The Root of All Evil

I'm sure you can guess from the title what this entry will be about... money. It's an integral part of our daily lives, we can't live without it, we talk about it a lot (I, probably, more than others). It dominates the news, whether it's what's going on over on Wall Street or Capitol Hill. Lately, a couple of major news items have grabbed my attention, and I felt the need to sound off on them, because in a way they are linked.

First is the bigger news story of the day, that being the showdown between Congress and the president over funding for the war in Iraq. First of all, I'm disappointed that we even have to vote on another supplemental spending bill for this war, considering the president and his advisors were moving toward not using supplemental spending anymore, which would help reduce the deficit. But here we are, and Democrats created a political firestorm by first attaching a ton of pork to the bill, then of course adding a withdrawal timeline that says chapter and verse when our troops have to leave Iraq. I'm not really surprised that the Democrats added unnecessary earmarks to this bill, as spending our money like it's water is what they do best. They even considered going back on their campaign pledge to force itemization of earmarks that would be made public knowledge; after all, now that THEY are spending the money, why would they want the voters to know what THEY are doing? Thankfully, when Republicans called them on it, they backed off. However, they are complicit in this mess, too, especially our local representative, Mr. Walsh. His point of view on the whole mess with this spending bill is that he just hopes the pork that affects New York will stay in place no matter what bill goes to the president that he will sign. Thanks for standing up for fiscal discipline.

Of course, the real focus is on the withdrawal timeline, which is everything the Republicans say it is... a schedule for al-Qaida and the insurgency, dates for them to mark on their calendar to which they can just count down the days. Muqtada al-Sadr makes increasingly inflammatory statements from his hidey-hole in Iran but doesn't command his Mahdi Army to rise up against us? Wonder why? Simple. It's because he's WAITING FOR US TO LEAVE. Not only that, but I'm sure he's making these statements to increase the feeling among the anti-war crowd in this country that we are not wanted in Iraq. Then when we leave, al-Sadr comes marching back into Iraq to lead his Mahdi Army against the government... with Iran's Revolutionary Guard right behind him. They will then team up to commit massive genocide against the Sunnis, and any remaining Americans. The Republicans know this, and some have even taken to referring to it as a "surrender timeline."

Once again, the Democrats are playing politics with the war, saying over and over again that the people put them in power to pull our troops out. The REAL reason that the Democrats are in power, that being the Republicans propensity to get themselves in scandals (Tom DeLay and Mark Foley, anyone?), has long been forgotten, another victim of the Democrats ability to dupe people into believing the "big lie." This money is needed by our troops in the field. Remember the constant criticism of Democrats that our troops were ill-equipped and not well-protected for what they are facing? Well, I guess the Democrats are hoping you forget that too, because the longer they drag this out, the more ill-equipped and not well-protected our troops are, and then Don Rumsfeld's words really start to ring true: "You go to war with the army you have, not the one you want to have." Or in this case, you go to war with the army Congress lets you have.

How is this supporting the troops? All we've heard from the Democrats is how they DO support the troops but want them out. Withholding the money they need so you can make your point about bailing out of Iraq is in NO WAY supporting the troops. And then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulls off this foot-in-mouth moment: "This war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything." Thanks, Harry. Thus confirming what we've known all along, that the Democrats' ultimate "big lie" to sell on the American people is that we've lost the war. As in past tense. Over. Naturally, the liberal bloggers immediately started doing their part, using such untrue rhetoric as "the overwhelming majority of Americans already know" the war is lost.

Well, the House and Senate, on party-line votes, rammed their withdrawal demands through and shortly this will go to the Oval Office, where it will promptly be vetoed. The Democrats are already planning their next move; Rep. John Murtha yesterday became the first high-profile Democrat to threaten President Bush with the "i-word." That's right: impeachment. As in, if Bush does not sign a withdrawal bill, the House will move to impeach him. I'm sure the 23% Crowd promptly went orgasmic. I will once again throw water on these people with this simple two-word question: "FOR WHAT?" You CANNOT impeach a president just because he won't roll over and kow-tow to Congress. You say the American people elected you to force withdrawal on the president? Well, the same American people elected the president to a 4-year term in 2004, during which he is to act in the way he feels is best for the country. They didn't elect Bush to 2 years of doing what he thinks is right and 2 years of deferring to Congress. Unfortunately, this is what I knew would happen last fall if the Democrats won control of the Congress; they would continue the practice of using impeachment not in the way that the Founding Fathers intended it to be (to remove a president who commits the most damaging of crimes to this country), but as a political tool used to "get" the opposition. After all the talk of bringing the country together and working together that proved to be nothing but hot air, some Democrats are now moving to further divide the country and possibly cause irreparable damage to our system of government.

