Geocache Your Way Home

Driving from Belleville to Traverse City we found 5 caches. I found one! Yippee! It was a lovely day, and we had a really good time. It took us all day to get home.
Message on answer machine from Dr. Burke. I'll call him tomorrow.

Kanitz Family Reunion

We got to the Tri-County Sportsmens' League around 10 a.m. The hall was in great shape -all clean and shiny . The tables were all set up. We set the chairs on the floor, unloaded the car, stashed the ice cream in the freezer and waited for Jim and Emilie to arrive with the table covers. When the covers were on, we decorated all of the tables. The theme was red, white and blue.

We all made coffee, punch, and iced tea - Dan and Kris arrived. The guests began arriving at around 12:30. It was great to see the first cousins doing so well. Out of 27 first cousins, 14 are

living, and 6 attended. Jim handled the microphone and Emilie gave the invocation. I took minutes, and Dick counted the money. We had attendance of 124, and the collection was $340.

Kris and Dan were a very big help. We also got help arranging the hot dishes and salads from Wanda, Dawn, and Marilyn, among others. Enjoyed talking to Ron, Loyola, and Myrtle was there in a wheelchair, looking very elegant. It was a very pleasant event.
Before we left, we had to put the hall back in the condition in which we found it. Dick did most of the table and chair arranging, packing up, and loading the car. Everybody really was great help in the kitchen - Emilie washed up the utensils we used.
We left around 4:30.
And I was very glad when it was over.
Back in Belleville, we took Sniders and Tammy and Eric out to dinner at Applebee's. Tammy is expecting in Feb. and it's very much fun to hear all of their plans. We all went back to Snider's for dessert - cake and ice cream from the reunion.
Watched Working Girl and went to bed.

Game Day

Arrived in the parking lot at Pioneer early and did a Mac Land tail gate. It costs $25 now for a car to park at Pioneer. Across the street at Ann Arbor Golf and Outing, it costs $40. I don't know how much it costs at the University Golf Course. We asked the ticket seller how much it was for RVs - $75 for the day and $125 for overnight.
After I walked around the parking lot for a while, I realized that there was no way I could make it to the stadium. So I didn't go to the game. (Foreshadowing - I was wondering about the results of the blood test on Thursday). I stayed by the car - and it was great. I had a lawn chair, a radio, lots of water, and it was a gorgeous day.
Michigan beat SanDiego State 24-21 (by the skin of their teeth). But at least it was a victory.
From mgoblue.com:

After trailing 21-17 at halftime, the No. 17-ranked Michigan football team shut out San Diego State in the second half and hung on for a 24-21 victory Saturday, Sept. 18, at Michigan Stadium. Braylon Edwards (left) scored the go-ahead touchdown on a seven-yard pass from Chad Henne to cap U-M's 79-yard scoring drive at the start of the second half. Edwards, who started the scoring with a 54-yard TD grab on the Wolverines' first play, finished with eight catches for 130 yards, while Michael Hart rushed 25 times for 121 yards.

At Sniders we watched State lose to Notre Dame.

Off to Belleville

Any trip to Belleville begins with breakfast at the Frosty Cup in Cadillac. Then we began a circuitous route downstate, so that Dick could do some geo-caching. There was a cache in the Reed City cemetery, but we struck out - Dick thinks it's no longer there.
In a very nice park in Morley, we had better luck. But then at a Rest Area farther south, we struck out again. But I did have time to sit at a picnic table and do my nails.
We ate lunch at Portland, and arrived at Snider's around 4:30. Dick went to the Belleville football game. Belleville won 9-6 over Y N . (get it?) Bill stayed home because of his hurt back.

Errands

This was one of those errand days. We're getting ready to leave for Belleville tomorrow, so today we tied up some loose ends. Thirlby Clinic - blood test - then Dick took me out to lunch at Ciao Bella, an upscale ristorante Italiano on Front St. It was delightful, and the food was great. We ate out for lunch three days in a row this week - and Ciao Bella was the fanciest.

Visited Mother, balanced her checkbook, made her promise to call Shannon over the weekend if she needs anything, and gave her a hug good-bye.

