HEY TRENT, THANKS A LOTT!

BY MICHAEL LINN JONES

So Senator Trent Lott is resigning before the end of the year. What an odd bit of timing, I first thought.

But, silly 'ole me. I have to be educated the hard way about how Washington really works. My first reaction was: do voters have a CLUE as to how the future-soon-to-be-former senator will get along?

I know that the rumor mill started off immediately with a bit about some kind of gay escort service and all that. As if that is a scandal compared to what is going to happen. Congressional salaries/pensions/etc. are a scam; a sham, and a rip-off.

Both parties do it; this is not an indictment of one political party so much as it is a glaring example of how much chutzpah exists among the so-called "servants of the people." Where else in America can one work a job for 5 years and get 80% of their pay for the rest of their lives? Oh, and don't forget the COLA's (Cost of living adjustments) that can (and DO) raise a retired congressperson's income ABOVE what they were earning while in office.

To add insult to injury, the royals elites have devised a scheme known as "ethics," which is always good for a laugh in Washington. See, it might appear to us rubes down on the farm that leaving Congress and then going right to work for the people who were buying lobbying you for all those years as a little questionable.

But not to worry. Currently, those leaving office have to survive one entire year on their pensions, which is 80% of $175,000. Some bright spark decided to increase that to TWO years! What is going on here, folks? Two entire years on such miserable pay? I think such a scenario is more than most millionaires (and their minions) can take.

BUT.....if Trent Lott resigns before the end of 2007.....hooray!, he is limited to only the one year in the poorhouse before signing on to millions in compensation from some lobbying firm. The two-year requirement starts after the new year. It also explains why Dennis Hastert is resigning, too.

I've come to the sad conclusion that the only hope for the future of representative government in the U.S. is a radical change from our current system. Members of Congress should serve just like anyone else does in a jury. You're summoned and you have to do it. One term and you can go home, but in the meantime you'll have to sacrifice your normal life for a while for the greater good of the country.

You know, like those 150,000 odd people in Afghanistan and Iraq right now. Of course it won't ever happen. Like Senator Clinton says, we can't afford to have the U.S. government be a learning center for newbies. No, we need professionals like herself, her husband, Mr. Hastert, Mr. Lott, ET AL.

They've done such a fine job so far.

The question is: for whom, though?
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Cross-posted at Michael Linn Jones.com

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ET TU, KRISTOL?

BY MICHAEL LINN JONES

Abraham Lincoln was a master of telling short stories to make a point. One I remember well is of the farmer out cutting hay in a field. He is interrupted by his ten-year-old son running towards him shouting, "Daddy! Daddy! You gotta come quick!" The farmer calms his excited son down and asked what the problem is."Well, Daddy, sister is up in the hayloft with her boyfriend. She's got her skirt pulled up and he's got his pants pulled down..and Daddy, they're gettin' ready to pee all over the hay!"

The farmer says, "Son, you got all your facts right but you've drawn the wrong conclusion."

At least the boy had his facts right, unlike William Kristol of The Weekly Standard. In his latest display of selective elitism, NOT-SO-GREAT GENERATION(The boomers will be best remembered for their self-glorification.) Dr. Kristol starts out with a response to a Tom Brokaw comment that the Boomer Generation ended segregation:

Whoa! The '60s generation changed our attitudes about race in America? Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther King Jr.--were they from the Vietnam war generation? Earl Warren, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Hubert Humphrey? For that matter, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, murdered on June 21, 1964, in Mississippi? None of these was a member of the " '60s generation." None was a boomer.

There really was greatness in the "greatest generation." It fought and won World War II, then came home to achieve widespread prosperity and overcome segregation while seeing the Cold War through to a successful conclusion. But the greatest generation had one flaw, its greatest flaw, you might say: It begat the baby boomers.

SNIP,

With all due respect to Clinton's intelligence and Bush's determination--it's hard to make the case that boomer presidents were an improvement. (And some of the most impressive characters in the Clinton and Bush administrations--Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Vice President Dick Cheney, to name two--weren't boomers.)

SNIP,

America's hopes for the future rest mostly with the 9/11 generation. Despite their unfortunate propensity so far to vote Democratic, these young men and women will, I believe, turn out to be far more impressive than we boomers who begat them. It would of course be a fitting fate, after all the soaring rhetoric about the boomers, if they turned out to be basically a parenthesis. They may go down in history as occupying space between the generation that won World War II and presided over a relatively successful second-half of the twentieth century, and the 9/11 generation that will deal with the threats the boomers neglected during that quintessential boomer decade, the '90s. It is the 9/11 generation that will have to construct and maintain a new American century. The best we boomers can do now is help them get started on the job. Meanwhile, the experience of the boomers should hearten us: America is such a great country that it will end up surviving even a not-so-great generation.

I've never been all that comfortable with Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation" simply because it is a selective view of history. Growing up in the Depression and sacrificing during World War II are significant, no doubt. But there isn't a Paul Harvey giving his "rest of the story." Some things happened that are commonly known and many that are not.

Not many know of the "Wanna Go Home" riots that afflicted American military installations after World War II. To be fair, these weren't the guys who fought during the war, but their replacements. They wanted to go home. Now. Harry Truman, George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, and anyone else who saw the growing threat of the Soviet Union in Europe wanted to maintain a large American military presence.

But they wanted to go home anyway. So did their wives, mothers, fathers, congressmen...one congressman received a flood of baby booties from constituents to dramatize the fact that all these babies wanted their daddies back.

