Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Cry For Mark Sanford, Argentina

It's a shame we can't afford to let up on the Republican Party because it's really looking bad right now. In two quick weeks, two major figures in the GOP have had to go before the media and apologize to their families, their constituents and anyone else who may have been offended over their (gasp) marital transgressions.

First it was Senator John Ensign of Nevada, considered by some conservatives to be a rising star. He didn't come clean with the public out of some epiphany; he was at the brink of being extorted by the husband of the woman with whom he had been cheating on his wife.

This week, it's South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who went AWOL for several days without anyone actually knowing where he was. After several stalls and clinches, his office told the press a genuine whopper, saying he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail (all by himself).

It turns out he was actually in Argentina, of all places, wrapping up what he said was a year-long affair with a mistress named Maria in Buenos Aires. He went through the stock speech and then some, even muttering something about "God's law". It would have been sad if it weren't so hilarious.

Once upon a time, the Democrats were known for being the womanizers in politics, starting with those (wink, nod) Kennedy boys. Then Gary Hart got his picture taken at a marina with Donna Rice on his lap. This all came to a head - I'm so sorry - with Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky and continues to this day with the likes of John Edwards and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

However, shortly after they ascended to prominence, Republicans began losing control of themselves. The dalliances of such notables as Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani went largely unnoticed even though both lost their marriages as a result. In the last few years, though, things have gotten very wierd in right-wing circles... They seem to be embracing diversity.

Mark Foley, after all, was hot for teenage male interns. Makes you squirm, doesn't it? Larry Craig's offense makes you even more uncomfortable than that. David Vitter, like Spitzer, was into prostitutes. The common thread among Vitter, Craig, Ensign and Sanford is that they all had plenty of moral high ground to stand on when Clinton was the target of their outrage.

The real difference between Republicans and Democrats in this regard is that Democrats have mostly had the decency to be ashamed of their actions. Gary Hart lost his political career. Spitzer resigned within hours of being exposed. Not a peep has been heard from Edwards.

In the Party of family values, there are no consequences, even for those who refuse to practice what they so forcefully preach. Sanford apologized but didn't resign. David Vitter, Larry Craig, John Ensign, those creeps are all still in office. Giuliani's a contender to be Governor of New York. Gingrich is hailed as a conservative guru and may be a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

As for Foley, he slunk away from public life, coming out of the closet in 2007 and forgetting all about doing the people's business in Washington. He was the only one with even the slightest shred of integrity.

pH 6.24.o9

Monday, June 22, 2009

Strapped

Another lawmaking session is under way in Arizona. Today, representatives from all across the state had a chance to show their stuff. Since Republicans hold a solid majority, they control the agenda, so one would expect to see some rock-ribbed conservative principles on display. Did we get that for which we bargained at the ballot box?

No. In fact, government got even more intrusive, and in sillier fashion than we could have imagined. As of this writing the law now states that children who are riding in motor vehicles must do so in the confines of a booster seat until the age of eight years old. Eight. (The mandatory booster seat age, until we were rescued, had been but five years.)

Two other bills were defeated in Arizona's Congress today. One would've outlawed smoking in the car with children present. The other would have made it illegal to text-message while driving. Neither of these, apparently, crossed that somehow-Reaganesque threshold of rugged individualism.

It surely cannot be easy, and for girls it was probably different, but think back to your childhood. Remember how cool you were at that age, how smart, how tough? Spitting, swearing, defending your mother's honor on the playground... Jumping off the swings at the highest possible point... Eating potato chips while chewing gum... Rock fights, stuff like that.

That kind of bravado was essential to our development, and it was magnified to stressful degrees anytime a bigger kid was around, an older kid who was admired and emulated. Good luck now, Junior:

"Daddy, can you take me and Jimmy to the movies?" Sure, Ethan. Get in your booster seat.

I'm told that Arizona is not the most draconian state in this regard. Some places want to keep kids in automotive highchairs until the age of twelve; I can't see that happening. When we were twelve, we weren't listening to anything our parents said, and that was back in the day when we had corporal punishment to consider.

One kid in my neighborhood, Ron Ludwig, was shaving when he was twelve years old. Booster seat? Why? To keep him upright after he's had a few?

Everybody knows what this really is. It's a way for the state to collect more money, in the form of fines, which is a below-radar way for Republicans to raise taxes on working families. That'd be a hard ticket for a cop to write, though, since children generally aren't required to carry identification.

Just claim your offspring to be age nine, no matter how small he or she might be. You can always say that the child's growth was stunted, you know, from you smoking in the car.

pH 6.22.o9

Friday, June 19, 2009

... And Then There Are California Democrats

Just when folks thought it was safe to like Democrats again, Barbara Boxer reared her extraordinarily large head and blew that fantasy away, simply by being herself. Anyone who pays even cursory attention to current events has probably seen this, but for those who haven't, enjoy this link:

http://www.mydesert.com/article/20090618/NEWS01/90618024/-1/rss

While it isn't interesting enough to delve too deeply into the subject matter, Ms. Boxer was speaking with a gentleman from the Army Corps of Engineers who happens to be a Brigadier General. He was using accepted nomenclature by addressing the Senator as "ma'am", but that wasn't good enough for her. Ugh.

There probably isn't a lot of variance to public opinion on this. Whether you support her or want to chastise her for what is obviously arrogance to the extreme, this is what makes our country great, the fact that I have her e-mail right here:

http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/email/policy.cfm?CFID=627618&CFTOKEN=98650408

Unfortunately, bad politicians are like dandelions in California; there's never just one or two. They range in degrees of badness, from Gary Condit to Duke Cunningham, who stack up well next to the ones who are most prominent in our current Congress.

