When One Speaks for Many

As a music lover, I enjoy singing, but it takes a chorus of at least 500 to c0ver my mistakes and self consciousnes. So it was the other night (actually some weeks ago) as I listened with interest to people speaking out at the Tea Party Debate for republican candidates for president in 2012. There was no reticence or timidity here. Members if the audience were comfortable with each other. One might even say they deserved each other.

One man shouted out "Let him die," when the moderator asked about what to do with an old person who had outlived his resources. Did I hear that clearly? It sounded lie I had suddenly been transported back to the Roman Arena. Yep, sadly I did and that person must have felt entirely comfortable yelling his comment. It was probably another Rep. Joe Wison type who couldn't contain himself seated cozily with other Republicans in the House of Representatives during the State of the Union Address last January. Imagine it! vLet the bum die, who cares? Do you supposed that man goes to church? It's an attitude that has zero virftue, something better left unsaid.

I was shocked,frankly, but I shouldn't have been because arlier in the evening Gov. Perry had been boasting about his excellent sleeping habits, unconcerned about the incredible number of people executed i9n Texas dduring his reign. He was certain none had been put to death innocent. Couldn't happen in the Great State of Texas. How could any official be quite so callous, or pretend to be, about one of the most serious of his responsibilities as an elected representative of the people? Why couldn't he have said something responsible like "authorizing the execution of another human being in the administration of justice is a part of my duties as governor that I take with the utmost seriousness and I would be horrified if my state ever took the life of a man or woman who did not commit the crime for which he/she was convicted. Accordingly..." Nope, Gov. Perry chose to posture. People do heinous things in my state they get fried. We don't need a president like that.

To me, the Perry types and those who yell comments like "Let him die" remind me all to clearly of those that screamed "crucify him" 2011 years ago.

(In the interim between when this piece was written and today when it is belatedly being posted, and at still another Republican Debate, a soldier who was praising the demise of Don't Ask Don't Tell was booed by the crowd without drawing the slightest rebuke from any of the potential commanders in chief present. How sad.)

To me the Perry types and those who yell "Let him died

Could It Happen Here?

You bet your life it could! The same rage, rioting and violence, death and destruction as in London, Madrid, Athens? Absolutely! And here's why.

First, came the dissolution of the compact between major employers and their employees that existed for much of my life. You really had to screw up to loose your job with AT&T, and hundreds of similar companies, unless you were drinking or stealing. A work life with one employer was a common thing. After 25 years you got your watch and retired with honor and many friends. If, for some reason, you were fired, it was serious stuff. No more. That's all as old fashioned as a Model T Ford.

As anyone in business today can tell you, the first step an executive in a new position takes is to prepare his/her resume, because there is such huge turnover in the work place. A top notch young executive can easily expect to have 10 or more jobs before retirement, partially because employees are just numbers today, so great is the emphasis on profit. Further, you can be fired Christmas Eve and no one thinks twice about it, because it's not personal, it's just the way the game is played. As a matter of fact, it's so impersonal that when the hammer falls, even a CEO is brusquely escorted out of the building by Security, just like anyone else. Imagine it, if you've never had the experience.

Then came huge disillusionment and disappointment with the Church. People have been brutalized by weeping evangelists, mega church TV preachers and pedophile priests. As the Roman Catholic priest and writer, Andrew Greeley has said, "We've done everything possible to drive them away and still they come." To many it seemed the fall of the Church was the last straw, but that's the straw that is being destroyed now, namely our compact with the government, our government which we have served in uniform and trusted in faithfully.

Young Eric Cantor, the Republican Majority Whip who so wants to be Speaker of the House,and 3rd in line to be president, tells anyone who will listen that we (the Republicans) have to tell the people (that's us) that the government (our government) promised things to us that we (the USA) can't afford it. According to Eric, that's things like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid at anything like current levels, but, of course, we CAN afford tax cuts for the rich and every conceivable form of corporate welfare. This is no longer a mere threat, IT"S HAPPENING NOW!

