The Voice of Treason

Running:
1. Joe Biden
2. Barack “Barama” Obama
3. Chris Dodd
4. John Edwards
5. Hillary (and Bill)
6. Bill Richardson
7. Dennis Kucinich
8. Mike Gravel

Still crouching in the wings:
9. Algore
10. Wesley Clark
11. Howard Dean
12. Nancy “Mee-Mee” Pelosi
13. The Reverend Sharpton

Jumpers:
1. Mark Warner
2. Russ Feingold
3. Tom Daschle
4. Evan Bayh
5. John F. Kerry
6. Tom Vilsack

“Speaking of subpoenas, it’s good to see Speaker Pelosi tonight.”

– George W. Bush at The Radio and Television Correspondents’ Annual Dinner

I sense there was plenty of cringing at the annual Correspondents’ dinner, mainly because George Bush’s performance was the best part of the evening. Good thing, too, since the president’s remarks are sure to be “scrutineered” by his critics.

“Ms. Clinton, it appears that terrorists have snuck a snuke up your snizz.”

– South Park, Season Eleven

I’d mentioned I’ve been cringing a little through the last few episodes of 24, so I almost fell off the couch when I realized Parker and Stone were parodying the show. After all these seasons, that dastardly duo is still managing to keep it fresh. This season has been especially cringeworthy, and when you’re talking South Park, that’s praise. Hillary as Hildog? Oh, snap.

“This is an interesting idea, but for me it still has a very high cringe factor.”

– Luke Visconti, partner at DiversityInc Media

Uncle Ben’s is finally getting a PC makeover from its maker Masterfoods (a rather unfortunate name, mind you), so Ben is dropping the “uncle” and donning a new suit. Why, he’s been corporatized. That trusted face on the rice box was modeled after a real life maitre d’ at a Chicago restaurant, but now Ben’s been reinvented – promoted, so to speak – as a fictional corporate chairman. Yeah, because people trust businessmen.

“If she wanted to. If they were relevant to something that she was interested in. I mean that would be something that I’d be very, very comfortable with.”

– Rudy Giuliani, when asked if his wife would be sitting in on White House Cabinet meetings

Oooh, now that’s cringeworthy. Don’t get me wrong – I like Giuliani and if he’s the nominee, he has my vote. And, to be fair, what’s wrong with letting the missus sit in on meetings that might cover healthcare? After all, she’s a nurse, isn’t she? Doesn’t she have some real world healthcare experience?

“I couldn’t have a better adviser.”

Of course, a president can be expected to have that special relationship with his or her spouse. But the cringe factor here is obvious. It smacks of Clintonism. Bill and Hill, Rudy and Judy. Judy in Cabinet meetings, Judy heading up a healthcare task force, Judy giving the weekly radio address, Judy all up in our faces.

If the 2008 candidates turn out to be Rudy and Hildog – er, Hillary – will they, and their respective spouses, be battling for the co-Presidency? Hmmm. This may actually bode well for John Edwards…

Sam Brownback (b. September 12, 1956)
John Cox (b. July 15, 1955)
Mike Huckabee (b. August 24, 1955)
Condi Rice (b. November 14, 1954)
Jeb Bush (b. February 11, 1953)

Jim Gilmore (b. October 6, 1949)
Duncan Hunter (b. May 31, 1948)
Mitt Romney (b. March 12, 1947)
Chuck Hagel (b. October 4, 1946)

Tom Tancredo (b. December 20, 1945)
Rudy Giuliani (b. May 28, 1944)
Newt Gingrich (b. June 17, 1943)
Fred Thompson (b. August 19, 1942)
Tommy Thompson (b. November 19, 1941)

John McCain (b. August 29, 1936)
Ron Paul (b. August 20, 1935)

Barack “Barama” Obama (b. August 4, 1961)

John Edwards (b. June 10, 1953)

Algore (b. March 31, 1948)
Bill Richardson (b. November 15, 1947)
Hillary (b. October 26, 1947) and Bill (b. August 19, 1946)
Dennis Kucinich (b. October 8, 1946)

Chris Dodd (b. May 27, 1944)
Joe Biden (b. November 20, 1942)

Mike Gravel (b. May 13, 1930)

T and I just met up with a friend of ours - someone we’d nicknamed “Hurricane Andrew” because every time he blows into town all hell breaks loose. He’s a young guy, born the same year that “Waterloo” was high on the Billboard charts. The three of us had worked together before he took a job that moved him from his native Nuevo Mexico to Taiwan; so he’s been bouncing around Asia for several years, but appeared back here last week for a friend’s wedding. We met up for a few beers the night before he was scheduled to fly back to the former Formosa.

