Is Assassination Patriotic?

Here's a question: Is assassination patriotic? If you listened to the right wingnuts, you would, like, totally think assassination was the patriotic thing to do. The questions posed, and answered as 'a joke', about assassinating Obama to the right wingers who are running for office, or who just want to flaunt their ignorance, or who are out and out homicidal racists, is an amazing show of (I'm at a loss for words, here, but am thinking hard) well, fucked up logic, spin...ok, sick messed up thinking. From birthers (where are they? did they crawl back into their wombs?) to jolly candidates who joke about assassinating Obama this seems to be the acceptable joke du jour for the folks right of the Sanity Line. Can you imagine the outrage if this had been seriously put forth as a righteous and eminently legal way to dispose of one's spuriously elected President, who's name rhymes with 'tush', and to dispose of him thusly forthwith?

There is a serious virus going around, and it's not the H1N1 that's about to invade our complacency about all things 'not on our immediate radar'...it's a virus that invades peoples' id - mostly those who lean right. There is simply no other way to explain the acceptance of the idea of assassination, that is in any way acceptable to those who seemingly 'look normal' but who are in the deep throes of a serious viral brain-altering illness. You haven't seen them?! Ok, so you're admitting you haven't been to a town hall! Some of them do not care to disguise themselves, but are right out there as cloned LaRouchie's. Note: if you look into their eyes, you must seriously contemplate whether these are pod people right out of Invasion of The Body Snatchers. Hitler is their touchstone and they respond like bobble-heads if you ask them a question.

But, seriously, folks...why is it okay to wear an AK47 or assault rifle strapped to your leg whether the President is nearby or not? From the outside, this country has got to appear like the most seriously narcissistic messed up Republic on the entire planet. Here is where I gravely remind people that I was born in Canada and have nothing to do with this national psychosis.

I can't tell you how important the ACLU is to the machinations of this country (please donate...they are the life blood of the First Amendment); but, honestly, sometimes, I would just like to put the assholes out of OUR misery. You know what I'm talkin' about...

Did Obama Read My Blog?!!

OMG, did President Obama read my blog? Back in March, I besought Obama to govern like a one term president and, lo and behold, here he is, six months later, even saying so himself. Of course, pundits are predicting he'll only be around for one term because they think he's colossally screwing up; but, from my perspective, I want him to make the tough - read 'progressive' - choices so that in the event he doesn't make it to a second term, he'll have essentially governed as though he were in office for eight years. Time's awastin'. GOBAMA.

Sarah, Sarah, Quite Contrary

Who can resist weighing in on the Cirque de Sarah Palin. Pundits have written biting (Maureen Dowd) and bitingly funny articles (Gail Collins) about it, but the really pathetic part of this is the support this whack job has gotten from Republican party elders like John McCain and Mary Matalin. John McCain believes, or so he said, that “ ‘she will continue to play an important leadership role in the Republican Party and our nation.’ He gave no other details.” Well, I’ll give you a detail that says Sarah Palin will never play any kind of leadership role in this “our/MY nation”. McCain can be somewhat forgiven, aside from the fact that's he rather musty, because I'm sure he's trying to cover his laughable tracks having chosen her for his running mate.

And Mary Matalin! Come ON. Listen to THIS: “Reached by CNN at her farm in the Shenandoah valley, Mary Matalin, a top Republican consultant, called Ms. Palin’s move “brilliant” although she said she was initially taken aback by the news. But she seconded the notion that the governor’s decision was smart in the sense that it will free her up, as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has been, to travel the country to make inroads with potential voters.” That is totally grounds for James Carville to dump her. Honestly, I don’t know how they live together; but that remark MUST totally have been reactive as I'm sure Mary didn't have a chance to hear Palin go off the rails as she gave her resignation speech because she was probably too busy plowing the sod on the farm. Mary! What's up with you? Do you believe Sarah Palin is a role model for your daughters? Sarah needs to be taken off stage left in that Versace straight jacket leftover from the campaign.

