Reaping the Consequences of Poor

About a week before writing this, I was feeling more impoverished than usual. You know how it is: when you can’t pay your bills, your shoes have holes in them, and your credit card company tells you that if you keep paying off your balance at the current rate, it’ll be all paid off by yesterday -- meaning, after forever ends and time starts over again, and gets back to then. Roughly 50-85 billion years, or never, depending on how much dark matter there is in the universe.

“So,” I thought, “let’s get us some of that household energy assistance!”

That led to about 3 hours of me and Anitra “Other Household Member” Freeman studying the application process for federal LIHEAP energy assistance funds. Our conclusion at the end of those 3 hours was that the government doesn’t think we’re poor enough.

While that was disappointing to us, it provided us with new respect for the people who do qualify for LIHEAP funds, and how truly needy they must be. Whoa, that is some amazing poverty, people! Way to go!

The very next day, Obama announced his budget proposal that would cut funding to LIHEAP programs by over 2.5 billion dollars. Millions of households in America, representing approximately 3 per cent of the population, that are currently eligible to receive energy assistance, would be cut loose.

You can’t manage the political will to bring about an end to George Bush’s gift of tax breaks for the richest Americans, so they can keep the yacht industry afloat, but you can slash funds needed to help the poorest Americans have heat? OK, I see how you are, Obama.

No, wait, that’s not fair, is it? We bought health care reform by giving the opponents an extension to Bush’s tax cuts. Yay, we got watered down health care reform! But, you know what? The Republicans didn’t shake hands with us on the purchase, so they plan on taking the goods back, and keeping the extension.

That was muddled of me. Let’s look at the stupidity of these cuts from a different angle.

Consider those Predator Drones you keep hearing about. Like the one that wiped out an Afghan wedding party in 2007. Recently, the Air Force decided they weren’t deadly enough, so they would replace all their Predator Drones with newer Reaper Drones. (The old Predators will be sold at a discount to the Italians, to take out Berlusconi.) Each Reaper, at 10.5 million, costs more than twice what a Predator cost, and they want to buy over 250 of them over the next couple of years.

Our own people can go without heat next winter so that Air Force crews trained on arcade games, sitting in comfort in Florida, can kill more Afghans with the click of a mouse. Have you seen the ads? “It’s not science fiction.” All the excitement of war, and you get to go home to your wife and kids at the end of each shift, 1.4 miles away!

Oh, I get. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. So it’s all one big war, then, isn’t it?

Other ways it doesn’t pay to be poor:
That Ian Birk will not be charged for murder or manslaughter comes down to this 1986 footnote to the law "The legislature recognizes that RCW 9A.16.040 establishes a dual standard with respect to the use of deadly force by peace officers and private citizens... " stating that the lawmakers “really meant it” when they said police should be allowed to get off for murder almost all the time.

So any police officer can kill anyone so long as it can’t be proved to have been done out of malice. For example, let’s say you’re a cop, and you see a poor person wasting space. So long as it isn’t personal (you don’t have anything against that particular poor person, just poor people in general) you can fire away.

Future Snark

Whenever there are great occasions of public oration, I miss them. They always happen in prime-time, and I’m accustomed to averting my eyes during prime-time. In fact, I always arrange to sleep through prime-time.

Missing the oration means I don’t know everything that everyone else does. I know the words because they’re in the New York Times the next day, if the oration is anything to sneeze at. But I miss the nuanced delivery, the dramatic pauses, the turned up eyes, everything you need to really be fully informed in a country informed by appearances.

But we must do what we can. I shall now attempt to read Obama’s State of the Union address, as it appeared in last Wednesday’s New York Times. [Pause for slow reader.]

OK, let’s see, distinguished guests, fellow Americans, Boehner, rancor, shooting, contentious democracy, we’re great, yadda, yadda, we’re set apart as a nation (as opposed to what? -- as a broccoli?), we will move together because we must, but we have to do more, China, India, yadda.

Alright, here’s something. He says our country is built on an idea and that’s why our kids don’t just memorize equations, they answer questions like “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I never put those things together before. So, it was our founding as a free republic that’s responsible for gnarly uncles asking endless stupid questions. Yeah, I can see that. It sure explains Uncle Ned. He never should have been free.

Next Obama’s telling us we have to win the future. Whenever someone points to something, I make a habit of glancing over my shoulder at what he’s pointing me away from. I guess it’s acceptable to lose the past if the future is still there to be won. I can switch to door number three.

Now here’s something else I did not know! I did not know this was a Sputnik moment! How did the new Sputnik get by me?

If I could see the Sputnik overhead maybe I could figure out how Obama gets from “What do you want to be when you grow up?” to “I want be one of the 80% of Americans riding in high-speed trains powered by 80% clean energy.” I don’t see that as much of a career, but then, maybe I just don’t know what the word “career” means. Is it like “careen?” What’s this 80% fetish?

What about my dream, that 80% of America be underwater, so I can get there by stolen rowboat?

Speaking of knowing things, we come to Obama’s first immediate concrete proposal, to continue income tax credits we already have for paying tuition. So that the people who can now afford to go to college can continue to afford to, until tuitions are raised again. A bold proposal.

After three decades of cuts in support for higher education, no change is progress we should all applaud.

He talks about bringing high-speed wireless to 98% of all Americans in 5 years, so that, among other things, students can take classes with a digital textbook. How about using that to crank the tuition down? Is that too much to ask?

How about a future in which 80% of adults have college educations that are fully paid off, so we don’t have a country of debtors?

Questions to propel further snark

Could the author of this column be any snarkier? Suggestion: come up with a snarky over-all assessment of the State of the Union Address that the author could have whipped out. Then, raise the snark level with a counter-snark of your own.

