This Is the Week that Is

It was almost magical. Someone described his acceptance speech on Thursday evening as "a symphony". That might sound a bit over-the-top but under the circumstances, the person who described it as such should be forgiven. Truth be told, it was music to many an ear. There stood the Illinois senator, a mile high in the American night, the first non-white person in the history of this troubled republic to receive the nomination from a major political party - the oldest political party on the planet earth - to run for the office of president of the United States of America. Is this a great country, or what?
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Moments such as this are few and far between these days. During the last eight years, it was difficult if not impossible for a thinking person to hold his or her head up high and bubble with pride at the thought of being a citizen of this doomed country. Witnessing Barack Obama deliver his address to the Democratic National Convention brought that pride back with a vengeance. Thank heavens for video tape. As a result of two hefty glasses of vodka and vegetable juice, I nodded out on the couch and missed the whole damned thing. My apologies to Mr. Daniel G. O'Brien of St. Petersburg, Florida. (See "Wake Up America", 27 August, to understand what I'm talking about).
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The following day, in order to dampen Barack's thunder, John McCain chose the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, to be his running mate. At the moment her name was announced, I immediately began to do some research on her. The first (and only) thing that struck me was the date of her birth: February 11, 1964. Coincidentally, that was the very day that my beloved, maternal grandma, Loretta Doran Clements, passed away in South Bend, Indiana. Other than that poignant fact, there was nothing that resonated with me as far as the Palin biography is concerned.
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She typifies the kind of nominee so often found in the top ranks of what used to be known as the "Party of Abraham Lincoln". Don't get me wrong, she's obviously a very good person. When told early in her last pregnancy that her baby would have Down Syndrome, she chose to bring the child into the world regardless. God bless her. But goodness aside, we're not talkin' genius here, folks. Did you get a load of her acceptance speech yesterday? She looked and sounded like a giddy little fifteen-year-old who had just been elected class president. Not a whole hell of a lot of gravitas there to be sure. She reminded me of Sally Field as Gidget.
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When told that she was being considered for the ticket, Governor Palin looked straight into the camera and asked, "What exactly does a vice-president do?" There is footage out there of her admitting that she hasn't thought too much about the war in Iraq. That is perfectly obvious since she seems absolutely tickled pink that her oldest son is now headed there.
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And this is the person who will be walking the delicate, geo-political tight rope of international diplomacy should a prospective President McCain become incapacitated in any way? Did Johnny even think this one through? I am convinced that the poor old bugger is on the verge of dementia. There is no other possible explanation. None.
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It is interesting to speculate that were it not for the efforts of a man who was born five miles down the road from my birthplace, Sarah Palin would today be a citizen of Russia, ineligible to serve as vice-president of the United States and we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
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DAMN YOU, WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD!
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It really doesn't take a political scholar to figure out what the Republicans are up to. In a lame and clumsy effort to tap into the disaffected Hillary Clinton voters, they just had to nominate a woman to run as second on the ticket. She is the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Although GOP propaganda have called it a "city", it is, in fact, a small town of under seven-thousand residents. From there she went straight to the Governor's mansion in Anchorage where she has been for less than two years. Hardly an impressive resume. Remember, Alaska is a rural state. Eddie Diana, the county executive of where I live in Orange County, New York, has more responsibilities than Governor Palin. Comparing the governors of Alaska and, say, California is like comparing the presidents of the United States and Upper Volta (Never heard of it, huh? It's there - or at least it used to be - Look it up.)
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The Democrats have every reason not to be jumping for joy over such a eye-poppingly lousy choice. In 1988 George Bush the elder, chose as his running mate J. Danforth Quayle, a man so utterly lacking in substance he reminded one of a mannequin in a department store window. Twelve years after that, the GOP had the misfortune of nominating a half-witted cowboy wannabe, the son of George 42. The guy was so rip-roaringly stupid, he made Dan Quayle look like Albert Einstein. The Republicans won both of those elections. Four years later, the people foolishly reelected the younger Bush. Given the nutty, recent history of American electoral politics, the Democrats have every reason to be cautious.
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If you thought the campaigns of 2000 and 2004 were dirty, hold on to your hats, kiddies! Those contests were but a prelude of things to come. We are now living in the age of Karl Rove and should be prepared for anything.While I was writing the previous piece on this site, quoting Dennis Kucinich's address to the convention, I noticed something very ominous about the words, "Up with Obama-Biden". Oh, shit! I thought. The similarities!
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Obama-Biden
Osama bin Laden
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In anticipation of where the assholes on the far right would go with that, yesterday I telephoned Obama's national campaign headquarters:
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"Listen", I told the poor bastard on the other end of the phone, "you've gotta be careful how you print those freakin' posters and bumper stickers, okay? 'BARACK AND JOE IN 2008'? Fine; 'THE DEMOCRATS ARE BACK'? No problem; 'BARACK ' n' ROLL'? Cool! BUT FOR PETE'S SAKE, NOT 'OBAMA-BIDEN', AWRIGHT???"
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"Gee!" the guy replied in a robotic, albeit perfectly amiable voice, "I hadn't noticed that. I'll bring it up with the Senator."
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Whether or not he was ever able to "bring it up with the Senator" is now beside the point. In this morning's Times Herald-Wreckage of Middletown, NY, a cartoonist has already picked up on the idea (in a satirical way, of course). Count on these silly, right wing jackasses to seize the banner at any moment. There is no depth to which these knuckleheads won't stoop. Count on it.
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It is depressing as hell to contemplate how astonishingly dumbed-down the American people have become in the last thirty years with respect to affairs of state. This contest should have been the easiest call since 1932. On the eve of the election that year, someone sent a telegram to President Herbert Hoover with the following, very cheeky message:
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"VOTE FOR ROOSEVELT AND MAKE IT UNANIMOUS"
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The only way Barack Obama and Joe Biden will be able to win this thing will be in a landslide. Don't forget that the Bush Mob were able to steal two elections only because the margins were so damned razor-thin. They have had those new, easily hackable, computerized voting machines conspicuously installed in the so-called "purple states" where victory for the GOP is not-at-all a forgone conclusion. Senators Obama and Biden have to get out there and convince the American people that a vote for McCain/Palin is the equivalent of committing economic suicide. That very fact is so incredibly obvious, why is it that so many just don't get it. What in the hell is wrong with the American people?
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One has to go all the way back Jack and Bobby Kennedy to find American politicians as extraordinary as Senator Barack Obama. Sure he has a bit of a funny name. But a year-and-a-half of it being repeated over and over again in the mainstream media has somewhat softened its edge. One has to give credit to the guy for not campaigning under the name "Barry" (as in "Goldwater") which is how he is known to his closest confidants. Maybe it is too much to expect of one mere mortal, but I believe he has the potential to save America's political soul. Heaven knows it sure needs saving.
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John McCain offers us only the tired and failed, trickle-down ideas of the last thirty years that should have been buried with the body of Ronald Reagan. In Barack Obama we have something new and inspiring. Hope: It's not a meaningless campaign slogan. It is a very real emotion that many Americans are feeling for the first time in decades.
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Said Teddy Kennedy when endorsing him earlier this year, "I feel change in the air." Yeah, I feel it too. Can't you?
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net
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In homage to the great Beth Quinn who always gently reminded the readers of the Times Herald-Record (Wreckage) how much time was left until January 20, 2009 before Rupert Murdoch purchased that paper and she was summarily fired without explanation:
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There are one-hundred and forty-two days to go until the disgusting, criminally corrupt and incompetent administration of George W. Bush is history.
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AFTERTHOUGHT:
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Just in case you fell asleep in front of your television on Thursday night, here is a link to the incredible speech that Barack Obama gave to the convention. It truly was an historic moment:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv8eiDvrHJ4

