The Non Union News

I was so disoriented when I began to watch the coverage of the GOP convention on Tuesday night that I might have gotten the whole thing wrong. Although the TV was on I was in the other room and couldn't see the picture, so when I heard a shrill woman's voice saying "Two thousand years ago a man said, 'I have come to give life and to give it in full.' In this country I have the freedom to call that man Lord, and I do," I thought my cat, who absolutely hates it when I watch politics on the tube because I invariably shout at the screen and it scares the bejeezus out of her, might have been fiddling with the remote again and somehow gotten the History Channel showing a documentary about The Crusades or perhaps the English Civil War. But silly me! It was actually Sen. Elizabeth Dole (yes, the wife of Bob, he who believes that unless you come back from battle crippled and needing permanent disability your Purple Heart doesn't count, though certain triple amputees seem to be an exception to this rule) extolling the imaginary virtues of the man she thinks ought to continue (like some demented Christian cersion of al Sadr) to occupy the White House (otherwise soon to be known as Theocracy’s Most Holy Shrine.)

Dole went on, and my heart nearly stopped when I heard her say, "Your road has not been easy; your burden has not been light; yet you have displayed the peace that surpasses all understanding." Now call me a simple-minded, plain spoken wanna-be Republican, but I am thinking, "Who in the blazes is she talking about now?" Turns out she was talking about George Bush. I am thinking, "Did she get that right? Doesn't she mean the 'ignorant arrogance that surpasses all understanding?'"

Well, she thought she was putting one over on me, speaking in code like that, but I immediately went to my Bible see just where she had stolen that line from. Turns out to be Philippians 4:7, (though she resisted using the King James version which would have cued her non-God-bothering listeners that she was quoting scripture), and anyway she dropped off the most interesting parts of the verse, (which would anyway have echoed silently in the skulls of those who were in on the joke: "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." I seriously wonder if there has been a more egregious diminution of the content and value of the Bible than her bestowing on George Bush the blessings of a deity with whom George Bush may very well have a personal relationship but only as the badly inbred third cousin that everyone else in the family probably refers to as "that dufus."

Dole went on to beat the drum for the gathered zealots on such noble expressions of Christian faith as exclusively heterosexual marriage, elimination of reproductive rights, the divinity of the soul (though this may not apply to everyone's), etc. I am constantly amazed that for all the much vaunted affinity of conservative values with those of the "Founding Fathers", the religious vanguard within the GOP seem unable to grasp that there really were sound reasons why the Fathers did not make Deuteronomy the 12th Amendment and Leviticus the 13th, and that their wisdom in this should be allowed to stand no matter how desperate Republicans are to prevail in this (or any other) election, and no matter how much money they can raise by pandering to those mightily self-righteous folk who think that Khomeini had it about right when he installed Religion above the Rights of Man in Iran, (even though he was tragically deluded about which was the True Faith.)

Towards the end of her little talk Elizabeth Dole offered that "The last century was known as the 'American Century.' […] We are now in the earliest years of a new century writing another chapter in American history."

Now here is finally something I can agree with. No truer statement has ever been uttered.

No, the mainstream (oh, excuse me, I mean the “elite”) press is not mentioning it due to their notorious liberal bias, but the GOP convention in New York kicked off in a truly unexpected manner yesterday with an upbeat tribute to John Kerry.

Yes, I said “John Kerry”.

Broadcast from the deck of the USS Intrepid (a WWII-era aircraft carrier permanently moored off the west coast of Manhattan), the GOP’s “paean to veterans” featured speakers as varied as Rip Torn and GHW Bush, not to mention some “real people” veterans who were trotted out to show the party is in touch with the common man. I couldn’t help but see the whole thing as a belated attempt to undo the damage the Bush campaign has done to their standing among veterans by their smear campaign on Kerry’s Vietnam service and on the veracity of every veteran who supports him, including the chain-of-command types that recommended him for and approved his various decorations. Of course it surprised me that the Republicans would devote expensive airtime to remedying the damage their lies and innuendoes caused, but I thought, hey, this is the “extreme makeover” GOP that has no right-wing nut jobs or faux-pious moral pygmies or anti-government troglodytes in it anymore...

