So where do we go from here? That is the question that Republicans must ask themselves after Tuesday’s midterm election.

Historians may remember the elections of 2010 as the campaign season in which the bunker mentality resurfaced. The Archie Bunker mentality.

To be sure, there were several Tea Party candidates who said and did things that had them hunkered down well before the voting started. There was Carl Paladino’s concern over gays indoctrinating innocent children, Sharron Angle’s “chickens for checkups” left her the object of ridicule and Christine O’Donnell was put in the uncomfortable position of having to explain some youthful brushes with Satanism.

But more tellingly, this election saw a resurgence of the world view of Archie Bunker. There was Mrs. Angle who did a television spot showing scary, dark-skinned people sneaking into the United States. Paladino’s opinions about gays could easily have been heard in Archie Bunker’s living room, and campaigns in Arizona fell under the shadow of SB 1070, a bill that is all about fear of a minority group.

Those who weren’t born when All in the Family hit the airwaves in 1971 can’t imagine how shocking the show was. Topics like feminism, anti-war protests and other political issues were hashed out – often at high decibels.

At the center of it all was Archie Bunker, a middle-aged white guy who’d worked on the same loading dock his entire life. The truths that he had known while growing up were passing him by. And that made him angry.

“People who live in communes are communist!” That was his opinion when Mike and Gloria made plans to visit out-of-town friends.

For all his bluster and bravado, Archie’s views were revealed to be the product of fear and resistance to new information.

Fear and resistance to new information. That could be the calling card of the entire Tea Party movement. People are scared of becoming a minority in a society where they have always been in the majority. They’re watching the buying power of their paychecks dwindle every year. They are scared that people who are different from them will gain equal acceptance. And the fact that an African-American occupies the White House has sent many of them off the deep end.

Republicans have exploited these concerns by raising fears concerning birth, death, morality and taxes. But to do that, they have had to at least pretend to be on the same side as the right-wing radicals of the Tea Party. Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell – who already said that making Barak Obama a one-term president his top priority – is barely bothering to conceal his glee at the prospect of ruining an administration that promised hope and change. Over in the House, Darrell Issa is already planning to wallpaper the Oval Office with subpoenas.

It will be interesting to watch Representative John Boehner trying to keep Tea Partiers in line once it is discovered that the Republicans really don’t care about deficit spending or plans to shrink government – unless we are talking about Social Security and Medicare, programs that even have some support among members of the Tea Party.

And you thought life was complicated when the Bush Administration acted as though the TV show 24 was a documentary.

Restoring honor apparently has something to do with stemming the tide of marriage-minded gay Mexican Muslim Marxists who even now are mincing and prancing their way toward America’s porous borders {while looking fabulous} to steal low-paying service sector jobs that patriotic citizens refuse and bankrupting the nation by seeking free health care.

Only Alaska’s former half-term governor and her Fox News colleague are up to this Herculean task; the Republican party, big enough to include more than a few elitists, racists, pistol-packing pastors, conspiracy theorists and militia members somehow fails to be conservative and/or crazy enough for people who have forsaken GOP Kool-Aid for a strange brew steeped in equal parts of fear, confusion and hatred.

Hoping to shut down such campaign before it starts, People for the American Way has been developing bumper stickers that ridicule the idea. It’s a good effort, but I have a feeling that a real Palin-Beck ticket might not necessarily trade on the candidates’ names. Both names carry a bit of baggage, and both names are irreversibly linked to conservative causes. Surely the time has come to rise above party labels as we work together to restore our nation’s honor.

Besides, if you use Palin-Beck, you wind up with the initials PB, It just wouldn’t do to have some durn liberal/fascist/communist to harass the candidates by asking, “Where’s the jelly?”

If you reverse the ticket, you get BP. It might be a little soon to conjure up those mental pictures.

