Fix FEMA

One of the most glaring and unforgivable incompetence's of the Bush Debacle has been the handling of FEMA as an agency. Under the Clinton administration, FEMA was led by the experienced and talented James Lee Witt. Witt reported to Clinton as a cabinet official, so that when there was a disaster, information and decisions could flow freely up and down the chain. Witt staffed FEMA with professionals who knew emergency management backward and forward.

Bush, in his effort to turn all American successes into failures, dismantled the agency. He staffed it with incompetent political cronies, and then he buried it in the Frankenstienien Homeland Security Department. What he failed to realize (there's a long book: "What George W. Bush Failed to Realize") was that in a disaster, the performance of FEMA and its leadership becomes a huge story.

Poppy Bush failed memorably to deal properly with Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and it helped lose the presidency for him. Clinton, having appointed Witt and the rest of the 'A Team,' looked great in a disaster. He got the supplies and support moving early, recognizing that states are notorious for delaying their call for federal help. Clinton's approval ratings went up every time there was a disaster. When Bubba walked through a disaster area with Witt, they exuded confidence and support for the victims.

Bush 43 was, as in everything, far worse at disasters than his bungling father. His political hack of a FEMA Director, the memorable Michael "Heckuvajob" Brown, failed in every possible way. And when the Boy King walked through the rubble with "Brownie" the incompetence and lack of empathy was thick enough to cut with a chainsaw.

Here's the thing: the right wing extremists who've been running the country believe that the government is always the problem and never the solution. In a disaster, government is the only solution. The 'invisible hand of the market' cannot build tents or evacuate thousands of people or rebuild a city. There's no profit in it. No marketable gain is derived. You can sell shares of disaster relief.

Sure, there are plenty of disaster profiteers (as there are now plenty of war profiteers), but the value that they soak up is tax dollars. It's not productive value, it's tax value. And, under Bush, it's borrowed dollars to be repaid by the kids and grandkids tax dollars. Thanks, George.
People look to government when there's a disaster. And when government looks back and says: "what're you eyeballing, you freeloader?" then there's a huge problem.

Look: Obama is not the progressive dream that a lot of people make him out to be, or want him to be. He's a Washington 'Villager.' But at the very least, he's going to stop dismantling the place. He's going to put actual Emergency Managers in charge of FEMA. Not actively tearing government apart in an attempt to prove that it doesn't work, and instead just trying to make it work good will be a giant change.

Friday Pseudo-Blogging

It is Friday again, thankfully. As we all know, Friday is the gateway to Monday, so you can forget all that happy weekend crap. No, it's off to the Salt Mines for me this weekend, which is my only respite from the infinitely worse Mines of Sharp Glass Chards and Socky Feet that I spend my not-weekend days in.

This weekend, I'm going to do start the class presentation that I was supposed to deliver last Wednesday night. See, where I go to school (and somebody stumbling on this page out of nowhere may suspect that I'm a full 30 years younger than I actually am at this point - feel free) they're on what's called a "strike." The striking workers are all graduate assistants of one ilk or another.

They want more money, but not just al little more money. They pretty much want it all - a 41% increase I'm told. If you think that's not a bit high, compare with working people at most job who get increases of between 3% and Go Fuck Yourself (I've received the latter and it's done nothing for my overall buying power in the marketplace).

Which is all fine by me. I'm having a relatively dreadful time outside of class at the moment, and not having to to all those dreadful assignments and the stacks of reading is just fine with me. Except that there are actual sane people who are member of the striking union, so I can't count on them acting like toddlers awake fare too long after they've become tired - not forever.
So I really need to get this presentation done. And here's where you can help: I need links. I need links to any material I can find on Hurricane Wilma. That's it. News stories, video footage - anything.

I figure that either the strike will end, in which case I need to have my presentation ready, pronto, or else it won't end, in which case I may have the opportunity to submit it to the prof for credit. Because I'm far more about the credit than the earning right now, sad to say. Just give me the degree, I'll pay you what I owe you, and we'll be quits.