Reading comprehension: Is the author really snarking at Obama, or is he snarking at Americans for setting themselves up for these kinds of addresses, by their absurd expectations. Should every presidential address be a callback to Kennedy’s “Man on the Moon” address?

Obama said that at the time Sputnik was launched the science didn’t exist yet to go to the moon. Hello? Newton’s Laws?

All Men Are Smelly Rutty Ibexes

[from 12/15/10]

Top ten Wikileaks revelations so far.

#10. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange favors Golden Trojans. Old joke recalled from college: what do you call a man who uses Golden Trojans? A. Dad. New joke for a post 9/11 world: What do you call a man who uses Golden Trojans? A. Surprising.

#9. All US State Department employees and dependents agree that Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is a ‘smelly rutting ibex.’ [Actually a mild family-friendly euphemism. The exact kinds of things they say about him can’t be repeated in front of impressionable children, because they’d just repeat it back to us endlessly, and spoil the fun of it.]

#8. That Hamid Karzai knows that he is a ‘smelly rutting ibex’, but he doesn’t feel that should keep him and the US apart. He is enjoying having ‘a dance’ with us.

#7. Iyyad Allawi, former US-appointed puppet leader of Iraq, begged us to invade Iran, at a time when we had already invaded two countries, including his, also at his insistence. We wrote him back a very polite letter, the gist of which was, “Get a life.”

#6. Egyptian Dictator Hosni Mubarak actually told US officials America should install our own dictator in Iraq once and for all, and forget this silly democracy business. At that time we told him we had Iyyad. Hosni said he had an uncle that would dictate for us for half what Iyyad was charging. We said, “no thanks,” money is no object, we just steal from the Iraqis.

#5. After a German of Lebanese descent was kidnapped, rendered to Afghanistan, and tortured under the direction of the CIA, the CIA discovered they had the wrong guy and released him, and he complained. Germany was all set to prosecute the CIA operatives involved in the kidnapping, then dropped the effort after one of our ambassadors told them the United States would spank Germany if they arrested any of them.

#4. While Germany was making us mad by wanting us to obey laws, a naughty judge in Spain was getting ready to prosecute no less than Alberto Gonzales, our attorney general, for allowing Spanish citizens to be tortured at Guantanamo. We sent Spain a very firm cable reminding them that children don’t tell their betters how to behave, and threatened to spank them, as well.

#3. Pakistan is providing safe havens for the Taliban. We should spank them. Oh, wait, they have nukes. Never mind that, then. But we’ll keep sending soldiers to Afghanistan to die, because otherwise the terrorists will have won.

#2. Hillary Clinton authorized spying on UN officials, including the Secretary General, in violation of international law that the United States has ratified. But let’s cut her some slack. After all, she’s married to Bill. She’s bound to be a little paranoid. We need to recognize, too, that paranoia is as much an ability as it is a dis-ability, and be accepting and celebratory of that fact.

#1 It’s not really a Wikileak, but the main thing we’ve learned from the whole affair is that Americans believe that the US government can withdraw freedom of the press from anyone merely by unilaterally declaring that they are not a journalist. Like all the other “revelations” from Wikileaks, this only surprises the inattentive. We already knew that the average American thinks that a citizen’s legal rights can be cancelled by arbitrarily being declared an enemy combatant. So, big whoop.

Nevertheless, Julian Assange and Co deserve awards, if only for proving to the rest of us that Pay Pal, Amazon.com, and MasterCard are also as cowardly as the German and Spanish governments, or as uncaring about freedom of speech and the rights of all the people of the world to know how much their governments violate their trust.

And now, a completely off-topic facetious remark. There’s a rumor Hillary Clinton advised Obama to compromise on continuing the Bush tax cuts for the rich. I’m sure she did, with his best interests at heart.

The Obama Channel

[from 12/23/09]

Obama has made it his goal to be the first former president to be a successful stand up comedian. Remember how he handled the heckler during his health care speech to Congress? ("You lie!" "Hey, do I go where you work and interrupt you? Oh, yeah, I'm the president, this is Congress, I'm doing it right now.") It was such a rush for him, he finally decided that's what he wanted to be when he grew up.

Of course, anyone starting out in stand up needs to find his own style. That's just what Obama has been struggling with in recent public speeches. You probably haven't heard about it, because the mainstream media doesn't want to help Obama make it, but thanks to some interested YouTube users I've been able to find the snippets that the networks cut. You can tell he starts out channeling some favorites.

In Oslo, getting the Nobel Peace Prize, he warmed the crowd up with, "Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Distinguished Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America, and citizens of the world: HEY! Stop the God-damned band, I'm working here! Just kidding, you all know I love you. Well, maybe not you in the front row. Look at these folks here. I'm working a beer party at a funeral parlor? You! What's your name? Harald? Harald what? Harald V of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg? So that's not your wife sitting next to you, then! It's OK, 'Harald', you're not under oath. By the way, ditch the babe, you can do better."

Then he got to the issue that was on everybody's mind. "OK, I know what you're all thinking when you see me here. You're thinking, I thought we were getting Nelson Mandela. This guy is no Nelson Mandela. Don't I know it! Ask Michelle, she can tell the difference! And she reminds me every night! I tell you, I get no respect... "

"Um..., I'm commanding a war now..., you might have read about it in the papers. I think this brings me to my main point..., well it's actually two wars, to be technical about it..., let me tell you how this happened. I was moving into my new house, and as I was looking for a good place to display my collection of Hummel figurines of Homer strangling Bart Simpson, I found plans for an Afghanistan surge underneath a bag of pretzels, dated 2003. The plans, not the pretzels. Imagine my relief, having had nothing but buttered toast all day."

