Friday, July 18. 2008Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) The View from the Couch: Ha Ha HaThe New Yorker cover is a triumph of marketing over meaning. Magazine covers, as most everyone during the last week seems to have forgotten, are there to sell magazines. The swells at The New Yorker wanted to join the national political conversation big time (even bloggers want to join the conversation) and sell product. It's been a while since we have had a New Yorker cover that generated much buzz. Bears wearing iPods don't help magazine copiesrush off the newsstands. So, when we hear endless debates about "parody," "satire," and other English Lit 101 topics on both cable and network news this past week, we can only say, well done New Yorker, your aim has been accomplished. Get the folk talking about your slick mag. The boys at the New Yorker have done it before, with the black on black 9/11 cover, the orthodox Jew and hot mama cover, and now with the Obamas in the Oval office, fist bumping (I have heard a number of racist riffs on that gesture), while the Old Glory burns in the fireplace and Osama stares down from the wall. Michelle looks more Assata Shakur than Angela Davis and Barack is in some generic pass-for-Muslim outfit. That'll get them talking! But the pious palaver about irony, etc., has been a real pain. As usual, it's about money, all you smart people out there. Continue reading "The View from the Couch: Ha Ha Ha"Thursday, July 17. 2008
Indy Tennis Ch'ship Action Heats Up; ... Posted by Andrew Roberts
at
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Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Indy Tennis Ch'ship Action Heats Up; Hot Shots Choke on Humidity
It is a record-breaking 149 degrees Fahrenheit at court level. So imagine my surprise, in a foggy dehydration-induced haze, when I saw a ball-kid line up opposite James Blake for tonight's main event.
Of course, as the sun settled, the stadium cooled to a brisk 124 degrees, and I realized that the squirrelly red-shirted Asian exchanging warm-up volleys with Blake was in fact Woong-Sun Jun (of course!), the 293rd ranked player in the world. His climb to the top is seemingly hopeless, but if tennis ever adopts a 30 team, 11 man roster format as I've been campaigning for, my long division skills tell me that he will be a valuable bench player for the office Tennis Fantasy League. Four of the tourney's top 8 seeds earned themselves a long weekend by choking on applesauce in round one. Rajeev Ram, Fabrice Santoro, Robby Ginepri, and Thomaz Bellucci all lost to miscellaneous contenders, apparently eager to free up their schedules for tonight's midnight showing of The Dark Knight. And they will all see Blake there-- as he sent Sun Jun back to Korea in straight sets. Tomorrow's sessions are at 12 pm and 7 pm-- with top seeded Blake competing in the latter. Last year's champion Dmitry Turnsunov is still looming in the quarter-final, and on the other end of the bracket, the second seed Frenchman Gilles Simon is undoubtedly up to no good, twiddling his fingers and waxing his dirty French mustache, plotting his anti-American chicanery against Blake and the rest of our freedom-loving contestants. Come to the Tennis Championships to cheer against Gilles Simon or else you hate freedom. There, I said it. Tuesday, July 15. 2008Paris, when she's soberI dress my confused 15-year-old beagle as W. Paris is nearly the intellectual match for Dave as I am for Stephen Hawking. But after Blondie's giggling through several questions about her current life and plugging her new TV show, Dave turned his attention to her entrepreneural endeavors. Apparently the Hilton fortune has fallen on hard times and impoverished Paris has to put her name to hair extenders and other non-essential items to buy gas and pay the rent. Continue reading "Paris, when she's sober" Friday, July 11. 2008Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) The View from the Couch: CastratorsThings continue to come apart at the seams. The economy, John McCain's campaign, Barack Obama's happy campers, what's left of the Bush II administration. Is it just the wild fires of the summer, or a continuing trend? In McCain's case, it well might be scorched earth forever. Phil Gramm, the former Senator from the great state of Texas and McCain's national co-chair, said we have become a "nation of whiners" and what's going on out there is only a "mental-recession." Gramm is one of the more unpleasant people still functioning as a public figure, even though he's a vice chairman of a Swiss bank, UBS. To Gramm and his friends it certainly is a mental-recession, since whatever happens won't leave them gas-less. Gramm has expended too much gas in his time in the Senate, pushing laws through that set the stage for the subprime mortgage collapse. That is, when he wasn't getting laws