GOP’s Culture War Soon to Claim Largest Casualty…The GOP!

Aaaaahh it’s primary season for the GOP! With spring bearing down on America, you can almost hear chirping sparrows nesting and flowers blossoming. Almost. You can’t because they are drowned out by the cacophony of the Republican Party’s culture wars.

As our economy continues to show signs of improvement (which, as a minor side note, is kind of a result of some big decisions made by the incumbent president) and Obama’s approval ratings climbing, the Republicans are doing everything they can to distract voters by going back to their ever-reliable failsafe; cultural issues that will have no discernable impact on those voters’ lives.

And as usual, their reason for engaging in said culture wars is because they have no actual ideas of their own. ‘Cut the deficit even if it stifles our fragile recovery, cut taxes for the rich and trickle down magic will manifest’, bla bla fucking bla.

So here they go again…waging war on anyone who champions the rights of gays, minorities and, lately, pro-choicers. These culture wars have been going on for decades, shape shifting and evolving as Obama entered the public arena. Misplaced Islamophobia ran rampant, soon to be followed by the birtherism movement. Birtherism. That is actually a fucking term in the American lexicon now. Staggering isn’t it?

A black president? Come on!!!

And remember GOP presidential hopeful (and hopeless) Newt’s claim that our president displayed “Kenyan anti-colonialism.” Shit man, it’s been three years and I still don’t know what that means but it sure does sound scary, un-American and really, really BLACK!

These sentiments have not vanished. They pop up intermittently as various Republican stooges make preposterous claims about Obama not being a good Christian, or not being Christian enough or not anti-Muslim enough. Such claims are nonsensical bullshit and go away quickly, rightly so. But Republicans keep firing away, trying and occasionally succeeding to rile up a base that is eternally starved for red meat that is filling though not altogether nourishing.

Let’s get back to abortion and contraception since they have been so prevalent in the news lately. These issues never fail to whip the GOP base into a frenzy, driving them further from the center and further from reason. Just look at what has been going on.

The Senate rejects a Republican effort to restrict health care that covers birth control at Catholic universities and institutions and what happens? Rush Limbaugh takes to the airwaves calling a college student a ‘slut’ and a ‘prostitute’. Come on dude. And what other highlights have this issue spurred recently? In yet another grotesque attempt to cater to the base, Rick Santorum, while campaigning in Michigan, said that JFK’s speech on the separation of church and state “makes him throw up.”

Okay. Nothing extreme or psychotic about professing that something written in the Constitution makes you want to vomit. Nothing at all.

It’s kind of remarkable that the GOP is too stupid to realize that rhetoric this extreme is crippling their chances come November. It should be common knowledge that Republicans don’t have to worry about procuring the votes of their base because those members will never cast a ballot for that Kenyan anti-colonial black guy who sings Al Green in public…even though he sings much better than Mitt Romney.

And, FYI, the Republican Party does consist of a few women. And those few sexually active Republican women that do NOT spend their summers at Jesus Camp might be a little turned off (pun intended?) by what Democrats are already hailing as ‘the Republican war on women.’

And this is where we find ourselves…in a political climate dictated by the most extreme faction of the Republican Party. Tea Partiers, take your bows. Although this has been going on for quite some time, you helped to re-imagine it for modern times. Way to go.

And the race into the gutter continues. Last week, when talking about the hybrid Chevy Volt, Newt Gingrich unleashed what I believe to be one of the worst lines ever uttered in the history of American politics. He said, and yes, this is an actual quote, “You can’t put a gun rack in a Volt.”

It is an oratorical marvel to be able to pack so much bile and ignorance into one nine-word sentence and as a writer; a small part of me is awestruck with admiration…or maybe revulsion. Let’s illuminate all the things about this statement that are so horribly wrong.

One: and I’m gonna channel Wayne Campbell here, a car should not have ‘a gun let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack.’

Two: the statement is inherently false. See Exhibit A:

Yes, the Chevy Volt fits a gun rack with room to spare in which you could fit a dear carcass. Or more guns.

 

Three: that’s not the point…you shouldn’t have guns in your fucking car. PERIOD!

Four: right before making that statement, he heralded the Volt as “an interesting experimental car” which, along with the nugget that immediately followed, further suggested that electrical cars are less manly and less American than gas-guzzling internal-combustion cars that destroy the environment while supporting the economies of nations that fund terrorists hell-bent on destroying America.

Five: this assault on electric cars reinforces the claims of the GOP that global warming is a myth perpetrated by liberal, atheistic scientists. 

Six: what this country needs after yet another senseless high school mass-homicide, is less stringent gun control laws.

Seven: In case you didn’t hear me the first time. YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE GUNS IN YOUR FUCKING CAR. PERIOD!

Karl Rove calls guns an ‘anger point’ and it is, proving time and time again that it will never fail to trigger a potent, Pavlovian response from conservatives.

So further to the right they go. Further and further; besmirching logic, alienating independents and annihilating Republican chances of re-taking the white house. Now, as a fervent Democrat, why do I oppose this?

Because I am a Darwinist god damnit. I believe in survival of the fittest as a principle, as a fundamental truth, as a moral imperative. And the Republican Party is shitting on it.

Two opposing political parties battling for supremacy should result in victory for the best party with the best ideas that result in the best policies and the best lives for all Americans. That is what should happen in any race, political or otherwise. The best athlete should win. But the republicans are running a fucking potato sack race and they are funning backwards.

It has been downright comical to watch the hopefuls, from Perry to Caine to Romney, falling over themselves in efforts to portray themselves as the most worthy conservative torch-barer. Meanwhile, the presidential candidate that consistently polled among the lowest and has long since dropped out, was also the only reasonable Republican who had any chance of winning over independents; John Huntsman.

