logo

Show Them the Light

Sex and Politics in California

DR. Strangelove

The Big Lie


"The World's Greatest Unemployed Talk Host"

Jim's World Famous Articles


SHOW THEM THE LIGHT

Did you hear the latest new progressive idea to be instantaneously mainstreamed?

The American Civil Liberties Union now says that inter-species marriage is mandated by the equal protection clause of the Constitution. In a press release today, the ACLU didn't specify whether interspecies marriage should be limited to members of different species of opposite sexes or whether inter-species same-sex couples would also be permitted to marry. However, an unnamed ACLU Board member said it is assumed that the same-sex aspect of the issue has already been resolved by recent court holdings in Massachusetts and elsewhere. In a surprising concession to moderates, the ACLU governing board did agree that for an inter-species couple to receive a marriage license it should be required that at least one of the partners be human.

Even more contentious is an issue not addressed by the ACLU press release. Republican members of Congress have sought to limit the impact of court decisions legalizing interspecies marriage by introducing legislation, supported by the Bush Administration, that would define interspecies marriage as marriage between one human being and one mammal, effectively barring marriage between humans and non-mammal species, including reptiles, fish, arachnids, and other insects. “We have to draw the line somewhere,” said Senator Orrin Hatch (R, Utah), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Senator Ted Kennedy (D., Mass), called the “mammals only” legislation divisive, saying “the Republicans are clearly trying to make this a wedge issue in this election year.” Kennedy made the comments at a press conference, with Congressman Barney Frank standing by his side, gazing up at him adoringly.

An ACLU spokesman declined comment on reports that the ACLU intends to file suit on behalf of an Arkansas pig farmer who professes to have fallen in love with his prize hog, which recently won a second place ribbon at a county fair. Gnarley Bates claims he was unfairly denied a marriage license by county officials, despite affidavits from witnesses and video footage purportedly documenting that the feelings between the farmer and the prize winning pig are reciprocal. Asked by reporters whether his intended mate is female, Bates, with apparent indignation, replied, "Of course! Do I look like a queer?"

According to a report on NPR, a recent opinion poll conducted jointly by the Pew Research Institute and the Kennedy School of Government found that 47% of Americans now favor inter-species marriage, up from 1/17th of 1% two weeks ago. Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry, in response to questions from reporters on the issue said: “Well I served our country in Vietnam. So I have seen up close the devastating effect this kind of divisive issue can have on young men and women. Therefore I have consistently favored civil unions for inter-species couples, but not marriage.”

As Firesign Theater said, “Show them the light – and they will follow it anywhere.”

Serving all humanity, but mainly serving himself

Jim Greenfield

Top

Sex and Politics in California

Just when you think it can’t get any more ludicrous, it does.  Reactions to allegations that Arnold Schwarzenegger has groped women throughout his career include the following:

