wheat farmer make me a deal because I'd love to be shed of them).

Anyway the message here is that the people of Indiana can elect whomever they want to be senator. If electing Li'l Johnny Cougar Mellencamp-Springsteet will keep the seat in the Democratic column, then so much the better. Just never be deluded into thinking that he's anything but a shallow, smarmy, self-important little oaf who mistakes a massive bank account for wisdom.

But I Thought Mel Gibson Was Dead

Or maybe it was just that he's been dead to me for so long, because it turns out he's still alive and just made another movie. What a waste of space Mel turned out to be. He could go off tomorrow and make the most beautifully realized perfect movie possible and I still wouldn't pay fifteen cents to see it. He's an ugly anti-Semitic piece of trash and deserves nothing less than to have all decent human beings turn their backs on him and refuse to patronize any undertaking to which he attaches himself.

I remember the first time I saw a Mel Gibson movie. It was the early eighties--the beginning of our nation's long descent into the dark abyss of Reaganism--and Road Warrior made its way to Austin. My buddy Vance Langley and I went to see it at the Varsity. That was back in the day when you could still smoke a joint at the Varsity (like I said, it was at the beginning of Reaganism) so we tooted a fat bird and watched in amazement. The movie was a revelation--completely different than anything made in America at that time (and also a wonderful allegory for that fate that awaits us once Reaganism runs its course)--and we were truly amazed.

Next thing I saw with Mel was Gallipoli--another revelation. This guy's pretty cool, I thought. Then I saw the first Lethal Weapon, and was generally okay with it (didn't think the cartoonish violence at the end hung together with the rest of the movie, but a relatively minor quibble--at that point).

But at some point crazy Mel took over the career. Most of his movies began to follow the same general plot: some moral upstanding man is humiliated by evildoers but gets his vengeance in an orgy of sadistic bloodletting. I mean that's Braveheart, and The Patriot, and Ransom, and on and on. It's even, in essence, The Passion Of The Christ (think about it--the whole movie is the first part of a typical Mel movie--the masochistic humiliation--and the vengeance? Well, that's the two millennia of violence done against non-believers, especially the Jews, that followed).

Of course by this time the wheels had come off Mel's buggy. He ultra rightwing version of Catholicism had become well known, along with his various conspiracy theories regarding the pope. He became increasingly bat-shit weird in interviews. And then came the DUI arrest, when a drunken, disinhibited Mel gave full voice to his misogynistic, anti-Semitic rage. From that point on there could be no doubt about Mel's character, and patronizing one of his movies (even if worth seeing) required turning a blind eye to his wretched, hate-filled spirit.

Believe me I understand about the whole "separate the artist from his art" debate. Pablo Picasso was an asshole (but was never called one--see song by Jonathan Richman). Many actors are egomaniacal drunken louts but I still watch them (like that lovable scamp Rip Torn). I was even able to continue reading Heidegger until the late eighties when Farias came out with Heidegger and Nazism, which showed convincingly that Heidegger was not just a Nazi sympathizer, he was a full blown brown-shirted true believer whose philosophy itself is in some ways inherently National Socialistic. I mean I'm willing to go along with bad behavior for a while, but at some point it becomes all too clear that the behavior reflects a flaw of character and spirit so mean, so ugly, so deep and unchangeable, that the person simply has no redeemable qualities.

That's where Mel is with me right now: he's someone from the past, someone dead. Mel Gibson can eat shit, get hepatitis, turn yellow and die, for all I care. He'll never get another nickel of my money, and I wouldn't let him have any of yours either. He's just a mean old man--a boor at a bar--a big bag of suck.

Death Knell To The Pretense Of American Democracy

Let's be frank: America has never been a democracy. It was founded as an oligarchy with the franchise going only to white property-owning men (much of whose property consisted of other human beings) and has been run as an oligarchy ever since. Sure the vote was eventually expanded (after a civil war) to people of color, and then in the 20th century to women, but the Big Boys have been pulling the strings from the get-go.