As soon as this little set piece was over the coverage switched back to the floor of Madison Square Garden where Sen. John McCain appeared on stage and immediately evoked Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech from his 1936 renomination convention (also thought to be a time of war, though in that case “a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization”, the repudiation of which the GOP has spent their every energy in the years since), claiming that Republicans, too, (and maybe the rest of us, if we are nice) have a “rendezvous with destiny”. It is interesting that this phrase was earlier borrowed by another Republican non-candidate – Ronald Reagan supporting Barry Goldwater in a speech televised nationwide one week before the 1964 presidential election. Last night, though, veteran maverick McCain, a man whose purported honesty and inability to abide bullshit made him the scourge of his own party, humbled himself to sing the praises of one of the emptiest shirts and most bald-faced liars to ever grace the highest office in the land. It was a profoundly sad moment.

Yes, it is true that McCain is now 68, is plagued by a continuing battle with cancer, and therefore has no hope of being a viable candidate for naught-eight. But to see him cave in to the small and angry group of pinheads running his party and ruining the country, (if we are to believe anything he said in his several runs at the presidency in the last decade) was as uncharming a thing as I have seen in the politics of this or any other country. But, hey, eating crow is the cost of a place on the stage, apparently, and as uncomfortable as McCain appeared, he managed to keep his meal down even while he intoned the absurd claim that for veterans “the world belongs to you and no one can take it away from you,” unless, of course, you happen to be the political opponent of The Great Uniter.

I know that expecting honesty, principles, or courage from politicians – of either party – marks me out as hopelessly naïve. So I also know that trying to complain about a politician throwing away public regard for his integrity in exchange for the privilege of getting to speak to the convention in primetime will also seem juvenile, yet McCain is a genuine hero and a person who has earned his reputation for plain speaking the hard way – by plain speaking. To see him lower himself to the level of the craven dufus in the White House is heartwrenching.

Anyway, after McCain finished with HIS praise of Kerry and other veterans, the former mayor of New York, Rudy Giulliani, got up and spent his last penny of well-deserved repute for even less gain than McCain got, but then he had less to spend to begin with.

Giulliani joked, exaggerated and lied through more than 40 minutes of fulsome, even absurd, praise of George Bush, throwing in any number of pointless and even pathetic jabs at Kerry along the way (sounding the first negative notes of the evening). Since he no longer has (if he ever had) a chance at national elective office – though a second term for Bush certainly offers the hope of an appointment of some kind for him, perhaps in the Ministry of Buffoonery – Giulliani simply frittered away the time avoiding the real issue of why nothing he said could make out of George Bush a man half as interesting or real as McCain, or even Kerry.

Of course, to the red meat-eating crowd at the Garden, none of this mattered; they would have whooped and hollered and cheered themselves hoarse if a chicken had squawked. Tonight they will be like putty in the gigantic hands of Arnold, whose charming accent and steroid-addled brain will no doubt whip the loyal masses into even higher states of hysterical simplicity.

The story that got buried here, but that was waiting for me on rising this morning was that Bush has now admitted that the so-called “war on terror” cannot be won (in the same seven-day period that he admitted that his administration had gotten completely wrong the situation in Iraq after the statue came down - something else that the notoriously liberal-dominated press seemed to not notice at all).

Somebody managed to ask Mayor Giulliani about Bush’s admission first thing today, and, predictably, he claimed that Bush had been misunderstood, that his comments were taken out of context, and that what Bush meant was that OF COURSE the war on terror could be won but that it would be a long struggle. The White House mouthpiece Scott “Beam me out of here” McClellan simply stated that “there are some out there that are intent on trying to create a false perception” (like the president himself, maybe?)

What Bush actually said when asked about the war on terror in a one-on-one television interview was: "I don't think you can win it." He went on to say, "I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."

