Just a Hunk, a Hunk of Burning Hate

Just a Hunk, a Hunk of Burning Hate

Quentin Smeltzer, www.SmeltzerNation.com, 9/8/2010

As you are likely aware, three days from now some nutjob pastor in Florida is going to burn copies of the Islamic holy book, the Quran.  I say nutjob in only the most positive way.  This is the kind of thing that could only happen in Florida.  Or Texas.  Or Arizona… heck I guess it could happen anywhere in this country, although it is difficult to imagine it taking place in my polite state of Connecticut.  Then again, we may elect the former head of the World Wrestling Federation as our new junior Senator, so let’s stick with it could happen anywhere. 

One thing I remember from my youth is conservatives love to burn stuff.  McCarthy incited the burning of pro-communist books.  The Catcher in the Rye was burned.  Beatles records were burned.  Before my time, a few Negro slaves were tossed into the flames.  One thing Americans know is that if you don’t like something, blow it up, and if you can’t blow it up, at least set it on fire!

To be fair, this urge to burn stuff is not confined to the right.  I don’t recall any conservatives burning the American flag.  I remember quite a few of them jumping to the conclusion that we must have yet another change to the Constitution (which they so dearly love just the way it is) to protect the flag.  But they weren’t burning it.  They didn’t burn their draft cards.  And was it conservatives out there burning their bras?  No, of course not.  Republican girls need the support. 

Nor is this urge to burn confined to America.  The Nazis famously burned books with which they disagreed.  The Chinese burned books (and buried the scholars who wrote them)!  The Quran has been burned before, during the Spanish Inquisition.  There was the destruction of the library at Alexandria and the burning of the Mayan codices in 1562…  Good times, good times…

So let’s face it, we all of us, left and right, near and far, we all love to burn stuff!  In fact, burning stuff may be the world’s favorite way to say, I disagree with you.  But why is this?  How to explain it?  Well, can you say “Weenie roast?”   And here’s a question for you:  what’s more cheery and heart-warming than a fire?  Answer:  a fire that devours thoughts and ideas you don’t have the intellectual firepower to refute, that’s what!

So let’s not get too down on our little pastor from Florida.  He’s not original, he’s nothing new.  He’s just doing what tyrants, despots and the intellectually feeble have done for centuries: casting big scary shadows from teeny, weenie people with just a little help from a glowing pile of ignorance and hate. 

Hot Topics

Hot Topics

Quentin Smeltzer, SmeltzerNation 7/27/2010

A political cauldron of hot-button issues is brewing this summer:  ending tax cuts for the rich, extending unemployment benefits for the jobless, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Tea Party, immigration, race relations and Lindsey Lohan.  Okay, Lindsey is clearly where she needs to be, but the rest of these issues need sorting out. 

Let’s start at the top: should we extend unemployment  insurance and should we let the Bush tax cuts expire? 

Conservatives have been arguing that giving away money only disinclines people to find and perform meaningful work, and I could not agree more… for the rich.  If you’re fat and happy are you going to put up with all the nonsense associated with starting new businesses and creating new jobs?  Judging by recent behavior:  evidently not.

If you want to see a bunch of rich people really get out there and hustle, I say, tax away most of their money.  That kind of “start over” mentality worked for the immigrants and it will work for Kent and Buffy too.  Nothing says “it’s time to produce” quite like the repo man showing up for your Bugatti Veyron. 

But don’t think I’m without sympathy.  While many captains of industry pay themselves salaries and bonuses and that amount to four hundred times the compensation their workers receive, they have some justification.  First, with their access to quality health care, there is some chance that the rich will live four hundred times longer than will you. 

Second, it is almost certain that a tax increase at this delicate time will hurt the economy.  Think of it: If the top tax rate increases from thirty-six to forty percent, some of these folks will have to get by on six million dollars a year instead of six point four million!  How they’ll do it is tough to fathom.  Doubtless, that kind of drop in their net income will cause them to buy fewer iced mochaccinos on their way to the spa, and employ fewer sex workers when they get home.

