Yee-had!

Boy! Them Israelis know how to ring out the old with a bang. Talk about taking an elephant gun to rouse up some grouse. If I may paraphrase, it’s sort of like when you are sitting there reading of a summer’s day and a fly keeps buzzing around you but you just shrug it off because flies don’t bite. Then it gets your goat and you put down your book only to lose your page and now you are mightily cheesed off. The fly must die, you cry. Find the freakin’ swatter and come back to the hunt. No fly. You wait. You hear it. Poised, you stand upon the shaky ottoman and survey your empire. There on the ceiling. SPLAT! It was a largish fly and now its mass is spread, red and black, all over your recently painted ceiling. You know there will be a hew and a cry if you leave the drying carnage and you know that any argument defending your actions will not be appreciated.

So, instead of going back to your book you get a paper towel and some 409 and soon enough you are going back to what you were so innocently doing twenty minutes before, reading. Then you hear the fly’s brother coming for revenge and you contemplate an early cocktail. But instead you move to where there are no flies and grumble a little that a fly got you so worked up. You know there are flies and you think maybe you should have just held the swatter and idly wave it in case he comes around again. But you didn’t. You took decisive action believing, almost, that the other flies would know not to mess with you. That they would meet the same fate if they dared. But the new fly is filled with hatred over his lost brother and doesn’t care if he meets the same fate if he can just get some revenge. And he goes in search of you hoping to find you in the brief time on earth allowed flies. He also knows there will be other flies to come after him and that you have what they want.

In Gaza, where the Palestinians are crammed in like flies at a dumpster (it has the same land mass as two Washington DCs for 1.4 million inhabitants), the people have been fighting since they began to walk erect and could use their opposable thumb to swing a club. Palestinian Arabs claim Gaza as their homeland and while they have been there a long time, with mixed results, no one else quite sees it that way. They have been run over and run by the Egyptians, the British and Israelis and that’s just the last century. They never really had it all together but most certainly not in living memory.

Remember Ringo’s separated-at-birth-brother Yasser Arafat? The guy was all that for a while but soon realized that the cause would never be won and so cashed in depriving “his people” of the basic necessities while he banked billions. He turned down an Israeli deal that promised more self-rule and a real chance to have their own state and there has been little peace since. Good call.

But the new guys suck, too. The Hamas charter states: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.” While Jihad means “struggle” in the Q’uran, mostly it has come to mean “wipe the sons a bitches off the face of the earth.” Hamas seems keen to do this where Israel is concerned even as other Muslim groups would like to see all of us Crusaders take a hike. In the most recent elections in Gaza, Hamas won big time taking 76 of the 132 seats to defeat the more moderate Fatah party. Now all of Gaza suffers the horrendous response to Hamas’ harassment of the all powerful Israel.

My man Zbigniew Brzezinski said this morning that the killing of (he said 400) Palestinians and wounding 1,400 more was too harsh. After all, with all of the homemade rocket attacks on Israel, not one person was killed. Morning Joe got indignant, as he is wont to do, and fired back with his typical bellicose bravado that a strong response is all these people understand. Joe’s a pretty macho guy. He’s a real toughy. Zbiggy came back with, “You have a stunningly superficial understanding of foreign policy in the Middle East.” I gave him a standing O, and Joe went ballistic.

There are always two sides to a story and this one has even more. Who knows what will happen, but I doubt I will live long enough to see the kind of peace in the Valley that most of us hope for in that land of endless jihad. It was interesting when I was bouncing around in Wiki-land that some wit had hacked in and when I clicked on the link for “Hamas” I came to this page. I reprint it in its entirety:

Fuck Hamas

Christmas tree hunting

I was moved by my sister’s piece in this coming Vermont Observer remembering very sweetly that our cranky old artist father had created wood-cut home-made C’mas cards that we painted in the colors with our own individual water color sets. One year he created an x-massy scene on the living-room wall with pastels. But the tradition that I remember now that had escaped me for years because it was just the way things were done at our house, was setting out the silver martini set for Senor Claus with my father’s favorite cheese (Liederekranz) and crackers. That it was gone in the morning goes without saying. Licked clean.

