No Ordinary Team of Rivals

The latest revelations that President-elect Obama has been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's recent biography of Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals, left me somewhat puzzled. He's reading the right author but the wrong book. The book he should be reading is her biography of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, No Ordinary Time. Like FDR, Obama will be entering office facing what can only be described as an economic catastrophe. And as the American people looked toward Franklin Delano Roosevelt with a renewed sense of hope and expectation, Barack Obama's election has a large part of this troubled country feeling the sort of hope that they have not known in decades.

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First of all, as tricky Dick Nixon used to say, let me make one thing perfectly clear: The economy has never been one of my better subjects. My knowledge is, at best, remedial. But this I know to be an absolute truth; it is so Economics 101 as to almost be trite:
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As goes the middle and working classes, so goes the nation.`
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This is something the extreme Right Wing has never been able to understand. The actions of the Bush White House to the current economic meltdown is all the proof you need to establish that fact. The economy is collapsing? No problemo, muchacho! Just pump America's treasure (or what's left of it) into the coffers of the two percent of the people who control over three quarters of the nation's wealth - not the people who are gong to spend it and pump it back into the economy - but the ones who will merely hoard it. Now that makes perfect sense! I need a drink.
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Here's what's happening: The plutocracy is in the process of looting our national treasure. This has actually been going on since the day Bush took office eight years ago this January 20. They're now making the final assault. If you think the situation President Obama will face is a mess now, Just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait. As bad as things are now, it's nothing compared to what it will be come Inauguration Day.

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Consider this: Most large retail businesses operate all year long in the red. It is the Christmas shopping season they depend on to put them back in the black - and that's just not going to happen this year - COUNT ON IT. The holiday season of 2008 is unlike any other in over three-quarters of a century. The most wonderful time of the year? Not this year, Santa! People are hurting in 2008 - Hurting badly. They're not going to go out and piss away seventy percent of their pay checks on presents and flub dubs. They need to survive. You just wait and see how many businesses fold after the new year. It ain't gonna be pretty, Bubbah!

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The children were nestled

All snug in their beds

While visions of poverty

Stomped on their heads

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As bad as things are now, Barack Obama's first day in office is almost certain to find them much worse. The most disconcerting thing about his proposed cabinet is the make up of it. All of these damned Clintonistas! I don't know about you, but that's not necessarily the kind of change I can believe in. I changed my political registration a decade ago from Democrat to Green - and Bill and Hillary Clinton were my primary reasons for doing so. The one thing that can be said in their favor is that the presence of so many Clinton people in the new administration will at least guarantee a good degree of hands-on, government experience. Let's hope they don't blow it.
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Clinton was, in many ways, a good and competent chief-executive. He was certainly head over heels better than the asshole whose term of office is about to mercifully end, that's for damned sure. But President Clinton's major sin, as far as yours truly is concerned, is the fact that he and his once-great party forgot that they were the party of Franklin Roosevelt. He didn't put a stop to the GOP's assault on the New Deal that began with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, but merely passively enabled it. One can only hope - indeed one can fervently pray - that the Clinton people have learned a lesson from their errors of the past. It's the only hope we have.

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Barack Obama would do himself a big favor by having a look at Ms. Goodwin's other book. If you listen to the recorded speeches President Roosevelt made all those many years ago - his inaugural address and his famous Fireside Chats - the phrase that keeps popping up is, "Action, NOW". Some of the action he and his Brain Trust took was bold and experimental. Some of it was unsuccessful. But he saved this country by "tempering the excesses" of capitalism.

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Don't listen to the half-witted revisionists on the Far Right. Their historical talking points have always been that Roosevelt's entire administration was a failure; that his policies actually made the economic situation worse and prolonged the Depression; that he knew the Japanese were about to invade Pearl Harbor and he allowed it to happen - it's all nonsense. If there is a president that Obama will do well to emulate, it is not by any means Abraham Lincoln - great president though he no doubt was. The situation the Great Emancipator faced, as serious as it was, was totally different than the one facing FDR - and Barack Obama.

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Nobody survives from the Roosevelt administration to act as technical advisor so Obama and his people will need to rely on a careful study of the historical record. That is not to say they should parrot the New Deal note by note. Obama needn't get a pair of prince nez spectacles or restart his former smoking habit with a cigarette holder. While there are many differences between 1933 and today, there are also a good deal of ominous similarities. They should carefully pick and choose what may be applicable for modern times and what may not be. Their best mode of operation? They should be bold but thoughtful; careful but fearless The only thing they have to fear is....well, you get the idea.

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Will the Obama Administration be successful? His chances of success are about as good as Jimmy Carter's were thirty-two years ago. What the people who love to disparage his reputation always conveniently omit from their tirades is that Carter inherited a disastrous economy from the Nixon/Ford years. Instead of making delicious lemonade out of the bag of nasty tasting lemons he was handed, he whipped up a pitcher of donkey piss. The biggest challenge Barack Obama faces will be how he responds to the current crisis. Of this we may be certain: He will be so much more able, responsible and competent than George W. Bush, even his failures (and there will be some) will seem like successes.
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When the sun rises on the morning of January 21, 2009, his first full day as president of the United States of America, no other human being on the planet will be shouldering a greater burden than President Obama. No American president since Franklin Roosevelt has had bigger man-made obstacles to overcome.