Recently elected Republican governors are leading their states to weaken unions, to destroy collective bargaining and to return to the old ways of the Robber Barons a century ago. I read recently of county employees in a small town in Rhode Island who had simply been told that their retirement was henceforth going to be $1,000 a month and they should consider themselves lucky. People will fight that kind of high handed outrage with everything they've got, as they always have. If the US had gone into default as a result of the Republicans' refusal to raise the debt ceiling and elderly people had been denied their monthly checks, there WOULD have been riots right here in America. That's more betrayal and disillusionment than any people can take, even those as orderly as we are.

But there's more. Americans who for years were entreated to "own your share of America" through investing in the stock market, have had the rudest possible awakening. As they learned that there are rapacious wolves on Wall Street, in addition to the bulls and bears, they were also discovering that another part of the American dream was also elusive, namely, owning one's own home, complete with white picket fence. Fuggedaboutit! It will be years before small investors venture back into the market for either stocks or houses. They aren't just terrified, they're furious. A local Florida legislator said recently, "The people don't hate us. They despise us." And she's right. The public now knows for sure that elected officials and people running for office cannot be trusted to be consistent. They run right or left whole seeking office and then as election day nears, they become centrists. Once in office, they forget let's say, their committment to just 2 terms, or some other pledge they never meant to honor. They lie whenever they wish, assuming people won't remember or that they can somehow excuse their action. And they lie about the most important functions of their offices. George W. Bush, and I regret deeply having to say it, should go down in infamy for lying about the reasons for which he led America into the Iraq war. He, VP Dick Cheney and Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld whould be held accountable for the debasing the very fabric of our democracy by condoning torture and renditions. They took away our innocense.

In addition, as I've said and written before, people feel they've also been ripped off by inflated oil and other prices which go up for any reason (and drive many other staples) but seldom come down. When they finally come to understand just how this has been allowed to happen there is going to be major trouble. And that's what's next, in the coming years - a very close look at the changes that need to be made in capitalism itself.

Did I mention that all this is on top of the enormous changes that we need to make in the way our government operates? The Republicans have made this startlingly clear in their historic opposition to President Obama. As Americans come to realize that Republicans are willing to sacrifice the interests of the nation to the interests of the Republican party, because they cannot abide the idea of a competent black man in the White House, all hell is going to break loose. Frankly, I think the GOP would welcome violence between now and Nov. 12, 2012, if they could recapture the presidency. That's how far we've descended from where we've been in just a few scant years of organized greed. This is only the beginning, too. Yes, really bad stuff can happen here in this "sweet land of liberty... Let rocks their silence break."

Barry's Baby

The National Elections of 2012 began with a titanic clash over the 2011 budget, which has been followed by a still in progress Olympic contest over raising the debt ceiling (normally done almost automatically with groans.) This death defying high wire act will lead to a gargantuan battle over the 2012 budget, assuming the country hasn't been downgraded to Dogpatch status. Then Barry's Baby will soon be upon us.

This term may not be familiar to you yet, but just wait. The existence of a baby sired by Barry Obama will surface on the internet just as soon as the Swift Boat crews can recall the details, courtesy of some Texas zillionaire just doing his civic duty to inform the public. I could be wrong about this, Michelle way be their target, involved possibly with former Rep. Anthony Weiner or former Sen. John Ensign. Regardless it's coming.

The billion dollar 2012 presidential election campaign will be the dirtiest ever, as well as the most expensive. The idea is to take your target's strongest point and then attack it, no matter how bizaar the claim. Remember John Kerry whose medals and courage were successfully sullied in the 2008 national election? So if President Obama seems decent, youthful, energetic, calm and cerebral, it is necessary to drag him down, get him to blow up and appear that he's been faking it all for the cameras.