Wake up, America!

My brother, Jeff Degan, is positively un-American. He lives in Frankfurt, Germany. He married a French woman. Need I say more?
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Early this morning I received an e-mail from the little commie bastard, with the message that that he was sending me a You Tube video link to "Dennis the Menace at the convention". He was referring to an address to the delegates late yesterday afternoon by the one and only, Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, a man whom - in a perfect world - would today be the Democratic nominee. Although I was home at the time, I missed this event because I was watching a film I have seen over a hundred times before and will probably see over a hundred times again; a Charlie Chaplin two-reeler from 1916 called, One A.M. Ninety-two years later and it's still a scream.
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Kucinich was imploring the country to wake up:
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Up with health care!
Up with education for all!
Up with home ownership!
Up with guaranteed retirement benefits!
Up with peace!
Up with prosperity!
Up with the Democratic party!
Up with Obama-Biden!
Wake up, America!
Wake up, America!
Wake up, America!
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I half expected him to start singing:
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Up, up with people!
You meet 'em where ever you go!
Up, up with people!
They're the best kind of folks to know!
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"Up With People". Remember them? They were Richard Nixon's favorite rock group. That should give you somewhat of an idea how perfectly lame they were. My father once dragged me to one of their concerts at the local high school. For thirty-something years I've been trying to get that awful song out of my head but, try as I might, I just can't seem to do it.
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All kidding aside, though, Kucinich delivered a fine speech. It was yet another reminder why he is a flower among the political weeds. His campaign was doomed from the start for no other reason than the fact that he just isn't telegenic. Had Abraham Lincoln today sought the nomination from any party but the Greens, it isn't much of a stretch to conclude that he would not have won a single primary. When people listen to Dennis on the radio they're mesmerized. But for reasons I cannot for the life of me figure out, when they see him speak, they tune him out. In the days before TV he would have been a political superstar. It only proves beyond a doubt that for each step forward we take technologically, we take two steps backwards intellectually.
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A tip of the hat to my darling nemesis, Hillary Clinton. During her keynote address to the convention, she seemed to make a sincere effort to heal the wounds that the Democrats sustained during the most brutally fought primaries in forty years. Her behavior during the next two months will prove whether or not she is really being a team player. For the time being, at least, I'm going to give the old gal the benefit of the doubt.
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My very vocal disdain toward her candidacy from the beginning seemed to many to be just a case of good, old fashioned sexism on my part. Please understand the reason I was against the very idea of a second Clinton administration. It had not a thing to do with the fact that she is a woman. As I have said on these very pages, had the candidate been Eleanor Holmes Norton or Claire McCaskill, I would have been working overtime for either of their campaigns - the hell with Barack Obama!
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My problem with Senator Clinton's candidacy was her October 2002 vote to give George W. Bush the authority to invade the (like it or not) sovereign nation of Iraq. It was the most important vote she will ever make in her life, a virtual political no-brainer - and she blew it. The fact is, she doesn't possess the judgement to be president. She now has the opportunity to redeem herself in the eyes of many by using her considerable influence to ensure that Barack Obama is inaugurated on January 20, 2009 as the forty-fourth president of the United States. Last night she told the cheering convention, "No way. No how. No McCain". Good for her. Her husband is scheduled to speak this evening.
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MESSAGE TO BILL:
Now you just behave yourself, Bubbah, and don't you be causin' no trouble t'night, boy! Ya' hear?
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But the highlight of the Democratic Convention of 2008 (as it also was twenty-eight years ago) was Teddy Kennedy's speech. Were I to try, I would never be able to forget the night of August 12, 1980. I was visiting my old pal, Dan O'Brien, who was then living on Route 57 in Liverpool, NY in a one-room kitchenette (Hey! Times were tough! Cut the man some slack, Jack!) Teddy's words that evening - political poetry - resound across the decades. In front of an audience of millions, he resolved....
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"....to speak for those who have no voice; to remember those who are forgotten; to respond to the frustrations and fulfill the aspirations of all Americans seeking a better life in a better land....for all those whose cares have been our concern, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."
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Watching that address on a small, black and white television set, I instinctively knew that I was witnessing an historical political oration so powerful and moving that it would be remembered a century into the future. It truly was a sublime moment. Leave it to O'Brien! He slept through the whole damned thing.
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On Monday evening, Edward Moore Kennedy once again addressed the Democratic National Convention for what, sadly, will probably be the last time. His three older brothers, Joe, Jack and Bobby, remain etched in our national memory as the youthful, vigorous men they were, all three violently wrenched from this life at far too young an age. How ironic it is that our final vision of the baby of that family will be that of an old man, frail and mortally ill. But - DAMN! - the fire was still there.
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It hasn't really been a good year for the right wing, has it? In addition to the fact that the people are finally starting to wake up to the damage these knuckleheads have done to this country, they now have to deal with the nasty reality that they won't have Teddy to kick around anymore. He'll soon be passed from our midst and attacking him now - for any reason - will merely be viewed as cruel and in bad taste. For decades, nothing made the Republican hardliners donate cash to the cause more than having the words "If Teddy Kennedy has his way...." on a fundraising letter. Those days are gone forever. Behind every dark cloud, there is indeed a silver lining.
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When he first campaigned for the nomination to the senate seat he has held for almost forty-six years (the amount of years his brother Jack would spend on this earth), he ran against Eddie McCormick, whose Uncle John was the Speaker of the House of Representitives. McCormick told him in public debate that, but for his name, his candidacy would be viewed as a joke. In fact, looking at film footage of that campaign today, our boy Ted is definitely in way over his head. Had he not been the much younger brother (by fifteen years) of an already young president, he would not even have been considered for the nomination and his name would today be lost to history. The sad fact of the matter is that in 1962, he was the walking, talking definition of a lightweight. Who then would have ever imagined that this punk - this spoiled little rich kid - would in time evolve into the greatest senator ever to walk through those halls? We're a better country because of Teddy Kennedy. God bless him.
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The Democratic National Convention of 2008 seems to be going off without a hitch. No one, so far, has thrown a monkey wrench into the proceedings. Hillary Clinton's hard core supporters (most of them anyway) seem to be bowing to reality and are getting with the program. Her candidacy was, no doubt, an historic milestone; but so is Barack Obama's - more so, in fact. In the future, after having elected an African American to the White House, the prospect of sending a woman there won't seem half as daunting. At this moment, on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Pat Buchanan is saying that Hillary has more than "supporters", she has a following. They will never desert her for Barack Obama. I hope that's not the case. The devotion of the Clintonistas is impressive, even admirable in a weird way. But they have a chance in this political year to be part of something monumental. Like FDR three quarters of a century ago, Barack Obama promises to be a very new and refreshing kind of president. Before he got involved with politics he was known as a brilliant organizer. Of this we may all be certain: He will organize a brilliant administration.
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This can't be emphasized enough: Democrats need to come together. That's all there is to it. As Senator Clinton herself said last night, "We don't need four more years of the last eight years." If John McCain and his appallingly corrupt party are able to once again seize control of the executive branch of our government this November (and it is our government - don't you dare forget it!) the results, I'm afraid, will end up being catastrophic for America.
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John McCain is not the leader the times demand. Barack Obama is. Could it possibly be more obvious?
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net
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SUGGESTED VIEWING:
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The American Experience:
The Kennedys
PBS Video
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Here is a link to the video of Congressman Dennis Kucinich mentioned at the top of this piece:
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http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/kucinich/
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There are one-hundred and forty-five days left until this nightmare of an administration is over.

