An Unjustified Weiner Roast?

Ooohhh Weiner, Weiner, Weiner. What has my Weiner done. My politicians let me down rather frequently but it is a rarity that they let me down in such a manner. Policy failures, flip-flopping, tacking too far to the center, abandoning campaign promises. I have developed a tolerance and almost an expectation for these disappointments. But Tweeting photos of your junk? This is new to me. But how much of an outrage is it and how angry should I be? How much of our animus is moral, and how much is political? 

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow appeared on Letterman Wednesday night to address these questions and naturally, they raised a few more. The most ubiquitous question floating around the blogosphere these days is whether or not New York Congressman Anthony Weiner should resign from the House of Representatives for Tweeting photos of him in his panties to what is now thought to be six or more of his “followers.”

Is this a crime? No. Is this immoral? His wife would probably say ‘yes.’ Is this an act of reckless stupidity? If you are a nineteen-year-old virgin with seven Twitter followers, maybe not. But if you are a high-profile New York Congressman with aspirations of being Mayor or Governor of New York, yes. Absolutely and unequivocally, without discussion.

But is stupidity grounds for resignation? The Republican Party is unified in shouting ‘yes’ from the top of its high horse. The party of God, guns, monogamy and morality wants Weiner to step down. And, much to my dismay, so do some Democrats as well. But predictably, most of the clamor is coming from the right.

And during her Letterman appearance, Maddow pointed out that last year, when Republican Senator David Vitter admitted to cheating on his wife with prostitutes, no one in the GOP called for his resignation. No one.

hy·poc·ri·sy noun \hi-ˈpä-krə-sē also hī-\

1: a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially

2: the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion

I’m sorry but I find it to be quite curious that in the eyes of Republican leadership and punditry, cheating on your wife and breaking the law by fucking hookers is not as big of a sin as cyber-flirting with strangers on the other side of the country. Yes, I am a Democrat. And yes, I have, for some time now, been stricken with Weiner-fever. But no, I do not think I am rationalizing the actions of a politician I have long-admired.

Weiner acted like, well, a wiener. That is not up for debate. What he did was inappropriate and his lying about it only exacerbated things. But is it unforgivable? How his wife answers that question is considerably different from how his constituents should answer it. His wife may have a reason to abandon him but his party does not.

I know that politicians’ failsafe tactic when confronted with these scandals is self-preservation-at-any-cost but is this large enough of a scandal to justify that? Should Democrats shun him at every turn? Will they deny him thrice before the cock crows at the dawn of the next election cycle?

Obviously, the Republicans will sling mud, slander and mockery at him at every opportunity because he is a prominent member of the enemy party. But can they really take the high road? Can the party of Christianity and family values continue lauding itself as such when they’ve got hooker-humping David Vitter still holding a seat in the US Senate? Can the monogamy champions of the political universe still cast stones when Newt Gingrich, its front-running presidential hopeful has been married and divorced more times than Elizabeth Taylor?

Wanna go around the world and back?
Tap twice for 'yes' and once for 'no'

And does everyone remember Republican Senator Larry Craig? I do. Because of him, I will never take a dump in an airport restroom in fear that if I inadvertently tap my foot, I will be arrested for soliciting a pre-flight quickie.

The President of the United States enjoying a cigar with his intern is one thing, Elliot Spitzer moonlighting with top-shelf escorts is another and Tweeting panty-pics of yourself is yet another. But they all ask the same question...do our elected officials’ personal lives have any impact on their ability to govern? Should we combine or compartmentalize the two…especially when no law has been broken?

Bill Clinton’s tendency to bang chubby girls and then lie about it makes him a bad husband with worse taste in women (yes, that was a jab at Hillary too) but does it make him a bad President? Spitzer is filthy and he broke the law so yes, by all means, step down, disappear and re-evaluate your station in life Elliot. But even though Anthony Weiner’s Twitter habits may land him in the doghouse at home, should they have him exiled from Congress?

Maddow made an excellent point in reminding us that Weiner never ran on a political platform of superior morality and that his recent transgressions failed to expose him as a political hypocrite in any respect. (see definition above)

Maddow claimed that this scandal qualified merely as ‘gossip.’ What do you think?

What is the difference between gossip and news in this round-the-clock multimedia blitzkrieg in which we are helplessly immersed? And how much stock should we put in it? Ha ha, Weiner got caught sending pictures of his wiener, what a nimrod. But should we really mock him out of office and forget how zealously he fought for healthcare for the workers at Ground Zero? Should we disregard the passion he brings to public service and judge him only for his idiotic indiscressions?