So I need to become strike-proof. So I need to do a pretty slide show about old Wilma. Actually, it's not just Wilma. There's a wrinkle. Wanna hear what this exciting wrinkle entails?
Well, if you didn't, you can get off my blog. Right now! Go on! Shoo!

Alright, for the rest of us, here's the exciting angle. I'm going to do a BCP exercise using the Hurricane as the cause, the cassias busing as it were. I'm going to Google up a town in Florida that got hit and see if I can find a corporate office that got nailed. And then I'm going to build a BCP exercise around that business.

Mad genius! Yes, I know that I tear at the very fabric of reality with that one. What Daemonic presence could have put together such a fiendish etc etc. Well, that's it.

In other news, it's already -60 days into the prematurely failed presidency of That One. And we didn't even need Bill Ayres to sink the ship. Failed President-Elect B. Hussein O. has done it to himself. First, he chose a guy named "Rahm" to be his Chief of Staff. Please. That's like a made-up name, right? And this Rahm guy doesn't like to take orders from John McCain. Who does he think he is? And now there's talk that he may offer the Secretary of State job to HILLARY CLINTON!!!!! Wow. We all hate her and think she's a B-tch, so that's how she almost won the whole thing and remains a powerful Senator and all that.

So, in only -60 days, Hussain O. has created the financial crisis that he ran his election campaign on, and he is under the powerful spell of HRC. Is it time for a return of grown-ups? Can we get some Republicans back in charge?

Because at least with them, you can go to bed knowing that the wealthy will be well looked after. You won't lay awake tossing and turning thinking: "what if billions in tax breaks for the wealthy suddenly morph into billions in social programs? Socialism!!!!" We sure don't want any of that Socialism, boy. We need more of that rudderless ghost ship that is non-regulated capitalism. That's the stuff boy. It's like taking the filter off your cigarette. The pure stuff.

Okay, so it leads to the inevitable crash every time they take away the regulations, but who really loses? The well-connected 'haves' will continue to have whatever they need or want. Everybody else goes from being "horrible screwed over by the political right" to "massively blown away and non-recoverably food-processed by the political right."

That's an important distinction.

Brooks

There are few people in public life who I loathe as much as David Brooks. He's a New York Times columnist, and manages to appear on every single political TV show at all times on all channels. He's like the conservative Max Headroom.

And he's so soft. He's no Rumsfeldian noecon hawk or screeching social conservative. Oh no. He's just a pudgy know-it-all who thinks he can ask his dog walker about the economy and know how the little people see things. Or just make shit up. Same difference. Because he's plugged in, see? He feels what people feel. He's not a multimillionaire TV star, he's just a lawn-mowing beer-drinking average guy.

Who only drinks really good wine and couldn't start a lawn mower without the help of a NASA technician and a signed liability waiver. Same difference.

So today Brooks is letting us lower middle class losers know that we're headed back to ultra-loserville. We're losing our ticket to ride on the American Dream train. Thanks, Dave!

See, the recession is going to push new middles back to being old poors. We're going to give up our exurb semi-detached houses and our Sharper Image toys. No more Tiffany's. Nor more Starbucks for crying out loud. Starbucks! Out of reach.

And we're going to be sad about it.

But look: I don't necessarily disagree. The coming storm will overturn all the rowboats in the harbour, and wobble a few of the yachts. Fine.

But why is that? Because soft conservatives like Brooks have been marching lockstepped with the Bush radicals for eight years pillaging the treasury and burning down the exurbs. Like economic Visigoths, they've taken from the middle class and given to the rich. The weight of the tax burden is now squarely on the working folk.

It's nice to sit around with a really good chardonnay and tisk-tisk for the unfortunates who will be out of the Starbucks club any day now. But who made it so precarious to be middle class, David?

YOU DID!

Do you think that if wages had gone up at all and that taxes were even ballpark fair and that if any help at all had gone their way instead of straight to the penthouse suite that the middle class would be able to take more of a bump in hard times? Do you think? Maybe?

