Special Session

So, as of last night, we are to be blessed with a one day special session for the benefit of the state's flood victims and the I-35W bridge disaster and all it implies in terms of daily travel dangers continues to be ignored.You have to admire Governor Pawlenty. He always knows where his voters live and carefully weighs the need to pander to the no-tax lobby regardless of how many of his fellow citizens are killed in a bridge collapse or how dire the need for transportation improvements in the state. At least it is only one day.

Must be a lot of conservative voters who got their feet wet in the floods. Too many for either the no-tax folks or Pawlenty to ignore. Even though the common good and common sense demand action on transportation, the no-tax dogmatists just can't bring themselves to do what is best for the state and fix the roads and bridges.

The following poem from today's Minneapolis Star Tribune says it far Truer than even the New True can.

August 2, 2007: American News

By: Bill Holm

More black news from Minnesota.

A bridge over the Mississippi falls down: nine dead, twenty missing, details unclear...
All this arrives in half-understood Icelandic over state radio while I am driving to Akureyri.
I imagine cars hurtling over the interstate bridge down into the now-tepid waters of the river.
The sky above a humid hundred, cries and shrieks muffled in the saturated air.
Bridges are not supposed to fall down in invincible "can-do" America.
The Brooklyn Bridge does not fall down.
The iron gates of the locks in the Panama Canal have opened and closed every day since 1913.
The generators hum below the Hoover Dam to feed the electrical jolt that cools, lights and irrigates the west.
The motor in the old Buick purrs after 250,000 miles.
We build to last! We are the world's engineers!
Suddenly we lose all our steadily stupider wars; the currency evaporates, we're afraid of every moving shadow.
The Fed-Ex clerk in Minneapolis has never heard of Iceland.
That in Europe? We don't deliver there. Where's Retchivelt?
The code book lies on the table in front of him: number 286.
But he either can't or won't read it.
So goes business -- as Charles Wilson said: the business of America.
Three quarters of us believe in a personal god who saves and punishes.
Three quarters of us can't find Canada, France, or the Pacific on a map.
We believe in one true god, but not in geography.
Every day Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan appear in the Reykjavík newspapers: what are they up to now?
Tomorrow I suppose it will be pictures of cars dropping off a collapsed bridge;
Down into the Father of Waters that divides us, east from west,
The waters that begin in Scandinavian, safe, efficient Minnesota and now will carry bodies downstream in the current through 27 locks and dams that may or may not open and close and open again as they are directed so that the ghosts can make their way toward whatever is left of New Orleans.
Oh United States! Walt Whitman thought you might wake up -- though he was not sure -- and he wept for you.
Your sleep is deeper now than ever before and none of your "information systems" are worth a damn to wake you or to hold up the girders of whatever bridge might carry you through even one more century of history.

Senator Craig - So What!

The bizarre story of soon to be ex Senator Craig serves not only as a perfect example of the stupidity that seems to infect so many of those we elect to serve us in Washington, but also gives a clear indication of the character of the leadership of the GOP party. Craig is gay or he isn't; it’s his business, not ours. He is however a victim of his own arrogance in letting himself be entrapped by the police, and an equal victim of the GOP Senate leadership's own anti-gay bias and willingness to turn on one of their own. Clearly, as one commentator noted, sympathy is not a GOP family value. But, the rest of us are culpable too, for tolerating a society that so marginalizes those of us who are different in any way that they are driven to such a desperate state.

So, where is the victim? Other than Craig, who is hardly a sympathetic character, I can't find one. Craig and the rest of Washington are rife with hypocrisy and mendacity. Where is the news in that? Craig is just one in long line of politicians, lately mostly Republicans, but with a good share of Democrats, who feel that they are exempt from any obligation to tell truth. Truth telling is to be left to others.

Virtually every single politician who has found himself caught with a hand in the cookie jar, up a skirt, or under an adjoining stall, has lied about it or tried to bury it and has come to see that lead to an unraveling of a career, a life, or a legacy. Rule number one for all who go to Washington - listen to mom; if you did it, 'fess up, it will go much easier. Instead, the first response is always to duck from any personal responsibility.

To be fair, the penchant for prevarication is not just a Republican strong suit. It is a hand that both sides of the aisle play. However, it seems to be the rule in the present Republican Party and the exception on the Democratic side. The problem for the Republicans is that the theme of the present administration is embrace the lie, both the big and the little, and it starts at the top with King George and First Lord of the Realm, Dick Cheney.

The Craig fiasco is as much a result of the king's policy of trickle down mendacity, tempered with callous disregard for common sense, as of Craig’s own character flaws. Integrity is not the currency of George's kingdom, so Craig is no surprise.

Craig twists in the wind and the beleaguered GOP rushes praise themselves for jettisoning him, but most of us have taken a "who cares" attitude. While rightfully concerned about the apparent entrapment, and baffled by Craig's inexplicable response, we are not at all surprised by the GOP leadership's rush for the exits, but that's certainly not new. No, the real news is that as a society we, except for the GOP senators, seem to care very little about this whole event other than we may enjoy the entertainment inherent in a public exposure of GOP hypocrisy.

New True