I just can’t bring myself to do that. Maybe it’s because I myself am a passionate person and I look for passion in my politicians just as I look for it in the athletes I admire. And passion is something that is rarely found in politics. Anthony Weiner has passion. He also has, Photoshop augmentation not withstanding, an enormous package. And forgive me for saying so, but it takes balls to represent the state of New York. Big balls. And the state of New York cannot afford to neuter one of its most tenacious political voices. 

The Jersey Shore: Now a Worldwide Epidemic

Have you ever seen the movie ‘Outbreak’? It chronicles the exploits of the Center for Disease Control as they attempt to contain the fictitious Mutaba virus within the small town of Cedar Creek, California. Why? Because they did not want the disease to spread to the rest of the country, let alone the entire world.

The Jersey Shore has gone international…and I want to know whose fucking fault it is. I want some accountability goddamnit. A virus, and yes the Jersey Shore is just that, will spread if not contained. And from the get-go, this disease was not contained. Conversely, it was given everything it needed to flourish; ratings, book deals, spin-offs and round the clock media coverage which I myself am contributing to at this very moment.

So kidding aside, who is to blame?

The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services? Might a little penicillin have eliminated this bug? Probably not. Could they have released an army of hazmat-clad soldiers to man the borders of the Garden State to keep these morons from spreading and infecting more intelligent members of Americana? They could have at least tried.

Is the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce responsible? I am not sure which governing body determines what products are allowed to bare the proud seal of New Jersey but couldn’t they have intervened and said, ‘NO, THIS ABOMINATION OF A PROGRAM IS SIMPLY NOT WORTHY OF OUR JERSEY HERITAGE!’ Aaahh, who are we kidding. Jersey is an armpit and the very fact that a show proudly boasting of its lineage could be so immensely successful, is proof that a deeper, more systemic problem has taken hold. 

Could MTV be the cause and catalyst? They are responsible for the original green light that began all this. But simply releasing a disease into the population is not enough. It needs to spread. And that is where we come in. Me…my fellow humans. We have all let each other down. I take responsibility. And so should you.

But on the off chance that you will not volunteer your guilt, allow me to castigate you on this page. And some of you are more responsible than others.

Mike Petolino of Gotham Entertainment. You represent The Situation. You should be drawn and quartered for representing such a specimen and plastering his face across the labels of products the world over. It is the social equivalent of releasing Anthrax into the global water supply and you should be ashamed of yourself. 

I don’t care how much money he makes you, how do you sleep at night asshole? While we’re at it, shame on the following companies for choosing him as your poster-boy; Vitamin Water, Nox Edge, Reebok and last but not least, the company that actually created this:

SallyAnn Salsano created the Jersey Shore and her punishment should be death by firing squad followed by an eternity in hell, which, incidentally, is the perfect place to get a good suntan. 

MTV, you were obviously to blame for introducing these nimrods to the world and you could have stopped there. But you didn’t. You went ahead and created spin-offs for Snooki, J-Wow and Paully D. I would say that ‘you’re better than that MTV’ but let’s be honest, you’re really not. You’re trash and you suck so you’re pretty much giving us the best you’ve got. My advice, maybe start aiming a little higher? Sluts and douchebags could be your starting point but you can always strive for more. You just have to dream and then follow your dreams out of the gutter and into the clouds. Just a thought.

Simon and Schuster Publishing and everyone at their subsidiary Gallery Books; you should all be tried as war criminals for aiding, abetting and facilitating the publication of “A Shore Thing.” This “novel” was written by Snooki, who is hardly capable of speaking an intelligible sentence, let alone writing an entire book of them. I realize the e-book has slightly altered the landscape of commerce in literature but there is no need to bring it down to THIS level. Reading was and still is to an extent, a medium for thirsty, malleable intellects looking to expand their minds…who are you to leave them shrunken and atrophied?

Now, I would hate for the responsible parties to escape into the shadows so below are a list of the people who played a large role in the publication of this stain upon American literature. If you see them in public, throw something at them. Tomatoes, dead sewer rats, bricks. Anything.

Lauren McKenna-Executive Editor at Gallery Books

Jeremie Ruby-Strauss-Senior Editor at Gallery Books

Scott Miller-Agent at Trident Media who negotiated WORLD RIGHTS. Save the brick for him.

World rights. That brings us back to the purpose of this post. The Jersey Shore has moved to Florence. Florence…renowned the world over for its breadth of art, architecture and culture. And we sent these orange mongoloids there for the summer. I don’t know who is more to blame; America for sending them…or Italy for receiving them.