The Senile Old Bobblehead

To say that this has been one hell of an interesting week would be an understatement. Witnessing the depths to which the right wing will sink to win the upcoming election are, all at once, amusing, disturbing, funny, tragic - and mind-numbingly ridiculous. They obviously won't be able to appeal to the finest instincts in the soul the average American voter; they can't make their case based upon the logic of their arguments (What logic?) They're going to have to go into the gutter - It's their only hope! The only way they will be able to win the White House on Election Day will be by scaring the wits out of the people. All they have to do is keep emphasizing the imagined ramifications of electing the first African American in history - A DAMNED NEE-GROW, FER CHRISSAKES! - as president of the United States of America. Well, Ah do declare! Oh, Mammy, pass me mah smellin' salts!

Their task is not going to be as tough as you think it might be. The fact that Barack Obama is neck and neck with John McCain doesn't speak well with respect to the overall character of the American people. What other explanation can it be other than Senator Obama's race? McCain is a doddering old fool! Half of the time he doesn't even seem to know where the hell he is. Just yesterday, when asked by a reporter how many houses he owned, McCain told him that he would have to check with his staff (The official guess-timate is anywhere from seven to eleven) - and this is the guy who incredibly is trying to portray Barack Obama as an elitist, for the love of Mike!
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Don't let the pundits fool you. The national trepidation toward Senator Obama has not a thing to do with his perceived lack of "experience". He has just as much - if not more - experience than some of the greatest presidents in America history (Washington, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Wilson and Eisenhower come readily to mind). It has nothing to do with his "youth". This is where a remedial knowledge of American history comes in quite handy. Barack Obama turned forty-seven years old on August 4. Should he take the oath of office on January 20, he will be older than four previous presidents on the days they were inaugurated (Ulysses S Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton). In his first four years in office, he will be the same age (and a bit older) than James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Garfield were at various stages during their first terms. So let us air out the smoke screen and deal with reality as honestly and as bluntly as is possible:
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The only reason Barack Obama is not destroying John McCain in the polls because he is a black man. Case closed.
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Consider this: Not since 1864, when the Democrats nominated the inept and reactionary civil war general George McClellan to run against President Lincoln has a major political party put forth a dud like Senator McCain to serve as their standard bearer. Not since the Dems gave the nod to JFK almost half a century ago has there been a candidate as extraordinary as Senator Obama. And yet, today anyway, some polls actually have McCain in the lead.
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Question: What's wrong with this picture?
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As of this writing, America's world-wide reputation is lower than it has ever been in its history. What we have here is the opportunity of a lifetime to right some extremely nasty wrongs. Just think about it for a minute. How are we going to look if we reject a thoughtful, articulate, intelligent and vigorous young man of ideas like Barack Obama over a man (on the verge of dementia in case you haven't noticed) who has said - more times than can even be counted - that he has every intention of continuing the disastrous, reckless military and economic policies of George W. Bush? Policies that have crippled the infrastructure of a country that used to be a perfectly lovely place in which to live! And now it seems that we are more than happy to continue down this same, self destructive path. If that happens, we're gonna look like country packed to the rafters with assholes and masochists, don'cha think???
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And then there's the fact of McCain's reputation for being....I'll put this as delicately as possible....a man of combustible temperament. In an article that was published earlier this week on military.com, Phillip Butler wrote a devastating piece on the Senator from Arizona. Unlike the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" propaganda campaign against John Kerry in 2004, Butler actually served with John McCain. Not only did the two of them graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958, they were both prisoners of war together at the infamous Hanoi Hilton from 1967 until 1973. After debunking many of the lies about McCain's service - most of which are being perpetuated by McCain himself (the myth that he was tortured for the entire time he was held as a POW, for instance) - Butler wrote the following:
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"I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button....In short, I think Senator John Sidney McCain, III is a good man, but not someone I will vote for in the upcoming election to be our President of the United States."
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Phillip Butler's opinion is not one to be taken lightly. It is safe to assume that he knows even more about the inner workings of John McCain's psyche than Cindy, having spent all those years incarcerated with him in a North Vietnamese prison. John McCain's explosive temper, his penchant for hurling obscenities and threats of physical violence at his colleagues in the senate is legendary. This is not the kind of guy you want walking the slender tightrope of international diplomacy. Trust me.
