Al

I don't know about you, but I'll be sleeping a bit easier tonight knowing that Mr. Franken has gone to Washington.

When he first announced over two years ago that he was running for the seat that was once occupied by his dear friend, the late Paul Wellstone, people laughed. That's okay. Al originally made his name thirty-four years ago as a comedian. Laughter is a tool of the trade. Doesn't it just make you giddy to know that it is he who is having the last laugh? Since this country's founding, the halls of Congress have been littered with unintentional comedians. At long last, we have a true professional in Washington; and not just a comedian, but a humorist (there's a decided difference). Remember this: when Senator Franklin makes you laugh, that will be his intent.

"My dad said be an actor, my son - BUT BE A COMICAL ONE!"

Donald O'Connor
"Make 'em Laugh"
from the film Singin' in the Rain

Franken's victory (FINALLY!) after being elected eight months ago can only be described as poetic justice. The very image of Norm Coleman has always given me the dry heaves. I have never been able to forgive him for the utterly despicable campaign that he ran against Senator Wellstone in 2002.

Paul Wellstone was that rarest of Democrat. Unlike so many in that cowardly, joke-of-a-party, he never forgot that he was the political descendant of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. He was an unapologetic, card carrying LIBERAL and he was never embarrassed to say it out loud. He truly was a man of the people. God rest his soul.

In the final days of that contest, in a fit of desperation, Norm Coleman ran a series of ads which implied that if Wellstone was reelected, he would tax the family farms all over the state of Minnesota out of existence via the so-called "Death Tax". Like most of Coleman's campaign it was a lie. Not a single family farm throughout the entire United States had ever been effected by the estate tax. The only farms that had ever been taxed after the demise of an owner were the huge, corporate mega farms - the very institutions that were, in fact, putting family farms all over the country out of business; the very institutions which, by the way, overwhelmingly donated not only to the Coleman campaign in particular, but to the Republican party in general.

On the morning of October 25, 2002, while trying to keep up with the multitude of last minute appearances the campaign was forced to add to its schedule as a result of Coleman's lies, Paul Wellstone, along with seven other people (including his wife Sheila and daughter Marcia) were killed in a plane accident two miles short of a northern Minnesota airport. You will kindly forgive me for gloating over Norm Coleman's defeat.

Al Franken is, I believe, the very type of person the Founding Fathers had in mind as the ideal public servant when they initiated this bold experiment in democratic self-government two-hundred and thirty-three years ago this Saturday: a concerned citizen who would put aside his plowshares (or in Al's case, his Stuart Smalley costume) and head off to the nation's capital to legislate for the people. The thing that has always struck me when reading his books (and I've read them all) is his almost schoolboy-like attachment to - and belief in - all that is good in this country and its potential to do better.

At the conclusion of his 2005 book, The Truth (with jokes), Al wrote a letter dated October 2, 2015 to his three, yet-to-be-born grandchildren:

"Both my parents worked hard and had to overcome adversity in their lives. Like almost everyone does. My Mom developed rheumatoid arthritis at an early age and was in constant pain most of her life. She was married on crutches. Still, she told us, "It's a great life if you don't weaken." And she didn't. After my brother and I were old enough, she became a real estate agent. At dinner, she made sure we had meat and always, always, a fresh vegetable. At the table she would tell us about business and things like "redlining." Banks wouldn't lend money to black people who wanted to buy houses in certain neighborhoods. She told us this was wrong. And that's why your Granddad works so hard [in the Senate] to make sure that banks continue lending money to the poor, to minorities and to women, not just to buy homes, but to start businesses."

Now that's what I call real moral values. That's the kind of person I wouldn't mind representing me in the Senate (Nothing personal, Chuck). By the way, in that same letter he predicted, not only his own career in politics, but also the two-term presidency of Barack Obama. This was a year-and-a-half before Obama even announced his candidacy. How's that for prescience? Not bad, Al!

To boil it down to the essentials, Al Franken understands the fundamental difference between Conservatives and Liberals:

The Conservative thinks we're doing just fine. The Liberal knows we can do better.

Yeah, I'll be sleeping really well tonight knowing that Senator Al Franken has gone to Washington DC. The Far Right's main talking point today is that the Democrats have sent a comedian to the Senate - as if that were something to be embarrassed about. If someone is foolish enough to make this argument in your presence, be sure to remind them of this fact: Any jackass can be an exterminator (remember Tom Delay?) But the ability to make people laugh requires an intellect that is rare. If you don't believe me, look back on the history of American literature and try to name one dimwitted humorist. Think about it: Robert Benchley, Mark Twain, George Carlin, Fred Allen - all of them - have been exceptionally bright and perceptive human beings. Al Franken's in pretty good company. The people of Minnesota are damned lucky to have such a man in their corner. The Senate is fortunate to have him in their midst.

Now begins the Al Franken Era. He is not your father's politician, that's for sure. Watching the loony Right Wing trying to portray this as a great tragedy for democracy is amusing to say the least. Just remember these three, crucial facts: He's good enough, he's smart enough, and doggone it, people like him! Somewhere, I'm sure, Paul Wellstone is smiling.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:

Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot (and Other Observations)
by Al Franken

LIES And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
by Al Franken

THE TRUTH with Jokes
by Al Franken

The Real Tragedy of Michael Jackson

This may not do me a bit of good. Gather 'round, children, while Mr. Degan commits journalistic suicide. Please forgive me for not participating in the canonization of Michael Jackson.

This is not meant as a condemnation of the man's private life, his eccentricities or the accusations hurled against him in the last decade and a half of his all-too-short life. A jury found him innocent of the worse charge (other than murder) that can possibly be made against a human being. We can speculate forever but in the final analysis, we have no other choice but to respect their verdict. My problem with Michael Jackson is a bit more complicated.

One day in the Spring of 1971 I heard a song on the radio by a group called the Jackson Five that was called Never Can Say Goodbye. It was (and is to this very day) one of the most beautiful pop songs I have ever heard. A couple of months later I read in the paper that he would be celebrating his thirteenth birthday the following day on August 29. This news piqued my curiosity; I had just turned thirteen less that two weeks before on August 16. Because the two of us were born on the same month in 1958, I would find myself over the years following his triumphs with the pride of a schoolboy watching a favored classmate win the World Series one year after another.

I was also intrigued to find out that, like me, he was a stone-cold fan of Charlie Chaplin and that he had actually met the great man - as had I. Over a span of time, however, the admiration I felt toward Michael Jackson would devolve into bewilderment and, eventually, disgust.

Although I was never a huge fan of his music (my Jackson collection comprises a mere handful of 45 RPMs and two long-playing albums) there was never any denying that the man was possessed of immense talent. It was my belief that, like Sinatra, he'd still be packing them in at eighty years of age. How ironic is that?

Last night in front of the Apollo Theater in Harlem, Al Sharpton was lauding Jackson as a shining example to the Black community. I am sorry but no statement could be further from the truth. At a time in history when young African American males were desperately yearning for a positive role model to look up to, Michael Jackson was running scared from his racial heritage.