The good news is that half the Republican party has their knickers in a twist over Palin fantasizing about her role as a party leader, traveling about the country ostensibly representing all things conservative while channeling unintelligible speeches from some purported Alaskan Angel hovering over her shoulder. And, the bad news is that the other half are delirious with excitement that Sarah, their Alaskan angel, will be their saviour. All these repressed little Republican boys salivating in anticipation til hot Sarah comes to their home town. I know it's been said before, but it is so painfully obvious that if Sarah looked like the Duchess of Windsor, she'd be on a fishing boat out on the Bering Strait. I thought she might be resigning because her other daughter was pregnant or maybe even Bristol got pregnant again while practicing abstinence. But...whatever.

I can’t wait to see Saturday Night Live reprise this speech.

Randy Republicans

Sigh. The hypocrisy. That really is the question, of course, about these Randy Republicans who swing so facilely from keepers of the family values flame to ever so tritely apologizing before the media, and the world, about their salacious little indiscretions. It's really breathtaking how these dapper self-righteous right wing Lotharios keep parading up to the mics to commit symbolic seppuku as though it were some part of a Republican patriotic hazing, and then the word "apology" is spoken like some special absolution from Jesus. Their sense of invulnerability and entitlement has nothing over the Power of the Dick to render them amnesiacs about their families, their values, their promises. The fact that they are on record vilifying and condemning every one else who screws around, makes their fall from grace all the more delectable. Who cares who's screwing who? Everybody's doing it but nobody likes a hypocrite. I bet Bill Clinton would like to throttle these guys.

So far, interestingly, women have been missing from this parade of philanderers. Hopefully, they're too smart to be caught playing at work. But then again, somehow the aura of power as aphrodisiac doesn't play the same for women as it does for men. There is definitely a disconnect when it comes to female legislators as sex objects. Is it that men are afraid of powerful women? Are they a turn-off? But, oh, wouldn't it be lovely to be able to dab a little Power on one's pulse points to equalize the playing field? Having experienced the political life, I can tell you, you don't have to be a pretty boy to attract aggressive female attention. Just the smell of power, at every office holder level, as long as you're elected to something, women will be hovering around you like you're something special. Hey, forget online dating. Run for office and babes will come out of the woodwork for you.

So, who's going to emerge as the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 what with almost every potential candidate going to marriage and family values rehab? The last unscathed politician standing, so far, looks like it might be squeaky clean Mitt Romney. What a way to get to the head of the pack...by default. And Mitt could turn being a Mormon into an attractive alternative to people who are fed up with the sanctimonious Christian right, even though they were scared to death of him last year. That really was so last year.

Oh, did you see that Fox news said that Sanford was a Democrat. God, these people are wily. They later 'corrected' it but when their own farts stink, they look around as though it was the other guy.

Today at Buchenwald

Today at Buchenwald concentration camp, President Obama made a heartfelt speech about the ability of humankind to perpetrate evil and asked "for a just, peaceful and tolerant world; a world that has no place for anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia, and right-wing extremism." You can read the whole text here.

But, when Elie Wiesel spoke, it was almost too much to bear. You feel the weight of his heavy heart, the weight of all of those he left behind, the weight of his bearing witness to the most heinous Holocaust, the sorrow in his all seeing, all knowing eyes. The passion and urgency in his plea for understanding and tolerance. His humanity. Take heed.

So, Elie Wiesel's call for all of us to come together, "where people will stop hating one another; where people will hate the otherness of the other rather than respect it.", touched on something very personal to me...opposing views on Israel within my own family that instigates the very intolerance he talks about. Without going into detail, my brother and I have not agreed on the Israeli/Palestinian issue for years; he on the 'extreme conservative' side, me on the 'liberal' (if you want to give them labels).

My brother's conservatism has so alienated him from me because he finds it, literally, intolerable that anyone could possibly not see things exactly as he does. Once, we did not speak for two years because he was disgusted by something I said. Since that time, we have managed to tentatively reconnect, mostly skirting talk about politics. But recently, it was too tempting for him not to comment on the subject, his voice was dripping with disdain. I didn't address his comment; rather I asked him - more like pleaded - to simply respect the idea that we could have differing opinions and still be 'friends'. I haven't heard from him since.

