Who Made This Possible?
Joe Keohane says, "If Kim Jong-Il’s going to take any US cities out before North Korea collapses, they’ll probably be on the West Coast. [Boston is] pretty much invincible." (Joe Keohane, "October, The slightly premature but nonetheless terrifying month in review," Boston Weekly Dig, October 25, 2006, Page 12) That didn't happen naturally.
Cambridge's Nuclear War and Peace Commission worked relentlessly for 20 years and prevented Nuclear War, not only in Cambridge but also in El Salvador and in Italy too. The liberal-Democratic-Bush-hating City Manager refuses to permit the Nuclear War Commissioner to aid the President's efforts preventing Nuclear War in North Korea.
The Dig could help persuade the Manager to allocate funds from one of his numerous accounts, allowing the Commissioner to travel to Southeast Asia and to exercise her specialty keeping the peace. Let's give credit where credit is due.
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Roy Bercaw, Editor
ENOUGH ROOM
Cambridge MA USA
October
The slightly premature but nonetheless terrifying month in review
* by Joe Keohane *
Issue 8.43 * Wed, October 25, 2006
Here’s the good news: If Kim Jong-Il’s going to take any US cities out before North Korea collapses, they’ll probably be on the West Coast. And while the wholesale annihilation of deeply liberal cities like Seattle, Portland or San Fran would virtually assure the continued dominance of the GOP, it would also mean that Boston, once again, gets away totally unscathed.
That’s right, America: We don’t get earthquakes, we don’t get tornadoes, we don’t get tsunamis or mudslides, forest fires, grand mal obesity attacks, Corey Lidle plowing into skyscrapers, school shootings or creationism outbreaks, and we don’t get rogue nukes. By my calculations, that means we’re pretty much invincible. Which is why locals were so puzzled when the MBTA started doing random bag searches again.
Bostonians almost unanimously take our current imagegovernor at his word, so when he announced to The New York Times that the measure was necessary because “We are fighting a war against people who have as their objective the overthrow of the United States government [and] we have to adjust our homeland strategies to confront it,” everyone in town just assumed he was doing it because he’s concerned for the safety of Massachusetts residents, and not because he turned out to be a shameless, opportunist jackass who will never forgive our pinko asses for electing him governor.
Then we said, “Wait, it’s gonna cost what to ride the T next year?!” And the T, as it rifled through our bags looking for bombs and loose change, responded “$1.70.” Long-suffering commuters then attempted to rise to their feet in protest, but they couldn’t, because vagrants had fallen asleep on their laps as their train paused for 30 minutes between Harvard and Central for a “schedule readjustment.”
Then, as if on cue, House and Senate Republicans stripped $4.5 billion in mass-transit security funding from a piece of homeland security legislation. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff had asked Republican leaders to kill the funding because he didn’t want the bill to become a pork-loaded “goulash” of programs. Thank god it was fiscal discipline behind this decision, and not the fact that people in cities don’t vote Republican and therefore don’t warrant protection from the scourge of terrorists, who, we hear, are plotting right now to blow the holy hell out of a mailbox or grain silo in Corncob, Iowa.
Actually, in retrospect, we’re going to have to take back that bit about being invincible. Because looking back through the month that was (up until press time, at least), we didn’t do too well at all. The bloodbath in the streets continued; rowdy North End soccer fans got duped by a fake World Cup trophy supplied by Anheuser-Busch; we got word that the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority never actually inspected the failed Big Dig ceiling bolts that killed a woman, directly contradicting the claims of ousted pike chairman Matthew Amorello; and former congressman Gerry Studds, the first openly gay member of Congress (and pioneer of the teenage page scandal) died, giving the federal government the chance to honor his service to his country by denying his husband death benefits.
As befits a town that continually laments how nasty and stupid national politics have gotten, our gubernatorial race went from being civil and high-minded (sort of) to utterly, unspeakably savage. Deval Patrick, who coasted through the primaries on a message of hope, hope and more hope, has seen his lead eroded by Republican challenger Kerry Healey and her message of rape, rape and more rape. Even longtime political observers were a little startled by how nasty Healey got so quickly, but then again, you wouldn’t be a true Republican if you weren’t willing to sell your soul for a race you have no chance at winning.