Meanwhile, another money issue is threatening to further distort our Constitution. This one is currently in front of the Supreme Court, a challenge to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act. The anti-abortion group Wisconsin Right to Life ran 3 ads during the 2004 campaign, urging Wisconsin residents to persuade Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl not to filibuster Bush's conservative judge nominees. Feingold, of course, co-authored the campaign-finance law. Even though the ads didn't say "defeat Feingold", they did urge listeners to check out a Wisconsin Right to Life Web site... which advocated voting for Feingold's opponent. If you read my last entry, you know what I think of these ads. Anyway, these ads ran during a "blackout period", where special interests are not allowed to air such ads, and the group said that this was an abridgement of their right to free speech. This is a view shared by most conservative Republicans, who believe that money equals speech, and that by denying a group the ability to spend money on an ad, you are stopping their right to make their views known.

(WARNING: I am going to trash Republicans... this is both for those of you who may be Democrats and think I never do this, and for those of you who may be Republicans and will get upset that I'm doing this)

This view is COMPLETELY WRONG. Where in the First Amendment does it say ANYTHING about money? The problem with this view is that by saying that money equals speech, you're saying that the more money you have, the more speech you can make, and that for someone like me, who just doesn't have the funds to make much of a political contribution, my views don't matter. This goes against everything the Founders stood for when they made the case for a Bill of Rights. Conservatives are so stubborn in saying that the Constitution says what it says and that meanings cannot be reinterpreted, and yet they are basically asking the Supreme Court, which is now a little more tilted philosophically in their direction, to reinterpret the First Amendment away from the pretty straightforward language with which it was written. Now I know the Founders never foresaw the runaway campaign spending we have today but I'm pretty sure they would want everyone's voice to be heard, as much now as back then. They didn't want a system run by the well-heeled aristocracy like in Europe; they wanted a system in which everyone is equal (ahem, Declaration of Independence, ahem). You think it's bad now? Just watch how bad it gets if campaign finance reform gets thrown out as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, it could lead to a presidential election SO down and dirty, so driven by the almighty dollar, that it may turn many in this country off to voting PERMANENTLY.

Of course, the Democrats are doing my side no favors here, even though most of them were for McCain-Feingold (there ya go, I'm back on the Democrats again, you can all breathe easy), and this is where these two stories are linked. How can you be against money equaling speech, yet make your case for pulling our troops out of Iraq by DENYING them funds? Essentially, what the Democrats are doing with this spending stalemate is forcing a situation where they only spend the money if their point of view is not only heard, but accepted, which can easily be seen by those who are against campaign finance reform as being a situation where money equals speech. Whether you follow my twisted logic or not, you can see that what is going on right now really concerns me, and really makes me afraid of what it seems we're headed for.

The Endless Election

Maybe it's the thrill of competition. Maybe it's the ongoing struggle that the right and the left insist on putting us all through. Perhaps being a political junkie is such an overpowering addiction that during the "downtime" between elections, they just don't know what to do with themselves; they just need that fix. Maybe that's why it seems like we are now ALWAYS in election season.

Now to be fair, there are always elections going on in this country; all localities don't adhere to the same time schedule. Just a few weeks ago, we had local elections for various villages here in the Syracuse area. However, on the national level, things at least took a break every other year (the odd-numbered years) before getting ramped up again for a presidential or congressional election. Those days, apparently, are behind us. Now we have daily coverage of a presidential campaign that is still over 18 months from being decided, and why not, because the primaries that decide the major parties' nominees are moving up earlier and earlier, from the spring into the winter months of 2008.

