WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? (J.D. Rhoades' Blog)

The Party of (Conditional) Love

2012-01-29T10:21:00.002-05:00

As you know, I call the Republican Party the "Party of Love," since it's an article of faith with them that it's the liberals who are filled with hate.

Unlike, say, Republican state delegate and Senate Candidate Bob Marshall of Virginia, who said recently that children with disabilities are God's punishment on women who have had abortions. (Sarah Palin has been notably silent on that particular insult to her Down syndrome baby.)

Or the Republican speaker of the Kansas House who urged people to pray to God, in the words of Psalm 109:8, that President Obama's "days be few, that his children be fatherless and his wife a widow." Some enterprising Republican entrepreneurs have even made this a bumper sticker.

Yes, the right is filled right to the brim with love. But it seems that right-wing love is a conditional thing.

- Right-wingers love the troops, unless they turn out to be gay, or report war crimes, or start speaking out against a war the right wing loved and cheered for.

At least they loved the war until a Democrat became president, at which point the war they cheered for becomes that president's fault and something that should have been ended yesterday.

- Right-wingers love the Constitution, except the parts that grant citizenship to people who were born here.

They also aren't all that crazy about the parts that give the right to counsel or to a jury trial to people accused of crimes, or the parts that don't allow the government to just read your mail or tap your phones without any oversight whenever they feel enough concern about your activities. Unless the president is a Democrat, and then they're suddenly very, very concerned about these things.

But they still don't want jury trials for cases where someone was injured by a doctor's or a corporation's negligent acts. Those juries are "out of control."

- Right-wingers love free speech and the right of free assembly, so long as it's exercised by older white people wearing teabags on their hats. Anyone else is either an anarchist or a dirty, flag-burning hippie who needs to get one of those jobs they say don't exist because it's the president's fault.

- Right-wingers love the idea of cutting government spending, unless it's cuts to money spent on them, which they don't consider spending at all.

- Right-wingers love the idea of cutting taxes, but only if you're talking about cutting taxes on the wealthy. A tax plan that raises taxes on the poor and middle class is just fine with them. In fact, one of the right's biggest gripes now is that not enough poor people are paying federal income tax.

- Right-wingers love "family values" and demand that politicians practice marital fidelity. But only if the politicians are Democrats. Republicans who conduct years-long affairs with staffers, and who ditch their wives because "they're not young or pretty enough, and besides she has cancer," are fine.

In fact, even bringing up those affairs is "appalling," because, after all, Bill Clinton had affairs. The fact that Bill Clinton had affairs, however, is itself so appalling that it must be brought up at every opportunity.

- Right-wingers love the rich and successful and think they deserve credit for their hard work and innovation. Unless those rich and successful people are George Soros, Warren Buffett, or anyone who made their money in the entertainment industry who doesn't vote Republican. Those people should just shut up.

George Orwell, in his novel "1984," described a party that maintained its grip on power by a rigorous adherence to the principle called "doublethink."

Doublethink was described as "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary."

Well, it certainly has become indispensable to the American right wing. No wonder so many of them go crazy.

My Open Letter to President Obama

2012-01-27T15:12:00.005-05:00

Dear Mr. President:

I saw a news story today about a little argument you apparently had with Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona. Apparently, you were unhappy with the way she described a meeting she'd had with you a while back. At the time, she'd said the meeting was "cordial," but in the book she said you were "patronizing" and "condescending." She apparently got a little heated up about it, and ended up shaking her finger in your face after which one of you stalked away, it wasn't clear which.

Now, Mr. President, I've always been a big supporter of yours. I haven't always agreed with you on some things, like Libya, the public option, and the detention provisions of the NDAA, but I agree with you on a lot more than I disagree. And even if we were discussing things I disagree with you about, I would never dream of being disrespectful or shaking my finger in your face. At least not normally.

But here's the thing. I also read that, after the finger-shaking incident, Governor Brewer's book " “Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure the Border,’’ went from 285,568 on the Amazon sales list to 20.

20! That's the biggest one day jump in Amazon's history. Which leaves me with a bit of a conundrum.

As you may or may not know, I'm a published author in addition to being a lawyer and newspaper columnist. (If you weren't aware of this, just call up the guys downstairs and have them bring you my Homeland Security file. After all the stuff I said about the guy who was President before you, I'm 99% sure I have one).

The books have done okay. I've gotten some great reviews and letters from fans, and the respect of some of my fellow writers. That means the world to me. But, sadly, none of them have cracked the top 20, at least so far.

I think you can see where I'm going with this.

See, I've always been one of those people who thinks outside the box. When something controversial occurs, and other people are saying "this is terrible, how could such a thing happen?" I'm thinking "how can I get me some of this?"

Like I said, I have nothing but respect for you. But could you do me a solid? I know you're probably going to be in North Carolina a lot in the coming months, what with it being a battleground state and all. One of those times, could I maybe come by and be a jerk to you? It wouldn't take too long, maybe a couple of minutes.

I'm not talking about any kind of threat or anything, because I don't want to get my butt kicked by the Secret Service or get indefinitely detained. But maybe I could make fun of your tie or tell you I don't like Al Green or something. A little sneer, a little finger shake, I'd flounce off, and we'd be done.

If I could do that, and if we could make sure that there are cameras there, I'll bet my sales would go through the roof. I might get invited on Jon Stewart or Conan or even--dare I say it out loud?-- Craig Ferguson. Like I say, I wouldn't normally even dream of asking something like this, but it's always been a dream of mine to leave the day job behind and write full time, and this may just be my ticket.

The books, by the way, are The Devil's Right Hand; Good Day In Hell; Safe and Sound; Breaking Cover; Storm Surge; Lawyers Guns & Money; and the new one, Gallows Pole. All are available in Kindle and Nook formats. I think we can both agree that those are much snappier titles than “Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Blah Blah Blah." They also make great reading on airplanes. Just saying.

Thanks, Mr. President. You're the best.

Your fan,

J.D. "Dusty" Rhoades

Supervillain or Newt?

2012-01-24T14:04:00.001-05:00

Supervillain or Newt shows you an idea and asks you to decide: does the idea come from an insane megalomaniac bent on world domination, or from a fictional supervillain?

I only got 50% right the first try :-( .

Year of the Water Dragon

2012-01-23T08:03:00.001-05:00

Astrology.com:

In a Dragon year, everything is magnified tenfold. And after the rather meat-and-potatoes Metal Rabbit year we just lived through in 2011, we are in for the ride of our lives. Commotion, turmoil and general hullabaloo will characterize the Dragon year ahead. As of January 23, 2012, better get ready to rock and roll -- or else crawl under a rock until it's over.

Think of the Water Dragon year as a 12-month-long, bumpy road with interludes of elaborate and joyful festivity. Fortunes will be made and lost with lightning speed. All events will be charged with a rare intensity. In short, 2012 will be a year of derring-do, hell-raising and exorbitant fun.

Dragon years are favorable for the enterprising and ambitious. If you want to succeed at something major, start early in the Dragon year. Don't give up. Express yourself openly. Show no fear. In China, it is said that the Dragon year brings luck to those who dare to speak out, to take charge and even to take over.

Dragons are fearless and direct to a fault -- but they are not without ruse. They're clever go-getters who are always in the running for first place. They want to excel at every endeavor. Dragon years, therefore, are propitious for people who have the courage to take risks, to stand fast in the face of danger and hold firmly to their principles. For those among us who are timid and shy, who shrink in the face of challenge and who daren't speak up for what it is they want, Dragon years can be rigorous and even a little bit frightening at times.

Time to be fearless, folks. Time to put aside the doubt and uncertainty and pain of the last year, to grab the dragon by the whiskers, go forth and conquer.

Happy year of the Water Dragon!

h/t to Balloon Juice

There Is Such A Thing As A Stupid Question

2012-01-22T00:14:00.000-05:00

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It is often said, mostly by people in the field of education, that "there are no stupid questions." This, of course, is simply not true. In fact, in the real world, stupid questions abound. "Why do they have to ask my name and credit card number when I call the psychic hot line?" is a stupid question.

Once when I was whitewater rafting, the guide warned us about a particularly dangerous rock formation. An unlucky rafter, she told us, had fallen out, gotten wedged under the rocks in the turbulent water, and it took three weeks to get his body out. A cute blonde girl from the back of the boat piped up: "Was he all right?" That was a stupid question.

You expect stupid questions from a certain subset of cute blonde girls and from the type of people who call psychic hot lines. One does not, however, expect truly brain-dead questions from the "public editor" of The New York Times.

Unfortunately, said "public editor," whose name is Arthur S. Brisbane, recently asked such a mind-bogglingly idiotic question that the majority of readers responding could not believe it had even been asked.

In his column of Jan. 12, titled "Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?" Brisbane wondered if "Times news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about." As one example, Brisbane cited the frequently made (and utterly false) claim made by Mitt Romney that President Obama has made speeches "apologizing for America."

This statement by Romney is blatantly untrue. It is, to put it plainly, a lie. Brisbane noted that Times columnist Paul Krugman called Romney's statement an example of "post-truth politics," along with other Romney canards like the one about how he'll reverse Obama's "massive defense cuts." (The defense budget has grown steadily every year so far.)

All well and good for an op-ed columnist, Brisbane said, but should a reporter do the same? Should a reporter, confronted with a statement like Romney's that is factually untrue, inform his or her readership that "the president has never used the word 'apologize' in a speech about U.S. policy or history," or that "any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president's words"?

The reaction from The Times' readership, bless them, was sharp and immediate.

"If you truly have to ask this question," a reader from Seattle wrote, "then you seriously need to think about a job change." A reader from Georgia was even more direct: "You can't be this stupid."

Perhaps the most pointed comment was made by "Stuart" from Riverside, Calif.: Was the question being asked "because NYT reporters perceive they have a real conflict between reporting the truth and being rewarded with approbation, access, career advancement and privilege by the people who benefit from the falsehoods?"

You have whacked the nail on the head, "Stuart" from Riverside, Calif. The biggest problem with the press right now, and the one that does the most to threaten our democracy, is not that they're liberal or conservative or even corporate. It's that the people tasked with reporting the truth are too close and too chummy with the people they're supposed to be watching.

Reporters who point out that a politician is lying through his or her teeth don't get invited to barbecues where the candidate lets them swing on his tire swing and makes them baby back ribs, like the "reporters" who were supposed to be covering John McCain.

They don't get invited to the cool parties at the White House. They don't get those juicy little exclusive tidbits that press secretaries feed them if they've been good little toothless lapdogs. So what you get are "reporters" who become nothing more than stenographers, taking down the lie du jour and passing it along without analysis or comment.

At best, what you get is "some say this, but others say that," without anyone bothering to ask, "Well, which is factually true?" But that's what we need reporters to do: Tell us the facts, don't just recite what some press flack has told them.

Comedian Bill Engvall has built his signature routine ("Here's your sign") around people who ask such ridiculously obvious questions that they ought to be required to wear a sign that says "I'm Stupid." So, Arthur S. Brisbane of The New York Times, I say to you: Here's your sign.

The Romney Standard of Truthfulness

2012-01-15T11:57:00.002-05:00

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"I like being able to fire people." It was the kind of statement, like John McCain saying he didn't know exactly how many houses he owns, that can define a candidacy. It played right into the picture that Mitt Romney's opponents, both Democratic and Republican, had been trying to paint of him: that of a heartless "vulture capitalist" who made his fortune not by job creation, but by buying companies and laying off thousands.

It made Mitt Romney look like - well, like a guy you wouldn't want to have a beer with. In a political environment where a candidate ordering orange juice instead of coffee in a diner causes pundits to call his regular-guyness into question, it's hard to see it as anything but a major gaffe.

Romney's opponents seized on the quote. Rick Santorum's criticism was somewhat mild. "I am not too sure that is a very good message to a lot of folks out there," he said. Jon Huntsman was a little more pointed: "Gov. Romney enjoys firing people, I enjoy creating jobs."

Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, started sounding like they were about to join Occupy Wall Street.

"There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business," Perry said. His campaign even made "I like being able to fire people" into a ringtone you could download from his website, no doubt bringing joy to the tiny black hearts of horrible bosses everywhere.

For his own part, Gingrich said, "I think there's a real difference between people who believe in the free market and people who go around, take financial advantage, loot companies, leave behind broken families, broken towns, people on unemployment."

A pro-Gingrich Super PAC released a video called "King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town." It called Romney a "predatory corporate raider" who "destroyed the American dream for thousands of workers and their families."

The ringtone has since been taken down, and Gingrich has backed off. "I think they're way overboard on saying he wants to fire people, he doesn't care," Gingrich said.

Whew. For a minute there, it was a little disorienting. I thought they were going to form a drum circle or something.

The Romney campaign complained that the comment had been taken out of context. Romney, they said, was talking about being able to ditch your insurance company when they're not serving you well.

They were, or course, right about the context. It was more than a little amusing, however, to hear that complaint coming from the campaign that had edited Barack Obama quoting something a Republican adviser had said about the McCain campaign ("If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose") and made it sound as if it was the president talking about his own campaign.

When confronted with that little bit of dishonesty, the Romney campaign was unapologetic. "He did say the words. That's his voice," Romney adviser Tom Rath insisted. So using the Romney campaign's own standard, the "fire people" quote was fair.

But we certainly don't want to use Mitt Romney's standard of what's fair, do we? That would be horrible. So let's look at what he actually meant.

"I don't want to live in a world where we have Obamacare telling us which insurance we have to have, which doctor we can have, which hospital we go to," Romney said at a press conference. "I believe in the setting as I described this morning where people are able to choose their own doctor, choose their own insurance company. If they don't like their insurance company or their provider, they can get rid of it."

Problem is, "Obamacare" doesn't restrict that. In fact, just the opposite. The law doesn't empower the government to pick your insurance company or your doctor. Nor does it keep you from "firing" either one. In fact, through the health care law's prohibition on denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and the setting up of insurance "exchanges" that allow people to compare different companies, the ACA actually will make changing insurance easier than the current system.

And here's the thing: Mitt Romney knows that. As I hope they will continue to remind the American public, the Obama administration based much of the act on the one championed by Romney himself in Massachusetts.

So while Mitt Romney may or may not actually enjoy firing people, his actual quote shows us one thing: We don't want to use the Romney standard of what's truthful.

Reflections On Iowa

2012-01-08T12:43:00.000-05:00

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So Mitt Romney, whom the media still insist on calling the "presumptive Republican nominee," has won the Iowa caucuses by a whopping eight votes.

The surprise of the evening (which everyone saw coming days ago) is that the person whom Romney beat by that molecule-thin margin was not Newt Gingrich, but was instead the former senator from Pennsylvania, Rick "For God's Sake Don't Google My Last Name" Santorum.

Santorum had the advantage of timing. This is a contest where every other member of the Republican Klown Kollege has gotten to be the front-runner for at least two weeks, until people actually got to hear them and they became a late-night TV punchline. (Gingrich got to do it twice.)

Santorum's "surge" came right before the caucuses, when people were desperate for a conservative, any conservative, to vote for. It was closing time at the GOP Bar, everyone else had turned out to be a dog, and Iowa conservatives were willing to squint and keep the lights turned low when they took Rick Santorum home.

It remains to be seen, however, how he'll look to them the morning after, when people who aren't completely off the deep end find out about some of the things he actually believes, such as:

- Exceptions to abortion restrictions to protect the mother's health are "phony."

- Insurance companies should be able to deny you coverage for pre-existing conditions.