This is where I will probably get myself into big trouble. After all, I'm just a middle-aged white guy (assuming I live to be one-hundred-and-one). What right have I to stand in judgment against Michael Jackson - or anybody else for that matter? My "right" (such as it is) is as a casual observer of "American pop culture" and nothing more. I attempt here to be neither psychiatrist nor sociologist.

Watching the slow evolution of his facial features throughout the years - the "Caucasianization", if you will, of Michael Jackson - could not have been something that would make your average African American kid swell up with any amount of pride. The martyred South African dissident Steve Biko used to tell his people that "Black is Beautiful". Although Jackson never dared to say it out loud, he spent most of his adult life implying that "Black is Ugly". There is no other explanation for it - none.

And here's some more irony for you: In his heyday, long before the multitude of "procedures" which would eventually alter his looks to such a horrible, even grotesque degree (procedures he would deny to his dying day) Michael Jackson was an extraordinarily good looking guy.

No one could fault him for his first plastic surgery in the early eighties. In the past many Hollywood legends, for whatever reasons (not all of them bad) have sought to "soften" their features. Actually the result of the first operation was pretty good. Picture him as he appeared in 1983 with Paul McCartney in the Say! Say! Say! video. He looked great, didn't he? Why couldn't he have left well enough alone? What the hell was he thinking?

By the turn of the new twenty-first century he no longer looked like a African American male. Do you remember that infamous mug shot after he was arraigned in 2003? He reminded me of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. Google both images if you think I'm exaggerating.

What has amazed me since the news of his demise came over the television yesterday afternoon are the writers who have credited Michael Jackson with being the first "cross-over" African American artist to reach a predominantly white audience. Most of those writers are in their early thirties (and, I assume, white) and may be forgiven for not remembering the names Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Sammy Davis Jr, The Mills Brothers, Josephine Baker, Jimi Hendrix, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine, Ethel Waters, Bill Cosby, Diana Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Eartha Kitt, Chuck Berry, The Ink Spots, Little Richard, The Temptations, Sidney Poitier, Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory, Charley Pride, Stevie Wonder, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, Diana Ross and the Supremes - and a score or more other pioneers who were able to chip away the walls of America's racial divide years before Jackson entered into our collective consciousness. That he was a major influence cannot be argued. But he was not the first - far from it.

One cannot help but wonder what might have happened had this most gifted performer not attempted to hide who he was and made more of an effort to set an example to the desperate children who shared his skin color - or used to share it anyway - the same children who would eventually seek to identify with the faux thugs and jackasses who produce "Gangsta Rap". Some of these kids - most of whom had no conscious memory of the Jackson Five or even Thriller - believed him to be white. And why shouldn't they think that? He was white! He was whiter than I - and I'm pretty damned white! (Irish complexion, you know).

To say that he was a good example for African American kids to emulate is - forgive me - one half step shy of insanity.

We have to give the man his due: Michael Jackson was - beyond a shadow of a doubt - a great artist whose recorded legacy will endure for decades, maybe even a century or more. But an examination of his life is riddled with questions of all that might have been; all that should have been. It is more than likely that this was a severely mentally ill human being who never sought the treatment he so desperately needed; surrounded by fawning sycophants who enabled his sickness by constantly reassuring him that he could do no wrong. As John Lennon once said in the same context about Elvis Presley, another victim of the excesses of fame: "It's always the courtiers that kill the king".

The sad, inescapable truth is that for reasons we will probably never be able to fully understand, his talent and his career were ultimately wasted. Like Charlie Parker, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland and Lenny Bruce before him, his brilliance as an artist would be overshadowed by severe, psychological torment and an unexplainable desire for self-destruction. Therein lies the real, unspeakable tragedy of Michael Jackson.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

tomdegan@frontiernet.net

AFTERTHOUGHT:

Oh yeah, and by the way, Farrah Fawcett died yesterday, too.

Freshman Diplomacy 101

Here is why Rupert Murdoch's media organization is such a beautiful, jaw-dropping delight to behold. Earlier this week on the front page of the Murdoch-owned New York Post Toasties, the cover story told of the chaos that is now underway on the streets of Tehran as a result of the new leadership that was cynically denied to the people of that country by their theocratic rulers (And let's not deceive ourselves - Ahmadinejad lost - every poll concludes as much). In huge, black letters the headline blared (So help me Mitch Miller, I am not making this stuff up):
.

"TURBAN WARFARE"

.

Rhymes with "URBAN WARFARE". Get it? The accompanying photograph showed a huge crowd of mostly men - all of them very angry - not one of them wearing a turban. Indeed, Iran being an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, there are probably only two turban-wearing guys in the whole place. I thought it was instructive that not a single person in the Toastie's editorial department had the sense to figure this out. Geniuses!

"And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world."

Charles Krauthammer

The Washington Post

Mr. Krauthammer's opinion is symptomatic of the Right Wing's historical failure to grasp the subtle nuances of diplomacy. He and his comrades in the vast right wing conspiracy didn't get it six years ago either, when they were goading on former President Bush to commit the stupidest foreign policy blunder in American history by invading the sovereign nation of Iraq. And where did that get us?

Contrary to the prevailing wisdom of the eight years of the Bush Mob's reign of error, diplomacy is not - and has never been - about such overt things as black and white (or "good and evil", if you will) It's all about those subtle and annoying little shades of gray. This is something that the yahoos and assholes who identify themselves as spokespersons of the Republican party have never been able to understand.

I am reminded of a bully that I went to grade school with. I won't mention him by name because, like all of the bullies I knew as a school boy (and this is something that has always puzzled me), he grew up to be a genuinely decent and grand human being. Whenever the bell rang for recess, this jackass (excuse me, I meant "ex-jackass") would walk onto the playground with his chin jutted out and his fists in the air, waving them to and fro in a circular motion. So anxious was this (ex) knucklehead to pound the bleeding, mortal shit out of some hapless passerby, you could almost smell his lust for violence. Whenever I saw him headed in my general direction, my common sense always got the better of me and I would remove myself from his line of vision.

In the months leading up to the war in Iraq, George W. Bush's impudent smirk as he pounded the drums of war, always made my mind flash back to this dopey kid (who today is just a gem of a human being, I promise you). Like every other kid on the playground of international diplomacy, the Iraqi people had not done anything wrong, so-to-speak, to warrant George's homicidal animosity toward them; but he was determined to steal their lunch money (read: oil) nonetheless.

Fast forward to six years later. Bush's ideological heirs are literally foaming at the mouth for Barack Obama to "take action" (most of them never exactly specifying what that "action" should be) against the government of Iran for perverting the results of their recent election. A few of them have even had the chutzpah to suggest that the president send in the Marines. Mind you, if the Iranian military had come in and kicked some serious ass in the state of Florida eight years ago when Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris stole the 2000 election from Al Gore, I'd be all for a military incursion into that country - after all, what's fair is fair. But they did not act against Florida in 2000 (Damn them!) We lack any moral justification interfering in their internal matters in 2009.