As a student of history (albeit not a good one), Beck probably knows that the candidate’s name doesn’t have to be used to run a successful campaign. Back in 1972, Republican presidential campaign organizers believed that the incumbent president’s surname was a liability. Nixon contains “nix”, a synonym for rejection.

And so was born the Committee to Re-Elect the President. CREEP’s
campaign gave their candidate an easy victory. Then some unexpected event abbreviated Nixon’s second term.

A Palin-Beck ticket has already dealt with a shortened political term. So I think a campaign name should reflect the sort of mood that the two have fostered.
I think that the Bipartisan League to Elect Conservative Heroes has a nice ring to it. A Palin-Beck ticket would unite politicians from the right and left in saying, “BLECH.” The word would spread like wildfire across our great nation as soon as the scope of the duo’s conservatism became apparent. Even the residents of faraway lands will say “BLECH” when they see the foreign policy designed to restore our honor.

The campaign slogan practically writes itself: “Don’t vote with your heart. Don’t vote with your mind. Vote with your gut. Vote BLECH.”

Sally Field as Gidget (1965)

Tea Party Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell (2010)

Separated at birth? Sally Field as Gidget (1965) and Tea Party Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell (2010).

The pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center made the announcement this afternoon after Defense Secretary Robert Gates telephoned him, and after allegedly extracting a promise to relocate the Cordoba House Islamic center further away from New York’s Ground Zero.

In other words, Jones perpetrated extortion in the name of the Lord.

Jones’ proposed 9/11 commemoration had stirred protests virtually everywhere outside the Republican Party. If Jones had followed through, his action might have been seen as the equivalent of Elijah’s competition with the priests of Baal:

At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.” So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention. (1 Kings 27-29).

Instead, Jones says that the idea of threatening a Koran barbecue was divinely inspired. Muslims connected with the center denied that any such accord was reached, and that in turn caused Jones to waffle on his promise.

But Jones shouldn’t have needed to broker a deal through blackmail. A truly divine solution would have ended the threat while holding fast to the spark of humanity that connects us all.

“Religion without humanity is a poor human stuff.” — Sojourner Truth.

Having failed to derail health care reforms the first time out, Republicans are offering a “second opinion” about the legislation.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), an orthopedic surgeon who coined the “second opinion” slogan, participated in a recent strategy session in the office of Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell.

“I’ve gone to the floor every week for the last four weeks and given a doctor’s second opinion of this health care law because at least every week something that I predicted would happen has actually happened,” Barrasso said, citing a Congressional Budget Office report estimating that the health care overhaul could cost an additional $115 billion.

Barrasso has emerged as the star of the push-back campaign at the GOP Senate website titled “A Second Opinion”, which subsequently  informed readers of a New York Times story detailing flawed methodology in the Dartmouth study that found a potential $700 billion in waste that could be saved through health-care reform.

Even if the Dartmouth study failed to account for a number of variables, including regional demographics, differences in the cost of living and patient outcomes, there still exists plenty of evidence, including:

• Private ambulance services that charge at least $50 for carrying alert nursing home residents to medical appointments in vehicles that carry no medical apparatus, but are basically elderly mini-vans with gutted interiors.
• Doctors who schedule appointments simply to inform a patient of test results, even those tests which had completed results available during a previous visit. This of course allows two charges for one procedure.
• Treating patients not according to their needs, but what insurance plans will cover. In my case, occupational therapists working with me to correct another issue have decided that a pair of splints, applied daily, can help correct my left arm, which has been drawn up since birth from cerebral palsy. These splints, which are elaborate contraptions built out of steel, aluminum, plastic, foam rubber and Velcro straps, would make me the envy of the roller derby. But really, after half a century, wouldn’t the amount of money used to build these devices have been better spent on airfare to Lourdes?

I was pleased to see that Sue Lowden’s campaign to unseat Harry Reid has been stopped dead in its chicken tracks. I think that the medical specialty I’d least like to barter poultry for would be proctology.

I don’t think I’d ever hear “finger-licking good” in quite the same way again.

