So yesterday the Dem’s finally took control of the House. In a, if you don’t mind me saying so, weird-ass move, newly crowned Speaker Pelosi asked all the members of the House to send up their grandkids for her swearing in… What a chick-move.

Luckily for me, the cheesiness of this moment was overcome by the uneasiness of one of the tykes; instead of being merely a lame PR stunt, the event turned into an incredibly awkward moment for one “little” girl…

Oh-My-GOOOOOOOODDDDDD! Look at that blond girl! She’s like 13 and all the other kids are like 5!!! Bahahahahahah! What a jerk! Who thought it would be a good idea to send this goober up with all the other little kids? Look at her face; she knows she’s too old to be up there! And now this pic is on every front page in the country. We’re talking years of therapy here. She’s taller than the damn Speaker!

Oh man, oh man. So, if anyone out there is having a bad day, just remember, you could be this chump…

There’s a line in the excellent new Scorsese flick, The Departed, that has been playing through my head.  Near the beginning of the film, Irish Mob boss Frank Costello says, “Twenty years after an Irishman couldn’t get a job, we had the presidency, God rest him.”  The line plays on the same unique American aura  that The Godfather tapped into three-decades ago.  The American Dream.  The chance that a man, or a people, can go from nothing to the top in practically no time at all.  From the oppressed to cock-of-the-walk in a single generation.  I’ve come to accept that this is how evangelical, born-again Christians must have felt when George W. Bush was elected President. 

Highly religious American Christians had increasingly been the butt of the joke (pretty much any joke) for years.  They were hicks.  Under-educated.  Illogical. Intolerant.    Judgmental.  Self-righteous.  Ripe for mocking.  And mocked they were.  To see an Evangelical Christian on the news was to see someone, usually with a laughably sparse vocabulary complaining about some inconsequential matter most people would never think twice about, let alone take the time to protest.  The conservative Christian character on a TV show or movie was almost always playing the part of villain, standing in the way of the free-thinking, open-minded hero.  Burned and barbed by the media again and again, the Born Agains became wise to the fact that the best they could hope for when dealing with the media was to be laughed at.  And so they remained quiet.  They went to their mega-churches every Sunday, quietly.  They asked themselves which candidate Jesus would vote for, quietly.    Interpreting the bible literally, they believed the Earth was formed but 6,000-years-ago…  Quietly.  And their numbers grew.

In November of the year 2000, the first Born Again Christian was elected President of the United States of America, again, quietly.    It was a much tamer affair than when the Catholic JFK was elected.  People were not overly alarmed.  For, over the course of 30-years leading up to the 2000 election of George W. Bush, Americans felt that most issues of Religion and State had been more or less debated and solved already.  The State would take no position on issues of faith.  Religion would stay in the church.

That’s what most Americans figured.  There was one group, of course, that did not consider the Church/State fight settled at all.  And, after decades of being increasingly marginalized, finally, one of them had come to power.  And then, all of a sudden, the quirky, formerly quiet and respectful Jesus-folk went on the rampage.  As their Savior George W. Bush led these peaceful people into War, War(!), of all un-Christian things, they focused on “correcting” every gripe they had been surpressing for the past three-decades.  Gay marriage.  Evolution.  Prayer in school.  (Notice I left out abortion, which I wouldn’t classify as a “gripe,” as it is a quite serious issue, no matter the side you fall on)  And, so long as the Christian masses gave him free reign to do pretty much whatever the hell he wanted, Bush was happy to sustain their Theocratic fantasies, and (why not), even turn back the clock a bit on a secular progression or two.

Yes, the hardcore Christian did become emboldened, and their demands did rise.  And this is a problem because, as most people already recognize, most hardcore Christians are a mess of misplaced anger and hypocrisies.

Example: Born Again Christians imagine themselves to be a fiercely Patriotic folk.  You know them, the ones with the American flag bumper stickers on their cars, the ones overtly proclaiming their love of America to no particular ends.  And yet, I have more than a hankering that if there were a vote tomorrow to abandon the Constitution of the United States (you know, that document that makes America the country they so love) in favor of a new document stating that the country shall be run by laws in accordance with the rules written in the Bible, the Born Agains would vote to ditch that dodgy ol’ Constitution en masse. Ah, yes, how patriotic.
 