  1. Gray Davis says he thinks Schwarzenegger’s behavior is disgusting, and swears that he, Davis, has never even touched a woman’s breasts, a claim which was corroborated by his wife of 32 years.- Blue Davis The embattled governor also again denied rumors that he is in reality - Mr. Rogers. At a press conference with former President Bill Clinton standing uncomfortably by his side, Davis said that any man who abuses women in this manner is clearly not qualified for public office. Mr. Clinton was observed biting his lower lip as the Governor spoke.
  2. Correspondent Eleanor Clift was outraged at Schwarzenegger’s behavior, saying that no man had ever grabbed her breasts. Clift, attired in a revealing low-cut dinner gown, requested a one on one interview with the movie star in private to confront him on the issue.
  3. Hillary Clinton said she was dismayed by the reaction of Arnold’s wife, Maria Shriver. Clinton said women can put an end to oppression by men only when wives whose husbands misbehave have the courage to stand up in public and condemn the misconduct.
  4. The most peculiar reaction to the scandal comes from the voters of Calif. Opinion polls show that support for Arnold has mysteriously increased among single women, and among likely male voters in all demographic categories. While the majority of male voters agree with the statement that anyone who would grab a woman’s breasts in public without her consent is a self-centered, immature jackass, 70% of men said that, nevertheless, they would be more likely to vote for Arnold even now that they know what kind of a jerk he is. The explanation most frequently offered for this apparently contradictory view is that men are hopeful that if Arnold is elected governor it will lead to the repeal of obsolete laws making it illegal to grab women’s breast.
  5. The L.A. Times denied charges that the hit piece against Schwarzenegger in the final days of the campaign was a case of biased reporting. “We’re not biased against Arnold” The Times said. “We’re equally willing to dig up dirt against any Republican candidate.”
  6. Rush Limbaugh said that if Schwarzenegger wins election despite the scandal it could put a nail in the coffin of militant feminism, and even lead to the repeal of the 19th amendment, the provision giving women the right to vote. But Patricia Ireland, President of NOW retorted that, if anything, the revelations about Schwarzenegger demonstrate that it is men who should not be allowed to vote. Ireland said: “It’s not just Arnold. They all go to his stupid movies, where all he does is beat people up and kill them. It’s all of them. They’re all obsessed with tits and ass and beating people up, and therefore clearly lack the requisite maturity for choosing their own leaders.”
  7. That’s the first sensible thing Patricia Ireland has ever said.

    Serving all humanity, but mainly serving himself

    Jim Greenfield

Top

DR. Strangelove

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the War on Terrorism

As the war on terrorism drags on over the decades we may begin to long nostalgically for the Vietnam War. At least then we knew who the enemy was and where to find him: Lyndon Johnson - in the White House. Yes, I know we paid a price – 58,000 Americans dead, long-term damage to our economy, and the creation of a cultural divide which still afflicts our nation. But every dark cloud has a silver lining. The silver lining was the wave of immigration which followed our defeat, enabling Americans to enjoy Vietnamese food.

The War on Terrorism doesn’t have a silver lining. The appropriate adage now is “Every dark cloud has an even darker lining.” I have a bad feeling about this. I’ve got a hunch we’re creating terrorists faster than we’re killing them. Rumsfeld hasn’t exactly been re-assuring about this.

Unlike Richard Clark, I’m not shocked and outraged by the notion that pre-September 11, our government did not view the threat from Al Quaeda with sufficient urgency. If the Bush Administration had responded to this charge by saying, “Okay, so what? Do you think Al Gore would have done any better?” Everybody would yawn and say, “Probably not.” And that would be the end of it. Because Americans really don’t expect that much any more. A believable re-election strategy for Bush would be to admit that the War in Iraq was a slight miscalculation, then adopt as a campaign slogan: “Kerry would do even worse.” Personally I’m willing to forgive a lot from anybody who cuts my taxes.

There have been many instances over the years when government administration has been extraordinarily competent and efficient. Perhaps you can think of some examples; I can’t. More typically the level of government competence has run the gamut from vicious malfeasance to incomprehensible ineptitude. On rare occasions government effectiveness has risen to a level fairly characterized in such comparatively glowing terms as “muddling through.”

For example, weren’t we all astonished when we suddenly figured out in 1989, without knowing how it happened, that we had won the cold war? I miss the Cold War. In retrospect it was comforting dealing with an enemy with whom we shared a common desire to avoid being blown to smithereens. Pundits have since debated whether our victory resulted from the Reagan Administration’s tough minded policies towards the Soviet Union, our military build-up, the Star Wars threat, our emerging technological superiority, or our growing economic pre-eminence. But the real reason we won is because Soviet society happened to collapse. At the time I thought it was a miracle that we could have fought the Cold War so incompetently, and still won. I later realized, of course, that the Soviets were even more incompetent.