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Some of the pundits are saying that it is Senator Obama's lack of military experience that concerns them. How could this possibly be so? Franklin D. Roosevelt had no military experience. Nor did Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams or Ronald Reagan. True, Reagan wore the uniform of his country during World War II, but he spent the duration of that conflict making Army training films on the Hal Roach lot in Hollywood. That is where Laurel and Hardy and Little Rascals worked. Just try and picture that scene in your mind: Stan and Ollie, Ronnie and Buckwheat - fighting, side by side, for the American Way. Someone pass me my hanky.
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While it is a fact that Abraham Lincoln did volunteer for the Black Hawk War in 1832, he spent most of his brief enlistment, as he later jokingly reflected, "battling mosquitoes". Yes, the man who saved America from disintegration as Commander of the Union Army during the Civil War, never saw a single day of combat. He was our greatest president. Any arguments? Thank you.
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The lessons of history teach us that military experience is not a prerequisite to being an able and effective chief-executive. Indeed, the examples of Wilson and FDR, two Democrats who presided over the two great wars of the twentieth century, are borne out by that fact.
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Senator Obama lacks military experience, they tell us? He's in pretty good company. And since when is having been in combat essential for the presidential resume? With the exception of George Washington, and a few others, most of the Founding Fathers were non-veterans. Of the forty-two men who served as president between 1789 and 2008, eighteen of them never served in the military. Of the ones that did, less than half of them ever saw combat. Please note: that list would include the man who went AWOL from the Alabama National Guard in 1972, the current president, George Walker Bush - or, as I like to call him: G.I. Joke.
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What we desperately need at this point in time is a leader who has not been brainwashed by decades of Washington's mentality - I'm referring to the town, not the president. (Which reminds me, knowing the personal character of President Washington, can you even imagine what his reaction would be were he to come back and see the current, deplorable state of the city which bears his name? I shutter to think!) Maybe the time has come for a president who tends to think "outside of the box"; a new kind of leader with new ideas. To whom would you ascribe the personification of that description: John McCain or Barack Obama? You see my point, don't you? I just knew you would! I really did!

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Honestly, this election should be the biggest, electoral no-brainer in three quarters of a century! One of sad things about this day and age is that, for every hour that ticks by, there are fewer and fewer people left who remember the Great Depression. People who were mere infants when the stock market crashed in October of 1929 are dying off at an overwhelming rate. That is the reason the New Deal lasted as long as it did. In 1981, the year Reagan took office and began the systematic destruction of the legacy of FDR, there were still a few people alive who were grown adults in 1929 and remembered how hard life was back then. The generations of Americans born after the end of the second world war didn't bother to learn the history of their once-great nation. Had they done so, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today. It is as simple and as stupid as that
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As in that time, the American economy had been looted and ransacked for decades by its plutocracy. In the election of 1932, the American voter had the good sense to change course. I'm not too sure about the voter of 2008. If current trends continue, Weeda Peeple will only compound the hideous mistake of sending George W. Bush to the White House twice by giving the disgusting little thug a third term under the misleading title, "The McCain Administration". Call it mindless speculation on my part, but me thinks that we've been down that road before and don't really want to go there again, do we? I didn't think so.
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Pray for peace.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net
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SUGGESTED READING:
The Glorious Burden
by Stephan Lorant
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AFTERTHOUGHT:
When you have a chance, take a look at Mike Weber's new blog, COMMONSENSE. As my Uncle Jerry Degan would say, "Not too shabby!" Here's a link:
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http://www.apoliticalcommentary.blogspot.com/

Jerome Corsi is a Liar and a Pervert

He's at it again. Why won't Jerome Corsi just go away? How is it that a lying jackass like this is able to make a living? Why are so many people in the media, particularly FOX Noise, giving this guy the time of day? What's up with that?

Just to refresh your memory, this is the same Jerome Corsi who four years ago coughed up the lie-filled book, Unfit For Command, a piece of propagandist trash that called into question John Kerry's military service. He even had the gall to say that Senator Kerry never deserved the Purple Heart he received for the very real injuries he sustained in the Vietnam war. This nonsense was quickly swallowed whole by many clueless American voters. Corsi's book, written in cooperation with the Swift Boat Veterans For "Truth", none of whom had even known Kerry during the war, was able to convince enough people that sending a corrupt little thug like George W. Bush back to the White House for another four years was the best thing for their country. And you wonder why the United States is the laughingstock of the Milky Way?

Corsi is back again with another work of fiction. The title is scary enough: The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. ("Cult of Personality"? Does this knucklehead even remember someone named Ronald Reagan? Cult of personality, indeed!) Said Corsi of his latest screed:

"My intent in writing this book, as was the case in coauthoring Unfit For Command, is to fully document all arguments and contentions I make, extensively footnoting all references, so readers can determine for themselves the truth and validity of the factual claims."