Couldn’t someone have stopped this? The Italian Consulate? The United Nations? The FAA? Isn’t knowingly transporting infectious diseases across national borders the equivalent of terrorism via germ warfare? Why didn’t someone, anyone, do anything to prevent this?

You know, for all my pissing and moaning, maybe I am just projecting. Maybe I am to blame. I just spent an hour of my life writing this post. I could have spent that hour reading to blind children or working at a soup kitchen. I could have spent that hour reciting poetry to my penis. That would have been more productive than giving these people more attention and press than they have already.

So who is to blame? We all are. James Madison, you are to blame for formally introducing the Bill of Rights that included the First Amendment. Democracy, you are to blame for denying the existence of American dictatorships that might have suppressed reality programming. Paris Hilton, you are to blame for suggesting that hot, stupid people should be deified, emulated and followed in the press. And anyone who has ever tuned into any reality show of any sort, you are to blame. Lastly, anyone, myself included, who has ever ranted about it in the blogosphere…we are to blame. We are all spreading the disease. And we should all be sterilized.  

A Tie-Dyed Stain Upon the Catholic Church

Those goddamn hippies have done it again. First, they gave us jam bands and never-ending guitar solos that when combined with psilocybin mushrooms, could transport you to another dimension where personal hygiene and brain cell regeneration were afterthoughts. Then their ‘burn your bras and fuck your neighbor’ campaign triggered Regan’s ‘War On Drugs’; which still packs our penitentiaries with anyone who has the audacity to carry more than a dime bag of marijuana on their person. Now, it turns out that they are also responsible for the ‘priests who want to fuck children’ epidemic that swept through the early stages of the 21^st Century, leaving Catholics across the globe on their knees begging for…okay, bad analogy…strike that.

Peace man. Go with God Bro!

A recent study conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice concluded, and no I am not making this up, that the rampant sexual abuse perpetrated by priests was not a result of homosexuality or a by-product of the all-male, celibate nature of the priesthood. The real culprit was that “priests who were poorly prepared or monitored, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and 70s.” So after the 1.8 million dollars that was spent on the study, we are left to believe that the reason some priests molest children is because they went to Woodstock and had a really good time there.

I naturally found this hard to swallow and upon reading such a preposterous claim, I understandably shat myself. After putting on a clean pair of pantaloons, I continued reading the study’s findings to find that apparently the Catholic Church has been employing this rationale for the last decade.

How fascinating. And as much as I have enjoyed mocking the various tenants of the hippie way of life, I think it harshly unjustified to hold them responsible for priests’ inability to keep their cassocks on and their hands off the altar boys. Having poor taste in clothes and obliviously dragging innocents into never-ending philosophical discussions devoid of anything resembling a point hardly warrant linking these creatures to child molestation.

Bong hits and hemp clothing do not lead to pedophilia, do they? I have pulled many a tube in my life (that’s Hippese for bong smoking). I have partaken in the reefer, imbibed the ganja, danced with Mary Jane and puffed the Magic Dragon yet I have never done what, according to the John Jay Report of 2002, 4% of the world’s priests have done to children under the age of eighteen.

Furthermore, the recent study claimed that the priests that were found guilty of abusing boys were not doing so because they were homosexuals. It also concluded that few of the guilty priests exhibited behavior typical of pedophiles or possessed any particular psychological patterns or disorders. That being said, one could feasibly deduce that celibacy turns 4% of its practitioners, regardless of sexual orientation or psychiatric history, into pedophiles. Will I too start assaulting children if I abstain from sex or eat too many unleavened wafers? Should I be worried?

So who is really to blame here? Could it be, and this is just a fucking stab in the dark, the Catholic Church itself? Could an archaic culture of diametric morality that is hell-bent (nice word choice, eh?!) on celibacy and keeping its followers on their knees, crippled with guilt for even briefly indulging in sexual fantasies, somehow be enabling if not cultivating this trend? There is a kink in the Catholic machinery and it sure as shit ain’t a pair of bell-bottoms.

If you stick a bunch of men in a monastery without a woman in site, wrap a suffocating Roman Collar around their throat and guilt every semblance of a healthy sexuality out of them…guess what. They are going to explode. And who do these holy powder kegs have access to? Children. Boys.

Pope Benedict XVI at Woodstock in 1969 

So what are we to do? Perhaps the Vatican should mandate weekly trips to Hooters for all clergymen. Or Pope Benedict could encourage priests to watch pornography and masturbate at least once a day; perhaps less frequently for the older ones. Maybe the priesthood should finally go co-ed and while they're at it, Catholicism as a whole could come to terms with the fact that having sex will probably not secure one’s place in hell on the off chance that there actually is one. Apparently the real solution to this problem is just to keep priests from attending Phish concerts. Who knew.

