The Return of the Middle Ages

AMERICANS LOVE to be fearful. As a child, I learned that from my own dear mother. She warned me that anybody who went outdoors within a couple of hours of having a hair wash would be a candidate for pneumonia. God help me if I did. I could forgive my mother's daily myths. She had my best interests at heart with very little education, and like my father, never read a book

But a political party that today has strong medieval tendencies and devotes most of its time to spreading fear? That takes us back a thousand years when illiterate folks were largely isolated in tiny villages and lived by the fearful myths of the day because there was no way to challenge them. For some it was the weighty threat of excommunication for an imagined misdeed. For others it was the silhouettes of advancing witches on the dusky horizon.

We have our share of witches and warlocks on the horizon today. Having lost to Obama last November, the Republican Party is reaching deeply into its cesspool of fears to win back some ground. It is clubbing folks with preposterous stories of death and destruction. And why not? It worked for George Bush, when he used Saddam Hussein and fictitious weapons of mass destruction to whip up public (and, alas, media) fervor to lead us into disastrous war. As I've written earlier, it was Bush & Co. against Gog and Magog.

Now, the weapon of mass destruction is single payer health care. The right-wing (i.e., Republicans and their enablers) opponents are conjuring up mushroom clouds from coast to coast should the Obama Administration have its way. And if you listen to all of those people shouting their protests at the town hall meetings, it's obvious that once again the know-nothings are gaining a lot of ground. Time and again the government Medicare program that has worked well for millions, including me, has been reduced to fiction by people who have no idea who is behind their Medicare coverage. Where do you think they're getting the frightening disinformation? Guess.

And when Sarah Palin tells you that her parents and infant son would be a victim of a "death panel" if the Administration prevails, it quickly enjoys currency among the uninformed fearful - or are they the don't-want-to-be-inf0rmed fearful? . We are immediately back to the Middle Ages, the only socio-politico culture that seems to work for a party with no progressive ideas of its own. It might help Obama if he told Americans to wash their hair anyway.

All agog about Gog and Magog

DID YOU read that former French president Jacques Chirac said he was "boggled" by George Bush's reasons for appealing to him for French support in 2003 to invade Iraq . I know, still one more leftover from the miserable Bush administration may be over the top, if not tiresome, in dismantling what for the most part has already been dismantled. I get that way myself at times, until a pearl like this one arrives from Chirac's lips.

According to an online report, Chirac said Bush called him and warned that the Middle East was erupting through work of two Biblical evil-doers, Gog and Magog, characters from the Apocalypse. Bush described America's response as a "mission from God"and sought accord from like-minded Christians.

Chirac quoted Bush as saying:

"Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East... The Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled... This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before the New Age begins."

Unsurprisingly, biblical diplomacy wasn't good enough to recruit the French,who were later scolded by the administration's symps as being too mulish to merit our consideration of their fried potatoes.

A woeful opera in too many nasty acts

WE'RE LIVING with the myth that the "debate" over health care reform is all about what's best for ordinary citizens. But there's nothing very ordinary about the nasty narrative that's in our face today. Americans might just as well be taking sides on whether Silvio Berlusconi should be running around his luxurious Sardinian estate with tempting young girlfriends. It really doesn't matter what ordinary Americans think. (Nor does the Italian premier care about what Italians think!)

In this country the luxurious estate is the fortress set up by huge health insurance companies to protect their tidy investment in your health and mine. They are, of course, servilely aided and abetted by their beneficiaries within the ranks of both parties. Besides, we've learned rather quickly that there are few self-described "ordinary" folks at the disrupted Town Hall meetings. They are scripted in how to hack a reasoned discussion of the issue with their Democratic congressmen.

And who is the inspiration for the hackers who have been crafted with behavioral patterns that riotously break up these sessions? One is, of all people, Rick Scott, who has put up millions to fight health care reforms as head of Conservatives for Patients Rights. I love these benign sounding front groups with titles that have little to do with their line of work. They might as well be called Concerned Foxes for Chickens' Rights. This, after all, is the same Rick Scott who once headed Columbia HCA, a for-profit hospital system that chiseled so much money from the Feds that he finally had to pay a $1.7 billion fraud settlement. That's billion. Among other things, he closed unprofitable hospitals and cut back services to the patients who were unlucky enough to land in the profitable hospitals that made the cut. I'm obviously missing something here, folks. Where are the patient's rights that this conservative wants to protect?

Another who has cast a big shadow on the "debate" is former Texas congressman Dick Armey, who is one of the heavy hitters at "Lobbyists, Central" in D.C. His outfit is a warm and fuzzy number called DreamWorks. He's also the Co-Chairman of the Alliance for Retirement Prosperity, another straight-faced cover job? By now, I'm ready to accept the validity of Concerned Foxes for Chickens' Rights.

