Wedding Bell Blues

Today’s ruling by the California Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of gay marriage throws yet another twist into the 2008 Presidential campaign. A similar ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 2004 helped to mobilize social conservatives-especially in the swing state of Ohio—to come out in election-winning droves to vote for George W. Bush. Bush and the GOP enticed conservative voters by dangling the prospects pushing through a marriage protection constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in the second Bush term.

Alas, like many campaign promises, this one went unfulfilled. Disappointing, to be sure, for social conservatives but lack of action on Bush’s part meant the anti—gay marriage drum could be kept to beat on in the 2008 campaign (much as much touted anti-abortion, term limit and balanced budget constitutional amendments have been dangled by the GOP in front of conservative voters for decades.)

I wrote in April of 2004 that the Massachusetts gay marriage decision had probably handed the fall election to the GOP on a silver wedding platter. Turned out I was correct. This time, however, the impact of the California decision of the fall election will be more complicated. That’s because, of course, GOP standard bearer St. John The Moderate broke with his party in 2004 to vote against the Marriage Protection amendment. The California decision will agitate and invigorate social conservatives but, with McCain leading the GOP ticket, they have nowhere to electorally go. Sure, there may be a big proposition fight in California over a proposed anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendment that may or may not make the November ballot. But this brouhaha will hurt McCain more than it helps him as it will soak up state and national political money that otherwise might have found its way into his campaign pockets. It won’t provide him with anything approaching the pro-Bush push the gay marriage issue provided the GOP in 2004.

Hillary Clinton supporters are increasingly saying they’d vote for John McCain over Barack Obama (up to almost 30% of the pro-Hillary voters in West Virginia, for instance.) If that happens Obama’s electability drops significantly.

Meanwhile conservatives are expressing increasing doubts about John McCain–especially after his remarks on global warming. (just listen to the talking heads of conservative talk radio lambast the fellow. You’d think McCain was Jimmy Carter’s long lost brother.) If McCain doesn’t come out against the California gay marriage decision (which he can’t do without looking like he’s doing what he’d be doing if he did it—pandering too the grossest extreme) social conservatives are liable to stay home come in election-losing droves. Worse for McCain, social conservative might vault the GOP to vote in protest for third party candidates yet unnamed, like former Republican representative and bane to Bill Clinton’s existence Bob Barr who’s trying to secure the Libertarian party nomination. Losing conservative voters makes McCain’s electability drops significantly.

Which leads to the interesting conclusion that, come November, neither Obama, McCain or anyone else can win! Constitutional Monarchy, anyone?

A Tale of Two Cities

Let me tell you about two cities lying across the American border from each other. You guess what towns they are.

The first is a relatively affluent place. Not everyone is living great but most people at least have reasonably decent houses in safe, clean neighborhoods. People can park their cars with out undoing worry they’ll be stolen or broken in to and walk the streets and parks without fear of crime. The town is a thriving tourist destination, with travelers from around the world coming to see and experience the local sights. There are numerous upscale hotels and more moderate motels, plenty of good restaurants and even a few nice casinos for visitors and locals to enjoy. There is a good medical system in place and enough business and industry to provide a decent leaving for most. Unemployment and poverty are low. The local and national governments, while not universally beloved, have done a good job over the years of maintaining infrastructure and helping their people to achieve a globally high quality of life.

The other town is, to be polite, a total mess. Unemployment is in double digits with large number of residents living in poverty. Drugs, crime, gangs and violence are rampant. The government has cracked down on the large crime cartels but they still have great sway. One drives with the doors locked and avoids driving through large swaths of the town if at all possible. Walking, even in the public parks, can be dangerous at certain times of day. Housing is in disrepair, with the number of boarded up windows rivaling the number with pane glass still intact. While the town has the same opportunities to attract tourists as it’s neighbor across the border, fear of violence, urban squalor, the general disrepair of roads and neighborhoods has greatly diminished the number of visitors willing to cross the international line. Government is seen as corrupt and incompetent. A general feeling of hopelessness pervades the population.

Okay, what two towns am I describing? San Diego and Tijuana you might think? Not in this case. I’m talking about a tale of two Niagaras: Niagara Falls, Ontario and Niagara Falls, New York, both of which I just returned from.

