Open Thread: Show 34
Listen here. Comment below. Eat sensibly and exercise regularly.

Dear Bill Cosby
Sir:
First, allow me to say how much I admire you, both as a comedian and as a human being. You are an inspiration and a true professional in every sense of the word.

For the record, I happen to agree with you about how certain aspects of the black culture badmouth self-improvement and education, and the inability of the black political leadership to come to terms with these serious problems, which affect not just blacks, but all of us. I also recognize that it is very difficult for me, as a white man, to have a truly serious discussion on race, as anything I might say that is critical of black culture or black leadership might be misconstrued as being racial. So I apologize if anything I say gives that impression, that is not my intent.

Given a fair chance, almost anyone is capable of reaching their fullest potential. Time and time again we have seen examples of people rising through poverty to become successes in many fields. But not everyone is given a fair chance in life from the beginning. You were fortunate enough to have been raised by caring, responsible parents who worked hard but still managed to find the time to care for you and to help you plan for your future. Many children born today do not have that luxury, and many parents today face more difficult choices than your parents could have imagined. As the fragile social net in this country unravels, as we care less and less about each other, as we endure the loss of, not just family, but community, less and less people are going to have the kinds of chances you had in life. So while your criticism is worthy, it ignores the daily realities of many people's lives.

We should also keep in mind that not everyone can become Bill Cosby. For every person such as yourself who is a great success, there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of others who have worked just as hard but who failed, for whatever reason. You have a special gift, sir, a gift for making people laugh that is rare and cannot simply be earned by hard work alone. You need to recognize this even as you criticize others for not reaching higher goals. And while there has been much progress in terms of race relations, racism still exists, and as long as it does, there will be inequality somewhere.

And finally, I agree with you that it is disgraceful that many sports figures graduate from college without being able to compose two paragraphs of coherent thought. However, keep in mind that this is not entirely their fault: colleges for decades have been exploiting these young men because of the money they get from television coverage and other businesses involved with college athletics. Did you expect these kids to turn down the millions they are offered? If you were that athletically talented when you were in college, what would you have done? You have a talent that will last you a lifetime, they are one ankle injury away from poverty that will last them a lifetime. If we want these kids to respect education, then we need to respect it just as much.

Respectfully Yours,
Joe Vecchio

Open Thread: Show 33
Listen here. Comment below. Be good to your spouse.

JACON
When you're feeling a little down on yourself, it's always nice to go somewhere where people treat you really nice, and such was the case for me at JACON this weekend. From the moment I got off the plane at Orlando to the day I left, the staff and guests at the convention treated me like a king, and that did a lot to raise my spirits. I've been going to fan-run conventions for nearly thirty years now, and you won't find a more professional group of people than those who put on this convention. What I also liked was how members of all of Orlando's anime fan organizations worked together rather than bicker among themselves, as fan organizations often do. There's a lesson to be learned there. Many thanks and congratulations to Jimmy, Ken and the whole staff of JACON for a fantastic show, and I hope to return next year.

Heading Out
I'm leaving for Orlando today, going down to JACON, an anime convention. I'll be returning on Monday. I'm not an official guest but I'm kind of a VIP there, having been one of the founders of the anime club that now runs the convention. I had a show in the docket but it's late and I have to get up early to catch my flight, so I didn't get a chance to finish it. That means there will be no new show on Sunday, either. It's one of those situations where, if the radio show were an actual, paying job, I would go the extra mile and get it done, but as long as I have to expend the bulk of my energy at my paying job, I'll have to make these decisions on a case-by-case basis, depending upon how tired I am.

I might be able to post from the convention site, we'll see. Meantime, use this as an open thread. Play nice!

Why We'll Lose
From the NY Times:

Democrats have come up with all sorts of excuses, from the evils of Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy" to the "stolen" election of 2000. They usually ignore the fact that the right has simply been far better at producing agenda-setting ideas. From welfare reform in Wisconsin to policing in New York City, from the tax-cutting Proposition 13 in California to regime change in Baghdad, the intellectual impetus has, for better or worse, come from the right. As President Bush bragged at last week's party, the right is "the dominant intellectual force in American politics."