- We don't need food stamps or other programs to fight hunger, because there are fat people in America.

The smart money says no. Even if those positions don't turn off sane people, that dorky sweater vest might. I mean, really. Dude. A sweater vest? Seriously?

The news networks spent millions of dollars and hours upon hours of air time obsessively covering the Iowa caucuses, all the while telling us they don't really matter. The caucuses, they tell us, are nonbinding and have no effect on the delegate count. They are, in effect, a straw poll on steroids. The winner of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, they point out, was Mike Huckabee. The eventual nominee, Hon. John McCain, came in fourth. And so on.

What the media consistently ignore in all this cognitive dissonance is that the alleged importance of the Iowa caucuses is entirely their creation. It's one of the clearest examples of how 24-hour news coverage has warped and distorted the political process.

For instance, the day after her dismal showing in the supposedly meaningless caucuses, former front-runner Michele Bachmann dropped out of the race (an announcement that led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth by political humorists everywhere).

It looked for a moment like Rick Perry was going to bail out as well, but a Twitter message to his followers defiantly stated, "Here we come, SC! And Florida! And ... dang, I forgot the third one. Oops."

When confronted with the weakness of their candidate lineup, some Republicans insist that it really doesn't matter whom they run, because Obama is "worse than Jimmy Carter."

This is, on its face, absurd; there's no way, for example, to hang something like the millstone that was the Iran hostage crisis around the neck of the man whose administration presided over the death of Osama bin Ladin, the fall of Moammar Gadhafi and the end of the Iraq War.

In addition, while there's dissatisfaction with Obama on both sides of the aisle, the deep hatred required to motivate people to get out of the house and go to the polls for an "even a flip-flopping, unprincipled empty suit like Romney over Obama" vote is restricted to a few noisy wingnuts who think everyone's as angry and hateful as they are.

Ask John Kerry how well "sure, you don't trust me, but I'm not the other guy" worked for him.

But leaving that aside for the moment, the biggest problem with that desperate attempt at historical analogy is that the GOP doesn't have a Ronald Reagan to run against Obama.

Reagan was a charismatic candidate with a solid conservative record and a message of hope. The current right wing that runs the GOP has made "hope" a word to be mocked, and when it comes to charisma, these people are not only not Reagan, they're not even Dan Quayle.

The Republicans have their best opportunity in a long time to win the White House, and they're blowing it with lame candidates, inept campaigns and nasty infighting.

That's usually the Democrats' job.

Review: SNUFF, Terry Pratchett

2012-01-02T13:10:00.003-05:00

Snuff by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sam Vimes has always been my favorite Discworld main character because he's easily the richest and most complex: a good man and a good copper who's always aware just how thin the barrier is between that and becoming bad. It doesn't help that he's taken on a rider in his head (possibly imaginary, but very possibly all too real) who would cheerfully give him a shove through that barrier.

In this book, Vimes takes a holiday at the insistence of his adoring (and incredibly rich) wife Sybil. Vimes being Vimes of course, it's not long before he's neck deep in murder and corruption in a place where no one knows him or cares that he's the Commander of the City Watch.

There are some of the usual pointed and witty observations here, as well as some good suspense. Pratchett does seem to indulge his penchant for beating you over the head with the book's message a little more than usual, but once you get past that, it's an amusing, fun read. I would have liked to see more of Vetinari (my second favorite Pratchett character), but then I feel that way in every one of the Discworld books. I just love that magnificent bastard.

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Fearless Predictions For the Year Ahead

2012-01-01T11:32:00.002-05:00

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Once again, here are our predictions for the year ahead (assuming that the Mayans weren't right):

JANUARY: Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich fails to place higher than third in the South Carolina primary, then throws an on-camera tantrum in which he claims that he has the right to subpoena all of the voters in the state to come to Washington and appear at a hearing to explain themselves.

FEBRUARY: A firestorm erupts on Fox News, talk radio, and the right-wing blogo-sphere when President Obama wishes his wife a "happy Valentine's Day." Bill O'Reilly devotes 30 minutes of his news show to ranting that the exclusion of any mention of Saint Valentine "just proves that President Obama has declared war on religion." Anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller shrieks that the omission of the saint's name is "the most compelling evidence yet that Obama is secretly an Islamofascist trying to impose Sharia law on the United States."

MARCH: Scientists discover a new faster-than-light subatomic particle whose only function seems to be to allow Kim Kardashian to get divorced a split second before actually being married.

APRIL: The first day of spring sees the return of a perennial rite of the election season: flag-pin mania. Michele Bachmann, still gamely hanging on despite low delegate numbers, gets the ball rolling when a picture of President Obama taken on a Hawaiian beach shows him without a flag pin. "A president who was a real American would figure out a way to attach the pin to his chest, even without a shirt," Bachmann proclaims. This sets off a war among the GOP candidates to see who can most ostentatiously display the largest flag pin. Tragedy brings the contest to an end when Rick Perry attempts to nail a seven-by-five-inch pin to the center of his forehead and ends up in a coma.

MAY: Rick Perry miraculously comes out of his coma, but dramatically changed in that he can now remember more than two things at a time. His rebounding poll numbers drop precipitously when Republican primary voters turn against him for "acting like he's smarter than us."

JUNE: TLC announces its new fall schedule and causes controversy with its new program "Celebrity Cannibal," a reality show in which D-list celebrities compete in various contests, with each week's loser cooked by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey and devoured by the rest of the cast. In the show's end-of-first-season cliffhanger, all those in the remaining cast (Hulk Hogan, Courtney Stodden, Stephen Baldwin) face expulsion from the show when they refuse to ingest former rock singer Courtney Love.

JULY: Canceled due to budget cuts.

AUGUST: The Republican Party holds its nominating convention in Tampa, Fla. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney finally gets enough delegates to clinch the nomination when the head of the Massachusetts delegation rises and delivers these stirring words: "Romney, I guess. Whatever. Can we go to the beach now?"

SEPTEMBER: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin gives an interview on Fox News in which she announces that "it's not too late" for her to enter the race for the 2012 GOP nomination. "Who knows what might happen in the future?" she chirps to an incredulous Gretchen Carlson. Despite the fact that the nomination has already been awarded to Romney, contributions pour in to Palin's campaign headquarters. Palin uses the contributions to purchase a yacht, which she christens the "One Nation" and uses on an extended "campaign tour" of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

OCTOBER: Apple announces its latest innovation: the iWash, an Internet-enabled washer/dryer combination. Despite the fact that no one at Apple can coherently explain why a washer and dryer need an Internet connection, record-breaking crowds of "early adopters" line up around the block at various Apple stores to purchase the device. Rumors that a security problem in the iWash's operating software could allow hackers to remotely steal your underwear fail to affect sales.

NOVEMBER: America goes to the polls, but the turnout among a dispirited, unenthusiastic, and battle-weary electorate is the lowest in U.S history. Barack Obama wins over Mitt Romney, with a national tally of 400 votes to 275 - in the popular vote, not the Electoral College.

DECEMBER: Dec. 21, the supposed date upon which the Mayan "Long Count" calendar (and therefore the world) ends, comes and goes without the expected cataclysm. The American economy receives a massive boost as merchants are deluged by people realizing they're going to have to do their Christmas shopping after all.

And so, once again, I offer you my traditional New Year's greeting, courtesy of Ogden Nash: Duck! Here comes another year!

Review: CRIMES IN SOUTHERN INDIANA by Frank Bill

2011-12-30T15:30:00.001-05:00

Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories by Frank Bill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You might try to comfort yourself by thinking that Frank Bill's exaggerating for dramatic effect in these short, tightly written tales of country meth addicts, domestic brutality, dog-fighters, unpredictably vicious rednecks, and rural ultra-violence. You might try to tell yourself that things this grim and lurid could never happen in real life. But I can tell you, they do.

This is not a book for the faint of heart; it's pure distilled essence of redneck noir, and there are few happy endings. But the quality of the writing keeps you coming back for just one more page, then another, until it's all gone, like a bottle of cheap whiskey that you can't put down and that's gone all too soon.

I got this book for Christmas, and Frank Bill just made it to the top of the "Buy As Soon As It Comes Out list."

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Jesus Probably Wasn't Born Today, But So What?

2011-12-25T11:56:00.001-05:00

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Well, here it is, December the 25th. Christmas Day. Since I can assume the first thing most of you did was NOT run out to the driveway, get your copy of The Pilot, and run inside to read this column, I figure the stockings are empty, the presents all opened, the turkey or ham or whatever your choice of holiday meat is either in the midst of cooking or resting comfortably in your tummy. Unless you're Jewish, of course, in which case I hope you have a good day and are enjoying your Hanukkah and the Chinese food.

Some pedantic souls are fond of pointing out that it's highly unlikely, based upon the account in the Gospels, that the actual birth date of Yeshua bar-Yosef, aka Jesus, was December 25th. For instance, shepherds in first century Israel did not "abide in the fields and watch their flocks by night" in the wintertime; that happened in the spring, when the lambs were born. In the winter, the sheep were kept corralled, and the shepherds stayed home. The angels would have had to come to the door and knock to announce the birth of the Savior in the City of David, like some sort of divine Western Union. It's a much less compelling image, to be sure, than the one of the Heavenly Host filling the sky with praises.

No, we're told, the December date was much more likely picked to coincide with (and hopefully take the place of) already existing pagan festivals. They'll point to the fact that sometime in the fourth century A.D. the Roman Emperor Aurelian announced the feast of Sol Invictus (The Unconquered Sun) which took place on December 25th.

Or perhaps the celebration of Christ's birth was meant to occur at the same time as an older Roman holiday, that of Saturnalia, a week-long debauch beginning December 17th. During Saturnalia, people exchanged presents and partied in a fashion that makes even the rowdiest office Christmas party look like an ice-cream social.

In addition, the normal social order was turned upside down; masters served their slaves at the dinner table, and the slaves could boss them around for a change--carefully, one would imagine, since they'd be back on the bottom of the pile next week.

Others suggest that our Christmas was meant to overlap Yule or other Northern European holidays celebrating the Winter Solstice. Those are the holidays from which we get our traditions of bringing evergreen plants indoors, of mistletoe, and of the blazing Yule log (fa-la-lalala, and all that).

I think, however, that the argument that late December isn't the "real" date of Jesus' birth and that it's really just a date co-opted from paganism kind of misses the point. All of those seasonal pagan celebrations have one thing in common: they take place during the coldest and darkest time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, the time when the night seems endless, the cold seems eternal, and it seems as if nothing will ever grow again. But they don't curse or bemoan the darkness; they look forward to the return of the light. They're celebrated with candles and firelight and evergreens. They remind us that however long the winter may seem, spring always comes back. They're holidays dedicated to hope when everything looks hopeless.

And that's why it's the perfect time to celebrate the birth of Jesus, no matter if it's more likely that He was born sometime in the spring. Whatever your belief as to the divinity of the person known as Jesus, it's undeniable that He was born at a time of great darkness and cruelty, in a country beneath the boot of an empire so brutal that they routinely nailed people to pieces of rough wood then hung them up to die slowly as punishment. And yet, His message was one of peace, of healing, of love, and of hope. It was a message of light in the darkness.

So, no matter what your beliefs, or lack of same, I wish all those things for you today.

"A Book That Will Both Entertain and Challenge You"

2011-12-22T16:34:00.002-05:00

Elizabeth A. White, All Purpose Monkey gives GALLOWS POLE a great review. Check it out!

Some Special Letters to Santa

2011-12-18T09:51:00.004-05:00

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Dear Santa:

I have plenty of gifts, because I have the most towering intellect and the farthest-reaching vision in America right now. Possibly in the entire universe. Tell you what, since I’m a guy with a lot of ideas, let me give back by sharing a few with you.

First off, you need to ditch the elves and replace them with poor inner-city kids to teach them what it’s like to earn a paycheck. And we need big mirrors in space. And geo-engineering to fight global warming ....

Oh, wait, I don’t believe in that anymore. Any video you’ve seen of me saying I did is a falsehood, because I say it is. You need to listen to me, Santa. I’m a transformational figure. I’m all that stands between us and Auschwitz.

— Love, Newt

Note to staff from S. Claus: We need to make sure Newtie gets his meds adjusted.

Dear Santa:

We’re willing to give up Christmas presents this year if we can just borrow the elves to pick our crops. Since this crazy immigration law came in, all the Latinos left. The locals can’t stand a day of this kind of work. Plus, I figure the elves are built low to the ground so they don’t have to stoop over.

Help us, Santa. You’re our only hope.

—Love, John McMillan, agriculture commissioner, state of Alabama

Dear Commissioner: Sorry, but elves don’t have identity papers. I don’t have time to keep going down there and bailing them out of jail. You’re on your own. Signed, S. Claus.

Dear Santa:

I want three things for Christmas. One, I want to be the front-runner again. Two, I want people to realize I’m not brain-damaged. Three, I ... dang! I can’t remember. Oops.

— Love, um ... Rick. Yeah, that’s it. Rick.

Note to staff from S. Claus: Maybe this is why Mitt Romney made that $10,000 bet with Rick. He assumed Rick wouldn’t remember it.

Dear Santa:

In 2007, we controlled 34.6 percent of the wealth in this country. Since the recession began, that percentage has grown to 37.1 percent. We’d like the rest of it. And we demand that people stop saying mean things about us.

— Sincerely, the 1 percent

Note to staff from S. Claus: They get coal in their stockings this year.

Note from staff: OK, but they already own most of it.

Dear Santa:

Can you bring me some more pepper spray? I’m all out, and I keep seeing people sitting down. They’re all over the place. There’s just something about people peacefully sitting down that really makes me want to give them a face full of the old pepper.

— Love, Lt. John Pike, UC-Davis campus police.

Note to staff from S. Claus: Coal.

Note from staff: Already on it, boss.

Dear Santa:

Both Newt Gingrich and I once supported an individual health insurance mandate and cap-and-trade legislation. Now, I have to convince Republican voters that those things are dangerous socialism. What I need for you is to give everyone in the country amnesia.

Oh, and while we’re at it, the next time I sit down next to some old white guy at a diner for what looks like a surefire photo op, can you make sure he’s not a gay war veteran who proceeds to hand me my head on a platter in front of everyone? Thanks.

— Love, Mitt

Note from staff: We should probably hold off on gifts for Mitt, boss. He keeps changing the list.

Dear Santa:

We want the influence of money out of politics. We want regulations to reform the banking system, like restoring the law separating investment banks from commercial and savings banks, so that crazy investments don’t take your savings with them when they fail.

We want investigation and prosecution of Wall Street financial fraud. We want to do away with the law that regards corporations as “people.” We want lobbyists to stop being the ones to draft legislation that benefits the industry they’re lobbying for. Thanks.

— Sincerely, the Occupy movement

Note to staff from S. Claus: Wait, what? All I keep hearing is that these people don’t know what they want.

Note from staff: That’s what the media want you to think. They’re owned by big corporations, remember?

Note to staff from S. Claus: Glad I’m not.

Note from staff: Us too, boss. Us too. Merry Christmas.

Interview at WritersBreak.com

2011-12-14T13:30:00.000-05:00

I'm interviewed by the very talented Jennifer Minar Jaynes today over at WritersBreak.com. We talk about Gallows Pole, places to write, and why I went indie. Check it out!

How to Take Christ Out of Christmas

2011-12-13T07:57:00.003-05:00

This was too good not to share:

‎"How do you take Christ out of Christmas? You take Christ out of Christmas every time you:

Don’t take the high road.