I would only suggest to those who are so quick to criticize the president that they put themselves in his shoes and start thinking long range - which, after all, is the whole point of diplomacy. A good diplomat thinks little about tomorrow, or next week - or even next year. The goal of competent international strategy is to think in terms of years, even decades down the line. It is, quite literally, the ultimate game of chess.

First of all, consider this: what do these people on the Far Right think would happen if tonight Obama denounced the results of the election and demanded that the opposition be installed immediately? I guarantee you that within five minutes, "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be in front of the television cameras, having a positive jihad hissy fit:

"See?? The Great Satan has chosen sides! He wants this government - your government - to be skinned like rabid dogs. DEATH TO THE EVIL AMERICAN TYRANTS! And have a lovely day."

It is in the best interest of not only the American people - but the people of Iran as well - that our president exhibit for the world the demeanor of calm, cool detachment. That is what is known as "international statesmanship"; the type of which was never displayed by his half-witted predecessor. To put it in terms that Rush Limbaugh and the habitual viewers of FOX Noise will be able to understand, the very last thing in the world Obama needs right now is to get into a pissing match with these clowns.

It's no secret to anyone who reads this page on even a semi-regular basis that I am (to put it mildly) just a wee bit disappointment in this administration's direction thus far. Obama and the people around him should start showing a little less profile and a lot more courage. It is essential that they cease acting like Bill Clinton and start acting like Franklin Roosevelt. Their moment under the sun of political advantage is rapidly ebbing. As FDR was fond of reminding his contemporaries so long ago, they need to take "action. NOW!"

That being said, it must be conceded that they have handled this latest international incident superbly and with great skill. Jack Kennedy, who in October of 1962 was confronted with the most dangerous crisis in the history of the world, would be proud.

Ah! The beguiling art of diplomacy!

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:

Fiasco
by Thomas Ricks

Dave 'n' Sarah: An American Saga

DISCLAIMER:

Let me start this thing off by saying that I thought the joke David Letterman made last week on his program at the expense of Sarah Palin's daughter was, to be polite, in questionable taste. Dave and his writers made their reputation for their wit and sophistication. They can do better than that.

The other day, a spokesman for Sarah Palin made this incredibly suggestive statement: "It would be wise to keep Willow [Palin's fourteen-year-old-daughter] away from David Letterman." When asked yesterday morning by NBC's Matt Lauer exactly what that statement implied, Palin callously replied, "Take it however you want to take it." Nice!

I've seen some sleazy politicians in my day, but what Sarah Palin did this week, exploiting her underage daughter - using her name as an imaginary victim of an imaginary rape by a man five decades her senior - was, beyond a shadow of any doubt, the most despicable thing I've ever witnessed in the circus arena that American politics has become.

The joke Letterman made, distasteful as we might find it, was not about Governor Palin's fourteen-year-old daughter Willow. It pertained to her oldest daughter Bristol - the same daughter whose main claim to fame is her current status as an eighteen-year-old, unwed mother.

Sarah Palin must know this. She can't possibly be as stupid as she comes off in every single public forum she has ever participated in - no one's that dumb! Let's be as blunt as we possibly can be, okay? It was Bristol Palin who practiced unprotected sex with her boy friend Levi Johnson. When her mother was being vetted by the McCain campaign late last summer as a possible running mate, Bristol was already well along into her pregnancy, a fact her mother conveniently concealed from McCain's handlers. Something like that might not play too well with the "Family Values" Mob, you know what I mean? When they were no longer able to hide the fact that Bristol was "in a family way", the campaign's spin machine desperately tried to put a cute little smiley face on the situation:

"Isn't that sweet? She chose life!"

And good for her for doing so....and God bless the child.

Thank your lucky stars for Sarah Palin. Her nomination as GOP running mate last summer is a text book illustration of what is wrong with that hideous, train wreck of a party. There were, quite literally, scores and scores of people far better qualified than she to take on the mantle of running mate (Kaye Bailey Hutchinson, Arlen Spector - even that nitwit Joe Liebemann - come easily to mind). The problem is that in the last thirty years, the Republican party has been hijacked by kooks, criminals and fools. They forced McCain, against his better judgment, to accept Palin. Had they tried, they could not have found a worse candidate. But for her nomination, President McCain would be sleeping in the White House this very morning. [SIGH OF RELIEF]

In a column in this morning's edition of the worst newspaper in the Milky Way (the New York Post), Michelle Malkin, the Far Right's favorite bloviating air-head/pin-up girl, addressed David Letterman directly:

"Tell us, great comic genius, how tacking on four years to the target daughter makes it funny? We unenlightened dim bulbs who live outside of Manhattan's boundaries don't get the joke."

Of course they don't. They never do. Let me attempt to answer that question for Malkin and her fellow, unenlightened dim bulbs:

What little humor there is to be mined from this sad situation is based on the undeniable fact that Sarah Palin, from the moment she was vomited onto the American consciousness ten months ago, exploited her obviously dysfunctional family by portraying them as icons of virtue and purity. Single mom Bristol Palin is at this very moment a very visible spokesperson for "abstinence". How does "tacking on four years to the target daughter make it funny"? Because (like it or not) she is a grown woman and she's a hypocrite. American children are a lot more on-the-ball in many respects than their clueless parents. The "Do as I say and not as I do" lecture doesn't really cut the mustard with a lot of these kids. Malkin ended her piece this morning by screeching:

"Letterman reminds me of the lecher at the school bus stop. Or the aging creep lurking in the dirty magazine section at the 7-Eleven."

Lurid, personal attacks. huh? Two can play at that game, baby....

Sarah Palin reminds me of a middle-aged, drug-addled heroin-addict who would prostitute her fourteen-year-old child just to get a fix.

Does that analogy sound cruel and unfair to you? If it does, please consider this if you will:

More than anything in the world, she wants to be the Republican candidate for president of the United States in 2012. So desperate is this silly, imbecilic woman to get the nomination in four years, she would cynically put out for national contemplation the mental image of her child being violated by a sixty-three-year-old man - when Palin and everyone around her knows damned well that Letterman was referring to Bristol, the daughter who became pregnant. It is highly doubtful that he or his writers would make such a cruel and obscene joke on national television at the expense of a mere child. Given his track record as a comedian, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt; Andrew Dice Clay, he ain't.

David Letterman's joke was tasteless - you'll get no argument from me there - but Sarah Palin's political motivation behind her feigned, "righteous indignation" is as laughably obvious as it is beneath contempt.

Can you even imagine having someone as unfeeling as that as a mother? Poor Willow! Poor Bristol!

People like me, who derive a great deal of personal satisfaction by watching the utter implosion of the "party of Lincoln", owe a great debt of gratitude to the governor of Alaska. Between Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, the damage that has been done to the GOP is, I believe, irreparable. But none of them have been half as much fun to watch as Sarah Palin. She really is the gift that keeps giving. Thank you, Sarah.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

tomdegan@frontiernet.net

AFTERTHOUGHT:

In early 2008, when my local newspaper, the Middletown, NY Times Herald-Wreckage was purchased by Rupert Murdoch's company, the first words out of my mouth were, "Beth Quinn is history". It was inevitable that Murdoch's water carriers would want to curry favor with their boss by giving her the axe.

