Political Rants

Over the edge.

The fiscal cliff is just ahead. Be afraid, be afraid! Are you afraid yet? Well, you’re supposed to be. Going over the “fiscal cliff” is the worst thing that can possibly happen – worse even than … I don’t know … losing your Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

Friends, this is the oldest trick in the book. Our leaders have done their best to bankrupt the government over the last decade and a half, coupling undeclared wars with massive tax cuts, crashing the economy through their vaunted hands-off approach to the financial sector, etc. Now when it comes time to pay the tab, guess who’s picking it up? Not a big surprise that they’re running out on the check. They only do it every freaking time.

Listening to the series of Republican interviews that is NPR the other day, I heard some talk of raising the Medicare eligibility age as one means of covering their failed fiscal policy decisions. That has to take the prize as the stupidest idea ever proposed. Sure, take the youngest people out of the Medicare system – the people who need the least care! That’s a surefire way to bankrupt the program, which I’m sure is their ultimate aim. The G.O.P. has always hated Medicare, almost as much as they hate Social Security, despite their claims to the contrary. If they were truly serious about saving money, they would be expanding Medicare to include younger, healthier people, not the other way around.

The thing we have to watch like the proverbial hawk is our election year friends, the Democratic Party. We need to remind them who gave them victory a few weeks ago. We need to encourage them to challenge the Republicans on their fealty to the same failed policies Milton Friedman advocated decades ago, on their determination to protect the private tyranny that is the health insurance industry. We need to encourage them to do the right thing, no less.

That is what we should be focusing on, not irrational fear.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Helladay house.

What? What time is it? It’s too early, tubey. You’ll get your Miracle Gro at 9:00 and not before. Christ on a bike.

Oh, hi out there. As I’m sure you already know, the morning after Thanksgiving is always a force to be reckoned with. Especially when you have a mansized tuber who has just discovered juicing. (He’s trying to win some of his bi-weekly pickup basketball games, but I think even with the Miracle Gro he’s reaching.) Morning starts kind of early around here – sometimes before noon, even. (You fellow rock musicians out there better sit down: There is a thing called morning. It’s not just another hallucination. That’s right … I’m talking to you, pothead.)

Excuse that digression. Hope you had a wonderful, glorious Thanksgiving, full of holiday cheer and/or anticipation (if you spent most of it queueing up in front of Wal-Mart or Best Buy). Perhaps you spent part of your morning watching the bizarre spectacle known as the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. I certainly did. It’s kind of a tradition around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where you don’t ordinarily get exposed to a lot of unfiltered promotional messages (aside from the ones that come on soup can labels).

Little known fact about the Hammer Mill: This is actually the end-point of the T-day parade. It’s a lot longer a procession than most people think. Folks get the mistaken impression that the march ends with the arrival of ersatz Santa Claus in front of Macy’s. Not true. For most of the next day and a half, the floats and balloons come marching up the West Side Highway, take the G.W. Bridge over to the Palisades Parkway, then pick up the NYS Thruway and process all the way up to the Little Falls exit. In a gesture of magnanimous welcome, we throw the compound doors open to them and allow them into the Hammer Mill courtyard for a little R&R. Then Mitch Macaphee and Marvin (my personal robot assistant) aid their technicians in deflating the enormous parade balloons and packing them away for another year. True* story.

Sure, you thought Christmas was just a throwaway songwriting theme for us. Oh ye of little faith.

* Note: veracity of story subject to unverifiable truth conditions. Contact Big Green for details.

Political Rants

Gaza misery.

All-out war has been averted in Gaza. That’s a good thing. The bad thing? More than 160 Palestinians were killed over the last week, more than half of them (in excess of 90 individuals) were civilians. Speaking on Public Radio International, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that “most of the people hit in Gaza deserved it“. Earlier today, with the cease-fire in place, a Palestinian man was shot along the border of Gaza inside what the IDF terms a “no-go” zone, but also in an area transited by Palestinian farmers on the way to their fields. This is not an unusual occurrence and is probably only being reported in the U.S. because of the conflict/cease fire story. This happens all the freaking time.

You don’t have to be a cynic to believe that Netanyahu wanted this flare-up, with elections just weeks away. He is following in a long tradition of Israeli political leaders who know that the iron fist earns votes. Already he has reconfigured his political coalition from a center-right to a more extreme right grouping, including the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party headed by current Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, a man who wants all Israeli Arabs – 20% of Israel’s population – to sign loyalty oaths and who has openly advocated for their expulsion. The bet appears to have paid off politically – a large majority in Israel favored the attack on Gaza. They have their problems, we have ours, it seems.

I am encouraged, at least, that the Palestinians in Gaza are getting their story told to some degree in the United States, the land where the money for Israel’s military comes from. I have heard in-depth commentary and reporting on Gaza over the last week that simply did not exist on cable television four years ago when the last murderous campaign (“Cast Lead”) ensued. Still, I’m doubtful that the majority of Americans understand the degree to which this is not a conflict between equals. Israel has had the Palestinians in Gaza under sustained attack for six years now, not that what came before was any bed of roses. Hamas may have a rudimentary offensive missile capability, but it’s nothing against the fourth most powerful military in the world. And anyone who distinguishes the lot of Gazans from that of Palestinians on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, who are being steadily bereft of their land, acre by acre, day by day, is simply not confronting reality.

In Gaza, the battle may be over, but the war is their daily life. They deserve our attention and our non-violent support.

luv u,

jp

Weird ass music since 1986