The way we decide on presidential nominees has certainly changed. Even 40 years ago, the Democratic and Republican conventions were exciting, contentious affairs where the nominee wasn't a sure thing going in. It used to take multiple votes for the parties' delegates to decide who would represent them in the November election. Now, the conventions are little more than a rubber stamp, a stage for more of the bluster and hot air that we've become all too used to in recent years. As a result, the major networks have dramatically reduced their amount of coverage of these conventions, and soon may not even bother with them at all. As for the primaries, they played out over a "season" of sorts, from New Hampshire's "first in the nation" affair in March to California in June, and week by week, the momentum shifted, front-runners changed, history took place.

Back in those days, you could take your time deciding if you wanted to run for president or not. President Lyndon Johnson even waited until after New Hampshire to make his call in 1968, vowing not to run on March 31st of that year. As late as 1992, Governor Mario Cuomo of New York kept us all guessing until the last minute about whether he would run, and only then did the real race for the Democratic nomination truly begin. Bill Clinton took the lead as winter turned to spring, but Gov. Jerry Brown of California gave him all he could handle for months afterward.

But oh, how times have changed. In 1999, I saw my political junkie roommate watching the Republican candidates debating that October, a full year-plus before the election, and 4 months before New Hampshire. That year, George W. Bush and Al Gore had sewn the nominations up by March. Four years later, John Kerry wrapped up the Democratic nomination in early March, after a dizzying few weeks that gave rise to the Howard Dean "scream", showing that you only need the early momentum to win all the needed delegates.

This time around, it gets worse... I don't know if it's "Bush fatigue", that being the desire by many in this country (myself included) for the sitting president's second term to fast-forward to the end, but the contest to see who would replace him was underway about 10 minutes after the midterm congressional elections ended. People seemed to announce their intentions because they HAD to; to wait a rational amount of time now means lost opportunities for fundraising and coverage time on the nightly network news. So here we are, in April 2007, with the presumed field of major party candidates long-since announced, not so much digesting as being force-fed news stories about fundraising totals and speeches and analysis about how a stance on an issue or a slow reaction to a news event could spell doom for a candidate 16 months before the nominating conventions. Hell, some in the media are already declaring John McCain's campaign dead and I'll bet a significant segment of voters DON'T EVEN KNOW HE'S RUNNING YET! Sure, some are hinting that John Kerry or Fred Thompson or even Al Gore may make a last-minute decision to throw their hats in the ring, but unless they then proceed to hit the lottery and win $100 million in campaign funds, they have NO SHOT.

And as for the primaries? Well, they are moving up as well, as states jockey for position. In recent years, larger states like New York and California grew upset about their lack of relevance in a system that seemed to decide the last couple go-rounds in Iowa, New Hampshire, and maybe South Carolina. So they all moved their primary dates up. However, New Hampshire HAS to be first, so they moved up too. Then the other states moved up again. The end result is that your primary schedule now reads thusly: the Iowa caucuses take place on January 14, 2008... barely after you've taken your Christmas decorations down. Then Nevada holds their caucuses on January 19, and New Hampshire will go after that, although they have yet to choose a date, and South Carolina will go shortly thereafter. Then on February 5th, no less than 30 STATES plan to hold their primaries. The ones who have yet to move onto this new so-called "National Primary Day" are feeling the pressure to move their late-February or early-March dates up in order to stay relevant.

So there you have it: it will all be over in about 3 weeks. Presumably, whomever wins Iowa and New Hampshire wins the nomination, as they will have the momentum and the other candidates will have just days to retool and get back on track before the big day on February 5th. Oh by the way, as the primaries move up, the conventions have actually moved DOWN for next year, with the first one being the Democratic National Convention starting on August 25th instead of in July as in the past. Therefore, we will be treated to no less than 6 1/2 months of competing nightly soundbytes between the two presumed nominees before they even get a chance to ACCEPT the nomination. By the time we hit Labor Day, the old theoretical "beginning" of the presidential campaign season, we will be so tired of watching this all play out that NOBODY WILL CARE what happens in November. The end result of this can only be more voter apathy and continuing declines in voter turnout.

Here's my solution: it's too late to do anything about next year, so as soon as 2008 is decided, the Congress passes two laws. One states that there will be NO PRIMARIES before June of an election year. That's it. And no more than 3-5 states per week. Have them run right up to the convention so there is no downtime and go from there. The second law then states NO ANNOUNCING OR FUNDRAISING before January 1, 2008. You break the law and start raising money early? You lose the money. The only way we can stop this whole mess of elongating the campaign season is to take forceful action.

