Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie

I thought: if Congress can take a vacation for the month of August, I can too. Except, as I hope you noticed, I came in on Mondays.

This August there were five Mondays. On some of them, it was almost too steamy to get hot under the collar about anything. Almost.

Spinoza’s dictum that “Nature abhors a vacuum” wasn’t an invitation to Rush to fill the void. When Nietzsche postulated, “Man is something to be surpassed,” he meant without DeLay, two-step or goosestep notwithstanding.

In the pulpits, we have men of God who preach hatred of God’s people, but hate only some of them. God isn’t omniscient, it's a homophobic Arizona pastor who fulminates about gays in the ministry and advocates death to the President of the United States who is—and can cite 30 verses in the Bible why God hates everybody.

In communities throughout the country, the golden rule is the Second Amendment and proper schooling is aiming and firing a rifle. These schools are never out for recess.

And in the Capital, we have a majority party that always seems to be in retreat—even when its members are away on vacation—and a minority party for whom a national conversation is “No.”

Rank-and-file members of the current House and Senate pay themselves $174,000 annually. That’s $14,500 a month, including the month of August, when they don’t have to show up for work at all! Leadership receives $193,400 annually and the Speaker of the House, $223,500. (All are entitled to an annual cost-of-living-adjustment.) I don’t want to begin to tell you what kind of month I’ve had. But this being the last dog day of August, I’m letting sleeping dogs lie and laying low.

Now Let Me Get This Straight

This is me at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, trying to see Russia.

Let me get this straight. Sarah Palin can parade her progeny over the flat screens of America without anyone noticing her family is comically dysfunctional. She can be a soccer mom with a ready sucker punch, but a succor-seeking simp when anyone else strikes. She can see Russia from Alaska, but can’t see how in over her head she is.

IF I understand Rush Limbaugh—and please note that’s a big IF—he holds President Obama responsible for South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s infidelity. That’s right, yesterday’s Gospel According to Rush is: if the President had been handling the economy better, and if, according (I think) to Rush, the governor hadn’t gone through the strain of having to turn down the federal stimulus money he was offered for his state, he wouldn’t have two-timed his wife with his Argentine Inamorata. I get it, Rush—it was principle over principal! So how is it, I want to ask, that Mark Sanford can turn down 700 million dollars for his state, but can’t turn down a piece of ass?

So let me get this straight. The Party of NO, formerly known as the party of “family values” (mostly to itself), can say no to everything but extra-marital sex. “Just Say No”—to all vices, as Nancy Reagan would have it—only pertains to Democratic legislation these days.

I’m trying to sort this out. Republicans are angry because they had unchecked power for eight years, abused it, and left the world much worse off than the way they found it. They’re offensively on the offensive because they’re defensive because they were misgoverned by the world’s most narcissistic, elite left-behind child, a president who didn’t really want to preside over anything but the workouts he blithely put before work, and through thick and thin mostly went AWOL on his country.

Now let me try to get this straight. George W. Bush, a man whose most complete sentences end in non sequiturs, is writing a book. Will he go absent without leave by Chapter Two? I try to get into W’s head to imagine who could edit such a book, and… By George, I’ve got it!—Brownie could do a heck of a job!

And while we’re all waiting to see that book:

If I understand anything, Newt Gingrich is cagily running for president; Mitt Romney is blatantly running for president again!; and Dick Cheney is running off at the mouth again and again. Karl Rove is running in place; Tom Delay is running to find a place; and ill will is running rampant. McCain is running down; Ensign, Craig and Vitter are running on empty; and Sanford will be running for cover.

Does all of the above conveniently exclude Democrats? Not in the least. The distinction is that all of the above includes hypocrites—sanctimonious phonies getting away with hiding in glass houses far too long while hurtling stones wrapped in mock morality and bound with those disingenuous family values.

I intend to continue working on getting it straight.

photo: Amy F.J. Stone