"So. These questions are not new. Since I'm the Peace Prize winner, and I have your attentions, let me tell you the entire history of war, from beginning to now, and why we have wars, and, huh, what are they good for, uh huh."

"War, in one form or another, has always been with us. At the dawn of history, wars broke up the monotony of those begats, dynasties, and dates. Wars enabled civilizations to make up for not having TV, American Idol, and British football."

"Over time, codes of law sought to control international violence, as philosophers, clerics, and statesmen called for regulation of the destructive power of war. Well, no they didn't, but we lawyers have to say they did so we can get paid. The concept of a Just War emerged, to put a name on what we were charging for."

"For most of history, this concept of Just War was rarely observed, and history has spanned -- let's see, there was Thanksgiving, when I pardoned that turkey, and my inauguration, and my election, and some stuff that happened before that -- a bunch of years. There has been a lot of really gnarly stuff going down in all that time."

"But hey, you know, Martin Luther King Jr said it best: 'Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.' Just so long as we keep having wars, let's all dig on that."

To Err Is Interesting

[from 9/16/09]

What I think the guy meant when he said "To err is human; to forgive divine", not having had the patience to read the whole piece, is that poetry critics should lighten up on the grounds that they then might come nearer to the divine. But all I hear is "to err is human", and isn't that what makes humans so interesting? Whereas the divine must bore us all, judging from the abundant lack of forgiveness. So why go there?

My entire interest in human history and current affairs is based on my love of error. I've always enjoyed error. Error and folly, or as I prefer to call them, stupid and stupidity, ought to be the principle objects of study in all anthropology and political science curricula, and central to the study of psychology. Of course history should be understood as the study of almost nothing but the trajectories of errors, propagating through time and space. Especially the parts having to do with the "leaders."

As much as I want to see error and stupidity take a central role in human self-knowledge, it does pain me a little when amateurs set about calling attention to it. This is what happened last Wednesday when Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted "You lie!" during President Obama's speech to his workplace. Clearly what Mr. Wilson should have said was "You are in error!" and "Read my blog" and he should have posted an explanation of the president's error in 500 words or less online. He could have used his Blackberry to post it from the floor of Congress. So far no real explanation has appeared.

During the rebuttal, another Republican amateur stupid-spotter didn't spot one actual instance of stupid error in Obama's speech. This is astonishing, because even I could spot mistakes in it, and I approve of the president's plan.

For example, when Mr. Wilson was shouting "You lie!" to Obama, what Obama had said was that the plan he would accept would not insure illegal aliens. In reality, illegal aliens are allowed, RIGHT NOW, to obtain insurance in this country, by PAYING FOR IT out of their earnings from their illegal jobs, and nothing in any plan under consideration by the Democrats would prevent that from continuing to happen. What the plans say is that illegal immigrants won't be given any government assistance to help pay their premiums. So what Obama said was erroneous, and if Wilson had not been such a poor student of error, he could be the one telling you all this, instead of me. By the way, I'm all for illegal immigrants buying their own insurance.

Right after the shouting, and after the evil eye from Nancy Pelosi, Obama went on to say, "... no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place." Why didn't anyone in Congress then shout "Error! What federal conscience laws?" If we had federal conscience laws, how could we have congressmen?

I can understand why Republicans are prepared to believe that Obama is evil, given that they've been demonizing liberals for decades, but even if the man's mistakes are intentional you still have to say how they are mistakes, or you haven't really called him out. Step one, tell me what he stepped in. After that you can go on to convince me he stepped in it on purpose.

Exercises to Better Know Your Stupidity

1. The Republicans say the Democratic plan would fund insurance for illegal aliens on the grounds that they wouldn't pass a bill that would totally rule it out. Using that reasoning, prove that the Democratic plan will fund breast implants, sex lubricants, and removal of heads from asses.

2. Obama said he wants to prevent insurers from dropping your coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Draw as many stupid conclusions as you can from that fact. Here's a hint to help you get started: liberals consider sexual orientation to be a pre-existing condition.

Drink Freedom Whiskey

[from 8/26/09]

Ignorance is rampant in America!

As I was about to be believe Obama's health care reform would not involve death panels, I was watching TV and saw a PSA talking about getting cash toward a new car for 12 year-olds. Just bring the 12 year-olds to any car lot, it said, as it showed a picture of a girl being delivered to a dealership by her callous, socialist, Obama-voting father. I'm not making this up. What are they going to do with her, I wondered? And then I realized it: they're doing 52nd term abortions, just like Obama's favorite country, China. Not enough Americans know these things are happening!

A couple days ago some of my acquaintances were sitting around and one was reading in a paper that Ramadan was set to begin. He asked, "What's Ramadan? I never heard of that." And none of them knew. I was shocked. To think that our country has been killing Islamicists off and on since before the Bush, Sr., presidency, and these Americans still didn't know that Ramadan is the time of year when Islamicists steal Christian babies, de-baptise them, stuff them with figs, and send them out to blow up American soldiers who happen by.

People, pay attention! You have to know who our enemies are!

Take the Scots. If Americans had only known years ago what a bunch of terrorist-loving American-hating bag-pipe-playing skirt-wearing freaks the Scots were, the 40 American passengers and one American crew member on Pan Am 103 wouldn't have allowed their flight to pass over Scotland in the first place. What a monstrous country! A plane goes and gets bombed and crashes into one of their towns, they had the guy whose clothes were in the suitcase with the bomb nailed, and they let him go die of cancer in West Islamicistbad!

Even though we have a wimp president, as a people we can still get even with the Scots for not stopping their so-called justice minister MacAsskiss from exercising his authority, under their so-called legal system.