However, some people apparently think that a longer campaign is a great idea, so now the congressional aspirants have joined the fray in declaring early. Dan Maffei, the loser of last November's election here in New York's 25th District, announced that he will run in 2008... on APRIL 7TH, 2007. This of course comes to no surprise to many around here, including myself, who predicted in this very space that he was going to run again, particularly after his whiny "letter of thanks" last January. In fact, I figured he was just going to announce right then and there. And we're already being force-fed political advertising. Gov. Spitzer, in an effort to get his proposed health care changes in the state budget, put advertising on the airwaves to combat the obligatory interest groups who aimed to basically tell people that Spitzer wanted to kill old people. An inventive move to be sure, but it should be noted that the group paying for the ads? "Spitzer 2010". They had to do it under the guise of advertising for an election that is still 3 1/2 years away. Now, we have various peacenik groups buying advertising time around here to push Congressman Walsh to change his mind about not supporting a retreat, errrr, pullout from Iraq. As far as I'm concerned, the ads may as well say at the end: "Paid for by Maffei 2008." Because THAT'S the ultimate goal of these ads; the attempt to get right back to knocking someone out of office as soon as the other side failed at it the last time.

It's gotten to the point where there is NO downtime; it's an endless election season. The day after one campaign ends, another begins. Living to be political, that's what it is. And it's all from the extremes, the right-wing and left-wing. I KNOW we moderates don't want to see this, that's for sure. This cannot end well. What we're going to have to do is build a Betty Ford-like center for recovering political junkies because it's bound to hit a point where they all just crash, or worse yet, OD. And when that happens, it may be the whole political process in this country that gets fatally injured.

Nothing's Shocking

A brief note: You may have noticed a lack of new entries lately. This was due to the unfortunate demise of my old computer upon my move to a new apartment two weeks ago. I am now back up and running with my new computer and will be returning to my usual irregular schedule of posting new entries. And so, without further ado...

Well, I'm sure you're all expecting me to comment on the whole Imus situation, as I am both a former radio programmer and a former local board op for "Imus in the Morning." Essentially, it comes down to this: What Don Imus said was wrong, no question about it; I neither condone nor defend what he said. However, for him to be fired for this is just plain ridiculous.

If you're unfamiliar with what Imus said and what has happened since (which means you've been living under a rock for the last week), here's the gist of it... Don Imus and his producer Bernard McGuirk were having an on-air conversation about the Rutgers womens basketball team, which had just competed for the NCAA Championship. Imus mentioned how the players had tattoos, and McGuirk called them "hardcore hos." I expect such comments as this from McGuirk, and they're usually followed by Imus either shushing him or just plain going off and calling him a "bald-headed geek" or something to the effect. This time, however, Imus went one step further (and one step over the line), calling the players "nappy-headed hos."

When Rev. Al Sharpton caught wind of what Imus had said, he went nuclear, calling for Imus to be fired from both his national radio show and the TV simulcast on MSNBC. Sharpton had Imus on his radio show and proceeded to try to goad Imus into saying some more racially insensitive things such as referring to African-Americans as "you people." Following Imus' on-air apologies, both on Sharpton's show and his own, Sharpton still called for Imus to be fired. CBS Radio suspended Imus for two weeks, which would have become effective this coming Monday. The annual radiothon for children with cancer was yesterday and today on Imus' flagship station, WFAN in New York, and management wanted to give him the chance to be on live to promote his favorite cause.

Well, the reactions came fast and furious from politicans of all stripes, lining up on predictable sides. Sen. Hillary Clinton called for Imus to be fired as well, and people were quick to point out that Imus has called her "the devil" in the past. They miss the point that Hillary has had it in for Imus ever since he started his speech to the Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner a decade ago with a joke about how his speech notes had been mixed up with Hillary's missing Rose Law Firm billing records. Then, Sen. Barack Obama (another presidential candidate) also joined the chorus of people calling for Imus to be fired... but he was then criticized by black leaders for not coming out against Imus quickly enough. These are the same people, by the way, who don't believe that Obama is "black enough" to earn their vote, because he is not descended from slaves. Sen. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, two Republican presidential candidates, took a stand for Imus, criticizing what he said but saying they would continue to go on his show if asked. For this, I'm sure they were labeled "typical racist Republicans."