When will my own brother "stop hating" my "otherness", as he sees it, rather than simply respecting the idea that I can think a different way, and still be called human? I am sure that mine is not the only family to be going through this - a microcosm of the world's intolerance. If family is where intolerance starts, then how can we hope for anything bigger?

The full text of Elie Wiesel's speech follows.

MR. WIESEL: Mr. President, Chancellor Merkel, Bertrand, ladies and gentlemen. As I came here today it was actually a way of coming and visit my father's grave -- but he had no grave. His grave is somewhere in the sky. This has become in those years the largest cemetery of the Jewish people.

The day he died was one of the darkest in my life. He became sick, weak, and I was there. I was there when he suffered. I was there when he asked for help, for water. I was there to receive his last words. But I was not there when he called for me, although we were in the same block; he on the upper bed and I on the lower bed. He called my name, and I was too afraid to move. All of us were. And then he died. I was there, but I was not there.

And I thought one day I will come back and speak to him, and tell him of the world that has become mine. I speak to him of times in which memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will -- in America, where I live, or in Europe or in Germany, where you, Chancellor Merkel, are a leader with great courage and moral aspirations.

What can I tell him that the world has learned? I am not so sure. Mr. President, we have such high hopes for you because you, with your moral vision of history, will be able and compelled to change this world into a better place, where people will stop waging war -- every war is absurd and meaningless; where people will stop hating one another; where people will hate the otherness of the other rather than respect it.

But the world hasn't learned. When I was liberated in 1945, April 11, by the American army, somehow many of us were convinced that at least one lesson will have been learned -- that never again will there be war; that hatred is not an option, that racism is stupid; and the will to conquer other people's minds or territories or aspirations, that will is meaningless.

I was so hopeful. Paradoxically, I was so hopeful then. Many of us were, although we had the right to give up on humanity, to give up on culture, to give up on education, to give up on the possibility of living one's life with dignity in a world that has no place for dignity.

We rejected that possibility and we said, no, we must continue believing in a future, because the world has learned. But again, the world hasn't. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.

Will the world ever learn? I think that is why Buchenwald is so important -- as important, of course, but differently as Auschwitz. It's important because here the large -- the big camp was a kind of international community. People came there from all horizons -- political, economic, culture. The first globalization essay, experiment, were made in Buchenwald. And all that was meant to diminish the humanity of human beings.

You spoke of humanity, Mr. President. Though unto us, in those times, it was human to be inhuman. And now the world has learned, I hope. And of course this hope includes so many of what now would be your vision for the future, Mr. President. A sense of security for Israel, a sense of security for its neighbors, to bring peace in that place. The time must come. It's enough -- enough to go to cemeteries, enough to weep for oceans. It's enough. There must come a moment -- a moment of bringing people together.

And therefore we say anyone who comes here should go back with that resolution. Memory must bring people together rather than set them apart. Memories here not to sow anger in our hearts, but on the contrary, a sense of solidarity that all those who need us. What else can we do except invoke that memory so that people everywhere who say the 21st century is a century of new beginnings, filled with promise and infinite hope, and at times profound gratitude to all those who believe in our task, which is to improve the human condition.

A great man, Camus, wrote at the end of his marvelous novel, The Plague: "After all," he said, "after the tragedy, never the rest...there is more in the human being to celebrate than to denigrate." Even that can be found as truth -- painful as it is -- in Buchenwald.

Thank you, Mr. President, for allowing me to come back to my father's grave, which is still in my heart.

Danger in Plain Sight Redux

The shocking assassination of Dr. George Tiller, seemingly sanctioned by insane "pro-life" conservative right wingers, highlights the lurking homegrown terrorist threat that I referred to in my February 27th post. Albeit, it was about the right wing threat to Obama, but also pointed out the distinct possibility that they would resort to violence whenever it suited them. I wrote about this a couple of months before the April report by the Department of Homeland Security that assessed the threat of right wing extremists. Jason Linkins wrote about it today in the Huff Post.