In the happy days of the fifties (not counting Korea, the cold war and polio), C’mas still held much of its charm. Though, I can never remember it being “magical” or that any part of it mattered as much as the loot under the tree, I herewith acknowledge that I loved the C’mas music that seemed to encourage the anticipation of the big day. And the outdoor decorations kind of confirmed that the great event was at hand. Mistletoe, however, appealed to the seamier side, the prurient and pimpled teenager say, who wanted something you don’t put on Santy’s list: sex.

I spent a couple of December 25ths in the army overseas. Germans were way into Sinter Klaus (or any holiday) and can’t nobody party like they do. But the barracks were devoid of the trimmings and there was never a tree for presents.

When I became a father, the spirit of the event came back and it was fun to get the kids worked up. In tiny little Freedom, not far from here, we had a big old farm house and we could cut our tree in the dense woods behind our field. I once made a tree-top star out of alu foil and I still have it, as I do some of the tree clingers Sonny Boy Jim made in grammar school. One year I traded Lance Cloutier a case of mustard (I was a mustard magnate during the ‘80s) to fashion a wrought iron hoop (see TSJ adverts) so that we could make our own barn wreath every year.

Going after the tree became a writable event when we all had kids of or around the age of believing, sort of. We had a tradition of going up to Jackson and meeting at the Lodi’s who had god knows how many kids at that point. Paul had one of the ur four door pick up trucks and we would load it up with giddy kids and groggy grown ups; saws and an ax; and of course a shot gun. We were in fact Christmas tree hunting.

In those days you were allowed to drive with open containers of eggnog as long as you were having fun and stayed off the main roads. Paul had the key to the National Forest. (Anybody who doesn’t know Lodi might ask, “How the hell did he get that key?” All of us who know him say, “How the hell did he get that key?”). The truck had four wheel drive and we would go up the unplowed trail till we couldn’t. Some of us had flasks in case the nog gave out. And there was always a whiff of spliff, if you were tall enough.

The main difference between a National Forest and a tree farm is the height of the trees. There aren’t a lot of short ones up in Carter Notch so we would cut down taller ones and make them smaller. The shotgun came in handy for knocking the tops off the real beauties standing tall against the sky. These usually turned out to be skimpy upon closer inspection and were discarded. Once, full of bravado (manufactured by Hennessy) I climbed up inside the branches of a spruce (I think it was blue), with my trusty buck-saw, because Flower (we were hippie to the core) wanted a particular top for her living room. I ascended slowly and painfully but committed. I descended rapidly and painfully and should have been committed. Down feathers from my new parka fell like, down feathers. But I got what I wanted, a mittened applause and some unsympathetic laughter. I don’t even remember if I got the top of tree. And our lovely Flower is no longer here to remind me.

C’mas trees are an obstreperous bit of biology. Their DNA is wired to fall over with the least bit of physics being involved. Once, I tethered a fully dressed one so that it could not possibly fall over only to wake up those still sleeping, with my obscenities, when I discovered early one morning on the way out the door for work, that what I know about securing a tree’s verticality could be written on a piece of tinsel.

Two things I miss still are the free eggnog at Carroll Reed’s on C’mas eve. One of my high school honies worked there and would spike ours, back when it was okay to do so, but only on that special eve. The other was that Horsefeather’s would special order oysters for us and we would pile in with our gin-cherried noses and make an afternoon of it before going off to the five and dime next door for cheapo stocking stuffers, because Ben and Brian had absorbed all our shopping funds.

Much about C’mas has changed, the main thing being me. I can’t fit a tree in my fuel efficient car and putting up the thing is now almost the chore it is to take it down. No matter how clever I think I am at putting things away the year before, they don’t seem to be where I thought. Going to parties requires too much planning, and driving after one is now forbidden. Nobody wants to hear my rendition of A Child’s Christmas in Wales any more, and I’m not all that keen on listening to little whosit scrape out an ear piercing version of Good King What’s His Face on his violin.