Are less than loving, and patient, and kind.

Gossip, complain about, and judge others.

Are slow to listen and quick to anger.

And yes…. grump and moan and cry about everyone taking Christ out of Christmas, instead of simply showing the people kindness and goodwill and grace, and letting them see through your actions that Christ cannot be taken out of your Christmas because Christ is living in you. No one can take that away from you, no matter what they believe or what they celebrate or WHY they celebrate."

Thanks to Jennifer McGrail at The Path Less Taken and to M'Lou Green, who posted this on Facebook.

Review: THE DEPUTY, by Victor Gischler

2011-12-12T12:57:00.002-05:00

The Deputy by Victor Gischler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Part-time sheriff's Deputy Toby Sawyer gives new meaning to the word "hapless." He's given the simple task of keeping his eye on the body of a local tough who turns up murdered. Somehow, he manages to botch even that. His efforts to set his mistake right send him lurching from one life-threatening situation to another, uncovering more and more secrets and corruption with every lurch.

Let's face it, Jack Reacher this guy ain't. But Victor Gischler keeps the action moving so fast, and makes the bad guys so bad, that you end up pulling for the poor schmuck with the tin badge pinned to his Weezer t-shirt.

Fast-paced, tightly plotted, and darkly funny, this is Gischler's best book since his debut, GUN MONKEYS.

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A Little People, A Silly People (And I Don't Mean the Muppets)

2011-12-11T12:02:00.002-05:00

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In a world where the rich and powerful, especially giant corporations, are the truly oppressed members of society, it’s a good thing that Eric Bolling and his cohorts at Fox Business News are vigilant and ready to warn us of threats to capitalism. If they hadn’t been on the job, we might never have known about the imminent Marxist peril posed by the Muppets.

As you might have heard, there’s a new Muppet movie out from Disney, starring Kermit, Piggy, and the gang, as well as that guy from “How I Met Your Mother” whose name I can never remember. Bolling, the host of FBN's “Follow the Money,” was offended by the portrayal of the movies’ villain, an oil baron named Tex Richman (played by the multi-award-winning actor Chris Cooper). Richman, the story goes, wants to drill for “sweet, sweet oil" under the Muppet’s home/studio, and the Muppets and their human friends have to save it.

Well, Eric Bolling and the cracked--sorry, crack-- team at FBN weren’t going to take that kind of socialist slander lying down. “Liberal Hollywood depicting a successful businessman as evil? That’s not new,” Bolling sneered.

Actually, that much is true, as we are reminded this season by multiple portrayals of characters like Ebenezer Scrooge and “It’s a Wonderful Life”’s Henry F. Potter. Ranging farther afield, you can find a lot of fictional villains distinguished by great wealth: Lex Luthor. Goldfinger. Montgomery Burns. Donald Trump. Wait, Trump’s real. I still have trouble believing that.

A few moment’s consideration would probably lead a reasonable person to theorize that rich and powerful characters make effective villains because their power makes them a credible threat to the aims of the scrappy underdog hero(es). Without a credible threat, there’s no suspense, and no story. A homeless guy isn’t going to do much to stand in the hero’s way, unless you give him a rocket launcher, and that would just be silly.

But not as silly as Bolling and Company when they’re convinced that leftism is afoot. “It’s amazing how far the left will go to manipulate your kids,” fussed one of Bolling’s guests, Dan Gainor of something called the “Media Research Center”. Andrea Tantoros, one of the co-hosts of the talk show “The Five,” chimed in. “I wish they could just leave little kids alone,” she said, her voice quivering with indignation. "We're teaching our kids class warfare,” Bolling agreed, adding, “Where are we, Communist China?"

Yes, according to the genuises at Fox Business News, the Muppets and the DIsney Company are agents of the International Chinese Communist Conspiracy.

You cannot make this stuff up, folks.

Perhaps the most amusing thing about the whole segment was that all the time Bolling, Gainor et. al, were warning us all of the Hollywood conspiracy to defame those poor oil company execs, and thus the very concept of capitalism itself, clips from the movie were playing on an inset in the screen--Muppets and humans dancing, singing, and generally being a heck of a lot more fun than these over-privileged whiners sitting in a New York Studio and complaining about how mean Hollywood was to the people who brought you price gouging and the Gulf oil spill. Apparently, it’s not enough that oil companies enjoy astronomical profits every year and that their executives enjoy compensation that would shock a Medici prince, now everyone, including the Muppets, has to be extra-special-nice to them to avoid hurting their (or Eric Bolling’s) feelings.

After other pundits began mocking Bolling for taking on the puppets in a children's movie, he eventually apologized--sort of. Being a true product of Fox, even his apology made him sound like a passive-aggressive dick. "Apparently," he said, "I said some things that offended little Kermit and Miss Piggy the last few days. And listen, I apologize." Then he went on to step in it again, adding: "I just wanted to say, listen, froggy--what's his name? Kermit, Miss Piggy, if you want to debate this any time, I'm all for it. So let's bring it."

I guess offering to debate creatures made of felt is moderately less crazy than demonizing them as Communist agents. But only slightly.

You have to wonder: was there no one in the entire studio willing to take Bolling aside and go, “Dude. Muppets? Really?” Thanks to the 24 hours news cycle and the Murdoch media empire’s unceasing hunger to find new and fresh outrages to satisfy right-wingers’ need to feel oppressed and put-upon, the answer appears to be no.

Review: THE COLD COLD GROUND, Adrian McKinty

2011-12-05T13:04:00.002-05:00

The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In Northern Ireland in 1981, Detective Sean Duffy wryly observes, there aren't a lot of what you'd traditionally think of as "serial killers"; any psychopath who wants to kill a lot of people has only to seek out and join the paramilitary group of his choice, and he'll have all the killing his twisted heart may desire. But when a pair of bizarre murders points to the existence of an honest to goodness serial murderer, Duffy, a Catholic "peeler" in a heavily Protestant area, gets the case.

I've been an Adrian McKinty fan since 2003's Dead I Well May Be, and this one did not disappoint. Duffy's a classic McKinty character: complicated and conflicted, driven by internal forces he himself understands only imperfectly. The book takes place during a time when IRA hunger strikers were dying in the notorious Maze prison and the entire country seemed on the verge of civil war as the paramilitaries responded with bombings and riots. The ever-present threat of an explosion (both literal and metaphorical) adds an extra layer of almost unbearable tension to the main story.

This one comes out in the US in early 2012. Get it.

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18-Year-Old Girl 1,Governor Brownback 0

2011-12-04T10:06:00.001-05:00

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Recently, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback's office took on an 18-year-old high school girl - and lost.

It all started when Emma Sullivan, a senior at Shawnee Mission East High School, went to the Capitol and heard Brownback, a right-wing hero and failed presidential candidate, speak.

"I don't agree with a majority of the things that he is trying to pass," Sullivan said, citing in particular Brownback's doing away with all state support for the arts. So, like many a bored and/or disgusted young person, she pulled out her smartphone and got on the online service Twitter.

"Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person," she sent, followed by a "hashtag," or topic identifier, reiterating in somewhat saltier terms her opinion that the governor was fond of performing a certain sexual act.

Now, here's something you need to remember: Twitter messages, or "tweets," go only to people who "follow" you. You have to choose to follow someone. Sullivan had only 60 followers at the time the message was sent. She did not actually say to the governor that he "sucked."

Unfortunately, Sullivan hadn't yet learned just how thin-skinned and belligerent right-wingers can get. Somehow, the word got out that she had dissed the governor to her online buddies, and Brownback's office decided that this expression of opinion could not go unpunished, even if it had not been conveyed directly to them, to the governor himself, or to anyone save the 60 or so friends, acquaintances, and admirers who'd chosen to "follow" Sullivan.

They called the principal's office and complained that Sullivan was being mean to them. She was called on the carpet by the principal, who demanded that she write a letter of apology. She considered it, but later decided that such an apology would be insincere and refused.

The situation blew up into a major national story after Sullivan's sister contacted the media. Her Twitter "following" grew from 65 to more than 15,000 people. Finally, an embarrassed governor's office realized that trying to intimidate an 18-year-old girl who'd insulted them on Twitter made them look stupid. Brownback issued a statement apologizing for his staff, who he said had "overreacted" to the tweet.

Despite Brownback's red-faced admission, the usual pearl-clutching and hand-wringing about how "uncivil" discourse has gotten (but only if it's done by liberals) followed. For example, columnist Ruth Marcus in the allegedly liberal Washington Post wrote that Sullivan should be glad she's not her daughter, because Marcus would make her apologize, then take her phone away.

I'll agree that Sullivan's tweet to her friends was rude. But it was, after all, to her circle, and not to the governor.

And you know what? After years of things like: Willie Horton ads; calling 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton "the White House dog"; Swiftboating; GOP convention-goers waving purple Band-Aids to mock a veteran's war wounds; Ann Coulter saying the "only choice was whether to impeach or assassinate" President Clinton and later claiming 9/11 widows were "enjoying their husbands' deaths"; Rush Limbaugh mocking Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease; posters and T-shirts with nooses on them saying "Rope. Tree. Journalist. Assembly Required"; "Liberal Hunting Permits"; birtherism; posters of Barack Obama dressed as Hitler, Stalin, and an African witch doctor with a bone through his nose; Rand Paul supporters trying to stomp the head of a protester; ads claiming Kay Hagan was "godless"; "If ballots don't work, maybe bullets will"; "Obama hates white people"; "GET OFF MY PHONE YOU LITTLE PINHEAD!"; "YOU LIE!"; wingnuts at FreeRepublic calling 11-year old Sasha Obama a "street whore" for wearing a peace sign on her T-shirt; Sarah Palin committing outright slander about "death panels"; "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy"; cheering for executions; booing soldiers for being gay; comparing poor people to stray animals you shouldn't feed; "We've got one raghead in the White House, we don't need a raghead in the governor's mansion"; supposed "Christians" suggesting that people pray for the president using Psalm 109:8 ("May his days be few, may another take his office. Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow") as a text; Limbaugh calling the first lady "uppity"; and on and on and on, all without a mumblin' word from so-called "conservatives," it's kind of hard to take them seriously when they start scolding anyone about manners.

When I start hearing the same disapproval from the right for things like that, maybe I'll reconsider. Until then, peddle that Twitrage somewhere else. I'm not buying it.

Praise for GALLOWS POLE From Robert Gregory Browne

2011-11-28T10:04:00.003-05:00

"J.D. Rhoades's Gallows Pole gets the adrenalin pumping from the very first page. Rhoades not only gives us a tight, suspenseful plot, his prose style is economic and full of quiet confidence, and you know you're in good hands the moment you start reading."

-Robert Gregory Browne, author of THE PARADISE PROPHECY , which was one of my own favorite books from this year.

Thanks, Rob!

The Phony War On Christmas Begins Again

2011-11-27T00:14:00.005-05:00

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With Thanksgiving now behind us, the holiday season begins in earnest. And no American Christmas season would be complete without the annual gripe-fest known as the Phony War on Christmas (PWOC).

After all, as I always say, there's no better way to celebrate the birth of Our Lord and Savior than with paranoia, unwarranted feelings of persecution, and bitter, deathless grudges over imagined slights.

Every year, it seems like the Christmas Warriors have to search harder and harder to find something to be upset about. Their usual MO is to take some small incident, omission or otherwise innocent phrasing (using "holiday" instead of "Christmas," for example) and spinning it up into an outrage on the level of burning believers at the stake.

This year, however, material has apparently been scarce, so they've gone right to outright lies and distortions.
First, there was the claim, circulated in a blast of indignant emails, that the Obama White House had decreed that the 2011 White House Christmas trees would be called "holiday trees" and that no one should send ornaments with religious themes.

"This isn't a rumor," one email insisted. "This is a fact." The message stated that the original sender had a "a friend at church" who was a "very talented artist," and who'd been invited "for several years" to send painted ornaments for the White House tree. This year, however, the letter supposedly said that "they would not be called Christmas trees this year. They will be called 'holiday trees.' And, to please not send any ornaments painted with a religious theme."

The letter ends on a typically portentous note: "Just thought you should know what the new residents in the WH plan for the future of America. ... This should confirm that [President Obama] plans to take us away from our religious foundation as quickly as possible."

Problem was, none of this was true. The White House released a statement: "There is no truth to this, and the letter referenced in the email does not exist. No letter has gone out yet from the White House pertaining to Christmas tree ornaments. The trees in the White House will be called Christmas trees, and the tree on the Ellipse will be called the National Christmas Tree. There will be no name changes."

Here's a handy tip for the future: When one of these spammed emails starts off with "this isn't a rumor, this is a fact," it's a rumor, and most likely a lie.

Then there was the hullaballoo around the supposed "Christmas Tree Tax." Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture began a program calling for a 15-cent-per-tree fee to be paid by large Christmas tree farmers. Right-wing media immediately exploded in indignation. "Grinched by the Government," blared a banner on Fox News, while alleged "news person" Gretchen Carlson reported on the "tax," with her usual look of breathless, wide-eyed outrage.

Blogger and Fox News regular Tammy Bruce, whose greatest political accomplishment seems to be organizing a write-in campaign for Bristol Palin on "Dancing With the Stars," did her own part to man the Yuletide barricades with a story on the wingnut website NewsMax. Headlined "Obama's War on Christianity," Bruce's story called the fee a "tribute," analogous to a "tax levied on non-Muslim citizens in the Islamic world."
Problem is, the fee wasn't ordered or requested by the president. It didn't have anything to do with religion. It had actually been requested by the National Christmas Tree Association, and was meant to be paid by the members of that association. Its purpose was "to fund promotion and information programs to encourage American consumers to buy farm-raised Christmas trees," according to a press release from the Association itself.

Unfortunately for them, the USDA caved - again - to the raging loons and shelved the program, much to the dismay of the NCTA.

Ah, the holiday season, when certain members of the nation's dominant religion, the faith that plays a controlling role in our national politics, take to the airwaves to tell themselves and everyone who'll listen that they're an oppressed and voiceless minority. Because aren't rampant drama-queenery and strident declarations of victimhood what Christmas is all about?

They're Not Even Trying to Hide the Racism Any More

2011-11-22T08:07:00.001-05:00

Rush Limbaugh Calls The First Lady ‘Uppity’ (VIDEO) | Addicting Info:

I’ll tell you something else. We don’t like paying millions of dollars for Mrs. Obama’s vacations. The NASCAR crowd doesn’t quite understand why when the husband and the wife are going to the same place, the first lady has to take her own Boeing 757 with family and kids and hangers-on four hours earlier than her husband, who will be on his 747. NASCAR people understand that’s a little bit of a waste. They understand it’s a little bit of uppity-ism.

There's no way he can spin this. Oh, he'll try, but 'uppity' is a racially charged word, and Limbaugh knows it.

Rush Limbaugh's ratings are falling sharply. Hardly any Republican pol feels compelled to kiss his butt any more. He's trying desperately to get attention, and it's only going to get worse.

This is mostly useful as a way of outing those idiots who claim "we're not racists, Democrats are the real racists, because Robert Byrd was in the KKK before any of us were born." Watch closely: anyone trying to defend Limbaugh and/or his use of the word 'uppity' is ipso facto racist. And I don't care if it offends them to be called what they are.

Looking Back at the 2012 Election

2011-11-20T09:23:00.003-05:00

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A look back from the future on the election of 2012:

By November 2011, Herman Cain became yet another Republican front-runner whose star began to fade as quickly as it rose.