As for not extending unemployment benefits: maybe not such a good idea.  Yes, the latest extension will cost the US Treasury thirty billion dollars or roughly what we spend in Afghanistan in an afternoon.  And yes, those receiving the aid will have less incentive to find a job, in so far as they can now to afford to eat.  But you’ve got to look at the big picture here:  it can be difficult to job hunt from a box under the interstate. 

What about immigration and race?  The second Bush administration used to argue that it was hard to address illegal immigration because illegal immigrants took the kinds of jobs that most Americans did not want.  Clearly, W’s solution was to wreck the economy, because Americans want those jobs now!

It’s funny how the economy, jobs, taxes, the wars and immigration all come together.  The only topic we haven’t touched on is race.  It is an important topic, but one that is probably best left to thoughtful experts with deep, first-hand experience in racial discrimination: like Andrew Breitbart.

No doubt, it’s a going to be a long, hot summer leading up to the November elections and many questions will have to be answered.  While we’ve tried to shed some light, the big questions remain, such as: Will Lindsey Lohan get out of jail in time to vote?  Only time will tell. 

Suport the Troops

Support the Troops

Quentin Smeltzer, SmeltzerNation 7/5/10

Not too long ago I was invited to join a Facebook group called “Support the Troops.”  At the same time there is a homeowner not far from my house who proclaims this same message from his front yard with an enormous, hand-painted sign.   Recently I heard a Fox News "repeater" wonder if Obama will support the troops by increasing the funding for the Afghan war.  And I began to ask myself, do these people realize it is no longer 1973? 

Who, exactly, in this country, does not support the troops?  I’m not aware of any Screw the Troops or Call the Troops Mean Names or Arrest the Troops movements, are you?   Not in this century.

So what exactly are you saying to me when you urge me to support the troops?  First, of course, you are implying that I don’t the support the troops, which is deeply offensive.  Second, you imply that, not just I, but some significant portion of the country, holds this We Don’t Support the Troops position.  Who do you suppose those people could be?  Let me take a wild guess here: progressives, liberals, Democrats? 

But that’s bunk, of course, because the overwhelming majorities of these three, overlapping groups completely, vocally and without reservation, support the troops. 

The group that would not support the troops, not on foreign soil anyway, would be the Tea Party folks.  Their stark, libertarian philosophy calls for a rapid withdrawal of all US troops from around the world, regardless of the situation or cost in loss of security or human misery.  If only the Tea Party folks were well-informed enough to know their own positions… but let’s not go crazy here.  The Tea Party is about freedom and American rights, and first among those is that most deeply cherished American right:  the right to be stupid. 

A tea drinker himself, Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican Party, recently called Afghanistan Obama’s "war of choice" and said anyone who knows anything about history would not fight a ground war in Afghanistan.  Evidently Mr. Steele believes it is clever to reread old criticisms of President Bush, replace "Bush" with "Obama," and then repeat them as new positions.  

Steele's view of Afghanistan was news to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who called Mr. Steele’s comments “unwise, uninformed and untimely.” 

This is not the first time Mr. Steele has repudiated his own party’s position in public, only to quickly perform a one-hundred-and-eighty degree spin and then ask, mystified, what all the fuss is about. 

As for the Fox News repeater who stared zombie-like into the teleprompter and questioned whether Obama’s support for the troops can be gauged by his willingness to give them additional funding, well, where does one begin? 

First, I am completely in favor of cute blondes on television.  But even I am disturbed by the glossy stare in their overly-made-up eyes as they read statements that contradict what they said the day or week or hour before with such regularity Michael Steele must be writing the news for them.   I am beginning to believe that Stepford wives really do exist, manufactured in Roger Ailes's basement.

Second, this might come as quite a surprise to the Fox news repeater, if indeed any contradiction, news, or fact could upset or even penetrate the consciousness of one of these automatons, but Secretary of Defense Robert Gates—the guy asking for more funding—is of the Obama Administration.  So Obama is asking for more money for the troops, not deciding whether to approve it.

And finally, must it still be pointed out that being against more funding for the troops is not a lack of support for the troops if it comes with a call to reduce their role?  If you really want to support the troops, join the Tea Party, make Michael Steele happy, and bring them all home immediately.