Beth was our local and very popular columnist who courageously wrote about the corruption and incompetence of this disgusting administration (Excuse me, I meant "that" disgusting administration). Sure enough, a year ago this month, Beth was shown the door.

For those residents of Orange, Ulster and Sullivan Counties who miss her weekly doses of wit, insight and good, old-fashioned common sense, I have good news for you:

She's baaaack!

Beth and a group of local writers have started a new site called "The Zest of Orange". Here's a link:

www.zestoforange.com

Happy reading, campers!

Lenny's House

Maybe he had some problems,
Maybe some things that he couldn't work out
But he sure was funny and he sure told the truth,
And he knew what he was talkin' about....
He's on some other shore
He didn't wanna live any more

Bob Dylan
from the song, "Lenny Bruce"

I imagine that it must not have been easy being Lenny Bruce. He was a man who saw the world as it really is - minus the rose-colored lenses that were the fashion rage during the age of Eisenhower and the New Frontier. "People should be taught what is", he told us, "not what should be". There had never been a comedian like him before. His humor was real. It could even be bleak. But he was always - to the very end - screamingly funny. That his was a troubled soul there can be no argument. Newsweek once described him as a "self-destructive genius of a dirty time."

So unsettling did the power elite find Lenny Bruce's tumultuous vision of society, they sought to silence him forever. Between the years 1961 and 1966, he was persecuted for his ideas by law enforcement agencies all across America with a relentlessness normally reserved for murderers and rapists. As the never-ending pressure on him increased, he sought relief from the stress in narcotics. On August 3, 1966 this brilliant but tormented humorist, whose name belongs enshrined with those of Mark Twain and Robert Benchley, was found dead in his West Hollywood home, the victim of a drug overdose. He was two months and ten days shy of his forty-first birthday.

The writers of his obituaries would callously dismiss him as a "sick comedian".

When Lenny died, his daughter Kathleen, known to all the world as Kitty, was eleven-years old. In the forty-three years since, her mission has been to make the name Lenny Bruce known to each new generation. In 1984 she published "The Unpublished Lenny Bruce", a book of her dad's writings, interviews and even a script for a proposed children's record.

Then a few years ago, she released "LET THE BUYER BEWARE", a six-CD set of mostly unissued nightclub routines and private recordings that span Lenny's entire career: from his 1948 appearance on the CBS program, "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" (where he did impersonations of Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart in German accents!) to a tape he made the night before he died. For the uninitiated who wish to discover the genius of Lenny Bruce for the first time, this box-set is a pretty good bet.

Now Kitty is on a different kind of quest to memorialize dear old dad. She wants to utilize his memory in a way that will help the less fortunate. In a fund raising letter she wrote:

"For a number of years I have wanted to honor his memory in a way that would change lives and make our world a better place. There is a great need for women to have a place to go when they are in recovery from drugs and alcohol. That place is 'Lenny"s House'".

Kitty Bruce is not content that her father be remembered merely as the most influential stand-up comedian of the twentieth century. She wants his name associated with a righteous cause. The name "Lenny's House" is not quite accurate. More than a house, it will be a home, a refuge that will provide the kind of aid to victims of substance abuse that was not around in 1966 - the type of help and comfort that might have saved Lenny's life had it been available then.

It is difficult to accept the fact that he has been gone longer than he was alive on this earth. He would have turned eighty-four this October thirteenth had he lived. Can you even imagine an elderly Lenny Bruce? I can picture him, verbally improvising on the sad state of modern-day America. Oh, what might have been! I can just hear him now....

"George W. Bush....Dig this: Forty-five years ago when LBJ became president - and this is just my perspective as an ethnocentric northerner - I could imagine him shoveling horse shit on a farm twenty miles outside of Galveston - that's it, Jim. Not as president, are you kidding me? Whenever Johnson said the word "Negro" it always came out sounding like "NIGGER-OH"! Really! But Bush? Compared to that guy, Johnson is starting to sound like Noel Coward! Emmis! And I can't even fathom Lyndon doing that 'Bring 'em on' bit! Never! It's just so....Pheeewww....Forget about it, man. It's too weird"

Lenny Bruce, 2009
(Hey, I can dream, can't I?)

In an e-mail received two days ago, Kitty told me,

"There is a great need for a place for women in early recovery from drugs and alcohol to go and have a couple of months to get their mind, body and spirit healthy and strong. Being altered for any period of time makes returning to a sober world very difficult without a strong foundation. Lenny's House is non-profit and is the place to go. I need all the help I can get to make this a reality. Some women are literally recycled through the prison systems and rehabilitation programs - but they just keep returning to old habits. I believe that the combination of the Twelve Step form of recovery, basic life skills - plus self-esteem building - is a win-win."

In addition to the traditional methods of fund raising, Kitty is also planning on holding an auction of all of her father's personal possessions. (So help me Masked Man, I'm going to get one of Lenny's ties if it kills me!) Although there is not yet a place on line where once can make a donation, here is an address where you can send a check via snail mail:

The Lenny Bruce Memorial Foundation
P.O. Box 1089
Pittston, PA 18640-5082

Let's all help Kitty Bruce make this dream a reality.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:

The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon
by Richard K.L. Collins and David M. Skover

The Essential Lenny Bruce
edited by John Cohen

AFTERTHOUGHT:

The photograph at the top of this piece was taken in Miami in the summer of 1960. Lenny Bruce is posed with his wife Honey Harlowe (1927-2005) and their beloved daughter, Kitty Bruce.

I'll let Father Bruce have the last word:

"I'm not a comedian and I am not sick. The world is sick and I'm the doctor. I'm a surgeon with a scalpel for false values. I don't have an 'act'. I just talk. I'm just Lenny Bruce."

Post #227: Random Thoughts

The following are a series of thoughts that I posted on other websites or had scribbled in my note book. Here they are, slightly edited. Happy June, everyone!

ONE:
It's all about the money. Our representatives don't give a hoot in hell about their constituency. This is true, of both parties. The Democrats have forgotten that they are the party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Hey Dems! The next time you have a chance, read a little book called, "Profiles In Courage". It was written in 1956 by a little-known senator from the state of Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy - his friends called him, "Jack". By all accounts, he was a pretty smart fellow.

Were he to rise from the dead tonight to do a little research on a possible sequel to the book that won him a Pulitzer Prize, where might he look for inspiration? He'd have to write a chapter on his kid brother Ted, no doubt about it; but then the Right Wing would accuse him of nepotism. Russ Feingold would certainly be worthy of a chapter and maybe one or two others. Unfortunately in the end he would be forced to condense it into a magazine article. The sad fact of the matter is that the House of Representatives is nothing more than a glorified whore house. The late Frank Zappa put it well:

What they're doing in WashingTON
They're just looking out for Number One
And Number One ain't you
You ain't even Number Two!

Well said, Frankie!

TWO:
Here's a prediction: If the GOP insists on continuing this stupid fight against Judge Sotomayor's nomination, by the end of the summer we'll be reading their obituary. What the hell is the matter with these people? They've already alienated the majority of that silly, moribund party - now they want to offend the few Hispanic women that remain lounging on the deck of that rapidly-sinking ship? This is too good to be true.