Some of the heat came from the blazing sun on a roadway outside Flagstaff. The rest of the heat was personified by an Arizona State Trooper who had just pulled him over.

“What seems to be the problem Officer,” the driver asked.

“Sir, I need to see that thing back there on the back package shelf,” the Trooper responded. Sensing the conversation was about him, the object in question – a Chihuahua named Poncho turned his head, bared his teeth and growled at the law man.

“Sir, I am stopping you today because I need to see the papers on that dog back there.” Poncho snapped at the Trooper when the Trooper gestured toward him.

“But officer, Poncho doesn’t have any papers,” the driver stammered. “I just got him from a rescue shelter.”

“I am sorry Sir,” the Trooper said. “Under Arizona’s Domestic Dog Protection Act we’ll have to confiscate him and send him back over the border.”

“For a Mexican dog?” the driver said. “I understand how Mexican people might take jobs that would otherwise go to native-born Americans, but what possible harm could a Mexican dog possibly do?”

“Well, Sir it seems that a lot of those little Mexican dogs are really yappy,” the Trooper said. “A lot of the larger Anglo dogs were starting to get stressed by all the noise.”

“What do you mean Anglo dogs?” the driver demanded. “What kinds of dogs do Anglo’s own?”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” the officer said. “Those dogs that aren’t strange and foreign like him,” he said gesturing at Poncho. “You know the dogs I mean – the French Poodles, the Irish Setters, the English Bulldogs, the German Shepherds – all those good breeds that are real American canines.”

“Look,” the driver said. “I know that Arizona’s law against illegal aliens was so harsh that not even a Conservative Supreme Court could stomach it. So why are you worried about dogs that may be illegal?”

The Trooper shrugged. “It’s simple. Dogs don’t vote.”

But not even the countless hours of animated antics I watched before the Senate approved its much diluted health-care reform bill could have prepared me for the cartoonish battles that preceded the historic vote. I watched in disbelief as leaders of the majority political party behaved like recent graduates of the Neville Chamberlain School for Negotiation.

Joe Lieberman, looking more like Droopy Dawg than Droopy Dawg ever did, kept moving the goalposts as to what compromises were required in order to secure his vote. Somehow, he reversed himself again to announce that he’d vote for the bill.

Meanwhile the Republican lawmakers as petty and grasping as any villain thwarted by the Scooby gang, delayed and diluted any proposals for reform. Except in this case, the ad guys largely succeeded in their evil scheme. They’d have gotten away with more, too, if it wasn’t for those pesky bloggers at Street Prophets and Daily Kos.

Now I’d like to debunk some of the myths I’ve heard during the debate.

Death panels. Something that exists only in the fevered imagination of right-wingers whose tinfoil hats have fallen off. The legislation in question actually reimburses physicians for time they may spend discussing end-of-life issues with patients.

Universal health care means rationed services. I hate to break it to folks, but health care already is rationed according to income and location. A hospital in East Armpit, Idaho is far less likely to have top-flight talent and equipment. When I was hospitalized with a case of gangrene back in ‘06, the doctor who did the surgery said I’d likely die unless I was transferred from the sixth-largest city in the state to the largest.

Cutting out waste and fraud means that people will lose services. People who make this argument don’t understand how much waste there truly is. If you had a chronic skin irritation, your tendency would be to treat the affected area, then save any unused ointment for use on future problems. Here at the home, the solution is to dispose of a half-full tube and replace it with an unopened tube when a future outbreak manifests itself.

Of course, it goes without saying that the ointment delivered by the facility’s pharmaceutical supplier is half the strength and twice the price of an over-the-counter product available at the nearest drugstore.

Prevention of disease doesn’t save money. I am convinced that for all those people who aren’t hypochondriacs with OCD, it does.

The nursing home where I reside could save a lot of money on insulin if residents were provided with meals that helped control diabetes. Instead, we dine on food rich in starches and sugars.

