Things That Aren't Going To Happen

Here's one thing I know for sure: I'm never going to be involved in the election process for a new pope. One reason is that popes are elected by the College of Cardinals, a group of which I will never be a member for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I'm not Catholic.

I only mention this because the sad human being and delusional presidential candidate Rick Santorum was in the news again today, blathering on about how the Iowa Supreme Court tried to "redefine nature" by allowing same-sex marriage in this state in 2009. (As in my previous Santorum post, I wish someone would start pinning him down on phrases like this. "Hey, Rick, can you point to the passage in the court's decision that redefines nature, or, if you can't do that, could you explain what the hell you mean by redefining nature? Because not only didn't it happen, it doesn't make sense.")

In the midst of his blathering, Santorum was asked if he would appoint a Supreme Court justice who would reinstate anti-sodomy laws. According to the story in Mother Jones magazine, he dodged the question. But beyond the idiocy of someone who thinks it's perfectly sensible and Constitutional for government to regulate what two consenting adults do in private, I have to laugh at anyone who thinks Santorum will ever in his life have an opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice.

The closest this twit will ever come to selecting a Supreme Court justice will be if he coaches a team in the Fantasy Judicial League.

America, We Have A Problem

This is a piece I posted on Facebook a few days before Congress screwed the pooch on the debt-ceiling compromise. Looks like you're going to have to squint to read it, so here's a recap. That first little Venn diagram shows that the government--the people we elect to office--is a subset of all Americans. If someone wants to argue that point, bring it on.

The second Venn diagram illustrates what I consider a problem (and by the way, of all the things I've forgotten from junior high math, why isn't the Venn diagram one of them?). The problem is that most elected officials think that being elected lifts them out of the set they came from. As the diagram shows, they think Washington orbits the rest of America. This isn't a good thing. If they feel they don't have to work for the greater good of the entire country (because, say, they're in the pockets of corporate interests), then who will? Who's going to protect us from the people we elected? Who's going to bring these people down to Earth where they came from?

Here's another part of the problem. Too many Americans also think Washington orbits the rest of us. Too many people have forgotten that the government--and the power it holds--comes from us. Thus, we hear constant griping: "The government can't do anything right," "I love my country but don't trust my government," "If you think [whatever] is screwed up now, wait till government gets a hold of it." And those who gripe are naturally going to be highly susceptible to the Tea Party message that "the government" is the problem.

If you can't point to any examples of your elected officials working on your behalf (or if elected officials actually do do something on your behalf and the opposition manages to make you think exactly the opposite--hello, admittedly flawed healthcare bill), then hell, no wonder you think of the government as your enemy.

This has to change.

We have to stop thinking that our elected officials are somehow above the rest of us. Sadly, this probably means we'll have to stop thinking that way before the elected officials do. We have to start thinking of the government as "us" instead of "them." That's the kind of thinking that led to the safety nets of Social Security and Medicare. That's the kind of thinking that led to consumer protection and worker safety laws. That's the kind of thinking that's going to get us out of this "Every man for himself" mindset.

Social Security isn't the government helping us. It's us helping us.

Universal healthcare isn't a socialist* plot. It's us helping us.

Our elected officials aren't "them." They're us. Or they're supposed to be, anyway.

There are people who say we should leave everything up to the vagaries of the free market. I say those people are worshiping at the wrong altar.

If we don't start electing people who will stand up for us, our elected officials might as well start wearing the logos of the corporations who are sponsoring them.

*The use of scare-words by corporate tools will be covered in a future entry.

E. Coli Claims Life of Local Sailor

Remember the big e.coli outbreak of 2006? Yeah, I wouldn't have either except that I was reminiscing in my long-forgotten Rat Race Choir blog and found this entry from September of that year. Enjoy.

WHARFTOWN, Mass. - Contaminated spinach is being blamed for the death yesterday of Popeye T. Sailorman, a colorful local character known for his massive forearms, his infectious laugh, and his decades-long rivalry with a local bully known only as Brutus.