I was called back to the Luna ancestral homeland (both my parents are from Niagara Falls, NY and I have second, third, fourth and thirty-eight cousins, most of which I haven’t seen in years if ever, on both sides of the border) unexpectedly last Tuesday. My mother’s 87 year old sister (my Aunt and godmother) had a massive stroke and was on life support. I flew out with my wife to be with her and her son in her final hours. For those of you who have been through it, you know the drill. Lots of grief followed by a whirlwind of funeral homes, relatives, dinners, shared memories, more grief, some laughter, the melancholy of life slipped away, a few new memories and then the journey home. Life goes on.

The most vivid memory I take back with me is just how bad–economically, socially, politically, culturally—things had gotten in Niagara Falls. Back in the sixties and seventies, when my family lived in Pittsburgh, we used to make the journey home a couple of times a year. Even then Niagara was a town in decline, part of the rusting bucket of east coast industrial America. Downtown was looking shabby, the chemical and manufacturing companies that had formed the backbone of the local economy were scaling back.

Now it looks like a throwback to the inner city poverty I remember seeing in the worst areas of Pittsburgh back in the ‘60s. Only it’s the 21st century and it’s pretty much the whole town of Niagara. Block after block of formerly tidy, working and middle class homes now reduced to ruin, residents mired in intractable poverty and unemployment. Good news: you can buy a three story brick house in Niagara within easy walking distance of one of the world’s great natural wonders for around seventeen thousand dollars. Bad news: the house will probably have a boarded-up house on one side from which drugs are being sold and an empty, trash filled lot on the other where the old house had been burned for the insurance money. Given that the median income in the area is less than twenty-thousand dollars, not many locals can even scrape up the seventeen k anymore, anyway.

Oh, and more bad news: if you did try to walk to one of the world’s greatest natural wonders you’d run a good chance of being mugged. That’s what happened to my elderly uncle a few years back when he went to take the same walk around the Falls he’d been doing for eighty years. He seldom leaves his apartment, now.

Industry has largely left the region leaving nothing behind except rotting factory shells, unemployment and toxic wastes from decades of chemical industry carelessness. (It is the land of Love Canal, after all.) The only thriving business is the Indian casino in the middle of downtown (or what’s left of it, Main Street being eight blocks of shuttered, abandoned buildings). Located in what had been the Convention Center, conventioneers long since having given up on the decaying former honeymoon capital of the nation and defecting to the Canadian side or Vegas, the casino’s clientele consists mostly of locals, disproportionately old, spending their welfare, social security and disability checks for the hope of winning a big enough jackpot to maybe get out of Dodge.

My wife and I stayed, meanwhile, on the Canadian side of the Falls, traveling back and forth across the Rainbow Bridge to spend time with my cousin and attend to the funeral preparation and consummation. The Canadian side is not a paradise—there are some ratty areas, particularly where my Great-Grandmother used to live off Ferry drive. But most of the town is in reasonably good shape and the tourist areas are thriving, the hotels beautiful and reasonably priced, even with the weakness of the US dollar, and the casinos are filled with well-healed international tourists. (And, of course, the place is also filled with Canadians, a people so polite that if you ran one of them over with your car they would apologize for having smeared

Barack Obama got into a flap while I was away for having said that small town America is “bitter,” clinging to religion and guns. Senator Obama is wrong. No-one I met in Niagara Falls seemed particularly bitter about the unfortunate circumstances they now found themselves. Depressed and melancholy, yes. Depressed over how plain depressing it was to live in such a depressing, declining place. Melancholy over how much things had changed for the worst over the course of lives that spanned decades. But bitter, no. The one word that best captures the zeitgeist of Niagara is “sad.” Everyone is sad over how bad things are. Everyone wonders how things came to this.

The last time we drove back into Niagara Falls, USA across the Rainbow bridge we chatted with the young INS agent manning a border control booth. After talking briefly about life in San Diego (you mention you are from San Diego to anybody who’s not from San Diego and they tend to have yearning tales of how they’ve been to San Diego once and want to go back that they want to share with you…) we remarked on just how sad things had become in the town. She said, “You know, it’s been down hill ever since they drove the mob out.”

Niagara Falls was actually better managed when the mob ran the place. How does it come to that?