Now I know it is hard to always tell exactly what a famously no-nonsense, plain-spoken person like Mr Bush means when he says something, but personally I think this is the other shoe that we have been waiting to drop since he admitted for the first time just the other day that his administration is not infallible. Finally, within about 24 hours’ time, the GOP has praised the Democrat candidate (and his fellow veterans) to the stars for their selfless and heroic service to their country, and then the GOP candidate has gone the extra mile to admit that the Democrat (and the Europeans) were more correct in their analysis that military victory over terrorism is impossible (it may take him bit longer to admit what was obvious from day one, that if you pick the wrong enemy and then completely screw up the execution of your attack, the military option is actually a counter-productive pursuit.

I can’t tell you how relieved I am, nonetheless.

I can hardly wait for the last and crowning concession to the Democrats this week when Sen. Zell Miller (Democrat from Georgia), the same man who introduced Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic Convention, (ALSO in New York), and who almost became Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, will deliver the keynote speech at the GOP convention on Wednesday. The cartoonish Sen. Miller explains his (apparently chronic) Democrat ‘flip flop” by saying that 9/11 changed everything. Apparently so; it even changed some people’s ability to maintain their integrity against even the most venal and petty temptations.

"It was only in the last few days, down at the ranch, that the president began to think that the public wasn't getting the right impression about our cooperation with the commission," one of Mr. Bush's most influential advisers, Dan Bartlett, his director of communications, said Tuesday. (NYT, 31 March 04)

I THINK Mr Bartlett is quite wrong. The Bush refusal to allow her to testify was very clearly understood by the majority of people in this country - conservative and otherwise - who were paying attention to the hearings at all; Bush was hoping the whole thing would blow away and he could get back to lying about the economy and the "war on terror" with impunity. He thought sending Ms. Rice down there would only fuel the fire (since, although she is very good talking off the cuff, she would undoubtedly have to equivocate and avoid and this would only provide more leverage for that pesky press). And he was right. And NOW it will be doubly so; the 1000 words she will have to use to answer every 100 of Clarke's will be mostly quickly forgotten while at least 1 in 10 of Clarke's will still be potent in November.

Of course we should not misunderestimate the capacity of the Democrats to fail to capitalize on the fact that FINALLY the central flaw in plot for a New American Century has been exposed as a patent lie - that there is or was any connection at all between the REAL "war on terror" and the neo-con's passion for invading Iraq no matter the cost., and that prusing this chimera has undermined the REAL struggle facing us all.

And just to be fair, contrary to the claims of wanting to protect some inviolate principle of "executive privilege", the fact is that the well-established precedent is that if members of the presidential staff VOLUNTARILY submit to questioning by a congressional committee then there is no precedent established that could possibly be used to FORCE future staff to testify. Of course, it might have gotten ugly and the committee might have found itself sending Ms. Rice a subpoena, and then the whole issue might have ended up in front of one of those notorious "renegade judges" that seem to be vexing the conservatives in this country, and then WHO KNOWS what might have happened...

Bush's refusal was a simple political blunder, typical of a paranoid and jealously secretive administration, and now that he has reversed himself, Ms Rice will have the opportunity to spin her own version of the events that have been laid out by Clarke and others. Let the sparks fly!

I know many of you will be glad to hear that the US is now going to get help from a friendly Muslim nation in the Middle East on the little task of creating a democracy in Iraq. Yes, not only the Turkish cabinet but the Turkish parliament as well have agreed to send up to 10,000 troops as long as the US offers Turkey $8.5 billion in loans (a nice compromise from the $10 B in grants and $20 B in loans the Turks had asked for in March just for passage of US troops, and the $6 B the US had offered then.)

Anyway, you might also have noticed that the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC, otherwise known as the local board of advisors) has rather turned their collective noses up at the idea of the Ottoman overlords returning to the land they were kicked out of by the British in 1918. What a surprise, you might be thinking. Well, not really. After all, Turkish troops have as recently as July 2003 been apprehended by the Americans plotting to kill a leading Kurdish politician in northern Iraq, and during the "war" they tried to smuggle arms into the country for Turkic militants. It is little wonder that the IGC Cabinet, with its five Kurdish members, has balked at opening the doors to the Turks just because Paul Bremer thinks it is a good idea. It would seem that the occupation is quite a bit more "Father Knows Best" than it is "This Is Your Life"...

