President Obama’s propensity for inept bungling has delivered a no-win choice of profound importance to the Democratic Party’s doorstep. After delivering a rebuke to Obama on Friday for his aggressive policy towards Libya, the Democrats can either take it to the next logical level by impeaching Obama or they can ignore the President’s failure to abide by the War Powers Act and thereby affirm the Bush Administration policy that the Constitution had become obsolete and irrelevant to America.
Has President Obama become the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to be subject to arrest in The Hague for war crimes? We dare him to go there and prove us wrong.
President Obama’s rash decision to oust Col. Qaddafi may have provided the Republicans with an opportunity to make their dream scenario of Impeaching America’s first President of Pan-african heritage come true.
If President Bush’s invasion of Iraq was an impeachable offense, the Democrats can now either move to impeach Obama for ignoring the War Powers Act or they can, by letting a second blatant violation of the law slide past, scrap that inconvenient part of the Constitution.
If Obama failed to get the Congressional approval necessary for the attempt to intervene in Libya’s internal affairs, then it would seem logical that he must be impeached for such a flagrant violation of his oath of office. If the Bush program of using Presidential authority to violate the Constitution and order troops into battle has replaced the method specifically established in the Constitution, then the question of immediate concern becomes: When will the Republicans make the determination of what other parts of the Constitution have also become outdated?
The Republicans, to participate in a move to impeach Obama, would have to completely ignore the fact that George W. Bush set the precedence with the invasion of Iraq and, like a woman with an “A” brand on her forehead giving a speech urging chastity, blithely make the case for the immediate impeachment of the President who has ignored the Constitution and the law of the land.
Such a brazen move would seem to be a bit hypocritical, but, in the past, the Republicans have never let a trivial matter such as blatant hypocrisy inhibit their efforts, so why should they suddenly let scruples hinder their program now?
Lefties and Progressives have always asserted that the Republicans were sanctimonious hypocrites so why should the party of “don’t do as I do; do as I say” stop inches short of the goal line just because of the threat of a bit of name-calling? Didn’t their mothers teach them the axiom about sticks and stones?
The World’s Laziest Journalist has speculated during the George W. Bush “lame duck” period about how long it would take the Republicans to find a basis for moving to impeach the (then) President-elect. Expecting Republicans to let a chance to make their dreams come true pass as a show of good sportsmanship may be a tad overly optimistic.
If the Republicans moved at a slow deliberate pace, they could spend all summer besmirching the President, and then make their move in the Fall.
If they were successful, my former classmate (in first and second grade), Joe Biden, would be sworn in and immediately have to contend with rebuilding the Democratic Party brand while (presumably) running his own reelection campaign and competing in the various primary elections in early 2012, while simultaneously conducting the business of day to day politics as usual.
If they failed to get Obama impeached, he would then have to fight to improve his image of being a Bush family clone, while raising funds for his own reelection, and contending with the various primary elections, which usually are not a high priority activity for a sitting President.
His critics on the Fox Network would be relentless in their unfair and biased condemnation of him for doing what George W. Bush had previously done. Obviously such heavy-handed punditry would generate some “sympathy backlash,” which would benefit Obama, but since most folks are reluctant (especially if they are not of Irish heritage) to assert an unpopular opinion, the majority of the country would be in a mood to treat the President very harshly.
The word temerity (which has the ironical meaning of being “ballsy”) would be bandied about recklessly if the Republicans did try to impeach Obama for doing that which George W. Bush had previously done, but that would be countered by the folk axiom that “Nature favors the brave.” Foreigner Rupert Murdock would make damn sure that Americans were continually assaulted by “pro-impeachment” partisan punditry.
Democrats who feared being tainted by an association with a President facing both reelection and immanent impeachment, would get very tired of hearing Fox talking heads tell the joke in which the Lone Ranger says to Tonto: “Look at all those Indians, Tonto, we’re in a very untenable strategic position!” (or words to that effect.)
Will Uncle Rushbo (will both he and Mike Malloy read this column?) be reluctant to gush about the vulnerability of Obama for impeachment proceedings or will he perceive it as an opportunity to be a leader of the de facto lynch mob?
Progressive bloggers will be reluctant to mention Obama’s vulnerability because they will not want to take the chance that they have inadvertently opened Republican eyes to a gambit they had not already noted. (Karl Rove enthusiastically encourages all underestimations of his cunning and shrewdness. [You don’t believe that? Just ask him if the World’s Laziest Journalist has him pegged with complete accuracy. Go ahead. We dare you to ask him. {He will probably deny knowing me.}])
Cynical columnists, who delight in venturing into taboo territory, might write a spoiler column about this opening for a possible Republican strategy. Any such renegade pundit would probably get more Democratic appreciation if they just inject obscure and esoteric cultural minutiae into their efforts. Such as?
