Welcome to Grand Junction!

Last month, when I read about the billboard in Wyoming, Minnesota, that featured a smiling, waving George W. Bush, with the caption, "Miss me yet?", I thought it was one of the most ridiculous things I had ever heard of. But the good citizens of my fair city, Grand Junction, Colorado, must have taken it as a challenge because one of them recently one-upped it in a big way. Yes, the billboard above is real. It sits near the intersection of 1st and Grand, about two miles from my home. Go ahead and click on it if you want to see the full 800x600 view.

The thinking behind this message is so foreign to me that I didn't even understand it at first. Obviously, Jimmy Carter's thought bubble is meant to imply that our current president, Barack Obama, has taken over the title of "worst president," but Obama has only been in office for just over a year. It's a little too soon to be making that kind of judgment, unless you're basing your opinion on factors other than job performance, like the man's skin color. Racism is alive and well here, and it was on full display at candidate Obama's rally in September 2008 and at President Obama's town hall meeting on health care in August 2009.

The more difficult thing for me to understand is Jimmy Carter in the role of previous "worst president." I will grant you that I didn't vote for him in either 1976 or 1980, but I most certainly did not vote for Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan either. I voted for Independents in both of those elections. But Jimmy Carter as worst president? I don't get it. Like President Obama, he inherited an economic mess from the previous administration, and he was unlucky to be in office when the Iranians decided to take some Americans hostage. Still, he narrowly lost to Reagan in 1980, so how bad could he have been? Former President Carter is now widely regarded as the most effective former president in history, acting, along with his wife Rosalynn, as America's ambassador to the world.

I don't care how much Karl Rove tries to sugar-coat it in his new book, George W. Bush will go down in history as the worst president ever--far worse than even Andrew Johnson, the first president ever to face impeachment. We will be living with the unconscionable economic and political damage of the Bush years for decades to come. President Obama was elected to begin the repairs, but he has no cooperation from the party that helped to wreck things in the first place. Yesterday's purely partisan vote on health care reform is clear evidence of that.

A more realistic billboard might show Republicans Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence laughing hysterically and giving us all the finger. Now that's a message I could understand.

2009: The Year of Stupid

Everybody who voted for him thought that when President Obama took office in January, the country would get busy fixing all the problems left over from the Bush administration, like ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, improving the depressed economy, reforming health care, and doing something to slow global warming. We optimistically thought that Congress would want to cooperate to achieve these goals. We were wrong. Apparently, the Republicans were pretty satisfied with the status quo and willing to do everything in their power to obstruct progress. To people like me, this was the equivalent of asking your dinner mate to pass the mustard while the runaway train you're on is hurtling toward destruction. Stupid.

And as the year wore on, it just got stupider: "birthers," "deathers," "tea baggers," Sarah Palin and her book tour. It was bad enough that the Republicans in Congress had become the party of "No!", but it was intolerable to see fellow citizens latching on to every stupid idea that came out of the mouths of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and their ilk. Former Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on political talk shows to cement his image as Darth Vader, and Karl Rove refused to shut up despite his persistent irrelevance. At least former President Bush was largely absent from the public sphere, the one thing we could have hoped for that came true.

Stupidity wasn't limited only to politics. Every day the news brought us more: the hoopla over Michael Jackson's death, Carrie Prejean's ignorant sensitivity, Jon and Kate's ugly divorce, the Balloon Boy hoax, the clueless White House party crashers, and Tiger Woods's excessive horndogging. The many celebrities who died this year were lucky they weren't around to see how stupid it could get.

There was an expression in the '70s: "The IQ of the universe is a constant. The population is increasing." Let's hope it's not true.

Happy New Year!

Jazz Aspen Snowmass 2008

Nan and I used to attend the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Labor Day weekend music festival every year, but we have missed it the last two years in a row, partly because we live in Grand Junction now and partly because we didn't think the music line-ups have justified the trip.