through as he left the senate to ease the way for his wife's trips to corporate board heaven. Having him around continues to make McCain look like a stooge for all things Republican at its worst. McCain does a passable job at connecting with average folk, since he doesn't always come off as the elite scion he actually is. Gramm is a buffoon on wheels, though a successful one. McCain has attempted to put "distance" between himelf and Gramm, but it's the distance between A and B. And then there's Jesse Jackson, an equivocal champion of Barack Obama, caught on film once again. Jackson has a long history of being embrassed by an open microphone ("Hymietown" comes to mind), but the latest is a dozy. The "cut his nuts out," Barack's that is, remark is a bit much, given the history of blacks in America. But Jackson and Bill Clinton are nursing the same hurt (not, decidedly, the nuts problem): both feel mightily displaced and had Hillary been the nominee to be, both Jesse and Bill would be rolling in clover. And that's a hard nut to crack. Continue reading "The View from the Couch: Castrators"Thursday, July 10. 2008Jermaine O'Neal era over
Blog by Anton Blender
This week, a trade the Indiana Pacers made with the Toronto Raptors before the 2008 draft becomes official, ending the Jermaine O'Neal era. In exchange for O'Neal, the Pacers are getting several new faces, a couple of expiring contracts, and the fresh start they've needed since the first punch was thrown at the Palace of Auburn Hills. A lot has been written about the O'Neal trade since it was announced, especially about point guard T.J. Ford. You may have gotten the impression that he's injury prone, since he's been carried off the court on a stretcher not once but twice in his young NBA career. You might think he has an attitude problem that forced the Raptors to ship him out just to restore harmony to the locker room. Continue reading "Jermaine O'Neal era over" Sunday, July 6. 2008Syria: An Innocent Abroad (Part V)
Beirut or Bust
My not-so-dramatic unknowing escape from Civil War Just two days before deadly violence broke out, I had left Beirut a quiet and peaceful (albeit tense) vacation spot. On Sunday May 4, we made a leisurely three-hour taxi ride back to Damascus from Beirut. We stopped for tea before the Lebanese border, shopped for cheap booze at the Duty Free, and waited patiently in the shiny 2008 Nissan that was our makeshift taxi ride home, while the driver handled the stamping and paperwork of our ins and outs through international customs. It cost 400 Syrian Pounds...about eight dollars...for the serene ride home with Miriam and two strangers. If I had lingered in Lebanon until Wednesday to catch the Lebanon and Jordan international soccer match like I'd considered, I may have been spent the remaining week of my pilgrimage twiddling my thumbs on a nice cot, courtesy of the U.S. Embassy. On Tuesday May 6, the borders in and out of Lebanon were closed, after the government shut down Hezbollah's private telecommunications network within the country. They also removed a head of airport security, who was accused of installing spy cameras on behalf of Hezbollah at the Beirut International Airport, and the nation was now flirting with implosion. In the words of Ron Burgundy..."My, that escalated quickly." On Wednesday Hezbollah's party leader responded with an apparent call to action. All of Damascus had its eyes and ears quietly fixed on Hassan Nasrallah—while I naively shopped for family souvenirs, trying desperately to filter through his Arabic to catch any one of the 7 words I know, and make some sense of the situation. Even as an outsider, new to the conflict and the implications of his words, as I annoyed Miriam with sheepish requests for a translation-- I could feel the gravity of proximate War, for the first time in my life. Within hours, several indiscriminate factions of Hezbollah and other miscellaneous oppositional forces set up blazing road blocks, creating an air-tight vacuum in Beirut, sealing it off from the world, and bringing the Mediterranean Sea-- where I'd danced around jellyfish and burned to a pinkish Caucasian crisp on the beach three days earlier-- to a rolling boil. On Thursday as I waited on my favorite lunch in the old city-- Shish Tawouek (a toasted-sub style sandwich with grilled chicken, garlic mayonnaise, and vegetables, with a Pepsi for 65 syrian pounds...about a dollar and ten cents...) Miriam wandered to the nearest television inside a sandwich shop, as the streets quieted, and locals were magnetized to the nearest broadcast within earshot, as the tick-tack of AK-47 fire and the inaudible shouts of militant officers filled the Damascus radio waves. Armed Hezbollah militants were returning fire at the Lebanese army, in the same neighborhood where I tenderly rubbed aloe into my sunburned shoulders and nursed an Almaza (Lebanese beer), while watching shitty Arab reality tv, four days removed. I was in disbelief. In retrospect, I realize at this moment, while searching for something in my generation's American history to liken the anxiety to, the feeling I had in my stomach while taking in the gravity of the battle was familiar... the feeling was miles off, and at a quarter of the volume...but it was like sitting in third period again, trapped in a state of incomprehension, where you put your head into your hand and mumble distressed prayers; it was the white noise feeling of watching the news on September 11, 2001. It is important to reiterate that the feeling was not on a par with my reaction to mass murder on civilians in my own country-- I mean to say only that it was the same sinking feeling of helplessness and disappointment in humanity-- and general distress for the well-being of our own people. I use the comparison only because it is the only other time a country I've stepped foot in has been attacked in my lifetime-- and that, I learned, is the only thing that can make war "real." Lebanon was no longer Mars-- some distant and inaccessible body of inconsequential interest. It had become very real, very close, and very important to me. Most Americans don't want to see anything bad happen to anyone. But when you get to know the affected hearts and fall in love with a landscape-- the plight hits your chest just a little harder. ***** Beirut: The Big Lebaneasy What happens in Beirut, gets posted on an alternative newsweekly blog page. It's still difficult for me to understand-- it was less than a week earlier when I had crossed over the Lebanese border, mildly bitter that Lebanon had started charging a $25 48-hour visa fee. A soldier explained to Miriam that the new fee was only for Americans-- at last, I thought, some of the fabled anti-American sentiment that I had feared about my trip had reared its presumed head. It turns out that the soldier was either screwing with us, or didn't know what he was talking about-- the fee was for all foreigners. At first the inconvenience was frustrating and seemingly asinine, until I remembered how many thousands of dollars and connections it costs an Arab to come to an America. Okay, Lebanon, spend my $25 well. The drive into Lebanon was beautiful. The highway snaked around green mountains, overlooking small villages against a blue sky and patches of farmland-- it reminded me of drives through Tennessee in my childhood, drugged out on Dramamine and going through the Smokies toward ocean. It was all the more refreshing to be in a green and free country after spending the last week in Syria, which despite its own distinguishable charms and beauty, is largely tan, dusty, and mildly oppressive. Then, once in Lebanon proper, I saw-- for the first time in my life-- a soft reality of political turmoil. A tank sat perched on the roadside, with its cannon vigilantly fixed on the "Anti-Lebanese" Mountains, as they are called in Syria, protecting against the ambitious President of their Eestern neighbor. To my left, I snapped a picture of an enormous and towering bridge-- with a 50-foot gap in the middle. It was under construction, being rebuilt from an Israeli attack. The Lebanese soldiers are built like U.S. Marines, gruff and fit, with either black/grey/white or jungle green camouflage uniforms, disciplined and seemingly vigilant. Meanwhile, the Syrian military looks more like teenagers or volunteer police officers, who sneaked into their father's closets and swiped puke-green garb from the '80's. Their shirts are always two sizes too big, their hats fall down around their eyes, and their pants are pulled up to high-water level, while they smoke two packs a day and apathetically direct traffic. Bashar, it would seem, recruits them young, and outfits them with room to grow. They look like nerds...like the Lebanese should be dunking their heads in the toilets while they scream uncle. Yet, somehow, Bashar's military threat still lingers in Lebanon. It is a band kid's wet-dream; a world where the nerds realized there are more of us than there are of them. Only these nerds have rifles, aren't good at math, and live in a world without pornography to cope with their misplaced sexual frustration. The streets of Beirut were more ominous in some areas than others. On streets near Martyr's Square, where many of the oppositional forces were camped, most of the shops and residential areas were vacant. There was massive reconstruction on towering buildings, while a parking garage and three story house sat in the foreground, bombed out and untouched from the Lebanese Civil War. Walking toward the beach, a tank sat with a .40 Caliber Machine gun pointed directly at what seemed to be a very specific hotel room, while a handful of soldiers stood guard around the tank. I walked by, trying to use my