Witnesses say Popeye had just squeezed open a can of spinach, forcing the contents to arc into the air and land in his open mouth--a feat of dexterity he had performed on numerous occasions without incident. Only after the elderly sailor dropped to the ground and began vomiting did the onlookers notice that the can was labeled Earthbound Farms, a brand of spinach recalled recently because of its link to an outbreak of e.coli.

"He was strong to the finish," said an acquaintance, Wimpy J. Wellington. "Well, except for when he was convulsing and screaming for a merciful end to the excruciatingly painful cramps, bloody diarrhea, and complete kidney failure."

Popeye's longtime girlfriend, Olive Oyl, released this statement: "Popeye was always ready to fight for my honor. It's one of life's bitter ironies that he was felled by the vegetable he loved most, the vegetable that gave him his incredible strength.

"I'll miss him," concluded Ms Oyl. "He was what he was."

Rick Santorum's Fantasy World

Noted GOP presidential candidate and sad human being Rick Santorum is in the news again today. That's the trouble with living in Iowa during the pre-caucus season--I didn't even get a chance to blog about the last thing he was in the news for before he shot off his mouth again. (Two days ago Santorum signed the National Organization for Marriage's pledge that as president he would try to amend the Constitution to define marriage as "one man, one woman," which isn't really news because I suspect Santorum signs one or two pledges of this sort before breakfast every day, but which I would have used as a dig at Mitt Romney, who also signed the pledge in an effort to prove that there are no depths to which he will not sink to grab the votes of the most hatefully diseased minds in the state.)

So yesterday Santorum told the Des Moines Register editorial board that the courts have "created a right to sexual liberty that diminishes the right to religious liberty." I hope the editorial board laughed in his face, but I don't know anyone on the board so I don't know if that's their style or not. The story doesn't say one way or the other, so let's assume they heard him out.

His explanation: "Same-sex marriages jeopardizes religious liberty because the government may threaten license-holders such as marriage counselors who refuse to treat gay couples." He goes on to say that the courts have thus created a "super-right."

Much the way Santorum has created an argument that is "super-specious."

Sexual liberty, beyond the fact that it has nothing to do with same-sex marriage, is not now nor has it ever been a right granted by the courts. It's yours when you're born. It's a human right. You are free to have sex with anyone who is legally and mentally capable of granting consent. Courts and governments through history have tried to repress this right, but it makes no different if they're repressing it or recognizing it: The right exists.

Santorum doesn't want to acknowledge this because he lives in a fantasy world where his religious beliefs trump everything else. He also told the Register editors that if the pursuit of happiness means the pursuit of pleasure, then "we won't be a country very long."

This is where I wish someone would have asked "Rick--what the hell do you mean by that? I mean, seriously, that doesn't make sense. What will happen to the country? Tell us how it will cease to be a country. Please explain what you're talking about instead of making vague threats."

Personally, I think the country would be in more danger--certainly the Constitution would be--if people like Rick Santorum were given the power to define "the pursuit of happiness."

Newts in the News

Well, we're five months away from the Iowa Caucuses and every day a different combination of Republican presidental candidates descends on the state and traipses around saying silly things. At this point in the process, candidates are not looking for the votes of moderate Republicans and certainly not interested in independent voters. They're mainly trying to out-bigot and out-reactionary each other so they can bring out the most rabid anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-Obama voters next January. There'll be time enough to court sensible folks if they win the nomination.

So who's making news in Iowa today? Let's start with Newt Gingrich, who addressed a group of civic leaders at the Cedar Rapids Country Club (truly a man of the people, that Newt) and made up a new phrase, "bureaucratic socialism," to describe Obama's policies. He also called the president a left-wing radical, which if true would certainly be news to all of us who have watched Obama capitulate to the right-wingers for the last couple of years. The actual quote was "Obama is a left-wing radical who wants to raise taxes." I don't know if the Newt has noticed, but (a) most economists agree that eliminating the Bush tax cuts is essential to a balanced budget, (b) most Americans think this is the fair thing to do, and (c) if Obama wants to raise taxes, he has a funny way of showing it--namely, not raising taxes.