Allegations of sexual harassment were eclipsed by a succession of gaffes, including one in which Cain found himself momentarily unable to remember whether or not he agreed with President Obama on intervening in Libya.

"I've got all this stuff twirlin' around in my head," he explained to The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, as campaign aides quickly began updating their resumes and checking job openings.

Meanwhile, former front-runner Rick Perry dashed hopes of a resurgence when he found himself in front of a debate audience, unable to remember exactly which federal agencies he wanted to abolish.

Fading candidate Michele Bachmann startled observers when she noted that "If you look at China, they don't have food stamps. If you look at China ... they save for their own retirement security. They don't have AFDC. They don't have the modern welfare state. And China's growing."

This became the first time in anyone's memory that a Republican candidate proposed that the antidote for alleged socialism in America was to emulate a repressive communist dictatorship.

A possible revival of the moribund candidacy of former Congressman Newt Gingrich faltered and died when it was revealed that Gingrich had been paid between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees by the mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac, an organization which the American right despised only slightly less than the ACLU.

It began to look more and more as if the nomination was going to go, almost by default, to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a man who had about as much backbone as one of the Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Men used to advertise car dealerships and other businesses.

Faced with this unpalatable prospect, a secret group of powerful conservatives met in an undisclosed location to come up with an alternative. After days of increasingly desperate wrangling, they came up with a bold and unprecedented plan: They would place a cardboard cutout of Ronald Reagan into the contest for the Republican nomination.

Reaction to the announcement was tumultuous. Pundits asked, "What qualifications does a cardboard cutout have to run against Obama?" Reagan Cutout campaign manager Ed Rollins answered succinctly: "He's not Mitt Romney." When asked what qualifications the Cutout had to be president, Rollins was equally concise: "He's not Barack Obama."

These statements clinched the Cutout's support from the right. "Barack Obama was unqualified and inexperienced," several callers to right-wing talk radio shows noted, "so now it's our turn to nominate someone even more incapable."

A few members of the press corps attempted to point out that a piece of cardboard was not, in fact, eligible to be president; after receiving angry denunciations from Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, they were immediately shut down by network executives and publishers terrified of being accused of "liberal bias."

At the next debate, the Cut-out received high marks for "looking presidential" and "avoiding major gaffes," largely because, being made of paper, it answered no questions. Conservative pundit Bill Kristol noted that "the Cutout doesn't have the same baggage as Romney, particularly in the area of health care."

Support for the Cutout grew on the right, particularly when the campaign rolled out its slogan: "Reagan Cutout: He's Not Obama."

By the time of the Republican convention, all of the other candidates had dropped away, with a disgusted Romney throwing in the towel the month before. The convention was a raucous affair, with the crowd hysterically acclaiming the nomination with shouts of "Not Obama! Not Obama!"

Those words, in fact, became the campaign's answer to every query as to policy: "What is the Cutout's position on the situation in the Middle East?"

"Not Obama's, that's for sure. Oh, and we're going to cut their taxes."

Even as polls showed the Cutout's approval numbers slipping, new campaign manager Sarah Palin remained outwardly confident, saying: "We're gonna be dependin' on those real Americans to do that winnin' thing for us, you betcha."

Even after Palin inexplicably resigned halfway through the campaign, her replacement, Joe the Plumber, predicted an easy win because, in his words, "You know. Not Obama. Also, tax cuts."

The American people, however, disagreed. Barack Obama was voted to a second term by the largest majority in American history, 85 percent to 15 percent. American conservatives had to learn the bitter lesson: No matter how weak you think a candidate is, you need something more than "I'm not him."

Setbacks All Over: Bad Election Day for the Far Right

2011-11-17T08:34:00.001-05:00

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I tell you, I wonder sometimes if it’s a sickness.
Election night 2011, an off-year election, no less, and I’m up till all hours, flipping back and forth from website to website, channel to channel, checking the results from races all over the country.
But politics is my football. Where some guys obsessively follow the stats of the Giants or the Panthers, searching for news on the health of their favorite quarterback’s throwing arm and trying to pick next Sunday’s winners, I amuse myself by pondering the broader implications for 2012 of city council elections in Cincinnati. OK, I’m exaggerating, but not by much.
So what can we glean from the results of this week’s voting? Well, mostly, it was a bad day for the far right.
One big story was a referendum in Ohio to repeal a law that stripped public employees of many of their collective bargaining rights. The embattled law was championed by conservatives, including Republican Gov. John Kasich. It was repealed by a margin of 62 to 38 percent.
In Mississippi, voters considered a so-called “personhood” law, which would have declared that human life begins at the moment of conception and which would have outlawed abortions in all cases, even of rape or incest. Anti-abortion forces had high hopes that the measure would pass in conservative Mississippi, setting the stage for a march to the Supreme Court and an attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade. Republican gubernatorial nominee Phil Bryant told a rape victim who questioned him at a rally that if the law failed, “Satan wins.”
The people of Mississippi didn’t buy it. The measure lost in a landslide vote, 57 to 43 percent. The Prince of Darkness could not be reached for comment.
In Arizona, the man who wrote and championed one of the nation’s most controversial and Draconian immigration laws became the first sitting Senate president in the nation and the first Arizona legislator ever to lose a recall election, according to The Arizona Republic.
The right did have a couple of small victories. In Ohio, they passed a law stating no citizen of the state will be required to buy health insurance, which would essentially nullify the individual insurance mandate in the federal Affordable Care Act.
Unfortunately for the supporters of the bill, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution (you know, the document the wingnuts claim to love but seem to know next to nothing about) is pretty clear that you can’t just nullify federal law like that, and the measure will almost certainly be overturned.
In Virginia, the election left the state Senate divided 50-50, with ties to be broken by the Republican lieutenant governor. Face it: When the victories you have to crow over are a symbolic measure sure to be thrown out and a tie, you had a bad night.
So what does it all mean? The key word is “overreaching.” The Republicans in these states got in power based on anger about the economy and the jobless rate, but instead of doing something about that, they went right to the radical union-busting and culture wars.
That may have played to the Teahadists who have the Republican Party in thrall, but the majority of the people were having none of it. On the other side, the vote against the individual mandate could be seen as a reaction against what the people see as overreaching by the federal government.
So the candidates who do well in 2012 general election will be the ones seen as moderates. Only Romney and Huntsman seem to have a chance at this on the Republican side. But they infuriate the tea party “base,” just as Obama’s mostly moderate stances infuriate the actual left (as opposed to the Obama-loving left that exists only in the imagination of the demented right).
The key to victory will be for a candidate to convince the center that he or she is the reasonable one, with reasonable policies aimed at benefiting them, while getting enough of the party’s far-right or far-left wings to put aside their distaste for moderation long enough to get out and vote.
So far, the person best positioned to do that is Barack Obama, because Romney’s still trying to pander to the True Believers who hate his guts, and Huntsman’s practically invisible.
But please, Republicans, as an Obama supporter, I urge you: Keep up with the overreach and the radicalism. Double down on the crazy.
In fact, I think I’ll go send a donation to the Cain campaign.

Review: WOLF HALL, by Hillary Mantell

2011-11-17T08:32:00.001-05:00

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The story of Thomas Cromwell, who rose from poverty to become one of Henry VIII's most trusted advisers. Most accounts treat Cromwell as a ruthless, conniving bastard, but this book doesn't allow for such an easy judgment. Cromwell is many things: scheming but loyal, clear-eyed and seemingly cold in matters of business but tender towards his family, friends and household, like a medieval Godfather.

The characterization is fascinating, not just of Cromwell, but of Henry and the various members of his court, especially the beguiling Anne Boleyn and her sister Mary. The prose is also nearly hypnotic in its beauty. On the downside, the plot moves slowly, and I confess there were times I had to push through to the finish, but the book is worth the effort.

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DEAD OF WINTER is Live!

2011-11-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

Dead of Winter: Chilling New Tales of Crime

"Southern noir thriller writer J.D. Rhoades weighs in with the unforgettable I’ll Be Home for Christmas, a holiday tale that will have you turning on all the lights before you enter your house and checking the bottom of your Christmas stocking for a concealed .38."
That's just one of the great stories in this new anthology that also features Chaz McGee (aka Katy Munger), Taffy Cannon, Rory Tate (aka Lise McLendon), Gary Phillips, Brynn Bonner, Sarah Shaber and Kate Flora.

GALLOWS POLE Goes Live!

2011-11-14T08:18:00.002-05:00

GALLOWS POLE, my third full-length e-published novel, is now live for Kindle, and for other formats on Smashwords. NOOK coming soon!

Someone is killing entire families, forcing fathers to hang their wives and children before taking their own lives. How does the killer do it? And what is the meaning of the small iron horse the killer leaves at every murder scene? FBI agent Melissa Saxon and her handpicked team are racing against time to solve the mystery before more families die.

Former anti-terrorist operative Colonel Mark Bishop and the survivors of his command think they know. One of their own, a stone killer who calls himself the Hangman, has come out to play, and he's trying to draw out not only Bishop, but his former comrades—the elite anti-terrorist team known as Iron Horse.

Only the Horsemen can stop one of their own. But the team is disbanded, the survivors scattered. Bishop himself is tormented by guilt for the things he had to do to keep one of his men from suffering an agonizing death. Their adversary is not only a skilled assassin, but a master at creating fear. Behind the scenes, shadowy and powerful figures pursue their own plans for Bishop and the Hangman.

Mark Bishop, Melissa Saxon, and the last of the Iron Horsemen will have to use all their courage and every resource, including an array of high-tech weapons, to stop the Hangman. What they have to do will put everything they ever believed in to the ultimate test and push Bishop to the edge of sanity.

Hope you like it! if you do, please tell all your friends by reviewing, "liking" on FB or Amazon, or recommending. Word of mouth is my best advertising.

HEY! HEY! LOOK AT ME! Or, When the Spear Carriers Start to Sing

2011-11-13T18:19:00.001-05:00

It's my turn today at the Thalia Press Authors Co-Op Blog, where I talk about the characters that just won't stay in the background.

GALLOWS POLE COVER

2011-11-09T16:24:00.000-05:00

The ever-talented Jeroen ten Berge hits another one out of the park with his cover for my upcoming e-release GALLOWS POLE. It's a bit of a different look from my earlier e-books, but then, it's a somewhat different book than I've done before. Stay tuned....

Congressional OCD

2011-11-06T11:49:00.001-05:00

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This past Tuesday, the United States economy was still fragile. A looming Greek debt crisis threatened to make things worse. Perhaps most tragically (judging from the wall-to-wall press coverage), someone named Kim Kardashian had just filed for divorce.

Beset by crises, it was hard to know which way to turn, which of our nation's many problems must be addressed first. But one man could see clearly what needed to be done. One man knew what required immediate action. That man was Speaker of the House John Boehner. With seconds ticking away, he and his fellow Republicans seized the moment and used it to its greatest advantage.

What step did these brave visionaries, these giants in the land, take? They boldly introduced legislation to have "In God We Trust" declared the motto of the United States.

This lightning stroke of legislative genius no doubt confused many people who thought that "In God We Trust" was already the national motto. Well, yes, it is. In fact, it's been declared the National Motto three times before: originally in 1956, then again in 2002, and once again in 2006.

The Supreme Court has upheld its use and insisted it's not an endorsement of religion. President Obama, much to the disgust of secularists, has also confirmed his support of using "In God We Trust" on our currency. The motto even hangs on the wall of the House chamber.

But apparently the Republicans in Congress have a severe case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, like one of those people who have to keep going back and back and back again to confirm that the stove is off and the doors are locked, so that they end up being late for everything.

"If we don't vote again for 'In God We Trust,'" they must have been thinking, "something terrible could happen. I don't know what, but ... it'd be just terrible!"

Listen, for example, to the words of Rep. Trent Franks of the great (and apparently totally crazy) state of Arizona, who asserted that without affirming our faith in God yet again, "we should just let anarchy prevail because, after all, we are just worm food." Texas Rep. Lamar Smith agreed: "There are few things Congress could do that would be more important than passing this resolution."

That last statement recalled for me the rhetoric thrown about by the movement here in North Carolina for a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, even though it's already explicitly illegal here.

One proponent of the amendment went on the radio and said, with what sounded like a straight face, that this was "the most important issue facing North Carolina right now." This, in a state in the throes of a massive budget crisis, still rebuilding from hurricane Irene's damage, with a 10.1 percent jobless rate.

Which led a good friend of mine to observe: "I woke up this morning to a fulfilling, full-time job, my wife's health costs are completely covered, the education system is so good that our dogs speak English and Spanish, the cat does calculus and we have a unicorn pooping Skittles in the front yard. So yes, let's go after gay marriage because everything else is 100 percent A-OK."

Anyway, the bill, to the surprise of absolutely no one, passed overwhelmingly, 396-9. And a new day dawned in America. Unfortunately, it looked just like the old day.

When the Republicans took control of the House, Majority Leader Eric Cantor declared, "Each day, we will hold ourselves accountable by asking the following questions: Are our efforts addressing job creation and the economy; are they cutting spending; and are they shrinking the size of the federal government while protecting and expanding individual liberty? If not, why are we doing it?"

Why, indeed. Maybe it's because the only "jobs bills" the Republicans can come up with are just tax cuts and more tax cuts - "solutions" which have been proven to have no effect on the jobless rate. We've had 10 years of tax cuts now, thanks to Dubbya Bush, and the economy's still struggling.

So in order to distract us from the fact that the Republican solution is to do more of the same and hope for a different result - the very definition of insanity - they spend time on easy-to-pass legislation that's already passed repeatedly. It makes them feel all righteous and panders to the religious right, but it does exactly nothing to help America.

DEAD OF WINTER: Homicide For The Holidays

2011-11-02T11:42:00.000-04:00

Recently I've joined a cadre of several of my favorite authors under the name of the Thalia Press Author's Co-Op. We're helping each other get our backlists up as e-books, and promoting new, independently published material as well. We've got a group project coming up called DEAD OF WINTER, featuring new, winter themed short stories by Chaz McGee (aka Katy Munger), Gary Phillips, Sarah Shaber, and others.

My own contribution, "I'll Be Home For Christmas," features Gibson County Chief Deputy Tim Buckthorn, who was one of my favorite characters in my critically acclaimed novel BREAKING COVER. My friend David Terrenoire observed once that the book was as much Buckthorn's story as it was Tony Wolf's, and he was right. I've been wanting to use Tim in a story for a while, and this was my chance.

The book's tentatively set for release on November 15th...I'll keep you posted.

The Zombie Renaissance

2011-10-30T11:41:00.000-04:00

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Tomorrow is Halloween, the time when we think about ghosties, ghoulies, and various things that go bump in the night. So it seems an appropriate time to discuss the Zombie Renaissance.

Seems like there’s never been a better time to be a creator of zombie-related art and entertainment. The website 24/7 Wall Street estimates that “today’s zombie-genre economy,” as they put it, is worth up to $5 billion.

First and foremost, of course, there are the movies. Starting with the shambling, rotting grandaddy of them all, “Night of the Living Dead,” all the way though films like “28 Days Later,” its sequel “28 Weeks Later,” the seemingly unkillable “Resident Evil” franchise, the Will Smith vehicle “I Am Legend” (which substituted fast-moving, rage-filled zombies for the vampires in the original novel), the hilarious spoofs “Shaun of the Dead” and “Zombieland,” and the upcoming “World War Z,” starring Brad Pitt, it seems that the undead make for great box office.

