And All I Want to Do Is To Get Back To You

As I believe I have owned up here before, I find great satisfaction in making connections. Today’s lunch walk linked up three items. Do you know the card game “crazy eights”? The piece of that game that I am thinking of is that you can play a card that matches the discard pile number and switch suit or vice-versa. That seems to me a reasonable metaphor for a lot of the stream-of-semi-lunacy linkages my mind tumbles into when minimally unsupervised. I.e., pick up on some even superficial connection and head off in a totally new direction. But it also works in the sense of identifying what appear to be arbitrary after-the-fact connections, as in this case.

Crazy eights is commonly thought of as a kid’s game. I spent many hours in college with a possibly more esoteric diversion that shared a few vital features – including those noted above - with crazy eights. This game, known as “Lost in Space,” had primary claim to fame that it was to be passed on by experience only. Watch and learn, no rule explication allowed. If you know that game we really are soul-mates.

Hopefully that is enough to help anyone who cares with connections I noted here.

I have been wanting to check in on one Bernie Sanders. By good fortune, the Burlington Vermont Progressive had an update today for me:

Perhaps the most exciting Senate candidate in the nation is the independent, Socialist Congressman from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.

Sanders is the real thing. A champion of his low-income, rural constituents--the dairy farmers and working poor of Vermont--and a star among Burlington progressives, Sanders has a compellingly straightforward way of talking about politics. And he has been tackling the problems that affect working families in a no-nonsense way. He was the first member of Congress to take a busload of constituents across the border to buy drugs in Canada, and he has had frequent, confrontational debates with Alan Greenspan when the former chairman of the Federal Reserve appeared before Congress.

[snip]

Sanders can't be surprised by the recent attack by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth slimeball John O'Neill, who calls Sanders "the most dangerous liberal in America." Sanders's candidacy "rises to the same level of danger as the thought of John Kerry as President," O'Neill writes on Newsmax.
As David Sirota points out on Huffington Post, the O'Neill screed against Sanders is as dishonest as was the Swift Boat Veterans' devastating attack on Kerry in the last Presidential election. Veterans' issues are among Sanders's top concerns, and he has been a tireless advocate for vets, loudly opposing Bush Administration efforts to cut veteran health benefits. Sanders has also led a long campaign for recognition of Gulf War Syndrome.

But the attack machine that O'Neill is part of works, as Sanders says, by ignoring issues and trying to smear candidates personally. It is also classic Karl Rove style to attack candidates not on their weaknesses but on their strengths--hence the broadside against John Kerry's military service.

[snip]

Go Bernie! We’re with you.

Ok, there’s a minor spelling issue here, but next up is George Saunders (you’re not going to get all snooty about the rules now, are you – it’s dang near the right card). I just hooted my way through his short book “The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil.” Sort of a cross between Lemony Snicket, Lynda Barry, and Chuck Palahniuk. If any of those folks ring a bell, you’re for me and vice-versa, and this is highly recommended!

As I say, it's a short little book, a couple bus-ride’s worth at most, but one reading is surely not enough. Just a snippet here:

[snip]

I’m glad to see someone enforcing my decrees, said the President. Back in the capital they’re always ignoring my decrees. Tell me, which decree were you enforcing? Was it a good decree?

The Short-Term Residency Zone Tax Decree, said Phil. A very good decree.

I don’t remember that one, said the President to his Advisors. It sounds like a good one but I don’t remember it. Did I decree that?

Well sir, it depends, said the mirror-faced Advisor. What we need to ask ourselves is, what, in general, has been the reaction to this Tax? Have the people been in favor of the Tax? If so, then it is my recollection that you did indeed make such a decree. On the other hand, if the people have been unhappy with this Tax, then I clearly remember you pounding the table, denouncing someone for even suggesting that you make such a lamebrained decree. It is clear, sir, that we must, to honor our democracy, go to the people, in order to determine just what it is you decreed.

[snip]

From the author’s “exclusive essay” on Amazon:

[the book] began with a challenge from my friend, [ . . .] who suggested I write a story in which all the characters were abstract shapes.

[snip]

Soon the story was going off in an unexpected direction, and was becoming that rare and not-so-sought-after thing, a kid’s story about genocide.

[snip]

Ok, I'm playing another card here. Having finished “Phil,” I have now moved on to "Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington," a similarly petite volume subtitled “The Brit Who Set Congress Straight About Iraq.” You know who he is. “George” is the first name, in case you’re still snugged into my card game theme. The book has already fulfilled my expectations based on account of GG’s Senate testimony last May (book includes transcript):

Frankly, it was the last call in the world I wanted to take. It was a famous and glamorous Arab film star who called me up out of the blue [ . . .]

[snip]

She was telephoning, she said, for a cousin of Saddam Hussein. Saddam needed my help – to find a lawyer to save him from the hangman’s noose. My heart sank.

[snip]

Later it emerged [ . . .] that in fact Saddam hated me.

[snip]

I opposed this war [against Khomeini], and when it started, followed Syria in supporting Iran. I abhorred the carnage created by the First World War-style attrition that the war involved. Not so the very Axis powers who now wish to add it to Saddam’s charge sheet. For example, take the infamous Halabja incident where, it must be presumed, Iraqi forces fired chemical weapons into a Kurdish village, killing a large number of civilians including many children. Saddam had chemical weapons because the West – the U.S. and its then close ally West Germany in particular – supplied them to him. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went to Baghdad, twice, to help Saddam use his weapons more effectively. For many months after Halabja the U.S. State Department, in publicly available documents, insisted that this crime was committed by Khomeini, not Saddam.

[snip]

Happy reading! Next play for me may not be so simple and obvious, but who knows.