Hillary Clinton said it takes a village to raise a child. I say it takes the determined effort of many people – corrupt and/or negligent government, short-sighted business, rapacious criminals—to ruin a once vibrant town filled with hard working, god-fearing, country-loving people.

How you bring back communities like Niagara Falls and all the Niagara Falls across this nation is the most important and least discussed elephant in the national living room of this Presidential campaign. Given the economic storm that is forming, perhaps the candidates for our nation’s highest office—and we, the nation as a whole—ought start fretting more actively over the plight of our Niagara’s, for what happened to them can easily happen to the rest of the villages, towns and cities of this proud Republic.

(And yes, I’ve used the title of this piece before but whaddahey.)

Spring Break Reading

With my post below on Iraq, I’m off for a while (spring break). See you all (metaphorically) back on these funny pages sometime next week. If you are bored beyond repair with all this free holiday time on your hands I give you an early gift for your Easter Basket (feel free to return it for something you really want. You’ll find below the preface and first chapter of a story I’ve been plugging at: a worrisome warning of a tale of what 21st century American politics could become subsequent to the next, even larger terrorist attack. I’ll post addiitional chapters down the pike subject to your interest or protests….

(And apologies for the line-breaks between paragraphs–can’t get WordPress to indent for me..)

And To The Republic
(A work in progress by Carl J. Luna.)
Preface

The bourbon was particularly good. He inhaled the smoky aroma, enjoying the glint of the amber liquid within the cut crystal, savoring the woodsy flavor, the taste of fiery peat, as it rolled across his tongue.

Thirty years old. Perfect. That the bourbon came out of the cellar of a man now dead, a man he despised and in whose death he took no small relish, only made the liquor all the more precious. That he had helped engineer the man’s death—he hadn’t pulled the trigger but he had most certainly done everything but cock the gun and place it in the poor bastard’s hand—only added to the moment. And that he had managed to buy the deceased’s entire wine and spirits cellar at fire sale prices—the desperate widow trying vainly to fend off the voracious creditors, the IRS first amongst these–completed the tour de force. All he had to do to achieve total victory over his vanquished foe would be to sleep with the wife.

But he wouldn’t do that. He was happily married. And he was a good Christian man. An agent of the Hand of God, indeed. God’s axe with which to hew and clear away the treacherous. And there were a lot more trees in that particular forest to fall.

He gazed out of his private office window down the steps of the Capitol and across the mall. There at the far end, past the World War II memorial, past the great testament to Washington, old Abe sat in his marble temple. He toasted the slain president.

Lincoln had been correct. Well, maybe not about violating the rights of states and, thereby, siring the power hungry whore that would become the Federal Government. But he was right that a house divided against itself could not stand. And the house of the United States had been divided for too long. Divided between the patriotic and the scurrilous, the god-fearing and the profane, the right and the wrong. It was time to put the house of the United States in order. The divine Hand had marked the United States as His chosen people, His most exceptional people. And he would be an agent of His Hand, clearing from the path those who would bring their own country low.

He would crush and destroy anyone who got in the way of his divine mission. For the greater good, of course. And for the power. The power to finally reshape America as it should be, to finally complete the revolution begun thirty years, four presidents and two terrorist attacks ago. And he would finish that revolution, vanquishing its foes for a hundred years – a hundred hundred years—thereby guaranteeing America’s exceptional role in the affairs of God and man in perpetuity. It was war. Jihad. And he would win it.
He took another long sip of the bourbon, allowing it to roll across his tongue, producing a most delightful burning sensation. He swallowed. That was enough. Just a finger of the delightful fluid. He put the glass back on the sideboard. Temperance in all things had always been his motto. All things but the accumulation of power, of course.

His private phone rang. He crossed over to his massive, hand carved desk and lifted the receiver.

“Yes?”

“This is the White House operator. Please stand bye for the President of the United States.”

POTUS on the line for him. He smiled.

“Mister Speaker,” the receiver reverberated with the familiar, deep southern drawl of the current President of the United States.”

“Mister President, a pleasure,” he drawled back.

“I want to thank you for all you did today, Mikey. I always know I can depend on your, boy.”

“Anything I can do, Mister President. I am always at your service.”

“I’m flying down to the house this weekend. Want you and Belle to drop by.”