Some folks have suggested that we all boycott Scotch whiskey. This idea further shows how ignorant Americans are. They have forgotten their own recent history! You don't have to boycott it, you just rename it! We need Congress to declare it Freedom Whiskey. That way we can still drink it while we stick it to them.

Another thing we need to do is stop letting Scotlanders visit or immigrate to this country, unless they first renounce their Scottishism. Did you know that Scotland allows socialism? Did you know that Obama's health plan is partly based on the Scottish health plan, which gives terrorists, Mexicans, and Hindustanis preferential treatment over grandmothers? Not that Scottish grandmothers deserve any breaks.

I have never needed to be told how evil Scotland is. I have been saying for years that my own dead Grandmother was not of Scottish ancestry, but Pict. As everyone should already know -- but since they don't, I'll now tell them -- the Picts were the original inhabitants of the place now called Scotland, which land the evil Scots stole from them. Knowing my Grandmother, I know the Picts would not have freed the Lockerbie bomber. They would have subjected him to forced labor in a peanut butter factory. Grandma sure loved her Sunny Jim peanut butter.

According to Wikipedia, 75% of all past US presidents are scientifically probably likely to have had some Scots ancestry, including, surprise, William McKinley, my vote for worst US president ever. We also know that one drop of Scottish blood gaelics up the whole pot. That fact alone should be a wake-up call to all decent Americans to the need to stanch the influx of terrorist-huggers to our shores.

The Scots simply can't be trusted. Consider this:The country of Scotland has sent no troops whatsoever to fight Islamicists alongside ours in Afghanistan, leaving that chore instead to their neighbors, brave little Iceland, Norway, and the United Kingdom. That's how little they care.

 

A Bob Hope to End All Bob Hopes

Whenever the national media obsesses on one subject for days I call it a Bob Hope. That's because, at the end of May 2003, the media obsessed on Hope's 100th birthday for a week, and then just two months later obsessed another week as they poured out his eulogies. If only he had passed away a week BEFORE his 100th birthday, we could have got birthday and death all wrapped up in one week, BUT NO, he had to drag it out. We ended up with at least four "Bob Hopes" that year, two due to Bob Hope himself, one to the Iraq invasion, and one to Martha Stewart.

This week's Bob Hope is Obama's inauguration. Not only has he got himself being presidentially inaugurated, Obama has cleverly arranged this for the same week the country honors Martin Luther King, Jr., a fact which gives his inauguration the punditry-significance equivalent of a telephone book on a high chair. Without MLKJr Day during the same week: "Obama's inauguration is the most important event in African-American history since the invention of peanut butter." With MLKJr Day the same week: "Obama's inauguration is the most important event in African-American history since the invention of peanut butter, and wouldn't Martin Luther King, Jr., be just tickled pink?"

I'm writing this Monday. Israel couldn't simply announce they'd be pulling out of Gaza by tomorrow morning. They had to feed the ongoing Bob Hope-itude, the current Bob Hope-unami, by announcing a pullout "in time for Obama's swearing in."

Were it not for Obama's impending assumption of office, last Thursday's pretty river landing of an Airbus 320 by Captain Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III might have been mainly an opportunity for the press to inquire into the relative vulnerabilities of French-made planes versus properly made planes, with regards to large water fowl. Instead, we get "Isn't this a wonderful thing to have happen now, in time for Obama's inauguration, to show what kind of great country we live in, where we can all pull together in times of need?" over and over again on CNN and Fox. With multiple testimonies from average American Hudson River ferry boat workers.

There's nothing the media can't tie to Obama. Chris Rock recently put out a DVD of a tour in which he made very few references to Obama. So CNN had to interview Chris Rock this week, focusing on why he had so little to say about Obama. Tomorrow they can interview an actual rock and ask it the same question. The next day they can do a piece on why the B in BLT doesn't stand for Barack.

CNN also highlighted the remarkable similarities between the rush of travelers to DC and the Inauguration to the annual Hajj to Mecca. Hajj: lots of people. Inauguration: lots of people. Hajj: a demonstration of the solidarity of the Muslim people and their submission to Allah. Inauguration: a demonstration of the solidarity of the American people and their submission to their elected leader. Hajj: Includes the rite of Ramy al-Jamarat in which pilgrims throw stones to signify their defiance of the Devil. Inauguration: this year, for the first time in history, there will be much throwing of shoes to signify the pilgrims' contempt of the last president. I'm crossing my fingers hoping that the last will become a great new American tradition.

Clearly, this country hungers for opportunities to engage in mass behaviors. Following American Idol, Survivor, and the NFL isn't enough. A nation of extroverts, we need structured mass play on the level of Children of the Corn. This is America, the land of Hope. We can accomplish anything we try. We can create a Mother of All Bob Hopes.

I propose that whenever the country is down in the dumps, say with a recession, or say a depressing war occupies too much of our attention, we hold a week long Throwing of the Shoes at the Bush Ceremony.

You may work the details out amongst yourselves.

Embrace Your Stupidity

Every day I am more and more convinced that the main difference between smart people and stupid people is that stupid people have all the answers.

As a corollary, to write opinion regularly you must avidly embrace your own stupidity, and roll with it.

So say I wanted to write this week's column about Barack Obama's selection of Reverend Rick Warren to do the invocation at the inauguration. Just to mention Rick Warren's name here is an Adventure in Stupidity in itself. Why don't I just save myself the trouble, turn in a column with the words "I have nothing better to do in life than smack myself in the head with a 5-pound sledge hammer" repeated 33 times, and then smack myself in the head with a 5-pound sledgehammer? Should I mention that Obama might likewise have saved himself some trouble? Probably I should not. Just go to the hardware store, Wes, and get the hammer.