So as the only legitimate conservative in the mix (Sorry Newt, you can’t have nine divorces on your resume and qualify as such), will Rick Santorum triumph? He just might.

And if he does, what will happen as a result of this self-destructive conservative pandering? Well, it can, probably and hopefully will culminate in the re-election of Barack Obama. And maybe this is a wake-up call the Republican Party will learn from. Because as Joe Nocera wrote in the Times on Saturday, “An alcoholic doesn’t stop drinking until he hits rock bottom. The Republican Party won’t change until it hits bottom. Only [a Santorum loss] offers that possibility.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/opinion/nocera-rooting-for-santorum.html

So maybe that’s it. Maybe an electoral ass kicking is what the GOP needs to change its ways. Lets hope so. Because these social wars are bad for Republican’ hopes for a long and healthy political life. They are bad for our two-party system. They are bad for common sense and they are bad for America.

But they sure are great for Democrats!  

The GOP and the 1% - Soulmates?

I really can’t say for certain whether our nation’s current tax policy is merely ironic or a flagrant bitch-slap to the face of the middle class. I’m not even gonna get into the lower class because, as the GOP’s frontrunner so eloquently put it, I’m not really concerned about the very poor either. Food Stamp Nation can fend for itself.

But for all the cries of ‘class warfare’, socialism’ ‘the 99 %’ and whatever other colorful terms have been slung from either side of the aisle, there is a serious issue of income inequality facing our economy, aided and abetted by a tax code that is in dire need of a make-over.

And what is the GOP proposing to do about it?

Absolutely nothing.

I find that to be astounding. Am I alone on that?

Even in the face of the Occupy Movement and irrefutable evidence of an unparalleled concentration of wealth, the Republican position on the matter continues to be ‘cut taxes for the wealthy.’ In an upcoming presidential election that is rife for a Republican reclamation of the White House, they do not have anything even remotely representing a solution to this issue. I have not heard John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney or any other prominent member of the GOP propose an overhaul of the tax code that levels the playing field.  

The Buffet rule was proposed by our nation’s second richest American and incidentally, it was supported by Mr. Gates, who currently holds the #1 ranking. Yet all those other millionaires and billionaires who so impotently lie on the outskirts of the Forbes 400 seem to be in dire need of Republican support. And they continue to get it.

And it is both apropos and for all Republican’s hoping to take back the White House, unfortunate, that in this era of income inequality, they are pinning their hopes on the posterchild for the 1%.

Even though Mittens likes to joke that he is unemployed, most unemployed don’t rake in $60,000 a day. (Try not to vomit but yes, that is an accurate approximation) And most Americans are not fortunate enough to pay 13.9% of their taxes on income, regardless of where that income came from.

Blogger’s sidenote: Hey did you ever notice that when anagrammed, Romney encapsulates the word ‘money’ with an extra ‘r’ for ‘rich’?  

In case you haven’t noticed, our economy isn’t doing very well. In spite of the fact that unemployment rates have reached the same rate that they were when Obama took office, 8.3%, the general outlook is still south of optimistic. I hate to speak in bumper stickers…but the 99% still isn’t exactly flourishing.

And what does Romney, who sadly enough, is looking like the Republican nominee,  propose? Brace yourselves. Seriously, this should be a ‘what the fuck’ moment in your lives. If it isn’t, defibrillate yourself.

According to the Tax Policy Center, a non-partisan institute, Romney’s tax plan would raise, that’s right folks, RAISE, taxes on households making less than $20,000 a year. Not individuals, HOUSEHOLDS with numerous people living within them. People…homo sapiens. And it would not only raise them, it would raise them by…wait for it…60%! 

I just shat myself. Did you? If not…again…the defibrillator.

But Romney’s tax plan is not all gloom and rain clouds, it would cut taxes for households making between 50 and 75K a year…by a whopping 2%! That equals about $250 dollars by the way…which those households could use to treat themselves to a new space heater or splurge on a luxury item like a year’s worth of indoor plumbing.

But the best part about R-money’s tax plan is what it does to bridge this income inequality gap. (Incidentally, I’ve already trademarked the term R-money so don’t use it without my express written consent which you will never get)

R-money’s tax plan would cut taxes for millionaires (yes, people making at least a million dollars a year) by 15%, resulting in an additional $146,000 a year that would land in the pockets of said millionaires…as opposed to the $250 dollars that would land in the pockets of the ‘mildly poor’, who are apparently just as little of a concern to Mitt as the ‘very poor.’

So what would equate to an $180 billion reduction in tax revenues per year would accomplish one goal, to…wait for it…that’s right, make rich people like Mitt Romney even richer. No wonder Donald Trump has recently latched onto Romney’s coattails.

So yet again, the GOP is held hostage by it’s own venom. With a message cloaked in racism and an unhealthy infusion of religion into politics, roughly fifty million republicans will vote AGAINST their own economic interests. They will vote AGAINST their financial future.

This has been and remains to be, the biggest and admittedly impressive coup d’etat of the Republican party…their ability to convince its caucus to cast their votes in favor of their own peril.

Goddamn that’s impressive!

How do you do that? How do you convince people to vote for a person that will make their lives harder?

Well, sadly enough, it’s actually not that difficult. You tell an uber-christian, homophobic, slightly more racist cross-section (a very large cross-section actually, most of the country) of the American populous that their president is a Muslim socialist and they will be considerably open to the idea. Tell those same voters that our president wants to kill God’s embryonic children, marry queers and give all your hard-earned money to pay for food stamps and welfare for minority crackheads and you will succeed in chalking up one more vote for the GOP…a party whose current presidential frontrunner’s plan for improving income inequality is to raise taxes on the poor and cut them for the rich.

