“Zucchini?”

“Yeah man, vegetables. Look around, half the world is there. They’re planted in their shit gardens, sucking in whatever nutrients they need to survive, but they’re not living, man. They’ve ceased to have ideas bigger than the vine they’re clinging to, whether it’s religion, academics, the rat-race, or something else. Whatever else you do, beware of that. Don’t become a fuckin’ zucchini.”

Most of the people I’ve met aren’t remembered, at least not vividly. Although I only knew him for a couple of years, Bill stuck with me. I’ve spent thirty years with the zucchini analogy branded in my brain, and have done my best to avoid becoming a clinging, myopic vegetable – which wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought it would be. There’s something about being hurt, struggling, overwhelmed, or frustrated that seems to stop life on a macro level. The world of ideas becomes less important than the need for a Band-Aid, a break, or an immediate solution – even if the solution is temporary, or detrimental in the long-run.

I’ve managed to keep myself out of the shit garden for the most part, if only because I love the idea of potential. I love knowing that, barring death or a cruel disease of the mind, the human brain can keep on learning, thinking, and creating up until the last of its neurons are fired and its gray matter grows cold. I get a special thrill out of stories about 70 year-olds graduating college or middle-aged artists having their first art show. Stories like that stoke hope, no matter how slim, that it really never is too late – not for a degree, for talent, for love, for dreams – not for anything.

I wonder, though, if it’s not too late to change America back to the innovative, thriving power it once was. I can’t be the only Democrat who believes that the bank bailout, and now the $900B(+) Economic Stimulus Plan, is like the governmental version of a shit garden. After browsing through the 1071 page document, I’m convinced that we are fertilizing soil for the benefit of the vegetables among us.

Bureaucracy is often a self-perpetuating monster, and the collective greed of big corporations has been well-documented. These are the major beneficiaries of spending in the bailout and stimulus packages, and for decades into the future, taxpayers will have the noose of this debt wrapped around their collective necks.

This stimulus package is just one humongous gambling marker, and the ideas within it seem to have sprung from the same kind of mentality that compels chronic gamblers to throw good money after bad, hoping that if they spend enough, Lady Luck will grace them with a winning streak. It’s irrational, it has no grounding in reality, but even otherwise smart people will rub their lucky pennies, throw a pinch of salt over their shoulder, or appeal to the fates when they’re losing.

The ideas contained in the bailout and stimulus plans cater to the chronic spenders and vegetables in our midst – there’s not an original thought or innovative, long-term approach within either package.

America didn’t become a superpower due to its government bailouts. We got there with revolutionary inventions – by the creation and manufacturing of goods no other country had, or could produce as well as we did. We got there by being innovative, competitive, and tireless in our search for ways to improve life for people here and around the globe. We got there by opening doors of opportunity, paying decent wages, making housing affordable, and being willing to challenge traditions and social policies that impeded human potential.

Greed and avarice overtook America during the Bush years, particularly in the corporate and banking sectors. It seems to me that the way back to greatness isn’t going to be found in borrowed money, mass bailouts, or by reviving sagging bureaucracies, but in a new vision that incorporates and rewards innovation, attempts new strategies, and insists on ethics.

Instead, we’ve just tilled a massive shit garden, and I think many working class Americans understand that, even if they don’t have a degree in economics. Most of us are aware that if someone stood out on the street tomorrow handing out $10 bills, people would take them, regardless of need. Free money is free money. There’s no innovation there, and no incentive to spend it wisely, or with the long-range interests of the country in mind. The zucchinis will plant themselves quickly enough, sucking up everything they can until the garden is dry.

My friend Bill was right. We are a world built on ideas, and the finest ideas aren’t contained in any one school of thought. Beyond every other consideration, our humanity, and our common desire for better circumstances, binds us.

“Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.” – Carlos Castaneda

“Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.” – Ayn Rand

I’m not sure what any one person can do at this point to avoid shit garden economics, but as a nation of newly invigorated citizens I hope we demand accountability from all of those who seek to plant themselves there, and insist that those who show signs of wasting their handouts be plucked from the program.

And, of course, we have do whatever it takes to keep new ideas from flowing out of the hemisphere and into the vacuum of apathy.

