TAKE AIM, SHOOT STRAIGHT

There's a little RIFLEMAN in all of us.

ONE REASON TO BE THANKFUL

Much like the turkey, this lame duck's days are numbered.

BARACK OBAMA - RIFLEMAN WANNABE?

Remember, Mr. President-elect, there's only one Rifleman at a time.

THE RIFLEMAN RECOMMENDS:

MR. FREEDOM

Life gets pretty lonely out here on the range. Seldom anyone to talk to, much less any kind of entertainment. That's why I was so delighted when I recently discovered a parcel from an old trail mate in the post. Inside, The Delirious Fictions of William Klein. The fine folks at Eclipse have released a boxed set containing the three fiction films of noted shutterbug and expat filmmaker William Klein. All of ‘em are worth a watch. But my favorite by far is Mr. Freedom, Klein’s ferocious satire of American foreign policy in the 1960s (and, by extension, the 1980s and the early 2000s).

It’s impossible not to laugh at the wild, amped-up buffoonery as uber-American superhero Mr. Freedom becomes a one-man occupying force to rid France from the red Commie scourge. But every laugh comes with an uncomfortable pang of recognition. One can’t help but see George W. Bush as the titular red, white, and blue clad bubba, his unhealthy idealistic balance of jingoism and xenophobia threatening to destroy everything he professes to defend.

In this so-called year of change, Klein's poisonous cynicism is almost enough to knock the idealism right out of you by bolstering the distressing old adage "the more things change, the more they stay the same." In four decades, it’s only the style and not the substance of Mr. Freedom that has aged. Its trenchant humor remains thoroughly current. While recent events suggest that America just had a collective laugh at Mr. Freedom in all his incarnations, I'm pretty sure Klein, like me, is a "see-it-to-believe-it" kind of guy.

THE ANTHEM, NATIONAL

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win

For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last

For the times they are a-changin'.

SUNRISE

The sun may rise in the east, but it sets in the west. That’s where I spend most of my time, and I’ve been privy to more than my fair share of staggering sunsets. Yesterday, as I watched that blood red ball of fire once more melt the sky before descending into slumber, I realized that I’ve been waiting to see that sunset for a long, long time. And in all my years, I’ve never been so nervous to see a sunrise as I am this morning.

Yet there it is, a pale yellow sliver peaking over the distant hills. The sun is rising in America once again.

Wake up, fellow rangers. There’s work to do today.

A CHANGE IS GONNA COME

SARAH PALIN - RIFLEMAN WANNABE

She doesn't have enough ammo to bag that moose.

VACATION OF THE MIND

De-Ranged Ramblings

Sometimes you need a little time away. A change of scene. Folks call it a “vacation.” It’s a time-honored concept that’s been around for at least a couple of millennia. The Romans called it vacatio. For them, it meant taking a much-deserved break from the scuffling, battling, slaughtering, scraping, and raping that the job of empire expanding demanded. More recently, the term has come to describe any length of time away from the soul crushing 2,250+ hour-a-year societal obligation that most people call their “career.” Coincidentally, career is another word adapted from Latin – carrus - though how a word meaning “wagon” got tangled up in the bizarre concept of performing a task in exchange for paper that represents the value of shiny rocks and must be traded in exchange for food and shelter is truly beyond me. Somehow in those intervening eons we never quite figured out a way to make our carrus vacatio and our vacatio carrus. And that, fellow rangers, is the failure of the human experiment.

But that’s a long, twisty road through tough terrain and perhaps it’s best we don’t start down it just now. Society is what it is, and I honestly wish I could say I had a proper vacation in the last few weeks. Instead, I spent a little time in a fusty county jail and a little more time in the torrid swamps of the way-down South, and while these two locales seldom top lists of ideal vacation destinations, they afforded yours truly a much-needed vacation of the mind.

This takes us back to last month. I was burned out and suffering from one of those nasty political hangovers. You hear many people say that politics is a drug, and I tend to agree. But it’s not an illegal smack-type high that gets its addicts off. Most political junkies I know are much more akin to alcoholics…suffering that long, slow kind of addiction that everyone knows you have but no one confronts you about. It slowly eats you from the inside out, leaving you bloated and broke and your family alone to pick up the pieces after the disease finally gets the best of you.

It got the best of me on September the Fourth. Two and a half days of treading water in a wallowing sea of political poison called the Republican National Committee left me a panting, slobbering wreck. Add that frame of mind to the thousands of slicked-back Republican pols in ill-fitting suits and thousands more uniformed police looking for an excuse to crack down and lock up any babbling sore thumb wandering amongst the herd and you’ve got yourself a particularly toxic recipe. One that landed me stone sober in a Ramsey County drunk tank on a charge of disorderly conduct.

I’m not about to waste your time reliving the whole incident. But suffice it to say it involved what I thought to be a harmless joke about John McCain, an Alaskan moose, and the campaign motto “Country First.” Don’t let the ill-fitting suits fool you; some of those GOP delegates can scrap. They treat fisticuffs like campaigns…the fuckers fight dirty.

It’d be difficult to call being corralled overnight with a bunch of boozy, sweat-drenched Midwesterners a blessing in disguise, but it did allow me to miss the Gov. Palin’s speech at the convention. And I’m deeply grateful that I missed her heralding as the Messiah of the GOP the next morning. I was otherwise occupied, staring at the white painted brick wall, listening to one of my cell mates get sick all over himself, and doing some serious soul searching.

When they finally let me out my pen at six o’clock that next evening, I was pretty sure that St. Paul had had enough of me. And I’d certainly had enough of St. Paul. I hit the road before John McCain even accepted the nomination. Spent the next few weeks in the South - Dothan, Alabama and Macon, Georgia to be precise - trying to polish off another of those personal portraits I started a while back.