What the fuck are you thinking Republican America?

Do you hate black people and homosexuals? If so, fine, hate them. But don’t let your hatred for them raise taxes on the poor and drastically minimize our social safety net while broadening income inequality for years to come.

Do you want to preserve the life of countless fetal souls? Then rear your children properly and keep them from getting impregnated. But don’t elect a political fuckdoll who has less of a soul than any embryo to begin with.

Obama wants to level the playing field and create a tax code that closes the inequality gap that has been growing for far too long. Voters of the United States of America, I implore, you…let him.   

Everybody’s Gone Mormon…Mormon USA!!! (sung to the tune of the Beach Boys classic)

Following a commanding Romney victory in Florida, it is finally time for us to face our worst fears and surrender to them. On inauguration day, less than one year from now…we will be welcoming in our first Mormon president.

Perhaps what is most alarming about this is that a such a notion induces more confusion than fear. Well, that is because this country is very ignorant; especially in their knowledge of the Mormon faith. If they were blessed with my knowledge and foresight, they would be very afraid. I have seen the future once again…and it is terrifying. 

So take a voyage into a horrifying tomorrow. Journey with me…into a Mormon America.

But before you leave, put on a clean pair of Mormon magic panties. I am wearing mine. They will neutralize your mojo but they will protect you from evil and venereal disease.

I know this underwear is an easy target but never the less; it is one we need to hold under a microscope. Because beyond their general silliness are social and financial ramifications that will alter the landscape of America.

When Romney is elected, all Republican’s will be forced to convert to the Mormon faith. The Tea Party is running the Republican Party these days and after failing to come up with a Romney alternative of their own, they will have to team up with Mittens because a house divided amongst itself cannot defeat a black, Muslim incumbent.

So with roughly 55 million registered Republicans marching around in Mormon magic panties (I’ve trademarked that term so don’t even think about using it), the underwear industry will tank. Victoria’s Secret’s stock will plummet. Calvin Klein, likewise. Billions of dollars in taxable lingerie revenue will be lost. But more importantly…many people will simply stop having sex.

How do I know this? Easy. Would you fuck anyone wearing that?

I didn’t think so. So with less people having unprotected sex, that will result in less unwanted pregnancies, less childbirths, etcetera. Gerber stocks will take a dive and when Toys R Us declares bankruptcy, Geoffrey the giraffe will commit suicide.  OshKosh B’Gosh’s stranglehold on the child clothing market will finally be released and they will struggle to stay afloat.

Planned Parenthoods will close across the country and the abortion debate will disappear entirely, lending credibility to conservatives’ long-held and fallacious belief that women should not have control over their own bodies. This will both validate and vilify Mitt Romney's official position on the issue.

With countless people yearning for spiritual security, a nation-wide obsession with the ‘laying of hands’ will ensue. Bon Jovi’s “Lay Your Hands on Me” will catapult to the top of the Billboard charts where it will remain for the duration of the Romney administration, serving as a potent anecdote to Bieber Fever.

Polygamy will provide a convenient outlet for every American man suffering from commitment issues, most of whom are either horny Democrats, Catholic priests or sexually repressed Republican Senators. Mormonism’s numbers will double and The Real Housewives of New Jersey will be canceled, replaced by The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Nobody will watch that show either.

Children across the country will reluctantly be forced to tithe ten percent of their lunch money every day…and ten percent of their weekly allowance. This sudden influx of funds will make The Mormon Church the largest multi-national conglomerate in the country and with no other job prospects, Newt Gingrich will be employed as their chief consultant though not, I repeat, NOT a lobbyist. 

But the most devastating consequence of the Romney presidency will be his position as America’s foremost political AND spiritual leader. The already flimsy separation between Church and State will disintegrate entirely and with Mitt’s flip-flopping proclivities, his bully pulpit will be a very confusing place.

He will save our souls in his first term only to damn them during his re-election bid. He will vehemently defend both positions. His successful campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade will be rendered moot because no one is having sex anyway. A few years later, he will propose overturning it yet again, denying that he ever championed its reversal in the first place. In 2016, Republicans will conveniently forget this again as they support his re-election campaign because as a result of Herman Cain’s incarceration for sexually harassing a deep dish pizza, there are simply no other viable Republican candidates.

I wish my clairvoyant skills could foretell a more promising future. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, just maybe, there is still hope. Maybe Independent voters will figure out that returning our country to Bush-era policies will re-torpedo an economy that is actually showing signs of life. Maybe they will realize that the Mormon faith is a step away from Scientology and a vote for Mitt is akin to putting a Thetan in the White House. Maybe. Let us hope people. Let us always hope.

2012 – A Fear of Things to Come

As I sit here, blogging for the first time in weeks, I find myself admitting why I have been neglecting my literary proclivities. The year is drawing to a close and I am irrefutably petrified of what 2012 will bring. Be it political, pop-cultural or miscellaneous, I am scared shitless. And justifiably so. 

Will Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney be our next president? Either possibility is equally terrifying. Or maybe Sarah Palin will jump in late in the race, put lipstick on this pig of a Republican field and pull off the political upset of the century. Would that be better or worse than four years of Mormon jokes? Hard to say.

If Obama wins, what will his second term look like? Will he become the messiah we all thought he would be or at the very least grow a stronger backbone when dealing with Republican recalcitrance? Will his Health Care bill stand up in the Supreme Court? Or will the ruling passed down by a Roberts-led court serve as another spanking to an American populace that re-elected George W. Bush?  