Up until Thursday, June 2, 2011, this columnist had never heard of the writer from Dublin named Charles Lever. On that day we betook ourselves to the location in Berkeley CA which is our secret source of pop cultural delights and bought four books:
Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara,” H. G. Wells’ “Tono-Bungay,” Hesketh Pearson’s “Oscar Wilde His Life and Wit,” and Robert L. Heilbroner’s “ The Worldly Philosophers.” We purchase all four for less than a quarter of a dollar.
Two of the books, Pearson’s and Shaw’s, mentioned the Irish writer named Charles Lever. We consulted “The Penguin Companion to English Literature,” edited by David Daiches, and learned about the existence of a 34 volume collection of his work or a 37 volume collection edited by Lever’s daughter.
The four books contained enough raw materials for about a thousand columns in the Life-Arts field.
However, on Friday June 3, 2011, a friend lent us a copy of Douglas Brinkley’s “The Majic Bus,” and since we are very enthusiastic about road books we will have to read that one.
Then we went for a walk and stumbled across a bargain bin copy of Donald L. Miller’s “Masters of the Air,” and since we have a mystical connection to B-17 bombers from WWII, we will have to read every word of that book before writing a review.
That night we finished watching a VHS tape of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” and realized there was enough new material in that old film for several columns. The year 1939 is considered by some critics to have been Hollywood’s Halcyon Year and Mr. Smith was nominated for 11 Oscars™. The theme of an honest man fighting a political machine backed by media ownership, might have some relevance for non Fox-addicted political thinkers. The idea that patriotic idealism is preferable to greed and bribery might be worth a column.
Form follows function as any fan of architecture knows so it’s obvious why today’s bloggers are flocking to the “thee dot journalism” style of column writing.
In Atlas shrugged, Ayn S. Rand wrote: “You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island – it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim . . . that a rock is a home . . . reality will wipe him out . . . .” Slyly injecting a problem in semantics into a discussion about morality might fool some Democrats (in an Irish pub?) but teabaggers won’t let such a blatant verbal equivalent of thee card Monty chicanery slid by unchallenged.
Perhaps we should do a column about Ms. Rand’s use of poor logic to confuse the audience? Maybe we could slip some references to James Norman Hall’s novel, “Lost Island,” into the discussion of morality on remote Pacific atolls? Maybe we could couch this debate in a column about the Tiki sub-culture in America? Then again applying the rules of logic to the words of Ayn S. Rand would, as far as her fanatical supporters are concerned, be as futile as trying to pick the fly’s excrement out of the salad. Why didn’t she use “Triumph of the Will” as the title for her book about John Gault?
Didn’t Ms. Rand use her middle name of Sally while performing a bawdy Vaudeville act before her first book was published?
We have just exceeded our self imposed “three e-takes” limit and so we will call the disk jockey in from the bullpen and he will play Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire,” “It’s All the Same” (from “Man of La Mancha”), and Lynn Anderson’s “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.” (Making promises in the Rose Garden isn’t the same thing?)
We have to go buy some more bargain used books. Have an “I, Don Quixote” type week.
The Torch is passed (again)
People who graduated from high school fifty years ago this month may want to indulge in a bit of nostalgia by exhuming a transcript of their commencement speech and having their lawyer take a closer look at it. Were all of that year’s inspiring words more of a variation of the “campaign promises” concept or did those inspirational words come with an implied guarantee? If so, it might be time to adhere to one of the basic principles established in the Constitution, by America’s founding fathers: “Sue the bastards!”
Would it be an example of poignancy if a kid who got a brand new car as a high school graduation present in June of 1961 were still driving that same car today? In the Spring of 1961, the last B-52 rolled off the Boeing production line and many of them are still in use to this very day.
What else hasn’t changed since the class of 1961 was promised a better world?
Before turning the keys to the White House over to Jack Kennedy, the departing president (a general from WWII), had warned folks not to let the military industrial complex become America’s guiding light (at the end of the tunnel?). It didn’t take long for the new young President to send American troops, as advisors, abroad doing the political version of what “location scouts” do for movie making.
Radio soap operas were transitioning into TV series, but when that class had started high school in the Fall of 1957, many of them were still available on radio. The radio audience had wondered, like Helen Trent, could a woman, after her 35th birthday, find romance? It would be well into the 70’s before that question would become relevant to the class of 1961.
What ever happened to “Our Gal Sunday”? She was, as listeners were informed at the start of each broadcast, someone “from the little mining town of Silver Creek, Colorado,” and she had “in young womanhood married England’s most handsome lord, Lord Henry Brinthrope.” How did that work out for her?
What ever happened to: “Aunt Jenny,” “Young Doctor Malone,” “Just Plain Bill,” “Ma Perkins,” and/or “Nora Drake”?
The members of the graduation class of 1961 are sure to be retired and collecting their Social Security checks by now and so they will have plenty of leisure time to look up the fate of those fictional characters on the Internets.