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I sure as hell don't envy the guy.

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Tom Degan

Goshen, NY

tomdegan@frontiernet.net

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AFTERTHOUGHT:

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Did you happen to catch FDR's grandson, Curtis Roosevelt's lecture at Hyde Park on C-SPAN 2 last weekend? It was taped on November 9 and will probably be repeated in the future. I was the questioner who asked him to speculate (and it was only speculation, mind you) what his grandparents might have thought about the current president. Lovely man. He signed his latest book for me afterwards.

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BREAKING NEWS:

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In fifty-five days this disgusting administration will be history! Cant'cha just feel the change??? CAN I GET A WITNESS???

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

One of the latest Washington parlor Games seems to be spectating as to whether or not Bush will grant a full pardon to convicted felon Scooter Libby before his administration mercifully comes to an end two months from tomorrow. I say "seems to be" because, trust me, I am not nor have I ever been a member of the Washington Beltway, cocktail party circuit - in good standing or otherwise. All of the info you read on this site I receive second or third hand. Truth be told, I have not even set foot in the District of Columbia since April of 2000.

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Recently, however, the Princes and Princesses of D.C. are starting to ask a somewhat different question:

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Is the First Fool going to issue a blanket pardon for all of the people within this administration - and without - who have committed crimes against the American people in general and humanity in particular?

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Expect a major Constitutional crisis between now and January 20. In the months following the dawn of the 110th Congress in January of 2007, I couldn't understand why the special prosecutors weren't forthcoming. What the hell is the matter with these stupid Democrats? Can't they see that this is the most murderously criminal administration in American history? Are these nitwits blind? Are they part of the conspiracy? What gives?

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Then in early July, I was finally able to figure out the reason behind the Dem's hesitancy. The moment Dick Cheney's chief-of-staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, Bush commuted his sentence. What's the sense of prosecuting these homicidal clowns for anything if the asshole in the Oval Office is simply going to render their convictions invalid?

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The plan, I am sure, is to wait until Bush is out of office, then bring forward the prosecutions. As I predicted on this very site almost two years ago, Bush would initiate a blanket pardon in the early hours of Christmas Eve "in the spirit of this glorious holiday season" much like his father did in the case of Casper Weinberger and everyone else convicted of the many crimes that were committed in the Iran Contra affair.

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Here's Bush's problem: No one in his administration has been convicted of or even charged with anything. A president cannot merely pardon someone in anticipation of an indictment, right? Right??? Of course he can't. Explain that, though, to the knuckleheads within the GOP who issue the talking points. You see, the idea is subtly being put forth that, not only can a president pardon anybody for anything - indicted or not - he even has the legal ability to vindicate himself.

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Beg Pardon??? (No pun intended).

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Is he really going to attempt something as hideously arrogant as that? Are you kidding me? This is George W. Bush we're talkin' about here! Of course he's going to attempt it. It would be uncharacteristic for him not to try it. At the very least, he's thinking about it - COUNT ON IT.

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Consider this: Do you think that the Founding Fathers gave the chief executive the power of the pardon in order that he or she would be able to conduct a criminal enterprise for four long years - and even longer - and then have the ability to walk away from their crimes scot-free? If that were the case, why in the hell did they give the Congress the power of impeachment in case of presidential "high crimes and misdemeanors"? What earthly sense would that have made?

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As the late, lamented Molly Ivins once observed, the founders of this country were "just about the smartest sons-of-bitches that ever lived". No article in the Bill of Rights and Constitution was meant to be self-defeating - of that you may be sure. If Bush attempts to do what I think he's going to do, the proverbial shit is going to hit the Constitutional fan.

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If a president had the legal right to pardon himself, why didn't it ever cross the mind of Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton when he was charged with the "high crime" of lying about a fling with a half-witted intern? Why didn't President Andrew Johnson consider it when he was impeached in 1869? Because to have attempted as much would have been dismissed out of hand as laughable. In 1974, Richard M. Nixon and company considered this very maneuver - for about two minutes. I hate to be placed in the position of defending the Nixon Gang; they may have been a bunch of arrogant thugs, but they were also a fairly intelligent bunch. As soon as the idea floated by, it was immediately overruled as ludicrous. That's the funny thing about Dick Nixon. Say what you want about the hideous old bastard, compared to George W. Bush, he's starting to look like Thomas Jefferson. No, it just doesn't any stranger than that.

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If our commander-in-disguise attempts to let himself off the hook via the dubious means of a self-pardon, how would the Supreme Court rule on something as extraordinary as that? How would they rule on the subject of a mass pardon of people for crimes that are not even named? My prediction would be seven to two, with Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia being the only two holdouts. Seriously, you don't think that those two could possibly render an intelligent judgment, do you?