Brooks and his ilk (and there's plenty of ilk) were cheerleaders for regressive taxation and overall fiscal policies that were first-foremost-and-only for the rich. And now it's too bad for the middle class.

You'll understand, Mr. Brooks, if we don't thank you for your newfound concern.

And all around the world, Brooks says, people will be mad at riot and hate America for pushing them back to poverty. Well. Imagine that. Foreigners mad at the US for harmful and selfish behaviour. What would that even look like?

Actually, it would look a lot like it looks on the evening news. Brooks' war of choice and ongoing conservative economic carpetbagging have seen to that.

I'll say to Brooks what I'll say to all his conservative fellow travellers: we tried it your way. Eight years of unilateral warmongering foreign policy. Eight years of Trickle-down and Starve the Beast. Eight years of your domestic and environmental policy. Eight years of your "ethics."

And it's all a failure. Conservatism had its day and succeeded at nothing. It couldn't even hold a good status quo - and isn't that the very definition of "conservative?"

So, David, please go to your room and shut the door, or at least shut up. Peering down at the ruin you made of our society and writing about how bad you've made it for this group or that is simply distasteful.

And Progressives have a lot of work to do.

Dick Cavett on Pailn

Is it terribly unkind to say that I'm glad Dick Cavett isn't dead? I kind of thought he'd gone to his reward because I haven't seen or read him in a long time. Maybe I'm the one who's dead, because Dick has a fine bit in the New York Times today.

Cavett puts the stake in the vampire heart of the Sarah Palin nonsense. Why oh why are we still hearing from and about this person? We all escaped the fate of electing her as Vice President of a country she sees as having citizens who are for and against the country itself. And given McCain's age and health, we escaped her presidency. We crossed the busy street at rush hour against the traffic light and lived. Isn't that enough?

Apparently not.

Cavett:

Could the willingness to crown one who seems to have no first language have anything to do with the oft-lamented fact that we seem to be alone among nations in having made the word "intellectual" an insult? (And yet…and yet…we did elect Obama. Surely not despite his brains.)

...I do not wish her ill. But I also don’t wish us ill. I hope she continues to find happiness in Alaska.

I would add to Cavett's insight the fact that I find her fun to listen to. She is so poorly spoken and has so much trouble collecting and offering a single coherent thought that she hold a certain fascination for me. That's probably why she continues to have a voice (and picture) in American culture. I've watched her Couric interview several times on YouTube - it's riveting. The meandering thoughtless words collected from half-remembered talking points - it's breathtaking.

I also thought it was brilliant that she was already embroiled in a major abuse-of-power scandal ("Troopergate") before she was even "tapped" as Veep. What a gift to Obama! And her bona fides as a "Maverick" were openly fraudulent. Her big line: "I said thanks but no thanks to that Bridge to Nowhere" was a complete lie.

And her foreign policy chops had been formed on her porch, where one presumes that she watch old Vlad Putin "risin' up" over the horizon. Or something.

In a reality-based world, she's as serious a candidate as Bugs Bunny. In the Rovian up-is-down universe we've existed in where the establishment lives in its own enclosed universe, she fits in as the sort of Jessica Rabbit of their world. But reality has caught up to the Bush Bubble. The alternate universe that we were forced to live in has gone away. By making real life decisions based on a cartoon understanding of the universe, the Bush people have nearly destroyed us.

Sarah Palin is the latest symbol of the cartoon-ocracy. Seen from reality, she's a funny cartoon.

The trouble is, her handlers meant us to take her seriously. That tells you all you need to know about them.

They're the people who tried to dismantle Social Security by lying about its solvency. They created their cartoon of a mustachioed villain tying women to train tracks and used it to sell us an unjust war against Saddam. They created 'voter fraud' and used it to suppress minority (Democratic leaning) votes. In their cartoon, the environment doesn't matter, it's just a painted background. So they signed the papers to dig it up and burn it, de-listing endangered species along the way.