“That’s most kind of you, sir.” He would be flying south this weekend, anyway. Always had to work on the base, even as strong and resurgent as it was. Perhaps he would have time to drop in on the leader of the increasingly freer world. But business came before pleasure. And he had a significant piece of business to deal with this weekend. Perhaps not as pleasing as the business which had placed that particularly fine bourbon in his possession, but just as, if not more, important. “Belle and I will most certainly try and take you up on your kind offer.”

“Atta boy. Night, Mikey.” The phone disconnected. The Speaker of the House of the United States of America returned the phone to its cradle. He walked back to his window and looked out over the mall. He could just see a portion of the White House down Pennsylvania Avenue.

POTUS.

Maybe some day, he smiled. Hell, even with the repeal of the 22nd Amendment, the current holder of that office couldn’t hang on forever. And as he continued to gather more and more of the reins of real power, well, who would be the most natural heir to the mantle of the revolution they had been forging, despite the occasional interrruption over the last forty years?

He looked back over at the bourbon and briefly considered having one more small glass, but rejected the idea. Discipline in all things was another one of his mottos. It was discipline that had brought him to the heights of power. It would be discipline that would bring him to the absolute summit of power.

And God help anyone who got in his way.

Chapter 1

“Please stop by an see me before you leave—Travis.”

I looked at the note for a long moment, the usual anger and nausea I felt whenever Travis invaded my life swelling from bowels to throat. I fought off the temptation to crumple the note into a wad and chuck it into the corner wastebasket even as my fingers, sensing their master’s mood, began to close in on the foul little missive. Travis would want to see the note—in tact—in my hand. A final confirmation that I was indeed doing his bidding, the summons alive and answered.

Travis. What a piece of work. He could just as easily have left me a voice mail or emailed me with his “request.” But taking the time to deliver hand-written notes to people’s mailboxes was just another of his many anal retentive—and effective—ways to monitor and control. We now were supposed to check our boxes twice a day, as opposed to the once in whenever the hell I got around to it of years past. Years long past, so they felt, even though they really weren’t. A lot can change in a man’s life in a short time.

Miss stopping by your box twice a day and you ran the risk of missing a message from the big T. Oh, it wasn’t like that would be the end of your career or anything. You certainly wouldn’t be bundled up and shipped off to Bismarck. But Travis would make note of it as he checked the boxes that night on his way out to be sure they were empty, their contents picked up by their owners. An orphaned note would be another tick against you. Just a little tick. Get enough, though, and you would be ticked out.

No, not to Bismarck. None of us were that important. Just to the unemployment line. Where, with the endless recession and all (or, as the Administration preferred to call the “R” word, “net positive economic growth”) a displaced academic could cool his heels for quite a long time. Not too long, of course, what with criminalization last year of long-term unemployment. They wouldn’t send you to Bismarck for that, either, of course. Just to county detention where you would be subcontracted to one of the manpower corps as part of your sentencing. Impressed pool cleaning in the tonier neighborhoods of town not being my particular thing, I had managed to get into the habit of checking my box the requisite twice a day.

I carefully folded the note and slipped it into the breast pocket of my Dockers. While the new dress codes—professors and staff now were expected to wear full business regalia to the campus, from shoes you couldn’t play sports in to the real deal jacket and tie combo– were both insulting and juvenile, they did mean I also had at least one pocket available at all times to tuck something into. Couldn’t do that so easily back in the T- or Polo-shirt wearing days. Change can do a man good.

I emptied the rest of the box’s contents – nothing but memos and other miscellaneous paperwork that could just as easily been emailed but, if they had been, would have left nothing to put into our boxes to justify the twice a day pick up requirement. One must always marvel of the self-reinforcing circular logic that marks a bureaucracy. Or a dictatorship.

As I left I carefully closed and locked the mailroom door with a swipe of my ID card– another protocol, to protect the memos and, more importantly, Travis’ notes from paper thieves, no doubt–and walked back towards my office on the other side of the building. Pulling my cell phone from yet another of those darned convenient jacket pockets, I checked the time. Four fifteen P.M. A brilliant piece of control, that. Schedule a face to face just after four-thirty to be sure the talent wasn’t skipping out of work a few minutes early. Not that any of us really could, any more. I slid my ID card through my office lock, resulting in an audible, mechanical “click.” The lock scanner not only read my card and opened the door, it also recorded my entry time. When I left I had to slide the card again – a ridiculous extra effort, as the door could just as easily been left in a default locked setting. But, then, they wouldn’t be able to gather the data on when I left. And Travis wouldn’t have all those files delivered to him weekly to pour over to be sure all the children had stayed in their rooms when they were supposed to. And anyone cutting out early would eventually be detected. And they would receive a tick.