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America is about to come to the end of the most criminal administration in our history. We cannot allow these people to escape the justice that is their due. What would it say if Bush pardons everyone for the torture that took place under his watch at Guantanamo Bay? It would say that he knew what was going on there was illegal all along! He would be virtually declaring himself a war criminal!

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Think about this for a minute or two: How is it going to look if this disgusting little guttersnipe is able to say, "Yes, I tortured; Yes, I committed war crimes; Yes, I looted our national treasure; Yes, my Justice Department conducted political persecutions under my orders; Yes, I authorized warrantless wiretaps in direct violation of the written law; Yes, I lied this nation into an unnecessary war; Yes, I did all of those things and then some. But guess what? I pardon myself. I'm innocent! TAG, YOU'RE IT! NYAH! NYAH!"
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If we allow him and the people around him to walk away from the carnage they have created, then justice in this doomed country will forever be rendered a farce. Never again will any of us be able to say with a straight face that we are truly a nation of laws and not men. These people have committed serious crimes against humanity - not only in this country but abroad. In 2003, they presented the Congress with falsified evidence that led this country into committing the stupidest military blunder in our history. As a result, as many as one million Iraqi men, women and little children are dead. Almost five thousand American kids now rest in cemeteries all across the land. That, my friends, is a crime of the worst order. The perpetrators of that crime need to be punished - severely. We have no other choice. Justice denied is justice mocked.

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We'd all be better off just handing him over to the Hague. Let them deal with the hideous little bastard. We would be able to avoid the partisan earthquake that would certainly come with the criminal prosecution of George W. Bush, Dick Chaney and the tsunami of human incompetence that comprises this nightmare of an administration. Also, they would surely be able to avoid the death penalty - something I vehemently oppose - which by their own standards they deserve. They would be able to spend the rest of their miserable lives contemplating their sins. Now that sounds like a plan!

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Gosh! I'm sure gonna miss George W. Bush. Aren't you? He certainly has provided us with gales of unintentional laughter low these many years, has he not? More than one person has asked me, "What are you going to rant about when he's gone?" Good question. Fortunately for me, the Republicans won't be going away any time soon. Fortunately for me, those idiotic Democrats are way far from perfect. Yeah, as America heads into the post-Bush era, I'll have plenty to "rant" about, thanks just the same. But I will tell you this: Even if America survives into the next millennium, the situation will never again get as good as it was under George W. Bush - NEVER. For someone who writes about politics, his reign of stupidity has been a virtual gourmet feast of choice material on which to feed. Don't hold your breath. It just won't get this weird again....
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On second thought, that's exactly what I said when when Ronald Reagan left the White House....

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Never mind.

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Tom Degan

Goshen, NY

tomdegan@frontiernet.net

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SUGGESTED READING:

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The Lies of George W. Bush

by David Corn

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AFTERTHOUGHT:

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I've just discovered a great blog site called The Mills River Progressive. It is authored by a woman who goes by the name of Anna van Z. and it's a great read! Here's a link:

http://www.millsriverliberal.blogspot.com/

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In just sixty days the Bush administration will be tossed onto history's shit pile. January 20, 2009 just can't come soon enough for me. Hang in there, America!

The GOP's Spiral Into Irrelevance

The euphoria I've been feeling since Election Day came to a dead halt yesterday when I was reminded of something that I hadn't even thought about before. The election of the first Black person as president of the United States is not the milestone event I had previously thought it to be. Think about it for a minute or two: What will Barack Obama be doing for the next four to eight years? The same thing that African Americans have been doing for over four centuries now - cleaning up the mess left behind by lazy and ignorant White people. What the hell's the big deal?
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Watching the implosion of the Republican party, which began with the election of the 110th Congress two years ago, has been a joy too delicious to even describe. And to think that it started one-hundred and fifty-two years ago with such good and honorable intentions. Their first convention in 1856 which nominated John C. Fremont of California and running mate William Dayton of New Jersey had one abiding purpose - the abolition of the inhuman institution of slavery. In hindsight, not an unreasonable goal by any stretch of the imagination. It is almost unimaginable that so barbaric a business could have continued to thrive over three-quarters-of-a-century after America's founding - a full eighty years after Thomas Jefferson put quill to parchment and wrote, "We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men [and women. My emphasis - so sue me!] are created equal". The best thing that came with the passing of the millennium eight years ago was the fact that the American people could now say that we were two centuries separated from the sin of human bondage. Maybe that was the milestone we needed to reach to finally wake up and face the dawn.