Osama bin Laden is Dead

There was no dramatic jet landing on an aircraft carrier. No “Mission Accomplished” banner. No cheering servicemen. No pomp or circumstance of any sort. There was just a slender, solemn Hawaiian man walking down an empty hallway and up to a podium to tell the world, to tell the United States, to tell New York City, to tell me that Osama bin Laden was dead.

It is very rare that life happens at a magnitude that is beyond my capacity to emotionally process it. This was one of those moments; one that transcended immediacy. This moment was over a decade in the making and it needed time to marinate, time to breathe and open up, like an old Bordeaux. This moment was not just now. This was the past…and the future.

I watched as Obama recounted the manner in which bin Laden had been killed and I struggled to keep my attention on the present. ‘This is history asshole, pay attention,’ I told myself. But my mind danced forward and backwards and sideways at the same time.

‘This should insure a second term for Obama’ I thought before nudging myself back to this historic presidential address. ‘Maybe now he’ll have the clout to rally the public behind his health care bill and a long-term fiscal strategy that keeps Medicare and Medicaid in tact.’ Then I would snap back to the now and Obama would be saying something about predator drones. And I’d grin because that term just sounds really fucking cool.

As he veered into a section about how for a decade, bin Laden was the one Al Qaeda leader that kept evading us, I hop-scotched back to the past and my hatred for George W. Bush was fresh again. I could feel it, almost taste it. Motherfucker. All this happened on his watch. And my moronic fucking countrymen re-elected him because the Democratic Party couldn’t come up with a more likable option than John fucking Kerry…with his long face and weird wife. Fuck. Goddamn fucking W. We had bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora but he got away because of W’s ill-conceived Iraqi oil campaign. Stupid Texan born-again Christian cocksmoker.

Then I realized that my self-indulgent festival of rage was causing me to miss history so once again, I returned to the address. I try to stay present. 'Listen to him. Hear him. Take this in. This is closure. This is what you’ve always wanted and needed.'

And I realize the potency of this unequivocal truth. I have always fought for closure in my life whenever it was remotely attainable. I like my issues neatly packaged and wrapped up with a pretty little bow on them. It gives me some semblance of control, of certitude and of comfort in a chaotic and utterly uncontrollable world.

Maybe this night will give me what has always eluded me and the many New Yorkers that woke up on September 12^th 2001 in a very different city in a very frightening world. I didn’t lose anyone on that day. But my world was radically altered and my worldview was profoundly tarnished.

I found myself afraid in a way I had never known; looking quickly upward every time I heard a plane passing overhead. I found my perception of humanity irreparably harmed; having never even fathomed people capable of doing such horrible things right here in my city. I also found myself asking questions I had never asked before. Awful questions.

Have you ever asked yourself what you would do to Osama bin Laden if you were alone with him in a room without windows in a world without consequence? Have you ever really asked yourself and honestly answered yourself? I have. I have for the past decade. And the answers always have and continue to frighten me. But I cannot deny them. 

And New Yorkers cannot deny them. The proof is in the crowds that gathered in Times Square and at Ground Zero late into Sunday night and early into Monday morning. The proof was in the hugs, the high fives, the tears, cheers, singing and chanting. We could not deny what we wanted.

We wanted that motherfucker dead. We needed that motherfucker dead.

So now what? What do we do now? We have permission to move forward, to let go of the past but can we? It’s not always such an easy task, is it? Hatred, anger, despair, a thirst for vengance…these things can get really familiar. They can become a part of us. They can envelop us like a warm blanket. They can start to feel like home.

So maybe we will not close the book on this. Maybe closure is only something that applies to cute little problems like breaking up with a girlfriend or forgiving your parents for not being perfect. Maybe we can just press on and let our anger evolve into whatever it is that we need it to become. Maybe it’ll turn into gratitude or unity. Maybe it’ll help us get our military out of Afganistan and Iraq. Maybe it’ll trigger the disintegration of Al Qaeda. Or maybe it’ll spark a revival.

I don’t know. I really don’t. And as tears stream down my cheeks, I can’t even tell you what I’m feeling. Relief? Hope? Sadness? Joy? I don’t fucking know man. But I like it. And judging by the crowds in the streets, New York likes it. And maybe that’s all that matters.