But America has always sold itself as a democracy and, more importantly, most Americans have gladly bought into this bright and shining lie. As of this week even the pretense has fallen away and anyone who continues to delude him or herself into believing America to be a democracy can only be described--charitably--as pathologically dense.

The election of a single senator in a single state--giving the minority party in Washington only 41 out of 100 votes--has destroyed the hope that America could ever or would ever do the right thing and make affordable healthcare available to the millions upon millions of Americans who are unfairly denied affordable healthcare for themselves and their families. This of course in an elective body that is itself fundamentally undemocratic (the two senators from Wyoming, which has less than a million people, get the same number of votes as the two senators from California: two). So much for the power of the people.

Now comes word that the Supreme Court--stacked with paleoconservatives after three long decades of Reaganism--has removed all limits from corporations with regard to financing political campaigns. Oligarchs and robber barons will be able to flood a political campaign with a never-ending river of cash, dominating the airwaves with paid advertising and putting as many mercenary organizers on the street as is required to put corporate lackeys into office (like they've ever been unsuccessful at that anyway). Corporations like Kellog Brown & Root, or Freeport-MacMoRan (largest single polluter in the history of the earth) will be able to elect to congress whomever they deem worthy of doing their bidding.

All the pretense is gone. Wake up America. This is a nation by the rich, of the rich, and for the rich. Your little salary gets you squat, nothing but what the Big Boys choose to offer you from their table. That and the freedom to put yourself further in thrall to them by using the high-interest credit cards they have so graciously provided you to buy all manner of cheap mall crap. Meanwhile, if you get sick just go hang out at your local emergency room and hope for the best.

Bread and circuses: the Romans understood the usefulness of the concept but the Americans have perfected it (the Romans, after all, only had the Colosseum; Americans have cable television). America has exactly the government it deserves.

Memo To Progressives: Hold Your Water, Part II

Democrats have only themselves to blame for the loss of Ted Kennedy's senate seat in Massachusetts. While progressives were busy finding fault with one another's ideological purity regarding issues like Gitmo, domestic spying and, most of all, healthcare reform, Republicans were busy stoking the fear and resentment that comes with double digit unemployment (with issues ranging from the marginally reasonable like the deficit to the racist and loony like Obama's birth certificate). Once the tea bagger phenomenon spontaneously combusted the R's just glommed on and rode the wave of resentment to victory in Massachusetts.

Now, of course, comes the question of what happens regarding healthcare reform? One hopes that idiots like pompous ass incarnate Keith Olbermann, or the ever-oily Arianna Huffington will now see how utterly dumb it was to advocate for saying no to any form of healthcare reform that did not meet their own acute standards for progressive purity (easy to have high standards when you're a multi-millionaire who can afford any healthcare anyone could ever even imagine). Their self-righteous criticism of centrist Democrats and of the messiness of the legislative process just made it less likely that working people--or, as Keith and Arianna refer to them, "the help"--would ever be entitled to affordable health insurance.

Unfortunately, I suspect that now progressives will come out and again tut-tut over the imperfections of the healthcare bill the senate passed and push for healthcare to be killed rather than have the house simply pass the senate bill and move on. This would appease the progressive elite--and overjoy the extreme right--but would cheat working people of access to healthcare. If progressives allow for healthcare reform to be denied again, then they deserve nothing but scorn and further electoral defeats. Best to take what we can get and move on to the biggest issue right now: jobs.

If progressives want to stave off further humiliation at the ballot box (or in congress) they need to spend more time/money/effort organizing the "great flyover" rather than examining one another for ideological purity. It should offend progressives to no end that the Republicans--the party of the rich and powerful par excellence--has been able to position itself as the party of Main street and to channel political resentment against the party that wants to grow the economy through the only way proven effective: fiscal stimulus. Progressives need to find a better way to get their message out because out here in the heartland it is the R's who are winning the debate.

