American Patrol

** Those of you who haven't yet read TD Mischke's "A Christmas Story" in last week's City Pages are urged to do so. Mischke, whom I have prized this year both for generating rare and precious readable column inches in the Pages and for being a fellow member of the Pretentious Initials Club (honorary President EJ Dionne), has truly created a Christmas classic. It is a modern day "Yes, Virginia..." and gave me visions after I read it this weekend of clippings of the story being handed on from generation to generation. Yes, I am an anachronistic old fart, thanks for noticing.

**Major mea culpas: I was obviously wrong about the inability of the Senate to pass the health care reform package before Christmas, which barring the unforeseen they are now set to do late Christmas Eve. No surprise, really—I finally posted the damn thing after five solid days of having the developing news cycle turn my draft copy into counterfactual poo, so being bitten in the ass yet again by the story isn’t exactly unexpected. Somehow, as hard as I may try, I’m always really bad at estimating the depths of cynicism-- it would never have occurred to me that Ben Nelson’s supposedly principled head could be turned by the mere offer of perpetual Medicaid funding for Nebraska, or rather, turned more than it already had been by campaign contributions from his old friends and colleagues in the insurance industry. I wasn’t wrong about the final bill containing indefensible elements, however, and the chances of those elements being eliminated in conference seem fairly slim.

**In the spirit of the season, Senator Tom Coburn, Sunday night before the cloture vote: "What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can't make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray." Sorry to bring it up during the Holy Days, but the longer I live the more the failure of God to strike certain people down where they stand convinces me of His nonexistence.

**This time of year I often find myself wondering what sort of effect it has had on Western culture that the major holiday of its dominant religion celebrates that religion's central figure as an infant.

"What happened? Why did we suck? How can we not suck in the future?"
-- Henchman 24

"Money doesn't talk, it swears."
-- Bob Dylan

"And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers..."
-- Matthew 21:12 (King James Version)

By now it seems obvious that the Administration and Congressional leadership’s promise of a health care reform bill all wrapped up and under the tree in time for Christmas is as good as broken. This is probably for the best. It was socks, people (which any kid can tell you counts as a lousy present and any appreciator of “vintage erotica” can tell you implies inadequate coverage), and that wasn’t cheery wrapping paper, it was a collection of premium invoices and tax statements. The real present was not for us.

While it remains to be seen if this particular package will even be delivered in the bleak early days of the New Year, the unlikelihood of any sudden dramatic action on this issue (particularly with the Republicans’ use of such bits of the Judd Gregg How To Stall memo as the forcing of amendments to be read aloud) before then gives those of us who can ignore politics when it isn’t directly in their faces an opportunity to enjoy the holidays with their friends and loved ones unencumbered by the news, and those of us whose obsession with politics won’t let us goddamn leave it alone for a couple of weeks adequate opportunity to grind the lessons of this debacle down into a fine and bitter paste, to wit:

1) The Democrats do not, and never have had, sixty votes in this Senate. The count, after the Specter defection and Coleman’s Last Stand, was always this: fifty odd Democrats; Bernie Sanders (I-VT), an honest to God Socialist whose lack of anywhere better to go serves as an odd and disheartening symbol for the relationship of the left and the Democratic Party overall; Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), who should have been invited for an extended ride on the nearest ice floe right after his Republican Convention speech; and a passel of Senators from rural Southern and Midwestern states whose conservatism and fundamental disloyalty to the party and its principles make the continued holding of their seats by the Democrats a complete moot point. Having a sixty vote majority caucus has been, for the Democrats, like having a stretch Mercedes limo with a thrown rod sitting in the driveway: it’s big, it’s impressive, and it won’t get you anywhere.

2) The Senate is a deeply antidemocratic institution. The Senators mentioned above, all of whom have threatened at one time or another to overturn the will of their constituents and the majority of their peers, collectively represent less than five percent of the US population. Lieberman, who has threatened to do so single-handedly if need be, represents 1.15% of that population, and was re-elected by a minority of that.

3) The Senate is a deeply corrupt institution. The Senators alluded to above have received millions of dollars in campaign contributions from medical insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers, and have, in the face of reliable polling, taken as a policy the bald statement “Screw you, citizens, who cares what you want?”

4) Much would be improved if Rahm Emanuel decided to, umm, “spend more time with his family.” My original iteration of this point actually involved a pedestrian traffic accident with a large public transport vehicle (The Curmudgeon’s involved his head on a pike on the White House lawn), which seems both uncharitable at the holidays and overly violent. It really doesn’t matter what takes him out of the government, it matters that something does. Why? Well, for one thing Emanuel, back when he was in charge of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, got the Party a swell deal on the stretch Mercedes limo that currently sits in its figurative driveway going nowhere, and this kind of value blind form-over-content politics, which he learned at the feet of Bill Clinton, characterizes his entire approach to government. Emanuel, whose appointment as Chief of Staff was greeted in certain circles with praise for his toughness and political savvy, can be best summed up at this point by his alleged statement concerning Lieberman—“Give him what he wants.” If politics is an art, Rahm Emanuel paints by numbers.