THREE:
"Blessed are the peace makers,
For they shall be called sons of God"

Jesus of Nazareth
from the Sermon on the Mount

I wonder how George W. Bush would have reacted had Donald Rumsfeld sent him those biblical verses in his morning briefings? He probably would have fired him.

I have always had this quaint hope that one day people who identify themselves as "Christians" would start living the teachings of Jesus Christ. Our former president was the most self-identified "Christian" chief-executive in American history. He was also - beyond a doubt - the least "Christ-like" one. Jesus was all about love and mercy - concepts that didn't play too well during the age of Dubya.

Lenny Bruce once said, "Thou Shalt Not Kill means JUST THAT". Lenny was an agnostic, and yet he understood some simple truths. So many so-called "religious people" just don't get it.

Read Thomas Merton. Read Dorothy Day. They got it.

The sleeping giant of the Religious Left is awakening. Maybe someday soon Christians will finally go back to Christ. It's a nice thought, isn't it?.

FOUR:
Elvis Presley was the most overrated performer in the history of western civilization.

FIVE:
It just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. Eventually they will uncover the horrible truth of this administration's (excuse me - I meant, "that administration's") crimes against humanity - but it might take years. This much is certain: it is obvious that the Bush Mob is starting to panic. In the months and years to come, that wall of silence they were justly famous for will start to crack like a fungus-filled saltine. People will need to white wash their place in history while making some cold, hard cash in the process. Oh, brother! I can't wait for those memoirs to come out!

SIX:
Doodles Weaver was the most underrated performer in the history of western civilization.

SEVEN:
So, you thought that Dick Cheney would just fade away, huh? Think again, Buster! The old freak is going to keep us rolling in the aisles for some time to come you may be sure. This may be pure paranoia on my part, but could it be that Cheney, as a result of his former position, received official intelligence that another attack is just around the corner and that he is positioning himself to say, "I told you so!"? Don't put it past him. Don't put it past him.

EIGHT:
Good 'n' Plenty candy tastes like crap.

NINE:
Many years ago I was visiting my father at his apartment in New York City. He gave me a bottle of wine and asked me to deliver it to his friend, a man named Alan Bisk, who lived about fifteen floors above him. When I arrived at Mr. Bisk's apartment, he invited me in and made me a drink. After talking over all range of subjects, I casually mentioned that I was being bombarded with offers from several different credit card companies enticing me to sign up. Since I respected his opinion, I asked for his advice:

"Which company do you recommend, Mr. Bisk?" I asked.

"None of them", he replied.

"Tom", he said, "I have never, even during my lean period, had a major financial problem. One of the reasons for this is because I have never owned a credit card - and I strongly suggest you never own one either."

Another man whose opinion I respected, the late, great Jazz Swanwick (the father of my pal Kevin) was fond of saying, "If you can't afford it, don't buy it." Those words were quoted at his funeral last year.

I took their advice. I have never had a major financial problem.

TEN:
If you haven't caught The Ed Show yet, you really should. It's hosted by a Progressive populist named Ed Schultz (or "the fat red head" as he likes to call himself). He's on Monday through Friday, 6:00 PM (EST) on MSNBC. He's great.

ELEVEN:
Bob Hope should have retired in 1950.

TWELVE:
Jack Benny should not have died in 1974.

THIRTEEN:
Too many people on the Left are starting to turn on President Obama. Yeah! Yeah! I know. He's starting to piss me off, too. But my disappointment in him is somewhat tempered by the fact that he's been in office for less than five months, and by the knowledge that we don't know what he knows. In other words, he is probably acting on information that he, for whatever reason, can't make public. Remember that the stock market is so damned volatile at the moment, any public statement (or misstatement) on his part could send it tumbling. For the time being we should give him the benefit of the doubt.

My advice? Before we cast all hope to the wind, let's give the guy at least eighteen months. By then we should have a better idea whether or not he really is the angel of change he portrayed himself to be during the campaign - or if he is merely Bubbah Lite.

FOURTEEN:
Being a tad crazy myself (in a fun and lovable way, I assure you), I have this gift: I am able to pick up on the crazy vibe. Some people have a subtle form of craziness. Some people have crazy to spare.

Glenn Beck is in the latter category. A blogger on AlterNet who goes by the name of "Izzy Stoner" put it well. He described Beck as "Ted Baxter trying to channel Josef Goebbels".

Most of the people on the Far Right are not the brightest bulbs on the porch - no doubt about it. Some of them have the I.Q. of a half-eaten box of Milk Duds. But very few of them could be described as certifiable.

Our man Glenn is as crazy as a bed bug. He likes to think of himself as the modern day equivalent Howard Beale, the character from the 1976 film, Network. It really is an apt comparison when you think about it. He's mad as hell.

FIFTEEN:
Lima Beans taste like crap, too.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

AFTERTHOUGHT:

My friend Rady Ananda, formerly of OpEdNews.Com, has gotten together with a few other progressive-minded thinkers and has started a site called COTO (Coalition Of The Obvious). WARNING: These people take no prisoners. Here's a link:

http://cotocrew.wordpress.com/

Happy reading!

Judge Sonia Has Her Day

"I chose to be a lawyer and ultimately a judge because I find endless challenge in the complexities of the law. I firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all of our basic rights."

Sonia Sotomayor
26 May 2009

The latest talking point on both sides of the aisle is that she came from nothing. That's not true. Nobody comes from nothing. Every human being on earth, whether they are born in a mansion or a ghetto, is priceless. Still, it's a good thing to know that in an age when America is starting to look more and more like a Plutocracy, that a person of Judge Sotomayor's humble origin can climb to the pinnacle of her profession without turning her back on from whence she came. It's quite curious; why does Clarence Thomas and Alberto Gozalez immediately come to mind?

Her biography is beyond impressive. Born in the Bronx fifty-five years ago this June 23, to Puerto Rican parents, she was raised in a housing project that was rife with vice and violence. A year after she was diagnosed with diabetes at the tender age of eight, her father died. Her mother insisted that she and her younger brother receive a private Catholic education - an expensive proposition under any circumstances. Back then (as now) Parochial schools were far superior to the public schools in most American cities. A few years after graduating from Cardinal Spellman High School, she received her A.B. from Princeton University.

According to some scholars, she has more judicial and legal experience than any proposed nominee in at least a century. You would assume that a person with her credentials would be easily confirmed by the Senate, wouldn't you? In fact as things now stand, that just may happen. While the Republicans are just itching to block her nomination with every possible legislative trick at their disposal, they have a bit of a problem: their hunting dog is dead.

The "party of Lincoln" has a really big dilemma on their hands. What we're talking about here is a classic Catch 22, damned if they do and damned if they don't scenario: It would be crazy on their part to obstruct the Sotomayor nomination for the simple reason that it would only further alienate the country's fastest growing demographic, Hispanics. A lot of them (for reasons I can't figure out for the life of me) vote against their best interests by habitually siding with the GOP. To throw a monkey wrench into this process is not likely to do the Republicans any good. You would think at least one of them would be smart enough to figure this out. The membership in that silly excuse of a party is dwindling at such an alarming rate, to do anything but grant the good judge a prompt and speedy confirmation would be foolhardy.

