Dear Red States

The following email is making the rounds of the Internet. Besides being funny, it brings home the point that our political structure is biased in favor of agricultural, low population areas, and big business interests and right now controls the Presidency and both houses of Congress. It is also, of course, one of the reasons people in Red States detest Blue State inhabitants – their sense that blue state people feel themselves to be culturally superior and smarter. Sometimes, I guess the truth really hurts. This feeling, nurtured by the ‘vast right wing conspiracy,’ continues to overcome what ought to be the natural economic and self-interested reasons for not supporting Bush and the Republicans that should motivate anyone but the super rich.

Dear Red States,

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.

We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, are opposed to discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

By the way, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Sincerely,
Author Unknown in New California

Immigration Side Effect

The New York Times today reported that as many as half of the roughly 5,000 private firefighters based in the Pacific Northwest and contracted by state and federal governments to fight forest fires are immigrants, mostly from Mexico. And an untold number of them are working here illegally.

I wonder how many of the 95% non-Hispanic Congressional Districts, which are pressuring their congressmen to support draconian anti-immigration laws are also summer forest fire prone areas. Maybe in the same way Congress is so distressed about the FBI searching Congressional Offices, while hardly noticing NSA monitoring of US citizens, they will decide in this case a few illegals are not so bad after all.

Another Disillusioned Conservative

Kevin Phillips, a former Nixon aide and author of the strategy that saw Republicans gain control of the South’s electoral politics has been moving away from positions he espoused in his youth. His current book, “American Theocracy” is a harsh criticism of Bush/Bush/Reagan policies over the past three decades. Here are a number of quotes as noted by John Judis in the May 22, 2006 The New Republic.

Over three decades of Bush presidencies, vice presidencies, and CIA directorships, the Republican Party has slowly become the vehicle of ... a fusion of petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex.

Under the Bushes the United States has embraced high-powered automobiles, air strikes, and invasions, become the world's leading Bible reading crusader state, and suffered from burgeoning debt levels and the implosion of American manufacturing.

W.'s election is a dynastic succession made possible by crony capitalism, campaign chicanery in Florida, and populist manipulation. The father's political Achilles heel was his cultural schizophrenia ... an unstable mix of genteel northern moderate conservatism and the two-gunned Texas brand. The son, with the cow country accent, the rumpled clothing, the chewing tobacco, the style of religiosity, the moral fundamentalism, the outsider language, the disdain for the Harvards and Yales, the six-gun geopolitics, and not least the garb of a sinner rescued from drink and brought to God by none other than evangelist Billy Graham, was almost a caricature overcorrection of several of his father's greatest political weaknesses.

George W. Bush and his father promote a reckless dependency on shrinking oil supplies, a milieu of radicalized (and much too influential) religion, and a reliance on borrowed money.

No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive, even a partial captive, of the sort of biblical inerrancy ... that dismisses modern knowledge and science. It favors military intervention in the Middle East to promote the fulfillment of end-times prophecy and the second coming of Christ, rejects the climate-change treaty because it is incompatible with the Book of Genesis, and believes in the rights of embryos and the prerogative of the sperm and egg to join over the arguable rights of women.

Some 30 to 40 percent of the Bush electorate, many of whom might otherwise resent their employment conditions, credit-card debt, heating bills or escalating cost for automobile upkeep (from insurance to gas prices), often subordinate these economic concerns to a broader religious preoccupation with biblical prophecy and the second coming of Jesus Christ.

The top four states where Bush has done better than Ronald Reagan--Alabama, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee--are fundamentalist and evangelical strongholds notable for their unimpressive rankings in education, mental health, child poverty and homicide rate. He even rejects the "car culture" and "hydrocarbon culture" of the South, Southern border states, and prairie states--noting that all thirteen states with 75 mph speed limits ... all lopsidedly backed George W. Bush for election. So did spectators at NASCAR events. This culture prefers conspicuous consumption over energy efficiency and conservation, and it sustains the rule of an oil, automobile, and national security coalition in Washington.