5) Maybe Barack Obama isn’t all that after all. While it would be nice to cast the majority of the blame on his staff (see Rahm Emanuel above), his leadership on this issue has been less than pathetic, and there can simply be no excuses made. The argument that is currently making the rounds that Congress must pass a health care bill no matter what it looks like in order to avoid hurting the President fails to take into account just how badly this process has hurt him already. His willingness to deal away key provisions of this effort to the Republicans and the insurance industry while earning the support of neither makes this supposedly keenly intelligent President look gullible and weak. The end result makes this supposed agent of change look like a champion of the status quo. His attempts to preserve his political capital by leaving the process to Congress and not deigning to address the lies employed by his opposition have resulted in a slow and smoldering erosion of that capital among the coalition that elected him in the first place.

While none have seen the final bill at this point, early indications are that it will contain any number of elements that should be seen as entirely unacceptable: an individual mandate without competition or cost control, an erosion of women’s rights, a provision allowing insurers to cap benefits, take your pick. Many of the elements being touted as so completely necessary as to require the bill’s passage, such as the elimination of insurance companies rights to deny benefits to those with pre-existing conditions, now exist completely detached from any elements that prevent the insurance companies from turning that coverage into another unaffordable cash cow. The point of the exercise was supposedly competition, affordability, and universal coverage. The result, it seems, has been none of the above.

Coal in our stockings, people. Let’s see if we can figure out in the coming year how we were bad enough to merit that.

"It is the night with the Christmas trees and pie.
Jesus was born and so I get presents.
Thank you, Jesus, for being born."
--Cartman, South Park

I went to the laundromat the week before Thanksgiving. Laundromat mornings are a departure from my usual morning modus-- I leave the house before having any coffee, not wishing to be any more aware of the eight block forced full pack march it takes to get there than I have to be, and bring a go-cup. I was only a couple of sips in and only vaguely aware of my surroundings as I sorted my laundry (cold load-- stuff I care about; hot load-- stuff I don't), but began to realize that the laundromat was resounding with cries of "Christ! Oh Christ! Jesus Christ!"

It was another few ounces before I twigged to the fact that I was hearing not an angry and frustrated fellow laundromat patron, but Christmas music on the PA system. WLTE-FM here in Minneapolis has made a seasonal transition from “Lite FM” (1/3rd less aesthetic content) to all Christmas music, all the time, and the laundromat management had either decided to share a little premature holiday cheer with us or had simply neglected to change the station.

In either case, I was festooned with yuletide greatest hits for the next hour and a half, and in all that time I had heard absolutely nothing unexpected. All the usual suspects-- Frosty, Rudolph, Santa, Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams, even John Lennon (“Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”) and the Beach Boys (“Little Saint Nick”)-- present and accounted for. How, I wondered, would they be able to keep it up for the next forty days?

By becoming amazingly repetitious, I would guess. Christmas music can be pretty repetitious to start with-- I have seen a tape loop of the repeating four note theme from “Carol of the Bells” clear a fairly crowded room in under ten minutes-- and doubly so when that music must be both popular and, umm, ethnically cleansed. While Mathis and Nat “King” Cole are doubtless invited to the party, along with Jose Feliciano (whose “Feliz Navidad” now sounds kind of weird when it doesn’t end with the words “…and from Taco John’s”), I would be surprised to hear Chuck Berry’s “Run Run Rudolph", shocked to hear Charles Brown's "Merry Christmas, Baby", and completely floored if they played Run-DMC's "Christmas in Hollis." They are, apparently, dreaming of a white Christmas.

Speaking of amazingly repetitious, the day after Thanksgiving marked the beginning of the Holidazzle Parades. Parades, plural-- four a week, Thursday through Sunday, every week until the Sunday before Christmas Day. Why Minneapolis needs to stage fifteen parades when most cities make do nicely with just one is something of a mystery-- one might think it has something to do with the utter boredom inherent in Minnesota winters, but alleviating boredom by standing in the cold on the sidewalk on Nicollet Mall watching marching bands and floats is crazy even by Gopher State standards. The default answer in such situations hereabouts usually has something to do with our overwhelming specialness as a place and a people-- it's horseshit, of course, but it will have to do.

Sorry for the humbug. Honestly, I like the Christmas season as much as the next atheist-- starting about December 18th.