Tick. Tick.

But, in 2014, that was the lot of most people, college professors included. And I am a college professor. Or, at least, I was. An academic. An academic living in a dictatorship. At least a developing dictatorship. A developing dictatorship called the United States of America. Not that anyone actually called it that. Dictatorship, I mean. Developing or otherwise.

They would send you to Bismarck for that. Ask Streisand.

Happy Birthday, Shock & Awe

You can find my comments on this, the fifth year anniversary of the Iraq War in the pages and bytes of this week’s City Beat. Meet you all at Dick’s Last Resort (that would be the one run by Dick Cheney in that party capital, Baghdad) after work for the party. First round of Mujehedin Martinis–Bombay (emphasis on the “Bomb”) Star Saphire straight up and dirty. With, of course, an IED instead of an olive.

Cheers.

Dennis Prager is an Ass

Okay, I usually try to avoid ad hominem attacks on politicians and my fellow pundits (and human beings in general, for that matter). If you remember your Logic 101 class, such argument present as a logical fallacy. But I was listening to the Dennis Prager Show briefly (Radio AM 1170 KCBQ just before noon as I was driving between teaching sites and got to experience one of those “Oh my God, he couldn’t have possibly have been stupid enough to have actually said that?” moments.

And my outrage has only grown since that moment. Thus this little bit of unprofessional punditry venting.

The issue Prager was pontificating on was the forced mass incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent after Pearl Harbor. Prager made the ludicrous and outrageous claim that there was nothing “racist” about the incarceration program. To prove this he pointed out that the mass internment was only carried out on the west coast. Expo facto, it was the outcome of legitimate fears that the thousands of Japanese-Americans residing on the West Coast (and, somehow, not those in the Pocanos) might become fifth column agents of their ancestral homeland.

Incredible.

Prager did go on to say that he thought the interment was “probably” wrong. Bully for you, Denny. But his overarching point was that the internment of thousands of American citizens based on their ethnic identity was an example of how non-xenophobic America actually is. Racism, for Prager, you see, is an artificial construct foisted on the American public by the victim-mentality liberal Democrats and not, even peripherally or incidentally, an actual part of the American experience.

(Note to Prager: Dude, maybe you should consider stopping inhaling so deeply on those cigars you love and claim don’t really give you cancer. At a minimum they seem to be giving you dementia or early onset Alzheimers…)

Look, Dennis, I can agree that Americans as a whole are not particularly more xenophobic than other peoples on this planet. I’ll even go so far as to say that, as a Nation, we have done a pretty good–and better–job of mixing more diverse people from more cultural, ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds under the same national roof than pretty much any other country one can think of. But to claim that xenophobia has never reared its ugly head in decisively mass-popular ways in American history is, at best, incorrect. At worst it is deliberately deceptive, disingenuous, divisive, disrespectful and delusional.

When WWII broke out the US found itself at war with the Empire of Japan—and the fascist dictatorships of Germany and Italy. Now, when our government set out to incarcerate thousands of Americans of Japanese descent—in many cases second and third generation Americans—in direct violation of their basic Bill of Rights and 14th Amendment Protections (as the Courts and Congress would later find) did it similarly set out to deal with the potentially equal (and even greater, given the numbers involved) danger of millions of Americans of German and Italian descent rising up to support their homelands?

When the war broke out my father, a first-generation American of Italian descent was a chemistry undergrad at the University of Niagara Falls. Did the government round up this dark-skinned Sicilian and send him to a government camp? Oh, wait a moment, they did! He was in the ROTC at the University. When the war started he was called up within months and sent off to an Army camp in Biloxi, Mississippi for basic and officer training. Coming out a second Louie, he went on to serve in combat in France, Italy, Austria and was part of the Japanese occupation forces.

So why did my dad get a uniform and a gun while Americans of Japanese descent, many of whom had lived in America longer than his family had, got the boot into Manzanar? Gee, what is the key difference between an American of Japanese descent and one of Italian descent?