Hopefully the terrorists will prove to be as incompetent as the commies, and hundreds of suicide bombers, invoking the name of Allah, will detonate prematurely on the way to their targets, enabling us to muddle through this mess too before these whack jobs get the chance to nuke us.

A case study in how governments evaluate foreign threats is World War II. I’m not talking about the emergence from oblivion by America on December 7, 1941 when we figured out that the Japanese were mad at us. I’m talking about Great Britain’s response to the Nazis, i.e. their lack of response. Anybody who assumes that people who rise to the highest level of government in a great democracy must know what they’re doing ought to study England before World War II. Despite repeated impassioned warnings throughout the 1930’s from the only man in Parliament whose head wasn’t up his butt, Winston Churchill, that Hitler was building the most powerful military machine in history and planning to wage war against all of Europe, and despite overwhelming evidence over a period of many years that Churchill was right, successive English governments did little to prepare for the Nazi onslaught because, um, they didn’t notice.

So if the U.S. had its head in the sand before Pearl Harbor, and Great Britain wasn’t concerned about Hitler, why should it come as such a huge surprise to media elites that the United States wasn’t paying enough attention to some obscure group of Muslim fanatics led by a madman living in a cave in Afghanistan? It’s human nature to go bonkers worrying about imaginary threats – the Salem witch trials, Y2K, Communists in the State Department, , the Trilateral Commission, global warming etc. - while failing to notice real threats – the Nazis, Al Queada, Communists in the State Department, the Trilateral Commission, global warming, etc.

But since September 11 of course we’re fully alert. That’s why we invaded Iraq - to prevent them from giving non-existent weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Of course everybody knows that the real reason was so we could take over the oil. But we didn’t take over the oil. Problem: even if we did do it for the oil, we didn’t want anybody to think we did it for the oil, so after we did it we decided not to take over the oil. And now gas prices are higher than ever. I never bought into the WMD argument; I was kind of hoping we did it for the oil. Instead we’re leaving the oil under state control to help Iraq back on the path to socialism.

One thing about the debate over Iraq makes no sense. Liberals should support the war and conservatives should oppose it instead of the other way around. Conservatives should oppose the war because it furthers no tangible American strategic or financial interests, and is purely altruistic in nature, producing benefits for the Iraqi people, who have been liberated from a brutal despot, but at a huge sacrifice to us. And for these same reasons, liberals should support the war.

Oh yes, we also fight the war on terror on another front by making old ladies take off their sneakers in airports.

A forward strategy for fighting the War on Terrorism would recognize that this struggle must be fought on many levels. We must go beyond apprehending terrorists with AK 47’s and explosive devices strapped to their waists. By that point it’s too late. We need to attack terrorism at its source before the brainwashing and training begin. We need a four-pronged plan:

  1. Cut off funding not just for the training camps, but for the madrasas and other religious institutions which teach violent jihad, murder, and terror.
  2. Infiltrate and neutralize media outlets which promote Islamic extremist propaganda and anti-western hatred.
  3. Fund moderate Muslim leaders and media to speak out against terrorism.
  4. Develop a new generation of smart medium-sized and strategic nuclear precision weapons with the capacity to atomize Muslim extremists while doing no harm to Christians and Jews who are standing next to them.

I realize that #4 may, at first blush, sound implausible. However one of the great scientific achievements of our age are gardening products which, when spread on the lawn, are capable of killing weeds while simultaneously nourishing the surrounding grass. If science can achieve this sophisticated level of discrimination in the development of precision consumer gardening products, why not in the field of nuclear weaponry?

If you think this sounds impossible, consider this. Recent reports have leaked from the Defense Department that the Pentagon’s work on the next generation of precision “smart” bombs includes a new weapon, called the “really smart bomb,” which not only can locate and hone in on foreign enemy leaders such as Saddam Hussein and Usama Bin Laden, but can also verify their identity using DNA testing, and then give them a prefrontal lobotomy.

