Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

I Really Want to Quit

You asked for it. Yes, you did.

In addition to guns, tasers, billy clubs (and a copy of Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and 2), pepper spray, handcuffs, and knives, police in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the U.S. Virgin Islands will be carrying barber shears so that they can take random hair samples of anybody they don't like.

The federal appeals court that covers the above states has ruled that cutting someone's hair for the purpose of testing it for drugs is not an unlawful search or seizure.

So, all you suspicious-looking characters out there -- you know who you are (god-damn Democrats) -- watch out. And the police don't need a warrant. They don't even need a reasonable suspicion. If they don't like your looks, what you believe in, or the color of your eyes, watch out.

This is the police we're talking about. Snip, snip, snip -- hair sample. What's next? The logic used by the court was that the hair is not really part of your body. It's on display to the public. It's not like pulling hair out by the roots so that DNA testing can be done. But in the court case, hair was taken from the guy's back and shoulder -- those are not on public display except in the locker room (look out Nicolette Sheridan!). Can the police ask a guy to take his shirt off to get a hair sample because there's a report that a hairy-chested man took a wallet from the health club? How about pubic hairs? Without a warrant. That's hair, isn't it? Just as long as they are cut and not pulled, it should be fair game without a search warrant.

While on the subject of not making much sense, Reverend Jerry Falwell was on "Meet the Press," I think. It's hard for me to listen to this guy. And he was talking over everyone, showing great disrespect for the others on the program. He was talking about religion, family values, God, gods, Jesus ... that was the two minutes I saw. Go ahead ... slam me. Tell me how I wasn't really listening. Tell me how I don't understand. Tell me about how I'm crazy ... well, okay ... you might have me there.

Family values. That's Falwell's big thing, like I'm hearing that the Republicans have these family and moral values that we over here on the far left do not have. And I take a look at a guy who went to law school with me. I'll call him Steve because that's what I've always called him. Steve was married for 20 years or so. He was a county prosecutor and then ran for and was elected to Congress on his first try.

He was recently re-elected for the third time with over 2/3rds of the votes cast in his Congressional district. As it turns out, family values weren't all that important to him or his constituents. Steve was cheating on his wife, which apparently is not that uncommon in the seat of our national government. An enterprising reporter caught Steve coming out of his mistress' front door one early morning. His mistress worked for him on his Congressional staff in D.C. But, he and she claim, it was only after she left his staff that Steve began his dalliance.

As things go in D.C., she left his staff and, having worked under a Congressman, joined a lobbying firm. Steve's the chairman of a committee his girlfriend has been lobbying. Steve called his wife after he got caught and told her he needed a divorce because he was going to marry the lobbyist. He's a Republican ... well, I guess, maybe not a real Republican.

Good old American family values, which have somehow become confused with religion, God, and the government, are not embodied by or defined by the Republican party. A "return" to "fundamentalism" and "old-fashioned values" might be perceived by many as "progress."

Forgotten is the Great Depression, when people learned that although they had worked as hard as they could, the vagaries of outside forces, over which they had no control, led them into poverty and soup lines. We are a couple of generations removed from that era. Most of the nearly one-third of the work force who became unemployed are no longer with us. School books on history give no perspective of the enormity of the suffering by individuals and families. The Great Depression is just another chapter to be covered, but glossed over, perhaps mentioned as the reason Hitler rose to power in Europe. The attitude that we are all in control of our own destiny is back ... with a vengeance.

The social programs that arose in that era, in which the belief that everyone was in control of their own destiny if they only pulled themselves up by their bootstraps was rendered asunder, and those social programs which were part of the reforms of Lyndon Baines Johnson's "The Great Society" and the civil rights movement of 40 years ago, are in extreme danger. Social Security, the bellwether of "civilized" nations is taking a beating. Medicare, another social program that is a cornerstone of "civilized" nations, is on the ropes, despite what Bush touts as a prescription drug plan that will save the elderly much money, in spite of his raising the Medicare premiums almost 20%, along with raising the co-payments. National health care ... oh, why even mention it as a possibility, despite the fact that the U.S. is the the only industrialized nation on this planet without it. Bush, the compassionate conservative, ignores the fact that there are well over 43 million with no health insurance, the fact that there are many more millions with only limited health-care coverage, the fact that millions more struggle to pay unpredictably skyrocketing health insurance premiums, the fact that rising malpractice insurance costs are due solely to poor insurance company investments, the fact that there are staggering long-term health care issues for an aging population, the fact that there are relatively poor health indicators for the rest of us, including increasing childhood obesity, and the fact that there is a wide and frightening disparity of health care available to the poorest and the richest. The President's idiotic solution is to put a cap on jury verdicts. Perhaps, if he did that in combination with a comprehensive national health care plan, he might be able to get us to bite on his sell-out to the moneyed insurance interests. He already fed everyone a line about Iraq for his oily friends in Texas.