This past Labor Day weekend, we decided we would attend at least one day of the four-day festival. For us, it was a choice between Bob Dylan and John Fogerty. I had seen Bob Dylan twice before, once with my friend Curt Haensel back in 1986 at Alpine Valley when Bob was touring with Tom Petty and once with Nan at Jazz Aspen Snowmass in 2002 when it was held at the base of Buttermilk Mountain. We had both seen John Fogerty once before when he performed at Jazz Aspen Snowmass in 2005. That was our last Jazz Aspen Snowmass show and it was so good that in the end we decided to see him again instead of Bob.

As we waited for the festival gates to open at 2:00, the clouds that had looked threatening earlier in the day began to drop a steady rain. That's always a potential problem with outdoor concerts, but we were prepared with rain jackets and a waterproof tarp. Our plan was to run to a spot next to the sound tent, close to the stage but not too close, spread the tarp, position our lawn chairs to hold it in place, and then head to the tent-covered bar to stay dry. Luck was with us though, and the rain stopped as soon as we got in.

The first act was Tift Merritt. We didn't know what to expect since we'd never heard of her, but she and her band were terrific. Her voice sounded like a combination of Joni Mitchell and Mary Chapin Carpenter, and she accompanied herself on piano, acoustic guitar and electric guitar. When her set ended, we wandered over to the merchandise tent where Tift was signing copies of her CDs. She was very friendly and chatted with us briefly about what an enthusiastic reception she was receiving in Colorado. We smiled and told her it was because she was so talented and her songs were so heartfelt. Her latest album, Another Country, is still in our car's CD player. Good stuff, especially "Morning Is My Destination" and the title track.

Dwight Yoakam was next. He is a little more cowboy-country than what we regularly listen to, but he played a bunch of classic Buck Owens songs from his new tribute album and put on a great show with his excellent backup band.

Our friends Robin and Dick joined us for John Fogerty's headline act with their son Alex and Dick's cousin, who was visiting from Sweden. I have been a John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival fan since the mid-1960s when my dad started buying their albums. I know all their songs by heart, but I wasn't the only one singing along to classics like "Who'll Stop The Rain?" and "Willie And The Poor Boys." The highlight of the show was a combination of songs off his latest album, Revival: "Long Dark Night" followed by "I Can't Take It No More." Together they form a harsh diatribe against the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. The crowd roared its approval. The show ended after two solid hours with fan favorites "Fortunate Son" and "Proud Mary."

It's always a blast to revisit the music of your youth, especially live in concert. If Jazz Aspen Snowmass keeps bringing in talent like John Fogerty, we'll keep coming back.

Going "Nucular" in Iran?

In a press conference today, President Bush responded to questions about the newly released National Intelligence Estimate on Iran with this: "Iran was dangerous. Iran is dangerous. And Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I think it is very important for the international community to recognize the fact that if Iran were to develop the knowledge that they could transfer to a clandestine program, it would create a danger to the world. And so, I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program. The reason why it's a warning signal is they could restart it."

Instead of letting out a big sigh of relief over the fact that Iran has abandoned its nuclear weapons program, indeed that it had done so more than four years ago, back in 2003, Bush attempted to turn the tables, essentially posturing that he was right all along about the threat from Iran. This is especially alarming given that his administration knew back in August that intelligence estimates on Iran were in the process of being re-evaluated. Still he continued to warn of a potential World War III if America did not maintain its aggressive foreign policy position, leading many Americans to expect that we would soon be bombing Iran.

Now it all seems to be just another of Bush's cheesy political ploys--a power play in the run-up to the 2008 election or a chance to bolster his legacy as the "War President"--remarkably and tragically similar to the fake intelligence that led us into the Iraq quagmire. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us? I don't think so. This might have worked in the fictional world of George Orwell's 1984, where thanks to "newspeak," black was white, up was down, and left was right, but like the book's Winston character, after our brains stop flopping around in our heads, we realize that this latest gaff is so transparent that any shred of credibility left in this presidency is now completely gone. The legacy? How about "Worst President Ever."