There are times when you can't take a side on a topic without inviting hate mail. Turns out that anti-abortionists, for instance, are as angry with Rick Warren for accepting the Obama invitation as the Gay Community is at Obama for offering it. You could make a case that Obama invited Warren in order to drive a wedge between anti-abortionists. Then, you could move to New Zealand, like you always wanted to, and live out the rest of your life raising chickens for slaughter, telling everyone you meet your name is Sally and you're really a vegetarian.

Or, take the case of the guy who shot up his former wife, their family, and in-laws, set fire to her house, and might have escaped safely to Canada if it were not for the one flaw in his plan, that his Santa suit caught fire in the commission of his own arson, and burned to his skin. If I had written that myself, it would have been a clown costume. Which brings up my opinion of clowns. I tend to think that, since clowns make fun of everything, it gives you the right to make fun of clowns. Not all clowns, it turns out, share that view. So I fall back on solipsist jokes. Why didn't the solipsist laugh at my joke about him? A. Because it didn't exist.

My point being, if I use this space to share an opinion of mass murder, such as "mass murder is unfortunate", I'm just asking for trouble. Someone will send a three-page letter in 8 point Courier telling me that my opinion is ill-informed and biased. "I have read Real Change for years, and in all that time you have never, NEVER, mentioned the good works that mass murderers do for their communities, or exposed the people that drive mass murderers to murder. Just this morning someone cut me off at the Mercer exit. Would you write about that? NO!"

Another fall back is liturgical-calendar humor. "Yesterday, I had an Epiphany!" Ha. "Advent-ures in Advent-ends." Ha, ha!

It's true. I was watching CNN covering the Israel-Gaza conflict, a conflict I don't dare have any opinion of, and they showed emails from viewers answering the question, "How would you solve the Israel-Gaza problem?" A number of stupid opinions followed. My favorite, which led to the small e epiphany, was the one from a Canadian that said something to the effect that "we" should completely rebuild the infrastructure in Gaza and spread the people around better, so that it would be easier for "us" to spot the Hamas soldiers among them.

OK. I won't venture an opinion of my own of the kind. I have no solution. But I will say this much. If Canada ever mucks with the infrastructure of Gaza or sends its people to spread out the Gazanians or whatever they're called, all hell would break loose.

Some people can't see that "rebuilding infrastructures" and "spreading people around" are not solutions to violence. They are descriptions of violence.

Who's The Dog? You're the Dog!

The incoming president is shopping for a dog for his two daughters. After the election was all over, the tears of joy were wiped away, and the spilled champagne mopped up, the media looked around for new news, and came up with this. It's so great not to be forced to write about torture, war, and economic disaster, for a change. Let's talk about hypoallergenic dogs!

I think I'm like most Americans, in that I did not know there was such a thing as a hypoallergenic dog. I'd heard of hypoallergenic earring studs and hypoallergenic soap. I wear hypoallergenic socks. But the thought that I could get a hypoallergenic dog never crossed my mind. I've looked it up and I've found out that one of the reasons I've never thought of such a thing is that the only really hypoallergenic dog is a bare naked dog. My mind resisted the thought simply because my mind revolted against the idea of calling any sort of naked furless quadruped a dog.

Then I remembered how, in the 90s, about 2 years after Utne Reader declared Belltown the 7th hippest neighborhood in America and it had fully ceased to be true, the place was overrun with people stringing along minute little hairless things that I used to call "long-legged rats." Their owners referred to them as dogs.

Here's what I'm thinking. Obama is just not funny enough by himself. I need me some funny stuff in the White House. He got me Joe Biden, and I thank him for that, but even Joe Biden isn't all that funny. He's no Sarah Palin. But a hairless live ferret morsel passing for a dog you can carry around in a coffee mug, that's a hoot.

Barack to the kids: 'Here's the dog I promised you! Now remember, you need to put him back in his thimble when guests are over, which will be all the time now; otherwise people will think we have rats. Oh, and here's one Swedish meatball. The lickings from it should feed him for a month."

The bottom line is, they don't really make hypoallergenic dogs, they only make hypo-dogs. They're less allergenic because there's less of them. This could be a great metaphor informing Belltown, Seattle, and America.

Greg Nickels wants Seattle to be a major business center and he figures businesses won't locate here if there's homeless people everywhere you look. That's never stopped businesses from locating in New York, San Francisco, or Chicago (home of Boeing), all three of which I have been to and know have at least as much visible homelessness as Seattle does. But let's forget that and accept the premise that visible homelessness would prevent us from being The Big Apple Bye & Bye that we've always wanted to be. We should then be striving to make Seattle hypo-homeless.

That way, in boardrooms all across the US there can be conversations that go: "Gosh, I had to see a homeless person on my way to our offices on the 70th floor of our skyscraper. How awful! Can't we do something about that?" "Why yes, I was looking on Craigslist for an ugly dog and I noticed that Seattle is up for sale, and it's listed as hypo-homeless." "That's great! Let's sell this skyscraper and buy a new one in Seattle, and work there."

In reality, this is America, not the United Arab Emirates. In America, there is no such thing as a hypo-homeless city. The closest thing to a hypo-homeless city in the world is Dubai, which passes its wealth out among its citizens, so that not one is poor by any standard. That will not happen here, even with the socialist in the White House.

[Right: Some would say Dubai can afford to be so socialistic.]

So, the only real way that Seattle can be hypo-homeless, is for her to be hypo-urban. Without sharing the wealth that is created on the backs of our citizens and from their resources, we can only have less homelessness than other American cities by being less city.

