Sunday, March 18, 2012
What’s My Name?
Sunday, March 11, 2012
THANKS, RICK AND RUSH!
This week, I'd like to reach across the aisle, as it were, and offer my thanks to a couple of Republicans.I know this might seem shocking, and it does break with the position of many of my fellow liberals, but I'd like to extend the hand of thanks to Rick Santorum and Rush Limbaugh.
Sen. Santorum, as a supporter of this president and someone who'd like to see him win a second term, I'd like to offer my warmest gratitude to you for your complete inability to stay on message.
Oh, I know that, with employment rising and other good economic news, the Republican platform of "everything sucks and it's all Obama's fault" becomes somewhat problematic. It's going to be hard to keep those moderates and independents on your side when you have to keep dismissing, mocking and trying to change the subject when there's any piece of good news. The Debbie Downer character from "Saturday Night Live" may be amusing, but I wouldn't pick her for my communications director.
Nevertheless, economic gloom and doom is the message the Republican Party has chosen to embrace, and that's the one the candidates are expected to broadcast.
But you, Sen. Santorum - when it comes to any issue involving sex in general and contraception in particular, you're like my dog when he sees a squirrel on our morning walk. He knows he's not supposed to take off running full-tilt after it, but he just can't help himself.
Likewise, whenever the subject of contraception comes up, you may know, somewhere back in the recesses of your mind, that the issue is an electoral minefield, given that polls show three-quarters of American women have used the pill, only 8 percent of them think that birth control is morally wrong, and 89 percent of Catholic women - your own fellow religionists - not only have no problem with birth control, but favor expanding access to it for people who can't afford it. But you can't help but chase that squirrel, can you?
You can't keep from blurting out things like how contraception is "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be," and that states should have the power to ban it, even for married couples.
Which brings us to Rush Limbaugh. Thank you, Mr. Limbaugh, for your recent comments regarding Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke.
When Republican House members refused to let any women testify at a hearing involving a rule that private insurance plans had to include contraception, the Democrats held their own hearing. Ms. Fluke was a witness.
She talked about the financial hardship some women suffered because the student health plan at her private university did not provide coverage for contraception and related how a friend who took the pill to control her agonizingly painful polycystic ovarian syndrome was denied coverage and suffered as a result.
So you, Mr. Limbaugh, then went off on a bizarre diatribe over three days about how Ms. Fluke was a "slut" and a "prostitute" who "wanted taxpayers to pay her to have sex," even though, again, this was a discussion of regulation of a privately funded insurance plan at a private university and had nothing to do with taxpayer funding.
Further, Ms. Fluke hadn't even talked about her sex life. Nevertheless, in one of the creepiest jokes ever heard on the American airwaves, you demanded that Fluke should videotape herself having sex and post it on the Internet so you, a 61-year-old man, could watch it.
Now, a lot of people have given you grief for that. As of this writing, 45 sponsors have pulled out of your show after a storm of Internet protests. There have been calls to take you off the taxpayer-funded Armed Forces Radio.
But I say, please continue. Keep disrespecting women with whom you disagree in the crudest possible fashion, while positioning yourself as the voice of American conservatism.
And Sen. Santorum, please stay in the race as the "conservative alternative," while uncontrollably spouting off a radical position on birth control that's sure to alienate the vast majority of female voters.
Because pretty much all of the women of voting age that I've talked to recently are as angry and energized as I've ever seen them over these issues. And they're not energized for your party.A recent AP poll showed the president's approval ratings up 10 percent among women since December, beating Romney 54 percent to 41 percent in this key demographic.
Thank you, fellows. And enjoy the second Obama term.
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Sluice Tundra, Private Eye: The Case of the Flip-Flopping Financier
It was about 11 o'clock in the morning, the day after the Michigan and Arizona primaries. I waited in the hallway of the big mansion, trying to keep my trench coat from dripping rain on the expensive Italian tiles. It didn't work. Darned gravity.
"The governor will see you now, sir," the ancient gray-haired butler said.
I followed him into a room so large you could have played full-court basketball in it and still had room for a game of pingpong in the corners. It was a long walk to where the former governor sat at the other end; I had to stop and rest a couple of times.