In the meantime, Condoleeza Rice's remarks in Chicago indicate that it might not really be all that long before our Iraqi friends, whoever they might exactly be, are living in a kind of shabby Palm Springs writ very very large.

Ok, ok. Certain people have already begun to gloat now that the circus of California politics has exchanged the fool (for losing the support even of the partisan voters in his own party) they had elected for the clown (for having a platform that consists solely of lines from his movies) that won yesterday’s election (forget for the moment that half the as yet uncounted absentee ballots trump the total vote difference between the two candidates).

Who can blame these gloaters? They have to get their jollies NOW before The Governator starts making HIS OWN series of voter-alienating errors and omissions; before they, like those of us who had enough sense to vote against the recall, start suffering under the steroid-stuffed joke that now lurks ominously over us.

Bitterness you say? Yes, but not at the victory of the cardboard-cutout stand-in for the Pete Wilson apparatus that was replaced by Davis in 1998. No, I would happily have voted for a REAL candidate of EITHER party that might have actually brought something besides celebrity or mere party affiliation to the table (think Richard Riordan, for instance).

No, my bitterness is about the fools that we have certainly become to allow ourselves to be tricked into thinking a bought-and-paid-for recall "movement" represents "grass roots democracy" (for the populists among us), or that Arnie is Ronnie (for the Republicans among us), or that the failure of the California Democratic machine to deliver what the citizens of California wanted despite being in control of virtually all the levers of state government is somehow the fault of the Republicans (for those few remaining Democrats among us). No matter how bad it gets over the next two-plus years, my mantra is going to remain: it could have been Stallone. Hell, it COULD have been Suzanne Somers...

There is really no point in remaining quiet any longer about the imminent threat posed to the world's fifth largest economy (otherwise known as California) by the possible election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor.

Leaving aside the pathetic performance of Mr Davis (who is guilty of unforgivably alienating his own Democratic base even if he is innocent of almost all else that the Republicans accuse), and even leaving aside the pathetic performance of Cruz Bustamante (who quite failed to appear even half the man that Arianna Huffington was in the debate), you are still left with the not just pathetic, but truly tragic electoral option represented by Schwarzenegger.

It is of course fitting that California be within a hair’s breadth of electing a person about whom they know absolutely nothing other than the sort of characters he plays in movies. But why should this bother anyone? Schwarzenegger has given virtually no press conferences or even interviews to the mainstream press. Instead he has depended on his friends in the entertainment media (Oprah, Entertainment Tonight and Inside Edition) to get his message across. This is the most brilliant stroke of all. Clearly his handlers know that his constituent base is substantially made up of people who ALREADY get their news from these sources and don’t find anything odd about deciding who to vote for after hearing the star (I mean candidate) of their choice field a couple of powderpuff questions from reporters who must be nice to stars in order to keep access to their bread and butter. But after a born Democrat member of the Kennedy family declared him to be “the most selfless public servant I have ever known”, what more do we need to know? That he has never been a public servant? That his selflessness extends entirely to implementing the wishes of his Pete Wilson-era millionaire backers? Pah!

But forget all that. If Schwarzenegger was not a major entertainment personality he would just have been another putz from among the 135 wannabees who are chasing Davis’s job. Voting for him is like shooting into the pitch black room where your family and friends are tied up and hoping that you hit the light switch rather than one of them. But hey; it might have been Stallone….

Just so you can say you heard it here first you should know that there is going to be a new spin on the insane whirligig of why the Bush administration invaded Iraq in March of this year. Yes, it’s true. Earlier this evening on the bizarre yet vaguely entertaining McLaughlin Group show on PBS Lawrence Kudlow, conservative economist and former Reagan administration official and Bush-Cheney transition team member, invited us all to consider the following as fact: Bush and his minions had not claimed that Iraq represented an immediate threat to the United States, its interests, or allies, and therefore the US must immediately invade that country, but rather they had claimed that the president had said that the US had to invade Iraq in order to PREVENT Iraq from becoming an immediate threat to the US, its interests, or allies. The first person who hears someone besides me or Mr. Kudlow say this in the public media is entitled to a glass of wine at my expense.