The Rutgers women's basketball team held a press conference, which was carried live on CNN, where they announced that they had agreed to meet with Imus and talk about what happened. They then proceeded to say "no comment" to just about every question asked for a good 20 minutes. By this point, anything to do with the Imus situation was worthy of being on the news channels. After all, there really was nothing else to cover, right? I mean we know who the father of Anna Nicole's baby is and the Duke lacrosse players were cleared of rape charges (or as CNN put it, they were "cleared"... as in "we're sure they're still guilty of SOMETHING"). Sharpton took on the advertisers of Imus' show, several of whom proceeded to wimp out and pull their advertising, saying things like, "We don't sponsor controversial shows." Excuse me? Then WHY did you sign the contract in the first place? You knew what you were getting... it's not like Imus has never been controversial.

By yesterday, this had become a true media circus. The Rutgers women's basketball team was on "Oprah." Imus was fired from MSNBC right at the START of the charity radiothon... and MSNBC proceeded to replace Imus with 4 hours of Imus coverage. Then they talked about having "integrity"... how is it integrity to pull a guy's show when he's about to raise funds for children with cancer? Then the backlash came against Sharpton and co. People wondered why they haven't criticized the rappers who put the word "ho" into our society. Opie and Anthony on their national morning show proceeded to read the lyrics of the top rap songs in the country; these two white DJs uttered the "n-word" about 20 times in a minute, just to prove the point of how this stuff is out there in our culture. Well, you'll be happy to know that Snoop Dogg responded...

"It's a completely different scenario, (Rappers) are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We're talking about hoes that's in the 'hood that ain't doing s--t, that's trying to get a n--ga for his money. These are two separate things. First of all, we ain't no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them muthaf**kas say we are in the same league as him. Kick him off the air forever."

Well, thank you Snoop Dogg for clarifying the OBVIOUS double-standard. It's okay for Snoop Dogg and even Eminem (even though he's white) to degrade black women as "hoes" because it's in the form of a song and it's "relevant." No, it's NOT okay. You put these words into the culture, and then white kids who don't know better, who never experienced racism in their lives and see their black friends as just friends and not "black friends" say these words and get called racists. Which brings me to my point and my take on all of this... again, what Imus said was wrong, and I'm glad he apologized. However, the line was said in joking form. I do NOT need to hear the endless analysis of whatever racist subtext is thought to be behind what Imus said. I can tell you as an ex-DJ how this happened. You are on the air filling air time, the words go from your brain to your mouth and out in a split-second, and in this instance, conscience did not cause the words to be edited. In other words, he was HUMAN.

But now he's out of a job, as CBS fired him in mid-radiothon, showing that they are just as thin-skinned as MSNBC. But Imus will swallow his pride, go back to his nice Central Park West apartment or retire to his ranch out West, with the millions he's earned and his beautiful young wife and child, and he'll probably live out the rest of his days in contentment. However, now Sharpton and co. need a new target. See, when you realize that all you need to do is get the sponsors to back out of a radio show and the host will be fired, well... there's a lot of other shows that the PC crowd could get rid of, and they may just try, starting with Opie and Anthony because of both their flagrant use of the "n-word" yesterday (never mind that it was to prove a point) and because they're on a short leash with CBS since they've been fired once before.

DJs will make mistakes, because they are human. I am not talking about that idiot in Pennsylvania who decided to make light of the whole situation by doing a contest where the "phrase that pays" was "I'm a nappy-headed ho." He DESERVED to get fired because he did it consciously. I know this all goes into the belief by some that we are still in a racist society and that white America, by nature, is racist. I'm only going to speak for myself here... I work in an environment where there are a lot of minorities, and I get along with everyone. We don't see each other as black or white, not normally anyway, but when a story like this happens, well, you do start to see people by their skin color, because you wonder what they think. Interestingly enough, the African-American women at my work all said leave Imus alone, he apologized and people say stupid things. Which just proves that the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are not truly representative of the minorities they claim to lead, no matter how much they believe they are. I don't know if there will always be racism among humanity, but I do know that there will always be humanity among humanity. We are all fallible, all capable of saying dumb things, and people should just remember that before they get on their high horse trying to judge someone.