Will the Democrats re-take the House or will things stay more or less the same with obstructionism and gridlock running rampant on Capital Hill? Can a recession-riddled middle class survive the latter? And can I fucking stomach it? Will John Boehner be stricken with a fatal case of bird, swine or goat flu? If not, does that serve as sufficient evidence that there is no God?

Are you there God? It's me Michael.

And speaking of God, will the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva finally succeed in locating evidence of the elusive God Particle, a.k.a. the Higgs Boson? And if it does, will that prove that God is not a man who lives in the sky and controls all our fates but is in fact merely a subatomic particle with a mass of roughly 121 billion electron volts that can only be measured, let alone worshipped, within the confines of a six billion dollar particle accelerator?

A scientific discovery of this magnitude would send shockwaves through the Vatican that would reverberate in the Bible Belt but would they be substantial enough to divert Newt Gingrinch from his crusade to unify, NOT SEPARATE, church and state? You know how immune to science and facts those damn God-mongers can be…especially when they are pandering to the Tea Party voting block.    

Will the Knicks somehow put together a complete roster to go along with their formidable frontcourt and can they accomplish the unthinkable by actually bringing an NBA championship to New York in my lifetime? If so, I might consider that to be evidence of a higher power, regardless of what the physicists in Geneva discover.

And why is God on my mind so much to begin with? Is it because Rick, Mitt and Newt are duking it out to see who can appear the godliest to cater to a right-wing base that would never vote for that Muslim black guy in the Oval Office anyway?

Or is it because in this economy, many on both sides of the aisle are saying that it would take a miracle for Obama to be re-elected. And even though I don’t believe in miracles, in this case I really want to.

And there are so many other unknowns that lie ahead.

Will America get its fiscal house in order? Doubtful.

Will Europe? Possibly.

Will I recover from the end of the Oprah Winfrey Show? No.

Will I recover from the cancellation of Lopez Tonight? Probably.

Will America complete its withdrawal from Iraq? Or will conditions destabilize and force the Joint Chiefs to rethink their strategy? Will Pakistan finally end this dysfunctional love triangle with Washington and the Taliban and choose once and for all who they want to commit to? Probably not. So does that mean that bombs will fall and predator drones will soar? I don’t know. But like I said, I’m quite scared.

In 2012, what is more likely…that Egypt will build a healthy democracy? Or that Simon Cowell will get assassinated by an X-Factor reject? My money is on a Cowell obituary. And while we’re on the topic of newspapers, which would get more headlines? A Kardashian wedding or a Kashmir genocide? It makes me furious that I am actually asking these questions and more so, anxious that I can’t answer them.

Iran appears to be buckling under the latest batch of sanctions. Will that deter their nuclear shenanigans or just piss Ahmadinejad off enough to do something terrible? 

I don’t know and part of me doesn’t care because he’s just so goddamn adorable! I know he’s a fascist who denied that the Holocaust ever happened but look at him! Don’t you just wanna cuddle up with him on a rainy afternoon and watch Lifetime Channel movies?

Will Tim Tebow finally admit that he and Jesus Christ are one and the same?

Will Casey Anthony admit that she and the Antichrist are one and the same?

What will happen in 2012?

Will these questions ever cease?

I guess we’ll find out soon enough. But whatever happens, always remember to ask questions. Happy Holidays y’all.

One Year From Election Night…And it’s Anybody’s Ballgame!

So here we are, roughly a year from the elections of 2012. The Republican Primaries have not even begun and The New York Times Magazine is already handicapping the elections based on the hodgepodge of misfits the GOP has put forth thus far.

Media pundits from both sides of the aisle are already slinging hyperbolic last rights for our president. So...is he a lame duck? A dead duck? The Chosen One Begotten? Or the latest incarnation of The Come Back Kid?

So much to discuss.

Let’s start with this shape-shifting GOP field that gets blurrier the more it comes into focus and the current frontrunner just might be, hold the laughter please, Herman ‘9-9-9, ummm, make that 9-0-9, or was it 9 pies for $9.99 or 9 women for $99,999’ Cain.

Where the white bitches at?

Oh Herman, my brutha from anotha mutha. You ornery little rascal with a trail of shredded sexual harassment suits in your wake. How can I even attempt to take you seriously?

You’re right, I can’t. 

So I won’t. Moving on.

Will that highest of glass ceilings finally be smashed after Hillary put “eighteen million cracks” in it? If so, is Michelle Bachman the one to do it? You know, there are moments where I contemplate that…and whether such a victory would be a victory for women around the world and a victory for America. And maybe that victory is worth celebrating. But then I remember all that she stands for. And if that’s not enough…all I have to do is look at this.

WARNING!  If you stare at this picture for 66.6 seconds straight without blinking, you will either explode, turn to stone or be sent to an inter-dimensional netherworld where you will become the middle of a human centipede, book-ended by Miss Bachman in the front and Jesus Christ in the rear. You will spend eternity there.

Okay, we all know that the crazy-eyed baby-collector has no chance in hell so I’ll ask an important question. Is America ready for another moron from Texas? Was eight years of Texan idiocy enough? I look at Rick Perry and I have two thought; one – fuck, that guy is really handsome. And two – fuck, that guy is really stupid.

So does America want stupidity back in the White House? Does America want shit-brained swagger back in the Oval Office? I don’t think so. And judging by the worst of his consistently pitiful debate performances, that swagger is not likely to return. So I’ll ask another question because, like I say, it’s important to ask questions.

Is America ready for a Mormon President?