The first thing I noticed as he sat down next to me was a large dark red mark on his neck. It looked as if someone had mistaken him for an ashtray and put a cigar out on him. An awkward moment: Is it polite to mention that you’ve noticed something disturbing? I decided to wait until he brought it up.

“You’re probably wondering if someone put a cigar out on my neck, huh?”

The curse of the Irish: our fair friend - and I mean fair - had some “marks” on his pale Irish skin. They were removed, analyzed, and were determined cancerous.

“Gotta get one of those yellow wristbands - I’m a @#$%^&* cancer survivor!”

There is just something about that word “cancer” that stops a person dead in his tracks. Back in 1999, just days before Y2K, I finally went in for a mammogram. I’d been putting it off, but I was growing weary of hearing my doctors tell me that since I was no spring chicken - “you realize you’re 40!” - I decided I really needed to go have it done, just to get them off my back. Just before the holiday, I went into the clinic first thing in the morning, headed off to work, and didn’t think any more about it. When I got home that evening I checked phone messages and there was one from my doctor.

“We’ve scheduled surgery for you Monday morning.”

Turns out that my doctor saw something unusual, and since I’d never had pictures of my breasts taken before, there was no way to tell if this was an abnormality. Better safe than sorry, they said: we’re going to cut it out and take a gander.

Two of the most devastatingly handsome - and funny - young surgeons introduced themselves to me on Monday morning, then began fondling my breasts. Between these two jokers and T, I was in tears - from laughing - by the time I was asked to start counting backwards into unconsciousness. When I woke up, I was told that something the size of a walnut had been removed and would be analyzed. The good news: whatever it was, it was benign.

After that, I started scheduling regular mammograms. But then it became difficult to schedule them around work. And when the non-profit - which continued to take money out of our paychecks - stopped paying for our insurance, I resigned in disgust and haven’t had any health insurance since. I actually can’t remember the last time I went in for an exam.

Stupid, I know, but it happens. T’s mother was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, and required treatment. Laura Ingraham, too. And, of course, Elizabeth Edwards is in the news because her cancer has returned and is in her bones. And now Tony Snow’s cancer has reappeared and is in his liver.

John McCain and Rudy Giuliani will be scrutinized now: will their cancers boomerang on them, too? I watched some of the coverage today when news broke that Tony Snow would be taking time off. The mood was generally optimistic: There’s been so much progress…it can change your life for the better…you learn so much about yourself and about what’s really important…as long as you’ve got family and friends who support you, you can get through it…it’s not a death sentence anymore.

“I just want to let everyone know having cancer hasn’t made me a better person.”

That, from Cathy Seipp — brilliant, beautiful, talented, much loved, and a benefactor of animals - who lost her battle with the disease earlier this week.

Our governor has been pushing for a special session in Santa Fe, but again our State Senate has weaseled out of taking action on legislation Bill needs for his presidential campaign. One piece in particular is centered on domestic partnerships - something I happen to know a little about. T and I celebrated our 16th anniversary yesterday. No, not the anniversary of our wedding. It’s the anniversary of our first date. We were coworkers and friends before that official first date - wait…ugh…stop. I hate when people say that and I just said it.

“We were friends before that.”

That’s always sounded so strange to me. (Oh, so you were friends, but then you became a couple, so you aren’t friends now?) Well, whatever we are, we are. We just aren’t married. So I should be for the government providing legislation that guarantees domestic partners the same rights as married couples, shouldn’t I?

Uh, not so fast. I’d really never given the matter much thought until health benefits came up. I’d mentioned this before: the non-profit where I’d been working was toying with the idea of extending medical coverage to the partners of its employees. Since several of the employees were homosexual, the staff was interested in hearing more. Our insurance rep met with us and explained what it would cost. When I told him that my domestic partner had just resigned from his corporate job and was working at home and had zero coverage, he told me that because I was living with the wrong gender we were out of luck. I turned to my gay coworkers:

“That’s not fair, is it?”

“Well, you can get married - we can’t.”

“Well, yeah, that’s true - I’ll give you that. But what we have is still a domestic partnership. We’ve bought a house. We’ve raised canine children together. Why is gender an issue?”