The conservative movement must take responsibility for fomenting this doctrinaire response. Everyone of those seriously unstable bobble heads on Fox, and their resident 'experts', need to get mental health checkups. Social scientists have recently been studying the physiological differences between liberals and conservatives, and need to continue that study by going deeper into the extreme conservative mind. It wouldn't be a surprise to find that there is brain damage of some sort, some grim synapse misfiring, potentially compounded by emotional damage, that produces fanatics in suits who somehow have managed to worm their way on television and spout their hateful diatribes to their devoted extremist, automaton counterparts existing in their little cells just waiting for their moment to carry out some delusional directive.

Just witness the bigoted, misogynist spoutings directed at Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. I hope she has security protection now. There are sick, sick people out there who have platforms, seemingly legitimized by their television presence, that need to be reigned in. These people are serious threats, and hopefully will be seriously monitored from now on.

Full Circle

Last night completed a circle for me. President Obama (huzzah!) was in Beverly Hills for a fundraiser for the DNC, and a lot of grassroots volunteers got to go, both as a way to thank them and as a way to fill empty seats. Fundraising these days is a bitch, as you might imagine, but I won't go into that now. The great thing is that so many people got to see, up close and personal, the flesh and blood embodiment of all of those hours phoning strangers in outlying states, walking precincts in boiling temperatures in the Nevada desert, redeye from inputting data into the wee hours, tabling at every event possible, registering voters everywhere, and god knows what else...those volunteers, the backbone of the campaign, got to see Barack Obama, no longer Candidate Obama, but the very real PRESIDENT Obama. What a ride!

The circle for me began on February 20, 2007, my first volunteer gig at Rancho Park right after Obama declared his candidacy...I got to shake his hand then. Last night, I got to shake his hand again, now as President. My certainty, from Day One, that he would be President was validated, sealed and delivered. It was a transcendent moment, as it was with every successful campaign moment along the way. He gave the usual political pep talk about his administration and how much he had accomplished in just four months, ticking them off one by one, and then he said...which I absolutely loved..."You ain't seen nothing yet!" implying that he had just scratched the surface of his agenda. Thrilling, eh? But, I have to say, the poor man looked tired...when 'we' shook hands, I really wanted to say, "Get some rest, man. Take a nap." but I just said, "Thank you, Mr. President." He wouldn't have heard me anyway above the din.

Ok, back down to earth, he didn't actually look at me either time we squeezed fingers as he floated by to press the flesh of insistent hands out-stretched to touch him, and I wondered if his Secret Service detail carried hand sanitizer for him. You know, swine flu, I mean H1N1, and all. And, hey, remember when George Bush used sanitizer after shaking Obama's hand...and then offered him some? How easily I digress. But it was a wonderful moment. Dreamlike.

The entertainment was stellar. Jennifer Hudson sang with the Crenshaw High School Choir and they were fabulous together, singing, Bridge Over Troubled Water and I forget the other song. And Earth Wind and Fire, just the three front men, really got the audience rocking. The back up band was fab. Also performing, was a talented ten year old flamenco guitar player, Ricardo (damn, can't remember his last name and for some reason I didn't get a picture), whose poise and dexterity astonished the crowd. Later in the evening, when he and his dad were leaving the hotel, we learned more about this amazing kid...he is totally home schooled, never had a tv or a computer, is an aspiring botanist, learning to speak Spanish, built his own pond on the family property, plays a variety of music genres, has a claptrap memory and belies the rubric that home schooled kids aren't properly socialized. He keeps up with the news by reading newspapers from around the world that his father downloads and prints out for him every day. Listening to it all, I suddenly felt like a miserably inadequate mother. Why hadn't I thought about no tv? Moved to the country to get away from urban temptations? Planted a sustainable garden? Taught them Urdu and the sitar? The fact that (I'm going to brag here, which I may have done before...so if you can't stand it, just skip to the next paragraph) my sons graduated from Harvard, Columbia and one's going to graduate school at Princeton, doesn't help to alleviate the thought that I could've, should've done more. God, I hope they forgive me.

All in all, it was a terrific evening, and being that a large grassroots contingent was there, there was lots of talk about how to move forward with OFA (Organizing for America), and brainstorming in general. There is a lot of restless activist energy out there waiting to be tapped in a concrete, strategic way. We just have to figure out the best way to engage it. ONWARD!