They were a match made in a blinders-on Republican heaven, where the conservative faithful still believe that with a little bit of faith and a lot of charm, they can transform failures and shortcomings into delusory gold, and rebirth multimillionaires into everyday people who really care about the plights of their Joe Six-Pack and Soccer Mom peers. Operating under the premise that if something is said often enough it will become accepted as the truth, they tend to blame the mythical devil of the Liberal Media for their public embarrassments, and don’t find it odd at all when their counterparts wave off abuse-of-power reports, and even court convictions,  as if they were the conspiratorial fantasies of an unpatriotic public. Behind the thick cigar smoke and carnival mirrors of such political propaganda, Limbaugh isn’t just a barker, but a godhead with a loyal legion of followers hailing from the furthest backwoods shacks to the hallowed halls of Washington. Those followers are called, appropriately enough, dittoheads.

The slippery, delusional thought processes of dittohead candidates and their lobbying groups were never as transparent as they were during the 2008 election. In the midst of a economic crisis, with the highest national debt in the history of the nation — after eight years of iron-fisted Republican domination — millions of Americans were bombarded with political slogans like these:

• Who can fix our economy? Only one party will fix the damage and prevent another crisis. Vote Republican.
• Jobs lost. Spending up. Economy down. Energy prices Up. Vote Republican to end America’s economic crisis.
  
• Vote Republican & Restore Balance to Our Economy.
• Republicans will eliminate wasteful spending, balance the budget and regain the trust of the American taxpayer.

Of course, Rush Limbaugh was there to lead the charge. And in the foggy realm of Republican obfuscation, Limbaugh is not just a college dropout with an inflammatory radio show, but an authority on capitalism, economics, defense, domestic policy, world relations and more.  Never mind that Limbaugh has not passed so much as one college course in business, law or political science — he has a $400M dollar contract with Clear Channel Radio, and a show that reaches an estimated 20 million viewers a week between 600 stations. According to figures obtained by Forbes, Limbaugh’s eight-year contract is only $87M short of what Hollywood’s 10 best-paid actors earned in the year between June 2007-June 2008, and $155.5M more than what the 10 best-paid actresses earned in the same time.

$400M can buy a lot of prestige in Washington, but a charismatic personality is worth much more, particularly when it comes attached to a substantial base of fans.  Just ask James Dobson or Pat Robertson.   Like Limbaugh, Dobson and Robertson managed to hold political sway based not on their intellectual credentials or objective reasoning skills, but on the basis of their Arbitron ratings.  They were given credibility by Washington politicians not because they were giants of integrity, ethics, or reason, but because they were media giants — willing to stand up for even the most beleaguered Republican politicians and truth-bereft party messages in exchange for Washington-sanctioned political standing.

Without that sanction, it is unlikely that personalities like Limbaugh, Dobson, and Robertson would have ever been considered newsworthy outside of the entertainment or religion pages. Certainly, without the sanction of Washington politicians, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal would not be doing what amounts to PR for Limbaugh.

Instead, thanks to Washington and the slavish capitulation of congressmen like Phil Gingrey-R (who backed off of his justified criticism of Limbaugh after fans inundated his office with complaints), Americans who would not normally tune in to hear the opinions of an unschooled political shock-jock, are being inundated with his ridiculous, uninformed messages.

Businesses need tax cuts. The US corporate tax rate is obscene. It is the highest of all industrialized nations. It’s 35%. Cut it. Cut it in half. – excerpt from Rush Limbaugh’s stimulus plan.

Taking his cue from dogmatic Republicans who can’t stop repeating the mantra of corporate tax cuts long enough to address the truth, Limbaugh used his PR opportunity to mislead more Americans than usual. The 35% tax rate is born from a paper figure that has little to do with the reality of what corporations actually pay. At the risk of repeating information that seems to bounce right off the collective conscience of the dittoheads, the fact is that despite the high bracket tax rate on paper, many corporations pay no taxes at all, and those that do pay, don’t pay anywhere near 35% after deductions, incentives, and loopholes.

America has known many charismatic media personalities but Republican politicians, perhaps still impressed by the number of conservative evangelicals thought to be delivered by television and radio preachers in the Reagan and Bush years (as if they would have voted otherwise), seem especially inclined to lend credence to Rush Limbaugh, even at the expense of their own reputations outside of the Republican party.