Marijuana

The National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse has just announced the results of the largest study of its kind that concludes smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer. Some participants had lighted up more than 22,000 times, while moderately heavy usage was defined as smoking 11,000 to 22,000 marijuana cigarettes. But the study did find a 20-fold increase in lung cancer among people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

Although the Bush administration is deeply opposed to following scientific advice, these results are hard to ignore. They also offer a solution that should appeal to the Administration’s paramount concern for the welfare of big business, and at the same time allow them to claim an interest in the health of normal citizens. They should immediately ban the use of tobacco as a health hazard dangerous to the American people and costly to the health system, while at the same time granting to big tobacco companies licenses to grow and market marijuana, thereby, preserving their business life.

Majority of the Majority

The loudly and frequently proclaimed Bill Frist position about Court nominees deserving “a fair up or down vote” is not being applied in the current debate about immigration. Republican principles change with no imperative to see if they correspond with previous positions. Speaker Dennis Hastert's intends to insist that a "majority of the majority" is needed before immigration legislation is allowed to reach the House floor for a vote. Although a combination of Democratic and Republican support would produce a majority in the bill’s favor, this GOP policy will effectively kill any chance for passage.

This has been a mainstay of the Republican strategy since they gained majorities. They’ve used it to stop debate in the House (releasing bills immediately prior to votes so that Democrats have no chance to even read before they must vote; and keeping Democrats off House/Senate committees reconciling differing legislation)

They’ve used it in the way they manage Presidential elections. Their aim is to gain an election majority consisting of 50% of the votes plus one. To get a mandate, to get a solid majority of voters in favor of your positions, you need to broaden your appeal and reach middle ground. But then you cannot give the extreme portion of your base what they want. With their way they don’t need to compromise with anyone but their conservative base.

I’ve always respected the Office of the President of the United States. Even in the worst of the Nixon and Reagan years the underlying assumption was that they represented the entire country. This Bush administration though comes across as being an administration that disdains and ignores the 49% of this country that did not vote for Bush. He acts as if he is the president of the GOP right wing, not of the country, and even they are beginning to question his decisions and incompetence.

Support Our Troops

Here is how the Bush Administration supports our troops – by using the 'Support Our Troops" mantra to discredit opponents while coldly betraying the people who are sacrificing themselves in furthering Bush's misguided Iraq policies. Today’s Washington Post reports the following:

Nearly four in five service members returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who were found to be at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were never referred by government clinicians for further help, according to a Government Accountability Office report due for release today.

The report says Defense Department officials were unable to explain why only some troops were referred for help. Many veterans groups have accused the government of playing down the risk of PTSD because of concerns over skyrocketing costs.

GOP Gone Wild

1. Senator John Cornyn (R. Tex) in a press release prior to an appellate court nominee hearing made the following statement referring to “liberals”: “There are some who want to end traditional marriage between only one man and one woman." This obviously refers to same sex marriage, which its opponents usually claim will threaten marriage between a man and a woman. Of course that claim is always an assertion that no one making it has ever explained. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how the marriage of two same sex individuals, who I know or don’t know, has any bearing on my marriage.

But now Cornyn has taken it one step further. The end of traditional marriage? They will go to any excess to further their cultural wedge politics. It doesn’t matter how extreme or how baseless the accusation.


2. Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld in speaking of the mistaken intelligence leading to the Iraq 2003 invasion, said "It turns out it was wrong, that intelligence.” But he then said it was the same information that was available to members of Congress and other nations. This is the justification the Administration trots out every time they are forced to discuss Iraq. But it is just another in the continuous series of lies and contradictions they feed to the public. On Sept. 8, 2002, Vice President Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that those who doubted his assertions about the threat posed by Iraq had not "seen all the intelligence that we have seen."

Are they just so desperate to explain their deteriorating position that they manufacture what sounds like a good explanation to fit the current criticism without even bothering to see if they are contradicting past statements? Or do they just believe that no one is smart enough to realize what they are doing?

