The Voice of Treason

I did something a little unusual last night. I stayed awake. I can sleep on a meat hook; the older I get the more lark and less owl I’ve become. But I was all owly last night and listened to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory.

I used to sleep with the radio on and wake up to hear either Ray Taliaferro or Art Bell; it’s been a while since I actually sat and listened to overnight talk. But Walid Shoebat was the guest and he agreed to stick around for three hours. I played Free Cell and listened, then switched off the radio and watched Sky News coverage until I slipped into a coma around 4:00.

Shoebat is interesting to listen to and his message is fairly simple. He was curious, asked questions, and the answers changed his life. He questioned Islamofascism and discovered that certain parts of the philosophy just didn’t hold water.

The Taliban hanged a seventy year-old woman and her son from a tree in Afghanistan this week. The pair was accused of spying for Hamid Karzai and the new government. Proof that we wasted our time in Afghanistan? No, proof that we have to do more to annihilate the Taliban.

Radical Muslims plot, bomb, torture, decapitate and kill on a daily basis; what’s absent is the outrage. The demonstrations in the streets. The demands that they cease the violence, the hatred, the fanaticism, the intolerance, the inhumanity.

Muslims are quick to take to the streets to protest America, Israel, and Denmark; where are they when terrorists commit carnage and preach about the destruction of ape/swine infidels? I guess I’m a swine, but I was raised in an ape neighborhood, so I’m definitely on the hit list. Oh, and I kiss dogs on the mouth, too.

History weaves peculiar tales. Blacks hanging from trees like Spanish moss made an impression on most people. An old Afghan woman and her son can swing in the breeze and no one gives a damn.

When I got up and turned on FNC this morning and heard that about “the plot,” I wasn’t surprised. What was surprising is that it was compared to another - a fairly identical one - thwarted in 1994/1995. How can this be? George W. Bush wasn’t even president back then. Let’s see…who was?

But, on talk radio, enlightened callers were quick to connect the dots and point this out. Defensive liberals, as usual, interpreted this as an attack on Clinton. Calm yourselves! Take a breath and think about terrorism during the Reagan administration. Breathe again and tell me how many days America was “held hostage” during the Carter administration.

No one is casting aspersions on Clinton here. We’re just trying to understand how it’s possible that people hated us and wanted to kill us even before Bush was in office. After all, this is all his fault, isn’t it?

As silly as this bickering is, what’s sillier is local reaction. Callers are saying all this coverage of a terrorist plot is “overblown.” Blowing up planes full of people is overblown? It’s obvious that if something happens in the world and it doesn’t happen directly to certain people, then those people just don’t give a damn. They simply do not care.

One caller, angry, wanted to know why the host was wasting time on this story when the important issues were “the rains and floods and roads that need paving.” We live in a desert and our infrastructure is challenged by our monsoon seasons. Generally we just talk about monsoons; this summer, we’re actually living through one.

When we moved here we had the opportunity to buy a home in a more rural, scenic area. The property’s value would have increased dramatically, but the idea of living without pavement disturbed me. Call me crazy, but I like sidewalks.

Unpaved roads are generally not an issue here, but now that they’ve flooded and created a serious mess, natives are getting restless. All I can say to this caller is:

“Dude. You chose to live where there’s no pavement. Deal with it.”

Or do what T and I did when the rain brought down the slope in our backyard. Shovel it.

Pack up all my care and woe,
Here I go,
Singing low…

You go, girl! Keep on goin’ and go far, far away. (Democrats might just be happier than Republicans today.) Cynthia McKinney has left the building. But not without a scuffle and her entourage creating a scene. Funny how Mel Gibson is crucified for an anti-Semitic rant, but McKinney hangers-on get by with it. And speaking of Jews, how ’bout that black sheep Joe Lieberman?

No surprises here. We knew he was going to lose to the rich white guy, Ned Lamont. See, if you’re a rich white guy and your name is Bush or Cheney, you’re bad. If you’re a rich white guy and your name is Lamont or Kennedy, you’re good.

Similarly, if you’re a white conservative Christian from the South, you’re bad. If you’re a white Christian from the South and your name is Edwards or Clinton, you’re good.

Is that the smell of high-pocrisy, or what?

You would think Joe would earn points. After a bitter, divisive election in 2000, Joe Lieberman and George Bush are caught in an embrace. But photos of Bush kissing Lieberman do little to help the campaign. They proved they could put 2000 behind them and move on. Isn’t that what Liberals tell us we should do? Move on?

Instead, the campaign has been like watching a mantis capture and eat a fly. Or a spider trapping, wrapping, and devouring a victim in its web.

That victim is Joe Lieberman, punished for having an opinion and standing by it. To be fair, he might not have run as well as he could have, but he still has a record. Doesn’t matter: He was kicked to the curb because he continues to support the war.