The Descending Spiral

About fifteen years ago on a weekend evening, I was having a drink at the Mother Lode bar in Aspen and talking with an acquaintance who also happened to be sitting there. The conversation had moved in the direction of what people do to eke out an existence in Aspen, which is undoubtedly the most expensive place to live in the United States. For example, I was probably drinking an Absolut on the rocks at that moment, at a per drink cost of about $5.00--and remember that this was fifteen years ago. Tim Cooney, my drinking buddy, was a good example of what it took to survive: he was a ski patrolman on Aspen Mountain during the ski season and a freelance writer the rest of the time. And he lived in a funky adobe house at the top of Original Street, which helped to keep expenses down.

Anyway, it must have been around election time because we were both marveling at one of the local candidates for public office. This guy had moved to town about three years before and landed a job as a dishwasher at one of Aspen's many restaurants. In his spare time, he went through the real estate classes at Colorado Mountain College, our local community college, and became a real estate broker. Now he was running for city council or something. Such ambition was a rarity, we both agreed. Aspen has a reputation as a "meat grinder," a place that chews people up and spits them out at a furious rate. It was much more common to see people fail--sometimes spectacularly, with accompanying articles in the daily newspapers--than it was to see them succeed. For what it's worth, this striver went on to lose his election. Badly.

Now we're talking about the real estate profession and I remark that a friend of mine used to say, "Every yutz with ears has a real estate license." Tim agrees, saying, "Yeah, there are way too many 'dirt pimps' in town." And we start to wonder why that is, other than the obvious lure of ridiculously high commissions on overpriced properties. I propose that real estate is what people do in Aspen when the thing they came here to do originally doesn't work out. Tim embellishes the idea, saying that selling real estate is just another step down on the descending spiral. Ahead of what, I ask. With very little effort, we reach a consensus: ahead of the military, prison and death.

So when Sen. Kerry botched his political joke this week, the one where he wanted Bush's decision to invade Iraq to be the butt of what happens if you aren't smart enough to study hard and do well in school, and instead it came out that ending up serving with the military in Iraq is what happens if you screw up in school, I had to cringe. It's one of those things that everyone knows is true but that nobody ever says out loud. The righteous indignation from Bush and the Republicans was to be expected since they exhibit righteous indignation over everything, including Michael J. Fox's display of Parkinson's Disease symptoms in his political ads for candidates who support stem cell research.

If you had asked anybody from my high school graduation class of 1976 if they planned to pursue a career in the military, they would have laughed at you. Vietnam had just ended, and most of us were just happy to have survived the possibility of being drafted. The only guys who ended up in the military were the guys who didn't have any better options or those whose families had a tradition of military service. My brother Stuart bounced around a few different career paths before ending up in the US Navy in his mid-thirties, hoping to get the training necessary to enter into the intelligence field. Here's a guy with a master's degree who is also a world-class athlete in cross-country ski racing. You'd think the military would put him in officers school. Instead they put him through boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Academy with guys half his age. Now, twelve years later, he's with the Air Force Reserve and still largely underutilized and underappreciated. Stuart says most of the young men he has met in the military are "dead-enders," guys with nothing going for them who believe that going out in a blaze of glory in Iraq would at least give meaning to their lives and make their families proud.

I think it's tragic that a segment of our nation's young people believe death in Iraq is their best option. If that's not a step down on the descending spiral from what you or I would consider everyday life, then I don't know what is.

Ever so much more so

Two years ago, during the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, Garrison Keillor wrote a commentary on the then-current state of the Republican Party. His line about hypocrisies shining like cat turds in the moonlight has stuck with me since I first read it and seems all the more apt during this election season, when the biggest hypocrite in recent memory, ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida), may have unwittingly thrown Congress over to the Democrats.