Extensive footnoting? In the first eleven footnotes and throughout the book Corsi quotes himself. Call me stubborn but I wouldn't - in a million years - peg this twit as a very reliable reference. In an article that was published yesterday on AlterNet, Matthew Gertz and Eric H. Hananoki wrote the following,

"Indeed, Corsi's comparison of the two books seems quite apt: Just as Unfit For Command contains false and baseless attacks on Senator John Kerry's military service, a Media Matters For America review finds that Obama Nation similarly contains numerous falsehoods about Senator Barack Obama".

Gertz and Hananoki then went on to provide the reader with eight printed pages of examples of the lies spewed fourth by Corsi. Unlike the Kerry campaign four years ago, the Obama organization is determined not to remain "above it all". On their website, they have assertively and convincingly refuted every single charge made by Corsi in his book. It's refreshing to see that the Democrats have finally learned some hard and bitter lessons. There's no need to fight fire with fire - just fight back! HELLO???!

Oh, and speaking of fighting fire with fire:

Why on earth would the Republicans want associate themselves with a man of his character? Aren't they smart enough to understand that his troubling and sordid past is only going to end up being a major embarrassment for them when it eventually becomes public knowledge? I am speaking of the secret life of Jerome Corsi.

Jerome Corsi has never been convicted of or even charged with the crime of child molestation - but it is only a matter of time before that happens. According to a trusted contact I have recently made, he has alienated every friend he ever had with sons between the ages of ten and eighteen. In the town in which he lives, he is well known to his fellow citizens for prowling areas where young boys on skateboards normally congregate. In the summer of 1987, a woman who lived two doors away from Mr. Corsi filed a complaint against him with the local police department. Corsi, it seems, picked up her two, fourteen-year-old twin sons who were seeking a lift to the local mall. One of the boys, Robert J.V. Bush (no relation to the president), is today a thirty-five-year-old assistant manager of a computer chain store just outside Concord, New Hampshire. In a recorded telephone interview conducted on August 12, he told me the following:

"As soon as we got into the car, he started to talk to us in a really weird and disgusting way. He asked us if we had ever engaged in gay sex with one another. I mean, it must have been obvious to him that we were brothers - we're identical twins, for goodness sakes! For the five or ten minutes it took to reach the mall, he just kept on and on. He actually offered us money to pose for photos. The whole experience was really uncomfortable and very, very disturbing. Remember, we were both just kids at the time."

It is more than probable that the mother of the two boys eventually made a private financial settlement with Corsi because she later refused to press charges against him. In my interview with the son on Tuesday evening, he seemed to confirm this:

"She just told us to drop the subject and steer clear of him. I remember she laughed and said, 'He's going to help pay for your college educations.' I can't absolutely prove it all these years later, but it is my belief that she was paid off. You must understand that she was a single mother raising three children. We were living in a nice neighborhood and she wanted to keep us there. But it was difficult for her to make ends meet. She had to take the money."

Mr. Bush's mother has since passed away. According to a reliable source, Corsi is now under investigation regarding another incident alleged to have taken place in October 2006 involving an under aged boy.

Corsi's accusation against Pope John Paul II a number of years ago - that the late pontiff was in favor of child molestation - was the ultimate in hypocrisy. But his private perversions aside, Jerome Corsi is a known liar. That has been proven more times that can be counted. Even his alleged success as an author is a lie. When his book appears on the top of the New York Times Best Seller list this Sunday, there will be a small dart next to the book's title. This means that it has been purchased en bulk by various conservative organizations in an attempt to push it to the top of the charts and that the figures can't be counted on for accuracy. For the record: Michael Moore, Al Franken and Frank Rich never had to stoop to that sort of thing.

The extreme right has one hell of an uphill battle ahead of them, that's for damned sure! John McCain is the worst candidate in my lifetime (I'll be fifty tomorrow). Not since the Democratic party nominated the reactionary and incompetent civil war general George McClellan to run against Abraham Lincoln in 1864 has a major political party put forward such a dud as their standard bearer. Knowing this, you would think that Senator Obama would be a cinch to win this thing, wouldn't you? Yeah, I would think so too. We both would be wrong, though.

The fact of the matter is that Americans are absolute gluttons for propaganda. A full one third still believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. He is not. Most people still believe that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet during the campaign of 2000. Not only did he never make such an absurd statement, he never even implied it. Both assertions were fabrications put forward by the GOP as matters of fact. As has been stated before, they can no longer win a national election based of their ideas because those "ideas" are positively revolting. The only way they will be able to claim victory at the polls in November will be by distorting the character of Senator Obama. Enter Jerome Corsi, stage right.

Will the electorate be naive enough to fall for the GOP's lies and half truths? Times are so desperate that it is next-to-impossible to believe they would compound the mistake of sending George W. Bush to the White House seven-and-a-half years ago by continuing his disastrous policies under a McCain administration. But then again, as P.T. Barnum (or was it H.L. Mencken?) once observed, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. 

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

DISCLAIMER:
In the two years I've been writing "The Rant", I have never printed a single sentence that I knew to be false. The two or three times I found that I had inadvertently printed an error of fact, I went back to correct the offending passage or deleted it entirely. The column that you have just finished reading is an exception to the rule. Some of it is not true - or at least I hope like hell it isn't! As the late, great Fats Waller once intoned with a wink, "One never knows, does one?"

Of the nineteen paragraphs in this piece, five of them are bald-faced lies. The title, "Jerome Corsi Is a Liar and a Pervert" is only half true. While he is indeed a known and documented liar, he is not - to the best of my knowledge anyway - a "pervert". Did you notice those little "details" I provided in order to make the charge of child molestation sound all the more convincing? That is one of Corsi's tricks. What was the point to this journalistic mischief on my part? No point at all, really. I just wanted to give Mr. Corsi a well-deserved taste of his own very nasty tasting medicine. The difference between me and him is the fact that I at least had the common decency to issue this disclaimer. Don't expect the same courtesy from a professional liar like Jerome Corsi.

SUGGESTED READING:

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
by Al Franken

UPDATE, 22 October 2012:

Four years later and Jerome Corsi is up to his old mischief. His charge against President Obama this campaign season? He's secretly gay. I kid you not.