I don’t think President Obama was being flip when he told congressional leaders that “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done”.  Rather, it seems he might have been responding to the lack of original thought and leadership within the Republican party, and the seeming eagerness of Republican politicians to hand the intellectual reins of their platform over to whatever colorful pundit they think can best deliver them voters in the next election. If it’s a strategy, it would seem to be one as disastrous as the Palin pick, and if it’s a habit, it’s one that surely needs breaking if the Republican party is to recover from the Bush years with any integrity.

McCain Slams Stimulus – Joins GOP Leaders to Attack Stimulus Package. Well, okay. I’m all for healthy debate, even if it is with a party that turned itself inside-out during the last decade to become the unaccountable, freedom-snatching, bloat-ridden, free-spending, debt-driven, war-mongering party it is now. It would be unfair to hold every Republican responsible for the failure of the Bush administration even if, like McCain, their Senate votes supported Bush 90% of the time.

Putting aside the fact that the majority of Americans voted against furthering the Republican agenda, elected representatives from the Republican party still represent millions of Americans. Their voices need to be heard, and their ideas deserve serious consideration.

However, when an idea is not just flawed, but based on a pervasive lie, it needs to be called out until facts overcome propaganda and truth rings from the rafters. In McCain’s case, the lie is that businesses are overwhelmed by taxes, and that a business tax cut is necessary to stimulate the economy.

“We need to make tax cuts permanent, and we need to make a commitment that there’ll be no new taxes,” Mr. McCain said. “We need to cut payroll taxes. We need to cut business taxes.”

While McCain was hawking lower business taxes during his run for President, many of us had already learned the ugly truth. I wrote an article about it in October 2008.

In a stunning report released by the United States Government Accountability Office in July 2008, Americans learned that many corporations, including those with assets over $250M, reported no tax liabilities. In fact, from 1998-2005, 72% of foreign-controlled domestic corporations (FCDC’s), and 55% of US-controlled corporations (USCC’s), reported zero tax liability for at least one of those years. In total, two-thirds of the corporations doing business in the U.S. paid no taxes from 1998-2005, while collectively reporting $2.5 trillion dollars in sales.

In that article, I pointed out that the cuts McCain wanted were something of a manufactured myth, not just because so many corporations paid no taxes at all, but because the majority of those who did pay, paid nowhere near the 35% McCain claimed.

McCain and other Republicans continue pushing the mirage of high corporate taxes despite the nuts and bolts of facts as presented by the government’s own accounting office. At a time when they should be demanding an end to the loopholes and special breaks that allowed so many corporations to exist tax-free, they are instead pushing for more corporate tax breaks.

One has to wonder what America’s bottom-line might look like if all the corporations in question paid taxes at even 10% during the last decade. My guess is that it might have been enough to fund the $700B+ business bailout that the Senate voted for, despite the the fact that the majority of Americans disapproved. We’re tired of paying the price for corporate negligence and greed, a point that is driven home every time we hear about multi-million dollar bonuses, million dollar office makeovers, or lavish parties.

There are small businesses — those without teams of attorneys and accountants at their disposal — who might benefit from tax breaks and other incentives. If the corporations that paid no taxes at all paid their share, we might be able to give relief to those small businesses that are struggling due to the economy, and not their own bad business practices.

With our country in crisis, this is not the time for smokescreens, mirages, and propaganda. It is time to face the truth, hold businesses and people accountable, and give relief where it is needed — and not just where it’s politically expedient or advantageous to do so.

It’s a myth that dreamers are incapable of rationality and lost in the elusive. Both rationality and imagination are behind every brush stroke of Mona Lisa’s smile, and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. They have connected – beautifully – in the pen strokes of Shakespeare, in the musical notes of Mozart, and in the inventive genius of men like Isaac Newton and Bill Gates. Every human being has the potential to share this duality. We are, as a species, gifted with complexity, and a desire to know the divine.

It’s a new election season in America, and on the heels of disaster, the possibility of change sparks both our imaginations and our desire for a more rational world. Is it possible, we ask, to heal the wounds of people and the rift between nations? Is it possible to overcome the well-oiled machine that has sanctioned the rule of morally bankrupt and intellectually empty leaders? Can the voices of reason and possibility rise above the rallying cries of war and more war?