To argue that racism played no role in the WWII internment policy is the logical equivalent of saying Hitler’s policies were not race driven – he simply targeted dangerous individuals who just happened to be overwhelmingly Jewish in heritage. (Given Prager’s own strong roots in the American Jewish community I would think that he of all people, indeed would be a tad sensitive to any instance of a government rounding up and incarcerating mass numbers of its own citizens for any reason, said incarceration being non-lethal or otherwise. But such is the sad case of AM talk conservatism that such obvious sensitivities and corollaries become sacrifices on the altar of ideological fervor.)

The Roman statesman Cicero once famously stated a simple theory of guilt and innocence. “Show me he who benefits and I will show you the guilty man,” he claimed. Who directly benefited from the incarceration of over one hundred thousand Americans of Japanese descent? Did it heighten security on the West Coast when dozens—hundreds—even one?—real case of American citizens of Japanese descent conspiring with the enenmy to subvert their country of birth or adoption? And even if there is record of a minute handful of countrymen participating in such schemes, what in the history of American constitutional thought could therefore justify the mass prophylactic incarceration of tens of thousands if US citizens?

To answer truthfully answer this question just follow the money. Who got their stuff? Their farms, their business, their houses, cars and personal possessions seized by the government upon their removal to remote desert encampments—what happened to it all? Why, it was auctioned off at pennies on the dollar to their white neighbors and business competitors who, through the tyranny of government, were able to achieve what they could not through the fair exchange of the free market. And when these citizens were finally released (only after which did the Supreme Court boldly step in to close the door on a flagrant abuse of the Constitution) they didn’t get their stuff back. It would take a half century, by which time many of the internees had shuffled off this mortal coil, before the US government would apologize for this egregious injustice and award monetary compensation to the survivors of the internment and their descendents.

Probably wrong, Dennis? Not racist? To say either is logically and factually incorrect. Beyond that, it is definitely insulting to hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens whose families suffered the indignity and injustice of the internment policy. It crosses the line from insensitive to inflammatory and pushes right up against the boundary of outright immoral. What next, arguing that slavery was just another economic institution—probably wrong, but not race-based?

You, sir, should be ashamed. And so should San Diego News Radio 1170 KCBQ for broadcasting someone whose views are inaccurate, irresponsible and downright reprehensible. You, sir, owe the thousands of Americans of Japanese descent victimized (and, yes, Mr. Prager sir, there are such a thing as real victims) by their own government and fellow citizens—and their hundreds of thousands of descendents, an apology, post haste.

Of course KCBQ broadcasts Prager and the rest of its AM-squawk lineup for the most noble of reasons—it’s a business model that makes them a nice buck, no matter how vilely obtained.

So I have to ask myself, if I was an American of Japanese descent, enraged by such talk, would I a) continue to ever listen to KCBQ and b) ever patronize a company so insensitive to my only family history as to advertise on a program such as Prager’s and a station such as KCBQ ever again? A list of which you can find by clicking here. And might I send a strongly worded message condemning both Dennis Prager (who can be reached here) and KCBQ (which can be reached at Info@kcbq.com) for the audacious awful content of his mind and their programming?

You bet I would. Indeed, as a second generation American of non-Japanese descent, that is precisely what I am doing. And precisely what members Japanese American groups (examples of which can be found here and http://www.asiansinamerica.org/directory/dir_e_ja.html) around the country should be doing.

Prager, in the unlikely event he ever reads this or hears any negative blowback to his statements will, no doubt, try to dismiss my call as yet another call from whacky liberals to silence freedom of speech. That is, of course, utter bupkis. Prager has every right to say anything he wants. He does not, however, have any right to say it on commercial radio. As the wag said, if you want free speech, own a newspaper. Prager has no right, per se, to say what he wants on the radio. He’s only there because it makes money for the people (and himself, not incidentally) who own the stations that broadcast him and gains customers for the advertisers who pay him and them. If the marketplace as represented by listeners and other concerned consumers care to show the companies (which can be found here) that pay for his platform that he’s costing them more than he makes them, he’s gone from the airwaves.

And the world would, in my opinion be a better place. Hey Dennis, ain’t the free market a great thing.