I just don't think that progressives have any real understanding of what it's like to live in the great center--politically and geographically--part of our county. Out here the local hometown paper is always owned by some right-wing extremist, and so every headline is spun right. The local news stations broadcast the latest Chamber of Commerce press releases with little analysis (or even acknowledgment as to the source), and public TV's are almost always tuned to Fox News. Couple that with ten percent unemployment and it's going to be the rare race that the Dems win anytime soon.

Progressives need to take their comeuppance in Massachusetts and then get down to work. Quit sniping and try instead to figure ways of harnessing the energy the R's have been able to harness lately and use it as a force for good. Get healthcare reform passed even if it means that the House has to accept the Senate bill as is. And then get behind whatever plan Obama and the congressional Dems come up with to stimulate unemployment, because if unemployment is still ten percent or up come November nothing progressives truly want is ever likely to happen.

Nah, You're Just A Breeder--And That's A Bad Thing

So some of the breeders are upset (click title for link) that others use that term to describe those who... well... who breed. They want to be seen as nurturing mothers, creative parents, anything but just another animal that spawns a being that will itself go on to eat shit and breed, thereby guaranteeing a world overrun with humanity to the detriment of all the other animals that inhabit our little planet.

I once had a breeder tell me that I was selfish for not wanting to have children. Selfish?! What's more selfish than believing that what the world needs is a mini-me? Another iteration of your own super specialness? Amazing! And you somehow think that your own little bundle of redemption is not going to grow up to be another ingrate teenaged mall rat? Where does anyone get off in thinking that what my city--any city--needs is another human being contributing to an environment that's already out of control with pollution?

That's what children are: another form of pollution. An infancy of diapers; a river of high fructose corn syrup; a mountain of feces; a carbon footprint the size of the Titanic. Thanks but no thanks, Mr. and Ms. Breeder. Time to get over your bad self and just say no to procreation. On behalf of Mother Earth, I thank you.

Brit Hume Can Suck My Dogma

Brit Hume personifies everything that is wrong with America: a preening self-righteousness informed by an ignorant religiosity; an unctuous condescension toward anyone who disagrees with him; and a bogus sense of persecution by those he deems to be on their way to hell in any event. Who the hell is he to tell Tiger Woods (or anyone else) what Woods needs to do to cure his soul. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone...." blah blah blah. Do any of these self-proclaiming Christians even bother to read the words of Jesus?

What is interesting is that Hume would compare Buddhism to Christianity and find Buddhism to be lacking. How many wars have been waged in the name of Buddhism for the purpose of converting souls at sword point (sometimes referred to as 'crusades')? How many innocent souls have been tortured in the name of Buddhism in order to make them repent of something they were innocent of anyway (you know, like an 'inquisition')? How much hatred has been spewed by Buddhists over issues of race or gender or sexuality toward "the other"? Two millennia of anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust? Wasn't Buddhism, Brit.

Not that any of the other Western monotheistic religions acquit themselves any more favorably (though it must be admitted that Christianity likely has a higher body count--at least for now). Islam is a faith built on conquest of the infidels. Much of modern Judaism is in thrall to Zionism and as such spends an inordinate amount of time trying to justify the oppression and ghettoization of the Palestinians. So much for the Abrahamic faiths.

As for Buddhism, what does Brit Hume (or most other Americans) know about Buddhism or any other Eastern faith? I've spend several years trying to study it, but the more one studies Buddhism the more complex one realizes it is... except.

The Buddha tried to teach a way of thinking and of interacting with the world that would liberate human beings from suffering. Unlike Western religions, Buddhism is more a way of approaching the world--the world as it really is--than of supernatural explanation. Buddhists use practices like devotion and meditation as a way of removing themselves from the cycle of birth and death.