I don’t think it enhances ones argument to call the opposing side idiotic (though, truth be told, if you got a couple of beers in this space man you could probably coax it out of me).  But the conservative, born-again Christians certainly ACT idotically.  Judging their various conflicting stances, I can only conclude they do not have any idea what it means to be a patriotic American, or what this country really stands for.  As with their leader, it’s tough to figure out if they are actually ignorant or willfully blind.  Whatever the case, it is important to realize that Bush emboldened an Idiot Culture in America, and that is a very serious thing.

It’s the culture that demands criticizes evolution, without ever taking the time to learn the intricacies of the theory they decry.  The culture that, again hypocritically, creates false idol after false idol (Bush. Falwell. Etc.) and unquestionably accept the opinions of their demi-God as their own.  It’s a culture that has a curious disdain for science.  I suppose their anti-scientific attitude stems from the evolution “debate,” but, much like Scientologists’ not entirely clear hatred of psychiatrists, it’s strange conservative Christians, say, take a stance against believing in Global Warming, for no obvious reason other than the fact it was those dastardly “scientists” who “came up with it.”

 In some ways, I welcome their resistance to scientific proclamations.  After all, am I not just as blindly believing the things the Scientists say as they are the things their Super Reverends say?  Do I ever delve into the actual studies and verify the facts I’m told by scientists?  No, not often.   But I have, in my day (college days, mostly) gone in depth into several experiments, examined how their facts are arrived at, how the publish/peer review system works, and, like Socrates, who remembers that a triangles’ angles equal 180-degrees, even if he doesn’t remember exactly how the mathematical proof showed it, I am confident that the system is delivering me accurate facts and proclamations.  The conservative Christians question what scientists say, but I don’t think any meaningful percentage of them ever go back to the original experiments.  I don’t think they have any interest in PROVING the scientists wrong.  They’re lazy; it’s a lot easier to just point to The Book and say, “Nuh-uh.”

The emboldening of the willfully ignorant.  That’s to be the lasting legacy of the Bush Presidency.  Ouch.

In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, you can’t drive on the roads unless you have auto insurance. The Libertarian in me bristles at this notion. After all, who is the State to dictate how I should pay off the costs of a car accident I am involved in? Maybe I’m a safe driver and independently wealthy, and, being able to afford to pay for any unlikely accident/injury to myself or other parties, don’t want to waste hundreds of dollars per month insuring my 1960’s vintage Cadillac; if I crash, I’ll pay the price, but I don’t want to pay money every month just in case I crash. Who is the state to demand I pay that money to a private, for-profit business?

While the Libertarian fraction of this spaceman’s psyche doesn’t like the idea of the state demanding I insure myself while driving, the pragmatist in me recognizes that I don’t, in fact, have the money for a 1960’s vintage Cadillac, and neither do 95% of the knuckleheads on the road with me. If I cause a car crash and do some serious damage to another person, they simply won’t be able to extract the funds from poor-ol’ me to put their life back together, and thus auto insurance is a necessary state imposition.

It isn’t quite a straight line to mandatory health insurance, however. The best argument for a law insisting on auto insurance is that, on the road, you could hurt someone else. When you neglect your health by not buying health insurance, you’re really only hurting yourself. And, hurting one’s self is a right of a United States citizen. Or is it?

When a poor person hurts himself, goes to the ER, is treated, but cannot pay the bill, who pays for the services rendered? Other tax payers. This situation is at the crux of Massachusetts’ new bill that basically requires all Mass. citizens to obtain health insurance. The way the Mass. legislators see it, tax payers already pay the bill when someone below the poverty line visits the ER. Countless studies over the past few decades have proven that preventing someone from getting sick (regular checkups, available prescriptions, etc. all go a long way towards preventing someone from becoming ill) is exponentially cheaper than treating someone who gets sick. Thus, it only makes fiscal sense to require everyone have health insurance, and for the state to pay the insurance charges for those who can’t afford it. Everyone will be healthier, and, added bonus, it will probably be cheaper in the long run.

