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J. Edgar: The Crown Weighs Heavy On This One

I have to see myself on that boat AGAIN! In 3D this time?!

Rating: 6 out of 10

Every director certainly has a style and while some may try to shake things up every now and again, keep people on their toes, others stay the course and deliver time and time again what you have come to expect from them. That’s not always a bad thing, especially when you have serious accolades and awards already under your belt, but it can also set up a certain type of expectation about the quality and depth of each story you bring to the screen, which sometimes can be a lot to overcome. The truth is there is no end to the sophomore curse. Your last fantastic picture is always quickly overshadowed by your current less than stellar outing. Clint Eastwood is the man under the spotlight right now and what he brings to the table is another tale of power, passion and persecution, all inside one continuously conflicted person.

J. Edgar is one theory of the story behind the story, the man behind the machine that created the F.B.I. and reportedly had the skeletons of scores of American citizens, including the presidents he served under. The film follows his rise to power, his curious relationship with his number two man, and his own seemingly unquenchable need to be feared and revered, leaving a legacy that could never be tarnished.

J. Edgar offers a scenario of what might have went on behind closed doors between Hoover and Tolsen, his number two man, and what motivated Hoover to push himself as hard as he did. Much of it is based on circumstance and conjecture though, so it’d be best to view this film as an imaginative or (at best) a mildly educated guess about the truth behind the most feared man in decades.

Eastwood delivers yet again another deep, layered and complex narrative about a troubled protagonist, someone who you are never really sure whether you want to root for. The film is extremely slow paced and at times drags in its repetition, showing Hoover in one situation after another where his power is called into question. Jumping back and forth between his later life and his early years was a nice touch in the beginning, but by the end, it felt disjointed, like you were being dragged back into the past or thrust into the future just at the moment when things were getting good right where you were. I might have thought about just using the older version of Hoover as bookends to the story and play it out more along a traditional timeline, but who knows, that very well could have dragged as well.

The performances are always the most important part of these types of biopics. You need to be able to lose sight of the actor, usually someone incredibly well known, and truly see the person he is trying to represent. Look at Frank Langella as Nixon in Frost/Nixon, Will Smith as Muhammad Ali in Ali, even our man here, Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, these are invested performances that elevate the movie beyond just a mere educational stroll in the cinematic park. Yet, DiCaprio falters this time in capturing his past fervor, not for lack of trying, just due to a lack of foundation underneath the moments. Naomi Watts also struggles to really find footing as the dutiful secretary, Helen Gandy. The true breakout here is Armie Hammer as Tolson, who brings a magical assured quality to his early life and a beautiful gentleness in his senior years. Hammer truly burst onto the scene last year in his dual performance as the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network, but in J. Edgar he shows he can handle much more than just overconfidence. Tolson is really the moral compass of the film and the only avenue for the audience to navigate their way in, but even with such a virtuoso performance from Hammer, it wasn’t enough to pull the whole film together in the end.

Eastwood’s decision to use younger actors in dramatically older roles also may not have worked to the film’s advantage. I understand it allows a connection, both physical and emotional, between the two versions of the character on screen, but sometimes it can also feel jarring. While we have come light years ahead in the technology of makeup, truly transforming these early birds into aged senior citizens, the one thing that remains is the sound and tenor of their voice. There is something so unique and distinct about a voice that has been speaking for seventy or eighty years, something that is nearly impossible for these youthful actors to capture. Once again, Hammer seemed to outshine DiCaprio in this arena as well, but I still feel it might have been more powerful to have actual older actors in those roles.

The End of the Page recommendation: J. Edgar has some punch to it, but fails to reach the heights of Eastwood’s past or the power of Hoover’s legacy.

The Backlash: Beneath the Doom and Gloom Lies Money

Boo! Scared you, didn’t I? Now send me money and I’ll tell you how I can protect you from people like me.

Rating: 9 out of 10

There are many things that connect us all, no matter where we live, what color we are and which God we believe in. One of the deepest and most integral of those connections is fear. We all have it, whether it’s worrying about the spread of Communism, the shortage of scientific breakthroughs toward a cure for cancer, or maybe just late night jitters about the foul-smelling thing hiding underneath the bed. Most of it can be boiled down to a simple phrase, “fear of the other“. While some fears can be debated and argued as being justified, the underlying problem with fear is that once someone or something knows what your fear is, it can be used against you as a weapon. People throughout history have made their livelihoods based on that fact alone and it is on proud display here in the present day inside the formation of the Tea Party movement and the outlandish opposition to Barack Obama.

The Backlash by Will Bunch is a well thought out and deeply researched journey into the heart of the fear that sprung forth like snakes-in-a-can upon the inauguration of our new President. While many progressives and liberals clamor from the sideline, poking fun at the Tea Party and their growing membership, Bunch takes the honorable mission of tracing the movement to some of its more humble beginnings and the people actually at the ground level. What he discovers is real people with real fears who are being co-opted by big business and private interests in order to stop the change promised by the new administration.

