How can we be doing this?

It is just barely today, October 31. I have been surfing YouTube for a couple of hours, bringing up favorite songs to cheer myself up after the horrors of the day, by which I mean the completely irrational, spirit-negative religiosity of Liberty University students working against Barack Obama and calling down doom upon him.

Even if only half of what Mr. Obama says is true, even if only one-quarter of what Mr. Obama envisions gets done, it is a start. And even if he were the worst of scoundrels, he would not deserve the ill will being pointed his way. In fact, if only half of his words are true, then he must be seen as the most humanitarian of the current seekers for public office in America.

To deny his vision is to affirm greed, avarice, exclusionary politics, segregated culture and a rubric of us vs. them.

So I simply must ask, if you deny Obama's vision, how can you live with yourself if you vote to exclude the downtrodden, to deny any human in this country, on this planet, the basic necessities of life? How can you live complacently when so many lack clean water, food, basic health care, shelter...whether they are sane, crazy,white, black, yellow, American, Latvian, Bosnian, Darfurian...anyone? How can you possibly cast a vote for a man (and unfortunately a woman) who sees everything in terms of us and them? How can you? How can you deny your own humanity so completely?

Please watch the video of Phil Collins singing "Another Day in Paradise." If you can watch it without at least a tiny movement of your heart outward, if you can hear it without your inner self being tugged to remember that all are not fortunate, cared for and loved, then stop reading. Go and cast your vote for doom.

If it touches you in the least, then please read on.

***

I lived in New York City for a good portion of my life, and it is my birthplace. I rarely gave money to panhandlers, but sometimes I did. I had a hard time making my way between my heart and the dictates of the limousine liberals I hung around with, some of whom were Rolls Republicans, in fact. Mea culpa. I admit that I was diseased with a relative lack of compassion. But I could not ignore the demands of the planet and its humanity totally. I channeled it through tithing to my church, granted a very liberal Episcopalian church, but still...I avoided contact. I avoided being upset in a very earthy manner by the poverty and disease and distress that surrounds every block of New York City, even now, even years after Rudy Guiliani made it a Disneyland for the well-heeled. (I don't mean to dismiss Guiliani's accomplishments, which were many, and his finest hour, which was after 9-11. But the city was sanitized, making life easier for the middle class and above, putting true poverty beyond their field of vision.)

There is a solution on this planet. Perhaps it begins in this nation; it has certainly almost ended here. We have no money for ourselves at the moment, or so it seems. We have given no care to ourselves. We have denied health care to the poor and broke, we have watered down education until we are raising a nation of morons, much to the distress of dedicated teachers caught in the need to teach and to make a living, and the knowledge that they are unable, by government mandate, to educate those in their charge. We have closed our borders to the needy; we have richly rewarded the rapacious. We have heaped calumny upon the head of those some consider "other" in futile attempts to make people see truth as lies, lies as truth. We, by electing and accepting leaders a pack of wolves would have justly torn to shreds as useless at best, harmful to the pack at worse, have put ourselves in harm's way, and with us, the rest of the world.

If we cannot help ourselves, we cannot hope to help others, the others who have come to rely on American generosity and innovation. We cannot help those we owe assistance by virtue of our great natural gifts; our melting pot of fine minds and vibrant cultural expression, our vast land area full of wealth of every sort. We must help ourselves. We must help ourselves to leadership that pays more than lip service to the word compassionate; we must help ourselves by educating our children, providing minimal sustenance at least for the unfortunate, and holding to account those whose greed has brought us all to the brink of disaster.

Vote your conscience, but please take care to educate that conscience first in what a conscience is there to do--keep up from doing harm to others no matter what the cost to ourselves.

What would Jesus do....about Liberty University?

This morning, the Washington Post ran a front-page article titled "God, Country and McCain." It was about students at Liberty University working to defeat Barack Obama in Virginia. That is their right, of course. What is not their right is to issue veiled threats on the life of the candidate they oppose. Within the article and also next to her photo at the top of the jump page is a quote the author attributes to student Meghan Allen.

Allen says, as reported by the Washington Post, "If Obama wins, I'm gonna want someone to get in there and reverse it ASAP."

If you do not have chills of fear running down your spine right now, check yourself for the following:

• Intelligence
• Humanity
• Spirituality
• Common sense

If you cannot find one or more of these, then go enroll as a student at Liberty University, or, if you have finished your schooling, see if you can get hired to teach. Apparently, the only requirements for either status is blind devotion to fundamentalist principles that include invoking the ultimate earthly punishment for those who do not share the same skewed vision of what Jesus would do.