Why, indeed? Now if I say that’s discrimination, gay couples can come back with: “So’s not letting us get married.” Well, hell, we can go back and forth on this forever and never satisfy both sides. I know married couples who wish they’d stayed single because now they pay higher taxes. If a domestic partnership guarantees the rights of married couples to unmarried couples, will we have to start paying the marriage penalty, too?

I mean, there’s going to be a catch, right? See, it’s like my feelings toward healthcare — I would prefer a free market solution. I don’t need the government to grant me special rights - there are already resources in the private sector I can contact to set up any protections we might require.

Surely there’s a market for this out there: Why aren’t companies targeting the unmarrieds of the world? Just imagine the services attorneys and insurance companies could provide for a fee. Why, I can hear the ads already:

“Are you just shacking up? Feeling a little unprotected? Don’t think you have rights, too? Don’t depend on Uncle Sam - call us instead!

That number’s 1-800-742-2587! Call now! 1-800-SHACKUP!”

That’s how George W. Bush described the Democrat House’s vote on the emergency supplemental this past Friday. But, Mr. President, isn’t that redundant? Politics is theater. And some scripts just sound better than others. “Bring the troops home!” Well, hell, that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? No one wants to be at war and no one wants our soldiers dying. So Act I is interesting enough to draw an audience; however, what precisely happens in Act II? We set a date for troop withdrawal, ship our men and women home, and then what?

And since we’re talking about scripts and spectacle, let’s bring up the curtain on this past Saturday’s production: “The Town Hall Meeting” staged at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, California. Its cast of characters: a variety of peaceniks that included the two Seans (Penn and O’Neill), District 9 Representative Barbara Lee, Betty Kano, Alameda County Board of Supervisors member Keith Carson, and, of course, The Token Cuban. They even unearthed Daniel Ellsberg for this, and when he took the stage he lamented that he didn’t live in the 9th District because he would love to have Barbara Lee representing him in Congress. No, poor Daniel lives in Kensington. A charming East Bay borough, roughly 80% white, nestled against The People’s Republic of Berkeley and two regional parks.

Look, I spent most of my life in the Bay Area, and in my final years there I lived near Alameda County, conducted much of my personal business there, and even worked there. May I submit that I have a soft spot for the city of Oakland? It has some truly lovely neighborhoods and, without a doubt, the most spectacular climate in Northern California.

But if I had the choice of walking down the street in Baghdad, or walking down the street in Oakland…uh, Green Zone, here I come.

But, having a soft spot, too, for theater, I just had to tune into this meeting in Oakland. I wanted some sense of the script, and what I heard was a patois of “universal healthcare, illegal occupation, civil war, and impeachment.”

I tried to get another sneak peek at the Dems’ script the other night when we were having a few beers with our Liberal friends. The subject was immigration and the Left side of the table was condemning the “greedy” companies who were hiring the “immigrants.” My point was that if you’re against closing the border to these illegal aliens, they’ll still keep coming, but what will they do for income exactly? No answer. It appears that part of the script hasn’t yet been written.

Is it safe to say, then, that if illegal aliens have no income they’ll turn to additional criminal activity (yes, sneaking over the border is criminal) or a government program to survive?

Isn’t everyone taking advantage of some sort of government program today? I can’t turn on the radio without hearing that ad about the grandmother who wants to spoil her grandchildren and buy them nice things, so when money’s tight and she needs to “eat right,” she gets food stamps. Say, Granny, if things are so desperate, why aren’t your grandchildren’s parents tossing a few groceries your way?

Currently I have no income or medical insurance and I’m starting to feel like a rube. Can I just give in and take advantage of some government program? I mean, my father, stepfather, and sister paid into Social Security and Medicare, died prematurely, and never collected. Can I have their share? I have produced no progeny to suck up additional government resources after I’m gone, and chances are I’ll never see a Social Security check, either. (Uh, can we at least give George Bush credit for attempting to address this?)

It’s a slippery slope, I tell you. Case in point. My eighty-three year old mother has been in assisted living for the last three and a half years. It’s all paid for out of pocket; it is extremely fortunate that she owned, then sold, a bit of property in California. But what she’s living on is limited. Because she is diabetic, has high cholesterol, and Alzheimer’s, too, she’s been prescribed a lot of pills - and she was paying for all those. In one year, she spent over $10,000 on medications that she doesn’t even know she takes.