One of the first things most people were introduced to when they saw the Tea Party crash onto the political scene was their fascination and fervor for protest signs and costumes. While this might have increased their news coverage, it also quickly devalued their message. From the subtle to the incredibly overt, racist slogans and imagery littered the reports of the fledgling movement giving an overall impression that everyone involved had the same color-coded mission, to purify the White House, and by extension, the country as a whole. On one side of the cable news spectrum (MSNBC, CNN, BBC, etc…) the Tea Party was characterized as rednecks that time had obviously left behind, while the other side (championed by Fox News) raised them onto the pedestal of patriots and grassroots revolution hailed as “real America”. The problem here is that neither description is true, but labels are sticky and even removed they can leave a nasty residue behind.

Another factor behind the proliferation of the “real America” illusion was those pundits and political commentators who saw the Tea Party as the lightning-in-a-bottle moment they were waiting for. Once they grabbed onto the coattails of fear inside the Tea Party, people such as radio/TV/internet phenom Glenn Beck wove those coattails around and around into each other until the fear escalated into paranoia, which in the ratings world is a wonderful thing. Beck had actually boiled it down to a simple equation, the bumper-sticker solution to all the fear in the country:

On his November 23, 2009 show, Beck went back again to the theme of a looming economic meltdown and recommended to his listeners what could just as well be a mantra of the right-wing movement in this new decade: “The 3 G system” of “God, Gold and Guns.”

Beck skyrocketed in popularity and influence, like many of the voices from the outer right-wing fringe, preying on the fears of people feeling like their country was forgetting about them. He wheeled out his chalkboard day after day, giving his viewers something familiar from their childhood, a symbol of learning which they all believed would never lie to them. Beck littered the surface of the chalkboard with various historical people and moments, drawing incredibly slippery and weak connections between them to prove any conspiracy theory he imagined that morning. Worse than that were those occasions where he blatantly misrepresented the views of historical figures to grant his own ideas more credence. Bunch illustrates that nicely in this section:

“Beck – and probably many of his listeners – would be turned off by many of the views of the real Thomas Paine. For one thing, while Beck has tried to argue that America’s true roots lie in Christianity, the real Thomas Paine was a Deist who loathed organized religion, writing in “The Age of Reason” that all churches “appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

You can be sure that particular quote from Paine never graced the esteemed surface of Beck’s chalkboard.

This is the thrust of Bunch’s message, that much of the Tea Party is being towed along by puppeteers and plagiarizers, purposely mis-informing them to wean the money from their wallets and the devotion from their hearts. The fervent devotees of the Tea Party should not be written off as a joke, especially since some of them actually won seats in our government during the last election. They should be listened to, but filtered through a lens of mis-appropriated fear. If we do not try and understand where they are actually coming from, people like Beck and his cohorts will continue to wield them like a bludgeon against the wall of this country until its inevitable collapse.

The End of the Page recommendation: The Backlash by Will Bunch is a staggeringly human look into the real fear behind the so-called grassroots revolution of the Tea Party and how it has been co-opted, controlled and ultimately, how it will be condemned.

Welcome to Pandora’s Tea Party!

Poster Board = $2.00, Two Sharpie Markers = $3, boiling down complex issues into a fictional comparison of choice = priceless.

There are two mostly unavoidable facts going into the first midterm elections for President Obama. One, the first midterm election after a new president takes power almost always sees a loss in the seats for his (or someday, her) party. This is commonly referred to as “buyer’s remorse” where the enthusiasm for the president’s party wanes after the win and they sit back on their laurels, while the losing party rallies harder and louder to try and come back from the embarrassing loss of the big seat. Two, in terms of this specific moment of economic hardship, the party in power is held to blame and again they lose more seats. It doesn’t matter where the problem started and how far back the blame can be placed. Most voters will only turn their calendars back so far before deciding that the current governing body had enough time to fix whatever ails the country. True, that sounds a bit illogical, but politics and logic are very, very long distance friends.

So as the Republican party looks to gain seats across the board during this so-called anti-incumbent rage, they are now seeing a quite different landscape over the horizon. There are still blue states where they were before, but now the red states are getting…redder. The fervor they helped whip up has bitten them much deeper and much sharper than the Democrats. Now heading into Nov. 2 the right wing of this nation has to figure out what they can do with a handful of wildly conservative, if not radically so, candidates which have to be groomed for the national stage. They opened a political Pandora’s Box and what rushed out has pushed any moderation in the Republican party completely out of the picture. Here’s just a snippet of what they are working with:

Sharron Angle (R-NV):

• she is an extreme pro-lifer, extending her anti-abortion stance even into cases of rape and incest. When asked her reasoning for those viewpoints she said “two wrongs don’t make a right” and when directly asked what she would tell a 13-year-old girl who was raped by her own father, Angle likened it to turning a “lemon situation into lemonade”
• she has repeatedly referred to unnamed members of Congress as “domestic enemies”
• after numerous attempts to help her back away from this statements, she has stood her ground on stating that if things don’t go the right way in November, the citizens have a right to fall back on their “second amendment remedies”. Yes, she means guns.