But still, I made the punch for the library party again, there’s snow on the ground and we’ve candles in the windows. There are half gallons of the good stuff for when T & D come up from Fla. and there’ll be three nights of dinner parties right here, with all kinds of cheery souls who will "help" cook and break dishes. No need to be a grumpy grandpigge. I can do this. And for all the sneering cynicism you read in The Jacket, I’m almost sure that the fat man, “Knows if you’ve been naughty or nice/ so be good for goodness’ sake.”

Christmas drear

O Gawd how I miss the campaign. We’re now down to yakking about puppy picks, what Michelle will wear to the balls, and whether the Smoker-in-Chief is mincing words about whether he does or doesn’t. Athens is in its third day of riots, the world economy is in a handbasket headed for Hades, we are fighting two wars, and we keep piling on the debt at home with a ho hum.

There is, of course, the Detroit debacle to perk us up. I hesitate to say “bailout” because I don’t believe that’s going to happen. I know bupkes about macro economics, except that “macro” means big, but when you look at the rate that Detroit is hemorrhaging dollars and the fact that new car demand is down from 17 mill a year to ten, anybody who can add and subtract would bet that there is no way that those companies can pay back these or any loans. They’ll take the money, reimburse their stock ops and let the chips fall where they may. Right now, Barney and Nancy want to give them a veto-proof $15 Billion dollars. Chump change in the world according to TARP. And they will have til March to get their asses out of its current sling and come back for more. What a plan! What a great country! What an eye-ache!

Some hotshot who works for Rick Wagoner, the top-kick at GM, actually tried to tell the booboisie this morning that Rick’s $16 mil. in bonuses, were really only a fraction of that when you figure the value of the stock. If you believe that then you will probably fall for his prognosis of GM’s overseas sales as solid. If there was any good news from Mo Town, why would it be an asterisk from this flack instead of a headline as big as The New York Post had for OJ’s recent change of address: "NOW ROT."

The big question for me is: Would we bail out American workers in Marysville, Ohio, making Hondas or BMW builders in South Carolina? I don’t think so. I think we tell them foreign fkrs to take a flying leap at a freakin' doughnut. But the argument, which we haven’t even heard a hint of from them, would be: We are American workers who pay taxes and all the subsidiary dependents of our industry would be screwed just as much as up in Detroit. If anyone is suggesting that GM's apron is more important because it’s bigger, than I want to know where the cut off is. What’s too big to fail, and, too small to care about?

But see, they are not asking for a bailout. American cars have one in the top ten car sales according to Consumer Reports. Why aren’t people buying American? I’ve had four Jeeps. I thought that was a good statement of how ‘mericun I am, although I now question why the dealer didn’t give me an Old Glory lapel pin so I could double down on my patriotism rush. Then, I found out that my ‘90 Wrangler was actually assembled in Comminist Chiner. What the hotel? YGBSM!

So, what is a patriot to do? Back up these billionaires on their boneheaded plan just so we can someday apologize to our children and their children for the extra gift they keep giving the gummint with every paycheck? Or tune into the post-season playoffs with a vengeance? Go Pats! (If they can squeak in past the New Jersey 'Jits.)

On another somewhat less sanguine note, I learned this morning from Dave Walker who was the head of the GAO (the nation's top accountant) that we’re broke, screwed and tattooed. By 2030 the entire budget will be spent on Soc. Sec., Medicaid and Care and interest on the national debt. That’s if things keep on keeping on. There will be ZERO money for defense (now 54% of our annual budget), twice as much for VA, about the same for education, right next to nada for infrastructure and scientific research. Even Ted Stevens couldn’t squeeze a nickel out of that budget.
Walker says that beginning next year and 20 years after, 78 million people will become pensioners and medical dependents of the US taxpayer.

If you haven’t seen this guy click here then pour a bracer and have a look. This interview is over a year old but I watched him say the same things today. Medicare, he says, is 5 times worse than SS. Now he is working for Pete Peterson’s new foundation so that he can do in the private sector what he could not in government. He said, “My new position will provide me with the ability and resources to more aggressively address a range of current and emerging challenges facing our country, including advocating specific policy solutions and courses of action.” Sweet.

