The blinking lights spewing out of my neighbor’s rain gutters can only mean one thing – the holiday season has arrived with a vengeance. It’s no secret that a few of my neighbors fashion me a Grinch because I can’t be bothered festooning dead trees or publishing treacly holiday cards. Fact is, I’m way too busy sniffing glue and ingesting industrial-sized jars of heavy medication; especially the kind that caution against operating forklifts or shaving your balls. If only I could better navigate the vagaries of the new Medicare Prescription Benefits Program, my habit might not be so damn expensive. Still, it’s better than another year of stupid office parties, smelly relatives and buckets of caramelized popcorn. And the gifts! Last year I had to sleep in my car to get a parking spot. And for what? Shops crammed with rabid, Starbucks-fueled psychopaths who would rather stomp your eyes out than let you get your hands on the last available X-Box? And yet, the mall seems like earthly paradise compared to the Abu Ghraib-like torture chamber of… the airport. Nasty ticket agents, long lines, rubber-gloved security guards, cancelled flights… and that’s what awaits on a good day. More likely that not, the airline you’re flying on is in bankruptcy; so don’t expect a lot of service. Why just last week, air marshals gunned down an American Airlines passenger who dared ask for a SECOND bag of peanuts. With warm blood still oozing from 44-year-old Rigoberto Alpizar, the plane was swiftly moved away from the gate and surrounded by attack dogs and a SWAT team as if to underscore the message.

In Chicago, one brazen passenger who filed a lost luggage complaint was silenced when Southwest Airlines flight 1248 burst through an eight foot fence and pulverized his car as he made his way home. The company noted in a press release that the despite blizzard conditions, the captain managed to score a direct hit on a drab-colored vehicle traveling 45 mph at an obtuse angle to the runway. Though spokesperson Harvey Fleener did concede the car had its lights on, he submitted that the episode “demonstrates the superior skill level of Southwest pilots.” Hyperbole aside, you can count on crappy treatment from any one of the carriers. Nerves are so jangled this time of year that even celebrities are subject to abuse. Playboy Playmates Danielle Gamba and Carrie Minter, who became “intoxicated to the point that they were a threat,” were arrested when their Frontier flight touched down in San Antonio despite offers to flash their 34Ds and “blow anybody in a fucking uniform.” And forget about asking for a kosher meal overseas. In Iran and Nigeria, tetchy flight crews simply plow their passengers into the ground.

Also heading into the ground this week is Stanley “Tookie” Williams, alleged murder of four and founder of the fabled Crips street gang. Williams was executed in California’s San Quentin prison despite spending the better part of his 26-year incarceration writing anti-gang children’s books and condemning violence. Governor Schwarzenegger, who denied clemency, was apparently unmoved by William’s efforts at rehabilitation. His unwavering assertion of innocence, moreover, seemed to backfire. “Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings,” offered the Governor, “there can be no redemption.” Besides, added Schwarzenegger, the evidence of guilt was “strong and compelling.” Even the defense team conceded this point. As for proving Tookie’s innocence noted one attorney, “We’re not prepared to do that,” lamenting, “There is no DNA in this case.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, DNA testing has led to the exonerations of 163 people since 1989, including Steven Avery, who did an 18-year stretch for a sexual assault he did not commit. His release was highly lauded; in fact Wisconsin legislators just enacted a bundle of law enforcement reforms under the aegis of the Avery Bill. One lawmaker called him a hero. Oops. It seems that Mr. Avery was using his newfound freedoms to, among other activities, butcher one Teresa Halbach, a 25-year-old photographer assigned to take pictures for Auto Trader magazine at Avery’s Auto Salvage Yard. Therein authorities found Halbach’s bones and teeth along with her car. The vehicle was spattered with Avery’s blood as well as that of his victim.

You should damn well expect to be sent through a wood chipper when you call on an overall-wearing ex-con in a back woods salvage yard; it happens in the movies all the time. But who walks into a cardiologist’s office thinking, “Yeah, this is the guy whose gonna turn my heart into a Chicken McNugget”? Yet such a fate visited a 21-year-old Utah man fitted with one of Guidant’s faulty implantable heart devices. The medical products company was forced to recall 109,000 defibrillators and suspend sales of several models of pacemakers after manufacturing flaws were discovered. The grim news saw suitor Johnson and Johnson lower their takeover bid 15 percent to $21.5 billion. Guidant sued to enforce the deal’s original terms, but dropped the litigation when they received a competing $25 billion offer from Boston Scientific. Wall Street was originally sour on the proposed merger, but then became enamored with the synergistic aspects of the deal. To wit: Boston Scientific has announced that it is recalling all 40,000 of its Flextome Cutting Balloon systems, used to unclog arteries, amid reports of a defect that could cause serious injury or death. The cost savings accruing from killing cardiac patients more efficiently, noted several analysts, could save the combined entity several hundred million dollars a year.