Incompetence and Intelligence Disarray

With approval polls hovering in the thirties, the weakened Bush administration is now forced to admit some errors of judgment, although not all (see Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.) Porter Goss was forced out as head of the CIA after a disastrous reign that has seen one of the prime US assets fighting terrorism lose major parts of its experienced staff, seen morale drop with the remaining staff, seen cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies curtailed, and seen turf battles unresolved in the intelligence community. The grossly incompetent administration is incapable of strategic, tactical, or management thinking and planning, and contrary to its public claims, is unable to fight terrorism effectively.

George Tenet was replaced, not because of pre 9/11 intelligence failures but because Bush believed that the CIA was politically opposed to his ideas. He brought in a Congressman with no managerial experience who set out to make the CIA politically responsive to administration desires. Goss flooded CIA senior positions with aides from his Congressional office, including the soon to be notorious Dusty Foggo who is rumored to be involved in the Duke Cunningham scandal. Transformation of an organization is inherently difficult but the way to do it is to involve those being transformed. Goss and his political appointees preferred to ignore staff, hoping they would leave and his wishes were achieved.

Dana Priest in today’s Washington Post provides disturbing commentary on what Goss did in his term:

Goss, then the Republican chairman of the House intelligence panel, was handpicked by the White House to purge what some in the administration viewed as a cabal of wily spies working to oppose administration policy in Iraq.

Goss's counterinsurgency campaign was so crudely executed by his top lieutenants, some of them former congressional staffers, that they drove out senior and mid-level civil servants who were unwilling to accept the accusation that their actions were politically motivated, some intelligence officers and outside experts said.

Four former deputy directors of operations once tried to offer Goss advice about changing the clandestine service without setting off a rebellion, but Goss declined to speak to any of them, said former CIA officials who are aware of the communications. The perception that Goss was conducting a partisan witch hunt grew, too, as staffers asked about the party affiliation of officers who sent in cables or analyses on Iraq that contradicted the Defense Department's more optimistic scenarios. Pre-retirement classes, which serve as a transition out of the agency for active-duty officers, are bulging with agency employees.

Goss left behind an agency that current and former intelligence officials say is weaker operationally, with a workforce demoralized by an exodus of senior officers and by uncertainty over its role in fighting terrorism and other intelligence priorities, said current and former intelligence officials.

"Now there's a decline in morale, its capability has not been optimized and there's a hemorrhaging of very good officers," John O. Brennan, a former senior CIA official and interim director of the National Counterterrorism Center until last July said. "Turf battles continue" with other parts of the recently reorganized U.S. intelligence community "because there's a lack of clarity and he had no vision or strategy about the CIA's future." Brennan added: "Porter's a dedicated public servant. He was ill-suited for the job."

As important, Goss -- who did not like to travel overseas or to wine and dine foreign intelligence chiefs who visited Washington -- allowed the atrophy of relations with the foreign intelligence services that helped the CIA kill or catch nearly all the terrorists taken off the streets since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in the view of these officials and several foreign intelligence officials. One senior European counterterrorism official, asked recently for his assessment of Goss's leadership, responded by saying, "Who?"

Less than two months after Goss took over, the much-respected deputy director of operations, Stephen R. Kappes, and his deputy, Michael Sulick, resigned in protest over a demand by Goss's chief of staff, Patrick Murray, that Kappes fire Sulick for criticizing Murray. Kappes "was the guy who a generation of us wanted to see as the DDO [operations chief]. Kappes's leaving was a painful thing," Gary Berntsen, a former operations officer and self-described Republican and Bush supporter who retired in June 2005 said. "It made it difficult for [Goss] within the clandestine service. Unfortunately, this is something that dogged him during his tenure." Many agency officials felt the aides showed disdain for officers who had spent their careers in public service.

While the stature and role of the CIA were greatly diminished under Goss during the congressionally ordered reorganization of the intelligence agencies, his counterpart at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, continued his aggressive efforts to develop a clandestine intelligence operation within his department. The Pentagon's human intelligence unit and its other clandestine military units are expanding in number and authority. Rumsfeld recently won the ability to sidestep U.S. ambassadors in certain circumstances when the Pentagon wants to send in clandestine teams to collect intelligence or undertake operations.

