Please, No More. . .

Even Freddie Mercury Would Want the Twins to Stop

The song "We Will Rock You" was released by the British band Queen in 1977. Junior high kids loved it. Professional sports teams started playing the tune in their stadiums when they had the visiting team on the ropes. We all have heard it literally thousands of times. We get it. It ceased being fun a generation ago. So, please, Minnesota Twins, stop blaring "We Will Rock You" at the Metrodome. It's time to move on.

Post-Election Analysis

Just One Of Many Questions

I am relieved that Barack Obama won this month's presidential election. He is a positive and well-spoken politician who ought to set a tone in Washington, DC that will feel like a salve after eight years of a White House that emanates sadism and stupidity.

Moreover, the other major-party ticket was abhorrent. It consisted of a simplistic old man who achieved "war hero" status by first dropping bombs on a distant agrarian society, and then getting shot down and imprisoned for it by the aggrieved, paired with a syntactically-challenged megalomaniac who believes that humans and dinosaurs (quite apart from her running mate) co-existed. If the Republicans somehow had won the presidency, it would have intensified the death throes of the USA. For once, America seems to have dodged a political bullet.

So, it is time now to move on to the three biggest post-election questions, judging from the mainstream press, facing the nation:

1. Whom should President-elect Obama choose to fill his cabinet? Many of my friends and family members, as well as former colleagues and professors, would make superlative candidates. These people have the experience, qualifications and moral fiber to do an outstanding job. Furthermore, none is beholden to the organized, monied interests of Washington nor wedded to the status quo manner of governing. If Mr. Obama would like me to forward specific names for his consideration, I will do so in an instant.

As for the other, well-known personalities being batted about by the media in connection with various cabinet posts, does it really matter? These people are so disconnected from and unconcerned about the average American that the federal government can scarcely be called "ours"; instead, it more closely resembles a parlor game, like pro sports. "Do you think Obama should keep Robert Gates on as secretary of defense?" "Do you think Hank Steinbrenner should try to put C.C. Sabathia in Yankee pinstripes?" Ultimately, it makes not a whit of concrete difference to us bystanders, the citizens.

2. What should the Republican party do now? That anyone feels genuine concern for a group of greedy; racist; superstitious; paranoid; and willfully ignorant zealots boggles the mind. That anyone still considers this pack of self-described "patriots" a legitimate political party is even more amazing. The GOP can best be understood as a religious cult. It confounds rational analysis. The best the rest of us can hope for is that the Republicans suffer their very own Jonestown.

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3. What type of dog should the Obamas take to the White House? Obviously, they should take a cat.

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Now that the above matters have been settled, the nation's commercial media and their endless supply of experts and pundits should feel free to move on to the next set of critical issues.

I Told You So

For years, I told anyone who would listen that borrowing money from the Chinese to make wealthy Americans even wealthier, while simultaneously wasting hundreds of billions dollars on a pointless war in Mesopotamia, was terrible economic policy.

For years, I told anyone who would listen that the invasion of Iraq not only would produce no foreign policy success, but that the resultant death and destruction would also contribute to severe domestic moral erosion.

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Today I feel vindicated but extremely rueful. I hope my country has learned its lessons so that it soon can begin to heal and evolve into a far better place.

An Open Letter Against Time Magazine

Time Magazine Carries On A Deplorable Tradition

Dear "Time":

Your magazine's question "Is It Time To Invade Burma?" - posed to readers today online - represents possibly the most arrogant, irresponsible and reprehensible piece of rhetoric I have ever seen emanate from the mainstream press.

The assumption of the article in question that other countries are the mere playthings of the U.S. and its military shows that your publication will sink to the depths of the most sordid yellow journalism and the most brazenly jingoistic posturing.

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Given the recent atrocious track record of our country in violent and imperialistic adventures, one might have expected more circumspection. Yet it is now more evident than ever that your publication is part of our nation's problems.

Sincerely,

Michael Blaine

McCain The Fraudster

Featuring John McCain As "Shyster"

The "Los Angeles Times" revealed today that presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has been collecting a tax-free disability pension from the US Navy that in 2007 totaled $58,358. Only two conclusions can be drawn: If McCain is (psychologically?) disabled, he's not fit to be president. If he is not disabled, he's been defrauding the federal government for decades and should be criminally prosecuted. Either way, McCain's candidacy needs to end immediately.

The Alcoholic and the Torture Victim

894/899

A diverse country of 300 million people, continental in scale, the United States is full of talented individuals. So why was a dullard like George W. Bush put in the White House? A man who challenged the nation with such penetrating questions as, "Is our children learning?" A man who assured us, "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." A man who told Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, "Germany is important." A man who declared to President Lula, "Wow! Brazil is big." That remains a mystery. But some day, with the benefit of hindsight, our country may come to realize, as Bush himself once observed, "people that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history."

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Fortunately, 2008 brings a new opportunity to select a national leader. Will Americans seek a person with the innate intelligence and cultivated wisdom to do the job properly? The Republicans think not. Their candidate, John Sidney McCain III, graduated from college with a class rank of 894 out of 899 students. This confirms, in spades, the reason McCain comes across as so lackluster and uninformative in his public remarks: he simply is not very smart.

Lack of intelligence in the White House impedes good policymaking, as has been amply demonstrated by George W. Bush. But what about other obvious warning signs in a presidential candidate? In my view, it always was clear that nobody who was an active alcoholic until age 40, as Bush was, should be voted into the presidency. It is welcome news whenever a problem drinker gives up the bottle, but that does not mean that the ex-drinker should go on to lead the entire nation. Clearly, decades of inebriation is poor preparation for such a task.

In McCain's case, his status as someone who was tortured during the Vietnam War gives great pause. How terrible that any human being is ever abused, and how difficult the recovery from such a harrowing experience must be. But McCain's five years in a POW camp, and the torture he endured there, are hardly solid preparation for taking the helm of the United States of America. America desperately needs a smart, steady hand in Washington. Any presidential candidate whose resume features a black hole in the middle, no matter how unfortunately come by, should be turned away. Let those wrestling with awful ghosts do so far from the halls of power.

Hillary Takes On Shuster: In Defense Of An Independent Media

MSNBC'S David Shuster Discovers The Perils Of Covering The Clinton Campaign

David Shuster is (was?) a TV journalist I had grown to respect enormously for his mastery of the arcane details of the trial and conviction of White House lawyer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. When Shuster last week described the process of Hillary Clinton utilizing her daughter Chelsea to court anti-democratic "superdelegates" by using the verb "to pimp out," he employed a phrase that is colloquial yet quite apt. Hillary's subsequent bullying of Shuster's network - MSNBC - into forcing him to apologize on the air strikes a blow against independent media and reveals the presidential candidate's arrogance and propensity for authoritarianism. MSNBC and Shuster should have stuck to their guns, even if it meant forgoing the Clinton machine's advertising revenues.