Dick Cheney, who without serving a single day in the military has risen to such distinction as to be labeled the “vice president for torture” by former CIA chief Stansfield Turner, blasted Democrats for practicing “revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety.” “We’re not going to sit by,” he added, “and let them rewrite history.” No, Siree. Cheney gave that job to the Lincoln Group, a government contractor hired to plant stories in Iraqi newspapers. Donald Rumsfeld, looking for a glimmer of sunshine under all those dead Marines, noted that with Saddam finally out of the way, “the country has a free media.” “They could have hundred-plus papers. There’s 72 radio stations… 44 television stations.” While I’ll concede there appears to be a plenitude of media, it’s far from free. The Pentagon admitted paying the Lincoln Group $100 million for their cooked-up journalism. With 71% of Americans feeling the Vice President is dishonest and unethical, and 80% of Iraqis demanding our immediate withdrawal, Lincoln Spokesperson Laurie Adler defended her company: “We counter the lies, intimidation and pure evil of terror with tales of gingerbread houses and fairy dust.”

It’s not enough, obviously, to merely shift the Iraqi perception of the occupation; if the administration is to keep the petroleum and defense industries firmly attached to the public teat, it must also subvert our own national dialogue. Enter Duke University political scientist Peter Feaver. Analyzing the President’s steadily declining poll numbers (65 percent now oppose the war), Feaver challenged the conventional wisdom that disfavor inexorably flows from mounting casualties and offered a competing theory: The public will accept significant fatalities if they believed the war was a worthy cause that would, with a high degree of likelihood, yield a successful outcome.

In case his 35-page “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” booklet failed to make the Amazon best sellers list, President Bush delivered the audio version at the U.S. Naval Academy. Conscripted attendees mostly slept throughout the oration with heads tilted and mouths agape. The Commander-in-Chief, despite his 15 invocations of “victory,” failed to rouse a single midshipman. So for those in the audience who missed the message, what the White House is saying is that the U.S. is winning the war because we say we are winning the war. Unfortunately for our troops on the ground, the insurgents remain stubbornly unconvinced. Only days after W’s speech, 19 Iraqi soldiers were killed in an ambush and 10 Americans died in a roadside explosion. Shortly thereafter a suicide bomber took out 36 Iraqi policemen.

Back in the early stages of the quagmire, Secretary Rumsfeld quipped that we are creating terrorists faster that we can capture or kill them. Now the inverse is true: Iraqi security forces are dying faster than we can train and deploy them. Which is problematic because, according to the President, “Our strategy can be summed up this way: As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” Our coalition partners, on the other hand, aren’t inclined to wait around. The Ukraine, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Poland and even the U.K. have already initiated plans to “cut and run.” Proudly, El Salvador, with its contingent of 380 troops, is staying the course. However, once the Bush administration finally renews a grant of Temporary Protected Status for 250,000 Salvadoran maids and dishwashers who would otherwise be deported, all bets are off.

As a failsafe, Mr. Bush appeared at a John Deere factory to trumpet his domestic achievements. Never mind that our middling economic growth is the bastard child of record budget and trade deficits, George remains Hell-bent on extending his tax cuts: “These cuts are making a real difference to American families… [moreover], we cut taxes on dividends and capital gains to encourage job-creating investment.” Alas, due to an unforeseen clerical snafu, corporate America never got the memo. Ford disclosed it will shit-can 30,000 employees (earlier, more optimistic estimates were pegged at 5,000) in a downsizing trend that is reaching well beyond America’s smokestack industries. Big Pharma is doling out the pink slips as well. Pfizer announced cutbacks earlier this year and now its Merck’s turn. The erstwhile Vioxx manufacturer will shutter five production facilities and jettison 7,000 workers. Even Eli Lilly, whose sales are actually improving, is trimming payroll. And always just before the holidays.

You might expect Christmas cheer to be in short supply in Sacramento, what with the Governator’s ballot measures crashing down in flames. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. It’s all eggnog and mistletoe as the Schwarzeneggers reprise their old-world yuletide traditions. After the tree and all the decorations comes the Austrian custom of husband and wife buying themselves matching gifts. Last year it was his and her Hummers, the year before, sable earmuffs. This year, California’s first couple wanted to do something over the top — and they have. This season Arnold and Maria will unwrap a set of Gray Davis homos. Lest there be any rumors about his orientation, the Governor will go Sapphic and take Susan Kennedy, former executive director of the California Democratic Party, for his chief of staff while the Mrs. gets gay activist and ex-Davis cabinet secretary Daniel Zingale.