The blatant anti-Semitism on the blogs is understandable, but when Chris Matthews takes a nasty swipe at you - “a schmaltzy ethnic type?” — well, it’s been interesting to watch. My hope is that Joe sticks to his guns and goes forth as an Independent. Frankly, I’d like to see more of them out there.

Shame on voters who claim they’re looking for candidates who are bold enough to stand firm on positions whether or not they’re popular, then criticize them when they do. But to be fair, it happens on the other side, too.

Joe Lieberman seems to be a decent human being. He cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered “the Right,” but on this issue and a couple others, he is right. If he can’t prove it, history will.

Last Friday I caught a little bit of our former governor on our afternoon radio show and it sounded as if he said he was contemplating running for president. And the more I thought about that, the more I liked the idea. I can see the T-shirts and lawn signs now:

“I did inhale - a lot!”

There’s a long list of things I like about Gary Johnson and one of the things I like most is the sense that the man is honest. Impossible, you say. The guy is not only a successful businessman and millionaire, but he’s a professional politician - and a Republican at that. He’s as crooked as they come - I’m just naive.

Maybe. But when we were considering coming out here I had my eye on elections, and when Gary won I felt it was safe to make the move. I say that because I truly believe that Gary is just too busy to be bothered with conjuring up falsehoods. He’s…well, an oddball. But an endearing, refreshing one. I’ll go on record here. If he ran, I’d vote for him. Hell, I’d even show up at campaign headquarters and tell them to put me work. And if he ever ran as a Libertarian, I’d officially make the switch.

Do I agree with him 100% of the time? No. But I just really like the guy. He’s…well, he’s just fun to watch. He sort of reminds me of Jeff Goldblum. A little strange, a little unpredictable, a little off center, but - unlike Goldblum - utterly charming. He’s sharp. He’s bold. He’s…different.

So when he says that the Attorney General who’s running for Congress knew about the uh, “culture of corruption” in her own party…specifically in the State Treasurer’s office…I have no choice. I have to believe him.

Her ads, like Gary, have been fun to watch. The Democrat claims she didn’t know what was going on, but the former governor insists that’s impossible. She had a representative at the meetings, and the meetings - with details of the corruption - are well-documented.

It’s like Ken Lay saying he had no idea what was going on in his own company. One has to question that. If you didn’t know what was going on around you, what else didn’t you know? But the AG is quick to point out in her ads that she is aggressively prosecuting the crooks. An odd choice, in a political ad, to bring attention to the crooks in your own party.

But then this is a Democratic state and the natives are used to crooked politicians. It’s business as usual, and there’s a good chance the AG - called incompetent by members of her own party - will win handily.

A shame, because there really has been opportunity for state politicians here to take some risks and break the mold. If we continue to vote for the same names again and again, we won’t ever break that mold. Instead we’ll be consumed by it.

This state boasts about its “intellectual capital.” Something strangely absent at election time.

Doctor, doctor!
Here are our views
We got a bad case
Of doctorin’ news!

No bill’s gonna cure this ill
We got a bad case of doctorin’ news!

Apologies to Robert Palmer aside, but is anyone really all that surprised that a Reuters photographer has been caught “doctoring” pictures?

The “cloning” of buildings in Beirut and the “enhancement” of billowing smoke has been attributed to Adnan Hajj. As in “Hajj you like to go job hunting, Adnan?”

But as Jeff Harrell (The Shape of Days) points out:

“Folks, I hate to break this to you, but it really doesn’t matter very much now what happened in Beirut. Now the story is that a photojournalist — or his editor, or whomever it turns out to be — faked a photo, and that Reuters ran it on their wire. Once you start just making stuff up, the argument is over. You’ve lost.”

“You know you got to stop them at the beginning, like they should have stopped Hitler at Munich. They should never’ve let him get away with that. They were just asking for big trouble.”

– Pete Clemenza to Michael Corleone in The Godfather

What makes the Coppola film so good is that it’s filled with good advice. Like:

“Watch the kids — don’t let ‘em run wild, all right?”

“Well, you watch yourself, all right?”

“Never tell anybody outside the family what you’re thinking again!”

“How ’bout a drink? Have a little brandy — that’ll help sweat it out.”

“Sit on the other side. You block the rearview mirror.”

“And watch out for the kids while you’re backin’ out.”

“Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”

“It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.”

“You see, you start out with a little bit of oil. Then you fry some garlic. Then you throw in some tomatoes, tomato paste, you fry it; ya make sure it doesn’t stick. You get it to a boil; you shove in all your sausage and your meatballs; heh?… And a little bit o’ wine. An’ a little bit o’ sugar…”

“Hey, don’t you ever tell her to shut up — you got that?”

“We don’t discuss business at the table.”