Jesus, I dare say--at least the one I was taught about--would rebuke that girl. He would forgive her, of course, because clearly, she is a Philistine. She may not know what she does, but arguably, her teachers do. Her parents do. Every person who has poisoned this young woman's mind and spirit until she spews the worst sort of venom in the name of God (and make no mistake, those students believe they are acting in the name of God) is culpable.

John McCain is culpable. In 2000, McCain called the late Rev. Jerry Falwell one of the nation's "agents of intolerance." By May 14, 2006, McCain was delivering the commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University. Apparently, a visit to McCain's D.C. office eight months earlier, followed by a dinner invitation and a little sweet talk was all Falwell needed to get McCain on board the train to the Rabid Right.

Now, Falwell's son, the Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr., who runs the school, has determined to see if his students (or you could use the term lab rats) can vote en masse (like so many little regimented pinko rats, one might almost think) to get McCain elected.

As detestable as it is in an institution that claims the title university to attempt to program student thought in that way, it is even more detestable that the programming has caused a young woman to spew such hatred, such ill-considered and ignorant wishes, in public. She must be very frightened. Remember, fear is the favored tactic of all despots, from Idi Amin to the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr. While Amin caused his constituents (loosely defined) to fear for life and limb, Falwell's constituents are tutored to fear for their souls. And if the election of Barack Obama, a thoughtful, sane, judicious and generous politician, is viewed as a danger to their souls, then their souls are in danger very certainly. But the danger is not from Obama; the danger is from the worms of hatred, prejudice, fear, cowardice and arrogance infecting their poor, abused hearts and souls, placed there by the very people entrusted by society with educating them in their humanity and their spirituality.

When confronted with bigotry, hatred, and foul thoughts from the unthinking tongues of a spiritually abused population, I simply ask:

What would Jesus do?

What would Jesus do? Rebuke her, I believe. And I do rebuke her. But not as Jesus would rebuke her: I'm not that pure. I'm angry that so young a person could carry such venom and cast it abroad.

From all I've been taught, I believe that Jesus would also forgive her. I fully admit, I'm not there yet. Pray for me that I might be able to forgive her--and her ill-intentioned elders--before too long for the sake of my immortal soul.

If you wish to read the Washington Post article containing the above quote, please see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/30/AR2008103004757.html?hpid=topnews

The Most Ridiculous of a Bad Lot: Vice Presidents on Parade

In looking at the vice presidents over the past 40 years, one is struck immediately by one undeniable fact: very few of them were presidential material should the need arise, and one of them took a plea bargain over a slew of felonies while he was vice president. Also not surprisingly, that one was a Republican, Spiro T. Agnew. He was, however, a perfect illustration of the adage, “Birds of a feather flock together.” He was Richard M. Nixon’s vice president for the first four years of that presidency, and, as we know, Nixon bowed out a few years later, just before they rolled the political paddy wagon up to the White House gates.

Nixoniana forms the basis of my current cogitation on political uselessness. The first political memory I have is of my grandfather, a lifelong Republican accountant, watching Nixon in debate against Kennedy and saying that Nixon was the most reprehensible politician on earth, in itself seeming hyperbole. History, however, bore out my grandfather’s words, until now. It’s a good thing my grandfather died in 1969; this election would have killed him. He could not have tolerated the cowardice of John McCain, nor his ill-advised choice of running mate, nor his reprehensible—not to say vile—tactics in running that campaign. My grandfather was a Republican, not a scoundrel.

Of course, a look at history reveals a number of bad decisions concerning running mates. That same look also reveals the worst of a bad bunch were Republicans. Richard M. Nixon was vice president to war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower; from that platform, he launched his, thankfully, ineffective and unsuccessful first bid for the presidency against John F. Kennedy.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was Kennedy’s vice president. Nothing particularly heinous comes to mind about him. In fact, he had the good sense not to seek another term in the midst of the Vietnam debacle. There remains, however, in many people’s minds, the possibility that he had something to do with Kennedy’s assassination. I’m not sure I believe it. And it hasn’t been proven. So it’s a non-issue…but still, it does mean that Democratic vice presidents can be as problematical as Republican ones, if not quite as thoroughly unprincipled in general.