Then there are things like video games (the recent smash hit shoot-em up “Call of Duty: Black Ops” comes with a mode where the player battles Nazi zombies); TV shows (AMC’s “The Walking Dead” has just been picked up for a third season); comic books; and even novels such as “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” which takes Jane Austen’s classic novel and updates it with a few ghouls (as an Austen-loving friend of mine puts it, that’s just so wrong).

Some people jump on the zombie bandwagon through so-called “zombie walks,” in which crowds of people make themselves up as zombies and lurch, moan and chomp their way through cities and towns, all in good fun and sometimes for charity.

The first recorded walk occurred in 2001 in Sacramento to promote a horror film festival, but the idea quickly spread like — well, like a zombie plague. Now cities compete for the record of biggest walk, with the current crown held by Asbury Park, N.J., which recorded an invasion of 5,000 rotters and secured a place for itself in “The Guinness Book of World Records.”

Dublin, Ireland, claimed a turnout of 8,000 for the one they held July 23 of this year, but Guinness has not yet confirmed the number, possibly because of the difficulty of sorting out whether a pale person staggering through the streets of Dublin and muttering incoherently is a wannabe zombie or just a drunk on his way home from the pub.

Which raises the question: Why are the walking dead such a hot item these days? I mean, I love a good zombie story as much as the next guy, but even I have trouble explaining why zombies seem to be replacing vampires as everyone’s favorite undead.

I can almost see the appeal of the vampire thing. There’s a certain sexiness about vampires, or so the fans tell me. They’re beautiful, their hunger equates with great passion, they bite your neck — hey, it’s not my kink, but whatever floats your boat. But it’s hard to envision a best-selling book and movie series about a forbidden romance between a beautiful but awkward teenage girl and a mindless, flesh-eating ghoul.

Maybe it’s because zombies embody something we all recognize deep down, something that’s definitely on the rise these days. As my friend Stephen Blackmoore, author of the upcoming zombie novel “City of the Lost,” once put it: “Zombies aren’t terror, they’re dread. They’re the physical embodiment of anxiety.” Which may be why they’ve gotten so much more popular in these anxious times.

On the flipside, though, zombies are kind of goofy, with their blank expressions, their clumsy shuffle, the bits falling off. They’re funny in a sick kind of way. They take that anxiety and make it into something you can laugh at. If you can laugh at it, it’s not so scary.

And that’s what Halloween is all about, Charlie Brown.

(click the pic for hints on surviving a zombie plague. Because you just never know.)

Graveyard Tales

2011-10-28T14:56:00.002-04:00

New for Kindle and Nook: "The Caretaker." Two short stories from the graveyard, just in time for Hallowe'en!

In "The Caretaker," William Cain doesn't know why only he can see the new arrivals in his cemetery, or why they tell him their stories--but he knows how to take care of their unfinished business. "Spadework" is a previously published tale of a father's revenge.

Cover by David Terrenoire.

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005ZT6PPU

Nook: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/e/2940013246478

We'd Get Jail Time If We Tried This

2011-10-23T10:03:00.002-04:00

Latest Newspaper Column

OK, listen up and I’ll tell you what happened.

Citibank is the giant consumer-banking arm of an amazingly, colossally gargantuan financial company called Citigroup.

And they don’t just make their money by charging you confusing and ridiculous fees for using your own money and by issuing credit cards with interest rates that would shame a Mafia loan shark; they also offer “investment services.” Among the investments they peddle are what are called CDOs, which is short for “Collateralized Debt Obligations.” Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?

Simply put, a CDO is a big ol’ bundle of debts. If you buy a CDO, you get paid when the debts do. If a whole bunch of the debts go into default and never get paid, neither do you.

So what Citibank did is offer a whole bunch of these CDOs to investors, telling those investors that the packages had been put together by an impressive-sounding outfit called “Credit Suisse Alternative Capital.”

How could this possibly go wrong? The people picking the investments in the bundle certainly sounded impressive; they had “Swiss” right in the name, and we all know how good the Swiss are with money, right?

Well, no. The CDOs, as it turns out, were backed by those infamous “subprime” mortgages. They were, in fact, crap. When mortgages started defaulting all over, the CDOs they were backing collapsed. Investors lost millions. Citibank, along with several other financial institutions, had to be bailed out by the U.S. government.

They did eventually pay their government loans back in full. So all’s well that ends well, right? Too bad about the people who bought all those bad CDOs, but who could have known they’d be duds?

Well, as it turns out, Citibank knew.

According to documents filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, it wasn’t Credit Suisse that had had the major hand in picking the lousy investments that backed the CDOs; it was Citibank itself. And they knew the investments they were peddling weren’t as solid as they made them out to be.

In fact, they were so dubious about the products they were selling that they took what are called “short positions” on them in other financial markets. In essence, they bet on their own investments to fail. And when they did, Citibank got paid anyway. In the immortal words of Jerry Reed, Citibank got the gold mine while its customers got the shaft.

Now, imagine if you will that I’d sold you some impressive-looking papers that I swore were bonds that were going to make you wealthy. I even brought out a bearded guy with a tweed coat and a pipe who told you he was a famous economist and that he’d pronounced the investments sound.

But the so-called “bonds” were actually just something I’d printed up on my computer, backed up by a lot of junk from my storage shed. The “economist” was some old dude I’d paid to say any nonsense I told him to.

Meanwhile, I’d gone and placed a bet that I could bankrupt you.

For you and me, that sort of con game would be a felony. No one from Citibank, however, is going to jail. The company, without admitting any wrongdoing whatsoever, agreed to pay a fine of $285 million. This seems like a lot of money, until you consider that Citibank reported, according to its own website, net income of $3.8 billion [with a “b”] in the third quarter of 2011 alone.

And that, my friends, is one very big reason why people are in the streets, not only on Wall Street and in Times Square, but across the world. They’re sick of the fact that no one, whoever’s in power, seems to be willing to hold these mega-banks to the same standards as you or me when they rip people off.

And yes, I include the Obama administration in that. While they’ve made some attempts at financial reform, they haven’t been nearly as vigorous about it as I’d like. Of course, “as vigorous as I’d like” would include public floggings and the placing of bank executives into the stocks to be pelted with offal, so I don’t think I’ll ever be completely happy with anyone.

But the point is this: If reading about Citibank’s shenanigans and the resultant slap on the wrist ticks you off, then you may have more in common with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement than you think.

Review: SHOTGUN GRAVY, Chuck Wendig

2011-10-22T12:39:00.002-04:00

Shotgun Gravy by Chuck Wendig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Atlanta Burns is an angry young woman who has, in her own words, "been through some bad shit." The exact nature of that particular metaphorical excrement isn't immediately spelled out, but the aftermath has left her an outcast, feared and shunned even by her former friends. When she takes on a particularly psychotic set of school bullies, she stumbles into some local secrets that foretell more bad times ahead in future installments of this series.

The violence and language would probably scare off the average YA publisher. That's why I'm so glad that the e-book revolution allows stuff like this to find a readership, because this is a really good book. It's very realistic in its portrayal of the relentless tension and dread that's familiar to anyone who's ever been bullied, that sense that you can't get away, no one will help, and there's no way out, save suicide or violence. I doubt school authorities would condone the way Atlanta takes matters (and her trusty .410 scatter-gun) into her own hands, but it makes for a compelling revenge fantasy.

View all my reviews

The Myth of the Liberal Media

2011-10-18T07:40:00.002-04:00

Pew Research Center

Rick Perry received the most favorable coverage of any candidate for president during the first five months of the race, but now Herman Cain is enjoying that distinction, according to a new survey which combines traditional research methods and computer algorithmic technology to code the level and tone of news coverage.

Perry lost the mantle of the candidate enjoying the most favorable treatment to Herman Cain two weeks ago, after the Florida straw poll in which Cain scored a surprise victory. Meanwhile, though he has often led in the polls, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has received less coverage and less positive coverage than the shifting casts of frontrunners -- and that remains true even now. He ranks second in the amount of attention received, and the tone of that narrative has been unwaveringly mixed.

One man running for president has suffered the most unrelentingly negative treatment of all: Barack Obama. Though covered largely as president rather than a candidate, negative assessments of Obama have outweighed positive by a ratio of almost 4-to-1. The assessments of the president in the media were substantially more negative than positive in every one of the 23 weeks studied. In no week during these five months was more than 10% of the coverage about the President positive in tone.

Liberal Media My Ass.

Herman Cain and the Forrest Gump Republicans

2011-10-16T11:39:00.002-04:00

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I want to make one thing clear from the very beginning: I do not think that Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza and the current darling of the right, is an ignoramus.

He's got a B.A. in mathematics and a master's in computer science. He worked as a ballistics analyst for the U.S. Navy before his highly successful business career. So no, I do not think Mr. Cain is an ignorant man.

I think that he just pretends to be.

First there was his famous pronouncement to a conservative organization in Iowa that he wouldn't sign any legislation longer than three pages.

As reporter Marie Diamond pointed out at the time, this would have stopped him from signing such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act, the PATRIOT Act, and the Bush tax cuts.

I'm sure Mr. Cain has, as a matter of course, read and signed off on hundreds if not thousands of business memos and contracts far longer than three pages. So when he acts as if he has the attention span of a third-grader, he's got to be pretending.

Most recently, Mr. Cain not only pronounced his ignorance of world affairs, he did so defiantly. He was asked by an interviewer on the Christian Broadcast Network if he was ready for the "gotcha" questions that bad old liberal media were sure to throw at him. Questions like, "Who's the president of Uzbekistan?"

Cain responded, "When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, I'm going to say, 'You know, I don't know. Do you know?' And then I'm going to say how's that going to create one job?" He went on to say that it wasn't critical to know "the head of some of these small insignificant states around the world."

For the record, the current president of Uzbekistan is a guy named Islam Karimov, and knowing who he is is really kind of important, since this "small insignificant state" borders Afghanistan, where I assume Mr. Cain knows we have troops on the ground. We had an air base there until 2005, and the country lies across a potentially significant supply route for our troops if things continue to get uglier with Pakistan.

So why would someone who wants to be the president of the United States pretend not only to be ignorant of a potential player in a regional hotspot, but also to be proud of that ignorance?

The answer is simple: because of the audience he's playing to. There is a distressingly large group of voters who act as if knowledge and expertise are suspect and simple-mindedness is something to be proud of.

It's a longstanding tradition in this country. From Jimmy Stewart's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" to "The Beverly Hillbillies" to Tom Hanks' "Forrest Gump," our national mythology is filled with the unschooled, the naive or the mentally challenged, who -prevail over the wicked and crafty "smart" people through their sheer goodness and -decency, without ever, it seems, getting any smarter or well informed.

Well, Mr. Smith, Jed Clampett and Forrest Gump are great characters, but they're just that. Characters. They're fiction, written to fulfill our yearning for simple answers in a complicated world.

But in the real world, the elevation of ignorance leads to bizarre aberrations like an unlicensed and uneducated plumber from Ohio being held up by the right as some kind of oracle, even as he says one silly thing after another. The elevation of ignorance leads to smart people playing dumb, like an otherwise bright girl pretending to be an airhead because she thinks boys won't like her if she's too brainy. Or like Herman Cain.

Cain's bumper-sticker homilies like "I'm not going to sign a bill longer than three pages," his alleged contempt for knowledge of foreign affairs, and his tax plan that every economist agrees won't raise enough money to run the country (but it sure is simple!) are pandering, pure and simple. They're attempts to play to the constituency I've begin calling the Forrest Gump Republicans.

But Forrest Gump isn't going to lead us out of the mess we're in. And neither is playing at being an ignoramus to get that rube vote. That's not leadership. You lead by encouraging people to act a little smarter, not by trying to pander and fool them that you're as dumb as they are.

How Steve Jobs Changed My Life

2011-10-10T21:49:00.000-04:00

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Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple Inc., died Wednesday of pancreatic cancer. He was only 56 years old.

It’s not overstating the case to say that Jobs was one of a handful of people who created the world we know today. Certainly, his Apple computers changed my life, even though I’ve spent years as a PC guy.

In 1984, I was in my last year as an undergraduate. I was living in a rowdy apartment with three roommates, each of them wonderfully mad in his own way. One of them was a double major, if I recall correctly, in anthropology and computer science.

He had one of the first personal computers I’d ever seen, an Apple II. I’d mucked about a bit on it, mostly playing games. Sometime in the spring semester, though, he brought home a strange-looking box with a built-in screen and an odd little device attached to it by a wire.

“What’s that thing?” I asked.

“It’s a mouse,” he said. “And this is a Macintosh.”

“Huh,” I said. He turned it on, and a little graphic that looked like the computer itself smiled at me.

“Whoa,” I said.

Now, understand, I’d never used one of these before, and the so-called GUI (graphical user interface) was completely new to me. But within minutes, it was as if I’d been using the thing all my life. Put hand on mouse. Use mouse to move a little arrow on the screen to an icon that shows what you want to do. Click the button. Presto!

Oh, there wasn’t a hard drive, so it was a pain to keep swapping those little 3.5 inch floppies out of the two disc drives to get a lot of things done, but it was the easiest, most intuitive computer I’d ever used.

I know, you young readers are rolling your eyes and going, “Right, Grandpa, that’s how computers are supposed to work.”

But the fact that you can be so blasé about it just goes to show how much those simple concepts — the mouse and the graphical interface — changed the face of computing, and eventually, the way work got done. In my case, it was the way things got written.

See, I’ve always been a terrible typist. Typing school assignments was always a particular kind of hell for me; I always ended up using so much Wite-Out on my frequent typos that the pages would actually be stiff and crackly, and people learned to cover their ears near my room if I was working on a term paper, because I’d be turning the air blue swearing over those same typos.

But with the computer, erasing a typo was as easy as hitting Backspace, and moving entire paragraphs around was a breeze. When I went to law school, it was the bank of Mac II’s in the school’s computer lab that made brief writing and other assignments far easier than they might have been otherwise.

Bill Gates and Microsoft quickly followed the Mac with their own graphic interface, Windows, which started off much clunkier and less elegant than the Macintosh system, but which, thanks to some brilliant (some say shady, and some others say illegal) marketing practices, took a much larger share of the market than Apple.

And so the Platform Wars broke out on a newfangled communications system called the Internet. Mac and PC users sneered, “Get a real computer” at each other in the way that only people who know they’re not going to get punched in the nose can do.

Since most of the places I've ever worked used Windows-based systems, that’s what I eventually ended up using. But it was the Mac, developed by Steve Jobs and his partner, Steve Wozniak, that revolutionized the idea of computing for me. I don’t think I’d even be a writer at all if it weren’t for the personal computer, and the Mac was the first one I ever wrote on.

The Mac wasn’t the only world-changing innovation Jobs and Apple gave us. Pixar Studios, which Jobs formed after buying Lucasfilms’ computer animation division, revolutionized the animated film with movies like “Toy Story” and “Monsters, Inc.” The iPod and iTunes changed the way we listen to and buy music. The iPhone expanded our ideas of what we could expect a cell phone to do. And now we have the iPad, which is changing our relationship with computing yet again.

RIP, Steve Jobs. I would have loved to see what you came up with next.

Chris Christie: The Second Coming?

2011-10-02T09:53:00.000-04:00

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A busted clock is right twice a day. Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then. And it appears that William Kristol has actually been right about something. These are, as Paul Simon sings, days of miracle and wonder.