The Republicans would lose that election to Democrat James Buchanan, a man who, before our current-commander-in-disguise came along, was generally regarded by historians to be the very worst president in American history. Four years later, they nominated an obscure Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln as their standard bearer. He is today, rightfully, remembered as our greatest president.
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The Grand Old Party started out with so much promise. What the hell happened to it? Where did it go astray? How did it manage to devolve into its sorry, present day state?
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How does any political party go from the mountaintop heights of Abraham Lincoln to the Death Valley lows of George W. Bush? You just can't fall any further than that!
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On June 2, 2006, on the very first piece published on this site, I wrote the following:
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"Please stop soiling the memory of one of the greatest presidents in history by calling it, "the party of Lincoln". Don't ever call it that again. Abraham Lincoln's influence on the Republican party ended at exactly 7:22 on the morning of April 15, 1865 when he breathed his last breath."
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That pretty much sums it up. Let's face some nasty and undeniable facts here, folks. The G.O.P. has for many years been a haven for extremists, kooks and fools. In 1954, after the Democrats were able to retain control of the House of Representatives after a two year hiatus, President Eisenhower, a Republican, breathed a prolonged, sigh of relief. In private correspondence he would tell friends and family that he had found it impossible to work with most of the members of his own party. Remember, this was the era of Joe McCarthy.
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Until the late nineteen-sixties, the the ideological direction of the Republican party was mostly navigated by clear-headed statesmen of the Everett Dirkson, Thomas Dewey variety - Rockefeller Republicans, as they were then called. They were imperfect men. Most of their policies were questionable, if not awful, yet they were basically decent men. And, with the exception of Millicent Fenwick of New Jersey (who was the model for the Doonsbury character, Lacey Davenport) - they were all men.
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Since the large migration of disaffected southern Democrats in the wake of Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Civil and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 respectively, the G.O.P has been hijacked by crazy people. You don't believe that? Two words: Sarah Palin. This is a person whose favorite sport is shooting defenceless wolves from low-flying airplanes. 'Nuff said?
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When Johnson signed those laws into existence, he told his aides Jack Valenti and Bill Moyers, "We [the Democrats] have lost the south for at least a generation." He was right: A generation and then some. But the Solid South's habitual embrace of right wing politics and policy may very well have come to an end on Election Day 2008.
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This is probably a good thing....Probably? What am I saying?? This is a wonderful thing!!!
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If the Republican party is to survive into the twenty-first century, it is going to have to undergo an extreme, ideological makeover. It's a sure bet that had the Founding Fathers of that party been able to come back from the dead and witness the depth to which it has fallen, they they would have been working overtime for Barack Obama in the last election. And if they don't get their act together really soon, they won't survive. The posting from "The Rant" that I quoted above was called, George W. Bush: The Last Republican President. If that eventually turns out to be the case, I won't shed any tears over over the matter, I assure you.
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No, this isn't the party of Abraham Lincoln. Hell, this isn't even the party of Barry Goldwater! Toward the end of his life, Goldwater, a senator from Arizona who held the seat which is now John McCain's, was bemoaning the direction that the modern Conservative movement had taken - a movement he almost single-handedly bought into being with his run for the White House in 1964. In his day, he was known as "Mr. Consevative".
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Barry Goldwater would eventually learn the hard and bitter lesson that "extremism in the defence of liberty" was indeed a vice - a danger to liberty itself. At the time of his death, he was working on a book with John Dean but passed away before it could be completed. Dean eventually finished that book two years ago. Conservatives Without Conscience is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how and why the extreme Right have been able to seize control of the Republican party.
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And while we're on the subject of great Republican presidents (there have been a couple, believe it or not) this certainly isn't the party of Theodore Roosevelt. In 1912, four years after leaving the White House, he was denied the nomination by the Republican party power base after winning the primaries. Roosevelt bolted the G.O.P. that year and ran on the independent, Progressive Party ticket (or the Bull Moose Party as it was popularly known) During that campaign, he pledged a Square Deal and a living wage "for every man and every woman in the United States". Roosevelt believed - to his very core - that big business served at the pleasure of the people - not the other way around. That is why he is forgotten by the party he so ably and nobly served. That is why today he is virtually unmentioned in all but a few pieces of maverick Republican party literature. He has become, quite simply, persona non grata.