For more recent postings on this electronic cesspool of left wing propaganda, please go to the link below:

"The Rant" by Tom Degan

I TELLS YA, THERE OUGHTA BE A FREAKIN' LAW!!!

Keep voting Republican. There will be.

Beth Quinn Appreciation Day

Saturday, August 9, 2008 was Beth Quinn Appreciation Day at Thomas Bull Memorial Park in Montogmery, NY. For those of you who don't know, for over a quarter of a century Beth was the gifted and popular progressive columnist for the Times Herald-Record, which is (or was) the paper of note in the city of Middletown, NY. Earlier this year, that paper (which I now dismiss as the Times Herald-Wreckage) was purchased by Rupert Murdoch - the same Rupert Murdoch who has blighted our culture in recent years with FOX Noise and the New York Toast. Predictably, within a matter of weeks Beth was fired with no explanation. That paper, which proclaims on the front page of every issue, "SERVING THE HUDSON VALLEY AND THE CATSKILLS", has been bombarded with letters to the editor protesting her dismissal. They have yet to print a single one. Nor did they send a reporter to cover the event which was held this past weekend in her honor. So much for freedom of the press.

For those of you who live in Orange County and the surrounding area (an hour or so north of merrie ol' Manhattan), remember you only know about this because it has been printed in "The Rant". Don't hold your breath waiting for The Record to tell you about it.
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For the last several years, at the close of each of her columns, Beth would remind her many, devoted readers exactly how many days were left until George W. Bush and crew were out of office. I have decided to pick up the torch in her honor:
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There are one-hundred and sixty-two days left until this disgusting administration is history.
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January 20, 2009 just can't come soon enough for me (and Beth!)
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

Photograph of Beth Quinn and Tom Degan taken at Beth Quinn Appreciation Day, Thomas Bull Memorial Park, Montgomery, NY, August 9, 2008

AFTERTHOUGHT:

Saturday also marked the fortieth anniversary of the birth of my longtime, beloved and very conservative Republican friend (I deal with it - day by day), Francesca Hubner Polli. Happy Birthday, Fran! You are truly loved - not only by me - but by every other person whose life has been graced by your friendship. We are all blessed. Now if I could only get you to vote for Barack Obama.

All my love,

Tom

WHERE DO I BEGIN???

From "The Rant", January 27, 2008:

"There's nothing vague about John Edwards' message - you know where he stands on every issue of any importance to average Americans. Unlike Barack Obama, whose heart is in the right place but who talks in poetic generalities, and Hillary Clinton - who is heartless - John Edwards has a definite, tangible vision of the new direction he wants to take America. Why isn't he catching on?"
`

Oh, Johnny we hardly knew ye! Hah-roo! Hah-roo!

Hindsight is a funny thing, isn't it? Can you even imagine what would have happened had this latest sex scandal exploded two weeks before the Democratic National Convention with John Edwards as the presumptive nominee? That would have set progressive politics back to the age of Theodore Roosevelt! And to think that he probably would have been nominated had Barack Obama not decided to run (I just can't convince myself that the Dems would have been foolish enough to give the prize to Hillary Clinton). Can you imagine how the GOP would have exploited that? The fact that John and Cindy McCain got together before he divorced his first wife would not have meant a thing to these nitwits. Hypocrisy knows no shame.

`

Oh! And speaking of hypocrites....

`

I naively believed that Bill and Hillary Clinton had finally conceded to reality and climed on board the Obama bandwagon. That was wishful thinking on my part, I guess. They are both trying to sabatoge Senator Obama's chance to be the First African American in history to live in the White House. Just a few days ago, when approached in Africa by a reporter from the American Broadcasting Company, Bill was asked if he believed Barack Obama qualified to be president of the United States. Our man Bubbah just could not bring himself to say one simple, three-letter word: "YES". And now, it seems, Hillary is determined to have her name placed in nomination at the convention, which is only bound to stir up the emotions of her starry-eyed, sycophantic core supporters - not a hell of a lot of them, but enough to do some serious and lasting damage. They still deeply resent the fact that their gal was defeated by this relatively unknown, prarie lawyer from Illinois....Forgive me, I meant to say "freshman senator from Illinois"....Sorry 'bout that. What was I thinking?
`