Kennedy, an abortion rights advocate and former member of Davis’ cabinet, earned no kudos from California Republican Assembly President Mike Spence: “She embodies everything I have spent my life opposing. [Her appointment] obviously raises more problems and concerns.” While Spence can be dismissed as one of these born-again bigots — Who Would Jesus Hate? — Kennedy, and for that matter Zingale, deserve (given that plating is passé) to be peed on. Not on the basis of their sexual proclivities, but for boot licking the despot who callously vetoed AB 849, the state legislature’s (and the nation’s first) bill legalizing same-sex marriage. Of note, in 1999 Kennedy had a commitment ceremony with partner Vicki Marti in Hawaii. Perhaps if old Sue had any balls, she could be married in California as well.

With boots still dusty from his recent expedition to Baghdad, Congressman John Murtha (D-PA) somberly described the Iraqi occupation as nothing but a “flawed policy wrapped in an illusion.” Unfortunately for the Republicans, Murtha cannot be flippantly dismissed as some leftie dope-smoking liberal. 37 years in the Marines, two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star lend gravitas to his call for an immediate withdrawal and his assessment that “We’re part of the problem.” Predictably, the Neo Cons sent out the attack dogs.

On the House floor, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) blasted that “Cowards cut and run, Marines never do.” Dick Cheney, who finagled five deferments in lieu of Vietnamese combat, added, “I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone.” And this from the same half-palsied maw that confided to Murtha (after being named Secretary of Defense in 1989), “I’m going to need a lot of help, I don’t know a [expletive deleted] thing about defense.” Maddeningly, Condaleezza Rice suffered no such derision when she let slip, “I do not think that American forces need to be there… we want to see a reduction fairly soon.”

I remain flummoxed by the ease with which rapture-obsessed Conservatives incessantly vilify Progressives for (among other things) their profligate spending and reluctance to confront America’s enemies.   Especially given the mountain of evidence showing that the correct paradigm — if you’ll pardon my teen-speak — is so the other way around.  A widely circulated Bizarro World roster of U.S. politicians publicizes Democrats as decorated combat veterans and exposes Republicans (with few notable exceptions) as a bunch of draft-dodging deserters. Such a list begs the question: Why is it that when duty calls, modern day Republicans never hesitate to send OTHER people into harm’s way?  Why, for example, aren’t the Bush twins getting blown up in Mosul?

The question is not offered rhetorically. There is a scientific (as opposed to I.D.) explanation for cowardice; namely elevated levels of Oncoprotein 18 in the amygdala region of the brain. Genetic researchers found that by removing the Stathmin gene responsible for expressing this protein, timid lab rats became emboldened as measured by their responses to various stimuli. Those rodents genetically engineered for bravery also displayed a propensity to form gangs and mug rats from various control groups. Dr. Gleb Shumyatsky: “Potential clinical applications could be quite important” for people with “fear-related disorders.” Clearly, Ramsey Clark is not one of those people. Ignoring the plot to assassinate investigating magistrate Raed Juhi, the former Democratic U.S. Attorney General marched headlong into Baghdad, unflinchingly filling the void of two of Saddam’s murdered defense attorneys.

Often enough throughout our history, war heroes have become presidents. By custom, these men have been Republicans (or members of predecessor parties such as the Whigs); the likes of William Harrison, U.S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower are now sadly nowhere to be found. As it is today, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, our only fighter ace of the Vietnam War (Navy Cross, Silver Star, Purple Heart) could muster only a lowly Congressional seat out of his military celebrity. It doesn’t seem fair. That he exacted million-dollar bribes from defense contractors certainly puts him on par with the Dick Cheney’s of the world, but his aspirations of the White House have since been dashed by the most egregious of Republican sins: getting caught. Pleading guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion, Cunningham blubbered, “Now I know great shame.” As if he suddenly found himself under the Bodhi tree after decades of raping the villagers. Wiping back tears, the San Diego Congressman continued, “I cannot undo what I have done. But I can atone. I am now almost 65 years old and, as I enter the twilight of my life, I intend to use the remaining time that God grants me to make amends.” Not so fast. Ten years in the pokey means the Dukestir will probably spend the rest of his earthly incarnation fitfully waiting for visiting days and the attendant bundles of cigarettes and lubricants unfailingly delivered by his dutiful wife.