`These clowns have controlled America's national political dialogue since the advent of Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" during the campaign of 1968. It was during this period when the Nixon Gang was able, through the use of race baiting, to convince a huge segment of southern voters that he was on the side of "law and order", a not-too-subtle reference to the riots that had erupted in cities all over the nation following the murder of Martin Luther King. Their strategy worked better than they had dared to hope. Up to that point, the majority of southerners were Democrats. One-hundred years after the end of the Civil War, these jackasses still couldn't bring themselves to vote for the party of "that bearded bastard that freed the slaves". Nixon's scheme would turn out to be a blue print for their political campaigns for decades to come. The "Solid South" would remain solidly Republican for forty years - or at least until Election Day 2008.
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Mah! Mah! The ol' plantation sho' has changed!
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Does the election of President-elect Obama mean the certain death of the Republican party? Are you kidding me? My luck has never been that good. But of this you may be relatively certain: It is the death of the party as we've known it for the last three decades, that's for damned sure. The so-called "Reagan Revolution" is as dead as a door nail - deader than the Gipper himself. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
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Eight years ago, poll after stupid poll said that most of the people who voted for George W. Bush did so because they would have preferred to have a beer with him over the smarty pants, policy wonk, Al Gore. Sure! I would prefer to have a beer with Bush over Gore any day of the week - if only to smash the little thug upside his head with a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon. But I'll let you in on a little secret: I sleep much more soundly at night knowing that my president is an articulate, intelligent person. Imagine how troubled my slumber has been for the last eight years, knowing that the man with his finger on the nuclear trigger has the I.Q. of a half-eaten box of Milk Duds! It has not been easy, trust me. From this day forth, if the Republicans insist on nominating people with the intellectual afflictions of Ronald Reagan, Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin and George W. Bush - then the Grand Old Party is over.
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This country took a step forward nine days ago. It wasn't a timid, baby step, mind you, but a huge step forward - maybe even three steps forward. If that party continues to pander to their half-witted, reactionary "base", they'll never win a national election again. The time has come for thoughtful, intelligent Republicans (BREAKING NEWS: THEY'RE OUT THERE) to take back their party from the fools and racists who have run it and their once-great nation into the dirt. That is the only way they are going to survive. Otherwise, they're finished.
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A profound question just came to me: Why the hell am I giving advice to those knuckleheads? I don't know....I guess I'm just a sucker for lost causes.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net
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SUGGESTED READING:
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What's The Matter With Kansas?
by Thomas Frank
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AFTERTHOUGHT:
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Today, for the first time since I started "The Rant" two-and-a-half years ago, Spell Check did not highlight the words "Barack" and "Obama" as errors. Now, that's what I call change you can believe in! That's progress, too.
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There are a mere sixty-seven days until the worst president since the invention of mud is out of the White House forever. Can you believe that George W. Bush and Thomas Jefferson lived in the same house? Even if it was two-hundred years apart, it's still very hard to fathom.

For more recent postings on this virtual viper's nest of left wing propaganda, please go to the link below:

http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com

Cheers!

Me 'n' George

I have a horrible confession to make. This is something that's been bugging me since mid-August when the readership of this site took a bit of a surge. I feel awkward and embarrassed even admitting this, but I might as well lay all of the cards on the table and 'fess up. It must be said:

George W. Bush is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

In order to explain to you exactly what I'm talking about, let me take you back to the beginning. It's a memory I'll never be able to shake till the day I die: The very first time I ever laid eyes on Dubya....

It was almost twenty-one years ago in the spring of 1988. Poppy Bush, then Ronald Reagan's vice-president, was running in the South Carolina GOP primary and the crazy preacher, Pat Robertson, was giving him the fight of his life. You see, your average South Carolinian Republican voter is so rib-ticklingly stupid, a lot of them thought that sending a half-witted reactionary like Robertson to the White House was a really neat idea. Something had to be done.

So the Bush Sr. campaign sent his jackass of a kid along with the late Lee Attwater down there to try to convince these goofy people to vote for Daddy. Why did they use the eldest son as an envoy? Why didn't they use the slightly more articulate sons, Jeb or Marvin or Neil? My theory has always been that the campaign's strategists figured that Junior was such a fire-breathing asshole, the right wing knuckleheads in that state would have no problem relating to him. They didn't. Poppy won South Carolina.

In 1988, I was videotaping hours and hours of network coverage of that campaign and I still have the tape. He was being interviewed by the National Broadcasting Company, telling a reporter, "He thinks he's gonna whoop George Bush? He'd better think again". I can still remember my initial reaction to this guy:

"My goodness! The boy's dumber than dog shit, isn't he?"

Back then, he went by the name of George Bush, Jr. which technically is not his real name: Poppy was George Herbert Walker Bush, while the scion was merely, George Walker Bush. In the words of the legendary Ann Richards, rest her soul: "He's missing his Herbert". Incredibly, it was only when he ran for office in his own right that he started to call himself, "George W. Bush". This was no doubt in order to separate himself from his father's failed, ex-presidency.

And that is where I first saw George W. Bush two decades and one half a year ago - almost to the day. Who could have possibly envisioned then how far he would rise? Had you told me the heights to which this foolish, mediocre man would eventually reach, I would have would have said, "May I have a little toke of what you're smoking, please?" Had you been able to convince me, I probably would have packed my bags, right then and there, and moved to Ireland - or Norway.

From that point on, I developed what I can only describe as a morbid fascination with this moronic son of a failed president. I studied his history as a businessman, one failure after another. I read about the investigations into his insider trading; how he sold every one of his shares of a company he helped run into the ground called, Harken Energy - just days before it was announced that the stock was all-but-worthless. He had even been advised by the company's attorney's that the sale of his stock, under the circumstances, would be blatantly illegal. That made no difference to this arrogant little son-of-a-bitch. After all, he was a Bush. At the time, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was an old Bush family friend. Poppy Bush, who was then vice-president, had the investigation squelched.