Was it a remarkable co-inky-dink or symbolism that one high school in Scranton Pa, for their class trip, went to New York City and saw “Pollyanna” at the Radio City Music Hall”?
For the class of 1961, it was just like Bill Graham would put it a bit later in time: “Ladies and gentlemen; it’s all about to happen!” Back then, the Nostalgia craze wouldn’t start until Susan Suntag’s essay “Notes on Camp” got published.
By the time the class of 1961 would celebrate the tenth anniversary of their graduation, America would make numerous cultural changes. The Beatles would erase Duane Eddy from the position of favorite guitarist. The Ford Motor Company would produce the first Mustang (and Carol Shelby would work his magic on them). Folks would also learn the geography lesson that answered the question: “Where the hell is Vietnam?”
When the class of 1961 entered high school in the Fall of 1957, one of the Dorsey brothers would release the last Big Band hit, “So Rare.” By the time they graduated, “On the Road” had been reprinted in a paperback edition and coffee house poetry was all the rage. The adults were very alarmed that the beatnik lifestyle seemed to have a hypnotic appeal to the youngsters who wanted to be “hep.” Hep became hip and that generation embraced all sorts of aberrant behavior that didn’t sit well with true Americans such as those who lived in Muskogee.
In the Fall of 1963, Capital Records, in Hollywood, handed out 3,000 layoff notices to the folks in Scranton working at the record pressing plant because record sales were in a slump. The layoffs were to take effect the day after Thanksgiving. While the nation mourned the assassination of its young President, the layoff notices were rescinded on the Monday before Thanksgiving because of a music phenomenon that was spreading like a highly contagious disease. It was called “Beatlemania.”
Rock and Roll was battling to replace the folk songs that dominated the pop music charts. Eventually, Rock got it very own separate chart and Fats Domino shared it with newer, younger musicians.
Tail fins on cars had reached their high water mark with the 1959 Cadillac. At one point the J. C. Whitney catalogue offered champagne glasses made from the distinctively shaped ’59 Caddy bullet style tail lights.
While getting America from the Marshall Program to the Bush Doctrine, patriots would come to realize that charity is permissible only if it also functions as a bribe or is part of an extortion plan.
If a person graduated from high school in 1961 and proceeded directly on to a four year college, he would graduate just in time to see President Johnson, in June of 1965, send several (was it six or eight?) Marine Divisions to Vietnam to straighten out that mess (it was well understood that they would be home in time for Christmas).
In 1961, all was well. The World’s Laziest Journalist knows of one member of the class of 1961, who joined the Navy, was assigned to a destroyer that circled the globe, came back home to Scranton and declined all additional opportunities to travel. “I’ve been around the world. I like Scranton. Why would I want to leave?”
Soldiers from Scranton, in the 28th Division’s 109th Regiment, had fought at the battle of the bulge and so America was determined to make sure that those war atrocities, such as the ones that Germany had committed during World War II, would never again be permitted in the world that was beckoning to the eager and enthusiastic members of the class of 1961.
The world in 1961 wasn’t perfect. The designers at Chevrolet were trying to develop a coupe model for the popular Corvette roadster. America didn’t need a Desoto car. TV would be better in “living color.” Pan Am, Eastern Airlines (“The wings of man”) and TWA stood ready to fly America’s youth to places where they could face the “Europe on $5 a day” challenge.
Americans didn’t have to buy a WMCA t-shirt to know that they were one of a special breed. Who didn’t want a T-shirt that proclaimed that the wearer was a “Good Guy”?
Wasn’t “The Ugly American” a Commie propaganda ruse? Didn’t the East German authorities have to build a wall to hold back their young people with curiosity about freedom?
The graduates who got married and started having kids didn’t have to worry about the draft. The guys who went on to college did. Did the lamestream media do feature stories about the last guy to be drafted? Who was it? Lord knows the lamestream sure did cover the story when Elvis got drafted and when Cascius Clay turned down his draft board’s invitation. When Elvis left the Army, there was a TV special on which Frank Sinatra welcomed Elvis back home.
There was one TV special (was it part of Ford’s 50th anniversary celebration?) that featured the best science based predictions for the future. As we recall it, that program predicted that newspapers would deliver their stories directly into homes via a machine that was a combination of calculator, telephone, TV set, and printing press.
Back in 1961 the icon of the American Dream was expressed in visual terms by a home with a white picket fence around it. That house has been seized by the foreclosure process. The lefties who are losing their homes think that Sarah Palin is dumb. How did they come to that conclusion? On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy, in his Inaugural address, said: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
The disk jockey went to the Flying Dutchman’s web site for a list of the hits from 1961. He culled out: “Big Bad John,” “Wonderland by Night,” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
We have to go put some dead flowers on a friend’s grave. Have a “The torch is passed to a new generation” type week.