Yet many Democrats insist this will change once Mr. Bush is ejected from the White House. This shows how little they have learned. First, the right has a history of advancing its agenda under Democratic executives (welfare reform came about under Bill Clinton). More important, it has organized itself for a much longer battle. Whenever it has been forced into retreat — as after Watergate — the flame has burned eternal at places like Heritage, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, and at their smaller cousins in virtually every state.

Why does that flame continue to burn? Why do these ideas and policies, which hurt working Americans, damage our prestige abroad, and lead us into foolish wars that only make the world more dangerous for us continue to be the guiding force of American politics?

Money.

Moneymoneymoneymoneymoney. They are awash with it and they aren't afraid to use it. We, on the other hand, are allergic to it and feel like if we do use it we're somehow wrong for doing so. Bartcop lost his job last year and now begs for money or puts on a pay-per-view style radio show just to pay the bills. Atrios is about to follow suit. Why aren't the powers that be on the left taking advantage of the skills and energy of these people by hiring them and just allowing them to do what they do? Why aren't they presenting a vision of their own and hiring writers to get the word out? Why aren't they looking at lefty radio shows like mine and saying "Hey, we could use a guy like that!"? Because they don't understand the nature of the fight.

I get sick of watching all the talented people here in the blogosphere (and yes, I include myself: I may not post as much as Kos or Atrios but I do a damn good radio show and am a damn good writer) suffer because they have to spend a lot of time doing a regular job to pay the bills. I would love to do this full time, as I'm sure nearly everyone who reads this would. But I know no one's gonna come knocking at my door saying they'll hire me to write a column or put on a radio show. I can't even get a few lousy donations to improve my cruddy computer system. This is why we're going to lose, even if Kerry miraculously manages to get into the White House. In fact, I think it will be worse for us in the long run if he does, because most of us, thinking the battle is over, will just go back to their regular lives, and Heritage will still be there, and so will all the others, just waiting for their next chance.

The Terrorist Production Line
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), has provided for us the two perfect quotes concerning the Abu Ghraib prison torture story: Am I the only one here who is outraged by the outrage? and They weren't there for traffic violations, you know. Both quotes sum up precisely what is wrong, not just with our policies, but with American culture to begin with. Americans are an arrogant people and always have been. There's nothing particularly wrong about that, all great nations, and America is a great nation indeed, have an arrogance about them, that's one of the things that makes them aspire to such greatness. But that arrogance is also what destroys nations, a belief that one group of people is superior to others.

The arrogance of the United States, as expressed by Sen. Inhofe and by others I have heard, is clear. They're not human, we don't have to treat them humanely. This attitude of who is and who is not human is central to what we are today. "Welfare mothers" are routinely derided. People are publicly humiliated on shows like Cops. Wal-Mart executives see their workers as little more than statistics and routinely steal from them. Why should we care? They deserve it. They can get a better job. Life is tough, deal with it. There's no sense of community any more, you're on your own, pal, and you'd better get used to it.

It doesn't matter to us that, according to the Red Cross, seventy to ninety percent of the "prisoners" at Abu Ghraib were there by mistake. They weren't guilty of any crimes, they just happened to be living in an Iraqi neighborhood where we were conducting a sweep. It doesn't matter to us because we don't see Arabs as humans. And now we are hearing stories of abuse at Guantanimo, and that conditions are little better in our own prisons.

As long as Bush continues to kill the people who are trying to kill me, says my old nemesis BChan, he's got my vote. I'm sure we have killed a lot of terrorists, really dangerous people wo would love to see the US go down in flames. But by our actions against purely innocent people because we don't see these Iraqis as humans, for every true terrorist we kill we are creating hundreds more. Abu Ghraib is now Chapter One in the Al Qaeda recruiting handbook, absolute proof that we are exactly what they have been saying about us all along, and that if they don't kill us, we will kill them.

America became an economic superpower in part because of our ability to mass-produce products. Now we're mass-producing terrorists. Do you feel safer?

Open Thread: Show 32
Listen here. Comment below. Be sure to buy the book!

Open Thread: Show 31 and Music Request Line
Listen here. Comment below, if Haloscan is back up. Also leave your requests for music for the special music show in this comments area, or email them to me.