peripheral vision to take in the scenery of political strife, without arousing suspicion of my interest. I know-- I'm a regular Jason Bourne. I was confidently safe, but not terribly brave. On a long walk along the Mediterranean, I could have been on South Beach in Miami. Palm trees, people walking, roller-blading, bicycling, pan-handling, jogging, laughing, pissing on the beach, embracing their lovers and taking pictures against the sunset over the Mediterranean...it was a beautiful and scenic free society. The residential area was heavy with what I perceive to be the French influence of architecture (I say boldly, having never been to France). We ate dinner overlooking the Sea, and had a tea at the base of a lighthouse, while the waves crashed against the rocks alongside us. There I was informed, a week into my trip, that crossing your legs and exposing the bottom part of your foot is considered a paramount insult in Arab culture; showing the dirtiest part of your body in public (Unless Miriam was making that up to screw with me). We went out for drinks in the legendary Beirut bar scene. There was a Coldplay cover band and complimentary shots and beautiful women in scantily clad clothes. This is one of the most appealing cities in the world-- with its beautiful green mountains, electric bar scene, affordable restaurants overlooking the Mediterranean, modern malls and free women, and a long, clean, wide sidewalk filled with the best-looking Arabs in the region along the beaches of the Mediterranean. Maybe I'd fight over it, too. Thursday, July 3. 2008Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) The View from the Couch: Happy FourthThis will be one odd Fourth of July. President-to-be-most-likely Barack Obama gave speeches this week on patriotism, on values, on religious groups playing a bigger role (delivered to "Faith in America"! ) in the nation, corralling the center (he hopes), while the stock market tanks, people get loans to fill up their gas tanks, California is burning, fireworks being outlawed, Fox News losing viewers, but old Rush gets a rush from his new many millions contract. John McCain might have trouble keeping the base happy, but not Limbaugh. I listened to him for a year, wrote about it in my '96 campaign book, and am impressed he's managed to triumph over his troubles (drug habit, subsequent hearing loss, fatness, etc.) Rush can't make it on TV, but radio, his audience, at least, loves him. Speaking of seeing, rather than just hearing, most Americans can visualize Barack Obama as President, but they are still trying to focus picturing Michele as First Lady. But, it's equally hard to focus on Cindy McCain as First Lady, too. So all that might end up a wash. Continue reading "The View from the Couch: Happy Fourth"Wednesday, July 2. 2008The candidate joke meterthis Irishman named O'bama walks into a bar... Oh sure, there have been jokes about Obama's pastor and the live-chicken-eating craziness surrounding statements made by Jeremiah Wright while Barack was a member of the flock. Those jokes may truly hurt Obama as Wright is or was a friend and represented Barack's strong faith. But compared to the up close and personal attack gags made on the other two including those regarding Hillary's looks, inferring a less (or more) than feminine mystique, and McCain's age, inferring the prospect of oncoming dementia, jokes dissing Obama are about as close to personal as another zip code. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure that somewhere, where the Klan is still the secret society of choice or the Aryans hold car wash fund raisers, there are sick and nasty jokes involving Barack's ethnicity and his Middle East middle name making the rounds. But back here in polite society, it seems totally acceptable to make fun of Hillary's "look" which is hardly out of the mainstream for her age group and McCain's codgerism which not only hasn't been demonstrated but seems to be automatically and generously applied to anyone old enough to collect Social Security. The only thing Barack has been mildly kidded about is his bowling ball's affinity for the gutter. This hardly makes him less of a man, athlete, or anything but a non-entity on the professional bowlers tour. Recently, when his Barack jab drew silence on the Daily Show, John Stewart remarked to his audience that it really was OK to make fun of Barack Obama. With anyone else, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Whig, Green, or Commie, he hasn't had to pause to make that statement. It's not that Barack is so good that his persona, personality, and presence are above reproach and pointed humor. Looking at it obtusely, it may simply be another example of the distance we have to go in this country before persons of color are fully accepted by the rest of us, uh, persons of non-color. We may like him, respect him, and vote for him but damned if we'll like him enough or feel comfortable enough with the fact of him to make fun of him. In that way, we continue to hold Barack and other African, Asian, and Hispanic Americans at arms length. As the saying around the old fraternity house went, "if you can't rip on a brother, who can you rip on?" Hopefully, some day we'll be close enough to do so. Friday, June 27. 