Thank goodness the cartoon is over and the Feature can begin.

Al Qaeda - Bigger and Stronger

Mike Hayden says that Al Qaeda is growing and reaching out to even more places. Oh good. Weren't the Repubs supposed to be tough of those guys? What happened to all the swaggering?

John McCain said that he knew how to beat them. Any chance he'll reveal his amazing secret now? Or will he petulantly keep it to himself? Pleeeeeeese. John? Tell us how to beat them? Pleeeeeeze!

I suspect we've been hearing that answer for a while. Okay, John, we'll bomb them. Sure. Now, eat your soup.

Really, the fact that Repubs can even talk about national security is a national joke. They have to turn their fact-fabricator up to "11" to go there. The Boy King has been the biggest windfall in terror history. His stupid bloody assaults on the world have done absolutely nothing - expect that SAl Qaeda recruitment videos don't need any special effects now. American taxpayers provide the fireworks.

What really gets me is that they don't even have to lie about us anymore to have the recruits fighting each other to join. They used to have to say 'America is run by secret Jewish bankers and dry cleaners.' Now? They don't even have to go there. All they have to say to young Islamic men is: "remember your grandma?" Sure - the one turned into marshmallow-jelly by American munitions. "Where do I sign?"

But at least we have Mikey Haden to keep torturing them. That's all about the hearts & minds. Al Qaeda's hearts & minds that is. Would you join up with the side using torture? No way.

It's all part and parcel to the Worst Government in American History. Their legacy is that American Conservatism is Dead. Hayden can go suck eggs.

Seven years later, Osama bin Laden still draws free air.

Heckuvajob, Mikie!

Watchmen - With SPOILERS

I've been thinking a bit about Watchmen lately, since viewing the clips of the upcoming movie. I'm so old that I actually collected it in individual issues when it first came out. If you've read it, you can only imagine how hard it was to wait between issues. When I pick it up now, I can hardly put it back down.

What I've been thinking about...

SPOILER ALERT -- SPOILER ALERT -- SPOILER ALERT -- SPOILER ALERT















... is the Veidt plot.

First, I haven't re-read the thing lately, so I fully embrace my G-d-given right to change this post entirely if I go back over it and come to a different conclusion.

Second, it seems clear that events, and specifically the fatalism of the ironically-named Comedian, convinced Ozymandius that some great thing had to be done to unify the people of the earth before the insane Cold War leadership - still President Nixon and the Soviets - turned the entire thing into a glowing radioactive rock in space.

As he perceived that 'masks' would be outlawed two years before it happened (and he may have had a hand in that), and resigned on his own, so too did he realize that one day Dr. Manhattan would lose interest in humanity. So he made that day come sooner, destabilizing the Cold War and bringing the planet to the brink of suicide.

So far so good.

But what was his big plot? To use the same semi-operative teleportation equipment that created Dr. Manhattan to teleport a big ugly monster to New York. So people would come together as a planet to face the would-be alien invasion. Hmmm.

And the Comedian saw the Bug Eyed Monster (BEM) from an airplane, so he went a bit nuts and Ozy paid him a home care visit and threw him out a window.

Hmmm.

Don't get me wrong, the whole thing is a masterpiece, probably the best comic book in history and a work of great achievement by any measure. I just don't know how well it holds together at that larger scale.

The intent, if I'm reading it correctly, is a look at human nature. What are our greater and less moral qualities? Who are we really? And - can we change? Do events (like BEM's blowing up half of New York) move people? Do leaders move people? Or do people move themselves, as the saying goes: "people get the government they deserve."

Alan Moore couldn't have seen 9-11 coming, but he did. That was the BEM moment in real life, playing in slo-mo on a continuous loop. It was a moment for a people to decide who they were and what they stood for.

Bush had cheated to win the presidency a year before. His administration represented (and still represents) the absolute nadir of American life. He and his close advisers showed the worst parts of America, the hubris, the violence, the scorn for law and decency. The inability to make anything like a moral choice. And the unfettered selfish greed.