Not too long ago, a stuffed baked potato was presented as a dinnertime entrée. To this, a resident could add tater tots as a starch and corn as a vegetable. Pile on a sweet dessert and you’ve got all the ingredients for an amputation in the not too distant future.

A diet with an assortment of fresh fruits and vegetables would cost more than the starch-laden meals offered here, but residents would require less insulin. Decent food costs less than insulin, but Medicare won’t pay for that.

Given this facility’s unceasing efforts to cut costs, I am dreading the inevitable “Soylent Green” moment.

Another money-wasting tactic is in the realm of admissions. Some facilities schedule transfers after midnight, in order to bill another day’s stay to the patient’s account. The facility receiving the patient also gets to bill the patient’s account a second time for the same day.

The first facility then has an opportunity to fill (and bill) a bed during regular working hours.

Universal health care will cause long lines. Unless you’ve got concierge medical service, you’ve probably spent time in the reception area of a general practitioner or specialist who has booked several patients at the same time in order to maximize profits. This is why these reception areas are known colloquially as waiting rooms; not “we’ll heal you while you sit there reading six-month-old magazines” rooms.

Universal health care restricts freedoms. Really? Good health is a prerequisite for availing oneself of some of our most cherished rights. What good is the right to pursue happiness if someone is too ill to make the pursuit? The rights to bear arms or to peaceably assemble can also be infringed by poor health.

So now we’re left with questions that need to be resolved. Can the house version of health-care reforms be resurrected? Can Democrats outfox their naysaying GOP colleagues? Will the final battleground be the judicial system?

Stay tooned.

Dear friends from Street Prophets,

If I have learned nothing else over the past year, I can now say without a doubt that the generosity shown by progressive people of faith exceeds anything I could ever have expected or imagined. There are small communities in western Kentucky that have fewer books than I now possess. The only possible downside may have come about because of my extended d stay in the nursing home. Something in the air must have caused my arms to shorten, for I now must increasingly rely on my bifocals to read the wealth of tomes at my fingertips.

And your generosity did not end there. Through your good works, I got the opportunity to get out of the home for a day. To mingle with last-minute Yuletide shoppers as I made the acquaintance of some terrific people. And there’s still more: DVDs, audio CDs and sugar-free treats and cards and letters.  Other holidays like Valentine’s Day and Easter were also accompanied by treats. I actually felt more loved than I had for years before my unfortunate move into this institution for the bewildered. (The Feline-American I shared my home with was never one for observing the holidays.)

Your gifts continue to bring me pleasure as I pass the dreary days. I’m stuck in a place where people shuffle around in a fog, unsure of what day it is, where they are going or where they’ve been.  And that’s just the staff.

It is seriously lonely in a place where Alzheimer’s disease is so rampant. How do you bond with people who can’t remember anything you’ve shared with them? It is part of a collection of daily aggravations that have had the effect of eroding my confidence to resume independent living. When you fight the same battles on a daily basis – carb- and sugar-rich meals that are a no-no for diabetics, haphazard maintenance and indifferent staffers, you stay frustrated and tired. Please pray for me.

And so I have taken refuge in various corners of the Internet. Last year was a tough year for me because events changed so rapidly in the world outside that my postings would have been based on a faulty premise or information that had been superseded. Instead I immersed myself in the community of Yahoo! Answers.

For those who don’t know, Yahoo! Answers may be the ultimate in democratic participation. Users post questions in different categories, and members of the community will come up with several answers.  Other members of the community then vote for the best answer, and the individual whose answer is most popular is awarded points.

Mind you, the winning answer doesn’t necessarily have to be fact-based to win. It only needs to be popular. This is why, in the religion section, someone can ask a question like, “Do Catholics/Jews/Muslims (pick one) know that they are heretics who are going to Hell?”  Reasonable answers need not be posted. Only bigots with a third-rate, sixth-grade understanding of theology should bother.