Maybe that’s all we need right now. A reason to get together. A reason to high-five a stranger. A reason to chant ‘U.S.A.’ A reason to feel just a little bit better about that horrible day. A reason to believe that those 2,996 people did not die in vain. A reason to hope. Maybe that’s it. We needed a reason to hope.

And we fucking got one!

Earth Day: A Retrospective, A Reflection...and A Warning

The year was 1990. It was a happy time. Vanilla Ice was shattering hip-hop’s monochromatic glass ceiling, we were training the Taliban, not hunting them, the A-Team was safely confined to television, not being tragically re-imagined for the big screen and wars in Iraq lasted months, not years.

Sure we had environmental problems but they were solvable, if not quaint problems like acid rain, deforestation, oil spills and holes in the ozone layer. Yet somewhere (maybe in Burlington, Vermont, maybe not) a group of hippies packed the ninth bong of their morning session, inhaled and hatched a plan. The plan was simple…take Earth Day global. And so they did.

Blogger’s Disclaimer: I made that up. The idea to go global was hatched by an environmental activist named Denis Hayes. But my version is much more entertaining...at least I think so.

Earth Day was born in 1970 by Senator Gaylord Nelson (no, I did not make up that name) in an effort to raise awareness about environmental issues in the wake of an oil spill that ravaged the coast of Santa Barbara. It started as a grass-roots effort to increase global consciousness and stimulate change. And what started out as a day celebrated in the United States by 2,000 colleges is now embraced by a majority of the planet.

And as it rolls around once again, I cannot help but reflect on it all. Why it started, the problems we had then, the problems we have now and whether or not this day has made much of a difference.

So here we are, forty-one years later and much has changed; but not necessarily for the better. We still have oil spills but now they occur a mile underwater and go on for three months. Deforestation is no longer something we oppose, just something we accept. Acid rain still occurs but it gets much less press than our new quagmires like resource depletion, radiation contamination and global warming.

So has Earth Day served its purpose? My cynicism not withstanding, strides have certainly been made. Over the last four decades, laws like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act have been put into place to protect our natural resources and keep the term bio-diversity itself from becoming extinct. Recycling, solar power, the Kyoto Protocol; without the Earth Day movement, they may not have evolved as they have. 

And who knows…without Earth Day, our Floridian waterways may be devoid of sea cows. And where would we be then?

Would you really miss me?

But it just seems like environmentalists are always (and pardon the ecological analogy) swimming against the current. No matter how much evidence presents itself, the government resists taking action…as if irreparable damage to our natural world were some nagging predicament that those damn hippies just wouldn’t stop bitching about. And our elected officials rarely respond to bitching…or hippies for that matter.

But we do have problems and we need to solve them even if, as Al Gore so eloquently pointed out, doing so is somewhat inconvenient.

But is it me or are our problems getting bigger? And the bigger they get, the more complicated and difficult the prospect of changing them becomes. There is one problem in particular that does not get as much press as it should and it is one that is enabling and augmenting the litany of environmental issues that plague us. 

Overpopulation.

China had a population problem. And in a move that was heralded by many as Orwellian and inhumane, they limited a portion of its populous to one child per family. The policy has successfully curbed population growth by preventing approximately 400 million childbirths in the last thirty-two years. And other countries need to start implementing variations of this policy...or at least entertaining the notion. 

Because we have more people than food to feed them and in cities like New York, we have more people than square footage to house them. We’ve got more cars that guzzle more gas than we can drill, barrel, process and sell for anything less than $4 a barrel. And it doesn’t stop there.

With our natural resources diminishing, oil reserves being drained and our environment being continuously polluted while our population skyrockets, you can see the potential for things to get significantly worse.

And on this Earth Day, dare I ask what we are doing about it? Well, the bad news is that the GOP is still operating under the ‘Global Warming is a myth’ precept. They illustrated this during the recent budget showdown when they tried to attach a provision to the budget that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to...wait for it...protect the environment by regulating CO2 emissions. And the worse news is that President Obama has been giving the GOP far too much of what it wants these days.

This year, the Earth Day Network is launching 'A Billion Acts of Green', the largest environmental service campaign in the world. Its goal is to register one billion green actions, large and small, before the Earth Summit scheduled for next year in Rio.

To make your pledge, visit  http://www.earthday.org/billion-acts-green-®

This pledge is a good thing. But it’s not enough. Grass roots activism will only go so far. We need bold initiatives from our government, regardless of how ‘inconvenient’ taking action may be in these trying financial times. But what happens if nothing is done? Allow me to paint a few alarmist scenarios for you.