Christine O’Donnell (R-DE):

• in 1998 she made an appearance on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher and espoused how truth is always the best route to take in any situation. While this is a morally upstanding belief, she was pressed on it and further clarified by saying she would not even lie to Nazis if she had Jews hiding in her house because “You never have to practice deception. God always provides a way out.”
• she founded a group called SALT (Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth) which lobbies the government on the basis of tightly followed Christian morals. At one point in a MTV interview she was quoted saying, “It is not enough to be abstinent with other people, you also have to be be abstinent alone. The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery, so you can’t masturbate without lust.”
• In a continued defense of bringing religion into every facet of society, she once said, “We took the Bible and prayer out of public schools. Now we’re having weekly shootings. We had the 60s sexual revolution, and now people are dying of AIDS.”
• In fact, since I can’t list all of the amazingly dangerous and inane stances she holds, here’s a link to an incredibly thorough list put together by Think Progress.

Joe Miller (R-AK):

• joins Angle in believing that abortion should be outlawed completely, even in cases of rape or incest (no word yet on his feeling about lemonade.)
• believes Medicare and Social Security should be phased out completely (no word yet on how he plans to help seniors pay for those benefits on their own.)

Those are only a few of the hard right wing extremists to swing out of the hurricane of anger and disappointment over the current state of affairs in this country. I’m not saying that the anger isn’t justified. The country is in rough shape, but this incoming flock of proposed candidates is talking about legislating by religion over democracy. They view the Constitution not as a document written by men, but one deemed to be written by God (the bitter irony being that many of those very men were defiantly against the idea of combining God and government.) There is a small, but loud and proud, group of people who are trying to split the country like the Red Sea, with Christian believers on one side and all others, known as “enemies”, on the other side. They say America needs to be brought back to its non-existent roots as a Christian-only nation. O’Donnell goes even as far as to say the idea of “separation of church and state” came from Hitler first (is there anything that guy can’t be connected to?)

Barbara Streisand said it best in the title to her Huffington Post piece: Stop. Think. Breathe. (You should truly take a peek.)In my own words, I would warn that if we are not careful as a country about where we let this flood of anger and fundamentalism takes us, we will find the country wiped clean, not of our sins, but of our freedoms.

2010 Midterms: Feeding Frenzy Overtakes Reason

For every dangerous animal out there, a bigger one exists.

It’s nearing that time of year again when all the news networks, and partisan sounding boards, break out their horn choirs and play that familiar ‘Decision’ music. It’s meant to inspire, it’s meant to encourage, and it’s meant to fill our hearts with the desire to take part in the core meaning of our democracy. Instead, what it reflects now is the onslaught of fear-mongering and fact distortion in the most heinous of manners. One side is struggling to buck historical trend and not lose too many seats, while the other is struggling to hold on to any semblance of its previous character, having sacrificed themselves at the altar of public reactionaries. Both sides smell blood in the water, but they ignore that too much blood makes the water impossible to drink and it cannot nourish the nation.

Issues are now distorted instead of debated and the public is suffering at the hands and wills of those we are brought up to trust, our elected leaders. One step down from them is the ‘pure’ news outlets, who are finding themselves a lonely species in the world, ousted by a new hybrid, the news/partisan echo chamber. Crawling out of the political ooze, this fledgling evolution of money, power and influence is now wielding its might like a toddler with a baseball bat, unaware of the dangerous power to damage and destroy.

Every story now is another opportunity for the extremists on both sides to gin up more rage and anger, but most boil down to absolutely nothing when dragged into the bright light of the day. These political assassins are becoming masters of the newly coined, ‘non-troversy’, and these hack job stories are currently dominating the country’s dialogue, which is now on the verge of descending into nothing more than hastily scribbled placards and photoshopped racist images of their enemies.

At the top of the non-troversy totem pole right now is the “Ground Zero Mosque” debate. While I can completely understand that it is a sensitive issue and there is still much grief and sorrow floating in the air in Manhattan and around the country, here are a few key facts that are very rarely mentioned in the so-called ‘news reports’:

- The proposed mosque is not just a mosque, it is a cultural center that includes a mosque, as well as a pool and a community center for people of all religions.

- The location, while close, is not actually at Ground Zero. It is two blocks away, completely blocked by many other buildings from the now hallowed ground. So far only the Associated Press has directed all their employees to discontinue any usage of the term “Ground Zero Mosque” because it is intentionally misleading.

- If this cultural center is such a horrific idea and flies in the face of our freedoms and what we suffered nine years ago, what about the other mosque two more blocks beyond? When was the last time you heard in a news report just how many mosques there are already in that small area, not to mention New York as a whole? Hundreds.

- Some have tried to label the proposed cultural center as a ‘terrorist headquarters’ in the heart of New York, but do they recognize that there is a mosque right now located inside the Pentagon? Why not rally and protest that one? Seems like an incredibly dangerous location, don’t you think?

- While the opponents of the cultural center are claiming they can follow the money back to radical Islamic terrorists, they are trying to conveniently avoid showing how the money actually leads back to the second largest shareholder in Fox News and other religious leaders previous hailed on their very network as “moderate Muslims” and as shining examples of the peaceful and proper worship of Islam.