Now, "the real battle lies between" Negroponte and Rumsfeld, said retired Army Lt. Gen. Donald Kerrick, a former deputy national security adviser and once a senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "Rumsfeld rules the roost now."

A Modern Man

In November 2005, George Carlin did an HBO stand-up comedy performance that I thought did not live up to his reputation. He seemed bitter and not overly funny. The best of George Carlin for me can be found on web sites that have collected his funniest one-liners and they are worth reading. Although I was disappointed with the entire show, his opening monologue was brilliant. He used almost every modern day catch phrase in a routine that approached poetry in its delivery. I dutifully transcribed it by watching it over and over and since I have been unable to find it posted on the web am doing it here. What will be missing of course, if you didn’t see the show, is the rhythm. I tried to arrange the lines to present something like it but I would suggest trying to find the tone by not reading it too fast. In fact the best thing to do is to say it out loud. Go ahead, try doing stand-up.


“I’m a modern man, I’m a modern man, I’m a modern man, I’m a modern man, I’m a modern man.
A man for the millennium, digital and smoke free.
A diversified multicultural post modern deconstructionist, politically, anatomically, and ecologically incorrect.
I’ve been uplinked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced.
I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading.
I’m a high tech low-life, a cutting edge state-of-the-art bi-coastal multitasker, and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.
I’m new wave, but I’m old-school, and my inner child is outward bound.
I’m a hot wired heat seeking warm hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable.
I interface with my database and my database is in cyberspace.
So I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive, and from time to time, I’m radioactive.

Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, riding the wave, dodging the bullet, pushing the envelope.

I’m on point on task on message, and off drugs.
I got no need for coke and speed, I got no urge to binge and purge.
I’m in the moment, on the edge, over the top, but under the radar.
A high concept low profile medium range ballistic missionary.
A streetwise smart bomb, a top gun bottom feeder.
I wear power ties I tell power lies I take power naps I run victory laps.
I’m a totally on-going big foot slam dunk rainmaker with a proactive outreach.
A raging workaholic, a working ragaholic, out of rehab and in denial.

I got a personal trainer a personal shopper a personal assistant, and a personal agenda.
You can’t shut me up, you can’t dumb me down, because I’m tireless and I’m wireless.
I’m an alpha male on beta blockers.
I’m a non-believer and an overachiever, laid back but fashion forward, up front, down home, low rent, high maintenance, super sized, long lasting, high definition, fast acting, oven ready, and built to last.
I’m a hands on foot loose knee jerk head case, prematurely post traumatic and I have a love child who sends me hate mail.
But I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing: a supporting, bonding, nurturing, primary care giver.
My output is down, but my income is up. I take a short position on a long bond, and my revenue stream has its own cash flow.

I read junk mail I eat junk food I buy junk bonds I watch trash sports,.
I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user friendly, and lactose intolerant.
I like rough sex, I like rough sex.
I use the f-word in my email and the software on my hard drive is hard core, not soft porn.
I bought a microwave at a mini-mall. I bought a minivan at a megastore.
I eat fast food in the slow lane.
I’m toll free, bite size, ready-to-wear, and I come in all sizes.
A fully equipped, factory authorized, hospital tested, clinically proven, scientifically formulated medical miracle.

I’ve been pre-washed pre-cooked pre-heated pre-screened pre-approved pre-packaged post dated freeze dried double wrapped vacuum packed, and I have an unlimited broadband capacity.
I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal, lean and mean, cocked, locked, and ready to rock.
Rough, tough, and hard to bluff.
I take it slow. I go with the flow. I ride with the tide. I got glide in my stride.
Driving and moving, sailing and spinning, jiving and grooving, wailing and winning.
I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber to the road.
I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time.

I’m hanging in, there is no doubt, and I’m hanging tough – over and out.

Hey, I got 341 days sober and next year is my 50th anniversary in show business – let’s do a fuckin show!”

June 23, 2008 George Carlin died yesterday. A Modern Man is now on You Tube.