Option A) by 2017, the world’s population rises to eleven billion and in efforts to feed everyone, geneticists engineer a three thousand ton mega-cow that is pumped full of so much Human Growth Hormone that it breaks Barry Bonds homerun record. (the accomplishment is shunned by Coopers Town but to little protest) 

Soon after, the GOP’s belief in the benign nature of global warming is proven wrong when the polar ice caps melt entirely. Those that survive either use the mega-cow as a floating landmass they call home or take to the seas; growing gills and mullets and drinking their own urine to survive.

Option B) The population continues it’s mathematical ascension and as it does, our oil, water and natural food sources evaporate. Poverty and unemployment rates rise and with a fiscally paranoid government in place, nothing is done to invest in clean, renewable energy or even fuel-efficient automobiles for that matter. America continues to fall behind the rest of the world in terms of energy, education and economic growth.

Once this happens, we delve even further into a polarized abyss of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’ The ‘have nots’ will die off and the ‘haves’ will survive but not for long. Due to the numerous detriments inclusive in their diets, cancer and diabetes become permanently embedded in homo sapien DNA and within thirty years, the average life expectancy drops to seven. Eventually, it drops to zero.

The rest of the planet won’t fair much better. Third Worlders that don’t die from irradiated spinach will wade through cholera-infested and radically depleted water supplies in search of a disease-free drink but the only way to get one is to buy a bottle of water with money they don’t have in a city they can’t get to. Fertile, farmable land becomes extinct, as do vegetarians. Zen Palate goes out of business but no one cares. And without vegetables to feed on, all carnivores, starting with Texans and undeomesticated felines but spreading to all others, die off soon after.

OR

Option C) We can join the Earth Day Network pledge and take one action in an effort to initiate change one small stride at a time. Then we can demand that our elected officials act NOW to curb the emissions of greenhouse gases and take better measures to insure that something like the BP oil spill NEVER happens again. But we cannot stop there. We need oil and coal taxes that will actually deter their usage and nudge us toward solar, wind and yes, despite Japan, nuclear power. Our classrooms must not only catch up to the rest of the world, but eclipse them so that future generations can lead the way toward a cleaner, sustainable future in a lush, fertile and harvestable planet.

Why? Because I want to drink cholera-free water, not my own urine. I want to eat free-range poultry, not a mega-cow scavenged upon by those fortunate enough to have survived an ecological holocaust. I don’t want to grow gills. I want to grow old with my children who can swim in the ocean and not be flammable afterwards. I want to believe in a better, cleaner tomorrow. And at some point, we have to start securing that for ourselves. Because if we don’t, we will have one pissed off Mother on our hands.

Click on the link below the image to join me. Happy Earth Day.

http://www.earthday.org/billion-acts-green-®  

   

OUR FISCAL FUTURE: A DEAD MAN WALKING GETS A TEMPORARY STAY OF EXECUTION

I realize that most of you have lives and aren’t glued to CNN for hours at a time because you don’t want to miss Harry Reid’s monotonic address about budget negotiations. And I celebrate that. As you raise your children, advance your careers and lavish your spouses with either affection or neglect, I live vicariously through you. Yesterday, my lack of life enabled me to obsessively indulge in the latest piece of political theater and luckily for all of us, it had a happy ending.

The government shut down was averted and both parties rejoiced, lauding the achievement as “historic” and an illustration of “democracy at work.” And I’ll admit, the small victory (avoiding melt downs qualify as such in this Washington climate) made my heart swell and my loins tingle. Once in a while our government acts remotely competent and minimally functional and it makes me smile so.

But yesterday does not negate the fact that we still have a serious problem that needs to be addressed…coming up with a reasonable long-term plan to prevent a fiscal crisis. And let’s face it, we really need to one. Unfortunately, the plan that is getting all the press these days is a fucking awful one.

As a self-professed sidewalk philosopher, I always feel the need to ask questions and on my blog, I encourage my readers to do the same. So here’s a question for you…is it better to have a shitty plan or no plan at all?

I enjoy the op-ed section of the New York Times and it rarely happens but once and a while Paul Krugman and David Brooks sound off on the same page about the same topic. I get a similar thrill watching Paul Begala and David Gergen duke it out on CNN. Yes, I said ‘thrill,’ my life is that sad.

"I've got a plan. It sucks but it's a plan goddamnit!"

But I enjoy these showdowns because even though we all love our pundits to regurgitate and reinforce our own ethos, it is more valuable and stimulating to hear perspectives on both sides. And yesterday’s op-ed issue was House Budget Chairman Paul Allen’s budget proposal. Merely a week old, the proposal is already making headlines and here I am, caught in the middle of the hyperbolic crossfire.