Those are only a few of the facts that might shift the debate were they to be boldly and loudly preached through the airwaves. Almost all the major news networks are to blame for taking the pill and getting on the ride for the sake of generating viewership over reporting on the facts. The direct and immediate danger of this is we are watching our country, which was once so wonderfully hailed as a place of religious freedoms and individual liberties, devolve into a religious monarchy, where only one religion rules the masses and the preacher’s pulpit will become the new oval office. We are already seeing the effects of the disease being spread. As I mentioned before, the location of the proposed cultural center in New York can easily draw up some raw emotion, but what about Murfreesboro, TN or Sheboygan, WI? Are those also too close to Ground Zero? We are creating an invisible line in the sand that is pushing any worship of Islam, or anything outside the Judeo/Christian norm, out into the oceans on either side of the country.

Yet there may be a flickering light at the end of this tunnel. The opponents of ‘the other’ are beginning to overplay their hand. They are losing supporters in the very base they are trying to rally. The violence is beginning to lash out in unavoidable ways, causing even the most staunch supporters to lower their hands. From the cab driver who was recently stabbed after being asked “are you a Muslim?” to the Ground Zero worker who was harassed at a protest rally just because he looked Muslim. Even Ron Paul, the un-official leader of the libertarian conservatives, has come out against this baseless fear-mongering:

It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don’t want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators. Statistics of support is irrelevant when it comes to the purpose of government in a free society—protecting liberty.

We have reached the breakwater and it is time to turn this ship home. So next time you think about screaming about protecting your country from the dangers of Islam or blurring the lines in our Constitution referring to the “separation of church and state” and “freedom of religion”, it might be time to sit down, take a deep breath and look around at where that path will lead you.

Oh, maybe turn off Fox News as well.

What are your thoughts? What stories do you feel are meaningful or being blow out of proportion for political gain?

Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend

The Che-cycle rides only towards revolution! [insert inspirational road music here]

Rating: 8 out of 10

Everyone has heard the popular phrase, “Never judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” Well, many people throughout history have judged those gone before us, especially those who went on to change the course of history. Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara Jr. was one of those people. After growing up in Argentina, he took a soon-to-be-famous motorcycle journey with his friend and compatriot, Alberto Granado, into the deep plains and undeveloped areas of Latin America. During that journey he witnesses abject poverty and suffering of the indigenous people. By the time he returned, seeds of political and revolutionary discourse were germinating in his soul and they would very soon sprout and give rise to the man everyone came to know only as ‘Che’. Even years after his execution by a one-man firing squad, scholars and modern-day revolutionaries alike have attempted to explain and understand who the man was, but very few of them remembered that famous parable above, and those who did remember, didn’t take it to heart like Patrick Symmes.

Chasing Che is a documentary tale of travel, both physical and intellectual, that follows Symmes as he saddles up on his own motorcycle (one a little more modern than Granado’s jalopy) and attempts to follow the exact route those two fellow travelers ventured upon so many years before. Symmes even attempts to limit any and all creature comforts to match whatever Ernesto and Alberto had during their original journey. There are new obstacles, to be sure, and detours must be made, but when they do arise, Symmes rolls with the punches and finds himself transformed into the same road-weathered traveler he is following years behind.

There are many great qualities about this travel journal, but foremost among those is Symmes’ dedication to the quest. At numerous points he could have taken a lighter path, called for more help or equipment or turned back towards more friendly locales, but he continually pushed through in search of the same physical places and people that Guevara and Granado touched on their way through. On more than one occasion, Symmes found himself in conversations of broken Spanish with heavily armed men– some government soldiers, while others were guerrilla warriors still trying to live out some of the mantras Che left behind. One wrong move could’ve landed him in a South American jail or worse, “disappeared” like many opponents of the various controlling regimes. Yet, I believe his saving grace through this was he not going after an ideology, he was going after a man. He made no proposition to learn, live and spread the teachings of Che. Instead what he was after was the true history of the man, good or evil, who would later become Che and change the face of global politics. That objectivity and balance allowed him access through gates many others would have failed to pass.

Two things struck me during the book. First, Symmes continually mentioned the inherent charity of the indigenous people with whom he crossed paths. Time after time he would ride up on his motorcycle, kill the engine a good distance away from a small shanty home and clap his hands twice (to signal that he was friendly and approaching the house). He would almost always find the family willing to give him a small piece of floor to sleep on, or at the very least against the side of the house, and possibly food if they had enough to spread around. The following mornings, many of his new-found landlords would refuse to accept payment, just seeming like it was their duty to help fellow travelers (which many of them are as well considering the great distances between villages and homes). Secondly, Symmes went in the end of his journey to the source, at least, one of the sources; Alberto Granado. Still living reasonably off his notoriety as Che’s wandering partner, Granado granted an illuminating interview and insight into those dusty days on the trail. Symmes had both of Granado’s and Guevara’s original diaries from the trip and he pointed out many of the disparate descriptions of places and actions between them, one moment standing out in particular where Granado and Guevara both credit the other for the heroic rescue of a small kitten. What came from that discovery was that the journey represented different transformations for each traveler. As for the kitten, Granado admitted to laying the heroic banner on Che because he was the one destined for it.