If it rang true then, it rings ever so much more so now:

Published on Friday, August 27, 2004 by In These Times

We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore

How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the Party of Newt Gingrich’s Evil Spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch President, a Dull and Rigid Man, whose Philosophy is a Jumble of badly sutured Body Parts trying to Walk?

by Garrison Keillor

Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned—and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today’s. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor.

In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. “Bipartisanship is another term of date rape,” says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP. “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy.

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous.

Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace.

Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy—the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. The omens are not good.

Our beloved land has been fogged with fear—fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich.

There is a stink drifting through this election year. It isn’t the Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. No, it’s 9/11 that we keep coming back to. It wasn’t the “end of innocence,” or a turning point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse of security. And patriotism shouldn’t prevent people from asking hard questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national security at the time.

Whenever I think of those New Yorkers hurrying along Park Place or getting off the No.1 Broadway local, hustling toward their office on the 90th floor, the morning paper under their arms, I think of that non-reader George W. Bush and how he hopes to exploit those people with a little economic uptick, maybe the capture of Osama, cruise to victory in November and proceed to get some serious nation-changing done in his second term.

This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the footage of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic policies with astonishing enthusiasm.

The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the town and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the constitution on behalf of intolerance and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them.

This is a great country, and it wasn’t made so by angry people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we’re not getting any younger.

Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader. It’s a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is more to life than winning.

Amen.

The Nature of What's Funny

Two weeks ago, Stephen Colbert roasted George W. Bush at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. (Click here to see the video on Google Video.) In the guise of his Comedy Central "Colbert Report" character, he took sharply critical potshots at Bush, the press and just about everything else. The thing that made it so outrageous was that Bush was sitting just a few feet away with his wife Laura watching the whole thing, at first with an expression of mild amusement and later in a condition of frozen-faced discomfort.

Since it first aired live on C-SPAN, the video has been watched by thousands on the Internet, myself included. I have read many of the articles and blog entries that followed, and I have some observations:

The first is that I can't believe this hasn't been more widely publicized. It's as though the embarrassment felt by the press at some of Colbert's remarks caused them to ignore this obviously newsworthy event, remarks such as: "Write that novel you got kicking around in your head, you know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know, fiction!"

The second is that many of the more conservative blogs have criticized Colbert's roasting of Bush as "not funny." Huh? I thought it was hysterical, mostly because it was so surprising and harsh. The nature of what's funny is always relative. If Colbert's remarks cut a little too close to the bone for some, then I understand why they would think it wasn't funny. But that doesn't lessen the impact or automatically dismiss those who applaud Colbert for having the guts to make light of what many consider a seriously flawed administration and the fawning press that covers it.

One of my favorite jokes goes, "How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" The stock punchline is "That's not funny." Once when I told it in mixed company, a woman didn't wait for the punchline before saying, "I'm offended by that." I burst out laughing because that's an even better punchline than the original. The point is that people need to get over themselves, to stop taking everything so seriously that they can't find the humor in everyday life. It's like Dennis Miller once said on his Friday night HBO show several years back, before he went over to the conservative side: "You can't tell me that when the tall magi smacked his forehead on the cross-beam while entering the manger that Joseph didn't take his mind off wondering who had impregnated his wife for just a second and laugh his little carpenter's ass off."

Victory against the terrorists?

In his speech today in El Paso, President Bush said:

"The whole objective is to achieve a victory against the terrorists. The terrorists have made it very clear that Iraq is the central front on the war on terror. See, they want us to leave before we have achieved our mission. You know why? Because they want a safe haven. They want to be able to plot and plan attacks. This country must never forget the lessons of September 11, 2001. And a victory in Iraq will, uh, deny the terrorists their stated goal."

Despite all intelligence to the contrary, Bush continues his efforts to tie the 9/11 terrorist attacks to Iraq. It's as though he believes that if he has the courage to proclaim it, then it must be true through the authority of his position as president. That might work for the true believers, but a growing majority clearly sees that "the emperor is naked."

