Who Are You Calling Lard-Ass, Ugly?

Oh, such a delicious Thanksgiving. Let me give you a tip, people: save your bacon fat. I keep a jar of it in the fridge, and in a wild moment of inspiration, I decided to use it to make Thanksgiving more festive. And I mean to tell you, I used it liberally. I used bacon fat with butter to caramelize the onions for the stuffing. I smeared the entire turkey in bacon fat before roasting it. For good measure, I put a sizable dollop of the stuff in the roasting pan to assist in the yummification of the gravy. I put actual bacon in the green beans, and sauteed them in the fat. With some butter. It was so smoky, so rich, so porky, so very, very good. I like a meal with a theme, and this year, the theme was "Behind Every Great Meal Is a Great Fat." My friends, let me tell you, that fat is bacon. Just like the pilgrims did it.

But even all this sublime swine could not distract from the key issues in the news: the twin meltdowns of Iraq and Michael Richards. I still have my Iraq/Vietnam post to unleash on the world, and I'm pretty much ready to go with it -- but my stomach is still a bit full, so I thought perhaps we'd start with an amuse-bouche to get us back into the swing.

So, here's what you missed while you weren't roasting your turkey in bacon fat (more fool you): Kramer from Seinfeld is not, to everyone's surprise, a Jew. We know this because he apparently made anti-semitic comments at a past show, before his bout with the N-word last week. Evidently, this past April, Richards did a show in which he yelled at some audience members who he thought were Jewish, "You fucking Jews, you people are the cause of Jesus dying." Naturally, he promptly hired a (Jewish) agent to say that, while the reports of the Jew-baiting incident were true, it wasn't really anti-semitism, because Richards is Jewish. Uh-huh. I don't think so. Or at least, I would have assumed so until I heard that quote, and then I realized the truth of Richards' hidden goyishness. For, while it is not unheard of for a Jew to be an anti-semite -- in fact, it's quite standard -- I can tell you from vast experience that Jews don't hate Jews for killing Christ. Jews hate Jews for being too smart, too nerdy, too pedantic, too typically semitic -- or, alternatively, for "passing", which is to say, for not being Jewish enough. (I have no doubt that T-Cro is going to kick in a few more things Jews hate Jews for, which reminds me that I should beat him to the punch and mention "argumentativeness".) But the Christ thing -- not even on the radar. While a little debate between Richards' friends and his publicist over "Jewy or not-so-Jewy" rages over the internet, I think we can consider that resolved and move on to the other core issue of the case.

The other core issue is this: Michael Richards is out on what is universally referred to as "The Apology Tour", making amends to the Afro-American community (his unfortunate phrasing, not mine) for the "hurt" he's caused them. I'm just wondering, where's the apology to ME? Because here's the thing: I don't think the people who get hurt in these racist incidents are black people. Some supposed Hollywood liberal revealing his true stripes and coming out as a bigot -- and not just any bigot, but a base, stupid, repetitive, N-word and lynching-imagery slinging, garden variety, uncreative, monotonous bigot -- well, that doesn't really hurt black people's feelings, does it? I think it's more likely it just confirms what they already believe about white people, that if you scratch our surface at all, we're all seething with the biological need to call people that name.

It's like when Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust. It doesn't hurt my feelings as a Jew. It's what I expect as a Jew -- it doesn't hurt me, or make me sad, or make me hate the stupid people who think the Jews start all the wars, or flew the planes into the twin towers, or run the White House (and I love that Bush is probably unaware that many people in the Middle East think he's a Jew). It just confirms the idea that, for most people, Jew is still a loaded term. Those of us waiting around for people to stop caring heave a sigh and adjust on the sofa to wait a bit longer. So when Kramer goes and does this stupid shit, I think he should apologize to me, and to all the other white people to whom it would never occur to unleash a racist screed, and who, if we were ever in the position of being heckled by a person of any color or creed, would never even think of resorting to racial slurs, but would instead happily stick to the territory of unflattering commentary on clothing, weight, and choice of companion.

Racial harmony can be achieved, my friends, once we all start criticizing each other personally.

Travel Size

I'm still working on the whole "Iraq as Vietnam" thing for you; it's proving complicated (especially since Kissinger refuses either to die or to just shut up). And you're all cooking and traveling this week and don't want to think dark thoughts about war and death and the fact that all ideology is bullshit. Let's talk about that next week. For this week, I'm going to give you some travel tips, courtesy of your friends at the TSA.