This is liable to get ugly, folks. As if I had to explain this to you, what is happening is this: The former first couple is going to do everything humanly possible to see to it that the Democratic candidate loses on Election Day, thereby giving her a shot at the nomination in 2012. The fact that another four years of Republican control of the executive branch of our government would be the final nail in this doomed country's coffin means not a thing to these two. All Bill and Hillary care about is power - raw, naked power. Neither one of them give a damn about the country they profess to love so much. Neither one of them have so much as a clue as to how transparent their lust for the White House is. These are two thoroughly disgusting human beings. And you ask me why I am no longer a Democrat? Please.
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Oh! And speaking of disgusting....
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It is plainly obvious - painfully so - that the Republican party is long past the point where they can win any election on the basis of ideas. As Paul Krugman astutely pointed out yesterday in his New York Times column, the so-called "party of ideas" has become "the party of stupid" (Good heavens, what would we do without Krugman? I shudder to think!)
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The only way John McCain will be able to win this thing in the autumn will be by demonizing his opponent. One would figure that he would have quite an uphill battle given the way twelve years of GOP control of the House and Senate and seven years of the worst presidency in history have nearly destroyed this country. McCain has stated - too many times to count - that he has every intention of continuing with the First Fool's disastrous military and economic policies. The task he has set for himself is not as daunting as one might think. He has one very important element working in his favor: the rip-roaring stupidity of so huge a segment of the American people. An electorate that would cheerfully send a criminally idiotic jackass like George W. Bush to the White House - not merely once, but twice - is capable of just about anything.
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The Republicans have been dealt a very lousy hand. There is only one card they will be able to play from this marked deck - and you know damned good and well which card I am referring to here. They will not be able to win this thing ideologically. By now, most of us know only too well what their ideas are all about. Twenty-eight years of their twisted obsession with deregulation has left America's infrastructure in shambles. Even the utterly clueless American people have started to wake up to that fact. No, the only way the GOP will be able to obtain victory in November will be by frightening the public away from voting for a black man.
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If you thought that the campaings of 2000 and 2004 were ugly - OH, BROTHER! In the words faux black man, the late Al Jolson: "You ain't seen nothin' yet!" This is going to get nasty; very nasty indeed. The most disturbing thing (to me, at least) is the fact that Senators McCain and Obama are in a virtual dead heat. It has to be admitted that had the Democratic nomination gone to a white person, he or she would be fifteen to twenty points ahead of the senile old bobblehead from Arizona. America is having one hell of a hard time coming to grips with the idea that a non-white person could be an able and effective chief-executive. The very thought that a black family could live in any other part of the White House but the servant's quarters is abhorrent to some of these knuckleheads. Will these people ever grow up? I think the time has come where they will be forced to do so.
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Here is what Barack Obama has going in his favor. In extraordinary times past, Americans have shown that they are perfectly capable of doing extraordinary things. While the Democrats took a major gamble by giving the nomination to an African American, it was a gamble that was worth taking. The people are desperate for change. Maybe the time has finally come where they will be able to take the same kind of gamble the Democratic Party took, toss their preconceived notions and predjudices to the wind, and put their trust in a man whom, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt three quarters of a century ago, will ultimately prove to be a very different kind of president.
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Not since Election day 1932 has the need to go in an entirely new direction been as obvious as it is in this extraordinary politcal year. Will we concede to the inevitabitity of the moment? It's hard to say at this point in time. The election is three months away (a lifetime in politics) and anything can happen between now and then. If McCain is elected, it is all-but-certain that the crimes of the Bush administration will never see the light of justice. George W. Bush will do everything in his incalculable power to see to it that Obama is defeated. The right wing propaganda machine, led into battle by Fox Noise, will do everything they can - within the law and without - to make sure that the Republicans are victorious. And let's not forget the very real possibility of voter fraud. They've already stolen two national elections. Don't think for a minute that they aren't planning to do so again. Keep your eyes wide open.
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An Obama administration, if inaugurated on January 20, 2009, will be hard-pressed to correct and reinstate some of the programs and social saftey nets that have been looted by the current, incompetent administration. The overwhelming majority of his time will be spent dealing with the fiscal catastrophe that the Bush Mob will bequeath to him. By the end of his first term, he will be seen even by some in his own party to be a failure (Watch for Senator Clinton to launch a primary challenge against him for the nomination as his first term draws to a close - the woman is absolutely despicable). But hopefully, the country as a whole will come to the realization that too much damage has been done to this once-great nation that can be remedied in a single, four year term. As has been mention on this site before, generations of presidents, some of them as yet unborn, will be dealing with the damage that was done in just eight, short years by this one, ruthlessly corrupt, imbecilic president. Patience and fortitude from all Americans will be called for. The next president of the United States should not make any promises but should instead ask for much sacrifice.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net
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SUGGESTED READING:
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BIG LIES:
The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth
by Joe Conason

Coming of Age in the Sixties

By the time 1969 rolled around, the decade of the 1950s was starting to seem like a century past. America certainly wasn't the place it had been when Ike presided over the White House, that's for damned sure. That really isn't the case as far as the sixties are concerned. Even from the vantage point of 2008, that decade still hovers over America's consciousness to such an astounding degree, it is clear that it won't be going away any time soon.

Consider this: One of the biggest selling CDs of the past year is a compilation of eleven previously released songs by the Beatles (two of whom are long dead), re-mixed and retitled, "Let It Be: Naked". That would be the equivalent of a reissue of Paul Whiteman recordings from the late 1920s making it onto Billboard's Number One position during the summer of 1967! An absurd notion any way you look at it.

Even though I was born in August of 1958 (I'll be fifty on the sixteenth) I still have a very clear memory of the 1950s. That is to say, the decade of the sixties didn't really begin on January 1, 1960, much in the same way that it didn't really end on December 31, 1969. The sixties that we all know, love and loathe began on a sunny, unseasonably warm day in the late autumn of 1963, when the man who symbolized the hopes and aspirations of that era was shot dead in the streets of Dallas, Texas.

Historical hindsight tells us that Jack Kennedy was far from the example of humanity's perfection that so many people believed him to be at the time of his death. But that knowledge does not in any way lessen the horror and genuine grief that most people felt the moment they received the news on their radios and television sets that the president was dead. Some dark and destructive forces were jolted loose from this nation's soul when a bullet from Lee Harvey Oswald's cheap, mail-order rifle shattered President Kennedy's skull on November 22, 1963. America never fully recovered from the psychic shock of that murder. God only knows if it ever will.

"Come Senators, Congressmen, please heed the call/Don't stand in the doorway, don't lock up the hall/For he who gets hurt will be he who has stalled/The battle outside's raging/It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls/For the times they are a'changin'"

Bob Dylan, 1963

In this political year where "change" seems to be the operative word, the decade of the 1960s could very well offer the first decade of the twenty-first century some valuable lessons. As with the 1930s, a long-festering societal dysfunction had bought about a nonviolent, social revolution. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution at the end of the nineteenth century, the plutocracy's assault on the American infrastructure had left the economy in tatters. In 1932, unaffected by the kind of mindless, twenty-four-hour-a-day political propaganda that exists now on the American air waves, the people had the good sense to go in a new direction of real, tangible change when they sent a disabled, son of privilege named Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the White House.

Thirty years after the dawn of the New Deal, a very different type of revolution was brewing within the American soul. The sixties saw the rise of the long-repressed outrage of Black America. From the day President Lincoln had decreed the Emancipation Proclamation a century before, they had been forced to live as second class citizens in the north and fourth class citizens in the south. With leaders as diverse as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X as their spokesmen, they were demanding their piece of the so-called American Dream.

For twenty-five years - from that late afternoon in December 1955 when a tired Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white man - black people in this country seemed to be making slow but significant social and economic progress. That progress came to a dead halt in 1980 when the people foolishly decided to send a former "B" movie actor named Ronald Wilson Reagan to the White House. Later on this year, God willing, that dreadful situation may very well begin to reverse itself. 2008 might be remembered as the year America confronted its racist demons by electing the first African American in history as president of the United States. Keep your fingers crossed and your hands folded.