Another factor I found interesting is Symmes was on his travels during the exact same time the government and others were in a desperate search to exhume Che’s body from the hidden dumping ground the Bolivian soldiers left him in. Another writer, Jon Lee Anderson wrote a book entitled, “Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life” (which I have also read and highly recommend), and in his research for that book he interviewed and received confessions from the very people responsible for hiding Che’s body. It had been many years since the action, so the location information was not entirely specific, but both books ended up tying together in the same place and moment, which made for even more interesting reading.

The End of the Page Recommendation: For those interested in learning more about the man behind the mythology and who that is staring back from the hipsters t-shirts and messenger bags, you could do far worse than starting here. As I said earlier, Anderson’s book is another great find, but a much thicker and in-depth read.

Arizona moves out of the ‘Land of the Free’

The moment I sign this, can someone please check the guy behind me? He seems fishy.

Arizona recently enacted one of the most backwards and revisionist immigration laws in our country. The piece of paper the governor signed into practice states that the police are now under orders to pull over, question or otherwise force any person in the state that “looks to be an illegal immigrant” to immediately show proper documentation of their status as American citizens. Most pundits and newscasters have been referring to this as the “Papers, Please.” bill. While I do not personally live in Arizona, this is a dangerous game to begin because a number of other Southern states with more conservative leaning electorates are watching very closely as to whether this law will withstand the oncoming onslaught of civil liberty and constitutionality law suits. If it does, you can be assured you will see laws like this popping up all along the southern border and spreading upwards. Honestly, do they think every illegal immigrant just stops in the first border town?

Arizona is the number one crack in the wall for the passage of illegal immigrants and in turn the number one funnel for the Mexican drug trade, but this sweeping doctrine is the result of over-reactionary zealots who are attempting to purify the state. What this does once more is bring back the everlasting debate over what a “real American” looks like. Supposedly this is the only way the Arizona police will know who to pull over and who to let by. I don’t envy any officer who has to enact this incredibly misdirected statute, which, at its core, institutionalizes blatant racism.

Recent rumblings around the legal circles depict this new law being shot down right after its inaugural usage. The first case to be brought by either the ACLU or any other civil rights group will force this into the State Supreme Court and it will find itself tossed out as a poor reminder of immoral laws gone by, like Jim Crow. Governor Jan Brewer states we will not see the abuses of personal and public rights we fear and that she is only doing what she feels is best for her state in the absence of any real immigration reform on the Federal level. I’ll grant her a small point on the lack of movement from President Obama and his administration, but her rash decision cannot be polished into rational judgment by that fact alone. President Obama has immigration reform in his sights and it seems to be next on the list once Wall Street reform gets enacted. He’s on a real roll and the momentum could carry along many of the changes he promised along the campaign trail.

As for me, well, there were days before when I felt that one voice couldn’t do anything, but I’ve learned through many examples set out before me that one voice can be added to another and then to another until the once silent whisper of a concerned citizen becomes the booming cry of a motivated public cheering for justice. In that vein, I’ve taken to writing letters and e-mails to any politician I believe is proposing or supporting laws I do not believe in and I encourage everyone to make your own voices heard as well. If there is one thing the recent Tea Party revivals have gotten right (and as far as I can see it has been only this one thing) is the government works for the people, which means you. Never forget it is your right to inform your employees when they are not doing their job correctly.

Obviously, since Governor Brewer signed the bill into law, my plea fell on deaf ears, but here are the words I sent her way:

Dear Governor Brewer,

Although I don’t live in your state, the bill currently sitting in front of you is going to set a precedent which will affect a growing number of states, especially those along the southern border, like California. I truly empathize with your situation and the need to get illegal immigration under control, but this current attempt is the wrong way to go about it. All the talking points being sent out now in defense of it are only trying to pull the wool over the eyes of a stunned and offended nation. This is going to create state-mandated racial profiling in the worst way. Every Mexican-American, Latino-American or South American, born free here under our nation’s laws, will be treated to regular accusations and challenges to their status as Americans. Yet, while some might say this racial profiling would not happen in such dire terms, can you tell me Irish-Americans, Russian-Americans or even British-Americans are going to feel the same microscope following their every move on their downtown streets?

You have the power to stop your state from changing it’s identity from a piece of what we call the “land of the free” into a racially cleansed country club. Please use that power.

You can follow these links to find the contact info for your senator, state representative or governor. Let them know what you think. Then, let me know what you get back!

Using the Best, Bringing Out the Worst

Freedom of speech is one of the most widely appreciated and critically lauded rights in our country, yet it is also one of the least understood. Under the protection of this original amendment to the Constitution of the United States, each person has the inherent right to express themselves through the use of words. This is one of the core elements to our democracy, if not the very heart of it. Yet once again we are beginning to see how that right can be mistreated, misunderstood and misdirected against the very ideals it was created for.