Meanwhile, Dennis, your statements about the internment of Americans of Japanese descent today was one of the most galling, inaccurate and offensive things I have ever heard you send over the airwaves. Which, given the competition from some of your previous statements, is no small thing.

Oh, and Dennis—you’re an ass.

Children of the Corn

The Iowa caucus results are in. A rational person may, of course, be tempted to say—would be justified to say, even—“So what? A couple of hundred thousand Iowans have had their say. Let’s get on with life.” But politics, like other, more worthwhile things in life, is occurs largely between the ears. And in American politics Iowa does matter to some degree, rationality be damned.

So what does a reading of the corn husks tell us? On the Republican side, John McCain may turn out to be the bigger winner. Mike Huckabee can win the rural heartland vote but before he returns to those fertile, evangelical fields, he has to face more secular New Hampshire where he will probably still, despite Iowa, come in third behind McCain and Romney. Huckabee might survive a bronze in NH and go on to silver or gold in South Carolina but doesn’t have the legs or pockets to carry both the home of the Confederacy and the home of old northeasterners (that would be Florida) within twenty four hours of each other.

Romney, meanwhile, may have taken the biggest hit yesterday having outspent Huckabee decisively only to come in second. While McCain’s finishing fourth behind Thompson wasn’t stellar, a) he didn’t contest the state heavily; and b) He’s more popular in NH. Thompson and the rest of the GOP crowd–except for Rudy—meanwhile, may limp through NH but will be gone before the first votes are cast in Dixie. If McCain can pull out a first or second in New Hampshire and South Carolina and a win in Florida, he’ll be well established for a decisive upset win on Super Tuesday. Move over Bill Clinton. Meet the new comeback kid.

What’s the Matter With Iowa?

I trust you are all wearing your “Go Iowa” tee-shirts and buying corn chowder to serve at your Iowa Caucus cocktail parties tonight! That’s right, Californians, its time for that quadrennial political celebration in which the Golden State is reduced to an impotent spectator while Iowa and New Hampshire boldly lead the nation forward.

When I was in Russia during the 2000 Presidential primary season on a Fulbright lecture fellowship I discussed with my Russian students how the US picks its candidates for its highest office. The Russians were, at that same time, electing the successor to Boris Yeltsin.

Their approach was straight forward: each of the recognized parties put forth a candidate – usually their leader—and a national election was held. Whichever candidate received a majority of the vote became President. If no candidate did, the top two candidates would go on to a runoff a few months later. Yeltsin resigned at the stroke of midnight, New Years Day, 2000. By March Vladimir Putin had won the first round of the election—and the Presidency—with over half the vote (albeit it thanks to no small share of vote manipulation, to be sure.) While the integrity of the Russian process is problematic, the process itself—similar to that which most elected democracies use—is simplicity itself. Any candidate who wants to run is on the ballot and then the whole nation gets to chose from that list.

Mr. Potter is Winning

(My Dear CityBeat Readers: I first laid fingers to keyboard on this piece four years ago when I was typing out columns for HispanicVista. It’s become, for me, my own perennial holiday repeat which I’ve vowed to post every year until the thesis no longer applies. Which, given the events of my lifetime, may be the balance of my lifetime. But optimism lives on, especially during this season of faith and hope. A Merry Christmas and wishes for a happy Holiday season to you and yours. — CJL)

I watched the perennial holiday chestnut, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the other day. There was George Bailey, as he is every year, struggling to keep the old Savings and Loan afloat. There was the malicious Mr. Potter, a truly covetous old sinner, trying to put Bailey out of business. There was Clarence the angel showing, once again, that our world is a better place for the George Bailey’s amongst us. It’s too bad that in today’s world the Potters are beating the Baileys, hands down.

Old man Potter dismissed the Bailey Savings and Loan as a kind of privatized social welfare program for dumb poor workers who couldn’t cut it on their own. “And what does that get us,” he asked? “A discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class. And all because a few starry eyed dreamers stir them up and fill their heads with a lot of impossible ideas? Don’t the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys say the same thing today?

Labor laws, social welfare, retirement benefits, guaranteed healthcare, workplace safety laws, consumer protection–all are dismissed by our modern Potters as so much misplaced sympathy offered to the undeserving by the foolishly starry eyed, thinking that is at best naïve and at worst dangerous. Any mention of social welfare on AM radio is now associated with Bolshevik Socialism – want to give workers a guaranteed living wage or put any limits at all on the worst excesses of the market and you’re labeled as an advocate of Gulags and death camps.