“You touch my sister again, I’ll kill ya.”

“Look at this — tomatoes, peppers — all of this — perfecto…”

“Don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family again. Ever.”

All sage words that can be applied to everyday life. A film that offers instruction on interpersonal relationships, family, business, food preparation, cold remedies, childrearing, driving, and foreign policy is a thing of beauty.

It’s ironic that Tessio was always smarter, but it was Clemenza who spoke some of the wisest lines in the film.

In college, I used to go out to have drinks with friends and inevitably some guy I didn’t know would ask me to dance. I devised an almost foolproof way of weaseling out of it, too: I’d tell the guy that I could only dance to My Sharona. Nine times out of ten, I could keep sitting there and continue drinking - but every now and then the guy would walk up to the band and request The Knack tune and I’d be on the dance floor. I was reminded of that when I heard that it’s one of the tunes on George Bush’s iPod.

And I’m reminded, too, when I watch the war news from Israel.

My-ee ey-ee by-ee ahee ah woo!
K-k-kiryat Shmona
K-k-kiryat Shmona!

I’m not making mock here. No, instead, the song has become sort of a mantra for me - a battle hymn, to be more precise. And it’s all because of bad behavior at the World Cup. Ever since that Algerian on the French team head-butted the Italian (and has anyone actually confirmed that he called him son-of-a-terrorist-whore?), everyone seems to be taking sides.

Zinedine Zidane is the hero; Marco Materazzi is the goat. Worse, he is the provoker. It feels like the Boomers in power were those kids who got picked last for kickball and never quite got over it. This wacky theory of theirs - that the side that provokes is at fault, and the side that responds aggressively is not - has spilled over into our foreign policy and we’re conducting a war as if we were geeks and bullies on the playground.

What makes their theory so wacky is how it’s interpreted depending on the situation. In the World Cup, the Italian player was the bully, the bad guy. If that’s the verdict, then this Israeli/Hezbollah conflict should be pretty straightforward stuff. Hezbollah started it, they provoked Israel and Israel, in turn, is responding. Then Hezbollah, the provoker, is wrong; Israel, the reactor, is right.

But it’s the exact opposite in this case because the media insists that Hezbollah’s actions were a response to the provocation of Israel. Israel started it, we didn’t! And, with this in mind, everything else falls neatly into place. September 11, 2001. The U.S. provoked the Islamofascists, so flying planes into buildings was an understandable response.

Saddam was a brutal dictator. No, he wasn’t - he was simply responding to U.S. provocation. We can go back and forth throughout history to prove this theory. The American Revolution? It wasn’t the fault of the British - we provoked King George. He had no choice but to react!

None of this matters, of course, because the result - no matter how twisted the theory - will always be the same. America is the bully. Israel is the bully. We’re always going to be the bad guy.

So I just take a breath and…

My-ee ey-ee by-ee ahee ah woo!

…remember, despite the media and its theories, which side is right.

No, the reason I’m wondering about Fidel - other than the fact that he’s past his prime and his health is failing fast…but not fast enough, dammit - is that I’m reminded of a couple things. First, that after T helped a lesbian friend of ours move, she and her partner invited us to dinner. Both bright women and interesting to talk to. But that night we got on the topic of Socialism and one of them said:

“Well, it is the perfect system.”

“What is?”

“Socialism. Communism. Whatever you want to call it.”

“I know what I’d call it. And that definitely isn’t perfect.”

I was reminded of our friend Ofelia, and her hair-raising stories about her family fleeing Cuba when the bearded one came to power. I’m reminded, too, of that old boyfriend - the one from Costa Rica - and his story about his cousin who was going to medical school.

The government was paying for her education. She was attending a respected university, didn’t have a penny to her name, but all her expenses were covered. The catch? Her benefactor was the government of the Soviet Union. (This was the eighties, before the big “shake up.”)

She studied, but what she studied wasn’t her choice. And when she graduated she was guaranteed a job…but it wasn’t going to be one of her choosing. And she would be sent to live in a place that wouldn’t necessarily be where she would want to live.

But to her, that was fair. To me, that’s communism. You get what you get whether you like it or not. How perfect is that?

Is Fidel dead yet?

Tick, tick, tick, tick…

I was driving home today, taking the scenic route through the overpriced little village near our city. Behind the “natural” food store was a truck and a table stacked with watermelons. A sign was posted nearby:

Texas watermelons. Blessed by Jesus!

When I got home I told T that I was tempted to pick one up.

“They looked like really good melons.”

“Huh?”

“The melons.”

“What melons?”

“The Texas watermelons that were blessed by Jesus.”

“Wouldn’t those be ‘walk-on-water’ melons, then?

(There is something to be said for atheist humor. It’s no wonder I continue to associate with so many of them.)