The ramifications of this technology are mind-boggling. Labotomizing terrorist and extremist Muslim leaders could be incorporated into a comprehensive strategy to win the War on Terrorism by transforming all the Mullahs into peace-loving Buddhist Monks chanting “Om.” If this doesn’t work it’s World War III and Dr. Strangelove and his ilk will be chanting, “Mein Fuhrer I can valk.” There’s nothing else you can do because you can’t deter these headcases with threats of retaliation. They think a nuclear Armageddon would be just the thing so they can get their 72 virgins. Hey, that gives me an idea. Maybe we could get these horny bastards to chill out by getting them 72 virgins here on earth.

I know what you’re thinking: “Where are we going to find 72 virgins?” Well, they don’t really have to be virgins. They can just say they’re virgins. A little deception’s a small price to pay for world peace.

Serving all humanity, but mainly serving himself

Jim Greenfield

Top

The Big Lie

As Hitler said, if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes true. How many times have you heard from Democrats that George Bush’s tax cuts only benefit the rich? Earlier this year on “Hardball” with Chris Matthews, held at Harvard, Democratic VP nominee John Edwards categorically stated that the Bush tax cuts shifted the tax burden from the rich to the poor. This assertion was cheered by the smartest people in the world there at Harvard, and went unchallenged by anyone in the audience or by Chris Matthews. This Democratic shibboleth has been repeated so often that even Republicans seem to have concluded it must be true. Most recently, Democratic Presidential Nominee John Kerry said in Coopers Union, NY: “Over the last four years taxes have been cut for people making more than $200,000 a year and for Haliburton, but have been increased for middle class taxpayers. The tax burden has been shifted from the rich to the working class.” (CSPAN, 8/24/04).

But is it true? Do the Bush tax cuts primarily benefit the rich? And do they shift the tax burden from the rich to the poor?

I hate to upset the politicians who have been demogogueing this issue by mentioning a few actual facts, but let’s take a look at those tax rates to see who really benefits from the Bush tax cuts. The marginal rate on those in the highest income bracket was reduced from 39% to 37%. The rate on the middle bracket was reduced from 28% to 25%. And the rate on the lowest bracket was reduced from 15% to 10%. The biggest cut in taxes came not for the top bracket, but for working people in the lowest income bracket. While the top bracket received a modest 5% reduction in marginal rates, the lowest bracket received a whopping 33% reduction as a percentage of tax paid. The lowest income earners received more than six times as great a reduction in their burden than the highest bracket as a percentage of tax paid, reducing their taxes fully by one third. This is of course exactly the opposite of what the Demogogoueocrats have been saying. The Democratic candidates have been, well – lying.

Unless, of course, we charitably construe the Democrat mantra about “tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich” the only way it could be construed to make it true. Since the Bush tax cuts clearly benefit all taxpayers, the only way the Democratic complaint about “tax cuts for the rich” can be true is if all taxpayers are rich. Apparently the Democrats believe that anyone who pays taxes must ipso facto be rich. This must be what the Democrats think because anytime anyone ever proposes cutting any taxes a chorus of Democrats is promptly heard moaning about “tax cuts for the rich.” You see? Since the majority of Americans pay taxes, we’re all rich.

But could this strategy backfire for the Democrats? Suppose you’re Joe Sixpack, earning $35,000 a year. You notice that after the Bush tax cuts your tax bill goes down by one third. Then you hear the Democrats intone that the Bush tax cuts only benefit the rich. What are you to conclude? Clearly, you must be rich. So, having learned from the Democrats that you’re one of those rich people George Bush is always trying to help, your whole perspective changes. Maybe you should start voting Republican like the other rich people. It won’t belong til millions of newly rich taxpayers making $35,000 a year create the emerging Republican majority. And the Republicans will owe a great debt of gratitude to Kerry and Edwards and the rest of the Dumbocrats.

Serving all humanity, but mainly serving himself

Jim Greenfield

Top