George, of course, argued back: “Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?” Today he could add: is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die with decent healthcare, affordable housing, quality education for their kids and the sure knowledge that, when old age comes, there will be some comforts to look forward to?

We don’t have that many George Bailey’s today. Few stand up to our Potters when they tell us workers can’t expect job security, no one is entitled to healthcare and decent pay is whatever the most desperate amongst us is willing to work for. Even the Democrats, the party of dreams of the working stiffs, have fallen in line with the rhetoric of balanced budgets and smaller government (except, of course, if deficits are required to provide tax cuts to the richest Americans) even if the cost are reduced programs to help the disadvantaged.

Can’t anyone makes the simple point George made that helping the least amongst us is not simple altruism, it is Capitalist self interest at it’s best? “Your all business men here,” he reminded the S&L board members thinking of supporting Potter, “don’t it make them better citizens? Doesn’t it make them better customers?” Heck, wasn’t it that old socialist Henry Ford’s idea to raise worker pay, not because it was the moral thing to do but because it made them better participants in the Capitalist market place? Like Old Man Potter, much of American corporate business has become warped and frustrated by ruthless competition and now sees its workers only as cattle to be milked for as long as possible before being sent to the layoff slaughterhouse.

Frank Capra understood that the Potters amongst us seldom lose, though the more public-minded like old George could, on occasion, battle them to a draw. Notice that, while George Bailey ultimately survived his battle with Potter, the old man survived unscathed too, his own crime of theft of the Bailey’s deposits unpunished. There have always been the Potters amongst us, those who pursue personal gain at any cost, be they a grasping banker like fictitious Potter or the greedy executives of a massive corporations like Enron or WorldCom. What’s regrettable is that there are fewer and fewer George Bailey’s speaking up for the little guy.

In the real world the Bailey S&L would have been bought out in the 1980s by PotterCorp, a huge transnational Financial Services leviathan. A PotterCorp holding company would have bought out Bedford Fall’s chief industry, the plastic’s factory old Hee-Haw Sam Wainwright had built at George’s urging and shipped the jobs to Third World sweatshops. Downtown Bedford Falls would now be a ghost town with shops shuttered by a massive PotterMart out by the interstate selling cheap slave-labor produced products to the town’s poorly paid service employees. Yes, least be there any doubt, in the world of today Mister Potter would have won.

And, least there be any doubt, Mr. Potter voted Republican

Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer (made in China, of course…)

Santa is here with a sled full of toys, bring happy presents for little girls and boys. Bright colored toys all painted in lead, toys with tiny little pieces that–if swallowed–may leave baby dead. Breakaway sharp parts that can put out an eye and other great features that can make children die. Even contaminated food for your sweet little pet, but all so cheap mom and dad won’t be in debt. Welcome Christmas, Christmas time, as we sacrifice our health to save a dime.

And blame it all on the Chinese.

I must confess to having had my own big, holiday “ho ho ho’s” this Christmas season as I’ve listened to all the breast-beating and hand-wringing over how those nefarious, inscrutable, insidious Chinese have diabolically conspired to flood America with poisoned products. Oh, those dastardly people. The press and presidential debates are full of proud posturing demanding Justice for American consumers and protection from this new Asian threat.

Grade School

Watching CIA director Michael Hayden attempt to explain away the destruction of CIA interrogation videos and John Boehner this morning on CNN Wolf Blitzer show trying to explain away record federal debt under Republican management, I was reminded of my youth.

Back when I was a wee little one in third grade, as war raged in Vietnam and anti-war protests raged at home, I can remember explaining to my teacher why I thought the US could not pull out of Vietnam. (And, yes. My pathology of political junkiness dates back to my earliest year: I started checking books out from the library on athe Ciivil War and WWII when I was five. Egad.) In way of explaining why there was no viable exit strategy from Vietnam I asked my teacher, “Do you know what a mortar could do to a landing craft?” I was envisioning, with my grand military experience, exiting Vietnam to be kind of a Normandy invasion in reverse, with the Vietcong firing mortar rounds at the departing US troops in their open boats at sea. What did I know: I was only nine.