I know I've been awfully hard on Smilin' Bill, the amiable boob who's the editor of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard and who's been popping up for years on the Sunday panel shows, grinning like a possum eating persimmons and spouting utter nonsense like "The Iraq War will cost at most $200 billion," "Sarah Palin's resignation won't hurt her chance at the Republican nomination and anyone who says different is afraid of her," and other lack-witted pronouncements.

Kristol is the guy who's often caused me to offer my services to the networks, because I can be just as wrong for half the price.

However, after the last Republican debate, Kristol wrote a "special editorial" on the Weekly Standard's website and summed up the Republican field in one word: "Yikes!" He went on to say that "none of the candidates really seemed up to the moment, either politically or substantively. In the midst of a crisis, we're getting politics as usual - and a somewhat subpar version of politics as usual at that."

He quoted a "bright young conservative" who'd emailed him in dismay: "WE SOUND LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!" He also rather glumly quoted my favorite poem, Yeats' "The Second Coming," to describe the choices before Republicans: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

So far, so good. And so right. Kristol, however, can't stay correct for long, and his solution was typically dimwitted: Call in Chris Christie, the corpulent New Jersey governor, whom Kristol calls "a big man for a big job."

Problem is, Christie's said over and over that he's not running. His poll numbers in his own state are awful. He also appointed a judge who's a Muslim to the bench and called people who protested "crazy" and their concerns about the imaginary threat of Sharia law "crap."

He's dead right, but it immediately disqualifies him in the eyes of the crazies who believe in crap.

Oh, and I don't want to be Pedantic Literary Guy here, but Kristol also completely misunderstands the poem he's quoting when he says that the last line ("what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?") "sounds like Chris Christie."

I wonder how Gov. Christie would feel about the comparison, because the "rough beast" Yeats speaks of in his vision is kind of scary. He's a "shape with lion body and the head of a man, gaze blank and pitiless as the sun." Not the kind of candidate you'd want to have a beer with, for sure.

Nevertheless, it seems that Christie is the latest in a series of desperate attempts by the wingnuts and teahadists to find someone who'll save the party from nominating Mitt Romney, a heretic who's actually worked with Democrats and gotten some good things done for his state, like a reasonable health care plan.

But the far right doesn't want compromises with Democrats. They don't want a health care plan for anyone who's not them. They're willing to burn the country down in the name of "taking it back." So they fall for grifters like Palin (perpetually fundraising, perpetually coy about whether she's running) or nutters like Donald Trump and Michele Bachmann.

But then the flavor of the month says something so mind-bogglingly stupid ("The HPV vaccine caused a woman's child to become mentally retarded!") that even the mainstream media can't ignore it, and down they go. So Rick Perry becomes the new ABM (Anyone But Mitt), until he falls apart in the debate, then shows that he's actually got some positions that make sense, such as not punishing children who grew up in America because they were brought here by illegal immigrant parents.

But sanity enrages the goon squads, that noisy cohort the party refuses to acknowledge, yet somehow manages to get invited to every GOP debate. You know, the ones that cheer for executions, shout "yeah!" when someone asks if you should just let an uninsured man die, and boo soldiers in Iraq because they're gay. For those people, Rick Perry's greatest sin is that he's not crazy enough. So the perpetually angry and disgruntled right moves on. Now they turn their eyes to Christie, who's not even running.

Yeah, good luck with that.

If This Be Class Warfare, Let Us Make the Most of It.

2011-09-25T12:17:00.000-04:00

(This is this week's newspaper column which does not, for some reason, appear on the paper's website, although it is in the print version. One of the paper's conservative columnists has noted that his column doesn't appear either. We're trying to find out why. Stay tuned. )

One of the most widely used and abused right wing buzzwords of this wild and wacky century is "class warfare." Sometimes it seems as if it's the knee-jerk wingnut answer to everything. Point out the growing inequality of income in America, in which the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and more numerous, and the middle class is getting smaller and being squeezed harder? They won't bother denying it, they'll just complain that mentioning it is "class warfare." Propose a tax hike on the wealthiest Americans to pay for upgrades to American infrastructure (and in doing so, create more jobs for the companies who do the upgrading)? "Class warfare!" the Teahadists sputter.

Well, after hearing the whining of Louisiana representative John Fleming, I'm saying "so what if it is?" Fleming, who owns a chain of Subway restaurants and UPS stores back home, recently appeared on MSNBC and complained that by the time he paid taxes, paid all his bills, and "fed his family" he had "maybe, $400,000 left over to invest in new locations, upgrade my locations, buy more equipment." When host Chris Jansing pointed out that he probably wasn't going to get a lot of sympathy pointing out that he "only" had 400K left over after expenses, the poor little rich boy went immediately to the standard fall-back, saying "class warfare never created jobs."

I've got to tell you, Congressman Fleming, when you consider that your buddies in Congress oppose President Obama's plan to cut payroll taxes, which affect primarily middle and working class people, yet continue to insist on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, that sounds an awful lot like class warfare to me. When you consider that that 400K you regard as so paltry is the equivalent of eight median household incomes ($50,000 was the average in 2010, down 2.3 percent from the year before)....well, it makes me want to reach for a torch and a pitchfork, build a guillotine in the front yard, and say, to paraphrase Patrick Henry, "if this be class warfare, let us make the most of it."

As for the tired old protest that higher taxes on wealthy people are "punishing success,” I refer you to Massachusetts Senatorial Candidate Elizabeth Warren. You may remember Warren as the woman who helped oversee the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that the Republicans in Congress are now striving mightily to strangle in its crib. She was recently at a campaign event in Andover and delivered an epic smackdown to the myth of the "self-made American millionaire," saying: "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Doggone right. Here's the thing. If there's one unshakable rule of economics, it's that stuff costs money. Roads, highways and bridges cost money. Schools cost money. A powerful military costs money, especially when it’s in two wars. Police cost money, as the NC Highway Patrol showed us when they had to suspend their training academy indefinitely, because of budget cuts--cuts necessitated by the Republican-controlled legislature's refusal to consider tax increases.

Let's face it: civilization is expensive. Right wingers like to rail against "freeloaders," but it's the people who become successful because society provides the infrastructure and the freedom to use it, and who then refuse to help pay for it, that are freeloading.

If you're a member of the middle class, keep one thing in mind: When multimillionaire politicians or pundits or talk show hosts start hollering about "class warfare," while opposing tax breaks for the middle class and defending them for the wealthy, they want you to pay for the civilization that made their success possible. They've already declared war. On you.

"We Sound Like CRAZY PEOPLE!!!"

2011-09-23T15:29:00.000-04:00

The Weekly Standard's take on the current GOP crop: YIKES!

...in a week in which markets collapsed, Solyndra exploded, our Middle East policy was in meltdown, the Iranian nuclear threat became more urgent, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff fingered our “ally” Pakistan as a sponsor of terror against American forces in Afghanistan—none of the candidates really seemed up to the moment, either politically or substantively. In the midst of a crisis, we’re getting politics as usual—and a somewhat subpar version of politics as usual at that.

Dudes, if you've lost an uber-wingnut like William Kristol, you are in deep kimchee.

Thank You, Ms. Warren

2011-09-21T16:29:00.002-04:00

This cannot be said enough.

Rep. John Fleming: Poor Little Rich Boy

2011-09-20T12:31:00.004-04:00

Multi-Millionaire Rep. Says He Can’t Afford A Tax Hike Because He Only Has $400K A Year After Feeding Family | ThinkProgress:

"After being asked about the $6 million profit of his businesses last year, he responded that, "the amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family is more like $600,000 of that $6.3 million, and so by the time I feed my family I have, maybe, $400,000 left over to invest in new locations, upgrade my locations, buy more equipment..."

Let me just say this about that:

Class Warfare? It's on, bitches. It is ON.

Forward This To Everyone You Know!!!!!!!!

2011-09-19T08:35:00.000-04:00

Thanks to John Scalzi for posting this first.

Review: CHOKE ON YOUR LIES, Anthony Neil Smith

2011-09-18T18:58:00.001-04:00

Choke on Your Lies by Anthony Neil Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Anthony Neil Smith set his best book yet in one of the country's best known cesspools of corruption and wickedness: academia. There's enough viciousness, backstabbing and sexual depravity among Smith's small-college faculty to make Caligula look like an episode of The Little Rascals.

The last decent man in this pit of vipers is Mick Thooft, a good guy but, apparently, a wretchedly bad poet. When Mick discovers his wife's infidelity and her attempt to defraud him out of the marital home, he turns to his friend Octavia, a big woman with a bigger intellect and a capacity for malice that dwarfs both. Octavia pronounces "let's punish the bitch," and proceeds to use her considerable wealth to make that happen. But even Octavia's sheer meanness may not be a match for the evil mind of the antagonist pulling the strings.

Smith pulls off one of the hardest tricks in all of writing: he fascinates you with characters who, for the most part, are completely unlikable. Mick's such a wimp you just want to pick him up and shake him, the only sane reaction to Octavia would be to flee from her screaming in terror, and the rest of the cast (with only a couple of minor exceptions) range from slightly creepy to downright demonic. And yet, you can't look away.

Great book.

View all my reviews

On Teabaggers Cheering For American Deaths

2011-09-18T09:09:00.000-04:00

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Remember back during the health care debate when Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson came onto the House floor and presented two posters which he called "The Republican Health Care Plan"?

One of them said "Don't Get Sick," and the other said "Die Quickly."

Remember the outrage? "Appalling," Sean Hannity called it. Bill O'Reilly called Grayson a "pinhead." House Republicans drafted a resolution of disapproval identical to the one approved against Joe Wilson, who became a hero to Republicans after shouting "you lie!" at the president while he was speaking to Congress.

(Remember, the GOP hates disrespect and name-calling, unless it's them doing it. Then it's a fundraising bonanza.).

Well, a few months later, it seems that at least some tea partiers actually think that Grayson's so-called "smear" could actually be the basis of a mighty fine plan.

During the recent TP-sponsored debate, moderator Wolf Blitzer was discussing health care reform with Ron Paul, the Rodney Dangerfield of his party. Blitzer gave Paul a hypothetical situation about a 30-year-old who'd decided not to buy health insurance getting sick and slipping into a coma. Who pays for his care?

Paul started talking about how assuming your own risks is what freedom is all about.

"But Congressman," Blitzer persisted, "are you saying society should just let him die?"

At which point, members of the tea party audience began shouting "Yes! YEAH!" to scattered laughter and applause.

To his credit, Paul at least said "no," but then he began scattering rays of the usual nostalgic moonshine about how the hypothetical coma patient would be taken care of anyway, just like in the Good Old Days. Back in his day, Grandpa Ron said, when he first practiced medicine, churches took care of people and "we never turned anybody away from the hospital."

Maybe not, Congressman, but I'm betting the hospital passed the costs of the uninsured along by charging everyone else more, just as the ERs do now, which is exactly one of the problems health care reform addresses. And I'm not sure how the doctors' offices are going to react when they're told to send the bill for an MRI or colonoscopy to the patient's church.

Actually, that's wrong. I am sure how they're going to react. They're going to tell you to come back when you have some health insurance, or several thousand dollars. In cash, not (as failed tea party candidate Sue Lowden once suggested) in poultry.

So, anyway, it seems that there are at least some Teahadists who not only approve of, but are downright gleeful at, the idea of letting the uninsured simply expire.

Now we see why Sarah Palin was so upset by that hallucination she had about the "death panels" in the health care bill. She wanted to get rid of the bureaucratic middleman and let the Grim Reaper do his work free of all that government regulation they're always so heated up about.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the current ABM (Anybody But Mitt) favorite of the tea party, told reporters the next day that he was "taken aback" by the crowd reaction to the question. I don't know why he was so surprised, though, at the idea that right-wingers would cheer at the mention of people dying.

At the last debate, one of the big applause lines came when NBC's Brian Williams, in the course of asking a question on the death penalty, noted that Texas under Perry had executed 234 death row inmates, "more than any other governor in modern times." The crowd cheered and whistled at the death toll.

Maybe next debate, Perry can put little stickers of nooses on the podium, like a fighter pilot putting his kills on the side of his plane. That'll really get their juices flowing.

See, here's the thing: The only lives wingnuts really care about are ones that haven't been born yet. Once you first see daylight, kid, you're on your own. Don't be poor, don't lose your job, don't get sick, and don't make any mistakes like failing to buy insurance.

Because in the Dickensian nightmare world the Teahadists fantasize about, "E Pluribus Unum" is Latin for "I Got Mine, So Step Off, Jack." And freedom's just another word for "we don't care if you live or die."

Here's What I Remember

2011-09-13T22:32:00.009-04:00

Now that all the remembrances of 9/11 are over, I finally felt I could say what I wanted to say. But as usual, Jon Stewart said it better.

Here are my memories of the time since that day:

I remember Falwell's "you helped cause this" comment and what a shock it was to see that kind of hate-as-usual, two days after the event that was supposed to bring us together.

I remember someone writing the local paper within six months and claiming that, if you voted for Bill Clinton, you helped cause all those deaths and all that tragedy on 9/11. I particularly remember it because that person was my own father. That wound's still as fresh as the day it was so casually inflicted.

I remember being called a "traitor" and "terrorist sympathizer" and people e-mailing me anonymous death threats for opposing their Dear Leader Dubbya's Wacky Iraqi Adventure (a war I and my fellow liberals were one hundred percent right about, by the way).

I remember Ann Coulter telling people that she thought the 9/11 widows were "enjoying" their husband's deaths.

I remember Glenn Beck saying he 'hated" the families of 9/11 victims--and becoming a hero of the Right.
So I don't want to hear a damn thing about how 9/11 unified us from anyone on the Right. They were the ones who immediately started waving the bloody shirt and using it to divide us.

After all the hate directed against me personally and against people like me in general, starting before the smoke had even cleared, I don't want to hear a damn thing about how liberals are hateful or the usual right wing whiny claptrap about "liberal name-calling". I don't know a name worse than traitor, and no one said a mumblin' word against anyone calling me that since 9/11.

If you didn't stand up against it then, you can sit right the fuck down now. You have nothing to say that I want to hear.

Quote of the Day, or Terrenoire FTW

2011-09-13T15:24:00.002-04:00

This morning, I heard someone on the radio claiming that a proposed state Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (which, it should be noted, is already banned by state law) is "the most important issue facing North Carolina right now."

Seriously. Someone from a state in the throes of a massive budget crisis, still rebuilding from hurricane Irene's damage, with a 10.1 percent jobless rate, had the infernal gall to say that. With a straight face.

Which prompted this rejoinder from my good friend David Terrenoire on Facebook:

"I don't know about Carthage, but here in Durham I woke up to a fulfilling, full time job, my wife's health costs are completely covered, the education system is so good that our dogs speak English and Spanish, the cat does calculus and we have a unicorn shitting skittles in the front yard. So yes, let's go after gay marriage because everything else is 100% A-OK."

Terrenoire shoots, HE SCORES!

The Tea Party of Love (With Video)

2011-09-13T10:13:00.003-04:00

Debate exchange offers window into larger question about role of health care - Political Hotsheet - CBS News:

So Ron Paul was asked in the Tea Party debate last night if a 30 year old without health insurance who went into a coma should just be allowed to die.

Paul, to his credit, said no, but opined that he'd be taken care of anyway.

Several voices from the Tea Party audience, however, cried out "YES!"

Yes. Just let him die.

A new low for the Party of Love.