On March 23, 2010 President Barack Obama signed into law a comprehensive package of health care reforms under the title of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This is being held as the most widely sweeping package of reforms to the health care system since the enactment of Medicare. As with any major change to our country, there was disagreement and dissent in how these changes should be applied, if at all. That’s a good thing–dissent and disagreement should be protected and even encouraged because that is how checks and balances work and it is our protection against any one party or idea running roughshod over the entire country. A multi-party and multi-idea system is inherently necessary for Democracy to work at all.

Unfortunately, as with any system requiring human beings to take part, there will always be people who will abuse that system. While hiding under the guise of protected argument in opposition to the passage of health care reforms, Senators, Congress people and ordinary citizens have escalated their rhetoric beyond reasonable limits. Referring to health care reform as “global Armageddon”, claiming we should vote out  those in favor in November, “if we have elections” or even calling for the assassination of politicians’ children if they voted yes on the bill; those are only a few of the responses from the opposition. While they might indeed reside technically under the protection of the first amendment, these types of exaggerations and exhortations are against the core ideal of free speech.

Our right to free speech was meant to protect our ability to state our opinion and express ourselves in face of totalitarian oppression and intimidation, yet in these cases it is being used directly for the intimidation and oppression of those with differing views. Worse, the politicians, pundits and performers who choose to wallow in this level of discourse ignore the effect it has on those people listening to their vitriol. They scoff at those who warn them and they deny that the mass population would ever take things too far, but they consciously and knowingly neglect the knowledge that terrible acts aren’t only orchestrated by a large group of people:

-       The recent flight of a small plane into an IRS office building was achieved and orchestrated by one man.

-       The Oklahoma City bombing was achieved and orchestrated by two men.

-       The mail bombing campaign issued from 1978 – 1995 was achieved and orchestrated by one man.

The very night the Senate version of health care was passed an operation of window smashing was enacted against various Democratic county offices and those offices of politicians who voted for the bill. Credit has been taken by a far-right conservative blogger who revels in each and every report of vandalism and damage, whether or not it was specifically in his name. While a few hundred dollars in damage per affected office is not a huge thing, I do wonder exactly why this particular act was chosen to express their disappointment. I suppose letters to their representatives seemed too light or too ineffective, or maybe it just wasn’t flashy enough, or maybe they were trying to draw a subliminal connection to the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ where the Nazis and anti-Jewish coalition smashed all the windows of Jewish shop owners, signaling only the beginning of the oncoming Holocaust. Whether or not this was in their heads while they scurried through the dark tossing bricks through windows, the message is clear. Words are no longer an option for them, action and violence is now their chosen recourse.

The opposition to the new health care package needs to quickly decry and despise the violence inherent in the rally cries and speeches from their very own supporters. If they do not, they will find the uncomfortable color of innocent blood on their hands and a saddened nation of people wondering how and why they let it get that far.

CPAC Starts Its Wild Ride

(Honestly, the joke here writes itself.)

Coming directly on the heels of the Tea Party Convention only a few short weeks back, the other clamoring section of the far right came together once again from all over the country for their once-a-year, bang-a-gong, color coded convention (red, white and blue being the consistent theme).

CPAC stands for the Conservative Political Action Conference, where those politicians looking to connect to the fervent and boisterous base of the conservative movement come to recharge and reload their political weaponry (or actual real-life weaponry depending on how dedicated they are to appeasing the second amendment crowd). The main keynote speaker on the final night will be Fox TV host and poster child for the Chalkboard Lovers of America, Glenn Beck. I’m doing mental workouts each morning in preparation for this speech, making sure I can handle the triple jumps of logic and 100-meter dash from assumption to conclusion (while dodging those nasty fact hurdles, of course). Yet before Mr. Beck can grace the stage, the crowd must be worked into a frenzy over the opening days.

I can’t comment on Marco Rubio, the new young buck on the right-wing  block, since I didn’t catch his speech. I know he’s young and he’s bringing a hearty primary challenge in Florida against Republican Governor Charlie Crist in the race for a Florida senate seat. Once a total longshot, Rubio rallied strong and sits atop a healthy lead in the polls right now. From clips I did see the only thing I can truly hold against him is he began the unending train of anti-Obama teleprompter jokes, all while standing in front of a shiny pair of teleprompters. (Nearly every speaker who followed made a similar crack, each one more tactless than the one before)

Let hypocrisy ring, people. Oh, wait, it’s freedom. That’s what they meant to ring. Freedom. Oops.

Jim DeMint graced the stage and really got things cooking with a reminder about where the conservative movement truly wants to take this country. While touting the goal of freedom for everyone he simultaneously spouts the idea that all politicians should be taken out of office if they are not voting based on Judeo/Christian values. His claim that this was the true intention of the founding fathers and the Constitution seems to fly in the face of the first ammendment when it states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” but hey, don’t let the actual words of the Constitution get in the way of your point Mr. DeMint. Please proceed.

He goes on to state that what the government should do is place a moratorium on all spending and spend the next two years balancing the budget, but again he staunchly opposed, alongside the entire Republican caucus, the creation of a bi-partisan budget commission created to do that very thing. Hmmm…I’m sensing a pattern here.