Despite those who would suggest otherwise, it was dissent against rigid dogmas, and not religious fervor, that informed every word of our Declaration of Independence. And then, as now, the authors of a new age seek both a dream and an absolute. The dream is peaceful progress and the building of a nation where every human being has the opportunity to reach their highest potential. The absolute is never again. Never again can we allow the want of revenge to override reason. Never again can we stand idly while politicians and big corporations sink our country into the morass of corruption and the swamp of endless debt.

When our highest dreams and most rational actions are joined, we may overcome not just the stalemate of political divisions, but other social issues.

Presently, over 500,000 children live in the limbo of foster care. I can imagine a day when the most innocent and vulnerable among us are truly protected, not just in a time of crisis, but for the duration of their childhoods. When the “best interests of the child” is a promise fulfilled, and where a child’s right to live in safety, without fear, is considered paramount.

I imagine a world in which every child is given multiple and varied opportunities to find, nurture, and expand their potential, and where doing so is not a luxury, but a given. I believe that if we were truly motivated to nurture the best within our children, we would find many more Galileos in our midst. Einsteins and Kings, Van Goghs and O’Keefes, and yes, Barack Obamas.

In a country that sought to revitalize the rational-imaginative minds of its people, we might see a final end to discrimination. We might see a day when false limitations are universally known and believed to be false – and where character really is the ultimate determinant of one’s opportunities.

I can envision a time when rational tolerance is practiced. When the steady progression of humankind is the goal of all cultures, including the cultures of the traditionalists and the devoutly religious.

Religion and tradition should not be used as justification for stunting the evolution of humanity, or as an excuse for denying the inherent right of others to liberty and freedom. No God or other high-minded entity would have us mutilate the genitals of little girls, rape women, or slay, torture, or starve thousands of people in order to advance a political, religious, or cultural agenda. To live in a world where even one act of such violence is considered unavoidable, or par for the course, is to have twisted the noble concept of tolerance into soulless apathy.

Humanity is not soulless, but our challenges are many, our divisions are great, and recent years have discouraged our ideals. So many, reeling from tragedy, or facing a time of personal struggle, are feeling the weight of despair. They may even be afraid to hope for better days, particularly in a climate that has traded rational dreams for ever-deepening political divides – a climate in which war, torture, and death was marketed as a rational response, and those who sought answers and accountability were derided as “bleeding hearts”.

There’s a saying – “we all want to change the world.” Actually, we know that some, particularly those who profit in a time of war and destruction, would like to see it not change at all. Others find change threatening in some fashion.

The dreamers among us move forward, past our fears, because our minds recognize them as unnecessary limitations, and our imagination longs to see what is on the other side. We long to expand the boundaries and break the unnecessary barriers. We long to fill our individual selves with the light of possibility, and then carry that torch to the outside world. We long to create a legion of united individualists, who will stand together and usher in a new age of revitalization, and the reconciliation of our ideals with our everyday realities.

If we can dream it, it is possible. A battle to revitalize the human spirit requires no enemies, and a revolution of peace requires no violence.

If we were to each follow our highest ideals, we would likely find ourselves not divided, but united. Not alone in our idealism, but joined. Not lost in idle dreams, but wholly invested in making them come true. 2009 is only our beginning. Our end is nowhere yet in sight.

As a registered Democrat, this is the first time I have been targeted by the right-wing campaign machine. In my mail today there were nine political ads — six from the Republican Party of Minnesota, two from the Republican-supporting “Associated Builders and Contractors Free Enterprise Alliance”, and one from a Republican state representative running for re-election.

I remember reading the novel Clockwork Orange as a teenager, and being bewildered by the “Nadstat” language Stanley Kubrick created for his characters. The 2008 campaign literature of the Republican party is much like Kubrick’s experiment, except in this case the words are recognizable, but make entirely no sense given the reality of the situation. It’s the same kind of language that was recently employed by both Sarah Palin and Ted Stevens. Palin, upon reading a report that clearly stated she abused her power, insisted that the investigation found “no abuse of power there at all”. Stevens, after being convicted last Monday on fraud charges, stated on Thursday that he had not yet been convicted.

Denial in the face of reality would seem to be a poor strategy, particularly in politics, but even stranger than the alternative realities proffered by Palin and Stevens are the gaslighting slogans being offered up by the Republican party, seemingly designed to make rational people feel crazy .

Who can fix our economy? Only one party will fix the damage and prevent another crisis. Vote Republican.