So they were brought back. It emboldened the Soviets but not many in America cared. By that time the American populace was busy building the new suburbia and.....making babies. Lots of them. By the early 1950's regimentation and keeping one's mouth shut was the form of existence chosen by most of that generation. It culminated in the era of McCarthy, wherein people lived in fear of expressing an opinion.

Kristol refers to Robert Rubin and Dick Cheney as "most impressive characters." And that they are not boomers. I might be mixing generations here, but Rubin, Cheney, Bill Clinton, and Dr. Kristol ALL went to fine schools. They ALL went into government "service." Yet NONE of them took the opportunity to personally fight communisim. Kristol makes the point that many boomers ridiculed their peers' struggle against communism.

Well, there's two ways to do that: either march in the streets in protest calling soldiers baby-killers, or pursuing an exclusive college education while avoiding military service while at the same time extolling the virtues of a war they refused to participate in. Either way it was an insult to those who did serve in Vietnam whether they wanted to or not.

And would it be rude to ask just WHAT generation made the decisions about the Vietnam War? I can't rightly place the then 20-somethings and teenagers of the 1960's as having made major policy decisions.

Each generation deals with the cards it is dealt. Those cards are dealt by the elites; people like Dr. Kristol who on this day makes the statement: "America is such a great country that it will end up surviving even a not-so-great generation."

Perhaps William Kristol would be satisfied had there been more than the 58,000 names on the Vietnam War Memorial. And perhaps someday a descendant of William Kristol will condemn the generation that "lost" the Iraq War, conveniently forgetting that his ancestor's wisdom is what got us there in the first place.
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This post kindly featured at MemeOrandum
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Cross-posted at Michael Linn Jones.com

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PELOSI & REID FOLLOWING A PATH TO IRRELEVANCY

By Michael Linn Jones

Ever heard of Al Smith? He was once governor of New York, and the first Roman Catholic in a major party to run for the presidency. This was in 1928, and he was nominated by Franklin Roosevelt. That year Roosevelt won election as governor of New York himself.

Smith lost the election to Herbert Hoover. Some might say the nation lost the election, too, considering what followed. In 1932 Smith was one of Roosevelt's rivals for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. In the years that followed Smith was a strong opponent of Roosevelt's New Deal. For all of his progressive attitudes of that time, Smith was a firm believer in government action needing the close cooperation of business.

FDR was born rich. Al Smith was a classic rags-to-riches story. One of the problems with rags-to-riches is that many forget all about the rags as soon as they see the riches. Al Smith was far from being a bad man; in fact, a good one really but not in step with the realities facing the nation at that time. As President of the Empire State Building, Smith found himself in the circle of the wealthy. And, according to historian William Manchester, he liked it. (THE GLORY & THE DREAM, VOL.1)

Brevity requires an injustice to the memory of Governor Smith, but certain aspects of his career remind me of the current Democratic leadership in the House and Senate. It can be very difficult to articulate some thoughts; to put them into words that capture both the meaning and emotion. Here is my best shot:

The election results of 2006 was a message of sorts. A lot of people were fed up. Yes, Iraq was a big topic but not the only one. Voters weren't exactly on the war path yet were also beyond patience. After six years of a presidency that was somewhat short of competence and honesty, along with a Republican Congress that was more cooperative than Hitler's Reichstag, people wanted a strong gulp of Jack Daniels.

What they've gotten is near-beer. The highly-touted Democratic victory in 2006 is a Roman Candle that is sputtering. And with very few sparks. House Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid have a big problem. The majority of the people who allowed them to gain the positions they now hold are not represented. That is, the voters.

No, there will be no talk of impeachment; no talk of de-funding the Iraq War (which is the ONLY recourse of Congress, really) nor anything else that might rock the boat. For that boat floats upon the invisible sea of campaign cash. In order for their nets to continue to haul in a harvest, that boat must be stable. The rules of life in America (which they write) must remain essentially the same.

When something needs to be done, there is something worse than doing nothing. And that is to APPEAR to be doing something when in fact doing little more than nothing. And THAT is the story of the Lilliputian Legistature in 2007. The boat remains steady, the nets keep hauling in the silent harvest, and a holding pattern is established that awaits the self-destruction of the Republicans.

In times past, there were convergence points; economic and social forces removed the status quo from the stage. It usually is unpleasant but somehow inevitable. In Europe, 1848 was such a time, not to mention the French Revolution.

Here, there is the Civil War, the Great Depression, and 1968. That particular year is relevant because that is when the Democratic Party started to dissolve from being a voice of millions to a thousand voices of narrow-minded interest groups. The glue that held the party together was diluted on purpose.

The years the Democrats spent out of power were not so much because of the effectiveness of the Republicans (which was considerable nonetheless) so much as their own slide to irrelevancy. What mattered to the party didn't matter to the people. Or vice versa.

Despite all the political science and election specialists, there are forces that build, much like along a geological fault line. They can be ignored (and usually are) for a very long time. But sooner or later those in power discover that their usual remedies no longer work. When the balance is lost no one knows what will happen.

But like Al Smith, Pelosi and Reid and all those they truly represent (and they are NOT "little people") have climbed to the heights and find they like it there. The rarified air of power not only corrupts, but blinds.

In the end, misused power has no power at all. It just creates a vacuum that will be filled by radical change. That does not always equate with wisdom or good.

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Cross posted at Michael Linn Jones.com & The Van Der Galien Gazette