2008Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) The View from the Couch: UnityWell, it's unity everywhere, or at least in Unity, New Hampshire, Senators Obama and Clinton smiling wildly at each other. More wild is Bill Clinton, unaccounted for, sulking, his hopes dashed, the boy from Hope hopeless, till he figures how to be the Come Back Kid once again. Meanwhile, Barack Obama already appears to be president, if the press conference he held in Chicago yesterday is any indicator. It seemed like a presidential press conference; Obama exuded a bit of impatience, mentioning that he had answered such questions before, talked in the measured tones of someone with his hands on the levers of power. Reporters differed to him as if he was already elected. Perhaps Obama's performance seemed presidential, since Bush's appearances recently seem slightly surreal, more Bush jokes than substance, Bush kidding around as if he can't wait for his term to be over. Though coincidental, it isn't difficult to watch the disputed election fiasco in Zimbabwe to be an Africanized version of the 2000 presidential election, Florida style, Robert Mugabe taking on the W. role. It's a cartoon version, of course, except for the Zimbabweans, especially those who have been assaulted or killed. Where is Donald Rumsfeld to give his political analysis of this young democracy and say stuff happens, ala Iraq? Continue reading "The View from the Couch: Unity"Tuesday, June 24. 2008Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) The View from the Couch: Public Money
The view from the West Coast is both short sighted and endless: it's that ocean
out there, going on forever. But politics here seems decidedly local, given that a host of reforms are already in place, i.e., water rationing, nitpicking recycling laws, gas guzzlers scorned and, at times, defaced. Out here cable news remains on east coast time, so unless one is watching in the middle of the afternoon, it's the shows CNN and Fox fill up the night with, Hannity and Colmes, Anderson Cooper, on at dinner time. And speaking of east coast time, one bit of information from out west needs to be put here, since I have seen it no where else. Taking a float trip in Wyoming, the guide regaled us with the tale of Saudis who took over a dude ranch near Jackson Hole. That is not strange, since they have billions to spend where ever they go. What was strange is when Saudis travel it is always Saudi time. Fancy restaurants would accommodate them:they would have dinner, shop, etc., at 3 AM. Whatever their Swiss watches told them was the time was the time. The hired help wasn't as happy with the arrangements, though, as the owners were. Evidently, it's a Saudi world, and the rest of us just live in it. But it is, ultimately, a matter of money, as it is with Barack Obama's decision to spurn public financing for his run for the White House. Continue reading "The View from the Couch: Public Money" Tuesday, June 17. 2008Syria: An Innocent Abroad (Part IV)
Tea and Narghile
The vast outward reach of Businessparkville, IN is growing increasingly dangerous to our sense of identity. This notion is not revolutionary--that Carmel, Plainfield, and Greenwood are exponentially becoming a landscape of Simon Malls and efficient retail space, as well as excessive contributors to Indy's vacant housing ratio. The expansion of miscellaneous retail chains and indistinguishable housing is murdering the notion of neighbors and basic human warmth. But six thousand miles away, despite political turmoil and sexual persecution, the Arab word for "neighbor" still preserves its weight. A year ago I conducted an interview with David Gray for NUVO's Oranje Indy issue, and on a personal level the Ball State Professor of Architecture indulged my helpless search for a "sense of place," as he put it, relative to the architecture and landscape of Indiana and the world. In some places, you just have to try harder than others to love your home. His designs accent and intrigue certain dimensions of stereotypical trademarks of Indiana; like a run-down red barn, sitting atop a soft incline of green-space in rural Carmel. When you live in a place that could be any of a thousand other cities in the world, sometimes only an artist and a searching heart can foster pride in the landscape. But in Damascus, where the labyrinth of alleyways and supersaturated round-a-bouts are filled with independent vendors, and the "neighborhoods" are a complex