But some of the paint on these well financed civic enterprises is starting to flake. One woman who went bananas at one of Town Halls later told a network that she was "just a mom" from down the block who had arrived to express her frustration. She lied. When reporters checked her background, it turned out that she was a soldier for the Republican Party in her state. The script for these well organized assaults of public sanity also remind the shouters to spread out across the hall so that a speaker might conclude that everybody is up in arms against health care reform.

And didn't Rep. John Boehner, the House minority leader, referring to the town meetings, declare that it was going to be a long, hot summer for the Democrats? This raucous opera obviously won't be over until - unlike the fat lady - the woeful chorus of Boehner, Scott, Armey and The Mom, stop singing.

Sotomayor approved; GOP holy day ends

THURSDAY WAS a sort of Holy Day for Republican senators who opposed Sonia Sotomayor. They enjoyed another opportunity for the party's preaching class to lead America away from the suspected judicial iniquities of the Dragon Lady. There are values of greater importance than competence, although they don't always apply to those who are making such distinctions. There was, for example, a befuddled John McCain who described Sotomayor as "immensely qualified" - then voted against her.

Among the nine Republicans who jumped ranks was Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, who will be retiring next year. Voinovich has been showing signs, often symptoms of a lame-duck status, of growing impatient with the southern regional command of his party - and is not shy about saying so. Good work, George!

Meanwhile, the Democrats voted unanimously to support her, a rare glimpse of how much more effective the party could be if it ever got its ideological act together. Fat chance. You don't have to be a party insider to know that such unanimity on a regular basis is like asking a Canada goose to hang out with a hummingbird.

I'm sure that Sotomayor's political opponents had worked overtime to find the smoking gun that would deny her nomination. Obviously, none was found. An historic moment, her rise to the Supreme Court bench. Despite the NRA's opposition, it wasn't even close .

Obamaphobia in the checkout line

SCENE AT A SUPERMARKET CHECKOUT COUNTER:

Woman #1 (looking at President Obama's picture with Oprah on the cover of a screeching tabloid: "Do you like Obama?"

Woman #2: "Yes, I do. Do you?"

Woman #1: "No. I don't trust him."

Woman #2: "Why""

Woman #1: "I don't know. I just don't. I guess you're going to vote for his health program."

Woman #2: "Vote? We don't vote on it."

Woman #1: "Oh. We don't? I'm still against it. "

Woman #2 "You mean you don't want to help the 50 million people who don't have health insurance?"

Woman #1: " If they don't have insurance it's their own fault."

She moved up to take up her turn to check out, and bought a copy of the Obama-Oprah tabloid to bring her up to date on the latest.

Woman #2 told another: "For God's sake. I would have thought more of her if she would have come right out and said she didn't like Obama because he is black. At least she would have been honest about it."

Well...yes. Unfortunately, you could say that about a lot of Obama haters these days.

A sitdown for mayor and police prez?

I FLINCHED when I read of the confrontation between Mayor Plusquellic and police at the scene of a post-midnight week-end brawl downtown. Not again! And it didn't take long for the hostilities to break out in charges and counter-charges in the Beacon Journal. The police union's president Paul Hlynsky and mayoral adversary accused Plusquellic of abusively interfering with officers at the scene with slurred words. The always combative mayor accused the officers of being dismissive of his efforts to clear up the trouble.

I wasn't there, but one must wonder about the implications of the "slurred words" when the paper also reported that the tapes of Plusquellic's calls to 911 showed that the mayor's speech was clear and direct. Hlyinsky also supposed that the mayor should have "minded his own business". Well, on that point, the mayor is the city's public safety director and police work is part of his business.

None of this is to suggest that Plusquellic could not have handled the situation with more restraint. But the relationship between him and the police union has deteriorated for some time and grew still worse when, by a couple of votes, officers decided to support his recall in June.

Time for a truce. The hostilities will serve neither side well, and certainly not enhance the image of the city itself. Maybe the answer is for Plusquellic, a la Obama, to invite the union boss to a sitdown over beer to work out a detente. It couldn't hurt.

Evolution, a thousand years from now

AS A MUCH-NEEDED escape from the political front, I have just finished reading a piece in The Teaching Company magazine on evolution. No, I'm not taking up the shopworn debate on intelligent design. Rather, I wanted to turn the key on the lock that has isolated me from a serious understanding of what is generally called the biotech revolution, a daunting term in itself. So you won't come near getting any expertise from me on the subject. But I at least really tried to understand, if only superficially, what science is talking about in tracking the path of humans from pre-history to the billions of uprights who walk the earth today. Some escape, huh?