Dry cleaners, Library, Gordon's, and then home. I called the Belleville Meijer to order ham and cake for the reunion on Sunday. Started packing.

Molly Ivins - You Go, Girl

Look at who's on the payroll
By Molly Ivins

Creators SyndicateTommy Corcoran -- Tommy the Cork, so dubbed by FDR -- was a Washington wise man. His various biographers called him the ultimate insider, the super lawyer and the master fixer. He came to Washington in 1926 to clerk for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and became a fixture, an almost institutional source of wisdom about American politics, before his death in 1981.The Cork had a theory about how to choose a president. He always said it didn't matter who was running, that it was unnecessary to pay any attention to them.What matters, he said, is the approximately 1,500 people the president brings to Washington with him, his appointments to the positions where people actually run things. The question to consider is which 1,500 people we get.So here are a few suggestions:

• At the EPA, you do not want people who think it's a good idea to allow more arsenic in the water. When someone, anyone, proposes allowing more arsenic in the water, what you want is people at the EPA who promptly say: "No. Not a good idea."

• There are some lawyers, and then there are other lawyers. You do not want lawyers at the Justice Department (or the White House or the Defense Department) who, when asked to prepare a legal brief defending torture, do so.You want lawyers at Justice (and the White House and the Defense Department) who say: "No. Torture is not a good idea. Trying to wiggle out from under our laws, international treaties and civilized norms is not a good idea."You especially don't want lawyers who defend torture promoted to the federal bench. It is not a good idea to have the CIA using the same "interrogation technique" so favored by the Gestapo.This is counterproductive as well as wrong.

• You don't want folks in charge of the IRS who think it is more important to audit poor people than rich people. That is dumb.

• You do not want people in charge of foreign policy who are fools enough to believe in Ahmad Chalabi, a convicted con man and, it turns out, probably a spy for Iran. Those people should be fired. Especially when some of them are now also being investigated for giving classified information to Israel.

• Having your Department of Homeland Security turn out to be a public disgrace indicates that you have either not put the right people in charge or they are not getting enough support.

• When "Hurricane Hits Florida Yet Again" becomes a standing headline right up there with "Canadian Trade Talks Continue," you may want to put people in charge of policy who recognize that global warming not only exists but threatens us all.

• If the people a president puts in charge of foreign policy are all from the same small circle of rigid ideologues, what happens is that they end up listening only to themselves, and that way lies disaster.

• When the people who are running the Food and Drug Administration do so to benefit the big processors and the big drug companies, people get hurt, and some of them die.

• When the people in charge of prosecuting terrorists in this country screw up case after case, those people should be replaced.

• When the country endures a hideous terrorist attack, is it actually useful for the White House to oppose the commission assigned to find out how it happened?To first deny it adequate funding, then refuse to provide it with critical documents, then oppose an extension of its deadline, then refuse to allow the commission access to prisoners who played key roles in the attack, then try to stop Condoleezza Rice from testifying, then refuse to have the president testify under oath?

• When the people in charge make a decision to start an unprovoked war because of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and nonexistent ties to the terrorists who have attacked us, you may conclude that these people are lying, or dumb, or just not helpful.

• When a new administration comes into office with a huge budget surplus and then blows it all on tax cuts that benefit the very rich, should it be retained? If an economic team leads the country to a record $422 billion deficit this year and $2.3 trillion in the next decade, do you really want a team in charge that announces it wants more tax cuts that will double the total deficit to $4.6 trillion by the end of the decade? Do these people have a sense of responsibility? If the economic team produces a net loss of 1.1 million jobs after four years, should its contract be renewed?

Forget Bush -- the people around him are a complete disaster.
John Kerry will basically re-hire the Clinton team and presumably remain faithful to his wife.
Of course, Clinton didn't get Osama bin Laden, either. But his people worked harder at it.

Maori Walking Stick

When Jana went to New Zealand, she brought back a beautifully intricately carved Maori walking stick for Dick. He loves to use it for geo-caching - it's good for poking into obscure holes and hiding places.
This morning, we were planning to go to Frankfort to re-try one of the caches along the beach, when he realized that he did not have his walking stick, and that he had left it at the Burned Cabin cache yesterday.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=96782875-10a7-411b-90fc-e6f80c40cc5a
So we set off in the other direction from Frankfort to retrieve the stick. It was right there where he had left it less than 24 hours before. While we were over there, we went out to lunch again at Coyle's in Houghton Lake. They have a mean buffet!