According to the story in the Register, the Newt got a hearty round of applause for suggesting that the Wall Street reforms enacted in 2010--the reforms meant to prevent the unethical practices that led to the economic quagmire we're still in--should be repealed. Who stands to benefit from the absence of such regulations? The people who already have all the money.

But that doesn't bother the Newt. He says Wall Street reform "restricts business" and is an example of unnecessary government regulation. I have no doubt that's where the applause broke out. To Newt and his followers at the Cedar Rapids Country Club, there's no such thing as a necessary government regulation. If it stands in the way of the rich getting richer, it's unnecessary.

And later, when the Newt said "Obama is creating bureaucratic socialism," the newspaper account doesn't give the context, other than the fact that it must have followed the equally fanciful "left-wing radical" remark. But I'm not sure the Newt needed context in that crowd. I'm not sure he needed complete sentences. He could just as easily have read from a list of dog-whistle words: socialist, left-wing, unnecessary regulations, raise taxes, ya-da-ta, ya-da-ta.

And the Cedar Rapids Country Club would have thought he was actually saying something.

Return of the Runes

Maybe it's because the 2012 campaigns are heating up. Maybe it's because I have more to say than I can fit in a Facebook status.

Or maybe it's because I keep running into stuff like this:

The drought in Texas has killed all the fish in the OC Fisher reservoir in the western part of the state, and has caused an overabundance of a bacteria called Chromatiaceae, which thrives in oxygen-deprived water. The presence of all this bacteria has also given what's left of the water a blood-red hue.

Now, according to the story on msnbc.com, the picture of this blood-red reservoir caught the attention of an Indiana theologian named Paul Begley, who responded with a YouTube video in which he noted that this could in fact be a sign of the apocalypse--which a lot of people seem to be in quite a hurry for, though that's another entry for another time.

Begley cited a verse in Revelation that goes something like "The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead person, and every living thing in the sea died."

I stopped caring about apocalyptic predictions when I learned in one of my college religion classes that people have been making them for about 2000 years. But by golly, when some attention-craving yahoo with a camcorder can read Revelation and interpret "the sea" as "a 5000-acre lake in west Texas," I know one thing: It's time to crank up the Runes again.

Remembering September 11

I’d been queasy all afternoon, but on the evening of September 10, 2001 I managed to drag myself out to the ballpark and go 4-for-4 in the last game of the CMF&Z Voodoo Bats’ coed slow-pitch softball season. I was still nauseous the next morning, so I called in sick and planned to rest at home all day.

And I would have, except that Love and Theft, Bob Dylan’s first album of new songs in four years, was being released that day. I drove to Target in West Des Moines to be the first on my block to own it—and as I walked through the electronics section, past the wall of TVs, I saw smoke coming out of the World Trade Center.

A plane had crashed into the building, they said.

That seemed impossible and ridiculous. Was it some idiot who lost control of his small twin-engine? They surely didn’t run flight patterns over the WTC, did they? And even if they did, the odds against a plane going down into such a major landmark had to be astronomical.

I was back home before I heard the real story. Hijackers. Terrorists. And then the truly unbelievable announcement that the first tower had collapsed.

I remember thinking they were mistaken. They said collapsed but they couldn’t have meant collapsed.

But there was the footage. It reminded me of when we used to crush pop cans by standing on them and poking the opposite sides at the same time.

I thought of the people inside, going about their business, feeling safe, never dreaming of any horror such as this. Whoever would have listed “Fear of an airplane being deliberately flown into my building” among his list of fears?

I thought of the people working on the floor the first plane hit, looking out the window at the nose of a jet getting larger and larger. I thought of the people on the jet, in utter shock that this was how it was going to end. I thought of the fanatic at the controls—the superstitious hateful fanatic—and wished there were a hell where he could be told: You were wrong.

The horror has diminished for me: I knew no one in New York at the time, suffered no anguish waiting on a call from a loved one. The horror has diminished but the sense of outrage lives on, and so with nothing political to say in this post I’ll just add my voice to those remembering the victims of September 11.