I didn’t believe America was ready for a black president before Obama changed history but this is different. At least I know what black people are. I see them every day and nothing about them confuses or scares me. Excluding the possibility of a Herman Cain presidency which, let’s be honest, isn’t much of a possibility at all. Just thinking about it makes me giggle.

But…Mormons. I don’t really know how I feel about them. I put them somewhere between born-again Christians and Scientologists and, like many, I have a few small problems with the whole ‘magic panty onesie’ thing they wear.

Mormon Magic Panties - Sure to annihilate any
semblance of evil, sexuality or political conviction.

Call me simple but I just can’t look at Mitt and not wonder if he is wearing one of these fuckers under his very expensive suit.

Poor Mitt. No matter how consistently and flip-floppingly he goes about his business, the GOP is still resisting embracing him. And he is, by far, the most viable of the front-running candidates…which is somewhat remarkable considering the fact that he is a political cyborg with no convictions, opinions, heart, backbone or personality.

So which of these candidates poses the greatest threat to Obama? According to the article I referenced earlier, it’s actually John Huntsman.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/magazine/nate-silver-handicaps-2012-election.html?pagewanted=all

But, if we are to predict the future based on the present political climate, Huntsman is far too sane and centrist to be taken seriously by this Tea Party-fueled GOP. Which is good news for the Democrats and bad news for Republicans.

The article was not very optimistic about Obama’s odds. But I cannot help but believe in his chances for a second term. The alternative is too unsettling. So what does Barry have to do to get himself another four years?

Well, for starters, he has to have a great fucking year. A great fucking year. And so does the American economy. Will it rebound or at least show modest signs of improvement? Obama better hope so.

Can Obama refine his message? If not, Bill Clinton is trying to do it for him. Just read his latest book and, if you buy the reviews, you will hear the message loud and clear that Obama has failed to project.

And what is his message exactly? That’s the problem. If he has one, he has not explained it to the American people. He has not adequately sold it…and henceforth Americans have not bought it. 

So I’m gonna help you out Mr. Obama…because I know you read my blog. And I know you value the highly informed advice of a bartender with a Communications degree.

But seriously, here’s what you’ve got to do in the next year.

The Republicans in Congress will never pass any jobs bill, as they have already illustrated. They will not give you or Democrats any legislative victory so you need to make America understand that the Republican would sooner see American workers whither if it helps their party rise. You need to remind us that not only are Republicans responsible for driving us into this economic shitstorm, they are also doing everything in their power to prevent us from steering out of it and they are doing it for political gain.

Your Foreign Policy victories are numerous and impressive. You responsibly intervened in Libya. You are bringing our troupes home from Iraq. And you killed the motherfucker that Bush couldn’t. Our economy sucks but our country is safer because of you. Make us feel the safety you have provided and make us appreciate it.

Moving along.

Have you noticed all these little Occupy movements? Well, they may not be able to articulate what they want buy I can. They want policies that favor the working American, not corporations and rich people. This is a clear message and although your policy agenda has reflected this, you have not clearly drawn this comparison. So do it. Use their energy to feed the values you champion.

You are trying to create jobs by having rich people and corporations foot the bill. This is a worthy cause that should be an easy sell to the public. But you’re not fucking selling it! So sell it!

The GOP candidates don’t want to raise one single tax ever again. They are extreme, they are unreasonable, they are crazy. Make people realize this. It is as clear as day that their  obstructionism, extremism and unprecedented rigidity is not what America needs right now. Make us see it.

Remember that fire you had in you when you delivered your speech about the Jobs Bill that had no chance of passing Congress? You need that fire to burn for the next year. America thinks your soft Barry. So get hard. Get angry, get hard and get serious.

Because the Republican are not serious. But they can still whip your ass a year from now if you don’t raise your game.

Do you hear me Mr. President? Probably not. But I thought I’d say it anyway.  

Is ‘Occupy Wall Street’ a Political Movement or a Circus? The answer is…Yes.

When penning the lead for this blog post, I was torn between two options:

Option 1 – For a good time, drop acid and run around Liberty Plaza naked, armed with a bongo drum and a dime bag, and see how many hugs you can collect.

Option 2 – An enthusiastic liberal response to the Tea Part has finally begun; born in lower Manhattan, its message is spreading across America like an air-born pandemic.

I really don’t know which lead to go with…and therein lies the problem. Having spent some time down in Liberty Plaza today, I am not sure whether to celebrate the ‘occupation’s’ many virtues or chastise its many flaws.

So I’ll attempt to do both. 

Occupy Wall Street, a populist movement that has been gaining momentum since 2,000 protesters assembled there on September 27^th, has a lot to say. But as the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets have, to an extent, accurately conveyed, it is not exactly sure how to say it.

As I strolled through Liberty Street Park today, I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know if I should watch the interpretive dance show on my left or stare at the topless woman on my right. I tried to  read a leaflet on how the bank bail-outs were allocated but I couldn’t concentrate because the topless woman kept shouting “I am the first amendment.”

And as I attempted to hold a conversation with one of the protesters about whether or not the police had been harassing him, I found myself reflecting on why the topless protester did not have nicer breasts. This bothered me.

Because there is something undeniably inspiring about this ‘occupation’ that contains, among countless other things, a fully stocked and staffed First Aid station, mountains of donated food and water and free legal advice for the 700 people that were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge October 1^st.

And as I walked around in a daze, I felt a populist energy I have not felt since I worked for Obama’s campaign back in 2008. It was a feeling I enjoyed. And one that I missed. 

Now I am remiss to do this because I do not want to diminish the value in what is transpiring here, but I think a little ridicule is called for if it serves as an attempted wake-up call. Because some of what is happening is jeopardizing the integrity of most of what is happening down at Liberty Plaza.