I'm So Privileged

Greg Nickels [our mayor] has me so royally peeved, I'm tempted to just write "Greg Nickels is an arrogant, narcissistic, fool" 75 times and turn that in. I've been told by the editor I could get away with that sort of thing. He's said no one would notice any difference in the quality of my writing, so "what the hell."

I won't though, because I wouldn't want to abuse my free speech privilege. Sarah Palin, who aspires to be Vice President of the United States, a job that requires upholding our Constitution, has reminded us lately that freedom of speech is a privilege that the press should not abuse. Indeed, I clearly recall how in 8th grade history we learned the first ten amendments to the Constitution (they formed what was called the Bill of Privileges), and that the first privilege listed after the Privilege of Religion was the Privilege of Freedom of Speech.

Another privilege we learned about was the Privilege of the People to Peaceably Assemble. I'm sure that if Sarah Palin ever gets to be president she'll keep us on the straight and narrow there, too.

[Right: Some women peaceably assembled to ask politely to be granted privilege to vote. "Please, sirs, with sugar on top!"]

Our activist Supreme Court, abusing its privilege to interpret the Constitution, declared decades ago that people retain privileges of association, asserting they could not otherwise exercise their speech and assembly privileges. Palin has clearly understood how wrong this is.

When Palin accused Barack Obama of associating "with terrorists who targeted our own country" she referred to the fact that Bill Ayers, who helped found the Weather Underground when Obama was 8, and Barack Obama have both worked on the same two non-profit boards. Palin would regard that as an abuse of the privilege of association.

She's absolutely right. Suppose I'm helping put out a fire, at, say, a kindergarten, and I know that the guy passing me buckets of water is none other than Bill Ayers, who blew up a critical Pentagon file-cabinet once. I should walk away from that fire because associating with known terrorists is always wrong, wrong, wrong. The kindergarteners would understand, when they got older, if they weren't burned to a crisp. If they were burned to a crisp, they'd have to ask themselves in the afterlife what the heck were they doing going to a kindergarten in the same neighborhood with a known terrorist?

[Above: President Lyndon B. Johnson shakes hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the signing of the landmark Civil Privileges Act of 1964.]

As if just to show you don't have to be republican to have the same kind of grasp of law on privilege as Sarah Palin, this past weekend the administration of our Democratic Mayor Greg Nickels put out a Notice of Land Use Violation threatening to fine a long list of individuals and associations for their support of Nickelsville, at least one of whom was listed for the sole crime of having emailed his support to another of them.

The Notice of Violation notably lists SHARE/WHEEL, the homeless grassroots organization that was NOT responsible for Nickelsville, as a supporter, and includes mention of its Vancouver, Washington, office. But the Vancouver WA office is that of an entirely different organization that just happens to have the name Share.

Therefore Nickels carries Sarah Palin's thinking a step further. Not only should people not do good things if the wrong people join in, they should also pay for having the wrong name. Again, this is as it should be. Share House, Vancouver, started in 1977. SHARE/WHEEL started in 1990. Share House has had 18 of its 31 years in existence to change its name. They have totally abused their privilege of name-having.

But Nickels went too far listing John and Jane Doe as "Persons Responsible For The Violations".

We know what he's doing. He's getting ready to fine everybody who so much as wrote a letter to the editor in support of Nickelsville, $150 a day, every day it exists.

Now we need everyone who cares about Nickelsville and the RIGHT of homeless people to survive to declare themselves to be John or Jane Doe -- I am John Doe.

[Below: I already posted this on my other blog Run Off, but it's worth posting again.]

Spartacus [I now think the subtitles are in Turkish.]

Lackawanna Wonderfulness

Here at Adventures in Irony, we aim to put everything that matters into perspective and distort beyond recognition everything that doesn't matter. Let's talk about the US presidential election!

We now know who's running. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama is running as the I Spy Bill Cosby (not to be confused with the stand-up or Jello-Pudding Cosbys), so has picked Robert Culp as his running mate. I discovered this watching Obama and Biden being interviewed together on 60 Minutes. The objective is for Obama to be the first African-American president without ever actually mentioning African-American-ness. Instead the focus will be on Wonderfulness and Joe Biden's ability to write his own speeches and direct himself. Obama's election will pave the way, in less than 40 years, for a Democratic Ticket that looks like Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson.

McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for Vice Presidential nominee gives us no choice but to speak of a Get Smart Ticket -- Sarah Palin being basically Barbara Feldon, Agent 99, with glasses, a bigger gun, and higher cheekbones. This means John McCain is Maxwell Smart. If anyone is bothered by this I'm sorry, but I don't make these things up. The McCain/Palin sequel, if it's allowed to happen, will be played by Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway.

Counting Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, and the others, there are at least an additional 11 tickets to choose from that I know of (not all offers valid at all election outlets). When one of those 11 tickets starts resembling a 60s TV spy show team I will let you all know within the week. Ralph Nader had a shot at being The Man From U.N.C.L.E but he blew it when he decided to run with Matt Gonzales. Matt Gonzales may have Illya Kuryakin's hair, his eyes, and maybe even his fashion sense, but he is no Illya Kuryakin.

A lot has been made of Barack Hussein Obama's name, especially the Hussein part. It's often suggested that Barack's parents went way out of their way to dream up the weirdest, scariest, name they could. The notion credits them with far more imagination than they actually showed: Barack's father's name was Barack Hussein Obama. They went with something already tried!

John McCain has been revealed as the least homeless man in America. Many in the homeless advocacy business are investigating what impact McCain's possession of all the vacant housing has already had on US homelessness. What we know for certain is that he's the candidate most capable of ending homelessness in a term at the White House, by inviting all the homeless people into his other digs.