Barack Obama and Lipstickgate

The willfully ignorant are out in force these days, all upset about Barack Obama and Lipstickgate. They’re wringing their hands, they’re getting their undies in a knot, and if it’ll help draw attention to themselves they’re probably wringing their undies too.

I’m referring of course to the pretend outrage over Obama’s comment about John McCain’s claim to be the candidate of change. Speaking at a rally in Lebanon, Virginia, Obama said:

“You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still gonna stink. We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”

Unfortunately for Obama and fortunately for the willful ignoramuses, Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin had made a joke at the Republican National Convention, noting that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick. Lipstick was thus fresh in the little minds of the sort of kneejerk Republicans who want desperately to believe their party has a corner on gentility, fairness, purity, and goodness. In these tiny minds, Barack Obama was referring to Sarah Palin as a pig.

And the media—too often as willfully ignorant as the rest of these clowns—gave them the voice they needed, as if there were honestly some debate about Obama’s meaning.

Never mind that the phrase “lipstick on a pig” has been in the lexicon for years (and enjoys a resurgence every four years, coincidentally enough). Never mind that McCain used the phrase years ago to refer to Hillary Clinton’s healthcare proposals. Never mind that it’s unfathomable that any presidential candidate in the 21st century would refer to his opponent as a pig—let alone one as gentlemanly as Obama, who had earlier noted that Palin’s family would be off-limits as campaign fodder.

No, these people had to pretend that they believed the unbelievable. Their outrage was manufactured and deceitful, and they know it. But here’s the sad part: They also know they only have to fool enough of the truly ignorant to keep this bullshit alive. So right now there’s a registered voter in Palookaville saying “I can’t vote for a man that calls a woman a pig,” and he’s saying it to two friends, and they’re saying it to two friends, and no matter what goes on between now and election day they’re going to remember something that never happened.

And the willfully ignorant will pat themselves on the back.

By the Way, Nostradamus Didn't Know Beans Either

Back in high school I read Hal Lindsey’s book The Late Great Planet Earth and got all freaked out about it because this Lindsey character’s interpretation of the Book of Revelation indicated pretty clearly that we were living in the end times. That would be the 1970s, if you’re keeping score.

Lindsey had it all figured out. I don’t remember the details, but the Soviet Union figured heavily into it, and the European Economic Community, and the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem, and of course everybody’s favorite boogeyman, the antichrist. There was rapture this and tribulation that, and I was terrified. I mean, it had to be true, right? They wouldn’t have published it if it weren’t true, right?

I had all the critical-thinking skills of a gnat back then. Hell, I thought The Amityville Horror was a true story because it said “A True Story” right on the cover. Luckily I took a religion class in college and learned that people had been interpreting the Revelation pretty regularly for centuries, and that oddly enough they all found parallels between those biblical prophecies and whatever was going on in the world that day.

But this brings me back to an earlier post, about the co-worker who claims to believe Barack Obama is the antichrist. I still don’t know who this co-worker is, but I’d love to find out so I can ask if he or she is planning to vote for Obama. After all, a key element in any serious interpretation of Revelation is the antichrist’s rise to power. Do the people who make this outlandish Obama/antichrist claim really want to be the ones to thwart biblical prophecy? Aren’t they afraid of crossing up their deity?

Which is it? Do they take the prophecy literally or not? If they do, it sets up a catch-22 Joseph Heller would be proud of:

Co-Worker: I believe Obama is the antichrist.
Runes: Really. So you’re going to vote for him and help bring about the end times.
Co-Worker: No! I can’t vote for Obama—he’s the antichrist!
Runes: So you don’t believe the prophecy.
Co-Worker: Wrong. I do believe the prophecy, but that doesn’t mean I want it to happen in my lifetime.
Runes: So you think somewhere down the road, the antichrist will come to power.
Co-Worker: Exactly.
Runes: Therefore, it’s not Obama—so you can vote for him.
Co-Worker: I can’t vote for Obama.
Runes: Why not?
Co-Worker: He’s a Democrat/liberal/socialist/Muslim/ terrorist/African-American. And inexperienced.