That greed led them to use the defining moment of a generation as a bloody shirt to wave - in their own narrow interest.

Certainly, Al Gore would have written as different story. A few hundred stolen votes and a deeply corrupt Supreme Court decision took it away from him, but would he have provided the moment of world unity that Ozymandias was looking for?

Perhaps the biggest irony of the 9-11 comparison is that Moore has Dick Nixon keep his presidency through 1985 or so. If Bush is anything, he's the guy who makes Nixon look like a saint. Right wing neocons are the same now as then.

If Nixon were president for the BEM event, he would have used it for partisan gain, and Dr. Manhattan would have had to stop an entire nuclear war. And win it for Dick.

Let's Fix This!

Oh, the fun we're going to have over the next year! We're going to be able to fix stuff! And not just the obvious, first-in-line stuff. As broken, horrible, destructive things become revealed, we can just put an Obama Whammy on them!

For example, let's fix this: the Navy won a Supreme Court case saying it can use active sonar in training without any limits, even though it kills and disables marine life.

That's just mean! You don't have to go around destroying wildlife and habitats to train - just turn up your iPod to the sound level you hear kids use on the subway every day!

Let's fix it! It's just a silly old Navy rule that allowed Dick Cheney to pretend to shoot manatees in the face. President Obama can just say: "cut it out!" That's it!

Now, Glenn Greenwald (link on the right) has made many excellent points (as usual) about Congress being overly deferential to the new president, and about the new president taking all that power and using it. Just because you think he's good and Georgie is bad - okay, just because he is good and Georgie is bad, it's still equally bad to break the constitution to give either too much power.

But the Great Glenn also points pout that many of the very very very bad things that Georgie has done were done by executive order, so Obama may have no choice but to rescind them the same way. Fair enough.

This case - and more to come - is about a Navy training rule that the president, in his actual (as opposed to Rightist Fictional) role as "Commander in Chief" can order changed.

Cool! Fixed!

What's next?

Now They Oversee

There's a long bit in the NYT Magazine about how the 'Imperial Presidency' is probably over, and how the Congress was turned, institutionally, into Bush's entourage. It's a pretty good read, and only about eight years overdue.

But what chills me about the concept of congressional Oversight is that it only seems to happen (any more) when there's a Democrat in the White House. Bush can break every tenet of democracy and decency, and Congress sits on its hands. Obama has yet to take the Oath and they're scratching up new subpoenas.

Right.

Even though they only fight when they think it's easy, I don't want to call Congress a bunch of bullies. They don't have the wherewithal to take lunch money from small kids (only to cut lunch money from the budget if the Boy King tells them to). They are so lacking in the basic human quality of 'sack' that they're even going to let Joe Lieberman back into their caucus.

Yes, that Joe Lieberman.

It's well past the time when the fault of the mess that we're in falls completely on the heads of the rightist scum that perpetrated the deeds. Congress should have stopped them after 06. The Democratic Congress has been the cop standing and watching the serial killer strike again and again - and doing nothing.

Why?

Why did they never oversee the Bush criminals? Why were they content to run out the clock as people died in masses in the Middle East - at our hands? As the corporate thieves cleaned out our money - our money - from the national coffers? They never said a damned word. And yet, stopping the Boy King was a popular thing to do. It would have enhanced their position.

Hell, they became less popular than the least popular president in history because they didn't make good on their promise to stop him.

Now they have their majority. Look out for the Repubs. They know how to make their base happy. You want to see oversight? Look out. After McCain-Palin threw them entire sides of red meat to feast on, they're ready.

Are the Democrats? Or will they acquiesce to the Repub smears that will masquerade as 'oversight.' Remember the Gingrich Congress investigating Clinton's Christmas list (true). That's their idea of oversight - trivia and smears.

Of course, that's their idea of everything.