PROBLEM: That party is just chock full of fools. The next few days should be very interesting; very interesting indeed.

Every day in every way, they spiral further and further into the abyss of irrelevancy. To do anything as politically suicidal as attempting to sabotage President Obama's nominee would only be further proof (as if any more were needed) that our Republican representatives, within congress and without, are beyond psychotherapy and need to be seriously medicated for their own safety and ours.

The other day on television, Mitch McConnell (What would I do without you, Mitch?) was saying that the last thing the American people needed was a Supreme Court Justice setting judicial precedent via any preconceived political conviction. It's a good argument, one that begs the following question: Has it occurred to Senator McConnell that there are already four Right Wing extremists on that court? It's time to take a very slight turn towards the left. In fact it's long overdue. And while Judge Sotomayor's record does lean toward a liberal point-of-view, she can hardly be described as a fire-breathing Lefty. Remember it was George H. W. Bush who on November 27, 1991 nominated her to hold a seat on the U.S District Court. What does that tell you?

Don't fall for the onslaught of propaganda that is about to be hurled at you that will portray her as some kind of extremist. Sonia Sotomayer is, at best, a wishy washy moderate. In fact, she's boring. Radical Lefty? Please.

Truth be told, Eleanor Holmes Norton would have been my first choice. Between you and me, I think that gal is the bee's knees! I'm just crazy about her!

As of this hour, college drop-out Karl Rove is questioning Judge Sotomayor's intellect (She graduated second in her class at Princeton). Rush Limbaugh is calling her a "racist" (The same Rush Limbaugh who a few months ago broadcast the song parody, "Barack, The Magic Negro"). The Right Wing talking heads are now trying to portray her as the instrument of Satan's own wrath. They are in the process of obliterating whatever credibility they have left. And isn't it wonderful? You and I are going to have a front-row seat for their self-immolation!

Three years ago next week when I started this site (June 6, 2006) I made what at the time seemed a very bold, even preposterous prediction. It's not as bold or preposterous now as it once was. In fact it's almost a foregone conclusion. Please allow me to make that prediction again:

George W. Bush will be the last Republican president. There will never be another. The grand old party is over.

I concluded that first posing three years ago this Tuesday with these words:

"Sound crazy? Stay tuned."

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

tomdegan@frontiernet.net

AFTERTHOUGHT:

In recent weeks, the site that monitors the global positions of the readers of "The Rant" has pinpointed a reader who has been tuning in every couple of days from about a hundred miles or so off the south-west corner of the coast of Africa.

MESSAGE:

Whether you be a passenger on a private yacht, a military vessel, or just a lone fisherman, please allow me to send out to you this hearty and heartfelt salutation:

AHOY, MATEY!

and peace to you, brother or sister....
*

IT'S THE (stupid) BASE, STUPID!

Sarah Palin for President

Let me rephrase that....

Sarah Palin for candidate.

It will never happen, you say? Maybe. Maybe not. But think about it for a minute or two: Just take a good look at the current state of that miserable, moribund party. To whom are they going to turn in three years when they run against an incumbent president? John Boehner? Mitch McConnell? Please. My money is on Sarah Palin. I want her to get that nomination so badly I can taste it. It'll the equivalent of shooting Alaskan Pollock in the proverbial barrel.

You don't think that they would be crazy enough to hand over the mantle of standard bearer to such an imbecilic person? You think that such a move would be politically suicidal? "NO WAY", you scream, in a voice loud enough to be heard in the next county, "THE WOMAN IS AN IDIOT! AN EXTREMIST! IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN! NEVER, I TELL YOU!"

Three words: George Walker Bush.

Let's be brutally frank here, shall we? The I.Q. of the so-called "base" of that party has deteriorated to such an alarming degree in the last thirty years, a Sarah Palin candidacy is not only a very real possibility in 2012, it's damned near inevitable! She is made-to-order for these fools, are you kidding me? There can no longer be any serious debate that the Republican party has cornered the market on Stupid. In fact, with very few exceptions, judging by the quality of the people they have been sending to Washington in recent years, it is quite apparent that Stupid sells.

Take Michael Steele, for instance. When the American people elected the first African American as President last November, the Republican National Committee decided that the GOP needed a face lift - actually a face dye. It was obvious that, given their history of policies that are utterly hostile to people of color, they couldn't have just another white guy as their spokesman of opposition to an Obama administration. There are a few (very few) black men who now earn their reputations on the talk show circuit spouting the talking points of the Republican party. A couple of them, I hate to admit, are fairly astute - like Ron Christie, for instance, who regularly appears on MSNBC - a very bright fellow any way you slice it or dice it. You would think that the geniuses who run the RNC would have signed up someone like him as chairman, wouldn't you? Yeah, me, too - but that would have been out of character for them. No. They just had to hire the dumbest black guy they could possibly find.

Yesterday in a speech before a gathering of party hacks in Maryland, Steele proclaimed that the gloves were about to come off and that the "honeymoon" between President Obama and the grand old party was over:

"We are going to take this president on with class. We are going to take this president on with dignity. This will be a marked contrast to the shabby and classless way that the Democrats and the far left spoke of President Bush."

Class and dignity, huh? QUESTION: Where the hell was this knucklehead when his party was trying to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about an affair with a half-witted intern - in solitary confinement? By the way, between you and me and the parking meter, Malcolm X had a term for people like Michael Steele: House Nigger. You want to talk about the worst kind of cow towing, Uncle Tom darkie? The guy is a walking, talking stereotype! Somewhere in that eternal void, you may be sure, Stepin Fetchit is laughing his ass off:

"Hee! Hee! Hee! Oh, Mistah White folks you sho' is sly!!"

Before he was even inaugurated, I predicted two terms for Barack Obama. Although at the time that was somewhat of a daring prophecy, it is no longer bold as it once was. As a matter of a fact, it is a near certainty. Which brings us back to the dilemma facing the "party of Lincoln" (Doesn't that phrase just make ya wanna giggle?) Three years from now they won't be able to nominate another bland and boring white guy, that's for damned sure! What to do? It's simple! Nominate a minority or a woman. I can just picture the bumper stickers: SARAH PLAIN/BOBBY JINDAL in '12". Count on it: Barring a miracle, scandal or tragedy, either one of them - or both of them - will be on the ticket in 2012. Remember, you read it right here on "The Rant", folks.

Getting back to the subject of Stupid....Are you ready for this? A vote will be held today in the RNC to rename the Democratic party - hold on to your sides, kiddies! - the "DEMOCRAT SOCIALIST PARTY". How's that for a knee slapper? Is it stupidity or simple arrogance that makes these assholes believe they can actually rename another political party? If this happens, the Dems should forever refer to them as the "Republican Fascist Party". Does that sound to you like a gross exaggeration? If it does, I would only remind you of how Benito Mussolini - the father of the fascist state - once defined fascism. In a 1927 interview he told a journalist (in English):

"Fascism should more properly be caller 'Corporatism' because it is the total merging of corporate and state power."