Jane Harman is an excellent example. She voted for the Iraq war and is generally regarded as a hawk on Capitol Hill. She also voted for warrantless wiretapping (which only bothered her when such technology revealed her dealings with Israeli spies in the notorious AIPAC case). Last year she backed a bill that would authorize domestic use of military force.

Basically, she's a House clone of Dianne Feinstein, who - like Harman and Boxer - was elected in 1992 and has much the same resume (with a couple of defense contractor connections to boot). She only co-sponsored the original Patriot Act. 'Nuff said.

The elephant in the room might well be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, first elected in 1987, who may or may not have known about the Bush administration's Saddam-esque torture policies. Either way, she signed off on the thing, and that's the least of the cover she has provided that former regime's shady list of characters.

Perhaps the lowest of all California Democrats, though, is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. I know, the GOP still thinks he's a Republican, and while he's certainly not the only Republican who happens to be a shameless womanizer, I'd bet he's the only one with a union card in his wallet.

Whatever he is, he needs to get a better grip on California's economy, because when California sneezes the rest of the nation gets a cold. Right now they're so bad off that the rest of us are at risk of something more along the lines of the swine flu.

It's sad to think that this needs to be said to California Democrats, as if they were from South Carolina or West Virginia, because they should be more savvy than this. Memo to the Golden State: You can vote for, y'know, someone else.

pH 6.19.o9

Thursday, June 18, 2009

And Away She Goes

For a great many Arizonans there was but one silver lining to Barack Obama's stunning victory over John McCain last November: The new president took our Democratic governor with him to the White House.

Janet Napolitano had no problem getting elected, or re-elected, governor despite a clear advantage for Republicans in voter registration numbers in Arizona. It must have been those pesky Independents who turned the tide for her (twice).

While she did not govern as a liberal in the classic sense, she was still a Democrat, and her sheer presence in office was enough to curb the most rabid of conservative sensibilities in the state legislature. There was a tacit understanding that Janet's pro-business stance insulated her from becoming a target for the usual ideological attacks. Some on the left considered it a flaw, actually.

Now she serves as our nation's third Secretary of Homeland Security. One of her first acts as a federal employee was to issue a report saying, in a nutshell, that right-wing militant groups were growing in number and that violence was a likely prospect for our future. Republicans across the dial went ballistic.

They accused Napolitano of trying to "chill" freedom of expression and whatnot. They took umbrage with the perceived stereotype of the GOP as a bastion for Klansmen and the like... And then came the killing of a Wichita abortion doctor - while he was in church - followed by a deadly armed rampage at the Holocaust Museum in D.C., heinous crimes committed by conservative extremists.

Napolitano's prescience will be missed by all Arizona voters, and if she can keep her head above water, her blinders-off method of dealing with reality will serve the nation well. She certainly takes the notion of homeland security more seriously than either of her predecessors.

Her gubernatorial substitute, Jan Brewer, has already tilted the lance against her own Party with a couple of tax increases - something Janet studiously avoided. More recently, she had to file a lawsuit against the legislature for failing to forward to her the latest budget, in accordance with the state Constitution.

Brewer already seems tired of the gamesmanship that always goes on in Arizona (it seems we just don't pay our lawmakers enough) and isn't likely to run for office in 2010. Nobody knows what sort of fruit will be borne by the next electoral season. We have before us a blank canvas, a terrifying thing in any red state, to be sure.

As for Napolitano, she's already used to the potshots, and won't have the time to deal with such trivia anyhow. She'll be lucky if she can even get around to reforming our color-coded terror alert system. Hurricane season's just around the corner.

pH 6.18.o9

Friday, June 12, 2009

Politicians that Americans Want

As two of the Big Three U.S. automakers have slid into bankruptcy, drastically altering the domestic market forever, a dispute has arisen over "cars that Americans want." Conservatives seem to believe this means gas-guzzling trucks, SUVs and sports cars while most Democrats (certainly those in power today) think we'll all be better off in more fuel-efficient cars.

The Republican penchant for rugged individualism somehow translates into more pistons and more gallons of gasoline being burned per mile. But they also have emitted quite a bit of hot air talking about energy independence, which logically runs afoul of their hatred for "putt-putt" vehicles.

Asking them to make sense is foolish, since nobody has ever succeeded in deciphering their schizophrenic views, and voters have long since lost interest in trying. Therefore, only factual data is required to assess and answer this question, and there is plenty of that.

One needs only to review the top-ten selling cars in America. The vehicle most often purchased in the United States in 2008 was the Ford F-150 pickup truck. Solidly in second place was the Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck. With a nearly 50-50 split between rural and urban populations, that makes sense.

Only one domestic car made the grade, the Chevrolet Impala, a mid-size sedan which ranks eighth among cars sold in this country. Just one other pickup truck was listed - the Dodge Ram, ranked ninth. Only one SUV made the roster, at number ten, the Honda CR-V (one of the most fuel-efficient SUVs on the market).

The rest of the list reads like the index of Consumer Reports. Third is the Toyota Camry. Fourth is the Honda Accord. Fifth is the Toyota Corolla. Sixth is the Honda Civic. Seventh is the Nissan Altima. No matter who tells you what, those are the cars that the public wants.

The Big Three doesn't really make cars like those. When American automakers do put out fuel-efficient cars, those seem to lack in either real or perceived quality. It is worth noting, though, that two of Ford's econo-boxes are ranked among the top ten models sold in Europe.

When one looks at things with agenda-free glasses it becomes clear: Unwavering production of the vehicles that conservatives say Americans "want" put these once-mighty companies out of business. It's no surprise that similar defects in thinking have put the GOP in much the same position.

pH 6.12.o9