Here's why. First, the Republican party will not be able to find an experienced candidate for president able to excite an old lady's sewing circle. On tap of that will be a string of revealing debates demonstrating that the GOP is so far to the right that it has fallen off the edge of the known world. Ron Paul will explain how we really aren't constitutionally supposed to do anything for the people except deliver the mail and defend our shores, while Michelle Bachmann will prove that the President is the Antichrist and has no reflection standing in front of a mirror. Rick Perry will probably be in the race by then, replacing Newt and Callista who will have returned to Greece. He will announce that if he loses, Texas will secede from the union. Mitt will defer appearances until the Tea Party people get off his lawn and so on. All this will prove to be so stupefyingly boring that the nation will be chanting for scandal when Lee Atwater finally reveals that he isn't dead and has actually been doing undercover work investigating Barry's Baby.

Described above is the bright side. There could be a total collapse of the world economy long before Labor Day thanks to John Boehner and the ever vigilant rating agencies. Only a few months ago, the GOP looked like it could take over the entire government in 2012, so they shot themselves in the foot by dropping "jobs, jobs, jobs" and going after unions, Planned Parenthood and grey wolves instead. The Ryan Budget, which all but 4 House Republicans voted for, went over like poison ivy at a nudist picnic as did dismantling Medicare rather than tax cuts for the rich. Then "Obama got Osama" and suddenly Boehner and those people dressed up as Revolutionary War Militia began to look ridiculous, refusing even to consider taxes on the rich or removing billions of taxpayer subsidies for big oil companies awash in profits. The idea of recouping the profligacies of the past off the backs of the vanishing middle class just won't work. Scandal maybe their only hope, so look out for Barry's Baby and remember you heard it here first.

"Troussage de Domestique"

For Americans, entitlements are spelled out in the Bill of Rights part of the Constitution. To Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, have been added some others, namely the right to a decent retirement, as in Social Security and the right to medical attention after retirement, as in Medicare, both programs that Republicans have always wanted to eliminate as too costly from a viewpoint that puts business interests above all others. It's too soon to kn0w if the Affordable Health Care Act of 2010 will survive Republican hypocrisy and develop fully into another entitlement, thereby bringing the United States finally in line with all the other industrial countries of the Western world in bringing quality health services to their peoples. These rights are precious and always in danger, especially in times of recession.

No where is there any Droite de Seigneur, the outrageous 16th century feudal fancy that the local lord had a right to bed the daughters of his vassals at the time of their marriages. A custom dead everywhere except among the fading aristocrats and moguls of Europe lingers on and it is called "troussage de domestique" an employer's right to lift the skirt of a female servant. It's based on domestic servants being so desperate for work that they will tolerate any indignity to continue getting a regular paycheck.

There is no right to sex on demand, no matter how handsome, powerful or wealthy one may be, but you can't tell that to "Ahnold" who build his fortune and career on his spectacularly muscular bod. He had the brains, education and charisma to be many things, serving as the Republican governor of California was just one of them. Whatever else might have been possible is rather iffy because of his all to obvious sense of sexual entitlement and what it implies. Almost as egregious as his uncontrolled sexuality is his cowardice in concealing the affair with the family housekeeper for 10 years!

Men are designed to be more aware of their sexuality than women; God intended them to be more aggressive than women so that the human race would survive and multiply and he surely built all kinds of redundancy into his plan. One result is that some men believe they are entitled to to a certain frequency and quality of sex. They are not! God provided strict rules of engagement, so to speak, and they are well understood in Western society. If Arnold knows about his responsibilities as a man, he has decided to ignore them because he has been dazzled by his so called good fortune. His downfall is, and will be terrible, not only because of his antiquated and juvenile sexual proclivities, but also because he made a complete fool of his wife, a remarkable woman in her own right who needs neither his money or name.

Schwarzenegger is joined in his narcissism by millions of men who don't know the meaning of the word. To them, sexual abuse is culturally endemic, a symbol of their sacred masculinity and, in some cases, may provide the only pleasure available in very harsh and difficult lives.