Hobbit Sense
In Tolkien's Return Of The King, Sam Gamgee, Frodo's stalwart companion, takes the One Ring from Frodo's body (believing him to be dead) and enters the realm of Mordor, intent on finishing the mission of destroying the Ring by himself. The Ring begins to work its power on him instantly, tempting him with visions of power: Samwise the Great, overthrowing the Dark Lord and turning the desolate land of Mordor into a great garden. All he had to do was put on the Ring and claim it for his own. But Sam rejects this temptation:

In that hour of trial it was the love of his master that helped most to hold him firm; but also deep down in him lived still unconquered his plain hobbit-sense: he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden. The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.

We're all tempted, at one time or another, by wealth and power. On television and in the movies we're shown how good the rich have it, and we curse the lives we lead, lives that seem to lead us nowhere. Look at all the money Donald Trump has! Look at how much Mel Gibson made with his last movie! Look at that lucky bastard who just hit the lottery!

But some of us can't handle that kind of responsibility. Great wealth and power carry with them burdens of their own, not the least of which is the loss of self-identity. How do we know who our friends are, or if they like us because we have money? Will my old friends treat me like a pariah because I don't live in the same world as they do anymore? And even when some people get the kind of money they've dreamed of, they don't know how to handle it responsibly; many of those who hit the lottery wind up going broke within a couple of years, through over-spending or bad investments or just plain getting swindled.

There are some who buy into the notion that by following a program of some sort they, too, can earn a lot of money. Certainly plenty of people have made money catering to that attitude by selling books or hosting seminars. There's a price to pay for that kind of attitude, because it becomes an obsession. Some people will do anything to get more, and don't care who they have to step on to get it. And more than money, it becomes an obsession with power for the sake of power.

The Bible tells us that love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10), and history gives us many examples of this; people, businesses, entire nations destroyed because they over-reached, millions of lives lost, all manner of depravities committed. It was at work 500 years before Christ, with the destruction of Athens, who sought an empire that went against every ideal they had ever stood for. We have seen it in nations with less moral beginnings: in Imperial Rome, in the France of Napoleon, in Germany's Third Reich and Imperial Japan. And we're seeing it today in Iraq, where the most powerful military machine ever created is going to lose its second war in fifty years to a nation with a fraction of our might. The people who prosecuted this war, the ones who lied about the threat posed by Iraq, who disregarded any voice that warned them of the dangers of alienating our allies, the ones who looked to create their own empire in defiance of every ideal this nation was founded on, they are fueled by greed, and greed for money and power is a powerful and addictive emotion. Their greed blinded them to the realities of what would happen, just as it blinded those in ancient Athens.

But behind that greed is another, more powerful emotion: fear. The fear that if you don't have absolute power over others, others will have absolute power over you. This is why the Bush administration and its political and financial allies are so focused on control and so dismissive of reality. They fear losing power so they must continue to grab more and more of it. But that kind of power is both an illusion and a trap. Had Sam claimed the Ring for his own, the Dark Lord would have simply overpowered him, just as greed and power have overpowered so many over the years. Just as it will, eventually, destroy the Bushes, taking us along with them.

I read in another blog where, if the Bush administration is allowed another four years in power, the world will take it as a sign that we approve of everything that this country has done over the last four years. And we will all be blamed for it, regardless of how strongly we opposed what was happening. Rightly or wrongly, we all share responsibility for what our government does, and we will all suffer the consequences.

And that's why it's up to us to stop it, now.

We can begin by getting the Bush administration out office, and truly changing the tone, not only of Washington but of the country. We have to stop, as President Clinton has said, focusing on the things that divide us and start focusing on the things that bring us together. We have to stop letting the worst aspects of our natures rule over us. We have to stop believing that fame, wealth, and power are the only things worth living for and recognize that true greatness comes from inside.

And then we must recognize that we are all in this together, that as powerful as we are, we are but one nation among many, the greatest of free nations seeking to create a global community based on the ideals of freedom and self-rule. Not a tyrannical nation that has given in to the darker side of our natures. This is not, as Gov. Dean reminded us, just a campaign to change Presidents, it's a campaign to change America, to prevent what happened to Athens, to Rome, to France, to Germany and Japan, from happening to us. We are not large enough to bear the burden of Empire. The freedom to rule over ourselves is all our need and due; our own lives to lead, not the lives of others to command. Deep down inside, in the core of our hearts, we know this. Will we listen?

Open Thread: Show 30
Listen here. Comment below. For some reason the new show didn't upload to Rant Radio. Don't know what's up with that...

Open Thread: Show 29
Listen here. Comment below. Electra-wow!