Then, in 1994, the arrogant little twit announced that he was going to run against the much-loved Ann Richards for the office of Governor of Texas! "HA!!!", I guffawed loud enough to be heard in the next county, "It'll never happen! Even your average Texan isn't that dumb!!"

Note to my beloved cousins, the Barras family of Port Arthur: Of course, I exclude you from that list, my dears.

What I hadn't considered - what I wasn't even aware of at the time - was the existence of a despicable creature named Karl Rove. The man known to the press as "Bush's Brain" was able to run a campaign that resorted to spreading rumors that, not only was Ms. Richards a drug user, she was a lesbian. It worked - like a charm. George W. Bush became the first Republican since Reconstruction to be elected Governor of Texas. Not only that, four years later in 1998, he became the only Republican governor in history to win two, consecutive terms in that worthless state.

As our beloved Molly Ivins, herself a native of the Lone Star State once rhetorically asked: "What is it about Texas?"

Late in the year of 1999, when he announced that he was seeking the office of the presidency, I became seriously alarmed. The American electorate had become so dumbed down in recent years, a George W. Bush administration was not only a possibility, it was inevitable! It was at that time I became an activist.

A few months later I managed to become involved as co-producer of the Kirk Grantham Program on W-TBQ in Florida, NY. Its studios are directly across the street from the birthplace of William Henry Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State and the man who purchased the state of Alaska from Russia (Yes, it is he who is responsible for Sarah Palin). It is a small station but it has a good signal and can be heard quite clearly in Northern New Jersey.

Every Thursday afternoon at 2:00, I would do fifteen minutes with Kirk on the subject of the campaign of 2000 which was then going full speed. Thank goodness I saved the tapes of those broadcasts. A year or so ago, I digitally transferred them to CD. Thanks to the miracle of Mr. Edison's talking machine, I now have the positively giddy pleasure of listening to my unheeded warnings to my fellow countrymen and women:

"If the American people are foolish enough to elect this idiot as President of the United States, we'll regret it for a century."

I love it! I hate to say I told you so, but....

As it turns out, the American people never really did "elect" George W. Bush to anything. The hideous little bastard lost the popular vote and was only able to barely squeak by in the state of Florida because an ideologically perverted Supreme Court decided to put a halt to the recount. Florida's Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, along with Governor Jeb Bush, were also successful in illegally removing fifty-seven thousand African Americans from the list of eligible voters. It was the most blatant election fraud in American history.

The night the Supreme Court selected George W. Bush as our forty-third president, I got so drunk, I wound up passing out in a hammock on the front porch of the house I was living in at the time (Remember, this was December). I knew we, as a nation, were in for four years of lunacy and incompetence. I say "four years" because on that cold night of December of 2000, even I never dreamed that so huge a segment of the American people would be naive enough to repeat their mistake four years later.

But as bad as I knew Bush was going to be for the country that I love so much, it never occurred to me that the homicidal little thug would have a positive effect on my life!

But for the accident of my birth, I would be now sleeping on the street, much like the night I spent on the porch those eight, long years ago - much like where George W. Bush would be sleeping tonight but for the accident of his birth. Back in the 1920s, my grandfather, Edward J. Degan, Sr., founded a company called, Stuart-Dean. We specialize in architectural metal, marble and wood restoration. Today we have offices in twenty cities all over the United States and Canada. I never knew my Grandpa Degan. He died suddenly of a massive heart attack four-and-a-half-years before I was born. And yet today, I am a major shareholder in the company he founded. That, in a way, makes me part of the privileged class. I might be on one of the lower rungs of that class, but I'm there.

Trust me on this one, campers: I did very well while Bush was in office. I even got a couple of tax cuts that I didn't even need! How utterly sweet is that?

But nowhere did I benefit more from the First Fool's reign of error than when I started "The Rant". Writing it has been a joy that I can't even describe and I've made thousands of friends worldwide. I never imagined it would get the response it seems to be getting but I'm truly grateful for it. And to think that I owe it all to the nasty, half-witted little frat boy who at this very minute, is tucked away under his quilts, sleeping soundly in the Executive Mansion. Life is kind of funny that way, isn't it?

Yeah, I owe an awful lot to George W. Bush. Me 'n' George have been on one hell of a journey together. The awful irony is the fact that the moment the disgusting little freak breathes his final breath in the infirmary of the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, he will probably have lived his entire life not knowing that Tom Degan ever existed. That doesn't really matter, though. What matters is that you and I and our children - and the great grandchildren who will never even know our names - will know the name of George W. Bush. The American people will be living with the strychnine-like aftertaste of his legacy for generations.

But not me, man! This imbecilic man has given me a direction and a purpose that I had previously been lacking. His failure has turned out to be my ultimate triumph. In a very weird and disturbing way that I can barely articulate, George W. Bush really is the best thing that's ever happened to me. I owe the bastard - BIG TIME!

Thank you, Georgie.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:

Shrub: The Short and Happy Political Life of George W. Bush
by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubois
and
Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America
by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubois

Photograph of the president of the United States and the author of "The Rant" taken in October 2008 at FYE, Middletown, NY.