But he believes he has been given a mandate. He believes that he is owed "political capital." He believes that he has become the one chosen to lead the U.S. back to respectability after the obvious moral and military degradation that he believes occurred under Clinton.

Manifest Destiny has taken on another name. As defined back in 1845 by John O'Sullivan, it was the "manifest destiny" of the U.S. "to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us." This liberty talk is oh-so-familiar.

It is undisputed at this point that Paul Wolfowitz and "Scooter" Libby (Damn, pretty soon we'll have Tiffany and Capri running things with Scooter and Skippy.) authored the "Defense Policy Guidance," which has been the blueprint for Bush's foreign policy. The Pre-emption Doctrine sounds much like Manifest Destiny of the mid-1840's, which gave govenment the excuse to pillage and plunder nation-states that were Native Americans, destroying their ethnic identities, spiritual beliefs, and heritage and to invade other sovereign territories on the North American continent.

The Pre-emption Doctrine promotes a general strategy "based on a distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests. The aim of this strategy is to help make the world not just safer but better. Our goals on the path to progress are clear: political and economic freedom, peaceful relations with other states, and respect for human dignity."

With the pre-emption doctrine, which was developed long before Bush the Lesser assumed the reins of power and was foreshadowed with a letter to President Clinton in January, 1998, by a group known as the Project for the New American Century, which counted as signatories Donald Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, Cheney and Libby, urging Clinton to remove Saddam Hussein from power and urging that as a new goal of foreign policy, the U.S., without support of other major powers and contrary to the findings of arms inspectors everywhere, started a skirmish in Iraq to depose Saddam and spread liberty and democratic ideals, like federated self-government, in a place that American soldiers would be greeted with open arms. You see, it's God's will, according to George the Crusader.

Chilling as it seems, the "political capital" that Bush thinks he is owed will be the foundation of expanding military operations. One of the national security strategy methods to ensure the goals of political and economic freedom is to "prevent our enemies from threatening us, our allies, and our friends, with weapons of mass destruction." North Korea. Iran. Syria.

That leads the administration into Palestine. I don't pretend to understand fundamentalist Christian thought. Literal belief in the Bible, parts of the Bible, or certain versions of the Bible as the word of God is difficult for me to comprehend. Those things in the Bible were written a long time ago, copied by clerics by hand, translated, re-copied by hand. Some "gospels" were omitted; some other writings substituted. Whatever. I will lose any argument on religion. I never took a bible studies class anywhere. I don't pretend to know who wrote what. I saw Godspell with Tom Hanks in a small supporting role. I've seen Jesus Christ Superstar. I got yelled at by the nun in the production of "Late Night Catechism."

All I know is that this faith-based, semi-fundamentalist, dry-drunk, rich boy, who never succeeded in business (or in balancing the books) and who went AWOL from the National Guard (and slammed someone who fought for "liberty and federated self-government," then had the audacity to protest the violation of human dignity) and that we have as a President of the most powerful nation on this slowly dying planet (which he refuses to acknowledge), believes, as do most fundamentalist Bible scholars, that Armegeddon will come in the Middle East. That's where we are headed.

The Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment were passed to protect citizens, the minority in the main, from being preyed upon by the majority government. Many in the U.S. believe that because of the historical significance of religion in our society a faith-based society is something that was ordained by the founding fathers. Many believe that this country is blessed by some god (the good god, not the bad one). I received an e-mail from my uncle which says, in part: "It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess about having 'In God We Trust' on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't we just tell the 14% to Sit Down and BE QUIET!!!"

I won't sit down. I won't be quiet. And I'm going to see "A Christmas Carol" Friday night. Peace.

Posted by Bill at November 30, 2004 09:55 PM