Is it “Bold?” “Ludicrous?” A beacon of fiscal responsibility? A good starting point or the latest Republican attempt at class warfare? Who do I trust? Who do I believe? I’m not a fucking economist so what am I to make of all this?

Well, lets try and get through this together. We can only hope that reason and solidarity will help us navigate these murky waters successfully. So what does the budget propose? To reduce federal spending by $6.2 trillion over the next decade, during which it will also reduce the deficit by $4.4 trillion. Well, that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing does it?

Well, no. But unfortunately, trillions of dollars in spending do not magically disappear in the same manner as Charlie Sheen’s integrity. They go somewhere. And Ryan’s proposal, which the GOP is praising copiously, would take that money from very important places. First and foremost, this budget assumes that Obama’s health care overhaul will be repealed. So, that’s Allen’s version of forward thinking; repealing past laws that he isn’t very fond of. Not a good start but let’s not get too discouraged and press on.

After that, he proposes that over a trillion dollars be cut from Medicare and Medicaid spending. Here we go again. The Republican solution…fuck the poor and fuck the old. Fuck ‘em both. They’re a drag no matter how much money we shell out to them so maybe if we just stop paying for their health care, they will die off and we will be left with the Arian Utopia we all crave; a nation of young, rich, white, heterosexual Protestants. Then we can all traverse life with the comfort that Gay-Black-Poor Plague will not kill our babies while they sleep.

But don’t think that Allen is a heartless prick or anything like that. He does not want to entirely abolish Medicare, which, with an 85% approval rating, is one of America’s most liked programs. No, he just wants to replace it with vouchers that citizens can use to buy private policies. Well, that sounds just as good, no?

According to Paul Krugman, who cites the Congressional Budget Office in estimating that these vouchers will only cover one third of senior health costs, that would mean that the other two thirds, they would just have to come up with themselves. Krugman seems to think this is all a bad idea. And since he has a Nobel Prize in Economics on his mantle and I don’t, I’ll go ahead and take his word for it.  

On the flip side we have David Brooks, who is right when he claims that increasing taxes on the rich will not, in and of itself, cover our ever-expanding fiscal waistband. But the answer cannot simply be to cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans, which Ryan’s plan once again suggests in hopes that the magical “trickle down” effect will manifest this time around…which is kind of like betting that the next book Snooky writes will win the Pulitzer.

Brooks is accurate in his claims that Medicare cannot cover the costs of every single new procedure that medical science introduces and that the more affluent cross-section of the populous should shoulder a portion of the burden of paying for our social programs with a slight increase in their tax rates. I agree with both statements.

But most importantly, Brooks is correct in claiming that until Democrats come up with a plan to counter Ryan’s, they cannot be taken seriously in matters concerning fiscal responsibility. David Gergen echoed these sentiments on Anderson Cooper’s program yesterday evening. So what is the Democrats’ plan? Well, that’s the problem. They don’t appear to have one.

And they need one if they want to not only muffle the populist anti-debt outrage that has already begun to spread from Tea Parties to voting booths, but also to avoid the fiscal crisis that will unfold if our debt goes unchecked and we don’t find a responsible way to insure our social programs’ long-term solvency. If anyone is curious about what happens when such measures are not procured, see recent collapses in Greece, Ireland and coming soon to a Euro-bail-out near you…Portugal!

So how are we to resolve this fiscal calamity without sacrificing our most cherished programs? And can we do it without resorting to ideological pissing contests and budgets packed with pork, riders and other gizmos?

The fight goes on. But no one ever wins.

Probably not. As even this budget standoff turned into a battle over party ideals. And is it me or does it seem that every time the Democrats pursue better health care, cleaner air and women’s rights, the Republicans counter with pro-life rhetoric, voodoo economics and tax cuts for rich people and corporations? Am I crazy? I hate to dualistically generalize like this but no matter how much I listen to David Brooks or David Gergen’s intelligent and valid counterpoints, I just keep tacking back to the same questions.

If our taxes pay for a compassionate welfare state we can be proud of, how can Republicans keep championing tax cuts that only make the rich richer and diminish the revenue that pays for our social programs? How can half of America keep voting for a party that wants to abolish Medicare and prevent the protection of our environment while failing to even try to improve the unemployment rate? I just don’t get it. 