Gerald Ford, who became Nixon’s second vice president, wasn’t unprincipled, just dumb as a box of rocks. When he pardoned Nixon, it’s a good thing my grandfather was still dead. I was so upset, I almost joined Gramp in a fit of distress. I couldn’t believe Nixon was going to get away with befouling the office of the president as he did. I still can’t.

But worse, that entire incident seemed to pave the way for Republicans to take ever more liberties with both the U.S. Constitution and good sense until we ended up with George Bush the First. He picked a cipher as a running mate, Dan Quayle, and I cannot say his presidency even began to approach his son’s on the Distress Scale. The economy was lousy under Bush I; he had gotten a less vibrant economy coming in than the massively good one Bush II inherited from his Democratic predecessor. So perhaps that’s an excuse. Still, he and his nebbish veep did enough damage, what with Iraq I and various misadventures in the Caribbean. At least he wasn’t a moron.

The Democratic vice presidents during the period before and after Bush I included Hubert Humphrey, from all accounts a skillful and relentless political negotiator, but not a criminal in any sense of the word. Walter Mondale seemed a nice Midwestern guy; nothing much to report. Al Gore was a little pompous—OK, a lot pompous—on the presidential trail after his eight lackluster years with his larger-than-life boss, Bill Clinton. But of course, Gore did invent the Internet. (Couldn’t resist.)

Which leaves only Republicans, two of them before now, to consider; Nelson Rockefeller and Dick Cheney.

Rockefeller was so rich, he didn’t have to do anything else. He had been an OK governor of New York State. He wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t on the take, and I don’t think any sort of illicit activities (at least beyond private bedroom doors, as he supposedly died in the arms of his mistress) were ever alleged against him.

But Dick Cheney. There are not enough pixels on the Internet to describe the willful damage done by this man. He has single-handedly all but destroyed the U.S. Constitution. He doesn’t need to do more. That, if the union survives the current election, will be quite enough. Can the Constitution be repaired? Is there any will in a Congress divided by partisanship one can only describe, on the Republican side, as Born Again Fascism, to repair it? In light of the very palpable need to keep citizens from starvation in the aftermath of the destruction of our economy, will there be time and interest in repairing it? Or, if Obama wins, will he of necessity have to hand the nation on to the next leader lacking a viable Constitution? Correction: lacking a viable Constitution for a free people. The current one, decimated by the Cheney onslaught and hog-tied by Executive Orders and meatball interpretation, might serve well for a nation of debt slaves. But perhaps that’s as it should be: the economic juggernaut, sent tumbling toward the abyss by Reaganomics, has resulted in two to three generations of financial slavery for the bulk of U.S. citizens.

It is completely unthinkable that John McCain and Sarah Palin, about as prepared to serve in high office as I am to be the first black woman elected governor of Maryland, should be elected. (I’m not black.)

No matter what happens, however, we need to rethink the office of vice president. Fortunately, I have worked out a simple solution: eliminate the office. If a president dies in office, then the next in line to succeed would be the Speaker of the House of Representatives. This has a great deal of beauty in it. First, that person was elected by his or her constituents on his or her own merits, not as a placeholder for the real deal. Second, the person is used to dealing in two-year terms, meaning he or she might be inclined and trained to get the lead out and push programs forward, rather than sitting on them for the better part of four years. Third, the House of Representatives is our lower house, roughly comparable to the House of Commons in England. Thus, those elected to it are more “of the people” than are the upper house, our Senate (comparable in a very loose way to the House of Lords, in which membership is hereditary. Still, in some cases, a six-year Senate term seems like a lifetime.)

Think about it. Write your Representatives and Senators about it. But most of all, think about it when you vote on November 4^th. Sarah Palin is already wanted for questioning in her home state about her potentially actionable activities as governor. She is a gun-toting, smooth-talking pseudo-soccer mom who wants, more than anything, to prove she is capable of serving in high office. She would prove the opposite, because her analytical powers are as lacking as her running mate’s good sense. And the entire nation, not just the few injured when Nixon and Agnew ignominiously stepped down, would suffer acutely, long after an impeachment proceeding—and certainly there would be one—removed her from the office in which she is so unfit to serve.

Obama: The first all-American candidate

Ever since I became a journalist, I've been offended by defining people by their presumed race. Thankfully, the practice has now disappeared from newspapers. We no longer see things like, "John Doe, a black man, was apprehended....." while never, of course, seeing "John Doe, a white man..."