On the way home, on M-42, we found a most unique place - at the site of the former Sherman one-room school. It's hard to describe it, but we poked around there for an hour. There were new things to discover at every turn. We think it will be an excellent place for us to put a cache.

Tom Barker came over with the check for the sealing of our common driveway. Shortly thereafter, we had a brown-out and Dick threw the main switch on the circuit breaker thingy to protect our motors. Barker said it was a local thing, not a system thing, and a crew came out and fixed it.

Tomorrow I go in for another blood test. My mammogram was normal.
Talked to Belleville - Bill has thrown out his back and is not very comfortable. We'll see him on Friday.

Heavenly Days

What a glorious day to be out in the woods finding beautiful small lakes, and enjoying the sunshine and breezes. We went geo-caching northeast of Kalkaska and we found everything we were looking for. There are lakes in that area that we had never heard of - small little gems that even had cottages and docks on them.


I was especially happy because I found two of the caches myself - one under a rock, and one stuck to a tree! It was the perfect day.

We started out at around 10:30 a.m. and drove to Kalkaska. We ate lunch at Whitetail's, which is a really nice, newish, American-style restaurant. Then we were off to the woods and our adventure began. There are several two-tracks and gravel roads and phantom trails that we discovered. It was our favorite type of terrain. Gotta love the North Woods. We had excellent luck.

Driving past one small lake, I saw a sign on a fence in front of a small, slightly ramshackle house. The sign said Oleo Acres - The Cheaper Spread.

Driving down Swamp Road (yes, that's right) Dick noticed a small turtle scurrying (yes, that's right) across the trail. He took a couple of pictures of it to prove that we had seen some wildlife.
The last cache was alongside the Manistee River. I was impressed with how much State land there is along that river, and with how well it's managed. Our little Boardman River can't compare, although we do have 3 DNR sites in our area. But our little river is narrower and swifter, and more fun to canoe. Wide, slow rivers are not nearly as exciting.
It was a memorable day.

Put Ice in That Tea!

Wow - we really had summer today - it was 92 down by the bay. June, July, and August the temps were mainly in the 60s, but now summer is beginning just as it's about to end. We also had a beautiful blue sky, and a smooth bay - lots of boats were out and about. We saw a cruise ship on West Bay yesterday, and today there was another one. They ferry the passengers over to the Maritime Academy so they can walk around downtown.
Dick worked at the Agency this morning - didn't get home til almost 1:30 - still trying to wade through those Medicare bills for his client.
Talked to Jim about the Kanitz Reunion - I added a few things to my checklist - I hope we're not forgetting anything.

Had a conversation with a cashier at Glen's about the development across from them. It will be Menard's along with a whole plaza of other things - a restaurant, etc. Then she said that there will be an Olive Garden on US 31 near Williams Bros.
In the Record-Eagle today there's an article about a new, bigger, better Great Wolf Lodge type of resort which will be in Elmwood Twp. off M-72. Progress - it just keeps happening around here. Soon we'll have to move back downstate to get away from the crowds!

Today Jana located her car by checking the impound list online. It had been towed 2 days after it was reported stolen - but evidently they don't notify you that they've found your car. Tomorrow she plans to check it out and evaluate the situation. She'll either get money from the insurance or donate the car to charity.

Article by Eric Alterman

This article answers the question - Why do so many Americans feel that they were misinformed about the war in Iraq:

The third anniversary of September 11 inspires many conflicting emotions from sadness at the loss, gratitude for the sacrifices of those who selflessly threw themselves into the rescue operations and subsequent physical, cultural and emotional reconstruction efforts and fury at its murderous perpetrators. But if we are honest we cannot overlook the morally degenerate reaction of our own political leadership. I was among those who, briefly, allowed hope to triumph over experience. I praised President Bush’s initial address to the nation and ignored his childish “good vs. evil” and “for us or against us" posturing. I did not make a big deal over his obvious panic on the day the attack took place. I supported the war in Afghanistan even though I would have preferred a police and intelligence action. (And for this I was called a traitor, literally, Little Roy.) Even so vociferous a critic of the unelected Bush, Cheney, the Neocons, and the religious right as myself could not bring himself to imagine in that horrific week with the smell of the smoking ruins literally polluting the sky above my house, that America’s president, its vice-president and their advisers would be capable of the following:·