'Nuff said? I thought as much.

The epidemic of right-wing bloviators overdosing on Stupid Pills is disturbing and far-reaching.The other night on FOX Noise, Glenn Beck actually compared the Obama administration's handling of corrupt corporate executives to the holocaust! (No, I'm not making this up. It's probably on You Tube - look it up) In a grotesque paraphrasing of Martin Niemoller's famous poem, he told his studio audience:

"First they came for the bankers, and I did not speak up because I was not a banker.

Then they came for the A.I.G. executives, and I did not speak up because I was not an A.I.G. executive."

He then looked his viewers dead-square in the eye and told them that "they" (he never really got around to clarifying exactly who "they" were) would eventually be coming for them. Now, intelligent people like you and I can look at something as absurd as that and appreciate it for its entertainment value. Let's face it: these jackasses are awfully fun to watch. The problem is that there are many people out there, a few of them mentally disturbed, many of them armed to the teeth - all of them dumber than dog shit - who take this utter nonsense seriously. God forbid, if there ever is another Tim McVeigh-style terrorist attack on our government, Beck - and many others, you may be sure - will have blood on their hands.

A special note of thanks is in order to Keith Olbermann, who every night airs for his viewers choice nuggets of FOX nuttiness. In this way, we can experience the unintentional comedic joy of FOX Land without ever having to go there. But I really do suggest that you tune into them once and a while - if only for the entertainment value.

"The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over."

Michael Steele
May 19, 2009

Over? Really?? Aw, hell. Mikey! It's barely begun!

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:

Treason by Ann Coulter
(Again, for the pure entertainment value, of course)

Dick Cheney's Tortured Logic

"Should the United States of America be using forms of torture dating back to the Spanish Inquisition?"

Ray McGovern
(No relation to George. Honest!)

Do you want to know why I love Jesse Ventura so much? Because he pisses EVERYBODY off. The other night on Larry King Live, Jesse said, "I'll tell you what: you give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders." I can top that one easily. Just give me two hours with the hideous thug and I'll have him confessing that he was part of the Lincoln Assassination conspiracy. Oh, hell - give me three hours and he'll be saying that he framed Judas! And speaking of Judas....

NOTE TO THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT: Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross. You folks might want to rethink your position on torture. Just a thought.

Ah, Dick Cheney! As the clock was counting down on the final hours of the Bush administration, I have to confess that I was feeling kind of blue. It would never again get half as weird or one tenth as entertaining as it was when Richard Bruce Cheney held center stage. I just assumed that the dirty old dingbat would slither away into that good night of ignoble obscurity and that would be that. But he didn't go away. Not only that, at a time when the GOP is desperately trying to mend its image and undo the irreparable damage that was done to it by the Bush Mob, the Dickster is in the final stages of pounding the nails into the GOP's coffin. He knows he's in big trouble and is looking at a very long stretch in federal prison. He's out there talking as loudly as he possibly can to as many interviewers he can con into letting him into their studios. It is pitifully obvious that he is trying to contaminate any potential jury pool. You think such a blatantly opportunistic ploy is beneath him? You don't know Dick.

And he is not the only member of the Cheney Klan spewing the propaganda on the media circuit. Yesterday morning, daughter Liz Cheney could be seen debating Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Eugene Robinson on MSNBC's Morning Joe - if you want to call it a "debate". Her idea of discourse was to talk loudly over whatever point Robinson tried to make in defense of his piece that had been published earlier in the day in the Washington Post - a piece which was decidedly critical of dear old Dad. That's the only way people like that know how to operate. It's the old Josef Goebbels strategy: Just keep repeating the lie over and over and over again. Eventually, the people will start to believe it. In spite of Liz's subterfuge, Gene held his own quite nicely, thank you very much. And here's to you, Mr. Robinson!

From "The Rant", December 16, 2007:

"For the record: "Waterboarding involves strapping some poor bastard down, taping a piece of cloth over his face, and pouring torrents of water over him. He then gets the overwhelming sensation that he is drowning. When an investigator asked the CIA to perform the procedure on him, even though he knew he was in no danger of dying, he found the duration of the ordeal unbearable and extremely frightening. His conclusion? Waterboarding is torture. PERIOD. Sixty years ago, several Japanese military commanders were sent to prison for many years for committing the same crime. Some were even executed! You see where I'm headed here, don't you. Okay, I'll stop."

And you thought the only thing George W. Bush was torturing all those years was the English language! And do you remember the word Alberto Gonzalez used in describing the international laws against torture? "Quaint".

"Did you see that, Lester? That there feller's entire respiratory system just shut down! Aw, sheeeit! Ain't that quaint?"

I hate be a party pooper here, but I have a funny feeling that in an international court of law, none of Cheney's defenses regarding torture would hold much water (No pun intended). I've always had this quaint notion that the United States is bound by tradition - and honor - to abide by the Geneva Conventions. To say that these so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" (Paging Dr. Orwell) were successful is, to put it as politely as I can, disingenuous. Were they able to extract any reliable information from these guys via the use of torture? It depends on whom you ask. But this much may be ascertained beyond a shadow of a doubt: a waterboardee will eventually tell the waterboarder anything and everything he or she wants to hear - anything to stop the extreme pain and terror. Human beings (being human beings) are kind of funny that way, you know?

Under the right (or wrong) conditions, a person in duress will confess to damned near anything. When I was a kid, I once admitted to a guy who was twisting my left index finger, that late at night when no one was watching, I liked to sing Smoke Gets In Your Eyes while dressed in a Coco Chanel negligee. Hey! A guy's gotta go what a guy's gotta do! As you can imagine (and has been proven beyond a doubt) most of the information the CIA received during these interrogations was absolutely bogus.

"The United States DOES NOT TORTURE."

George W. Bush

Oh, really? Tell that to ibn al-Sheik al-Libi.

Under conditions of extreme torture, al-Libi agreed in 2002 to provide his interrogators with the political cover the Bush/Cheney cabal needed in order to invade the sovereign nation of Iraq. Libi made a deal with his captors. He would tell them everything they wanted to hear and then some. In exchange, they would stop the torture. At the moment this was happening, the now-infamous "Torture Memos" were being written. If there is a case to be made against that disgusting administration for war crimes (and there is - trust me on this one, campers) Mr. Libi has been described as the "smoking gun" .

Good news: HOORAY! We've got an Arab John Dean!

Bad news: Oh, damn. ibn al-Sheik al-Libi is dead.

They found his body last week. He appears to have committed "suicide" even though his family and friends insist there were no warning signs that he was about to kill himself and that such a self-destructive act was not in his nature. That's okay. I'm sure its all just an innocent coincidence. Never mind.

The ball is now in President Obama's court. It is disturbingly apparent that he lacks the will - the political courage - to have his Justice Department initiate the prosecutions against these murderous assholes. The only problem is the fact that it's not just his Department of Justice - it's ours, too. If the American people aren't very angry over the plight a bunch of tortured "A-Rabs", you can bet your last dollar that when they learn the reason those guys were tortured, they'll be seething with rage.