Jobs lost. Spending up. Economy down. Energy prices Up. Vote (Republican) to end America’s economic crisis.

Vote Republican & Restore Balance to Our Economy.

Republicans will eliminate wasteful spending, balance the budget and regain the trust of the American taxpayer. [Emphasis added].

In these uncertain times, Americans have many questions….Republicans have real answers.

Help Republicans revive our economy.

Today’s financial crisis requires more than just a band aid. Vote Republican. Help fix a broken Washington and an ailing economy.

The Republican Plan: End wasteful spending for special interest projects not in our national interests and regain the trust of taxpayers. [Emphasis added].

There’s more, but you get the drift. Somehow, the crises wrought by eight years of a Republican administration is not the fault of Republicans, or of right-wing ideology. Somehow, even though our economy crashed while under the control of Bush and company, and the public’s trust was shattered, only more Republicans, sharing the same philosophies, can fix the damage. Only Republicans know, as Dick Cheney surely did when he decided to fill Halliburton’s coffers, which “special interest projects” are worthy of wasteful spending in the name of our national interests.

By way of some magical thinking, McCain didn’t support Bush with 90% of his votes, and the ultra right-wing Palin has no stake in the pro-war, corporate-pandering, pro-deregulation ideas that got us into this mess. As for all those Republican governors, representatives, and senators who refused to criticize their puppeteer, and instead spent the last four to eight years pulling strings and punches to ensure Bush’s will was done? Well, either those years never happened, or those politicians have been reborn, with only a scant memory of their lives before reincarnation.

It’s really a zammechat raskazz that the Republicans have vareeted, but my rassoodock just doesn’t buy it. And if that makes absolutely no sense to you, then I am surely worthy of your consideration — at least according to Republican logic.

Speaking of corruption, a lovely little solicitation flew into my hands yesterday, courtesy of Minnesota’s own right-wing nut, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who recently received her fifteen minutes of infamy for suggesting that the media should investigate Obama and other members of Congress to find out who is “pro-America” and who is not.

“They’ve got $2M To Smear Me Now!!” cries a sticker planted on the corner of the envelope.  Inside, it gets even more interesting, with Bachmann suggesting that the outpouring of donations to her opponent after her disastrous Hardball appearance was due to “special interest liberal money”.   It couldn’t, of course, have anything to do with how incensed Minnesotans of almost every persuasion were by her McCarthy-like suggestion.  Even Governor Tim Pawlenty and Senator Norm Coleman, both Republicans, repudiated Bachmann’s statements.

“The Alliance for a Better Minnesota, a front group for liberal extremists, is already running a negative smear ad against me on TV,” Bachmann alleges in her letter.  Call something a “front group” and it brings up visions of an armed Patty Hearst, or a group of radicals setting off bombs.  Follow it with “extreme” and you have all the makings of an anarcharchist revolution.  Odd, because while the Alliance clearly has Democratic roots, there is nothing “front group” or extreme about them — unless you count advocating for the interests of the working and middle-class of Minnesota extreme.  Bachmann never explains what she thinks the group is fronting for, but this kind of hyperbolic, fear-driven language has been part and parcel of Republican antics this year.

Lastly, Bachmann’s letter claims that the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) “is concerned enough to buy ad time” to support her campaign.  Um, no.  That’s also a lie.  The NRCC canceled its planned media buys in the Twin Cities shortly after Bachmann’s Hardball appearance.

If you haven’t seen Bachmann’s disgraceful brand of conservatism, you really must.  Here’s the whole, unedited clip on YouTube.  After you watch it, read what she had to say about her own comments below, in a letter she wrote to subscribers of a national online conservative newspaper.

“Chris Matthews did what Chris Matthews is paid big bucks to do: Twist my words and set them up for full-fledged distortion when his next guest came on,” she wrote. “And, when the liberal blogs got hold of little clips of my appearance, the spin machine really kicked into overdrive…. They’re motivated entirely by their hatred of me and my conservative beliefs.”

There seems to be a serious disconnect between Bachmann’s mouth, brain, and conscience.  The only “twisting of words” and “full-fledged distortion(s)” arising from Bachmann’s media snafu didn’t come from Matthews, liberal blogs, spin machines or haters — but from Bachmann herself.

Eight days to go, people, but who’s counting?