In seventy-three days, Barack Obama will be our new president and George Bush will be on his way to ignoble exile!

Wake Up and Face the Dawn

Yes We Can? Yes we did, Buster!

With Love and Peace to all of you on this beautiful and glorious night!

IS THIS A GREAT COUNTRY OR WHAT??

"Do you remember? Remember? The fifth of November?"

John Lennon

I'm speechless....Please, give me a few hours to take all of this in....I can't even think straight at the moment....Too much celebratory drink. You know how it is....
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1:00 PM EST

I woke up a few hours ago from the first night of sound, restful sleep I've had in a very, very long time, thinking that it had all been merely a dream. And so it had....
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A DREAM COME TRUE, BABY!!!
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A wonderful thing happened last night. The world, for the first time in nearly a decade, is feeling good about the United States. After eight years of the arrogance of the Bush Mob, America was in dire need of an international face lift. John McCain would never have been able to provide one. Barack Obama, it appears, has.
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Here's where I turn on the old cliche` machine: This is the dawn of a new day. The election of Barack Hussein Obama last night as the 44th president was a tranforming moment in the history of this country; a country that literally was built upon the lacerated back of the Negro Slave. We'll never be the same again. Never.
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I haven't felt hopeful about this country in almost thirty-two years. January 20, 1977 to be exact. That was the day that Jimmy Carter was inaugurated. The hopefulness I was feeling on that fine day lasted an entire afternoon and into the early evening. This time 'round, I'm counting on it lasting much longer. Last night, America was changed in a real and fundamental way. The sin of slavery has, for almost a century-and-a-half, been an open and infected wound on this nation's historical psyche. The election of Barack Obama as our very first African American president might very well be the beginning of our healing.
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Not since Franklin D. Roosevelt entered office on March 4, 1933, has a president inherited a bigger mess than that which will be bequeathed to President Obama. No president since FDR has faced a bigger challenge. He will be forced to make many hard decisions in the next four years that a great many people - within his party and without - will oppose strenuously. We will not always agree with the direction that this new chief executive will take this country. But at least we will be able to rest assured that the decisions he makes will be the result of intellectual honesty and not petty partisan gain, unlike the administration which mercifully is now within weeks of ending. Will his be a successful term of office? It's impossible to tell at this early stage. But of this you may be absolutely certain: Barack Obama is so much more competent than Bush, his failures will seem like successes by comparison. In two and a half months, responsible grown ups will be once again in charge of our government. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, George. The times, they are a'changin'.
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I feel like the Beatles at the end of the movie "Yellow Submarine". The good citizens of Pepperland have been liberated from the Blue Meanies! Really, it's all too much for me too take!
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Every generation or so, the American people will do something that defies historical expectations. Last evening was a shining example of one of those moments. For the first time in my life (I turned fifty on August 16) I will point toward the Executive Mansion on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and I'll be able to say with pride, "That's where my president lives". I suspect that there are millions of us who feel that way. I don't know about you, but I've never been more proud of my country.
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Forgive me, folks, if this posting has been somewhat inarticulate and disjointed. I am, quite literally, beside myself with joy. I have been rendered speechless. As Big Russ would say, "Is this a great country or what?"
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Wake up and face the dawn.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@fronmtiernet.net
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In just seventy-six days, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the forty-fourth President of the United States of America. Pinch me, I must be dreaming.
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PLEASE NOTE:
The photograph just under the one of President-Elect Obama is of Mr. Tom's right index finger, helping to change the course of history. Don'cha just love it?