The TSA, it turns out, is very much concerned with your breasts. They have several breast proclamations on their site, which, being myself the owner of some breasts, I found most interesting. Let's review them, shall we?

1. You will be relieved to know that you are allowed to travel with your breast prostheses, though they may be made of gel and are therefore potentially highly dangerous.

2. If you have silicone or saline implants, your breasts will not be punctured and drained prior to boarding. What a relief that is!

3. Your underwire bra may set off the metal detector, and that would be bad. So that pretty much cancels out the kindness to big-breasted women demonstrated by the permissive attitude toward implants.

4. If you have breast milk, you can take that on board and, the TSA reassures us, there will be no disgusting ritual of tasting the stuff, either by you or by them. But you must have a baby with you, or the breast milk is a no-go. I consider that very wily of them, making you bring an actual baby. I'm sure they make you take it out of its stroller and demonstrate that it works.

5. If you have amorous intentions for those long mid-air hours, you'll be delighted to find that you're allowed to bring KY jelly on the plane. I know, it's not about breasts, but somehow it seemed worth mentioning. I mean, they actually specify: "All prescription and over-the-counter medications (liquids, gels, and aerosols) including KY jelly, eye drops, and saline solution for medical purposes". Why does KY jelly come before saline solution? What kind of sick mind prioritizes that way?

The TSA would also like you to know that it is crucial that the 3 oz containers of gels and liquids that you are permitted to bring with you ALL fit within ONE quart-size ziplock bag. This is because, as I'm sure you're aware, the quart-size ziplock bag has a magical property whereby its contents, however explosive they may be, are neutralized. This applies only to the quart-size bags, and only when they're alone; two quart-size bags together are extremely volatile, and the gallon-size are such insane hotbeds of explosive activity that they're practically nuclear reactors. Hence their expressly forbidden status.

The TSA reassures us repeatedly on their site that these restrictions are the result of the latest research on jihadis and their nefarious plans. Clearly they have thoroughly excluded the possibility of an exploding bottle of breast milk, or a toxic tube of KY jelly. That's why those things are permitted. Because they're safe. And with the tool of the one-quart ziplock, our safety is guaranteed. It is, literally, in the bag -- just so long as there's only one.

Safe travels, happy Thanksgiving, and we'll see you back here next week for the story of how Vietnam got us into Iraq.

Golden Slumber

Yesterday this story from the British paper The Guardian was getting a lot of play all over the internet, primarily because of its assertion that Bush is planning to put 20,000 more troops into Iraq in a "final push" to "win" the "war". This came, of course, on the same day that General Abizaid stood in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee and told them with a perfectly straight face that the number of troops is not too many, not too few -- juuuuust right.

Uh-huh. So let me get this straight. Bush says he listens to the generals on the ground. The top military commander in the region says he doesn't need any troops. He says this, almost certainly, because he's been told to say it, because he knows, as you and I know, that there aren't any more troops and no political or public will to move them if there were. But Bush is going to back-stab the generals, who've been loyally singing his tune, by demanding exactly what he said he'd support them in not needing. Does it seem like maybe these people need to get their stories straight?

The joke of it, of course, is the number 20,000. I've not been to Iraq recently. Or ever. But I've read a lot of people who have, and none of them thinks that 20,000 troops would make a lick of difference. I think we all know that 400,000 troops would have made a difference 3 years ago, and that's about the size of it. It's insulting to hold out the idea that we're 20,000 troops from turning this thing around. Bush may really think it, because this is his version of waking up to reality, and he is evidently a very, very heavy sleeper. But McCain is saying the same thing, with slightly different numbers, and in his case it's downright dishonest. He has every reason to know better. Need I point out that in 1965 we had 184,300 soldiers in Vietnam, and by 1968 had ramped that up to 536,100, and yet were never in much danger of winning the war? You could put 20,000 troops right in downtown Baghdad and it wouldn't stop the kidnappings -- which now, as you may have heard, take place in broad daylight at government ministries. So forget it.

I have more to say about Iraq and Vietnam, but I need to give it a little more thought first. I'm making that my task for next week. But for now, let's all spend the weekend contemplating the basic moral question that lurks at the center of both wars, and that, I think, is only recognized at all by the left: to allow any more Americans to die in Iraq in pursuit of an unattainable objective is akin to murder, or treason; to pull the troops abruptly out of Iraq is to shift that murder even more firmly onto the Iraqis and simultaneously to commit political suicide at home. So if you're a Dem, I think you're in the uncomfortable position of choosing between political survival and moral honesty. Appetizing, eh?