As I came closer, he got up from behind an antique desk that probably cost more than my house. He flashed me the tight-jawed, blank-eyed, toothy grin I'd seen a thousand times on my TV screen, the one that always made me wonder if he was real or something that had escaped from a ride at Disney World.
"Are you Mr. Tundra?" he said.
"That's me," I said, "Sluice Tundra, private eye. An honest gumshoe, trying to earn a living out on the mean streets, where life is cheap, the women are fast, and the lead flies like ..."
"Yes, Mr. Tundra, I know," the governor interrupted. "It's on your business card. I must say, you really had to use some small print to fit that speech onto one card."
"It was either that, or say 'Continued on Next Card,'" I said. "And that would be silly." I took a seat. "So what can I do for you, governor?" I said.
"I'm being followed," he said. A hunted look came over his chiseled face. "It's always there. Right behind me. It won't leave me alone."
"What?" I asked. "What's following you?"
"My record," he said.
"Your record?"
He nodded. "I'm supposed to be this big right-wing conservative. I need that to get through the primaries. But every time I turn around, it's there." He got up, went to the nearby wet bar, and poured a drink with shaking hands. "I can't get away from it. I can't get away from the fact that I once supported a ban on assault weapons. That I ran for the Senate in 1994 saying I'd be a stronger advocate for gay rights than Ted Kennedy. That I supported the Wall Street bailout and once supported stem cell research."
"Don't forget Romneycare," I said. He looked daggers at me, but I went on. "You remember? You said you liked the individual mandate, that the mandates worked."
"You're not helping!" he snapped.
I shrugged. "What do you want me to do?"
"Make it stop following me!" he said.
"Sorry, Governor," I said. "I'm pretty good, but I can't change the past. If I could do that, I'd undo my second marriage." I got up from the chair. "But look on the bright side. Once you've got the nomination, a lot of those people who've been railing against everything you've supported will fall in line and vote for you. Because as bad as they hate bailouts, health care (for anyone but them), gun control and gay people, they hate Obama even more."
He brightened up at that. "So I'll win the election?"
"Oh, God, no," I answered. "Obama's going to take that record you're fretting about and spend months beating you over the head with it so hard your ears ring. You're going to be the John Kerry of the Republican Party - the guy the base went along with, even though they didn't like him, because he was safe and electable. Then the moderates and independents looked at him and saw him as a phony who votes for things before he votes against them. And we all know how that worked out."
I shook my head. "No, you've got to have more than 'I'm not that guy' to win the general election. There just aren't enough people willing to turn out in the general election to vote based on hate. And you, sir, just don't have much more than that, especially now that the economy's improving."
He looked stubborn. "I can tell them it isn't. I can tell them the better unemployment figures don't mean anything."
"Yeah, good luck with that."
He drew himself up to his full height. "Mr. Tundra," he said, "you're fired." Then, for the first time, he smiled a genuine smile. "I really do like firing people."
"Yeah," I said. "Good luck with that, too."
Friday, March 02, 2012
GALLOWS POLE FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME
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 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.
"J.D. Rhoades delivers the goods and then some in the wonderfully suspenseful Gallows Pole."
-- Gary Phillips, author of THE UNDERBELLY
"J.D. Rhoades kicks ass!"
--J.A. Konrath
"Rhoades is a knock-em-dead writer. Always a fan. Get this."
--Anthony Neil Smith, author of ALL THE YOUNG WARRIORS
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Andrew Breitbart Has Died
There's a lot that could be said about the death of Andrew Breitbart. But let's not think about his death. Let us remember him as he lived:
And then there's this touching moment.
and of course, this set of Tweets after the death of Ted Kennedy:
Over the course of the next three hours, Breitbart unapologetically attacked Kennedy, calling him a “villain,” “a big ass motherf@#$er,” a “duplicitous bastard” and a “prick.” “I’ll shut my mouth for Carter. That’s just politics. Kennedy was a special pile of human excrement,” wrote Breitbart in one tweet.
Let us remember the life of Andrew Breitbart.