• Bush and company specifically ignored multiple warnings of just such an attack.·
• Bush and company lied to the heroes of 9/11 about the health and safety implications of breathing the air down at Ground Zero—my own family included.·
• Bush and company immediately sought to manipulate the grief and anger of the attacks to launch an unnecessary and counterproductive war against Iraq which has resulted in over a thousand needless American military deaths and U.S. soldiers turning into occupiers and in some case torturers.·
• Bush and company lied to the nation about the responsibility for the attack, trying to pin it on Saddam Hussein who had nothing whatsoever to do with it.·
• Bush and company allowed its friends in the Saudi royal family to hide its relationship to the killers. ·
• Bush and company made only a lackluster effort to capture the killers, allowing many to escape at Tora Bora and pulling agents and resources out of Afghanistan to feed its obsession with Iraq.·
• Bush and company did everything they could to prevent and later, undermine an investigation of why 9/11 was allowed to happen.·
• Bush and company continue to ignore their responsibility to protect the nation from another attack, failing to protect its ports, nuclear and chemical plants, and its most vulnerable urban targets and instead, have actually gone out of their way to inspire more such attacks, despite intelligence warnings on this very topic.·
• Bush and company have destroyed the sympathy our nation enjoyed (and deserved) in the immediate aftermath of the attack and have instead turned that sympathy into global hatred and disgust, further endangering our citizens.·
• Bush and company have repeatedly manipulated the powerful imagery of the attacks for their own partisan political purposes.·
• Bush and company have repeatedly cowed the media into ignoring, and when that’s impossible, apologizing for, much of the above.

For all of the above, the men and women who people this administration deserved not merely to be repudiated politically but held accountable both morally and legally. Instead it is they who attack and impugn patriots like lifetime public servants Richard Clarke and Anthony Zinni, whose only crimes were to call them honestly to account for their catastrophic dishonesty, incompetence, and ideological fanaticism. Since September 11, President Bush and company have accomplished what the terrorists could not; they have divided us against ourselves. That so much of the mainstream media have proven ineffective-or worse—cooperative with their deceptive efforts give one cause for an even deeper pessimism. One’s only solace, I suppose, is that we have, as a nation, been through worse—though never, it must be added, under quite such feckless leadership.

Wok the Heck

Dick worked on a client's medicare bills - stacks and stacks of them. Not a whole lot of fun. But he thinks he may be able to save the client $1000, so it's really worth it.


I made a checklist for the Kanitz reunion next week and packed a couple of boxes. To be honest, we really don't look forward to this event. (heavy sigh) But like the song says, you can have a good time if you've a mind to.

We visited Mother, and all is well on that front.

Tonight Dick is doing stir fry - how lucky can I get?

Anniversary of 9/11/2001

This is the 3rd anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center - I watched some of the memorial and a couple of new programs put together with private individuals' videos and pictures. It was an unimaginable event, and those who were there and who lived through that must have horrible nightmares. The inhumanity perpetrated by the terrorists was absolutely unthinkable, showing a total disregard for innocent human life. On the other hand there were many instances of man's humanity demonstrated by those on the ground.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memorial/

This morning Marco the Explorer got 4 new brakes, and all new fluids. He feels like a new Ford.

We went for a ride through town, and then home to watch the football game. The outcome of the game did nothing to improve my mood of the day. Michigan played poorly, couldn't score a touchdown until the very end, and lost 28-20.
http://msn.foxsports.com/story/3002384

TGIF

Well let's see...in Florida Laurie reports that the stores don't have anything, especially not milk or other perishables, nobody has gas, nothing is open, nobody's going to work, and you can't go anywhere. Other than that, she's doing fine, and anxiously watching the weather channel try to figure out what Hurricane Ivan is going to do.