As much as I would have liked to have told her doctor that all those meds seemed pretty useless, I dutifully stood in line at Walgreens several times each week to fill her prescriptions for Aricept, Namenda, Lipitor, and a multitude of diabetes specific tablets. With every purchase, the pharmacy tech’s eyes would get huge: “Wow. That’s expensive!”

But there was no way I wanted to mess around with that whole Medicare Part D business. It’s a mess, it’s confusing, it’s too hard to figure out, there are all those catches, and you don’t really save anything anyway. I swallowed the hype hook, line, and sinker. But one day I had to face facts. This wasn’t my money - it was hers, and I’d been entrusted to make sound financial decisions on her behalf. Do I want to spend what’s left of her finances on meds, or do I want her to have a roof over her head?

After putting it off for months, I took a few minutes to research my options, picked one, called a number, spoke to a representative, signed my mother up, and was pleasantly surprised. And then I kicked myself in the ass for not acting sooner.

Again, let me take another look at the script. I see where it says the Democrats are against the Medicare Drug Plan, yet they still want universal healthcare. A chunk of the 2008 Democrat candidates were in Vegas over the weekend, at the SEIU Health Care Forum, comparing their plans. Why, neither T nor I have had any sort of health insurance since we left our corporate jobs. We were watching the TV coverage and I caught a twinkle in T’s eye.

Me: “Now what?”

T: “You know, I’m going to have to get behind the Democrats on this universal healthcare thing.”

Me: “Excuse me?”

T: “Look, it makes sense. If they’re not going to be pro-active and protect the country from terrorism, and then suddenly bombs start going off here in the U.S. every day - hell, yes, someone else is gonna be picking up the tab when I’m full of shrapnel and lying in a hospital.”

Aaaahhhhhh. So is that Act II?

“When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk.”

– John Edwards

Well, that’s all well and good, I’m sure, but we all know how that scenario played out. My question now — what with the revelation that Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer has returned and is incurable, and the accompanying revelation that John Edwards will stay in the presidential race to win — is this:

“When John Edwards is president, will people like Elizabeth Edwards be cured?”

I think the first tribute I read this week was the one on FNC’s website - an article by Susan Estrich. And then the floodgates opened. It was if George W. Bush had blown up the levees again. (People, it’s a joke. Bush didn’t blow up the freaking levees, okay?)

Anyway, I had to go where I usually go when I want to read the top-of-the-line obits. A lot of people want their day in the sun, their fifteen minutes. They want fame, they want to be remembered. This isn’t something that motivates me - I prefer to travel incognito. But if I knew I could get a write-up in National Review after I’m dead, I might just be whistling a different tune.

Since Cathy Seipp wrote a dazzling column for NRO, there would certainly be some mention of her this week. Oh, was there.

“Our Girl, Cathy”

“Fearlessly Independent”

“An Unorthodox Talent”

“A Fond Farewell”

Cathy was like a secret you just had to share, and all those who wrote about her at NRO provided links to share even more of her with us.

“Moxie” provides a stunning photo. “Pajamas Media” bestows a portrait by Roman Genn. “Jeremayakovka” provides a piece from an interview:

Interviewer: What do you consider the most important personal quality?

Cathy: A certain large-mindedness, or generosity of spirit - because this encompasses not only extending yourself for others, but other qualities like courage, and having friends who disagree with you politically, and not constantly worrying about what other people think.

And also a quote:

“Any publication she wrote for was changed from bottled water into a crisp martini. She was the olive — savory, faintly intoxicating, even nourishing.”

As a vodka martini fancier myself, I know precisely the type of olive he’s talking about. A martini is simply swill without it.

Uh-oh. Did our governor catch that one? There was Hillary, telling a crowd of supporters what she’d like to do with Bill (hell, I could tell you what I’d like to do with Bill, but the OMCT would come after me), and she says she thinks it might just be illegal to make her hubby Secretary of State, but that she might be able to get away with giving him the title: “Ambassador To The World.”

Hold on a minute, honey, that’s Bill Richardson’s job. If he doesn’t get the nomination for top job or second fiddle, he’s counting on Secretary of State in the next Clinton administration. And even if he does end up on Pennsylvania Avenue or on the corner of 34th Street and Massachusetts, he’s still going to want to be known as Ambassador To The World. He went to school for this. He’s the diplomacy guy.

The governor has been careful not to say anything negative about the senator, but now that she’s made it public that the other Bill is going to solve all the troubles of the world, watch out. Precisely what, then, is Bill Richardson’s role going to be?

Uh, frankly, in a new Clinton administration, what’s Hillary’s role going to be?