system of back-alleys with front doors miscellaneously scattered about the maze, proximity inflicts togetherness. There is no such thing as a grocery store in Damascus. The system of shopping for anything is like a flea-market-- you buy your pistachios inside one shop, then walk twenty feet through the crowded Souk (think of the market scene in Aladdin... "Dates! Sugar Dates! Sugar Dates and Pistacciooooooos!") to buy a bag of soft and delicious bread--which, while I was there, thanks to the Iraq War and the influx of refugees, had inflated to the cost of madness at the bakeries. Six thousand miles away from a U-Scan and Kroger plus card, I was forced to speak with each vendor (such as the language barrier would allow)--God forbid, engage a moment of my time with another human being. And many of them are genuinely interested in my life, if only for the 7 minutes I come and go from their world forever. Since I've been back home, I have been aching for the U-Scan to ask me in pitiful English where I'm from, and eagerly welcome me to its medina. When the infrastructure of society forces you to actually talk to people in person-- even if it's an escalating argument over the price of a taxi fare (generally ending somewhere near the range of 80 cents) and you see them everyday, you have no choice but to learn their name and, at that point, invest in them neighborly courtesy. This past weekend, new neighbors moved in downstairs. I considered asking them to take a break and visit-- but the idea of knocking on a stranger's door-- even one who sleeps eight feet below me-- and inviting them in for tea and narghile (hookah) seems asinine and moderately suspect. But, in the Middle East, that is hospitable-- that is life-- the kind I wish we had in Indiana. There were certain Arab lifestyles that I wanted to bring home with me. Chiefly, stopping to "have a tea." I drink it daily at work since my return, in my flowery tea-cup (a habbit that has often called my sexuality into question among certain ball-busters) each afternoon, and it is wholly refreshing among the madness of my day. But Damascene culture takes it a step further-- no visit, errand, or play-date is complete without a tea and/or narghile. I've taken up tea in lieu of coffee, often times, but the impersonal experience of a Starbucks or massive Borders Book Store, with a paper cup and indiscriminate scenery is far from intimate-- and defeats my desire to stop for tea with my buddy on our way to the ballpark. Meanwhile, oceans away, American students at the University of Damascus are having a quiet tea on the balcony of their home, after a pleasant afternoon siesta, before heading out for the hustle of their evenings-- and knowing, I mean really knowing their confederates, filtering through teabags the hardships and impermeable differences among their contrasting life stories, to find genuine warmth in white clouds of narghile smoke. (This message brought to you by Phillip Morris.) Tuesday, June 17. 2008The Watchdog of the Forest
[Editors note: this story, by The Watchdog of the Forest, was posted by Jim Poyser]
I'd like to start this piece by clarifying a few things from the article in last week's Nuvo about the deforestation of the Hoosier National Forest in southern Indiana. First of all, I don't live in a house adjacent to the National Forest. It's a one-room log cabin with an outhouse, although it often feels like home. A three-hour journey separates the cabin from my house in the city. Continue reading "The Watchdog of the Forest" Friday, June 13. 2008Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) The View from the Couch: Town HallingSummer's slowing down most everything political, so much so that we're lost in town hall mania, John McCain style. He wants one held most every week, with Barack Obama in attendance, so the old war hero can poke fun at mister smarty pants. And Ronald Reagan's widow has just announced that her husband's library out in a lovely part of California is available as a setting anytime it's needed. Obama's people are a little reluctant to get involved is this love fest of highly managed citizen participation. Way back when, when Joe McGinniss wrote The Selling of the President 1968, these staged formats were Richard Nixon's favorite. But everyone wants a break, a vacation, from campaigning; indeed, exhaustion is being given as a reason that Obama chose Jim Johnson for his veep screening team, now that Johnson has bailed out, given the bad publicity he generated just for being who he is. (My mention of him last week was doubtless the last straw.) McCain has been losing people for months after their biographies are made public; usually it's the long list of lobbying efforts trailing them being the cause to jump. In Obama's case, one commentator on Diane Rehm's Friday news roundup show expressed disbelief that Obama, being a Harvard Law School graduate, didn't have a trusted brilliant lawyer friend to name to his veep committee. She didn't seem to recollect that Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, Yale Law School graduates, had the same problem when they hit town and moved into the White House. It's hard to gain trusted friends when you're accelerating through space so quickly. And some of Obama's Chicago friends were only showing up at the local political operator Tony Rezko's trial, including defendant Rezko himself. It's a problem with hitting the big time so soon. There's likely to be more betrayed friends than trusted friends. Continue reading "The View from the Couch: Town Halling"Wednesday, June 11. 