So why are we talking about Barack Obama as the first black candidate? He's as much white as he is black. He is half white and half black. His black half is African, recently, not in the time of slave ships. His white half is Celtic, for crying out loud, a "whiter" race never having been seen on the planet. I know whereof I speak. I am a Celt myself, and the translucent white skin that runs in my family, not to mention all over the Republic of Ireland, is a shining beauty to behold.

So why, in heaven's name, do we not call Barack Obama what he is: the very first all-American candidate.

Moreover, and even better, he's a mutt, just like the rest of us. He has had to make his own way, just like the rest of us (except the Bush caste, of course, as their way was made by forebears whose gene pool degenerated with every passing inbred generation.)

I love mutts. Everybody loves mutts. They are agreeable, sturdy, usually intelligent. They have to be; they don't have a pedigree to hide behind. They are also, in my experience, undyingly grateful for the kindness they receive, especially if they were abandoned or orphaned mutts. Obama was raised by only one parent, giving him at least a toe into that particular special and greatly-to-be-praised area of mutt-ness.

So come on, people. Even if you don't like the mutt analogy (and there may be a few curmudgeonly people out there who don't know it is better to be a dog than any other mammal), Barack Obama is, without any shadow of doubt, the first totally American candidate, completely representative of the entire nation, that we have ever had. We have never had a better chance to heal this nation and make it what it can be.

Obama. Period. Obama.

Faux-Palin: The Devil on Horseback

I think I might have met Sarah Palin once. It was not Palin, of course, but the similarities between the dope I met 20 years ago at Columbia Horse Center and Sarah Palin are too cogent to ignore.
When I met her, the Faux-Palin had just bought a horse. The horse was too tough for her to handle, too strong, too young and untrained.
I was, at the time, an adult beginner. I was avid. I had found the best possible trainer, an Iranian man who is still my friend, who taught there. Generously, I might add, giving his students enormous benefit of his extraordinary knowledge and skill.
His generosity allowed him to let Faux-Palin, riding her new horse, enter the arena where he was teaching me. Ordinarily, a private lesson was a private lesson and no one else could use that arena--there were two others--until the private lesson was over. Faux-Palin had a crush on my instructor. Few women didn't, myself included. So she wheedled, and she won.
Before long, her horse got out of control, which frightened the school horse I was on. My horse, reacting, twirled suddenly on the way to a jump and launched me high and fast and hard through the air. I was powerless to stop it or to stay on; I was too new at the sport, had little experience, and had not yet developed much sticking power, all of which requires time and attention, and good lessons.
I landed on one hip with both heels dug into the footing, and both hands out behind stopping my head from hitting the ground.
My instructor ran to me, and told me to check out all the parts. I found that one elbow was jammed. I told him to take my hand, put his foot against my shoulder and pull my arm hard. He reluctantly did it, and I heard everything pop back into place. I don't know why I thought to do that. I just wish I had thought to keep Faux-Palin out of my lesson. As it was, my worst injuries were two sprained wrists and a mashed sciatic nerve, all of which healed themselves over the next month. Far sooner, I think than the country could heal itself after a round in the arena with Sarah Palin.
Faux-Palin, a vapid, selfish, and ignorant young woman to say the best of her, had a vanity plate on her car. It said MsPrez, because this airhead had decided to go to law school and become the first female president.
She'd be about 42 now, so she could be mistaken for the real Palin if Tina Fey hadn't already done such a darn good job of it.
I'm thinking maybe there's a monkey brain that is parceled out by whatever god there is and installed behind the unfinished faces of lower-class women with grandiose ideas and nothing--such as intelligence and/or experience--to back those ideas up.
MsPrez ended up selling the horse. It remained too much for her because she refused to actually take a lesson from someone who knew something about horses. She preferred to pose and be coquettish, just like Sarah Palin. She hurt people with her ignorance. She ruined a horse, a valuable animal, and a kind one in general, with her despicable overweening arrogance and pride.
Just like Sarah Palin.

Republican Women: Transgendered Men?