The second revolution to come out of the sixties was the righteous indignation of an entire generation of kids who were being forced to fight and die in an untenable quagmire in a far away land. By the summer of 1968 it was obvious that the outrage expressed against the Vietnam war was not being vented merely by college age radicals. Within time, people of all ages and classes would turn against that "stupid fucking war" (as the late, lamented Molly Ivins once described it).

The dirty little secret about the massive opposition to Vietnam is that it had not a thing to do with the fact that it was an illegal war which was a sin against God and humanity. The reason American colleges exploded in the 1960s was because President Lyndon Baines Johnson decided it was unfair that the poor and working classes were doing all the fighting while the sons of privilege received college deferments. Just take a look at any newsreel of a college protest from forty years ago and I'll guarantee you that - at the very least - eighty percent of the kids in those films are today right wing conservatives. It was the sons of the working class who did most of the fighting and dying in that war. That's not just my opinion, that is a documented, undeniable fact. Look it up.

Sadly, the youth of this doomed country will never wake up to the sins that their civilian leaders are committing against the men, women and little children of Iraq unless the draft is reinstated.

Then there was what can only be described as the "Cultural Revolution". Although not quite as severe and a lot more fun than the one that had occurred in China starting in 1966, its influence is still being felt to this day. Everything, it seemed, was changing. And yet some of the things which seemed so groundbreaking all those years ago look downright silly today - the television "comedy", for instance.

A number of years ago, the cable network Nickelodeon broadcast a week-long Laugh-In retrospective. Looking at some of those programs (as many as I was able to stomach) I was rendered speechless at how awful they were! What was I thinking when I would eagerly tune into NBC every Monday night for no other reason than to hear Judy Carne jabber, "And now, folks, it's Sock It To Me time"? In my own defence I can only say that I was a mere nine-years-old and too young to know any better when that show made its debut in September of 1967. Unlike the comedy of The Smothers Brothers, Bill Cosby and Lenny Bruce, the "mod" ramblings and antics of the late Dan Rowan and the recently deceased Dick Martin has not stood the test of time very well. It has all the depth of a Peter Max poster. Sock it to me, indeed.

As much may be said of most of the things that passed as "comedy" in the 1960s. Very little of it stands out forty years later. The only interesting thing today regarding old episodes of Petticoat Junction, Bewitched, Green Acres and Mayberry RFD - is contemplating the fact that at one time people were paid huge salaries for writing such drivel. The TV networks even had to supply these idiotic programs with canned laughter in order to encourage the semi-comatose viewer at home that the crap they were watching was actually funny. Let's face some serious facts here: by the time 1960 came along, the Golden Age of American Humor as personified by the likes of Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, S.J. Perelman and Fred Allen, was long gone.

The passage of time can be a misleading thing. More times than I can count, a person born post 1970 has expressed to me how brilliant he or she thought the music of the sixties was. Truth be told, it wasn't much different than any other decade. The reason the music stands out today has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with memory. We remember "A Day In The Life" and "Like A Rolling Stone". We choose to forget, "Henry The Eighth" by Herman's Hermits and "Do The Freddie" by Freddie and the Dreamers. Memory is everything.

But it cannot be denied that there were cultural and artistic events during that tormented decade which had real and lasting impact. It was, after all, the decade which produced Bob Dylan and The Beatles. The change in the language of the cinema, which had subtly begun to express itself in the previous decade, was in full bloom by the end of the sixties. Although it was an era that saw the deaths of Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Merton and Jack Kerouac, it also saw the emergence of Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter Thompson. The artistic possibilities of television and videotape were pioneered very early in that decade by a lovable and eccentric madman named Ernie Kovacs. He was the world's first "video artist" although that term did not even come into being until four years after his death in a 1962 automobile accident. No question about it: between 1960 and 1970, trails were being blazed. The times were indeed a'changin'.

The comedy, tragedy and turmoil of the 1960s would all come to a head in 1968, a "whore of a year" as someone once described it. Although the final year of that decade would see the Woodstock Festival - three-hundred thousand hard-core music fans gathered at Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, NY - plus Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin walking on the surface of the moon (both events taking place within the space of three weeks that summer!), nothing could have prepared any mere mortal for the events of 1968.

With the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in the spring, the mindless violence inflicted by the Chicago Police upon hapless demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in August, and the endless and graphic carnage from South East Asia that was being televised into living rooms throughout the country - night after depressing night - a sensitive and impressionable ten-year-old could very easily have been overwhelmed by the thought that the world was coming to an end. So it was with me.

But then on Christmas Eve, an epiphany....

That was the night that the crew of Apollo 8 became the first human beings to orbit the moon. Upon emerging from that asteroid's dark side, eternally invisible to the inhabitants of this small and fragile planet, the crew of Frank Borman, Bill Anders and James Lovell broadcast a message to the world. Turning to scripture, they quoted from the Book of Genesis:

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light": and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness...."

At the conclusion of that transmission, Commander Borman, no doubt reflecting on the turmoil of the year which was about to mercifully end, said these words:

"And from the crew of Apollo Eight, we close with: good night, good luck, a merry Christmas, and God bless all of you - all of you - on the good earth."

Hearing those words broadcast on the radio, my ear almost pressed against one of the two massive KLH speakers that dominated my father's stereo system, I felt the weight of the world being lifted from my shoulders. Somehow, I thought, everything was going to be alright. For decades afterwords, whenever America was confronted with some indescribable national trauma, Frank Borman's gentle words - transmitted from the heavens on that long ago Christmas Eve - would come back to calm me and I would feel better my country. Everything is going to be alright, I would tell myself.

I'm still struggling to believe it.

Tom Degan

Goshen, NY

tomdegan@frontiernet.net

Photograph of five of the seven Degan kids taken at 48 South Street, Goshen, NY, circa spring of 1965

Front row (left to right): Tom Degan with brother Peter and sisters Susanne and Carol

Back row: Brother Jack

Missing from photo: Brother Jeff (who was an infant at the time) and sister Sarah "Sally" (who was born later that year)