Them!

by Jim Washburn

I feel like I’ve been playing catch-up, with a rubber mitt, ever since I got off my road trip the other month. Things that peeve and mortify me just keep piling up in ugly clumps of newsprint. I will attempt to dispatch with a few of them this week.

First off, when our conservative brethren continue to carp about what a “miserable job” President Obama is doing, and reject any response that involves facts or recent history as “playing that worn-out Bush card,” how do we get the point across to them that just maybe Obama’s doing a pretty good job given that upon taking office he was handed a bigger platter of steaming shit than any president since FDR, and, thanks to Obama’s efforts, most of that shit has stayed clear of the fan?

Let’s try this: Ask them to pretend that the United States is the Starship Enterprise. Its old commander, Captain Drinkypants, crashed it straight into a planet, kaboom. The crash might not have been so bad except he’d diverted all power from the shields so he could fire the ship’s photon torpedoes at the Iromulans, who, curiously, had posed no threat to the ship.

There had been no warning that the ship was going to hit the planet, because the people in charge of detecting and preventing such threats had been specifically placed in their positions by Captain Drinkypants because they, like he, were ideologically opposed to the Enterprise detecting and preventing things, believing instead that the universe was self-correcting.

So, kaboom, and the Enterprise was in a mess, just as a new captain had been chosen to run it. When he arrived on the command deck, the hull was breached, and the crew was staggering around for want of oxygen. To make matter worse, the life support systems had been switched over so that, while everyone else was gasping, a very special three percent of the ship’s crew was receiving more oxygen, food and nicely colored drinks with dry ice in them than they could ever use. Meanwhile, a significant portion of the crew didn’t even have access to the sick bay. And, oh yeah, the planet they’d crashed into was right in the path of a black hole, and it appeared they were going to be sucked into it.

So there’s no honeymoon period for the new captain. He gets right to work, but is continually stymied in his already herculean task. Just as Captain Drinkypants had done with the ship’s watchdogs, he’d embedded persons in nearly every position of authority who were dedicated to the notion that a starship shouldn’t fly, so none of the ship’s departments was running as it should. Many of the most vital jobs, even security, had been outsourced to the entrepreneurial Harry Mudds of the universe.

The new captain also was frequently undercut by an old-guard faction at Starfleet Command, who blocked the crew appointments the ship needed to ever run again. This same faction refused to address the black hole emergency, because, despite what all their scientists told them, and the sucking sound of the Enterprise being drawn in, they just didn’t believe in black holes, thank you.

So this new captain does what he can, and somehow manages to keep the Enterprise’s engines running, and even manages to kill the old captain’s arch enemy, Osama bin Khan. New disasters are cropping up on the Enterprise all the time—fuel leaks, solar storms—and he’s dealing with those, too.

Even so, many in Starfleet fight him at every turn rather than pitch in with solutions, and openly accuse him of being a Klingon. They even threaten to cut off the Enterprise’s credit to resupply its dilithium crystals if the captain doesn’t agree to degrade and outsource even more of the crew’s fragile lifeline.

Captain Drinkypants’ old cronies crow, “This new captain is the worst ever. Look how lousy the Enterprise flies now compared to when we were in charge!” Just because they bring up the past doesn’t mean anyone else can. They just don’t want to hear that of course the new captain is having trouble flying the Enterprise because the old captain CRASHED IT SMACK INTO A GODDAMNED PLANET.

Just to highlight that this story isn’t entirely in the stars, another key Obama appointment withdrew his nomination last week after having his appointment permanently stalled by congressional Republicans. Peter Diamond had been nominated 14 months ago to the Federal Reserve Board—a crucial post in these troubled financial times—and he should have been a shoo-in for the job. Diamond is a respected economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a blemish-free record. Oh yes, he also won the frigging Nobel Prize in economics last year, but that’s just not good enough for the knuckle-dragging conservative senators who blocked his appointment, as they have so many others.

That’s just business as usual for them. Back in the day, all you had to be was competent and not behind bars, and Congress felt duty bound to approve you, out of respect not just to the President but to the majority of Americans who elected him. No more.

On to other matters: Anthony Weiner. Why, exactly, should any of us have a say or a concern about when he sent in private emails to grownups? Well, here’s why, according to Andrew Breitbart: by writing and sending out sex-laden emails, a congressman leaves himself open to blackmail. And to prove how right he is, Breitbart, who broke the story, is using the salacious material to try to drive Weiner from office. Breitbart was in town promoting his new book, How to Get Government Out of Our Boardrooms and Into Your Underpants. (It’s actually called Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World, but who needs to know that?)

People ask me how my war with the ants is going. One was just strolling across my computer screen until I hit its delete button. A couple of days ago, I saw a blur, and found one crawling on the upper rim of my reading glasses. I just swept about 80 off my tiled floor. Scores of them have taken up residence on a stained glass swag lamp, like they’re vacationing in Venice. Does that answer the question? They still aren’t pouring out of the ceiling by the thousands like they were last year, but I can’t claim to have the upper hand yet.

Things I have crushed ants with this week: dumbbells; the bridge from a Danelectro Convertible guitar; an expired credit card; guitar picks; my gloved fingers; my bare fingers; tweezers; a nail file; business cards; a nine-volt battery; Kleenex; a ruler; and I slapped some dead with one of the ant bait traps I’d laid out for them, which otherwise sure aren’t killing them anywhere near fast enough to suit me.

My main squishing tool is still the brass steel guitar slide. When ants gather ’round the sugar bowl for years to come, they’ll be telling horror stories about its clattering wake of death. They’re valiant little creatures in a way. Like the Marines, they don’t leave their fallen behind on the battlefield. They risk death to drag their comrades off to a safe spot, where they devour them. I’ll have to ask one of my ex-Marine friends what they do with the bones.

Isn’t it odd that ants have a thorax while Thor has a hammer?

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