It’s anyone’s guess whether New Orleans will still be under water by the time Cunningham finally sees daylight, but it nonetheless remains difficult to rationalize the NFL’s dimwitted decision to award the 2015 Super Bowl to Kansas City. Unlike warm weather locales such as San Diego and Miami, where golf courses, amusement parks and deep-sea fishing conspire to keep hotel patrons spending for days, rust belt cities obtain negligible benefit from hosting the Big Game. This season’s pilgrims will probably shun Detroit’s bounty of mid-winter activities like ice-skating on Pine Lake or drive-by shootings on Eight Mile Road. Folks will fly in just before the coin toss and stampede over bedraggled locals the moment the fourth quarter starts to wind down. Which really sucks now that Ford’s layoffs and GM’s nine plant closures will cost the region some 34,000 jobs. But what can you do? A deranged shopper sending text messages on his cell phone before shooting up a Tacoma mall only underscores the obsolescence of old-line American manufacturing. And, of course, the idiocy of allowing assault weapons back on American streets.

Christ, the battle over Intelligent Design is really heating up. In Tennessee last week an existential high school student, jarred by the revelation that evolution could not adequately account for his being, abruptly converted to nihilism and shot three administrators at close range. When Assistant Principal Ken Bruce died as a result of his wounds, papal ass-muncher Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) suddenly renounced his conviction that Creationism is a “legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom.” With a federal court set to rule in a case involving the Dover, Pennsylvania school district, Santorum casually shrugged, “Science leads you where it leads you,” which was straight to the curb for the eight board members voted out of office for trying to replace science with unsubstantiated biblical lore.

The Senator’s insouciance, however, was not shared by a churlish Pat Robertson who clenched his fists, stomped his feet and threatened to turn Dover’s citizens into pillars of salt. He warned, “If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected him from your city.” The next day, Bill O’Reilly collapsed in a tantrum when San Francisco voters outlawed handguns and banned military recruiters from high school and college campuses. Instead of invoking the Almighty directly, O’Reilly beseeched His bearded zealots to destroy the city by the bay: “If Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.” Curiously, Denver’s legalization of Marijuana engendered no such Right-Wing vitriol. Maybe Republicans were too busy loading their video iPods with pornography and episodes of Beavis and Butthead to take offense.

Or perhaps they were still smarting from gubernatorial defeats in New Jersey, Virginia and (by proxy) California. The election results, especially in the East, were at first construed to reflect President Bush’s rapidly declining popularity. Exit polls in the Garden State, however, revealed something else altogether. A tight race became a blowout for Democrat Jon Corzine after his opponent ran an attack ad featuring the palpably embittered ex-Mrs. Corzine. “[He] let his family down,” she bitched, “and he’ll probably let New Jersey down, too.” One voter in Patterson summed it up this way: “I usually don’t vote, but when I saw her on TV my blood began to boil. Reminds me of my ex; if that loudmouthed cunt had only kept her mouth shut and her legs spread I might have kept her around.”

Whatever the animus, when poll numbers slip below the Mendoza line, the White House reflexively hauls out its tired, two-pronged response of tarring its detractors and scaring the crap out everyone else. On Veteran’s Day, Mr. WMD railed that, “It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how [the] war began.” The impotence of recent terror alerts in New York and Baltimore, however, forced the administration to alter its scare tactics: Though we are no longer cowed by graven imagery (mushroom clouds, duct tape), we might succumb to pedantry. Hence, terrorist activity is no longer simply that. As the President cautioned, “Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism.”

Big words notwithstanding, Sen. John McCain (R-Hanoi Hilton) is lobbying to curtail the torture of terror suspects. Prisoner abuses, he argues, “inevitably become public and when they do they threaten our moral standing and expose… our own troops who might someday be held captive.” This would explain Sen. Bill Frist’s (R-TN) reaction to a Washington Post story describing CIA torture chambers or “black sites” operating in Eastern Europe. Frist declared: “Such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences.” Our despicable behavior, in other words, degrades us only when we get caught.

Among all the scandals permeating Washington, this legacy of prisoner abuse has the best chance of becoming a torpedo. Karl Rove simply can’t get his hands around it and the administration’s moving parts are uncharacteristically out of sync. When the President, who seems to have missed the Abu Ghraib photo essay, insisted, “We do not do torture,” Dick Cheney’s standing request to exempt the CIA from rules of interrogation seemed, well, quaint. But there is a silver lining. The Iraqi security apparatus’ seamless adaptation of our nefarious methods may well be the first indication that their inchoate government is ready to stand on its own.