In order to attain redemption from the endless cycle of suffering that is birth and death (and birth) Buddhists seek to behave in certain ways that, though not redemptive in and of themselves, help to hone consciousness to the level of mindfulness needed to transcend suffering. These ways of behaving are generally referred to as the five precepts: don't kill; don't steal; avoid sexual incontinence; don't deceive others; and avoid substances that alter one's consciousness (it interferes with mindfulness).

Following the five precepts brings peace to one's own mind, to one's family, and even to one's community (or nation). One need not understand all the various iterations or complexities of Buddhism to understand that following the five precepts is a formula for personal integrity of the sort that is sorely lacking in Brit Hume's America. To behave in a way that is mindful, nonjudgmental, and devotional--just what does Brit Hume find wrong with that?

One suspects that had Jesus had occasion to read Buddhist philosophy he would have understood it completely, intuitively, affirmatively. The Sermon on the Mount has much in common with Buddhist thought. Before Brit Hume raises himself up on his high horse to preach to the rest of us about the superiority of his views, he should first look inside to see if he is even faithful to what he purports to be his own views. Meanwhile, he can suck Baby Fatt's big fat crooked dogma.

Rush Limbaugh's Irony-Free Zone

The headline of the SEIU press release says it all: "Hell Freezes Over: Rush Limbaugh Loves Union Hospitals And Socialized Medicine" (click on title above for link). Rush apparently had chest pains over the long holiday weekend (had he read the warning that came in the bottle of Viagra he might have been more careful), and was subsequently impressed by the healthcare he received in Hawaii.

As SEIU points out, the Hawaiian healthcare system is the most progressive in the country, requiring insurance mandates for employers and subsidies for employees, and with a healthcare workforce that is heavily unionized. The Hawaiian healthcare system, in other words, is much like what progressives have been trying to get passed in the rest of the country. As with most blowhards, one suspects the irony will be completely lost on Rush.

Of course Rush has millions and millions of dollars, and so could get great healthcare wherever he happens to start having chest pain (memo to Rush: kick the meat and up your veggie intake and you might live a long time. Then again: never mind, have another Havana). What I can't wait for is the effect the healthcare reform will have on working class conservatives, the ditto heads who so slavishly parrot Rush's talking points. Once folks actually start to receive decent healthcare--you know, have a PCP prescribing for them rather than an ER doc--how will they reconcile that experience with all they've been taught to believe? Unfortunately it probably won't have much of an effect on any of them.

A few years ago one of my aunts (who's somewhere to the right Ron Paul) injured herself while in France. She was walking along a dock in Normandy and slipped and lacerated her knee badly. My cousin took her immediately to the closest ER to get the wound treated. She was treated as soon as she walked in the door. It took upwards of twenty stitches to close the wound, and at discharge they gave her a prescription for antibiotics and another for pain meds.

My aunt is a cynical--and also a wealthy--woman, so as my cousin was helping her get checked out my aunt whipped out her American Express card and told her to pay whatever bill there was. My cousin told her the bill had already been taken care of. The prescriptions were five euros each and the stitches, doctor time, X-rays--everything else was free. My aunt was fairly impressed, but did it change her view of socialized medicine? Nah.

There are problems with any healthcare plan, no matter where and how it is constituted. Ten years from now America will have a much more progressive healthcare system than it has now and, as is our inalienable right as Americans, we will all complain about it at every opportunity. We will complain about its shortfalls, its bureaucracy, its inefficiencies, all the while getting routine healthcare for everything from wound care to chronic conditions (heart disease, for instance). Hell, half the fun of an entitlement is getting to complain about it.

And conservatives, of course, will complain most of all, even while taking every advantage of a progressive healthcare system that provides routine, affordable care for themselves and their loved ones. Just as today they gather in well-armed hordes to decry socialism while taking time on their way home to deposit their Social Security checks, they will somehow be able to keep within their heads two utterly incompatible thoughts: government is the problem not the solution; and why hasn't the government done more for me lately. Amazing, simply amazing.

But that's the joy of being conservative: never having to suffer cognitive dissonance (or appreciate irony). Just ask Rush.