Exhibit A – This man’s sign says “Tax the Rich. Shitcan the Tea Party, America’s doucebags.” Now these are all valid points and truths I agree with. However, I cannot see the truth because it is blinded by the kaleidoscopic visual clusterfuck that is his outfit. I would have clobbered him in the head to knock some sense into him but, as you can see, he was wearing a helmet.

The Tea Party is fairly easy to de-legitimize because their racism, homophobia and other fairly transparent sources of hatred are not difficult to spot. But the Occupy Wall Street movement, if it is to accomplish anything, will never approach legitimacy if nimrods like this are representing it.

Just looking at that guy makes me want to vote for whatever political party he does NOT represent. And if I were a Democratic politician, I would be terrified to even remotely endorse a movement that this man supported.   

I love my city. It is unparalleled. George Carlin once said that New York was the best city in the world because when you walked down the street, you had to make a decision every ten seconds of whether you would stare at the most beautiful woman on the planet…or the craziest asshole on it.

In this case, the beautiful woman is the litany of valid socio-political agendas being championed by O.W.S. and the crazy asshole is…well…all the crazy assholes championing them.

The central message here is that Washington’s elected officials should more pro-actively defend the economic interests of the average working American, not those of millionaires and corporations.

I agree with this sentiment whole-heartedly. But if I was on the fence about it, I doubt this person would sway me. What the fuck is this creature? Seriously...this thing scares me. 

There are so many secondary and tertiary agendas on parade in so many vibrant colors that the 50/50 balance of political activism and theater of the absurd that has manifested here threatens to cancel itself out; imploding in a blurry fog of pepper spray, tits, tie-dye and recycled leaflets.

An essay in an ‘Occupied Wall Street Journal’ newsletter that is being distributed downtown, lauds the diversity of issues being forwarded. And although Americans sounding off about the policies they disapprove of is noble, it is also counterproductive.

If ‘we the people’ oppose everything today, we will accomplish nothing tomorrow.

Is this the time to express our outrage with Republican opposition to the Buffet Rule that would raise taxes on the rich? Yes! Is this the time to attach provisions to that argument that address climate change, health care and nuclear waste? No.

If we oppose everything, we will accomplish nothing. 

And to all those people in Liberty Plaza, trust me, I’m with you. I’m unemployed, the government does not seem to be doing anything to get me back to work and I am furious about it. Every day, I walk the streets of Manhattan, handing out resumes as I wander in the shadows of towering skyscrapers; omnipresent reminders of how good corporate America has it and how grim my future looks. Sometimes I feel like, well, like the walking dead. Kinda like this guy.

This is one of the many zombies that has participated in O.W.S. He is angry about Washinton’s turning a blind eye on the plight of the average working zombie. But he is also lost and confused and ambivalent about what to do with all this outrage.

So I would like to volunteer myself to be the voice of the undead.

Here is what we want, here is what we need and here is what the people we elected into office have to give us.

We need money to stimulate job creation and Obama’s Jobs Bill, though flawed in many ways, is still a step in the right direction and a lot better than the Republican ‘cut taxes and hope for some trickle down magic’ antidote to this plague of unemployment.

Where should that money come from? Well, since the Tea Party insists that it should come exclusively from spending cuts, the O.W.S. movement should insist that it come entirely from increasing tax revenue. And whenever someone objects, direct them to the video below from one of America’s most beloved fiscal messiahs.

But that is only the start. We also need to adjust (I said ADJUST, not ABOLISH!) financial regulations so that they do not stifle small businesses but do eliminate corporate tax loophole exploitation and prevent little things like mark-to-market shenanigans (Do you remember Enron? If not, you’re parents do), sub-prime mortgages, predatory lending and all the other cute little gimmicks that creative capitalists come up with to stuff their wallets while fist-fucking the average working American.

So what should they do to pursue these goals here on Wall Street? Well, for starters, take off the zombie make-up, put on a fucking shirt, get serious and get specific about what we want and what we can actually accomplish. If the message gets honed and targeted at something tangible like the Jobs Bill, perhaps that message will be heard by the mainstream media, not mocked and/or ignored.

We need to harness all this crazy and transmute it into progressive fuel the same way the Tea Party has harnessed racism. Take all that hippy, all that zombie, all that lunacy and transform it into viable political activism and hopefully, political capital.

And we need to do it now because the movement is spreading. Today, Unions and college students marched in support of it. People with higher political profiles are coming out in favor of it and thanks to social media and the many organizations involved, it has  spread to Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and nearly fifty other cities.

If it continues to spread, soon the whole world will be listening to what this movement has to say. So people need to get specific about what they want to say and they need to get serious on how they go about saying it. 

For more info on Occupy Wall Street, visit http://occupywallst.org/ or http://nycga.cc/

Join the movement. But please, for the love of God, keep your shirt on!

9/11 - From THEN to NOW

I have spent the last two weeks wondering how I was going to write a post with an angle or approach that I deemed worthy of commemorating the tenth anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history.

So here I am, listening to CNN regurgitate the murky details of a new terrorist threat we may or may not have to contend with…and I’ve still got nothing. So I think I will just write about that day and how it changed my experience of living in this large and once indestructible city. Admittedly, I am not sure if I am writing this post for you or for me. Maybe both.

Ten years ago I was a struggling writer and actor, much as I am today, and I was at a bar on the Upper West Side of Manhattan at 8:00 AM. No I was not on a round-the-clock bender, I was actually in ‘holding’ for an independent film I was shooting that day. So there I was with about twenty other actors and ten crew people, eating breakfast, chatting cordially.