Sarah Palin might not know how to end homelessness, but she could help homeless people get relief from their day-to-day struggles by teaching them to shoot and live off wild game. She knows how to make hats out of pigeons and gloves out of stray cats. I'm sure she'll have no problem with homeless people shooting stray cats. Realize it's not about the cats, it's about self-reliance. It's not about the elk, it's about oil. And so forth.

Joe Biden has been a senator from Delaware for 35 freaking years. He's not known for that, of course, since most Americans have never heard of Delaware ("lowest highest elevation of all fifty states") or knew that it was permitted votes in the Senate. Instead, he is best known for having lived as the son of a working-class car salesman in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, absorbing the honest straight-shooting ethics of all good salt-of-the-earth car salesmen. I didn't really mean to say that, I just wanted to say "Lackawanna."

For Extra Credit

Figure out how John McCain can be said to have had far more foreign policy experience than Barack Obama, but he still can't tell when a war is wrong and an insane waste of people and resources. Should we value experience in and of itself, or should we look at what’s been learned from it?

Presidential Game

I have a new game. I watch the presidential campaign news with half my brain shut down. I don't need illegal drugs, I have a natural gift! Besides, my doctors prescribe brain-shutting-down medicine, because it makes me so darn happy. They've seen me not happy, and it wasn't pretty.

[Right: Me not happy, from the Wes Archives.]

So let's put those filters up and examine the 2008 presidential race not with our right brains or our left brains, but with our leftover brains!

I was especially excited last week when McCain camp said Obama isn't fit to be president because the leaders of Hamas have said he's the Cat's Meow. The exact quote used was a statement by Ahmed Yousef who said in an interview: “We don’t mind — actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will [win] the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, he is like Kennedy, the Cat's Meow. Of course Kennedy loved Israel and would have despised us and crushed us militarily, but hey, he was American, you take what you can get."

Subsequently McCain deflected similar charges against him by sort of renouncing his endorsement from John Hagee, the man who said "Everybody gets me wrong when I say the Catholic Church is the Great Whore. I didn't mean ALL of the Catholic Church, just most of it. Gee, lighten up people." McCain says he still likes Hagee 'cause he has that old-timey religion, but he now acknowledges that Hagee is political rat-bait. His exact words (this part I'm not making up!), in response to being asked whether it was a mistake to accept Hagee's endorsement were, "oh, probably, sure." He then went on to say that, still, he was "glad to have his endorsement."

In other election news, Hillary Clinton has charged Obama as being "out of touch" for saying working class Americans are bitter. She went on to explain, "Where was he when they came out with Prozac? I've been using it since I married Bill! Bitter? Who, me?"

Speaking of questionable endorsements, Hillary Clinton has been endorsed by none other than the ring-leader of the vast right-wing conspiracy, conservative billionaire publisher Richard Mellon Scaife, who sank millions of dollars into the effort to keep Whitewater alive. Tomorrow Barrack Obama will charge that Clinton is unfit to be president because, "That is just so whacked."

In the latest news, upon hearing Obama say that McCain would be a better president than Bush, Clinton responded with, "We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain." McCain responded with, "We need a nominee who is John McCain; and let me tell you, I am not bitter either." Hamas responded with, "John McCain is better than Bush, but he is no John Kennedy. We never knew John Kennedy, but, look at McCain, he is surely no John Kennedy." Hagee responded with, "John Kennedy is just what we don't need. We need a candidate that won't suck at the tits of the Great Whore. I did NOT just say John Kennedy would have sucked at the tits of the Great Whore. We need John McCain." Richard Mellon Scaife responded to that with, "Twinkle twinkle little bat."

Questions for Further Abuse

1. Turn to your neighbor on your right and explain to him or her how the identity of endorsers became more important than all other issues such as the economy, the war(s), health care, homelessness, the environment, education, racism, energy, or food prices. If you have no neighbor on your right, talk to the wall until the bell rings.

2. Compare and contrast the odiousness of endorsements from Hamas, Hagee, and Scaife. Remember, comparisons themselves are odious, so wash your hands after.

3. Obtain drug treatment if necessary. Then, when you are clean and sober, listen to Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues on a continuous loop for five hours. Now you're clean and sober, and nevertheless half your brain is out to lunch. See? I told you it was possible.

Don't Not Preach On!

I couldn't remember just now what I was going to write about. Then I spotted the story about Chuck Norris saying McCain's "too old to handle the pressures of being president." Chuck Norris is a spry 67 while McCain is a decrepit whole four years older, at 71.

[Left: Chuck Norris in '76, or John Edwards in '94?]

Which reminded me, I was going to talk about reasons not to not vote for presidential candidates. I don't want to tell readers how to vote, because that would be presumptuous of me. But some of the reasons I've seen given for NOT voting for certain candidates are sheer bovine doody.

That John McCain will, if elected, be a year and a half older than Reagan upon his first election, means nothing. After all, we went and re-elected Reagan when he was two and a half years older than what McCain will be. So we just have to all agree, scouts honor, to only elect McCain once.

Also his full name is John Sidney McCain The Third. Do NOT NOT vote for someone because one of his names is "The".

Let's examine a few of the other candidates now, in no particular order.

Some say Hillary Clinton shouldn't be president because she 1) screwed up that national health care initiative of hers back in '94, and because 2) she's married to Bill. Actually, 1) Congress fails to pass lots of good laws and 2) Mrs. Lincoln was Mary Todd.

Lincoln is an excellent source of counterexamples. Too tall -- Lincoln. Too inexperienced -- Lincoln. Dude slept with a man -- Lincoln.