Rove Plan

Jon Stewart had a great line the other night (when doesn't he?). The odious Chris Wallace was on, and gave Jon a cookie that Karl Rove had given Chris especially for Jon. Wallace told Jon to eat the cookie, right there, on camera. Stewart unwrapped the cookie and said: "I'm going to eat this cookie, do you know why? Because Karl Rove can't hurt me anymore."

Amen to that. There's a good chance that the ugly Rovian brand of politics has been de-fanged. It just doesn't resonate with people any more.

Now, it may have been the case in this election that the economic crash (along with the unpopular war and president) made everything seem too important for Rovian trivialities (he sat next to a guy who was an asshole 40 years ago!). Maybe, if there's another election like 2000, where you have a strong economy and peace (mostly) in the world, the race-baiting and crap-flinging will work again. I hope not. Having a good economy and world peace (mostly) can only come about by Democratic leadership, and those things are winners.

The 2000 election was stolen, and the 2004 election was all about fear and hate. 2008 has been, improbably, about hope. And maybe it was hope that beat Rove after all.

There was one aspect of the filthy McCain campaign that I wanted to touch on before it justifiably disappears into what Mike Tyson calls "bolivian."

It struck me, as I watched the McCain-Palin show whup up the hate, that the Bush-Cheney-Rove team never did that. Rove was too smart to let his campaign rallies come off as Klan rallies.

The Rove events were invitation only. Zombified Rightists with eight ball pupils would be invited to come down and say what they were told to say to the empty suit that they so revered. Rove would hand pick some Army widow who was ecstatic to have offered her husband and four sons to die in the sand for the Boy King, and was now proud to work three jobs and who needs health care anyway? "You're welcome. Heh-heh."

McCain wanted Town Halls. He wanted his folks to come out and tell him how great he was - unscripted. The audiences were (from what I saw) virulently hostile to anything left of Barry Goldwater. And by painting Obama as a Socialist Terrorist Muslim who Hates America, the crowds tore at the red meat in great hunks and cried for more.

Rove would have been so much smoother. His "Town Halls" would have been invitation only (Chamber of Commerce and wives), and the scripts would have insinuated just the right amount of racial and 'class war' fears and hatreds to get the message across.

And where McCain relied on his existing cozy relationship with the media - which failed him once he started his 24/7 lie and slander festival - Rove would have known that the media needs constant attention. Do you think you can put a bunch of 14-year-olds in a room and trust that they'll keep liking you? Not a chance. You have to keep feeding and praising and gently scolding them all the time.

McCain thought he had the Junior High class that is the national media under his thumb, so he let them have their heads. More patting and preening and maybe a cool new phone would have done the trick.

All that being said, I don't think there existed a playbook that would have won this election for the Repubs. They had a historic chance to govern their way, to have purely their own foreign and domestic policies for most of a decade. And it's been proven to be the biggest failure of both ideology and execution in the nation's history.

The Republicans failed Capitalism the way the Soviets failed Communism.

McCain's Shame

There's one dead horse being beaten today, and a pony being born.

Of course, those of you who know about the Intertube-nets and all their traditions know what a "pony" is. It's actually been the governing concept of the United States foreign policy for a number of years. A pony is the free thing that comes along with all the other magical things that happen in places like Iraq when you wish hard enough. Our Boy King and his Court have been making wishful thinking the centerpiece of their war policy for a long, long time.

"Maybe tomorrow they'll stop shooting at us and planting IED's to kill us."

"And maybe tomorrow we'll get a pony, too."

Today's pony is the Martyred Maverick, John McCain. Poor, John. He ran for president, but he somehow was force - forced - to use all the mean old bastards who ran the Boy King's campaign all those years ago. They were just shameful in 2000 and 2004. Maybe Honourable John thought they'd mellow with age, so he hired the lot of them. Not that he wanted to.

And then they forced - forced - him to pick the unalterably unqualified Sarah Palin as his running mate. And she bought clothes and "went rogue" and whupped up the rednecks and said a series of things so surreal in its abject cluelessness that even the big boys at CNN and Big Media (who, after all, listened to, reported on, and recorded her every word) started to notice.