I know many people who have been raised with a sense of general entitlement. Indeed, I am one of them, but things have changed immensely in just my lifetime. It is no longer enough to be comfortable in the halls of privilege. One has to prove himself everyday or he/she will be eaten alive by legions of competitors springing up seemingly from nowhere who have zero respect for legacies or unearned freebies. They are largely a thing of the past except for a dwindling base of the super rich. Moreover, the race today is much longer and more complicated than previously. Just consider among them the totally different aspirations of women, to say nothing of the changing role of men. In the current affairs of men and women, anyone thinking about entitlements is delusional. Poor Arnold, he is doomed now to being just a late night comedian's joke, if that. Worse, he is a disgrace to his sex.

Now comes before us, the newly married Representative Anthony Weiner, age 46, and his explicit internet sexting with half a dozen young women. Leestake is that the congressman's "crie de coeur" indicates he needs psychiatric help of the inpatient variety. He may be merely a victim of his physical endowment, though I haven't seen pictures because the NY Times doesn't print that, I think the word now is, junk, but if I'm right he may have done men everywhere a favor. So called locker room heroes are doomed to the same kind of fate that often befalls high school and college sports stars who marry the Homecoming Queen and then spend the rest of their lives with no place to go except down with their dreams of the pros. If a guy regards his penis as his primary asset, he is in as much trouble as the beautiful gal people snicker at for wasting her life fighting to stay looking like 25. Mr. Weiner may be a talented legislator, but to many people he's always going to seem like a creep with a serious mental health problem who disgraced himself and the US House of Representatives. Regrettably, Anthony and Arnold have plenty of company.

TIAGAIG

Many years ago, sitting in a luxurious private dining room at 21, and participating enthusiastically in a black tie dinner for my roommate who was the scion of a famous Wall St. family, I puffed on my cigar (I don't smoke.) warmed my cognac and thought, if I was thinking at all, TIAGAIG, this is as good as it gets. Today, I think TIAGAIG when my family gets together for hamburgers in the park. The intervening years have taught me a great deal about "as good as it gets." And so when I read that almost 50% of this year's brightest and best of Ivy League colleges are going straight to Wall St. to "securitize things that don't exist" I get a sickish feeling in the pit of my stomach. Maybe it's still that cigar. Forget the fact that my roommate is long divorced, his famous firm absorbed by another giant Wall St company which has, in turn, been swallowed up in a fire sale and that the Street now resembles a casino for the rich rather than an opportunity to own your share of America, There are now so many threats to feeling good that an hour in the park breaking bread with people whom you love and who love you, seems almost like the religious experience it once was. TIAGAIG squared is when the park visit comes at a time when no one in the family is desperately sick, struggling or in harm's way. They are rare and marvelous events.





As one moves through the checkout line, it becomes increasingly clear that recognition, applause and grandiosity are less satisfying than really simple stuff. Old goats like me are less responsive to maitre'ds who know my name than to someone who passes on the street with a smile that says "I bet you were fun 100 years ago." We're not looking for gavels, framed resolutions and the like, but rather the feeling that maybe we were useful somehow and didn't hurt anyone much in the process. There's a certain disdain now for all the boardroom games and pretenses and even a little contempt for the performers. The final arbiter awaits after all.





At this point, most of us have discovered how to handle life's slings and arrows. Nothing can be done about the pains of ill health, but an immunity has accumulated for most of the other stuff, especially if you're blessed with a strong hook up to your higher power. Did the Great Recession mess up you're plans? Too bad. Moses didn't make it into the promised land, six presidents struggled in vain a national health plan and Gauguin never sold a painting. Such disappointments don't matter as much as hamburgers in the park.

What Republicans Really Want

Leave it to Jay Leno to make a double edged joke out of the sasuage making in Washington. In talking about a possible government shut down, he said we'd be sad with a govenment stopped from NOT protecting our borders, NOT keeping air controllers awake at airports, NOT inspecting food products coming into the US, etc. It made me laugh, but it also made a good point: we want our government to do all kinds of things very well, but we don't want to pay for them.

Does anyone really not want a center for disease control, intense investigations of aircraft safety and accidents, some support of the arts, fine national parks, NASA, Pell grants and, of course, Planned Parenthood, etc? The list goes on and on. Such services benefit everyone and they are part of a mature government in the modern world, let alone what makes America great. Wring out waste but don't pretend there is any advantage to lopping off whole governmental departments and expect people to take you seriously.

