My Open Letter to the Democratic Leadership

Warning: the following message to the Democratic Party is going to have some harsh language in it. so if that sort of thing offends you, bail out now.

Today I read yet another story about how “Democratic Party insiders” fear that the Democrats are going to lose their majority in the U.S House and possibly even the Senate. The “insiders” and “strategists” requested anonymity so as to “speak candidly” about the prospects.

Well allow me to speak candidly as well to these anonymous officials of the party:

What the FUCK do you people think you’re doing?

You’re supposed to be helping the Democrats win in November, you assholes, not conceding the fucking game. The dumbest assistant coach of the most hapless junior college team in the NCAA knows better than to tell reporters “yeah, jeez, it looks pretty bad, I think we’re going to get our asses kicked this season.” If he did, he’d be out of a fucking job, and good riddance.

Here’s something even I know, Brainiacs: people vote for winners. If you talk like you’re a loser, people aren’t going to vote for you. They’re either going to stay home, or they’re going to vote for the other guys. You know, the guys who are strutting around talking about how they’re going to win. Either way, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m no high ranking Democratic party strategist, but even I can figure that much out.

I’ve given my time and my money to this party, and I’ve written almost weekly in support of its candidates for over ten years now. Since I live in one of the most heavily conservative areas of a southern state, I take shit for it every day--including the occasional anonymous threat--from mouth breathing redneck assholes and cranky old racist teabaggers who treat me like something they scraped off their orthopedic shoes because I don’t think Sarah Palin is the Second Coming, with Tits. And you want to know what new and exciting flavor that shit’s being served in lately? “Even your own leadership thinks you’re losing in November. HAW HAW HAW!” Thanks a lot, you craven sons of bitches. Thanks just fucking LOADS.

I’m still fighting though. And I don’t even get paid a “political strategist’s” salary to do it. So why the hell are you pulling down hefty bucks to throw the game?

You know what, you chickenshit bastards? If you don't think the Democrats can hold a majority, then quit. Fucking leave. I mean it. Quit being a ‘high ranking Democratic strategist” and go buy a goat farm or write a novel or something. Put some people in charge of the party with some goddamn backbone and some will to win. Because for all the sports analogies, this isn’t a game. It’s the future of the country we all love. And you defeatist lackwits are about to let it fall back into the hands of the same people who ran it into the ditch.

You want any kind of meaningful reform to be stalled because some birther lunatic is tying up the Senate until Obama personally walks down to the Capitol and gives him a DNA sample to prove he’s human? Then keep talking. You want to see some right wing dingbat tie up the House for the next two years with investigations over how much the First Lady spent on her last pair of shoes?

You don’t? Then SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET BACK TO WORK.

Do your damn jobs, which do NOT include eroding the confidence in your own ranks and making the other guys look like the winners three months before the election.

If anyone who reads this knows any of these “insiders”, will you please pass this along to them? Maybe somehow, some way, one of them will get the message that we want leaders who’ll fight for the party and for the future of America.

I Am Losing Patience With These People

Democrats Privately Fear House Slipping Away

I'm reminded of a story told by Shelby Foote in Ken Burn's documentary on the Civil War, about U.S. Grant. Some of his junior officers were fretting about what a great General Robert E. Lee was, to which Grant responded: "I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at thesame time. Go back to your command, and try to think what are we going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do."

Will you people MAN UP, for Christ's sake?

Sane Conservatives, Redux

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I've occasionally been accused of being too hard on conservatives in this column. Some have even asserted that I hate conservatives. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Some of my best friends are conservatives.

What I’m against, and what I mock on a regular basis, are people who use the mantle of “conservatism” as a cover for meanness, selfishness and bigotry, people for whom so-called “conservatism” isn’t about what you believe, it’s about whom you hate. I actually go out of my way to look for reasonable, rational, non-insane conservatives. I’m pleased to say, the hunting has been pretty good recently.
One thing conservatives profess to love is the Constitution. Remember the brouhaha when Supreme Court nominee (now Justice) Elena Kagan quoted her mentor, Thurgood Marshall, in saying that the Constitution,
as originally drafted, was “defective” because it recognized and legitimized slavery? You’d have thought she’d advocated setting fire to the original ­document and replacing it with Mao’s Little Red Book.
Yes, some conservatives sure do love that Constitution — until its protections start being applied to someone who looks, prays, loves or think differently from them. Freedom of religion? Right to private property? Not for Muslims in Manhattan, bucko! Right to counsel? Shut up, you Islamofascist sympathizers, and bring on the waterboard!
A recent example of conservative disdain for the Constitution arose over the 14th Amendment’s definition of a citizen as anyone “born ornaturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

That really grinds some ­conservatives’ gears when it’s applied to the children of ­people here illegally. They really hate the idea of those rotten little brown “anchor babies” being citizens, to the point where some Republican senators have called for at least partially repealing the 14th Amendment.
That got to be too much for former CNN newsman Lou Dobbs. It would be hard to find someone more hard-line on illegal immigration than Dobbs, who’s characterized it as “an invasion.”

But he recently went on Fox and said: “The idea that anchor babiessomehow require changing the 14th amendment, I part ways with thesenators on that because I believe the 14th Amendment, particularly inits due process and equal protection clauses, is so important. It laysthe foundation for the entire Bill of Rights being applied to the states.”
Another conservative who suddenly managed to turn up sane was Ted Olson, former solicitor general under George W. Bush and no one’s definition of a bleeding heart liberal.
After a federal judge struck down California’s ban on same-sex marriage, I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the attorneyswho had argued the case for the plaintiffs was none other than Olson. He afterward went on “Fox News Sunday” and proceeded to calmly demolish Chris Wallace’s argument that the judge had created some kind of “new right” for gays and lesbians.