As an actor, a general rule to follow is ‘the smaller the film, the more you will be sitting on your ass waiting for the production team to get their shit together and shoot.’ I was still sitting on my ass at roughly 8:53 when my cell phone rang.

I remember that piece of shit phone; I’d only had it for a month or two, a Sprint phone, probably the same size that a landline phone is today. My best friend is on the other line relaying that minutes earlier, a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.

Since we are in a bar, I turn on the television and surely enough, there it was. I was not watching some shitty Michael Bay atrocity that may or may not be in my DVD library, I was watching real life.

We discuss what kind of a plane it was and how it could possibly fly into the tallest structure in New York. We don’t have any answers and suddenly a Production Assistant hands me an updated script. My lines have changed. Fuck. I have to learn them because, well, I’m a professional and I was getting paid $100 dollars for my thespianic expertise so national crisis or not, I would learn my lines.

I sit at the bar and try to ignore the unfathomable images on the TV but my eyes keep drifting upward. ‘Learn your lines asshole’, I tell myself. This piece of shit film might just be the break that launches your career. The film was about a world where white people were the minority and blacks were the majority…interesting concept. I was playing the leader of The White Panthers.

I am trying to memorize some poorly written racial epithets when I glance up at the TV and see a plane fly into the Twin Towers. There is an explosion and the image cuts out for a nano-second. In that nano-second, my brain tries to decipher whether or not the image was some sort of replay of the earlier incident superimposed over the present image and in the several seconds that followed my mind tries to reconcile how NBC News could commit such a technically complex blunder while reporting live. My mind goes everywhere, except to the reality that it has happened again.

What they were. 

Finally, the brain-chatter is drowned out by the sounds emitted by the thirty people in the bar that had just witnessed United Airlines Flight 175 crashing into the South Tower.

I call back my friend and the call goes through. This would be the last call I could make on that phone until I woke up the next morning. What the fuck? That is all I can say? Is their some sort of fluctuation in the electro-magnetic field that is fucking up the radars of every plane in the metropolitan area? Did the smoke from the first tower obscure the usual approach to LaGuardia Airport that southbound planes take?

My mind races…employing preposterous scenarios to explain how two planes had flown into such immense buildings. My brain goes everywhere except to the inescapable truth. My mind simply will not go there. Or maybe it just doesn’t want to.

Maybe I don’t want to believe I live in a city where skyscrapers were not places of commerce but targets on a battlefield in a war I am incapable of understanding at the moment. Maybe I just liked the security I have always taken for granted and I am not quite ready to relinquish it.

The girl next to me is crying but I don’t know what to tell her. Some guy at the other end of the bar is talking about his brother who works in one of the buildings. He says something about his cell phone not working but I can’t really make it out.

I pick up my script and look at it. I can’t make out any words but in a very strange way, I can see the page with a preternatural clarity…every pixel, every textured imperfection in the paper. But my eyes can’t focus on a single word, let alone memorize sentences and assign emotions to them.

They say we are still shooting my scenes today but the exteriors they are shooting before mine are taking longer because the constant cacophony of passing sirens is wreaking havoc on their ability to record sound.

I go outside for the first time since it happened and I realize what a beautiful day it is. I can’t say for sure but it might just be the prettiest, bluest fucking sky I have ever seen and the temperature is perfect. It is the perfect day for the perfect fucking nightmare.

I can hear the sirens except they don’t drift in and out of earshot like they normally do. They are constant, like the rain machine that puts me to sleep every night…except the people in the cars with the sirens are on their way to an unimaginable hell that has somehow descended on lower Manhattan.

I suddenly think about my mother. She knows I work in the city every day but probably doesn’t know that actors never go to the Financial District unless it is to score blow. She is undoubtedly petrified so I call her. At least, I try to. The call is not going through and my phone is telling me that the network is busy. I try my dad. Nothing. I finally realize that there are ten other people around me unsuccessfully trying to make phone calls.

Someone runs outside and says the Pentagon just got hit. Those were his exact words. I don’t know how to translate that at first but then through some frantic back and forth, I learn that once again a plane was used as a missile.

I pace back and forth on the sidewalk and I don’t care about the film anymore. I look around at these people and our eyes meet but we say nothing. We don’t have to. We are all scared and confused and addressing it would be redundant.

Here is where things get hazy for me. I am simply ill equipped to handle all this information and I lose my general bearings. Time, space, feelings, thoughts…they all kind of get lost together, blending into a fog.

Now, the notion of terrorism is well beyond indisputable but I still won’t go there.  Terrorism was just some exotic concept that other countries had to deal with. It was nothing tangible and it certainly couldn’t happen here. Oklahoma City, the previous bombing at the WTC…those were just crazy people doing crazy things. Not international terrorists who had executed a complex attack that took months if not years of planning, doing so with military precision.

Someone finally tells me that the shoot is postponed because of the sirens and I am free to go. The sirens…they canceled the shoot, not the horror and death that was in progress ten miles downtown. 

The only thing I can think of is finding a phone because my piece of shit with the retractable antenna is malfunctioning. So I start walking…walking because mass transit has been shut down. So have all the tunnels and bridges leading into Manhattan. Nobody can come in and nobody can leave. We are all trapped on this island and I live in Queens.

Every phone I pass has ten people waiting to use it. Every restaurant and bar I see is mobbed with people glued to the TV. Yet the city is oddly quiet.

I stop at a bar and stare at the TV, just gazing through the window at the horror. I am having some sort of thought; I can’t remember what it was…when suddenly the South Tower collapses. 

The bar erupts in motion and sound but I can’t move. I just stare. I am somewhere around Lincoln Center right now, which is miles from Ground Zero, a term that does not even exist yet in the New Yorker vernacular.