Could it be that we are deep in a time in our national history when factual debate isn't really important, confronted by 24 hour news cycles and the need to capture the headlines with some statement even more inaccurate and outrageous than the last one. Just look at Michelle Bachman and Donald Trump. The stuff they're spouting is pure blow hard nonsense, but it sure gets attention and improves TV ratings, in "The Donald's" pathetic case.

Could it also be that we're in a great period of reaction to the days of yore when the robber barons prowled the nation, when workers felt lucky to have any job and had no union protection, as Pinkertons broke up strikes and backroom deals were the norm in state capitals and Washington, DC. It would certainly seem that way, looking at Wall Street today with Hedge Fund moguls literally making billions annually! Now throw in the race card and one can see clearly what the Republicans are trying to do and why. There are, beyond doubt people making huge fortunes who are well intentioned and generous, but for each one there are 100 who think they are entitled to whatever they can make and the hell with the "losers" who aren 't as smart and the vast poor who deserve nothing more than a big tip for an excellent shoeshine. The Republican budget is evidence of this, as obvious as pigeon droppings on a top hat. The only people who would trade Medicare for a voucher system are those unaware of the costs todayof the simplest surgical procedures or briefest hospital confinement, or the seriously well healed with multiple millions. We already have the largest divide beteen the rich and the poor since the Gilded Age and the Republicans want to enlarge it. That's always the problem with greed.

The Country Club View of Planned Parenthood

When I speak of country clubs, I speak with authority. After all, I'm a WASP and I've spent a good chunk of my life dallying at these institutions of pure right wing conservative Republicanism. (Is there any other kind of Republicanism now that the extremists have run the moderates out of sight?) I haven't been undercover trying to change them quietly either because that is impossible. I've simply enjoyed the tennis, golf, food without a line, etc. for which I appologize. I have kept my ears open, however, and there is considerable confusion at "The Club" over Planned Parenthood. Most members think Planned Parenthood is organized late term, baby killing abortion. Just ask Senator John Kyle. They don't know about PP's pregnancy prevention program or women's health services and, surprisingly, they don't care. You see, Republicans today, by and large, don't give a hoot about the poor and they aren't very sensitive when it comes to women either. The poor don't pay their own way and they shouldn't have sex in the first place. That's the way they breed, after all, and the offspring of poor people become thugs or welfare queens who have babies to make money which makes it very expensive. We can't afford welfare programs that are almost as costly as defense expenditures ( in their view) especially during a budget crisis that's got Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan Chase taking down less than $21 million last year. Normally, Republicans would be for anyone's pregnancy prevention programs, but conditions now are really serious and they want, if you'll excuse the pun, to throw the baby out with the bath water, the office furniture, NPR, Poison Control and everything else. That's the only way to deal with a nagging problem like this that's upsetting and confusing people at The Club.

Shocked, Shocked

It was reported that Alan Greenspan, the former Fed Chairman, was amazed that major American banks failed to police their business practices and so helped to speed the sub prime mortgage recession, a weak misnomer I doubt will last the test of time. No doubt the honorable Mr. Greenspan was also surprised that it took decades, even generations, before leading US corporations began to clean up their acts regarding pollution of the environment. They did so only because public opinion would no longer permit them to deny the facts on the damage they had done, hidden, belittled and finally admitted. Even so they fought like tigers with stockholder money to reduce their alleged deadly responsibility. Does it come as much of a surprise to learn that Americans are not alone in this overall failure of governance and regulation? 'Fraid not. We're learning in Japan that when all the radioactive dust settles it will be discovered that costly reactor repairs were sacrificed to profit or expediency. The abundant dollars for the promotion of new construction, presented by the ubiquitous lobbyists, of course, trumped the cautionary calls for prudence and extra safety measures. The latter cut into profits, don't they? No one can even guess today at the cost of Japan's nuclear reactor problems. Indeed, it may take years to find out. I wonder if we Americans will ever discover how much the Republican Party's perpetual and ongoing efforts to relieve Big Business of any responsibility except to maximize shareholder profits has cost the nation. Tea Partyers don't care and the Republican leadership is doing everything possible to undue the small start made by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, to say nothing of Elizabeth Warren's efforts to give consumers some relief from the predatory practices of the credit card companies. They have placed the responsibility for the whole mess on Big Government that has undermined business confidence. This line of attack is familiar to people who have watched Republican strategists go after John Kerry's medals and Max Cleland's patriotism. It's called turn the truth upside down by telling the biggest lies you can think up. In the question today, if there was insufficient regulation to prevent a financial meltdown in the US and a real nuclear one in Japan, spread the word that regulation is the real enemy and get some Texas zillionaire to produce some witnesses (what's Joe The Plumber doing theses days?) to support the claim. Democracy is a wild ride, that's for sure. I'll be the one shocked, however, if the truth doesn't win out in the end.