Pete Peterson said, “The entitlement monster is unfunded. We are dangerously dependent on foreign capital. Our health care costs per capita are twice the level of the developed world. The goal is to integrate public policy and charitable giving and to answer this question: How do you educate a public that has become largely inert?”

Blog, Baby, Blog.

Would you like to be “vetted”?

The other day at the unveiling of the top cabinet nominees, some reporter asked President Elect Obama (PEO) If the campaign hyperbole wasn’t now biting him in the ass. BHO grinned that grin and said, “I know you’re having fun but…" and then he went on to say that “outside of the heat of the campaign” we have had good solid discussions and we are very much on the same page vis a vis the big issues that we are now concerned with. Which seems to The Jacket a tacit admission of the bullshit that goes on inside the holy hell of a campaign that absolutely requires the precision parsing of the opponents words to turn them on themselves only to be revealed later as “just kiddin’.” This isn’t news as in “new” but it is in the news that Hilary said this or that about the Senator before he was PEO and before he whupped her ass. And you may remember for his part he had reduced her touted “diplomatic missions” to “having attended some tea parties” in various world capitals.

Now AG Elect Eric Holder, who hopes to head Justice is being held to a different standard than he was when he was number two there and helped to pardon Marc Rich – but do we care? They’re all a bunch of scoundrels and probably the worst thing we can presently say about PEO is that he “palled around with terrorists” and he failed to leave church when he disagreed with his pastor’s theatrics. One could argue that he shouldn’t have been in the church in the first place. But that argument holds no water in that this is a nation of christian convenience, meaning that most of the voters are some sort of adherent to that religious philosophy if only because it looks good on their resume. So, go to church the candidate must.

PEO, when he was just plain BHO, played the hand that was dealt when he horned in on the game. He attended a popular black church so he could be seen with the people with whom he wished to rub elbows. And it works until you try to explain the Rev. Wright clips to the huge swath of guns & religion clingers. It isn’t up to those voters to fathom how the intricacies of politics works. They are supposed to take you at your word when they see you on TV. Or not.

Nobody is now holding McCain responsible for some of the dumb or desperate things he said back in September and October. Of course it doesn’t really matter now, at all. And his confessional concession speech that showed the best side of old McNasty is what most people will remember about him. It’s just the way it seems to work.

Holder was doubtlessly doing the Presidential bidding of the boss. Marc “Filthy” Rich was a fugitive of justice for twenty years making himself even richer by investing, illegally of course, in Iranian contracts and eventually enriching the Clinton Library with his ill-gotten lucre. Part of that joke is that Rich fled the US because he was convicted for not paying taxes. He couldn’t pay his taxes but he could contribute to the First Bank of Clinton Library. And the reason he gave for not paying is because (he says) he was innocent. That the over zealous prosecutor, one Rudolph Giuliani (Rudy? Overzealous?), tried him criminally when, Rich says, “it should have been treated as a civil matter.” Memo to Mark: Pay the damn taxes!

Anygate, AG Elect Holder, who had nothing to gain, except the ire of the Commander in Thief, did as he was bid. Conversations he was supposed to have had about the matter in the two years prior to the hurried pardoning process seem innocent if you’re not looking for trouble, and the opposite if you are.

Here’s my understanding of the “vetting process”: If I want to buy a horse, I take him to a veterinarian to look in his mouth and ears, test his feet and legs and stick fingers in every orifice to make sure there is nothing wrong with the horse before the sale. That is probably less painful and embarrassing than a political vetting at the cabinet level.

Christopher Hitchen’s assessment of Hilary Clinton not withstanding she will be confirmed easily as it is almost too embarrassing for colleagues to ask: “If you could lie about being shot at in Bosnia, telling the same story three times, how do we know you wouldn’t lie to us when reporting on matters of State?”

Politics is a gas but it often gives us gas. I have seen at the Selectmen level in tiny NH towns the cheating, lying and even stealing that goes on. It starts there and works its way up. However cynical we think we are, the general public is way too trusting. That’s why our Sheriff got away with charging new suits to the taxpayer and why Bill Clinton got away with getting a beanie in the oval office. If he could be whinnying amonst us, I’m sure Kurt Vonnegut would want to say, “And so it goes.”