What am I missing? Don’t people realize that this whole “trickle down” approach to the economy doesn’t work and that it has already failed us in the past? Don’t people want the government to take care of us by championing affordable health care, clean air and an economic policy that takes care of the average working citizen? Why would the Republicans try to attach provisions to a budget that opposes all these things? Don’t people see that? Don’t they care? And as always, it leads me back to the same question…

REPUBLICAN VOTERS OF THE UNITED STATES, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING?!?!?!

Sorry. I just…I get a little upset with my fellow Americans sometimes. Anyway, Paul Ryan’s plan is an atrocious one. But right now, it’s the only one on the table and it’s the only one that people are talking about. That needs to change.

Boehner: A Man of the People - Even the Fat, Poor and Lazy Deserve a Voice

The fat, poor and lazy people of this country have been silenced, discarded and left for dead without purpose, direction or a voice to call their own. But they now have a beacon to follow, a leader to shepherd them through these tumultuous financial times, a voice that echoes throughout the halls of Congress, a name for the droves of nameless, faceless citizens that have been cast asunder. And his name is John Boehner.

      

George W. Bush gave America “Compassionate Conservatism.” But apparently G.O.P. leadership felt such an approach was too…well…compassionate. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Boehner accidentally let loose his true thoughts on how to approach Americans who have fallen on tough time. His approach is, well, to not approach them at all. The majority leader of the United States House of Representatives has adopted more of a ‘Fuck them, it’s they’re own fault if they can’t get a good job or an education’ philosophy.

While on a coffee break, Boehner, who apparently is not aware of reporter/subject etiquette, dropped a little English when he thought they were off the record. After the reporter Matt Taibbi asked what he felt about young people, he shared his thoughts on that and more.

"Can't pay your student loan? Face it, your parents were lazy and you couldn't afford college. The world needs ditch diggers and you were born into a family of them. Can't pay your mortgage? Your house was too expensive and you couldn't afford it."

Love. So much love he has for the American working class. I can feel the fuzzy, snuggly affection for the ditch-diggers of America oozing out of his pores. Can’t you? But his love is not limited to the lowly ditch diggers that make up such a large cross-section of the American populous. John, much like myself, believes that the children are our future. And he exemplified this belief when he said, “The kids here [in the U.S.] are too fat, too lazy, too addicted to TV, fast food, cheap credit, and Facebook.”

Hmmmmm. Well, people do watch too much television. Facebook can be addictive and yes, McDonalds is a little more popular than it should be. But I am not so sure that this attitude is altogether helpful. I’m all for constructive criticism but he comes off as a little bit of a, what’s that word, cocksucker. Am I wrong? I have heard the ramblings of a cocksucker before and they sounded very much like that; harsh, apathetic, rooted in truth but completely unaffected by it.

Alarming as his comments were, he unleashed one little verbal nugget that filled me with hope and upon reading it, a light of clarity shone through me. All this time I have been worrying about unemployment in this country. Even though it recently dropped to 8.8%, I was still laboring under the fallacious impression that rampant unemployment was in fact, a problem. You know, something people were not necessarily happy about. ‘People need jobs and they want them’ I’ve always thought. Oh what a silly lad I was to entertain such childish notions.

But Boehner, in a quote of the ages, claimed, “I have news for you- there are plenty of jobs out there- the unemployed don't want them.” Ooooooohhhhhhhhhh, so that’s the problem! Eureka! It’s not that people CAN’T get jobs because the job market has shriveled up due to inferior education and the collapse of housing, banking, automotive and countless other industries. No you silly monkeys, it’s that people simply don’t want the oodles of jobs that are saturating this surplus of a job market.

Well, I don’t know about you but I feel enlightened and filled with an optimism I have not tasted since the summer of 2008; a sunny, happy time when predator lending and sub-prime mortgages only existed in science fiction books. Nobody knew who Fannie Mae or Freddy Mac were and housing bubbles were just something kids liked to play with. Twas a glorious time when automotive industries entrenched in 19^th century technologies thrived and the general public actually believed that overhauling our tragically inefficient health care system was a good idea.

And since then, what has Mr. Boehner learned from a period that most economists herald as the worst recession since the Great Depression? That the unemployed don’t want jobs and that future generations of Americans are too fat and lazy to even deserve them.

So, is this the future of the G.O.P.? Is the G.O.P. the future of America? Is this the leadership this country needs to mend its wounds and repair its limping economy? Is this the attitude that is going to restore America’s dignity and virility in the world?

I hope voters are paying attention. Because our Congressmen exist to serve us, to advance our values and to realize our dreams. They exist to speak for those who cannot be heard. They are our voice. John Boehner is our voice. He is speaking to you and more importantly, he is speaking for you. Are you listening?