Bring in the Witches? Opportunists? Bullies? Clowns?

A president of one of America's finest universities, where I am one of the most humble graduates, once said that a major purpose of a liberal arts education was to provide a "catholic" understanding of men. I knew he wasn't expecting me to genuflect, but catholic is a tricky word. As an adjective, it means universal. What I didn't learn about men at that wonderful monastery where I enjoyed (too much) four years, I picked up in 2 years in the US Army and 10 years on Wall Street. Nothing in my experience, now running to 77 years, explains, however, what I am seeing in American public life today. I am able to make a nice literate reference that Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Eric Cantor, of Virginia have, like Cassius, lean and hungry looks, but I can't really understand their patently rapacious and opportunistic attitudes. Have their genes been altered or their brains been tinkered with, a la the Manchurian Candidate?



Here, in the deep South, bumper stickers like "Stop Socialism" are seen frequently. President Obama himself admitted to some overreach when he rushed to prevent an economic meltdown in the early months of his presidency, but he has not taken over the nation's banks any more than he has taken over the auto industry or the American health care industry. Those are deliberate and despicable Republican canards, like the birther issue, aimed at deceiving the public and undermining his presidency with an eye to the 2012 national elections.



If anyone wishes to see crystal clear overreaching, look at what is happening in Wisconsin, Ohio and Illinois and the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. Claiming just to be doing the will of the people, as expressed in the midterm elections last November, Republicans have abandoned "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" to balance the budget on the backs of the middle class by attempting to eliminate collective bargaining and emasculate unions. In the process, they'd like to strike out at some old ideological enemies like the Pro Choice movement and the teachers union, despite the fact that one poll after another has revealed strong public support of collective bargaining. The voters are still focused on jobs, but key Republicans are at it again trying to wreck what they missed the last time they achieved power. It's amazing. Why? They know only miniscule savings can be achieved without cutting defense, social security, or medicaire and raising (heaven forbid) taxes on the rich. In reality, they really want simply to posture and play games, anything but govern or work copperatively in a time of budget crisis for which they are largely responsible.

My take on this is that just a few people, wrongly inspired, can make a big difference, the old Army of One theme. In this case the culprits are Mr. Walker, the governor of Wisconsin and Eric Cantor, the number 2 man in the House, who are both so eager to assume even higher office that they might as well be carrying signs. It isn't Karl Rove or the Koch brothers implementing a grand strategy, it's just pure greed and opportunism. The hell with jobs, who cares about stalling the recovery, let's just act in our own personal best interests. If gilding your creds as a conservative Republican means a putsch against unions, so be it. If dumping still another Speaker of the House means Eric can shine brighter still, who cares about the institution or the nation? It's selfishness and stupidity beyond belief and it gives Democrats an unexpected way to rebound from their humiliation last November. Don't worry, Republican friends, if President Obama is re-elected and the U. S. Senate stays in the Democratic column in 2012, you can count on their lack of discipline and cohesion to bring about a backlash to a backlash until we start electing people who aren't witches, mama grizzlies, and unfit opportunists. Until then the clowns look good to me.