Dick worked at the Visitor Center this morning, and he had 50 visitors from 9-12. A lot of them were here to bring their kids to Interlochen for the school year.

Dr. Burke called and said that my numbers were stable, and we will do another blood test next Thursday.

We finalized the Goldbug cache - it was fun to be out in the woods again. We had a great ride on what turned out to be a cloudless summer day.

Michigan plays Notre Dame in South Bend tomorrow. Go Blue.

Spoke to Tom - he's fine. He has a Porsche event tomorrow - he loves those things. He's going to tape the game.

Red Car

Jana finally decided to buy the red car from Car Max. She really wanted a car from Preston, but the sleazy guy there sent her a spurious email and it turned out he didn't have that car at all but wanted to sell her a 2005.
Dick went out to hide the 4 stages of his multi-cache, and discovered that some of his coordinates were off. He came home tired and discouraged.
I went in for my annual physical and mammogram, and I came home tired and in a funk. So we made quite a pair!
We got a chance to talk to Dylan, and he was really hyper perquackey today. Or maybe it was just because we were tired.

Mother's 96th Birthday

Happy Birthday Mother!

We didn't really do much today. I'm not feeling very perky lately. I mostly just watched TV and read, and packed up table service to go to Mother's later.
Dick is busy formulating his new cache. It's called Goldbug , and it's based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. I'm thinking that this cache is so complex that no one will ever find it!

We packed up "high tea" and presents and went to visit the birthday girl around 4:30. She loved her gifts - especially the watch and the scrapbook and the knee highs.

Then we had shrimp cocktail, banana bread, toast, wine, and chocolate cake.

Tom sent flowers, and Jana sent large print books from Amazon.com. I think Laurie was pre-occupied with Hurricane Frances aftermath. There will be no school in Palm City until Sept. 13th.
The mailman brought 6 or 7 birthday cards, mostly from people at church. Mother was very happy. She doesn't look a day older!

She called later in the evening to say that her neighbor across the street had come over with treats (cinnamon bread and apple pie) and they had a good visit. She had a very nice birthday.

Dude, Where's My Car?

Yesterday when we visited Mother she told us that the front porch door wasn't closing properly. Dick checked it out and he thinks the wind took it and blew it too far open. The automatic closer thingy was ripped off. Today before he went to the dentist, Dick took in the proper tools and fixed it so now it closes properly. Whew!

We go to Traverse Dental Associates, and our two favorite dentists are Dr. Pat Kelly and Dr. Kevin Kelly. Dick's dentist is Dr. Pat, and mine is the other one. Today Dick went in for repair of a cracked filling so his mouth was numb for most of the day.

But being an intrepid geo-cacher, he did go out exploring in the woods, numb mouth and all.

I went shopping for some last minute gifts for Mom's birthday tomorrow. And then I wrapped the gifts.
No news from Florida today.
Meanwhile, in Washington DC Jana's car was stolen right from in back of her house. It was a red Ford Escort nicknamed Francie. Unfortunately, her driver's license was in the car, and an extra set of keys to the house was in the glove box.

Blendi (who is now married to Veronica but still a Friendi) came and took her to the DMV, changed the locks on the house, and took her to go rent a car. It has to feel like a total invasion of your space to have that happen. We had a car broken into once, but never stolen. Laurie has had a car stolen, and she says that Jana should hope that they don't find it. Getting the car back to running condition was a major hassle because the car had been stripped and mutilated.

Labor Day

Dick mowed the whole yard except for the paths.
I fooled around on the computer making a print-out scrapbook for Mother's 96th birthday on the 8th.

We drove into town and went shopping at Walmart. Dick likes to get coffee there. I also bought a bunch of things for Mom's birthday. Then we did our cruise of downtown, and off to Mother's to do the trash. We had a good visit. Brought her up to date on the hurricane in Palm City.