On Monday the first stage of Massachusetts’ Health Care For All plan went into effect. I support the plan, and I commend Republican Governor Mitt Romney for getting behind it. From now until Spring 2007, the plan will only effect Mass. citizens under the state’s defined poverty line of $9,800 a year. Anyone who makes less than this amount now has health insurance through one of four private insurance companies working with the state. The impoverished citizens pay no deductible, and their visits to the doctor cost as little as $3. But, in reality, these people already were getting a sort of free healthcare, as, since they couldn’t pay their medical bills, the tax payers were paying for their hospital visits anyway. The plan’s biggest effects will bee seen this Spring when the plan starts to work for the State’s lower middle class, those making between $10,000 and $40,000 a year, who make too much money to simply ignore medical bills like the poorest citizens do, but perhaps not enough money to justify the considerable expense of monthly medical insurance bills. These people often go without health insurance and pay out-of-pocket for their visits to the doctor’s when they get sick. Since these visits are so expensive, they often put off going in for medical treatment until they’re in really bad shape, which obviously lowers their quality of life the much of the time. The lower-middle class will now be forced to obtain health insurance, or else pay tax penalties. The good news is the new health insurance plans offered to them in conjunction with the state will be significantly lower than they used to be.

One las thing. I was never really a supporter of the idea of universal health care until I began to think about America’s entrepreneurs, arguably our greatest resource. Most middle class Americans get their health care through their employers. I see the lack of universal health care as a real impediment to entrepreneurship, because it keeps people with good ideas and skills from leaving their day jobs to start their own business. You may have a billion dollar idea with an 80% chance of success in the marketplace, but if you’re married with 3 kids, can you justify quitting your job and starting your own company, knowing you won’t be able to afford paying out of pocket for your family’s health insurance? Very likely you’ll simply stay with your job for the benefits, and thus your million-dollar idea fades away. I don’t think a system like that makes economic sense for our country.

I jumped into Woodward’s thus far excellent new tome, State of Denial, the third book in his Bush at War series, this morning. These books by Woodward are invaluable. I think they should be read in every classroom, though I know, because of perceived political bent, that could never happen (the first two books were decidedly pro-Bush and, though I’m not far enough in to make an informed judgment myself, the media consensus is that ol’ Woodward’s done a complete 180 in his newest volume, writing a book quite critical of both the President’s administration and of the man himself). The fascinating thing about these books is not the so-called revelations (if you caught Press Secretary Tony Snow’s take on the book, he fell upon his standard/overused line of, “We’ve heard it all before. This administration isn’t living in the past, yada, yada, yada,” as though he finds it laughable that anyone would bother judging an administration in a state of war on past mistakes) but rather the connections Woodward illuminates between political players.

I think I’m representative of most Americans when I say I generally have no idea how, say, a Presidential cabinet is formed in the days before and shortly following an election. Woodward’s book makes you realize that it really is just one man (the newly elected President) picking names and resumes, often of people he’s never met before the obligatory sit-down when he offers them the job. In the case of W, if Woodward’s book is to be believed, he mainly picked people who had served in the White House before (Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense during the Ford Admin, for instance), bringing back the many of his father’s old guard. You always recognize, in the abstract, that nepotism plays a bigger role in politics than in nearly any other field, but, when you’re seeing the connections right there on the page in black and white, it’s quite unsettling: Person A serves in the White House in the 70’s, becomes acquainted with Person B. Person B serves under the first President Bush, Bush takes a liking to Person B’s friend, Person A. First Bush recommends Person A to serve on Bush 2’s cabinet as such and such. Bush 2 accepts the recommendation because, well, it’s his dad… There’s no adequacy test one must take in politics, no way to prove one’s competency.

So far into the book, Woodward has painted the picture of a President overwhelmed by the options in front of him, blindly accepting the recommendations of people around he trusts not for intellectual reasons, but for their friendliness with his Dad or himself. As it turns out, he may have put together the most wholly incompetent cabinet we’ve seen in a while. I always kind of figured, “Well, these are the guys Bush picked; I’m sure he had good reasons for picking each one.” And yet, the various reasons for their appointments in the book, reasons concluded from the hundreds of interviews Woodward conducted, always seem to be suspect. W picked his Chief of Staff, Andy Card, because his father told him he’d never come across someone as loyal Card. Well, great. A dog is loyal. But now Card’s in a position to make national policy decisions, decisions that affect my life everyday, because Card always sided with Bush 1 a decade ago (takes a lot of guts to side with a sitting President, by the way)? It’s a bit disturbing to think about…