The Rake Magazine

At the risk of getting too self referential here, I'm going to recommend Brad Zellar's blog entry from yesterday.

It's about why his blog is the antithesis of this one. The editor and I are often fairly earnest here...in a Buck Turgidson sort of way. Brad, though, has defined his take perfectly. He's disgusted, or as a good friend of mine once said about a conference we were attending, "I thought I'd save time this year and come 'pre-disgusted'."

We've achieved a "pre-disgusted" state ourselves these days and admit that we only open the newspaper now to confirm our suspicions that the level of discussion on Republican key issues is not going to rise about the natural level of the whale shit that it is.

To wit:

this lovely addition to high mindedness by the same evil bastards who brought you the Swift Boat Liars for the Destruction of Kerry.

They are now after AARP for God's sake. My mother and father belong to AARP (admittedly mostly for the motel discounts) but I can assure you that Mom is probably not for gay marriage, and while my Dad doesn't give a damn what other people do in the privacy of their own justice of the peace's office, he certainly isn't against veterans. He is one, and not one of the guys like Bush who were maybe members of the Third Messkit Repair Batallion, if they got even that close to the shooting. He was a Ranger in WW II and has a big chunk out of one leg, a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts and the nightmares to prove it.

He was a life long Republican till Bush became President, but now says Bush is "the worst President of my lifetime...and I was alive when Hoover was President." Is he disgusted? You bet.

But is he disgusted with Bush? Not as much as he is with the morons who are letting him get away with it. You know who you are.

Please can I have some health insurance?

Representative Jim Ramstad gave us a good chuckle this morning in his Strib op-ed piece, "Too much at stake for continued partisan warfare."

He rattles off a litany of the nation's problems: social security, hungry children, crisis in public schools, out of control health care costs, national security, dependence on foreign oil, etc, and calls for a bipartisan effort to solve them. He goes on to say, "I'm not talking about singing "Kumbaya," holding hands on the Capitol steps."

Well, Jim, that's exactly what you are talking about. In case you haven't noticed, your party now controls both houses of congress and the White House. If your party were really in power for the good of the people as you see it, they could do all these things.

For example, they could raise the retirement age a squeak and eliminate the limit on the amount of income that is taxed for Social Security benefits. They could add to, rather than cut, poverty programs, especially for children. The party of Lincoln could establish a reasonable basic health care system for all Americans that would make our businesses more, not less, competitive internationally. You could put a tax on gasoline that would raise the price to somewhere near what the rest of the world pays, and use the income from that tax to repair roads and bridges and build a mass transit system that would use less gas. While you are at it, you could put a huge tax on gas guzzlers and require car manufacturers to increase their fleet mileage. You could pay for increased security measures where we really need it--around our ports and chemical plants--instead of sending seven times as much money per capita for increased security measures to Wyoming (home of Dick Cheney) than you do to New York.

I could go on, but you get the point, Jim. It's your party, firmly in the control of the DeLay wing, which is against all those things you say the country needs. They are the ones who want to cut taxes at the same time we're at war in order to starve the government enough to effectively repeal the New Deal.

Jim, if you really think these things need doing, you need to round up the few remaining moderates in your party and get together with some of the same from the Democratic side and get to work to wrest the power from those who simply want to destroy government.

Writing a polyannaish letter to the Strib ain't gonna cut it.

Image courtesy Nathan Walsh

Now that we know that President Bush smoked dope, I guess we can finally admit that we were in the room when some of that went on at our college, too. And, also because we now know the President has finally admitted to what we all knew anyway, I don't feel bad pointing you to High Times for this interview with Hunter S. Thompson, Mr. Gonzo himself, who is at least a bastard godfather to all journalists of my age. Thompson killed himself yesterday.

From the passage he wrote about looking down into the trunk of his Cadillac which was stuffed full of marijuana, LSD, mushrooms, uppers, downers, and a tank of ether, and figured "with careful rationing, I could make it through the weekend," to last week's report of him and Bill Murray driving golf balls then shooting them like skeet, Thompson was bigger than the rest of us who merely wrote about stuff other people did. "Living large" was a phrase invented for him.

He wrote a lot of great stuff, and a lot of crap, too. We certainly remember Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas from college...it's maybe the only thing we remember from college. But, while that was all in good fun, what we really remember was his essay, which amounted to an endorsement, of then Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, after he heard Carter give a speech at the U of Georgia on Law Day 1974.

Thompson was drinking Wild Turkey at the luncheon, while everyone else was sipping that overly sweet Southern ice tea. I can't find the piece he wrote on the internet, but it's in his book The Great Shark Hunt. That piece, as much as any, except maybe All The President's Men, made me pick up the typewriter. I had to do a lot of typing one handed because it took me a while longer to remember to put down the Wild Turkey.

Drug addled though he may have been, Thompson set a standard for truth telling in his journalism that is rarely matched today. (My favorite example: "There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until you've followed him around for a while.")

Maybe his epic battles with the likes of Richard Nixon left him with less to fear than journalists have today. As far as I know, he didn't face jail when he crossed some lines, unlike Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper do today. But then, Nixon was a complete amateur at dealing with the press, when compared to that old dope smoker George W. Bush. If only Nixon had thought of populating the White House press corps with gay prostitutes, maybe things would have gone easier for him.

I wish Thompson could have held off his own demons long enough to write about hot military studs in the White House. I would have paid to read his thoughts on something so weird even he couldn't have made it up.

Every time I look at my Time Warner bill and wonder why I'm paying so much for so little I think of Groucho's advice: "I find TV very educational. When someone turns it on, I go into the other room and read a good book." It's not that easy though. I'm as dumb as the next guy, and when the damn thing turns itself on (I've got to quit sitting on the remote) I tend to just sit there and take it in.

It's not really that bad. I used to like West Wing, and I do like the Sopranos and the movies on Turner Classics, but every time I really think of pitching the box out the window I begin to worry that I'm going to miss an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher.

If you haven't seen Real Time, or you don't remember when Bill used to have a show on ABC before he said something Ari Fleischer didn't approve of, here's a sample of why it's so good from today's LA Times.

The new season of Real Time starts tonight at 10 on HBO. If you call right now, I'm sure they can add HBO to your package. While you're on the phone, ask them if it's any cheaper if you can drop the Fox News Channel.

The Strib did a nice job last Sunday in their Op-Ex section on immigrants.

Some views from both sides, including some of their own pieces and the obligatory screed from the Center of the American Experiment. (Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a link to the series, so you'll have to dig the section out of the recycling pile if you want to reread it.)

Included in the section was a very short sidebar written by two religious leaders: Evangelical pastor H. Gene Follis from Rochester and Catholic Bishop Harry Flynn from St. Paul.

You should read it yourselves and make your own judgments about which iteration of Christianity attracts you, but I want to comment on one thing Follis said. He argues that big government, and its taxes, hinder his brand of Christians' ability to give to the poor. The government, he says, is taking too much of the money that Christians would otherwise willingly turn over to their less fortunate brothers.

He goes on to say, "America's founding fathers predicted that a democracy without a strongly biblical/moral foundation will spawn a growing percentage of the people voting in favor of their own maintenance..."

Now aside from this putting anyone who's in favor of using tax money to help the poor firmly in the not biblical/moral camp, he now also seems to shove those who vote in favor of their own interest over there, too.

So, keep that in mind the next time you vote. You can vote for the candidate who promises to lower your taxes, but only if you promise to give every penny of what you get back to people in need. Otherwise, I guess we'll be seeing you in hell along with Bishop Flynn and all the other Democrats.