Politics As Unusual

Current Tunes: Children of Bodom – She is Beautiful (Andrew W.K. cover)

I haven’t done a post in a while where I rundown/react to Friday’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” but this past one had a couple of special gems I wanted to point out. A really a good episode this past week, really solid and completely devoid of comments or suggestions I was diametrically opposed to, which does happen sometimes for me on that show.

The most positive thing to stem from this week was becoming familiar with two of the panelists Bill brought on the show, one of whom is “New Yorker” magazine columnist John Heilemann. Hopefully plenty of this guy’s material will be on the Webernets, but for now a quote from the show: “The Democrats run the House, the Democrats run the Senate, the Democrats hold the White House and yet they are having huge trouble passing a health care bill. The Republicans are a side-show here, compared to the failure of the Democratic party to get its shit together [my emphasis] and govern the country.”

I had touched on this very vaguely and briefly last post, but I want to thank my fellow writer Heilemann for putting the frustration into such succinctness. Let’s make a distinction here. Let us imagine instead the political structure was such that Democrats had no super majority in the Senate, and say only a 2 or 3-person majority in the House. In that scenario, it would as well be inexcusable for them to have such authority and leverage in government and completely fail to achieve any semblance of progress. The reality being that they indeed have an iron-grip control over the legislative and executive bodies should dictate that something at least get voted on. But no, the Donkey Party has screwed the pooch yet again and demonstrated their long-standing lack of ability to remove their invertebrate selves from the floor and stand up for something.

Perhaps I’m not giving credit where credit is due. Maybe the Republicans are just that savvy and that powerful. They’ve been shuffling the pieces from behind the curtain, undermining and thwarting the Donkeys at every turn. Those clever fellows!

Wait, this is the Republican party of 2009 we’re talking about, I forgot. The same nitwits who believe that running a country is sitting around sipping lemonade and watching baseball games while bankers and CEOs make the real decisions about the direction of the country.

Beyond dismantling the F-22 program, the cash-for-clunkers program (still not signed into law, as I understand it) and getting lucky enough to have avoided any terrorist attacks on native soil, this Congress and this President have failed to achieve anything of reasonable value in my eyes. It’s only the six-month-mark, so I can be lenient for now, but I’m not sure how much longer. Especially on the back of a President who made some very grand promises (well, what President doesn’t?).

The other panelist on the show that highly impressed me was Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of (you guessed it!) the great Dwight D. Eisenhower. Apparently she deferred from the Republican party about a year ago, which sounds mighty brave to me. Perhaps I don’t know what I’m talking about when I say that; I could be dead wrong to think that whole family is entrenched in Republican loyalty.

Anyway, with her appearance, Bill of course wanted to draw attention to her grandfather’s farewell speech warning about the peril of the industrial-military complex, but Mrs. Eisenhower, thankfully, brought to light an important point about that speech. She mentioned how ol’ Ike had also wanted to make mention of how that complex gets its lifeblood from Congress. You know, the people we elect to represent our cities and states in Washington. Our esteemed representatives who think that jobs created from building useless fighter jets (hint: the F-22) are a value to the country.

Ike apparently omitted mention of Congress’s role in this perpetual nightmare because he had always been in good standing with the Senators and House representatives who served while he had been Commander-in-Chief and didn’t want to leave on a bashing-fellow-politicians note. A noble-hearted decision, sure, but oh how I wish he hadn’t made that choice.

I can understand wanting to be civil; I know how American politics involves a high degree of niceties and smiles and handshakes with people in the name of appearances, but most times that's precisely what I had about our political climate. It's not about serving the people, doing what's best for it's citizens and speaking out against injustice no matter whose 'feelings get hurt.' Oh no, we have to play nice and not step on people's toes. Ike, you really shouldn't have worried about such frivolous details; I don't think there's any debate that history remembers you well and kindly, but I guess hindsight is 20/20, as they say.

Oh, and my only comments about the Gates / Obama / Police incident: If they all really do sit down and have a beer together, I really wanna know what brand of beer they're going to drink. UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar recommends Coors Light...

Post coming tomorrow hopefully recapping San Diego Comic Con. Lots of stuff for me to talk about. 'Til then!