The Massachusetts State Lottery also made some moves this month, announcing that it would be launching a new Keno-style game next year that would involve placing bets on animated car races. There are also rumors of another game, in which gamblers would place bets on half a dozen tiny boats circling a drain that represents their future. There could be a hilarious little noise at the end to keep people coming back for more. Kind of like a boi-oi-oi-oing! sort of thing. Wait, did someone say North Korea had the bomb now?! Quick, somebody call The Decider for some good tough cowboy talk! George Stephanopoulos, you’re on: Stephanopoulos: Last week, after their first test, you went into the White House and you said that any transfer of nuclear material by North Korea would be considered a grave threat to the security of the United States.
I went back and checked, you’ve used that phrase once before in your presidency about Iraq. So, are you saying then if North Korea sold nukes to Iran or Al Qaeda … Bush: They’d be held to account. Stephanopoulos: What does that mean? Bush: Well, at the time they find out, George, one of the things that’s important for these world leaders to hear is, you know, we use means necessary to hold them to account.
Stephanopoulos: So if you got intelligence that they were about to have that kind of a transfer … Bush: Well, if they get—if we get intelligence that they’re about to transfer a nuclear weapon, we would stop the transfer and we would deal with the ships that were taking the—or the airplane that was dealing with or taking the material to somebody.
Stephanopoulos: And if it happened, you’d retaliate.
Bush: You know, I’d just say it’s a grave consequence.
Stephanopoulos: And that’s about as serious as it can get. '
Bush: Well, my point is, is that I want the leader to understand, the leader of North Korea to understand that he’ll be held to account. Just like he’s being held to account now for having run a test.
Eh, let’s move on to something a little less disturbing. Like the Mark Foley scandal. All that could possibly be said about this mess has been said, but it’s worth revisiting some comments made by Bill Maher on Salon.com: From 1995 to 2002, the number of children prescribed antipsychotic drugs increased by over 400 percent. Either our children are going insane—which we might look on as a problem—or, more likely, we have, for profit, created a nation of little junkies.
So stop already with the righteous moral indignation about predators—this whole country is trying to get inside your kid’s pants because that’s where he keeps the money Daddy gave him to stay out of his hair. I don’t care if Mark Foley had been asking boys to describe their penises because I have some sad news for you: Your kid is so larded out on Cheetos and Yoo-hoo, he can’t even see his penis. We live in a country where the ultimate consumer is an obese 16-year-old hooked up at one end to a Big Gulp and at the other to a PlayStation. So many of our kids today are fat drug addicts, it’s almost as if Rush Limbaugh had had puppies. In conclusion, we can pretend that the biggest threat to “our children” is some creep on the internet, or we can admit it’s Mom and Dad.
When your son can’t find France on a map, or touch his toes with his hands, or understand that the ads on TV are lying—including the one in which the Marine turns into Lancelot—then the person fucking him is you. Speaking of drugged-out fat kids who can’t read, there are now more than ever. This month, the population of the US passed the 300 million mark, which means not only that we will avoid the kind of problems facing European nations averaging like a kid and a half per couple, but also that our might is increased a hundredfold! Picture it: Given the current physical condition of our countrymen, with just a little coordinated exercise we could to spontaneously generate enough sweat to destroy a thousand Sri Lankas.
Plus, word on the street is that we’ve been reforming all the enemy combatants we’ve been holding down at Gitmo, so they may be able to pitch in. According to an AP report, “A high-calorie diet combined with life in the cell block—almost around the clock in some cases—is making detainees at Guantanamo Bay fat.” Welcome to America, fellas. Only in our case, we got morbidly obese before they took our rights away. Now, in closing, as your assimilation continues, join us in celebrating how the Dow just crossed 12,000, even as wages keep falling, hours keep getting longer, health care dries up and the cost of living goes through the roof. But at least the economy is strong.
Oh Lord, make November a good one.