Unable to offer a response, I walk away and continue ambling downtown, deciding that I will make my way to Queens, somehow. At some point in my trek, the North Tower also collapses.

I am on the West Side and the Queensboro Bridge is about two miles across town. As I cross midtown, I stop on Sixth Avenue and there is a clear view down to the bowels of Manhattan. All I see is the plume of smoke that satellites would later photograph from space. I am sweating from walking several miles so I take off my shirt and drop it in a garbage can. I don’t want it any more.

I eventually reach the bridge and it seems that the moment I get there, they open it to pedestrians so I start walking. There are throngs of people walking but no one talks. Minutes later, the bridge is opened only to cars leaving the city. They drive slowly, as if they were afraid that driving too fast might incite the anger of whoever it is that has been flying planes into American buildings.

I spot a U-Haul truck creeping along and see that it has bars on the back that could be grasped the same way sanitation workers hang on to the back of a garbage truck. I break into a jog and hop on the back of the truck, grabbing on the bar.

We pick up speed, passing by the hordes of people inching their way into Queens. I look at them and they look back. Some guy pumps his fist at me in approval but I cannot muster a response through my fog.

Then I look out at what is happening on the other side of the East River.

And I see what looks like the aftermath of Mt. Saint Helen’s eruption of 1980 emanating from the island of Manhattan. Here I am, shirtless, holding on the back of a U-Haul truck passing thousands of pedestrians, watching New York City burn.

There are no words, no thoughts, no feelings. Just smoke…and the lingering probability that things will never be the same.

I make it into Queens and walk back to my apartment. It is empty and I have no idea where my roommate is. He works in Rockefeller Center so chances are he’s fine.

I grab my phone and I have twelve voicemails. As I listen to them, the gravity of the day registers and finally, for the first time…emotions. As I listen to messages from my mother, my girlfriend, my college girlfriend, my friends, my acquaintances, my co-workers…I find that I am sobbing. This is at a time in my life where I had not quite learned how to feel so the outpouring of emotion is unprecedented and frightening.

As I sob, I call my parents. Then my girlfriend. And then my ex-girlfriend. And then my shrink. And my friends. I call everyone just to connect, just so I know they are still there, a part of my world that did not go up in the enormous cloud of smoke blanketing lower Manhattan. 

An hour later, my roommate comes home to find me watching the looping of footage that is recycling on every channel. We speak briefly but I feel like I have nothing to say to him. I don’t know how to communicate with him in this horrible new world.  

I watch news coverage for six hours and then I pass out on the couch, with my roommate watching TV beside me. I wake up at four in the morning. I walk into my bedroom and cry myself back to sleep.

What they are. 

The next day, I have a life to get back to, which is good because it leaves me with no time to languish in the aftermath. I have an audition and an appointment with my shrink that I really, really fucking need to go to.

I catch my subway, which arrives in seconds. The train is not atypically at about a quarter capacity, some people are dressed for work, others not. But the mood is solemn; a post-funeral cloud hovering over the subway car denser than the one hanging over Ground Zero.

I look at the other passengers and they look back. We actually take each other in, which never happens on the subway…or anywhere in the five boroughs. Some grin. Others nod. Whatever the response, there is an unspoken understanding that we were all going through this together; which is inexplicably comforting.

My shrink is on Sixth Avenue, which had the same view down to the Financial District and the Avenue is closed to cars. People stand briefly in the street, staring at the cloud of smoke, before continuing on with their lives.

Offices and restaurants are open for business as are casting offices like the one that held my commercial audition. The city is alive but dead; functioning but altered. The towering skyscrapers are different now; vulnerable, mortal.

There are men in full military fatigues with machine guns in subway stations, at the Port Authority, at Penn Station, on the streets. This may be a common site in some countries but not on the sidewalks of Manhattan. Soldiers ask to check my bag and I decide to let them. They are holding machine guns so it does not seem like the time or place for a debate on civil liberties.

The next day I see that people are wearing American flags of varying sizes on their person. I buy one and wrap it around my belt. I’m not sure why, I have never been patriotic. Something made me do it though and I would not take off that flag for a month, maybe two, I can’t remember. Crime rates were surprisingly low in the weeks that followed and box office revenues were incredibly high. 

As people toiled in the rubble, looking for thousands of survivors, only to find several, the city and country struggled to redefine themselves. Osama bin Laden started popping up on T-Shirts that said “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” People, myself included, started shuddering every time they heard an airplane flying overhead.

Rudy Giuliani became an international hero and George W. Bush proved himself an adept cheerleader in ushering the country through unprecedented times. But as the weeks and months passed, the sense of common loss that united the city gradually dissipated. Eventually, the atrocities at Ground Zero devolved from something you could not escape to something you only thought about every few hours…to several times a day…to once in a while.

Beautiful phantom lights were installed at the sight that shone like the Twin Towers’ ghosts into the stratosphere. City planners wrestled with Port Authority diplomats over what building and memorials should be erected at the site while dump trucks hauled the remains of the building and the thousands of victims that perished to various landfills in the tri-state area.

It has been ten years and I don’t think it is necessary to ruminate on how many ways the world has changed. Augmentations to Airport security, increased Islamophobia, underwear bombs, the War on Terror, the death of bin Laden, there is too much to reflect on and this post is too long as it is.

New York City changed because of that day. Everything is different now. I am different. We all are. Knowing that is enough. Mourning that fact will not bring back the 2,977 victims that died that day but it is important to remember. As I look up at the flag I wore ten years ago that adorns my work desk, I remember. That is all I can really do to honor them. 

What it will be.