I like my chiropractor. He's a nice guy, and pretty smart. Witty. Likes red wine and loves his dogs. But for the life of me, I cannot see why he's voting Republican because he considers his practice a small business. Perhaps he needs to have a few things explained, such as:

• Since Daddy Bush, the Republicans have started wars, leaving the Democrats to clean up the mess and pay the bills. (I could go back farther, but I think that's sufficient in the current crisis.)
• To finance those wars, among other things, the Republicans cut services, such as education--particularly the humanizing subjects such as art, music, civics--stuff they, in their tunnel-vision march toward self-aggrandizement, don't notice. They also cut other programs, however, such as funds for environmental projects and assistance to nations that could be allies.
• When large corporations amass more power and more money, as has been abundantly true throughout the Bush administrations, they don't share it with people. They pay their own executives 1,700 times as much as a British nurse, a figure I recently read in a respectable--that is, mainstream--publication. If their much-touted trickle-down theory is supposed to work on that basis, look at it this way:

1. They pay an illegal worker a salary below minimum wage to clean the house. She gets sick and is rushed to the emergency room, where our tax dollars (as much as 27.5 percent of middle-class wages and less than one-half of one percent for her employer) pay for her inadequate care. Inadequate because, as a charity case, she doesn't exactly get Dr. HarvardMed on her case.
   
2. They buy things, but they don't pay as much as you and I do. Why? First, they probably pay cash and avoid interest on the charge card or loan. Second, since they pay cash, they can negotiate a much better price. So the trickle is cut down to a drip.
3. They invest, in such things as companies that are bolstered by subprime loans. A generation ago, it was savings & loans. Either way, guess who pays for it? Middle America, small businesses. Me, and my chiropractor.
4. They are also big enough to crush competition, so even if Dr. Chiro becomes the best-loved bonecracker in U.S. history, if he runs afoul of one of their sacred cows (and understand this: chiropractors are not beloved of the American Medical Association, so he's treading thin ice there), they'll simply crush him.

Republicans do not play well with others and they have never learned to share. The only reason they get away with their ignorant, selfish behavior is that Democrats and others who may actually acknowledge their human condition have been raised to play well with others and to share. Often, those two traits are so thoroughly ingrained that we cannot cast them aside long enough to treat the Republican cadre as it deserves to be treated, with the same lack of compassion, respect and generosity with which they treat others. And if you want to define "others" as a Republican might define them, I believe you would need a very narrow definition, extending no farther than the reach of one arm, and less if the Republican in question--whoever he* is--had to bend that arm to hug the ill-gotten gains more closely to their breast.

* I use the term he because it is inconceivable to me that any woman could possibly support the common (and I use that term advisedly) platform of Republicans. Even if a woman is anti-choice, presuming to force her beliefs on others seems to me to be at odds with womanhood, by nature an inclusive state of being. In my opinion, a female Republican might as well go and get transgendered; her brain already has.

Is the urge to puke evidence of the presence of a skank?

I debated whether to write this post for Skankbusters or Review of Applied Ethics. Actually, I shall put it up on both.

I didn't watch Sarah Palin's talent segment last night in her quest for the Miss Skank America crown...excuse me, the vice presidency of a very populous nation. I have read very little about it; there was no need. Her entire presentation, from the top of her bubble do to the tips of her peep-toe little girl high-heels, assures me that, inside, there beats the heart of a teenager who never got past dry humping under the bleachers. Perhaps, actually, she has morphed herself into her bleachers partner, the dumb jock who would now very likely espouse shooting bears from helicopters.

Katie Couric--who, if nothing else, finds it difficult to diss anyone--has damned Palin not with faint praise, but outright disdain. Katherine Parker, a conservative, has seen the light. It would be hard not to. Palin's orb of ignorance shines very brightly.

There is a web site called Women Against Palin, calling for her to step down for the good of us all. Gloria Steinem has rung in with a very reasoned plea for women not to vote for this woman. Steinem noted that feminists regard Palin as a shill meant to fool those women who do not understand the women's movement, a formerly successful movement involving improvements--equality--for all women, with justice and fairness. Nothing about the women's movement called for revolting displays of ignorance dressed up like the doggy's dinner and pandering to dunderheads, fools, and good ole boys. It still doesn't...and as far as I'm concerned, especially in this Era of Imbecility...the movement still isn't dead. See Women Against Palin as proof.

But the original question I posed, above, was this: Is the urge to puke evidence of the presence of a skank? I contend that it is. I say this having, within the past twenty minutes, been treated to a still photo of Sarah Palin 'winking' to the audience at her debate, so called, last evening. I read she also blew the audience a kiss.

After eight years of a smirking chimp, I wonder if we can withstand any years of a Winking Wonk, or Smoochy Sarah. I want to puke.