That takes a lot.

So Poor John ran the nasty brutal race-baiting lying below-the-belt dishonourable corrupt and stupid campaign he swore he would not run.

I hope he enjoys his pony.

The dead horse being beaten to death also has to do with McCain. And it's a vital horse to beat, so, please, hammer that horse meat.

That horse is the gone and unlamented McCain campaign itself in all its gore and absence of glory. The McCain guys are pointing at Sarah. The Sarah guys are pointing at McCain. And everybody is writing the post-mortems on the ugliest campaign in modern history.

I've taken a few pokes at it, and may well do more. But today I'd like to take a moment to consider the McCain campaign that could have been.

We may take it on faith that JM had to say and do certain things in order to win the nomination. He was a slow starter and was behind in the polls for a long time, even once considering quitting. Fair enough. I think that Rudy was an unelectable nutjob (even for Repubs, so consider...), so his faux lead in the primaries was a ghost on the radar. Huckabee was a fad; no squirrel-eater has been a major party presidential nominee since Bob Dole.

Mormon Mitt Romney was a threat, but turned out to be a un-nominatable Mormon (who knew?). What I'm saying is that the field fell away from McCain. He didn't have to chase it by becoming Bush Junior Junior.

He could, instead, have been the man he tried to be in 2000. I don't think that version of JM actually exists, but as the character he plays on the Daily Show he can be somewhat charming and politically centrist.

If the fire-breathing neocon JM is not the real JM (per the pony above), the Maverick certainly isn't either. But they are both characters he's chosen to play at various points in his political career.

As the nominee, he could have chosen a different direction. He could have run a 'change' campaign with real changes and a real set of policies. Instead, he ran Ayres and Wright. He thought his 'cover the world with carpet bombs' would win a war election. But even if his stunning lack of fiscal acumen had not been exposed, how was he supposed to win on Iraq? Couldn't he read a poll?

The Maverick character would not have been blown the hell out. And the Maverick character would be a character he could play for years, like Kelsey Grammar playing Fraser Crane for 78 years on the long-running Cheers and again in the very long running Fraser. Tossed salad and scrambled eggs indeed.

As the Maverick, JM could have left a legacy. Isn't that something you want to do at 72 years old?

Barak Hussein Obama

Barak Hussein Obama is the president-elect of the United States of America. It's difficult to add to the outpouring of emotional exuberance that has come from all parts of the country, the continent, the world. It's been so long that we've forgotten what this tastes like. Tastes like real freedom, real progress.

The eight bitter years in the wilderness have been made more difficult by right wing triumphalism and Democratic Party cravenness.

When they cheated out their "victory" in 2000, the Bush extremists brought bulldozers and paper shredders with them to Washington. Just as GWB "was born on third base and acts like he hit a triple," so, too, their administration had to cheat voters and work the refs to be declared victors, and then acted like they'd won in a landslide.

I won't try to capture the extent of the destruction - I don't know enough words. And they're not done yet - there are many endangered species to stop protecting between now and January.

But over the course of those eight failed years, they never stopped celebrating. You may recall that the 2004 inaugural parties were lavishly funded by the corporations who knew their profit margins were about to soar - and that there was no legal limit on giving inaugural parties.

The distasteful excess of the Republicans should not be forgotten. They had their way for so many years - to what end?

Regulation-free markets proved that there is no cap on rightist greed, and that in no sense can Capitalists be trusted to 'police themselves.' Consider your local grocer, free of all regulation; no cash register, haggling over every melon - and worse: colluding with the warehouser to inflate the cost and value of lemons. And yet Wall Street fat cats were supposed to restrain themselves from taking guaranteed profits by making high-stakes gambles and pyramid schemes with your money?

What did they get from selling the store? They got the socialism they feared the most. President Obama will be the one to use the $700 billion in bailout money. Not Hank Paulson, who has plenty of money himself and has no interest in seeing more money get spread around to middle-class chumps. Those Chumps just elected their own guy.