By the way, if you missed it, you really must read the Times piece on the Armed Services Committee hearing -- it reads like the minutes of a high school yearbook committee meeting, and is simultaneously hilarious and infuriating. McCain is acting like the captain of the football team, and Lieberman has cast himself as the nerd who thinks he's hot shit since he's in with a few of the popular kids because he does their homework for them. To all of which I say, in the eternal language of high school -- losers. But props to Hillary Clinton for using "hortatory" in context. Perhaps there's hope for her yet.

Don't Let the Screen Door Hit Ya Where the Good Lord Split Ya

No doubt you were, as I was, startled by Bush's announcement on Wednesday that Rumsfeld is history. History as in "Worst Defense Secretary In All Of". Didn't waste any time, did they, those Bushies? No, one bad election and Rumsfeld went under the bus in the newfound spirit of bipartisanship. And the media completely buy this -- Bush has turned over a new leaf in his relationship with Congress; Bush's speech was "conciliatory"; Bush is moving back to the middle.

Yeah, right. I don't buy it, and I bet you don't either. Bush has no intention of being bipartisan, and for concrete proof you need look no farther than the fact that he intends to try (almost certainly unsuccessfully) to push through the lame-duck Senate an approval for both John "Did you just call me hostile, asshole?" Bolton and the discredited and unconstitutional NSA wiretap program. Conciliatory my ass. It's all window-dressing.

So, given that we know that, and aren't fools, let's look at what else we know: had they thrown Rumsfeld under the bus a little earlier, they'd possibly have held on in the Senate at least, although probably not in the House. So why didn't they? By all accounts, Rove genuinely believed they were going to keep both houses of Congress, and maybe he did. I'm certainly not going to defend Rove -- in my mind he's no longer an asshole genius; he's just an asshole. But when they have the new guy all lined up and ready to go at 10 AM the day after the election, but have breathed not a word of it before that, and when Bush is happily swearing days before the election that Rummy's in it til the bitter end, well then, a person has to wonder what the hell was going on.

This is a bigger contradiction than the media has acknowledged. Sometimes they're so credulous it's amazing; to the extent that they acknowledge this puzzle at all, they do so only by way of reprinting the quote wherein Bush admitted at the Wednesday press conference that he'd lied in his pre-election interviews. They appear to take at face value Bush's explanation that he didn't want to inject a major announcement into a campaign environment. Uh-huh. Because that would be, like, unethical.

Right. So here's my theory, and you can see what you think of it. Rove thought they'd probably hold on. Bush and Cheney both love Rummy, Cheney possibly more so. No one wanted to get rid of him, and they thought they probably wouldn't have to. They didn't see how much could be gained by firing him weeks ago because they didn't see the seriousness of their predicament. But one of them -- and I really doubt it was Bush -- decided that if they lost the election, if the polls for once turned out to be right, they had to get rid of Rummy right away. So Bush agreed: if they won, they'd keep him. If they lost, they'd bring in the new guy.

They knew they were going to have to get rid of Rummy with a Democratic Congress, simply because having him hauled over to Capitol Hill under subpoena would be a disaster. By giving him up without a fight they manage to look magnanimous, and to strike a blow at nullifying any Democratic effort to hold hearings on the conduct of the war. As evidence for this, I can tell you that within a couple of hours of Bush's speech, David Gergen was on NPR saying that Dems now couldn't hold hearings without looking churlish, and that they would be fools to do so. But I'll bet you anything you like that if the Bushies had held on to the Congress, Rumsfeld would still have a job. This is a wager without meaning, of course, but I'll make it anyway.

As a principled Dem, I am loathe to give up on the hearings, and loathe to counsel my party into actions that will alienate the public so close to a presidential election. I would be inclined to worry a great deal about this, except that I think it is possible that over time the Dems can, if they play their cards right, make it clear that the Bushies are not being bipartisan at all; that they are, in fact, being obstructionist in the extreme. And they can have their hearings in a year, when everyone has forgotten how much they hated Rumsfeld. After all, without Rumsfeld there's no one left to blame except Bush and Cheney themselves. And there will be plenty of blame left in a year, in two years, and for all the years to follow, as far as the eye of the mind can see.