Mitt Romney is a Mormon. While most decent Americans his age were learning how to make bongs out of tin cans and aluminum foil, Mitt Romney was speaking to Frenchmen, telling them the good news that Jesus had vacationed in America. Who cares? The important thing is, he didn't inhale.

Barack Obama has people saying he isn't black enough. Evidently, none of these people have noticed that ALL of his Democratic Party rivals are less black than he is. It makes me worry that we put too much emphasis in K-12 on the three Rs, and not enough emphasis on encouraging consciousness.

[Left: Photoshopped white enough?]

Then governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee declared 1997 a year of racial reconciliation in that state, rather than propose any significant civil rights legislation. On the other hand, as a minister, he took proactive steps to integrate his church. He is a graduate of Ouachita Baptist University. Ouachita is most likely pronounced "ouch-itta". One must look deeper to excuse oneself from voting for him.

Dennis Kucinich, a leprechaun, was the keynote speaker of a North American Street Newspaper Association conference attended by yours truly. I can vouch that he is shorter than my Grandmother, who was a genuine pixy woman. He once saw a flying thing, while at Shirley MacLaine's house, and admitted he couldn't identify it. He is more than twice the age of his hot babe wife. While mayor of Cleveland in the 70s he so offended the Mafia, they sent a hit man after him. Hey, no one's perfect.

[Above Right: Kucinich in '78, or Eric Burdon of The Animals in '64?]

Fred Thompson played D.A. Arthur Branch on Law and Order, a TV show. If he were a liberal Democrat that would be grounds for calling him just another wacko Hollywood liberal. But he's not a liberal so you can't hold that against him.

John Edwards looks like your rosy-cheeked paperboy, but people say they wouldn't vote for him because he's sued the American Red Cross three times for distributing AIDS contaminated blood. It goes to show what an "ambulance chaser" he's been. But it was his JOB to sue the American Red Cross for distributing AIDS contaminated blood. Haven't you ever done things you didn't want to do while working for The Man?

Short and quick: I haven't mentioned Guiliani, Ron Paul, Gravel, or any of more than a dozen declared third party candidates. That's NOT a reason to not vote for any of them. This column has 666 words.

[Below: The author depicted as the Beast Of Another, Unlisted, Number.]

Old Fart Wises Off

Good news! Thanks to the Democratic Convention occupying the media, there has been no actual news lately.

This gives us here at Adventures in Poetry – meaning by us, me, Copyright Dr. Wes Browning – a chance to take stock of our life. A chance to sniff the winds of our change and dip our toes into the pools of our stagnation. To audit the account books of the psycho-social-biological records of our historic being. To see to whence we have arrived, and from whence we have departed. And to see who or what is all that in the cargo hold, and why is there a woman in our bed wanting something.

Well, first of all, we are old. We just did the dreaded calculation and discovered that our current incarnation has been breathing air for 20,000 days and a little more than an extra hundred. As a mathematician, let us put that number in perspective. That's one more than 19,999. If he saw 20,000 Republicans laid end to end, Rush Limbaugh wouldn't raise any moral objections. Jules Verne talked about 20,000 leagues, but we don't know what a league is, we're a mathematician, not a damn encyclopedia. If you saw 20,000 pigeons flying toward you, you'd wish you had an umbrella, etc.

We once saw a guy walk on the moon live on television. We saw the assassination of an assassin live on television. We saw several wars live on television, so many that we lost count, sometime around about Panama. Most of them we're unnecessary and a huge waste of lives, health, and money.

History used to happen in black and white, but now it's always in color. Conversely Red Square isn't red anymore. There's nothing left for conservatives to be better dead than, which must be disorienting for them.

We have lived to see the amazing Wolf Blitzer ask Jesse Jackson, in Jesse's capacity as a black spokesperson, why did Barack Obama, a black African immigrant running for the Senate, not speak before the Democratic Convention in Boston using the same kind of rhetoric as did Al Sharpton, a black African-American reverend who had been running for president. Why oh why, Jesse?

Just yesterday, after living a thought-filled and examined life for over 5 decades, we arrived for the first time ever at an adequate working philosophy. This was facilitated by the able conversation and intellectual assistance of our regular companion, the afore-mentioned wanting-something woman and person on whose kitchen floor we have sometimes slept, Anitra Freeman. With her help we came up with this: "Good things now, bad things later." When in doubt always refer to that formula. It's a plan of action that can't go wrong. For example, by using it, you will never force yourself to save dessert for after the asparagus again. You will know all the times that it would be better to be home in bed than. You will learn to appreciate the paper plates of life, and the other disposables. You will shower for the fun of it, not because you have to. There is the way of wisdom.

We have been homeless four times in our life. We mention this in part to fulfill our unwritten contract with Real Change and the Real Change Editorial Committee. Every column we write is required to make at least one mention of homelessness, directly or indirectly, or one local politician must be made fun of, or two national politicians, or we must directly advocate for at least two of the following: minority rights, free pizza for Real Change volunteers writers and "editors", free/more/better treatment for recovering [insert addiction here], cats.

Duck licking. Speaking of speaking of duck licking, every column should contain at least one non sequitur, and one abuse of logical accuracy, which may be the same. But that has nothing to do with the unwritten contract. We have digressed.

We have lived in the same subsidized housing for almost 7 years now, the same housing funded by the Housing Agency Formerly Known As Seattle Housing Authority, the housing that was granted after 14 months on a waiting list, the housing that was promised to me as being permanent, the housing that is now threatened by Bush Administration cuts in Section 8 funding, the housing that we will never move from until they haul my cold lifeless never-to-be-homeless-again body out of it. Or until they come up with something better. Like that'll happen.