We all got record debt. Try explaining that to your grandkids who will still be paying it. I wonder, if you proposed a scheme like the Bush racket to decent people, would anybody take it? If you were offered this deal, would you take it?

Here's the deal:

"You can have as much money as you like to live a lavish rich-and-famous lifestyle. You can party day and night, you can fly private jets to even more private islands, pay for all your friends and family (who will be offered the same deal), and never stop until the day you die.

But...

Your kids will owe that debt, and they themselves will not be able to borrow. As many years or generations as it takes, the debt will never go away until it's paid."

Any takers? Because that's the Repub tune that the insiders have been dancing to since 2000. They are betting the future of their own progeny that the U.S. will never again be a meritocracy. That is, all fortunes will be old fortunes. Big money will stay within the class.

You know, on the plantation.

Otherwise, how does it make sense to wreck the economy and ring up $10 trillion in debt? The answer is that it doesn't make sense and never did. The Bush class has not only been crushing the poor and middle class, they've been spending their inheritance. Screw you, junior!

The president-elects background put lie to any notion of an American aristocracy. As much as 'King' George Bush tried to install one, Americans have rejected the notion along with the faux royalty.

We also got proof positive for all time that "Trickle-down economics" is a lie and a failure. It was a lie and a failure when Reagan tried it, and its even more so today. It sold the snake oil idea that as the rich and corporations were given more tax cuts, they would spend and invest the money so it would "Trickle Down" to the poor and middle class. It was tried over years at the highest level of government. The executive and legislative bodies both embraced it under iron-fisted Repub rule - and it destroyed the place. It was always the happy-face mask on the serial killer of "Starve the Beast" economics. The Right Wing Extremists, as always, knew that they could never sell "Starve" so they sold the gentle-sounding "Trickle" instead.

Their idea has always been to give all the government cash away to the rich and to corporations (especially defense contractors) so that the "Beast" (the federal government) would be "Starved" (no money to spend on you poor plebeians out there, so government is forced to shrink). But the irony is that the "Starve" philosophy didn't even work on its own terms.

The core of greed and sloth that lives in all Rightists couldn't ever give up their free lunch. So when the taxes were cut and the Beast was getting hungry, they just started borrowing. And it was their borrowing that showed just was evil, soulless creatures they are. See, they have run up trillions of dollars of debt for war and 'Bridges to Nowhere' and just flat out gifts of greenbacks - not to mention foreign wars of choice. But not a dime for health care. Not a dime for food or jobs or single parents or day-care or the environment or infrastructure or anything else that the vast bulk of the country actually needs.

And then they killed hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East for no reason at all. I wish it were more complicated than that, but that's the whole thing: And then they killed hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East for no reason at all.

And if you listened to all their presidential candidates - not just McCain, but the whole nasty lot of them - what were they saying? "More tax cuts." "Less regulation." "Wars are good and were needed."

No. No. No no no no. No more. No more insanity dressed up in the robes of power. No more Supreme Court Justices who see no limits to the Executive (somehow unable to fathom Article II despite their many years on the bench). No more TORTURE! No more rendition! No more thugs dressed up as Americans doing horrible things around the globe in my name and yours. No more!

I remember reading an interview several years ago with a Special Forces General (before Bush ruined our military with over-use and by promoting the highest ranks politically). He said (and I paraphrase) 'to kill bin Laden, what we should have done was drop a four-man Delta Force team into Tora Bora. They would have either killed him or we wouldn't have heard from them again, and would have tried again when we had better intel.'

I read that and thought: 'that's the America I used to know - canny, capable. Using force wisely and only applying what we need to get the job done. Even knowing what the job is.' Have we known what the 'job is' in Afghanistan? In Iraq?

The change we need is to go back to being the one who's canny and clever and capable, not the mean drunk falling over tables and chucking drinks into our friends faces.

Let the Obama era begin!