In Florida, their phone was out most of the day, but by 3:30 they had power back, and also the telephone. So we were able to talk to them, and they're doing quite well. They went to Publix, but all that was for sale were items that had been left on the shelves before the storm. Nothing perishable. So they bought pop, cookies, pretzels, and all that kind of stuff. They drove past Palm City Elementary and it looked like there wasn't a whole lot of damage - some flashing had been blown off, but nothing structural.
The portables were still there, but Laurie is afraid that they might leak. Dylan remembered that there was a leak in the library before the storm. Hope they fixed that. Laurie said that she was not sending Dylan to school tomorrow in any case. She doesn't think the kitchen/food situation would be straightened out by tomorrow. Such a sensible Mom!

Misty Morning

Dick called from Belleville to say that it was so foggy he couldn't see across the street. So his departure was delayed until almost 10 a.m.

Here, it was misty and a little foggy along the river, but nothing like downstate.

All I really did today was watch TV, go to the grocery store, and read books and newspapers.

Dick got home around 4:30 by way of Grayling. He stopped to do some caching along the way.
We talked, ate leftover pizza, and I forgot all about Mother's trash. It took me a while, but I convinced Mother that there was no reason on God's green earth why it couldn't wait until tomorrow. She's not an easy sell.

In Florida, the kids lost power on Friday night around 10:30. Today it came back on for a couple of hours and then went off again. We had no trouble communicating by phone (hard-line). They can't see any structural damage - they did go outside for a while - I was glad to hear that in their neighborhood the power lines are all underground.

Dylan made a fortress with pillows at the end of his parents' bed. He slept in there with Sheepie, (his favorite stuffed animal), a lantern, and some books. He had a fiction section and a non-fiction section. He's been hearing that there may be another hurricane in a few days (Ivan) so he says they'll need more Oreos and more M&Ms. This kid knows how to stock up for a hurricane.

Laurie has no idea how the school building fared. Dylan's class is in a portable classroom - so I'm hoping that it wasn't TOO portable.



Anyway, the worst is over down in Palm City, Dick is home, Mother knows we'll do the trash tomorrow, and all's right with the world.

Season Opener

OK - Whoopee - Michigan 43 - Miami of Ohio 10


Boo Hoo - Rutgers 19 - Michigan State 14

I think that State is the only Big 10 school that lost today. On the bright side, they have nowhere to go but up.
On the dark side, the Michigan kicker missed two (2) TWO points after touchdown. This will not work next week against Notre Dame.
Just before kickoff at noon, I got a delivery of beautiful flowers - yellow flowers in a blue vase tied with a yellow ribbon. It was from Sue and John, and I was really surprised. It was a very thoughtful thing to do!


At 9 a.m. the driveway sealer people came. Today they're doing McLenithan's, Barker's, ours, and out by the road. It took them pretty much all day - they were finished around 4:30. The man said we would all get a 15% discount if we all did it at once. A pretty good deal, I think. And the driveway looks terrific. They filled the cracks, and edged all the way around.


Dick had a great time at the game with John and Sue and Bill. John and Sue are going to Rochester Hills after the game to stay with Doug and Odette - tomorrow is Odette's birthday.
Dick's been having a sore throat lately, so he didn't do his usual yelling. His throat is still a little sore this evening. He and Sniders went out to a Chinese Buffet. He'll be coming home tomorrow.
Tonight I got pizza at Mancino's and took it into town to have dinner with Mother. We had pizza and salad. She said it was the first time in her life that she had real pizza. She's only had the store bought frozen variety. It was a real treat - she said it was delicious.

In Florida, the kids are really bored with being inside the house not being able to see outside because of the shutters...and just listening to the wind. They have peeked out the front door a couple of times and they report that all the trees on their street are uprooted and down on the ground. So far they don't have any flooding. They still have power (cross your fingers) but 88% of Martin County is without power. In their old neighborhood in Delray Beach, everybody is without power. Boynton Beach is the worst hit, according to their local TV coverage. Laurie's best friend Sallie Nelson has had a tree hit her house- I have no idea of the damage. Dylan says that their garage door is "moaning". Chip held the phone out the front door so I could hear the wind. It really was moaning. They are expecting the eye of the hurricane around 2 a.m. - and that's the calm part so they should be able to get some rest over night. Hurricanes are no fun. Laurie says she's nervously munching M&Ms.

Garrison Keillor

This is a must read for any thinking homo sapiens:


We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore
By Garrison Keillor
August 26, 2004
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.