Sometimes the questions could make a person do a double take. “My sister hasn’t touched it in 15 years,” one question read. “Will it still work?”

You can’t imagine how relieved I was to find that question posted in the automotive section, and not in the section dealing with human relationships.

I had hoped that the worst of the lies told by conservatives about progressives would wither on the vine after Inauguration Day.  Stupidity, however, is just like a Hollywood movie monster. No matter how many times it is killed. It can be resurrected.

These lies have been richly in evidence during proposals for health-care reform. I have watched with astonishment as members of the majority political party have made concession after concession to win the support of conservatives who have proven themselves every bit as trustworthy as Lucy when she holds the football for Charlie Brown.

The heck with birth certificates. From now on, I want to see progressive candidates’ X-rays, so they can prove that they are vertebrates.

Time enough for that after the New Year. For now, I pray that every one of you can find rest in the peace of the season.

This week’s show will be entitled Church Governance: An Old Model for a New Generation. We will be taking caller and hope to have you there to listen and share your thoughts on this subject.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Eighth Commandment. Not a real complicated rule. Not very difficult to understand, even when rendered in the somewhat archaic language of the King James Version of the Holy Bible. And yet the editor of publication aiming to serve Roman Catholics can’t seem to get it right.

Writing in Wednesday’s edition of The American Spectator, George Neumayr, editor of the conservative Catholic World Report, wrote about the “Unholy Triumvirate” of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

To be a good American now means you nod vigorously as an Obama supporter at a cocktail party bashes the Boy Scouts as bigots while explaining to you why Obama’s association with the “distinguished” education professor (as Congressman Rahm Emanuel put it) Bill Ayers is no big deal. It means you chuckle along with Joe Biden as he tells Ellen DeGeneres that conservative Californians are deluded to oppose gay marriage.

Or it means listening in hushed awe as unimpeachable American hero Colin Powell calls the most liberal Republican presidential nominee ever “narrow” and insufficiently “inclusive,” and scolds unnamed Americans for objecting to the notion of a Muslim president. (I was half-expecting him to join Barney Frank in calling for the elimination of the Constitution’s prohibition on foreign-born presidents. Surely that’s not “inclusive” either.)

To start with, it’s not just Rahm Emmanuel who calls former terrorist Bill Ayers a “distinguished” education professor; it’s the University of Illinois at Chicago, which gave that to Ayers as a formal title.  And, if John McCain is “the most liberal presidential nominee ever”, what then do we make of a GOP presidential nominee who helped lay the groundwork for Human Rights Watch, one who supported the ill-fated Equal Rights Amendment and one who nominated a (gasp!) liberal to the highest court in the land.

Mister Neumayr, feel free to read up on the life and times of Gerald R. Ford sometime.

Of course, the whole Muslim charge has been debunked so many times I scarcely need to repeat it here. But it’s because of writers such as Neumayr that this unfounded rumor lives on. It’s worth noting that U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, a practicing Muslim, has been serving his Minnesota constituents since January of 2007.

Or consider Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, a 20-year-old soldier who was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.  His headstone is marked, not by Christianity’s cross, but rather Islam’s crescent and star.
No one with a trace of humanity can fail to be moved by the patriotic sacrifice of a man whose patriotism would have questioned by some of the people he died for.

Still, patriotic sacrifices such as Khan’s may be beneath Neumayr’s notice, the way he claims that patriotic acts are beneath liberals’ notice:

Patriotism is now measured not by respect for the conservatism contained in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution but by the level of one’s enthusiasm for the America to come.

And what conservatism might that be? Surely not the notion that all men are created equal. As far back as anyone living can remember, egalitarianism hasn’t been part of the Republican game plan. Separation of church and state? Don’t be silly. The social conservative base of the GOP would love nothing more than to see the Ten Commandments posted every 25 feet or so.

Or, in Mister Neumayr’s case, maybe just nine of them.