A secret bunker was uncovered beneath Baghdad where 173 prisoners were reportedly tortured. “We were beaten with cables, hoses and wooden sticks, and electrocuted all the time,” swore a tormented inmate. Undersecretary for Security Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal lent credibility when he recalled, “I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralyzed and some had skin peeling off various parts of their bodies.” These allegations didn’t sit well with the American Embassy –“mistreatment will not be tolerated” — and prompted Interior Minister Bayan Jabor to issue a swift rebuttal: “Claims we used things to carve people’s limbs are absurd.” Dismissing the charges as “inaccurate,” Jabor countered, “There were only five, or at most, seven, who showed signs of having been beaten.”

Donald “Stuff Happens” Rumsfeld simply could not resist the opportunity to weigh in after two detainees claimed that in 2003, they were put in a cage with a lion. “It seems quite farfetched,” he scoffed. And it does…until you read the following passage from Scooter Libby’s 1996 novel, The Apprentice:

At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.

When it comes to our ham fisted response to terrorism, it’s a safe bet that no one will lose interest anytime soon.

Well, the Chicago White Sox have done it, claiming their first championship since 1917. Players on the official World Series roster will receive a fat bonus (well over $100,000) and a nice, shiny ring to commemorate their victory. Given the momentous occasion, a few extra pieces of bling should be handed out as well. First to iconic Sox slugger Frank Thomas who was sidelined due to injury, second to the Cardinals’ Albert Pujols who’s dramatic two-out ninth-inning home run mangled the Astros’ pitching rotation by forcing a game six in the League Championship series and, last but not least, to Shoeless Joe Jackson, unfairly tainted in the bribery scandal of 1919.

That the Sox won absent any black players (the two on the regular season roster weren’t included on the reduced series team) was a source of consternation to Hall of Fame announcer Joe Morgan: “Of course I noticed it. How could you not … [In fact] there are two or three teams that didn’t have any African-American players this year.” Overall, the numbers are stark — and worsening. Thirty years ago, one in four baseball players was black — the number now stands at one in ten. By way of contrast, two thirds of NFL athletes are African-American while the NBA would exclusively black if not for the recent trend of importing white players from Europe. No doubt, race is always a touchy subject, yet my jaw dropped when the network, prior to game 4, paraded out the Baseball Latino Legends team. These were clearly great players, but why give them special recognition simply because of their heritage? The demographics of Houston are well established, but was Fox employing a double standard? They would be vilified, for example, for celebrating the greatest Caucasian players in history. I, however, have no such limitations:

C Johnny Bench
1B Lou Gehrig
2B Rogers Hornsby
SS Cal Ripken
3B Mike Schmidt
OF Babe Ruth
OF Ted Williams
OF Mickey Mantle
SP Walter Johnson
SP Roger Clemens
SP Sandy Koufax
RP Rollie Fingers

But enough of that already. Leaves are falling, holiday decorations are cluttering store windows and the baseball season is as forgotten as Scooter Libby’s indictment. Time to move on. In fact, the word in Washington is that the Cheney’s have already rented out his room. Ironically, Libby may soon be provided lodging by the very government against which he committed treason. Ah, only in America.

Across the pond, the death of two North African teens fleeing the police sparked a weeklong riot in which religious fanatics have torched the outskirts of Paris. Not surprisingly, French politicians are alternately dithering and posturing for 2007’s elections. With (predominantly non-assimilated) Muslims comprising 10% of the population, a hamstrung President Jaques Chirac meekly declared, “Emotions must quiet down.” Europeans are, in a word, fucked and it’s not that we don’t savor their demise; it’s just that here at home things happen differently. Religious zealots rarely take to American streets; rather they attempt to destroy our society by infiltrating local school boards and stacking the Supreme Court with activist Richelieus.

And they’re achieving measured success. With Harriet Miers relegated to the trivia pile, we are left with Judge Samuel Alito who supports strip searching 10-year-old girls without a warrant and decrees that battered wives require their husband’s permission for an abortion. Meanwhile, The Kansas Board of Education has implemented biblical standards for teaching science. Evolution is out and Creationism is in. Unfortunately for those who prefer not to characterize natural phenomena as an extension of mythology, the Democrats are too craven to raise a stink. They’re so worried about offending some allegorical church-going soccer mom that they sit mutely in the corner staring at their shoes like some socially inept third grader. But the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association are fighting back. Threatening to “put the students of Kansas at a competitive disadvantage,” the groups pulled all their copyrighted material out of the state’s classrooms. It’s a brilliant strategy and, remarkably, Conservatives are already growing dumber. During the Watergate investigation, President Nixon was named as an “unindicted co-conspirator,” a term far too polysyllabic for today’s intellectually challenged Republicans. As such, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, with language worthy of “My Pet Goat,” simply tagged Karl Rove as “Official A.”