Woo Hoo!

Woo Hoo! WOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO! Woooooo Hooooo! Woo! Hoo!

Ah, yes. Things went well. Last night, as returns came in, over here at the Nation of Bacon, we started cooking up some yummy smokey pork flesh to kick off the night, and we never looked back. At this historic moment, I'd like to take a moment to thank my staff. To T-Cro, Reader M, Reader K, and Reader H for calling in last night here to BN Election Central, where we were making stew and watching the returns. To Readers P and H (not their real initials -- really they're Readers T and A -- ha!) for bringing new readers into the family in time for this auspicious day. Now, as we go forward into a whole new era of bickering rather than rubber-stamping government, and the labored question of "Hilary -- should we or shouldn't we?", I hope that you'll all stay along for the ride.

I'd also like to take total credit for my own personal GOTV effort, which delivered two Dems to polls, one being the friend here in California who had never voted in her life until '04, when I made her registering and voting a condition of helping her move house, though I did so only after the ordinary modes of persuasion didn't work; and the other being a reader in the fine city of Dallas who, without my fabulous Google skills and shear mighty determination might never have found her polling place. Ok, she'd have found it; but I made sure it happened with a minimum of stress. Also, you can credit me for delivering Missourri and Virginia, since 2 weeks ago I gave $20 each to the McCaskill and Webb campaigns. Not convinced? Well, I thought Tester had it in the bag, so I didn't give him money, and he ended up in the closest vote tally. I take that as total proof, and thus take total credit.

Yes, indeed, today is a very fine day. Here in California the sun is shining, and all's right with the world. I'm totally not letting the re-election of our governator penetrate my consciousness, and I feel fine.

And so I have decided to leave until later in the week my personal reckoning with the question of whether the summary firing of Rumsfeld means that I, as a Dem with an eye on a glorious future, should give up on my cherished dream of congressional hearings on Bushie fraud with regard to Iraq. Let us deal with nothing so divisive on this great day. Let us lean back in our chairs, and smile, and be delighted that we managed in one fell swoop to take both houses of congress, and at the same time to rid ourselves of Kerry for '08. The bon temps are here; let 'em roll.

Federalist Pleading

I don't even know what to say about the election on Tuesday. According to a stack of polls coming out in the last two days, the margin on preference for Democrats has narrowed to 4%, which would sound good were it not for the fact that, as Paul Krugman pointed out in a recent column, gerrymandering and the nature of the Senate (all states are equal) means that Dems need to be up by 8% nationwide to effect the leadership of the Congress.

This is discouraging news -- not because it means the election might be lost, but because it means that if it is lost the election will give the Bushies free reign to continue with their current rampage of delusional, hypocritical, intellectually lazy, warmongering, war-criming, civil-rights-depriving, totalitarianism-loving, bigoted, gay-bashing, corporatizing, fearmongering, lying, cheating, stealing, venomous bullshit -- all the while claiming it as a mandate.

This is beyond partisanship. I know most of you agree with me, and most of you know me, but we've got some readers checking in lately from far-flung places, where there are congressional seats in play, and I am begging you, all of you -- vote Democrat, just this once. I'd be a fool to promise that everything will instantly get better; but I can promise that the "business as usual" steamroller will finally meet with some resistance. If you're a patriot at all, and for possibly the second time in my life I'm using that term in all seriousness, that should be motivation enough.

At the founding of this country, James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers that the logic behind representative democracy was precisely to provide an avenue for correcting our current situation:

When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government on the other hand enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest, both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good, and private rights, against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our enquiries are directed: Let me add that it is the great desideratum, by which alone this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.

We can't say he didn't warn us. And if we don't do something about the tyranny of this (partial) majority now, I cannot imagine what lies ahead.

So vote, dammit.

PS The first time I ever called myself patriotic, by the way, was right after 9/11, so Dick Cheney can kiss my royal Irish ass.