Lastly, making a nice closing, he related a thinly veiled threat to those in the Republican party who were only pretending to be Conservative to gain the political voting power of these fine folks. Mentioning Mr. Rubio and others like him, DeMint made it clear that all the incumbent Republicans could easily be replaced if they didn’t fall in line with the people and this nationwide groundswell from the Tea Party movement.

Let the right-wing evisceration begin. Self-inflicted, of course.

Later on Kevin McCullough came up and reminded everyone how freedom loving the Conservative movement is. One of his points was that the young people in the conservative movement had to save the next generation from the terrors inside the “halls of academia”. Are our children are being taught too much? Given too much information so they can think for themselves and make up their own minds? Maybe he’s angry at the system because more and more of the youth are growing up more tolerant towards gays and lesbians, which is staunchly opposed to his “freedom”. Oh yeah, so is Roe v. Wade. So ladies, prepare to grow more free while simultaneously losing control over your own body.

My favorite moment of his was when he used the phrase “we will not sit in the back of the bus”, which is a direct reference to Rosa Parks and her daring silent protest against blacks being made to sit in the “black” section of the bus back in the pre-Civil Rights days. I had no idea the conservative fight for freedom was so identical to the civil rights movement.

That’s because it’s not. Not even close.

More and more came up, singing the praises of Ronald Reagan and each other and rehashing new version of the teleprompter gag. Scott Brown and Mitt Romney took turns praising each other, while Dick Armey, current head of FreedomWorks, dropped a gem when he claimed Obama created the illusion of the health care crisis in order to gain control of the economy. I wonder if Mr. Armey works for Aetna Blue Cross as well? They could most certainly afford to pay him well since they are planning to raise their rates for a large section of Californians by up to 39% with no reasoning whatsoever.

Nope, no health care crisis here. Not at all, Please move along and do not under any circumstances look behind the curtain. (Did you notice our new curtains, by the way, their made out of 100% money. Feel how decadent they are…)

Also, the right wing should know better what it look like when someone creates a fake crisis in order to gain control. Bush did a splendid job of that with his mythical WMD’s in Iraq. *BOOM goes the dynamite*

Lastly, Ginni Thomas, an everyday citizen who just wanted to get involved, spoke about how pleased she was with the energy surround the tea party movement. She specifically pointed out how wonderful she thought all the homemade signs were. Think she’s talking about this one:

this guy is actually the head of one of the largest Tea Party groups


















or possibly this one:

maybe this one:

but she couldn’t have meant this one:

Is half-breed muslin washable with other like fabrics?












These are the people rallying right now to take control of the direction of our country.  Progress sure looks funny, doesn’t it.

The Assault on Reason: Attacks from the Head and Gut

Since I’m not President, I finally have time to finish writing my book.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Flipping through these pages can be tragic when you read the level of intelligence behind the words and begin to wonder what the world would be like today if Al Gore had served George W. Bush’s two terms in office. Would there be milk chocolate fairies delivering candy and fountain-style root beer floats to children throughout the heartland of America? No, absolutely not. Yet I would wage a healthy amount of money that the U.S.A. would not have been in the geopolitical crapper as it was when George W. Bush finally walked out of those hallowed doors with one of the lowest approval ratings in history. His one-time opponent, Al Gore, tries to explain and extol on the reasons things went so badly off the rails.

The Assault on Reason is written by former Vice President Al Gore and details chapter after chapter the numerous areas where the Bush years, and some of those before, have displayed an incredible and frightening trend replacing science and reason with faith and narrow-mindedness. The government we once knew, the one begun all those years back, has been systematically dismantled, pulling the power from the people as a whole and concentrating it into an increasingly small number of hands. Those chosen few have since done everything in their power to eliminate reason and intellectual debate in favor of religious rhetoric and cowboy posturing in face of any and all opposing evidence. In essence, readers feel the true power of the American people slip further and further away with each turn of the page.

Before even opening the book, it must be noted the context in which these words live. Al Gore lost the Presidential election back in 2000 in one of the most contentious, and in some minds demonstrably corrupted, rulings in history. This man was a single breath away from the oval office and seven years later he writes a book about how terrible a job his former opponent is doing. So it is impossible to view this book without a small sense of bias on the part of the author. Yet, although the book does sometimes fall too far into “political slam-book” territory and reaches a slight whiny tone, Gore checks himself and within a few pages brings it back to a place where he backs up each and every criticism with solid, reasonable and irrefutable facts. In those passages when he cites source after source and charts out the trends which we should be so afraid of, that is when Gore is at his most effective.

The real power of the book is not as a weapon against the Bush-era style of politics and power grabbing, but the entire political system hierarchy and its continued growth away from the general public. Gore points out numerous occasions, pre-Bush, that also helped lead to the dangerous place we are today with so much control centralized into the office of President and not spread out amongst the three co-equal branches of the government as intended by those who set it up all those years ago. Yet, Gore even expands on this to the rest of the planet as well when talking about nuclear proliferation, detailing other nations and how they followed the missteps of the American powerhouse. In one of his most eloquent moments in the book, Gore writes:

“As a world community, we must prove that we are wise enough to control what we have been smart enough to create.”