Olson pointed out that the right to marry a person of your choice has long been defined as a fundamental right, “part of liberty, privacy,association and spirituality guaranteed to each individual under the Constitution.” Pressed on the issue of so-called “judicial activism,” Olson responded that it’s a “judicial responsibility” to overturn laws that violate the Constitution, no matter how many people may have voted for them. “Would you want Fox News’ right to report be submitted to a vote?” he asked Wallace.

One conservative writer and blogger I read regularly is David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush and the author of several books on conservatism, including “Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again.” Frum recently responded to an editorial in The National Review condemning the falsely named “Ground Zero Mosque” by using the same sort of rigorous application of the Constitution that conservatives claim to be so fond of (but so rarely adhere to).

“I remain skeptical that the sponsors of this mosque are quite as benign as they have been represented,” he said,“... but the rights guaranteed by the Constitution do not belong only to nice people. And whatever we may wonder about the mosque promoters, we should also remember the mosque’s users: the thousands of Muslims who work in lower Manhattan, every single one of whom is as entitled to pray as any member of Marble Presbyterian or Temple Emanuel.”
Sane conservatives: They’re out there. They don’t get the same press coverage as the nutballs, birthers and death-panel fabulists do, and to tell you the truth, they’re not nearly as much fun to write about. But they’re willing to be fair, and so am I.
At least this week.

It's a Lot Like Arguing On the Internet

The next time you feel like jumping into an argument with some idiot on the Internet, think of this video...it has very much the same feel to it.

Weed Makes You Stupid

Facebook mom posts photographs of her 11 month old baby with a bong:

A teenage Florida mom thought it'd be funny to snap a picture of her 11-month-old son playing with a bong and slap it on Facebook, but the half-baked scheme landed her in the clink.

Cops busted Rachel Stieringer, 19, of Keystone Heights, after a computer user in Texas saw the picture and called an abuse hotline to report her.

Stieringer was charged late last month with possession of drug paraphernalia and posted $502 bail.

It doesn't appear the baby boy was injured, and drug tests on him came back negative.

I'm Not Saying I CONDONE It...But I Understand

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A recent headline on the ABC News website asked the question: "Steve Slater: Criminal or Folk Hero?" One wonders if ABC is perhaps outsourcing its headline writing to India, because anyone who knows anything about America knows that, in this country, you can be both.

In case you're not familiar, Steven Slater is (or was) a flight attendant for the airline JetBlue who became a media sensation after an encounter with an unruly passenger.

According to published reports, the passenger, who before takeoff had been involved in a near fistfight with another traveler over space in the overhead bins, continued to behave badly when the plane landed in New York. She was up before the plane came to a stop, yanking her suitcase out of the bin. When Slater tried to stop her, she cursed him and struck him on the head with the luggage (whether deliberately or inadvertently is not clear).

At this point, Slater had had enough. He got on the plane's intercom and delivered the following soliloquy: "To the (bad word) who called me a (bad word) and told me to (bad word) off: (bad word) you! I've been in the business 28 (bad word) years. That's it. I'm done."

Then Slater popped the emergency slide, grabbed a couple of beers from the airplane fridge, slid out of the plane, walked to his car, drove home - and immediately passed into legend.

You might expect that the consensus would be that this was another example of arrogant and rude flight attendants throwing their weight around. But for some reason (perhaps the flamboyance of his exit), Slater became a symbol for all of the people who've had to deal with a rude and unreasonable public.

Bloggers and commenters hailed him as a hero. Folk singer Jonathan Mann even released a YouTube video called the "Ballad of Steven Slater." "Every day in a million ways," one of the verses goes, "he was subjected to the worst kind of impotent rage, like a bubble about to burst." (The chorus incorporates Steven's uncensored rant in its entirety, so you may not want to watch it at work.)

Many who commented told their own tales of having to deal with cranky, unreasonable and downright insane customers. Having worked in a variety of public-contact jobs, I can certainly say I have some sympathy for them, for Steve Slater, and for anyone who's wanted to say, in the words of the old Johnny Paycheck chart-topper, "Take This Job and Shove It."

It should be noted, however, that we really don't know much about the passenger's story. Don't get me wrong, she behaved abominably, and nothing justifies hitting someone on the head with a loaded bag, but it's possible she was under some stress, too.

Has anyone considered that perhaps she was trying very hard to make a connection that the airline had put in jeopardy because the freaking plane sat on the tarmac for an hour and a freaking half before takeoff and her connecting flight left in 10 minutes and the stupid airline put that flight at a gate that was a 15-minute walk and a freaking train ride away?

(Why, yes, I have flown through Atlanta recently, why do you ask?)

Again, nothing justifies the passenger's behavior. We should all try to remember that whatever stress the airline is putting everyone through, it's (usually) not the flight attendant's fault. But anyone who's flown the unfriendly skies in the past few years understands a little about "impotent rage" from the passenger's perspective too.

The thing about outlaws, though, is that, well, they did break the law. Slater was arrested at home (by a SWAT team, no less), and charged with criminal mischief, -reckless endangerment and trespassing. (I guess the last charge is because you're not allowed on the slide absent an emergency.)

The passenger who struck him was apparently not charged. But the people who shrink the seats more and more so as to cram passengers in like cattle, the people who are charging an outrageous fee to check luggage which they then lose, the people who make sure that  wherever you go, you first have to go 400 miles in the opposite direction and have to stress over connecting with the flight that actually goes to your destination (see above)  no one's even talking about putting them on trial.

Maybe if we did, there'd be a little less "air rage" from both sides.