Vote Like There's No Tomorrow

Ronald Reagan is at this moment on his death bed.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. The dirty old dingbat kicked the bucket nearly three-and-a-half years ago, true. But the revolution which bears his name and the era of unprecedented greed, incompetence and political corruption which was ushered in with his election in November of 1980, is about to go the way of the 45 RPM and the 8-Track tape. The twenty-eight year period of right wing lunacy which has destroyed the infrastructure of a country which used to be a nice place in which to live, is within hours of being shoveled onto history's shit pile. And you and I are going to make it happen.
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Tomorrow night, the so-called Reagan Revolution will be rendered dead as a door nail. Deader than the Gipper himself.
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But it's only going to happen if we all make a Herculean effort to get out the vote. Otherwise, we're in for at least four more years of the slowly closing coffin of America's cultural and economic suicide. If enough people foolishly choose to send John McCain and Gidget von Braun to the Oval Office - to the White House, for Heaven's sake - I will probably be the only person in the country who makes less than two-hundred and fifty-thousand dollars a year who will benefit.
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I'm the type of guy who, if you give me a bag full of really nasty tasting lemons, I'll go out and whip up a pitcher of juicy, thirst quenching lemonade. Such was the case when George W. Bush became president of the United States. Although the disgusting, half-witted little thug was the worst thing to ever happen to this country, he was the best thing that ever happened to me! The hideous little jackass has damned near made me famous. If you don't believe that, "google" my name sometime. See what comes up. We've been quoted in several newspapers and magazines world wide and have been mentioned in a book (Amoral America by Robert Fearn). They're starting to talk about "The Rant" out there, folks. Note to the good people at the Kellogg's Corn Flake Company, Battle Creek, Michigan: I'm open for advertisements.
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If Wednesday morning's headline reads that McCain and Unable were somehow able to pull off the biggest upset since Truman defeated Dewey sixty years ago this week, I'll be fine and dandy, thank you very much! I'll have been delivered four more years of dynamite political material to write about. Also, I'm a millionaire! That's not a subject that I particularly like to talk about but it's the truth. Believe me, if the American people are naive enough to send John McCain to the White House tomorrow night, I'll be swimming in the gravy, baby! Don't cry for me! Cry for yourselves. Better yet, cry for your children; cry for your grandchildren. They're the ones who are eventually going to suffer - horribly. Not me, though! Truth be told, people like me did great during George W. Bush's reign of error! In fact, I did so well under Bush, I was able to quit my job and devote myself to writing full time. Life is literally peppered with these delicious little ironies, isn't it.
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Think about this for a minute: Barack Obama has surrounded himself with brilliant people. The campaign they have run is as well orchestrated as a Swiss watch. John McCain has surrounded himself with reactionary, political hacks. The man who literally wrote the laws which directly led to our current fiscal meltdown, former Texas senator, Phil Gramm, was slated to be the Secretary of the Treasury in a McCain administration. His campaign has been directionless and disorganized.
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Here's the sixty-four dollar question:
Which group do you want managing the executive branch of your government for the next four years? Ah! I thought as much!
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As I have said so many times it's starting to sound trite: This is the most important election in our lifetimes. Not since Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent Herbert Hoover packing back to Iowa have the stakes been higher (FOR THE HISTORICAL RECORD: Hoover actually spent his remaining thirty-two years of life living in a suite of rooms at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. The only time he went back to Iowa was to be buried there). The Republican party has been hijacked by an organized conspiracy of kooks, criminals and fools - and they show no signs that they are about to rehabilitate themselves anytime soon. As Paul Krugman wrote in his column in this morning's New York Times:
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"The G.O.P.'s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat."
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Heavens to Betsy! It just doesn't get any better than Krugman. It really doesn't!
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Send the message to as many people as possible. Forward to them this column if you have to. (The more readers the merrier, ya know what I mean?) The results of tomorrow's election will be resounding three-quarters of a century from today - and beyond. Don't believe it? Do you or any members of your family depend on a monthly Social Security check from the government? Do you seriously think that they'd be getting that check today had Hoover had won in 1932? As I said before, the stakes have never been higher. We've still got work to do.
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Where I live in New York state, Barack Obama is a sure thing. All I can do is get the message out to those of you who live in the so-called "purple states" like Florida or Virginia or North Carolina or New Mexico or Ohio or my mother's home state of Indiana (Hi, Uncle Bob! Hi, Aunt Nancy!) The party of Rush Limbaugh was able to steal the elections in 2000 and 2004 because victory depended on a slim margin in single states (Florida and Ohio respectively). What we need in 2008 is a landslide. Barack Obama will need more than a 49/51 victory. If he is going to be able to govern effectively, he'll need a mandate! Let's get to work.
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Just think about the historical ramifications of tomorrow night! This country, which was literally built upon the lacerated back of the Negro slave, is about to send to the White House an African American. And not just any African American! Senator Obama is not Jesse Jackson; He's not Al Sharpton. His is without a doubt the most extraordinary candidacy to come down the political pike in our lifetime - or at least since Jack Kennedy in 1960. If we reject him for the likes of John McCain and Sarah Palin - SARAH FREAKING PALIN??? - honestly, were going to look like a nation of knuckleheads, don'cha think?
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By the way, former Monty Python member John Cleese recently made the following observation, "I used to think that Michael was the world's funniest Palin". Not any longer. Not by a long shot.
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We're almost there. If you can afford to, take tomorrow off; volunteer to drive your home bound, elderly neighbor to the polling place; make phone calls; if you're an African American, make damned sure that all of your friends and everyone in your family gets out and votes. We're within reach of taking our country back from these hideous bastards and bitches. They're going to challenge our votes - particularly the votes of the young and people of color. We've got to make a massive effort. It's our country, goddammit, and we're going to take it back!
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God help them if they try to stop us.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net
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AFTERTHOUGHT:
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The photograph to the left of the column is of an RCA Victor record album that Reagan recorded in 1964. It was called. "Ronald Reagan speaks out against SOCIALIZED MEDICINE". It was a forty minute diatribe against Medicare and Medicaid. You can hear it in its entirety on You Tube. It's an absolute scream. What can I say? The man was a contemptible asshole.
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Special thanks to Louise Carle for the photo at the top of the page of Senator Obama embracing one of the millions of victims of this disgusting administration.
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FLASH!!!
Just seventy-seven days to go until the Bush Mob is History!