Will establishing democracy in Iraq be a victory against the terrorists? I doubt the terrorists think so.

Is Iraq the central front in the war on terror? If it is, it is only because we have made it so by our prolonged occupation.

Would leaving Iraq create a safe haven from which terrorists will be able to plot and plan attacks? The terrorists seem to be capable of plotting and planning attacks, such as the ones since 9/11, in Bali, Spain and England, from whatever location is convenient to them.

The lessons of September 11, 2001 should include paying attention to intelligence in Presidential Daily Briefings indicating that a terrorist attack involving airliners colliding with skyscrapers on US soil is imminent.

Diverting attention away from the possibility of another terrorist attack in the United States, under the guise of fighting terrorism in Iraq, at a cost of over two thousand American lives so far, accomplishes nothing. The problem is not in Iraq, it is here at home.

Reflections on Humanism

These days it is difficult to escape the constant barrage from the Christian right. From the fish symbols and "Real Men Love Jesus" bumper stickers to Bush advocating the teaching of "intelligent design" in our public schools, there is a radical retrenching of progressive thought going on in this country. Instead of living in the moment, taking our cues for what is right and what is wrong from how we are received by our fellow human beings, an increasing number have opted to put their faith in the Bible and its ancient teachings, which profess an otherworldly origin for life and mankind's place in it. Instead of looking outward for the answers to questions like, "What is our purpose?", I look inward. I look at who I am and what I have to offer others to make this world a better place, because I believe that what we see, you and I, is all there is. We don't answer to a higher God, we answer to each other. There is no heaven and there is no hell. There is only this life and what we make of it. And we are all in this life together, so the greatest good is to do the best we can for each other--Christ's message but without Christ in it--because the reward is not in heaven, it is here in this life.

To this end, the greatest virtue becomes personal freedom. This country declared its independence for the purposes of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." One of the most disturbing trends in government today is the legislation of morality, which runs counter to everything the founding fathers had in mind. If what I do does not affect you, then why should you be able to tell me whether or not I may do it? Whatever happened to "live and let live"? If issues such as drug use, abortion and gay marriage make people uncomfortable enough that they press their legislators to pass laws against them, then the problem is with these people, not with the behavior. They need to understand that the world is made up of different people with different values, and that it is not up to them to make everyone the same. What advantage does it serve? Does it ease the conscience to know our prisons are full of drug law offenders? It would be more advantageous to society if we understood that most people are doing the best they can and that if that requires behavior other people do not agree with, then so be it.

More than anything, this resurgence of Christian fundamentalism amounts to the dumbing down of modern society. It has become acceptable to display bumper stickers with slogans like "Let go! Let God do it!" and "God is my co-pilot!" To me, this is the same thing as saying, "The universe is a complicated place and I don't understand it, so I'm going to throw up my hands in frustration and give my destiny over to God and his mystical ways, even though I don't understand them, because I have faith." Wouldn't it be more productive to think that our concept of God is a stepping stone to free thought? In simpler times, before we understood that we're all riding a small rock around a small star at the edge of a galaxy full of mostly bigger stars--some of which probably have life similar to our own circling them--in a universe that has no bounds, we needed God to explain the unexplainable. And the God concepts of heaven and hell helped to keep the masses under control, in a state of servitude toward a reward in the afterlife. We are way past that now. We know our place in the universe, at least geographically, and we know more about the workings of this planet and its inhabitants than would have been thought possible just a hundred years ago. We have invented technology and medicine that have made our lives longer, healthier and more comfortable than they even need to be. But instead of looking ahead to what new discoveries we might make, many in society have chosen to look backward, almost in nostalgia, to the simpler times. If we believe the Bible, Christ lived and died as an example to us of how we should live. It is time for us to take his example and apply it to our modern situation: Don't live in fear of spiritual retribution for perceived sins. Rather live for each other, in trust and empathy, that we all may prosper in this life. Think for yourself!