FAQ Two (And Final): How the Jury Might Have Been Thinking

2011-09-11T11:46:00.000-04:00

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Last Saturday, a jury found Robert Stewart guilty, not of first-degree, but of second-degree murder for killing eight people at Pinelake Nursing Center in Carthage. I confess, I really didn't see it coming either.

First off, let me say that my heart truly goes out to the families of the dead. It must have been brutally hard to sit through hours of testimony and to relive the pain of that day. But please, I beg you to remember this about the verdict: Degrees of murder are in no way a reflection on the victims.

The life of a second-degree murder victim is worth just as much as that of a first-degree one in the eyes of the law. The degrees of homicide refer to the state of mind of the accused. After a lengthy hearing, ably tried by lawyers on both sides, the jury found that Robert Stewart didn't have that state of mind that could allow him to act with premeditation and deliberation.

Why? How could they do such a thing? Well, unless the jurors decide to talk about it (and there's no indication that they're inclined to do so), we may never know why they decided the way they did. There are a number of possible reasons, but all are pure conjecture.

The simplest explanation is that the jury considered all the evidence as to the prescription drugs Stewart was taking and the potential effects of those drugs on his state of mind and truly had reasonable doubts as to his ability to engage in premeditation and deliberation. The fact that they asked to re-examine evidence about those drugs would seem to bear this theory out.

Another explanation is that it was what we call a "compromise" verdict. Possibly some jurors wanted one verdict, some wanted another, but everyone was just plain worn out and daunted by the prospect of a another few weeks of hearings on whether or not Stewart should get the death penalty (the "guilt or innocence" phase is only the first part of a capital trial; the second, or "penalty" phase can go even longer).

So they came up with a verdict everyone on the jury could live with, one that put Robert Stewart in prison for well over 100 years - effectively life without parole. Again, this is pure conjecture, but it does -happen.

One of the things that shocked a lot of people was that Stewart's lawyers immediately gave notice of appeal. What were they thinking? Why didn't they just take the win and go home? Well, they can still do that. Just because a notice of appeal is given doesn't mean that the appeal itself will be pursued.

I imagine the last thing Messrs. Megerian and Wells would want for their client is another lengthy trial that could result in a different verdict. But you give the notice, because if you don't do it within the time limit, you lose the right to do so. It would be malpractice to just let that right go because you forgot to say the words "defendant gives notice of appeal."

On the subject of those defense lawyers: I don't know the gentlemen personally, but I do know the -system, and I have to laugh when people claim they did this trial for the big money. I know the court-appointed rates, and I know private rates, and trust me, they'd have made a heck of a lot more staying home and defending private clients.

You don't get rich off court-appointed capital trials; in fact, thanks to the time they take away from -everything else, they can turn into The Trial That Ate Your Practice if you're not careful.

So why do it? Well, as I said, I don't know Mr. Stewart's lawyers except to say hey to, so I can't speak for them. But I can say that everyone else I've ever met who does appointed capital defense does it because they believe that the Constitution's guarantee that everyone is entitled to counsel means everybody and that there isn't a constitutional loophole for really bad crimes.

In the Stewart case, two teams of experienced trial lawyers, under the eye of an experienced and even-handed trial judge, worked very hard to put all the evidence at their disposal in front of an impartial jury, which pondered that evidence for hours before -arriving at a verdict that put the defendant in jail for the rest of his natural life.

We may never know the answer to the question of exactly why they went the way they did, but I hope I was able to answer at least some of your other ones.

FAQ: Why Bother With a Trial, Anyway?

2011-09-04T12:35:00.002-04:00

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[NOTE: As this column was going to press, the jury came back with a verdict of guilty to second-degree murder. Robert Stewart was sentenced to a minimum of 142 years in prison--effectively a life sentence without parole. More thoughts on this next week.]

As of this writing, the trial of Robert Stewart for killing eight people and wounding Michael Cotten and police officer Justin Garner at the Pinelake Nursing Center in Carthage is about to go into closing arguments.

By the time you read this, the jury will likely be in deliberations. Or they may already have reached a verdict.

I don't comment often about local trials. The reason for this is simple: They're not my cases. As I pointed out a few weeks ago in reference to the Casey Anthony trial, unless you're really involved in a trial, on a day-to-day basis, seeing what the jury sees and being excluded from the stuff they don't, it's hard to comment on them with any degree of real authority (although there are plenty of people who pretend to that authority).

The Stewart trial, however, is inescapable, and if you're in the legal business around here, so are the questions from a concerned, occasionally annoyed, and once in a while downright cranky public. While I'm not going to comment upon specifics, there are some frequently asked questions that I can answer, just from a general knowledge of how things work.

The question I see and hear most often is this: "Why do we even have to have a trial? Why are we paying lawyers to defend him? Everyone knows he did it!" The answer is simple: because the U.S. Constitution says so.

The Sixth Amendment reads: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed ... to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."

That's in all, repeat all, criminal prosecutions. There's no exception for "really bad crimes" or for defendants who "everyone knows" are guilty. All means all.

Which leads us to the next question: "Why doesn't Stewart just agree to take life without parole?" Yes, I have actually seen this question raised. Friends, I haven't discussed the matter with Mr. Stewart's attorneys, much less with Mr. Stewart, but I would imagine they would take a plea to life without parole in a hot second - if it were offered.

But, like the tango, it takes two to plead, and I haven't heard even a shadow of a whisper of a suggestion that such a plea was even being considered.

Well, you may ask next, why not? Why won't the state just offer life and get this over with?

There are a number of factors that go into the decision by the state whether or not to seek the death penalty and whether or not to consider backing off it. The strength of the particular case is one. The potential public backlash from pleading out a high-profile, emotionally charged case is another. A huge factor is always the wishes of the families of the victims.

But why does it have to take so dadgum long? Believe me, as one of the many folks who have had to navigate around enhanced courthouse security and the courtroom shortage created by this trial, I've asked the same question.

But remember: This is a death penalty case. It's going to be examined and re-examined and re-re-examined by courts, probably all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Neither side's going to cut corners here to save time.

There's also a concept that comes into play called "harmless error." This is a phrase that crops up in some appeals court decisions in which the court concedes that yeah, maybe the trial judge made a mistake in letting in a piece of evidence or some error of law, but they're going to let the conviction stand because "the other evidence of guilt was so overwhelming that this error was harmless."

As for the defense - again, it's a death case. So neither side, prosecution or defense, is going to leave any horses in the barn.

I'm not going to get into a discussion pro or con about the death penalty here, because, let's face it, no one's opinion ever changes on that. But I'll say this, because it's the answer to a lot of questions about this and other trials: If the state's going to take someone's life for breaking the law, then they need to do it according to law.

Otherwise, we're just a well-dressed lynch mob.

Jon Hunstman: Dead Man Walking

2011-08-28T08:57:00.003-04:00

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"To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." In a sane world, this sort of pronouncement wouldn't be necessary. In a sane political party, it wouldn't be an item of controversy.

But we don't live in a sane world, and Jon Huntsman, who expressed those sentiments a couple of weeks ago via Twitter, doesn't belong to a sane political party. He's running for the GOP presidential nomination, a race in which being a member of the reality-based community is an actual handicap.

You know, if he had a chance of getting the nomination, Barack Obama might have something to worry about in Jon Huntsman. He's smart, articulate and fiscally conservative, and he's got some serious credentials, as well as good hair. Not as good as Romney's, but still very presidential hair.

He's also worked in the Obama administration as ambassador to China, which would certainly cut the legs out from under any attempt by the president to attack Huntsman's judgment and/or character. ("Well, Mr. President, if he's that much of a boob, why'd you hire him?")

Fortunately for the president, however, Huntsman is far too rational for the Teahadist fanatics who can be counted upon to swarm the early primaries. They don't want to hear anything about no fancy science stuff or any of that "bipartisanship." They'd rather chow down on the sort of red meat served up all fresh and bloody by demagogues like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann.

In an interview with ABC's Jake Tapper, Huntsman stated that he didn't think that calling Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke "traitorous" made Perry sound "serious" on the issues. In the same interview, Huntsman also criticized Bachmann and other wingnuts for their willingness to allow this country to default on its debts.

Huntsman was, on both counts, completely correct. He is, therefore, completely doomed.

I mean, really. Trust scientists? Why should we, as good Americans, give any credibility at all to people who actually make a career out of studying an issue, like the 98 percent of the scientists actually working in the field of climate science who believe in man-made climate change?

Why believe in the clear empirical evidence, including striking photo after striking photo of glaciers and icecaps retreating?

In the words of the guy who got caught in bed with another woman by his wife: "Who you gonna believe, honey, me or your lyin' eyes?"

Trying to reverse or even slow down the clear damage being done to the environment would be hard. It might be expensive. It might even, horror of horrors, cut into the profits of the oil companies, reducing said profits from "totally inconceivable by the brain of man" to merely "mind-boggling."

Why go through all that when you can just wave a hand, say a few magic words ("Al Gore owns a big house!" or "It snowed last winter!"), and make all those uncomfortable facts disappear from the minds of your loyal followers so they'll pose no threat to your corporate donors?

Or, if you're a Texas-size con man like Rick Perry, you can just make stuff up, like his claim that a "substantial number of scientists" were found to have been "manipulating their data." The truth is, a half-dozen scientists were accused, based on eight emails hacked and stolen from their computers. There were five separate investigations. All found no evidence of wrongdoing or data manipulation.

You can look it up. But why would any Republican candidate bother to do that? The truth doesn't set you free in the GOP, unless what you want to be free from is any chance of surviving Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Mitt Romney certainly saw the writing on the wall. After saying back in June when he announced his candidacy that he favored reduction of "greenhouse gases that might be significant contributors" to climate change, Mitt saw Rick Perry take the lead and did one of those deft backflips for which he is so justly famed. He now says he's an agnostic on the matter:

"Do I think the world's getting hotter? Yeah, I don't know that, but I think that it is," he said. "I don't know if it's mostly caused by humans. What I'm not willing to do is spend trillions of dollars on something I don't know the answer to."

Jon Huntsman is a sane, reasonable moderate who believes in science. Which is why he's a dead man walking in the GOP. And that's why President Obama, for all his faults, is going to win a second term.

Local Idiot: Tax The Poor!

2011-08-26T08:24:00.004-04:00

In a letter entitled Rhoades At It Again in The Pilot (where my weekly column appears), local idiot Jack Jakucyk once again raises that old discredited argument that it's not the rich, but the poor who aren't paying their fair share. In reference to this column, he starts off with the name-calling right wingers claim to despise, unless they're engaging in it:

Dusty, with his degree from the Karl Marx School of Economics, suggests that the rich not only don’t create jobs, they also don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes.

Then he goes on to parrot one of the more egregiously stupid arguments of the American Right:

At the other end of the spectrum, the bottom half (71 million returns) contributed only 3 percent of total tax revenues. And 51.8 million of the 142 million returns from your fellow Americans had no income tax liabilities due to deductions, tax credits, etc. This may seem counterintuitive, but I wonder if it’s a good thing for our society when half the population pays essentially no taxes. They have no dog in the fight. But Dusty Rhoades is on their side.

They don't pay taxes because they're poor, doofus. It's the old "lucky duckies" argument that was so roundly mocked when the WSJ first floated it. Take, for example, this article by Noble Prize laureate Paul Krugman which points out that:

The Journal considers a hypothetical ducky who earns only $12,000 a year ? some guys have all the luck! ? and therefore, according to the editorial, "pays a little less than 4% of income in taxes." Not surprisingly, that statement is a deliberate misrepresentation; the calculation refers only to income taxes. If you include payroll and sales taxes, a worker earning $12,000 probably pays well over 20 percent of income in taxes. But who's counting?

Or then there's Reuben Bolling, who brilliantly skewered the whole idea with his character "Lucky Ducky":

It's such a persistent fallacy of the Right that I thought it merited being addressed for a wider audience.

Just keep in mind, every time someone raises this claptrap about how "some people at the bottom don't pay any taxes, and that's not fair" that:

(a) it's a deliberate misrepresentation; and
(b) what they're really demanding is more taxes on the poor.

As Jonathan Chait wrote:
One of the things that has fascinated me about The Wall Street Journal editorial page is its occasional capacity to rise above the routine moral callousness of hack conservative punditry and attain a level of exquisite depravity normally reserved for villains in James Bond movies.

So I guess we we can say that Mr. Jakucyk studied at the Blofeld School of Economics.

Oh, and he conveniently fails to address the statistics showing that tax rates don't affect job creation. Wonder why that is? Maybe because he can't...Fox News hasn't told him how.

NRO Columnist Takes Issue With the President's Reading Choices, Makes Self Look Like Complete Idiot

2011-08-25T18:28:00.004-04:00

National Review Online apparently needed to fill some column space and was running out of things to complain about in regard to Barack Obama. So they applied a scraper to the bottom of the barrel and came up with some dripping clump of ooze by the name of Tevi Troy, who's got his right wing panties in a bunch over--get this-- the books the President brought with him on vacation.

First, five of the six are novels, and the near-absence of nonfiction sends the wrong message for any president, because it sets him up for the charge that he is out of touch with reality.

And:

Beyond the issue of fiction vs. nonfiction, there is also the question of genre. The Bayou Trilogy [by Daniel Woodrell of Winter's Bone fame] has received excellent reviews, but it is a mystery series. While there is nothing wrong with that per se, not every presidential reading selection is worth revealing to the public....Room is another well-received novel, but it is about a mother and child trapped in an 11-by-11-foot room. This claustrophobic adventure does not strike me as the right choice for someone trying to escape the perception that he is trapped in a White House bubble....

This year’s list suggests that Obama needs to consider the messages sent by his reading more carefully. According to Mickey Kaus, the Obama list is “heavy on the wrenching stories of immigrant experiences, something the President already knows quite a bit about.” For this reason, Kaus feels that the list reveals an intellectually incurious president. Either that, or it is “a bit of politicized PR BS designed to help the President out.” In that case, he notes, “it’s sending the wrong message.” Either way, the annual book list should be a relatively easy way to make the president appear to be on top of things and in control. This year’s list, alas, reveals a president who appears to be neither.

Words fail me.

Oh, wait, no they don't.

Are you KIDDING ME? Is there literally nothing these people will not bitch about? JFK read James Bond novels and helped launch Ian Fleming from a writer with middling sales to an icon. St Ronnie Reagan read The Hunt for Red October and did the same for Tom Clancy. But Barack Obama reads Daniel Woodrell and this somehow shows he's not "on top of things or in control?"

Maybe somebody should remind this "Tevi Troy" person that the founder of the print version of National Review, William F. Buckley, also wrote genre fiction, namely eleven spy novels. Pretty good ones, too, at least judging from the couple I've read. But then, this so-called "senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former senior White House aide" probably never actually read Buckley, a true conservative whose shoes the current Klown Kollege at the NRO is not worthy to shine. Buckley's probably spinning like a dynamo in his grave with the way these morons have defiled the name of conservatism. It used to be a political philosophy; now it's nothing more than a reflex, an immediate rush to yell "foul" about anything the Democratic President does, no matter how trivial. The people at the NRO specialize in this sort of smallness, silliness and pettiness, and they make the entire movement look even more ridiculous than Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin combined could do, and brother, that is saying something.

Satire Just Can't Keep Up, Again

2011-08-25T14:35:00.001-04:00

Me, August 21st:

It looks like it’s going to be another election filled with nonstories about whether the candidate’s tie or his lunch or his choice of hobbies makes him think he’s better than you, along with celebrations of some random ignoramus like Joe-Not-Really-the-Plumber.