2008Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Is George Walker Bush our worst President ever?It's summer. Let's go waterboarding! You're right. It's certainly not fair to judge our current President before his term ends or before he is judged by the sands of time. It's just that it's fun to wonder if thirty more years of scrutiny will really make any difference. Thirty-four years later, Nixon is still a crook though admittedly the botched second-rate burglary and Tricky Dick's paranoia seem somewhat quaint and inconsequential compared to the lists of transgressions and psychological challenges logged by some of today's politicians. And Nixon's accomplishments in foreign and domestic policy were and are notable if not far-reaching. Hey, look 'em up. But what has George done that basks in a positive light or even a dim bulb? Try to name one successful program, positive initiative, good speech, or even a memorable sentence. Hard huh? Looking back and grasping for any low echelon comparison in recent history, Jimmy Carter was not a particularly strong President. Gasoline was expensive and sometimes hard to get, the economy was down, inflation was up and Iran thumbed its nose or flashed other, more expletive digits in our country's direction. But compared to Bush, Jimmy Grits looked like the world's statesman and domestic guru as he worked to get Israel and Egypt together and at least tried to help Americans in tough times. And that conclusion can be drawn before counting the recent starting of a war that is widely accepted by liberal and conservative alike as unnecessary at best and horribly catastrophic and humanly and monetarily wasteful at worst. W may never have slept around but the religious right must be yearning to trade W for a more randy President that also might occasionally get on base in any game by getting a hit or at least getting beaned by a wild pitch. So as we see the last months of President George W. Bush enter the history books, somewhere Andrew Johnson and Warren G. Harding must be high-fiving. They're out of the cellar. Saturday, June 7. 2008Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) The View from the Couch: Over and Out?The primaries are finally over and the buyer's remorse seems right around the corner. Even Barack Obama has been sporting "How did this happen?" expressions in photographs various newspaper editors have chosen to run. Hillary Clinton's concession speech today, though, apparently was the hottest ticket in town, almost any town, though the event was held in Washington, D.C.. Though Sen. Clinton said she would throw her "full support" behind nominee to be Obama, she's not throwing her delegates his way yet, since she merely "suspended" her campaign, a fund raising ploy and her ticket to mischief in the convention to come at summer's end. And, speaking of mischief, when Bill Clinton called the author of a Vanity Fair article, which insinuates a lot of both smoke and fire on the Bubba behavior front, "slimy," it was a veracity endorsement of sort. The former president claimed there were "five or six blatant lies in there," in the article, though that sort of non-denial denial leaves all the rest of the innuendo certified. The timing of the article and Clinton's tirade, coming as it has on the heels of Obama's elevation, seems to have put another nail into the coffin of an Obama/Clinton ticket. The notoriety of a barely published magazine article screams "Here's What to Expect!" if Hillary is put on the ticket. But, with all of Barack Obama's "Change" theme, one thing he did not change was the makeup of his veep selection team. There is Caroline Kennedy (the next Cheney, the one to pick herself?), Eric Holder, a former deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton (and there was so much good luck in picking an actual attorney general in Bill's administration), and, the coup de grace, Jim Johnson, the former head of Fannie Mae (subprime city now), who was instrumental in picking the wonderful veep choices of both Geraldine Ferraro and John Edwards. Now those were some picks! Continue reading "The View from the Couch: Over and Out?" |