Dear Mr. Angry,

If you look at the comments section of "Midterm Madness", you'll notice that someone claiming to be Bill Stegmeier (the amendment's chief sponsor) has offered a "clarification" on the language of Amendment E. In addition to calling me a "boy", and thus demonstrating his implicitly entitled assumptions about the workings of the world, he asks whether I have any questions. And the answer is, nope. Because, if you look at Mr. Stegmeier's comment, and at my post, you will notice that he does not address any of the concerns about Amendment E that I raised, including the troubling possibilities raised by the section of the amendment that I quoted at length. You would think that someone seeking to operate in the field of public opinion would have a better answer to the complaint that the language of his amendment, in addition to violating the basic principle of judicial autonomy, sets up an unfair trial system to review the results of that violation. But there you have it. Given that he doesn't address any of my complaints, or any of the serious reservations of those who oppose Amendment E (which includes the ENTIRETY of both houses of the South Dakota legislature), I don't see anything that prompts me to ask any questions to which I don't already have the answers.

But hey, thanks for reading!

Midterm Madness: South Dakota Edition

One of the problems with this particular midterm election is that, with so many congressional seats in play, it's almost impossible to keep on top of governor's races and ballot measures in the far-flung provinces. Thankfully, here at the Bacon Nation (don't you find yourself putting "the" in front of every noun these days, in homage to Bush and "the Google"? If not, start) we have Reader M to keep us informed. So, in today's Spotlight on Democracy Gone Horribly, Horribly Wrong, I offer South Dakota's Amendment E.

Amendment E is the brainchild of an asshole named Ron Branson, who's from California, not South Dakota, and who has tried to get this piece of shit on ballots in other states and, mercifully, failed. But apparently, South Dakotans enjoy ruining the hallmarks of American democracy -- the right to equal protection under the law; the right to a fair trial -- and so enough of them signed a petition for this measure that they got it onto the November ballot. What does Amendment E say? It attempts to curb "activist judges" by instituting a special grand jury, impanelled specifically to hear complaints by citizens against judges who they think have wronged them.

Yeah, that's right. The entire appellate process is apparently insufficient to hear the grievances of those who get legal outcomes they don't like. In South Dakota, you or I (were we stupid enough ever to live there) could decide that we didn't like a judge's decision, or attitude, or look, and we could force him or her to come to court and do some 'splaining. With the possibility -- I shit you not -- of actually trying these judges on criminal charges, based entirely on the Special Grand Jury's assessment of (in a horrible parroting of the language of Article III of the US Constitution) "law and fact". Don't believe me? Take a look:

Should the Special Grand Jury also find probable cause of criminal conduct on the part of any judge against whom a complaint is docketed, it shall have the power to indict such judge, except where double jeopardy attaches. The Special Grand Jury shall, without voir dire beyond personal impartiality, relationship, or linguistics, cause to be impaneled twelve special trial jurors, plus alternates, which trial jurors shall be instructed that they have power to judge both law and fact. The Special Grand Jury shall also select a non-governmental special prosecutor and a judge with no more than four years on the bench from a county other than that of the defendant judge, to maintain a fair and orderly proceeding. The trial jury shall be selected from the same pool of jury candidates as any regular jury. The special prosecutor shall thereafter prosecute the cause to a conclusion, having all the powers of any other prosecutor within this State. Upon conviction, sentencing shall be the province of the special trial jury, and not that of the selected judge. Such sentence shall conform to statutory provisions.

Got that? The Special Grand Jury brings the charges; the trial jury cannot be properly voir dired as they would be in any criminal trial; in fact the only provision of impartiality is to pick a new judge from far away -- someone who doesn't know the judge on trial and who has a newly evolved sense of his post-Amendment E place in the world. I dare you to read the whole thing -- it's blood-curdling. The pro-E people even have a website called "jail4judges", just in case you missed the message: these people don't want justice, they want vengeance. And I say all this despite the fact that South Dakota, as a red state, almost certainly has more judges offensive to me than to the originators of this measure. But can you imagine a world in which any disgruntled citizen is entitled to bring charges against any judge? Do very many of us find ourselves in front of a judge because things are going well for us? How likely is it that many people are happy about the experience? If they pass this thing, South Dakota is going to drown in a whole new version of the frivolous lawsuit -- and it will serve them right.

One of these days, Americans are going to get the democracy they deserve, and this thing is just one step closer. But hey, don't despair -- if we're lucky, chasing judges around will keep the South Dakota prosecutors too busy to arrest the victims of rape and incest whose abortions will probably become illegal on Tuesday.

PS I wish I could tell you how this measure is polling, but the only numbers were sponsored by the Pro-E people through a Zogby push-poll. So when I tell you they got a 67% favorable result you will perhaps not be totally shocked, and also not totally convinced.