Wonkette, August 25th:

Joe Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, is considering a run against U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur in 2012, according to Republican Party sources.

Jon Stainbrook, chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party, said there is “high-level interest in the national Republican Party” in a potential Wurzelbacher candidacy.
“We are encouraging Joe to run,” Mr. Stainbrook said. “He hasn’t made any official decision yet.”

Not only can you not fix stupid, as Ron White said, you can't stay ahead of it.

Of course, God would have to change His mind for Joe to run.

Today's Awesome Advice

2011-08-23T08:07:00.000-04:00

From Chuck Wendig, 25 Things Writers Should Know About Social Media, at his great blog Terrible Minds.

"People want to follow other people. People don’t want to follow brands."

"Talk to people, and try not to be a dick."

"Be an escort, not a whore."

Best advice I can give you is, check it out. Wendig speaks truth.

Quote of the Day: On the Use of the Term "Political Correctness"

2011-08-22T16:14:00.004-04:00

Writer Steven Hart, on Facebook:

I'm old enough to remember that "PC" began as an ironic joke among leftie academics. The wingers took it up as a cudgel, and now the term is useless except as a signal of low-to-zero IQ on the part of the user. When it crops up, like the phrase "I'm really a classical liberal" or "I'm a student of history," it's a warning that a tandem-trailer load of bullshit is about to come up your driveway..

Amen, brother. I don't de-friend or ban people for disagreeing with me. However, if you insist that people are disagreeing with you because of 'political correctness", you're on the short list to go in the Bozo Bin. It's condescending, dismissive and lazy. Any time someone starts a sentence with "I know it's not PC to say this," you can bet that what follows will be some sort of ill-thought-out, racist, and/or bigoted garbage. Frankly, if the words "political correctness" or the letters "PC" crop up in your argument, I'm going to assume you're a non-sentient jagoff until proven otherwise.

The Dumb Starts Earlier Every Time

2011-08-21T10:10:00.004-04:00

Latest Newspaper Column:

I know that every time there’s an election, I’m going to see things in the national media that are so silly, so shallow, so utterly dimwitted, that they’re going to make me want to bang my head on my desk until the darkness claims me and the pain goes away.

But why, oh why, does it have to start so early?

Recently, Texas Gov. Rick Perry declared his candidacy for the presidency of the country he once openly talked about seceding from. Like an entire pack of Pavlov’s dogs, the right-wing media immediately went into full-out idiot mode and started drooling over Perry as the second coming of George Dubbya Bush.

Not only that, but they did it as if that was a good thing.

For instance, columnist Kathleen Parker, writing in the supposedly liberal Washington Post, went all squealing fangirl on Perry, telling us with breathless adoration that Perry was a real Manly Man like Dubbya, claiming that they both “have that same je ne sais quoi that corresponds to the way a confident Southern male asks a girl to take a spin around the dance floor: ‘Wanna dance?”

She went on, like a bad romance novelist describing the handsome rogue who’ll soon be ripping the bodice of the feisty heroine: “There’s something slightly lazy in the mouth, half a smile, a knowing look … Weathered, creased and comfortable in jeans, they convey a regular guyness that everyday Americans relate to. Take it or leave it, it happens to be true.”

Oh, for God’s sake. The man’s a candidate for the highest office in the land, not the king of the freakin’ prom. I had hoped that the eight-year disaster that was the Dubbya Reign of Error had at long last put a stake though the heart of this “the president needs to be a regular guy” nonsense. I’d hoped we were done with selecting our chief executive on the basis of which one you’d rather have a beer with.

Let me tell you, folks, I am a guy you would love to have a beer with. Ask anyone who’s ever had a beer with me. I am all kinds of fun in a beer-enabled environment. I can do the half-smile and the knowing look. I’m so comfortable in jeans you have to shake me from time to time to keep me from falling asleep. But even I’ll be the first to tell you: You do not want me to be president of the United States.

Here’s the thing: Anyone who wants to be the president of the United States is not a “regular guy” (or girl), and I don’t want them to be. It is a supreme act of arrogance for anyone, of any party, to stand in front of the cameras and tell the watching multitudes, “I am qualified to be the leader of the Free World.”

Anyone who pretends that it’s anything else, and tries to convince you that hey, they’re just like you, needs to be viewed with the same skepticism as a guy offering to sell you a Rolex watch on the street.

One of the biggest problems with this country right now is that we’ve made being smart something to be suspicious of. We’ve made, “Well, I guess you think you’re pretty smart, don't you,” a legitimate retort. We’ve become a society where the phrase, “Well, I might not know much, but I know one thing,” is never followed, as it should be, with “and it’s that I need to shut up.”

But I want the president to be the smartest person in the room, any room, and I don’t really care if he or she acts like it. I want an elitist president, just like I want an elitist brain surgeon, or an elitist fireman, or an elitist Special Forces guy coming to get me out the hands of kidnappers.

I want somebody doing the tough jobs who’s a lot better at them than I’m ever going to be, and if he’s a little cocky about it, well, as the great American poet Kid Rock once wrote, “It ain’t braggin’, [bad word] if you back it up.”

It looks like it’s going to be another election filled with nonstories about whether the candidate’s tie or his lunch or his choice of hobbies makes him think he’s better than you, along with celebrations of some random ignoramus like Joe-Not-Really-the-Plumber.

It’s going to be a long campaign, not to mention another painfully dumb one.

Interview at Edged In Blue

2011-08-16T08:20:00.000-04:00

Jim Winter (or, as he's sometimes known eviljwinter) interviews your Humble Blogger over at Edged in Blue. Jim has an e-book coming out of his rollicking chase thriller Road Rules, which I did a brief intro for. Watch for it. It's a lot of fun.

Doghouse Riley on the Crazy Eyes Cover and the Myth Of "Liberal Media"

2011-08-15T08:46:00.002-04:00

Bats Left/Throws Right:

....whatever's wrong about that Newsweek Bachmann cover--and, somehow, no one to my knowledge has mentioned "being the sort of country where a religiously mazed Bible saleswoman rates any sort of national news coverage"--it's not an example of Librul Media bias which makes FOX look good. Liberal Media? It's fucking Tina Brown. It's marketing. It's the reduction of everything to celebrity gossip as perpetrated by the Roone Arledge of Literacy...

...We heard this crap about Sarah Palin. We heard it about George W. Bush, more to the point, and look where that got us. Nobody said it was unethical to make fun of John Kerry, or Al Gore, or Mike Dukakis. It's just well past time for forty-something male commenters to acknowledge that this is no one-sided game, that this sort of thing is the Right's great stock in trade--the bumper-sticker witticism, the Messiah caricature--and demanding unilateral disarmament from the Left, let alone from "The Left", is ridiculous.

Doghouse Riley's become one of my daily must-reads. Check him out.

And while you're at it, check out this compilation showing both conservatives and liberals being dinged by sensationalistic covers.

So spare us the whining, Bachmanniacs. We'd all be better served if both parties were going after the press for perpetrating this shallow, "optics"-obsessed, narrative-driven bullshit that they call journalism rather than whining about how they're "in the tank" for the other side. The mainstream media just generally sucks all around. Claiming that they're taking sides just gives these idiots the cover of saying "well, both sides are saying we're being unfair to them, so we must be balanced."

Crazy Eyes and the Right Wing Cult of Victimhood

2011-08-14T10:45:00.002-04:00

Latest Newspaper Column:

This past week, those on the American right stopped patting themselves on the back for nearly causing America to default long enough to engage in another of their favorite pastimes: whining that they’re being picked on.

This time, the source of the injury to their delicate feelings was the cover of Newsweek, featuring the visage of Michele Bachmann.

The cover photo, over a headline dubbing her “The Queen of Rage,” showed Bachmann looking pretty much like she’s looked in a lot of pictures and videos, including her much-parodied response to the State of the Union address: staring off into space, wide-eyed, as if she’s watching a troupe of fairies dancing in a mystic circle only she can see.

Republican fairies, naturally. Non-gay ones.

Of course, to the right, running an accurate photograph of their current icon is like quoting her past statements accurately: proof of a vast left-wing conspiracy in the media.

“Can anyone really say with a straight face that the mainstream media is not totally biased against conservatives?” a conservative blogger at a site called “Freedom’s Lighthouse” complained.

Gee, I don’t know, dude. Maybe you should ask Anthony Weiner how the media go easy on liberals. Or you could ask Bill Clinton, who was once shown on a Time magazine cover with his face printed as a frightening-looking photo negative, over the headline “Why People Don’t Trust Bill Clinton.”

Actually, Bachmann’s supporters should be ecstatic about the Newsweek cover, because once they begin their customary temper tantrum, it’s like throwing a switch that sends the talking heads and chattering pundits of the allegedly “liberal” media into their own customary fits of blather about their favorite subject: themselves. Was the picture unfair? Are we sexist? Would anyone in the media distort appearances to try to make a male Democratic front runner look unhinged for the sake of a story?

Maybe you should direct that last question to Howard Dean.

Meanwhile, something a lot more substantive that can and should be more closely examined about Bachmann gets pushed to the back burner: the fact that the woman who’s so given to railing about government spending and programs isn’t shy about benefiting from them herself.

She’s been a vocal critic of federal home loan programs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even while she and her husband were taking out a $417,000 home loan backed by those agencies. The Bachmann family farm received $251,000 in federal farm payments between 1995 and 2006, and Michele took $50,000 in profit out of the place in 2008.

The clinic run by Bachmann’s husband received money from Medicaid, a program she decries for “swelling the welfare rolls,” until her hubby got caught taking it. At that point, according to a Bachmann spokesman, Medicaid became “a valuable form of insurance for many Americans.”

Then, as a congresswoman, Bachmann frequently appealed to agencies like the EPA (which she’s suggested she’d eliminate if she were president), the Agriculture Department, and the Department of Transportation for funds from the very stimulus programs she once dubbed “fantasy economics.”

She also praised Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for using government money to help prop up the struggling pork industry in her state and urged him to continue to “stabilize prices through direct government purchasing.”

The website Politico has referred to this sort of behavior as “selective socialism.” It’s the sort of thing we’ve gotten used to from the right, which, as I’ve said before, often reminds me of a teenager screaming at her parents “I hate you, you ruined my life, I wish you were dead!” then demanding a ride to the mall.

Maybe, like the tea partiers who want to “keep the government’s hands off Medicare,” Michele Bachmann is actually so unhinged that she truly doesn’t regard it as government spending if it’s spent on her. Or maybe she’s just another grifter assuring the rubes that she’s the only one who’s looking after their interests while she pockets government cash with both hands.

In any case, those are bigger questions about Bachmann than the superficial one of whether or not the Newsweek cover made her look bad.

Modern media types, however, are notorious these days for concentrating on style (or “optics,” to use the new buzzword) rather than substance. They’re more interested in fretting about whether they’re “balanced” than in whether they’re reporting the truth.

That’s not because they’re liberal. It’s because they’re lousy at their jobs.

You Cannot Make This Stuff Up

2011-08-10T08:05:00.002-04:00

Wonkette:

Arizona Teahadists show up at a John McCain town party rally to demand he apologize for calling them "hobbits."

I give up. Satire is dead. There's no way I could write anything more insane than that.

Twitrage Times Two

2011-08-07T09:17:00.007-04:00

Latest Newspaper Column:

A couple of weeks ago, I used the term "Twitrage" to characterize the sort of ill-informed online indignation that's spread by sites like Twitter and Facebook and has become part of the common currency of our national discourse. A couple of recent events demonstrate Twitrage at its finest.

First there was the kerfluffle over "Black Latino Gay Spiderman." I know the very idea of such a thing both boggles the mind and raises the hackles of comic geeks and wingnuts alike, which is probably what the right-wing website The Drudge Report had in mind when it blared "MARVEL Kills Off SPIDER-MAN, Replaces with Half-Black, Half-Hispanic Reincarnation. ... 'Miles Morales' ... could be gay."

A news item in England's newspaper The Daily Mail was similarly lurid. "Marvel Comics Reveals the New Spider Man Is Black - and He Could Be Gay in the Future," the headline said, and went on: "Spider-Man has been given a makeover - as a half-black, half-Latino teen. Miles Morales has replaced Peter Parker as the face behind the famous webbed mask."

The results were predictable. Shock! Horror! Outrage! "When will this PC crap stop?" moaned one typical Twitrager who goes by the online handle of "NoMoreObama2012." "We will never accept the new spidey-gay boy!!!" one Facebooker fumed.

Even Glenn Beck got into the act, blaming, of course, Michelle Obama. (What, you expect sense from Glenn Beck?)

So, was it true? Well, yes. But also no. The reason lies in one of the weirder things about the world of comic books, so please forgive me a moment of nerdiness.

See, Marvel Comics (which publishes Spider-Man, X-Men, etc) also publishes series called "Ultimate Spider-Man," "Ultimate X-Men," etc. The "Ultimate" series portray alternate versions and storylines - another fictional universe entirely, really. The writers seem to delight in "what would happen if" speculation.

Oh, as it turns out, the "Miles Morales" character isn't actually gay either. That came from an offhand comment by one of the book's artists: "Maybe sooner or later a black or gay - or both - hero will be considered something absolutely normal."

So fear not. In the "main" Marvel Universe, Peter Parker is still Spider-Man, and vice versa. Still alive, still white, and as far as anyone knows, still straight. And if that explanation has caused you to have an irresistible desire to consume family-size bags of Cheetos in one sitting and live in your parents' basement while engaging in endless online debates about pop-culture trivia like whether the Starship Enterprise could beat the Death Star, I'm sorry.

Our next example of misplaced Twitrage comes from The Huffington Post, which reported the tale of Alison Capo of Virginia and her 11-year-old daughter Skylar. Young Skylar found a wounded baby woodpecker being stalked by a cat. Being a tenderhearted youth, Skylar rescued the woodpecker from the voracious feline and, when she was unable to locate the bird's mother, took it home.

Then Skylar and her mom carried the bird with them, for some unexplained reason, on an errand to a "local home improvement store." An alert fellow shopper, who happened to be an officer of the Fish and Wildlife Service, informed them that little Woody was a member of an endangered species and "transporting" him was illegal.

The officious officer later showed up at Casa Capo with a citation announcing a $535 fine and, HuffPo reported breathlessly, "possible jail time."

Shock! Horror! Outrage! The story of the little girl whose merciful act was deemed criminal by the big bad unfeeling bureaucracy made the online rounds, with the usual results. The big bad government made the little girl cry! Her mom might go to jail for saving a baby bird!

Except for the fact that the Fish and Wildlife Service immediately dropped the citation, stated that the local office had tried to cancel it before it was served, and apologized to Ms. Capo before the story even hit the Internet.This part, of course, was buried three-quarters of the way through the HuffPo story and isn't mentioned anywhere in the outraged tweets and online postings on the subject. Because "government bureau immediately catching its mistake, fixing it, and apologizing" just doesn't fit the narrative. Where's the outrage potential in that?

It used to be said that "a lie can travel a thousand miles before the truth gets its boots on." In the era of Facebook and Twitter, misplaced outrage moves at the speed of light. My advice: Take a deep breath, look up the facts, read the whole story - and think before you tweet.

New Look For the Blog....

2011-08-05T11:56:00.006-04:00

I'd stuck with the original turn of the century Blogger template too long. I'll probably be tweaking the changes a bit as we go, but I'd love your input on the new look. Note the new "reaction" buttons below, and the Facebook "like" button.