In my mind, that is the central thesis to his entire argument. His textual intent is to warn us of the danger of nuclear arms being in the hands of people who block out reason in favor of belief, religious or otherwise, but sub-textually I believe the statement also shines lights on the creation of our government. Power should never be wielded only by one man alone; that is the antithesis of our democratic style of government. The balance between the three branches has been slowly ebbing away and the person sitting in the oval office has been the silent beneficiary of it all. Both sides have played their parts in the dismantling of that balance, but the Republicans took more giant steps on that march towards  an iron-fist government between 2001-2008 than ever before in history.

What we can learn from this book is how to regain that balance, if you can filter out Gore’s “I wouldn’t have done it that way” tone in various portions. Science, reason and factual proof are slowly making their way back into governing politics, but there is a long way to go and more people who live by that credo need to find their way into the hallowed halls of the capital buildings. I’m not suggesting no one of any faith should be in government, just that they no longer turn a blind eye to anything that doesn’t follow in lockstep with that belief. Important choices should only be made after the most rigorous of debate and unfortunately, as you will see in these pages, our last President was not a huge fan of differing points of view. Even though this was written while Bush was still in office, many of the policies and laws enacted during that time are still in effect and Obama has yet to find the spare time to return some of that balance the government so desperately needs. Let’s help remind him.

The End of the Page Recommendation: A well written and well researched book on the state of our government and the dangerous path it is on. Although not exactly a page turner and it gets randomly embroiled in mudslinging and overly scientific terminology, the final result is still impactful and important.

A Glimpse Behind the Fog of Hope and Hate

I promise to do whatever my political party says, in right and in wrong, till death do us part

I can hear it now rumbling in the back closet, rocking back and forth with one broken foot, that same one I’ve been meaning to fix for two hundred years:

The Political Spin Machine

…and it’s going full steam.

With the election of Republican wunderkid, Scott Brown, the troops on the right are doing everything they can to convince Democrats across the nation that every progressive and liberal policy currently being proposed now has as much chance of succeeding as Conan O’Brien ever doing a show on NBC again. Yet, let’s take a good close look at what really happened yesterday and see if we can’t find a way to help each party find its way back to some type of ethical center.

By electing Scott Brown, Massachusetts brought the Democratic majority in the Senate down by exactly one. They dropped from 60 to 59 and while many will bemoan the loss of the filibuster proof majority, what they neglect to mention is the filibuster proof majority never really existed because of those Democrats in the Senate referred to as “Blue Dogs”, or more conservative-leaning voters. The squelching of the filibuster happened only once, which was to finally push the Health Care bill out of the Senate, and the reparations the liberal Democrats had to make in order to secure those Blue Dog votes over the filibuster helped to shape a bill that virtually no one is pleased with. So the idea that Scott Brown’s inclusion in the Senate will suddenly destroy the happy-go-lucky hand-holding going on in the left leaning side of the chamber just shows how little the right side actually pays attention to what is going on.

This is nothing more than a scare tactic to frighten the left and encourage the right, but I honestly believe the right has more to fear from Scott Brown than the left. Republicans think his election is a repudiation of Democratic policies and of Obama himself, but in fairness I believe he was chosen more out of frustration of continued record unemployment ratings and a growing disappointment from independents who let themselves believe the Obama hype machine during his campaign. I’m not knocking Obama, I voted for him as well, but people seemed to forget he is just one guy inside a government machine built by money, power and massive special interests. He has made many changes already, in demonstrably record time, but people on Main Street won’t feel the effects of those until much later. The change some people was hoping for was much more than he could ever achieve in such a short amount of time. Remember, his one-year anniversary as President was yesterday!

Scott Brown also comes in claiming he is ushering in a “new type of Republican”, which in other terms means “time for the old guys to move on out.” Let’s see how well that plays out in the polls come mid-term time. Anyone coming in preaching change to the “old way of politics” is a danger to anyone currently sitting, Republican or Democrat.

Now, while watching Mr. Brown gloat over his seemingly amazing win, I can’t say I’m incredibly impressed with him or how he handles himself (check this little moment of pimping out his daughters at his acceptance speech), but I wasn’t all that enchanted by his opponent, Martha Coakley, either. This is where people need to help usher in a real and tangible sense of change. We need to start looking beyond the party name and look at the actual person. As unattainable as it might sound, filled with pretty rhetoric and uplifting oratory, I agree with Obama when he stumps for the goal of bi-partisanship, but I want to take it one step farther. “Bi-partisanship” alludes to the idea of two parties getting along, but what about “tri-partisanship”? Actually, we do have one Independent senator (wave to the nice Internet folks, Mr. Barney Frank of VT). What about “quad-partisanship”? The Tea-Partier’s are about to host their own conference, so who will deny they have a chance to get their own candidate on a ticket and not be forced to list them as Republican? I’m a good distance off from supporting anything currently coming out of the tea-party caucus, but I fully encourage their right to not affiliate with either dominating party. My belief is if we breakdown the powerhouse parties the American populace would be forced to learn more about who they are voting for instead of just checking whether their was an “R” or a “D” next to their name.

An informed populace is an absolute necessity of any great democracy and it’s time that we as members of that populace bore some responsibility for that.