Let's put things in their proper perspective, Shall we?

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (both failed oil men) were desperate to seize control of a country which possessed the second or third largest oil reserves on the entire planet. But before they could do that. they needed to prove to the clueless American people the following little bits of misinformation:

1. The ruler of that country, Saddam Hussein (Remember him?) was harboring dangerous Weapons of Mass Destruction.

2. He was somehow in cahoots with Osama bin Laden in the atrocity that was committed on September 11, 2001,

3. He was an imminent threat to the peace and security of the free world in general and the United States in particular.

The only problem was that they needed one crucial thing to make their case which they were seriously lacking - EVIDENCE. So how would they be able to get the evidence they needed so badly? Extract it from hapless Prisoners of War by any means necessary. Torture was the means they used to achieve their ends. As a result, nearly five-thousand American kids - not to mention as many as a million Iraqi men, women and little children - are dead.

They were determined to invade a country that was a danger to no one but itself. They fabricated the reasons for that invasion out of thin air - much in the same way Adolf Hitler did when he invaded Poland on September 3, 1939. They cherry-picked a mole hill of evidence that claimed Saddam was a threat to America and completely ignored the mountain of evidence which conclusively proved that he was nothing of the sort. They wanted that fucking oil, baby! And they were determined to grab it - come hell or high waterboard.

I don't know about you, but I've got a funny feeling that when the American people finally figure all of this stuff out, they're going to be just a tad peeved, don'cha think?

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED VIEWING:

Uncovered: The War on Iraq
A film by Robert Greenwald

The G.O.Pizza Party

Did you see it? It was beyond pathetic - it was dark comedy at its finest. Kurt Vonnegut might have written it! There they were - Eric Cantor, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush - holding some kind of town meeting - at a pizza parlor. They made much of the fact that they were able to crowd almost fifty people into the place. Smart move. They probably realized that they would not be able to get much more than that number into an average sized auditorium. Romney was actually comparing the Republicans to the American revolutionaries of the eighteenth century. He also said that the Democrats were more like the English monarchy that ruled during that era. As he was making these incredibly stupid statements, he was sitting next to a man who was the son of one president, the brother of another - and the descendant of still another (Franklin Pierce). I think poor old Mitt's irony meter needs some adjusting.

It was yet another silly attempt to remake the image of the GOP and it didn't work. No one is buying their product anymore. It reminded me of an electronics dealer who used to operate here where I live in Goshen, NY. Well into the 1980's, years after they were rendered hopelessly obsolete, this clown was still selling 8-track tape machines - or trying to sell them anyway. I always felt sorry for the poor guy. Although I was very much involved in audio and radio production at the time, he sold absolutely nothing which suited my purposes. So out of touch was he with the times in which he lived, he eventually went out of business. Come to think of it, that is exactly what is happening at this very moment to the Republican party.

While this silly nonevent was transpiring, the life of Jack Kemp, one of America's last remaining conservative visionaries, was ebbing away. It was sad, symbolic and ironic all at the same time. Kemp, like Arlen Specter, was a right-of-center moderate who was viewed by many Republicans in the House and Senate as a Pravda-reading, Castro-loving lefty. He also understood something which every single one of his Republican colleagues could never figure out: the importance of bridging the gap that has existed in this country for centuries between blacks and whites. Jack Kemp knew that it was the single most important issue facing the American people. This morning, one less, clear thinking and decent conservative politician walks among us.

And what was the purpose of this so-called "Pizza Party" you may well ask? No one, thus far, has been able to quite figure that out. It made about as much sense as those moronic "Tea Bag Protests" of last month - just another mindless publicity stunt. They spent a great deal of time preaching the ideas of the Republican party without being able to define just what those ideas were. That has been pretty much the case with all of their public venues as of late. Whenever a relevant question has managed to cut through the spin, smoke and mirrors, their responses tend to be of the "dog ate my homework" variety - amusing to say the least. The fact is, they have no good answers to the questions we might put to them at any given time:

Us: "Now, about the economy...."

Them: "We have a plan."

Us: "Umm, right, you have a plan - got'cha. Explain your plan."

Them: "We have a plan."

Us: "And just what would your plan entail?"

Them: "We have a plan."

Us: "Wait! This plan of yours doesn't even have any numbers!"

Them: "We have a plan."

Us: "Do you even have a clue as to what you're talking about?"

Them: "We have a plan."

Us: "Do you really think you'll be able to get away with this?"

Them: "We have a plan!"

You get the idea - or lack thereof. What they are doing is tying a pair of antlers to a pig and calling it an elk. This is beyond humorous; this is screamingly funny! The Snake Oil salesman will only be able to sell his worthless nerve tonic for so long before the people catch on to the scam. When that happens he'll merely relabel the bottle to read, "CLEANING FLUID". The American people have been swallowing that worthless Right Wing Elixir for nearly thirty years and it hasn't cured their ills - in fact it has only made them sicker. Doctors Canter, Romney and Bush are desperately trying to change the bottle's label. Unfortunately for them, the people have gotten wise to the swindle and are no longer buying the product.

"Stop claiming you have 'an agenda.' It's not an agenda; it's a random collection of laws that your corporate donors paid you to pass."

Bill Maher

Not only that, you should stop claiming that you're the "party of ideas". No one believes that anymore. You don't even believe it anymore! You are the purveyors of an obsolete ideology. And while we're on the subject, will you people please cease and desist from using the name of Jesus Christ as proof of your so-called moral superiority over the rest of us? While I can never claim to be a religious scholar, my Catholic school upbringing has given me, at the very least, a remedial understanding of what Jesus was (and is) all about. When He said, "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth", I have a funny feeling He wasn't talking about Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter - or Canter, Romney and Bush. Enough already, alright?

"What we have here is a failure to communicate"

Struther Martin
from the film, Cool Hand Luke

It is not really a question of failing to communicate. After all, the patron saint of that party was called "the great communicator". The problem is the fact that for so long they were able to communicate a whole range of perfectly screwy ideas that the electorate (for reasons I'm still trying to figure out) took seriously. While the notion of a "trickle down" economy might have looked fine and dandy to many in 1980, twenty-nine years later the people are no longer swallowing the snake oil. The (Republican) party's over. The piper must be paid.

This would appear to be the end of the line for the loony right wing, and maybe even the Grand Old Party itself. The "moderate wing" will not be able to save it this time for the simple reason that the moderate wing no longer even exists! Arlen Specter and Jim Jeffords are now Democrats; Jack Kemp and Barry Goldwater are dead (And yes, they have moved so far to the extreme right, historical hindsight now views Goldwater, "Mr. Conservative", as a centrist). As someone recently remarked, "That's not a political party; that's a cult".

While I couldn't be happier over the complete destruction of what used to be known as "the party of Lincoln", my utter joy is tempered by the knowledge that one party rule can ultimately lead to disaster. Will absolute power corrupt the Democrats? Absolutely.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:

New Rules
by Bill Maher