The magazine featured a course by Prof. Lee Silver of Princeton University and the descriptive outline - here's where I have to inch forward carefully - turned to such terms as gene sequencing, FISH (Fluorescence in Situ Hybridization), DNA microarray and molecular clock, with great strides in the field since the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003. If you've stayed with me so far, there is good news to report.

It seems to me that if notable scientists are still delving into the past to extend the curve into the future, we're in luck. It tells us that we are, at this moment, still evolving and the world will still be around for us to evolve in. That , of course, is hypothetical at this point, but on the upside for all humanity.

I have no idea where that will take us because there is no certain accounting for nuclear bombs, birthers, tea baggers and William Kristol . But Darwin did provide some clues by telling us that we will adapt like his finches. Well, no, we won't turn yellow or purple each spring, but you get the point.

Since I won't be on hand to admit my mistakes, I would suggest that a human being a thousand years from now will probably have a fleshy rectangular niche in his ear where he safely and permanently implants a cell phone, much like a pacemaker. TV remotes, too often misplaced under last week's newspapers, will be passe. One will be able to switch stations by activating a tiny device that develops in the tongue and will always taste like a root beer float. And hips will have shrunk on frequent flyers to accommodate centuries of squeezing into airplane seats. Really basic stuff, if you think about it.

But remember: These alterations will only occur if evolution is sustained by an active planet itself. We can hope. On the other hand, a worst-case scenario would have human beings returning to life in the treetops. By the looks of the noisy Neanderthals at the town meetings on health care, some among us are getting a head start.

Will the real McCain please stand up?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, the fellow who accepted Sarah Palin as his runningmate - remember? - seems to be getting flakier by the minute. While publicly complaining that his Republican party needs to do more to lure Latino voters into the GOP column, he now has declared that he will vote against Sonia Sotomayor because he fears she will legislate from the bench. (A fear, by the way, that has not discouraged his friend, Lindsay Graham, from supporting the nomination.)

Is McCain reclaiming his maverick status, or is he simply silly? The Arizona senator and his attempts at rational thought are often like two ships passing in the dead of night. What does he do now to appeal to the Latino vote in his own state? Or does it really matter?

Morrison could fill his foxhole for years

THERE'S A strictly political scenario being played out in Atty. Jack Morrison's rejection of demands that he resign from the University of Akron Board of Trustees in the wake of his two convictions on ethics charges. Although I suggested in an earlier piece that he would likely remain on the board during a drawn-out appeal to reverse the outcome of his bench trial, that is only part of the unfolding saga involving a Republican member of the board. Another reason is that his resignation would give Democrats a windfall opportunity to name one more Democrat to fill the vacancy.

Although Republicans dominated the UA board, as well as those of all other state universities during the 16 years when a Republican governor (Voinovich, Taft) controlled the appointments, the current occupant, of course, is Democrat Ted Strickland. He has appointed three Democrats to the nine-member UA board and would name another one next year. A vacancy now, and you do the math. Right: 5-4 Democratic control. It could be the leverage to influence Morrison's decision to stay put. An active (and influential) Republican at the county and state levels, he arrived on the board in 2005, which means he could hang around until his nine-year term expires in 2014 - or in the event that Strickland loses to a Republican next year. Even for politics, that's a long time.

The bookish right-wing polemicists

SCANNING THE Sunday book sections, it soon became apparent to me that the Obama boo birds are on wing rather early his year. And considering that the president hasn' t been in charge for more than seven months, this jury of "authors" has spent less time on their convictions than if he had been charged with a library fine.

The latest eruption from the right-wing jeering section is Michele Malkin's tome, Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheaters, Crooks and Cronies. Given the normal length of time to write and publish a book these days, it would be fair to suggest that our author, a right-wing polemicist, must have begun her outline for the Obama book when he was still at Harvard. But she's not alone. The ubiquitous Dick Morris, who has worked both sides of the aisle depending on the political climate of the moment, and his wife, Eileen McGann, are represented on the best-seller list by the apocalyptic work, Catastrophe, which the New York Times mini-captions as "stopping President Obama before he transforms America into a Socialist State".

There's also one by South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who's out with a remedial book, Saving Freedom: We Can Stop America's Slide into Socialism. And forever, there is always something from Bernard Goldberg, one called, A Slobbering Love Affair, the true (and pathetic) story of the torrid romance between Barack Obama and the mainstream media.

Really, Bernie. Slobbering? And considering how far downstream the mainstream media have drifted for several years, they are too far away from the action for mutual slobbering.