While I was out of pocket, I missed all the big news. The biggest, perhaps, was when an ever so humble Hank Paulson reached out his grimy paw and begged for money like a Wall Street urchin. He and the rest the riverboat gamblers in the Bush administration have been riding high, making huge bets on credit and conning average Americans of below-average intelligence that they could live well beyond their means. These people made the mistake of trusting the suits, something I’ve sworn never to do. I keep most of my money buried off the Natchez Trail in a location known only by me and my trusted compadre, Blevins. People used to laugh at me when I told them I buried my money. I told ‘em I rather do it myself than have others do it for me.

The one thing I wish I wouldn’t have missed was Sarah Palin’s epic descent. Once the scripted words were removed from her mouth and she had to produce a few of her own, she revealed herself as a wifty walking stereotype whose deep-seated incuriosity and disdain for book learning made her much more akin to a George W. in red lipstick than the pistol packin’ Reagan-in-a-skirt her handlers posited her to be. When McCain went down to the crossroads and made that deal to become President, I don’t think he realized that even Satan couldn’t handle four more years of this hell.

That’s just what it is and just what it’s been. Hell. I travel all over this wide, open range. And the one thing I can’t help but notice is that people everywhere are tired and weary, beat down for eight long years by this sick-headed band of thieves that ran roughshod over their American Dream. Eight long years of corruption and lies. Eight long years of war-waging and money grubbing. Eight long years that we’ll pay for in perpetuity…the rest of my lifetime, the rest of your lifetime, your children and your children’s children’s lifetimes. Over and over for eternity. That is Hell…the lasting legacy of George W. Bush.

With their American Dream trampled dead in the gutter and everything they’ve worked a lifetime to build crumbling around them, all Americans have left is hope. Hope is the one thing the bastards can’t take away or destroy. The hope that things will change for the better. The hope to one day have the luxury of dreaming again.

I think it's fair to say we need a vacation.

As we close in on what will no doubt be a very close and hotly contested election, I find strength in the words of the great young soul singer Sam Cooke:

There've been times that I've thought I couldn't last for long
But now I think I'm able to carry on
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come

Oh yes it will.

TAKING AIM AT THE RNC - DISPATCH 2

The Elephant Strikes Back

It seems the Republican Party doesn’t like to have their dirty laundry aired in public. They’d like to keep their dirty little secrets just that - dirty, little, and secret. Can't say as I blame 'em. Could be they don't like people prying into other's private lives[1]. Or could be they're not keen on looking like a criminal gang of hypocrites. But hey, isn't this the party of Harding, Hoover, Nixon, Reagan, and W? I say it's common knowledge by this point.

Perhaps I should have waited to post my first dispatch until after the convention. Or maybe I should be grateful that my spurious press pass was revoked. It saved me from the bitter struggle of attempting to stay upright and awake during a triple threat onslaught of George W. Bush, Jumping Joe Lieberman, and Fred Thompson. Any one of 'em serves up a heavyweight bout of boredom. All three in quick succession could very well be fatal.

I ended up watching the speeches on TV in a local sport's bar, Malina’s, a scene of much local interest in recent weeks. Seems a young patron started trouble with the wrong guy and ended up with a shiv in his gullet. Nobody’s been arrested, the cops suspect the regulars are protecting one of their own. Happens all the time on the Range. C'est la vie. My advice: don't kick shit you can't carry.

Malina’s was the closest thing I could get to a sense of danger in a town that’s more locked down than Leavenworth. And even that was weak by most standards. Had I yelled out my support for Obama, I would have had to fight my way out of there. I decided to keep my mouth shut and bellied up to the bar, praying for CSPAN. I got FOX NEWS, and quickly realized that a bar is not just the best place to enjoy a Republican Convention, it's the ONLY place.

I got into it pretty good. So much so that I was able to laugh at that lame duck when he quacked about the "angry left" with his trademark murderous contempt. By the time "Traitor Joe" took the stage, I was less focused on his "maverick blah blah blah" than I was on his shocking resemblance to Droopy. Juvenile, I know, but so is the whole Republican political agenda. And maybe it was the Beast playing tricks on me, but I swear to God when I closed my eyes during the Fred Thompson speech, I thought that TV's Dr. Phil was addressing the rabid Republican hoard.

Another cheap smile, perhaps, but one much needed in a world where a McCain-Palin ticket is considered anything more than the whispy death throe of a once-powerful tyrant.

_________________________________________________
[1] Except, of course, in public policy that dictates Governmental involvement in a woman’s most private decision and a gay couple’s civil rights.

TAKING AIM AT THE RNC - DISPATCH 1

There’s a dangerous air in St. Paul. I’m not talking about chemical leaks from the local 3M plant, I’m talking about a sickening nervous energy that’s pulsing through “America’s most livable city.” It’s my first day at the RNC, and despite the fact that I saw a female journalist dragged Cro-Magnon style by the cops; this is far from a conventional GOP convention.

New York in 04 was the real deal. In a previous dispatch, I talked about the GOPoPPP, and the Manhattan convention was the ultimate expression of the “say one thing/do another” social club. Take, for example, Club Liberal[1], a once-respectable Midtown hangout transformed by party officials into the definitive late night right-wing fetishfest. After hours of speeches about family values and morals all peppered with racism and a not-so-healthy dose of gay-panic, young male wonks could retire to the Bacchanalian backrooms of Club Liberal and indulge in every "sinful" behavior they spent all day protecting America from. Drugs, sex, violence. Stick your prick into one of those holes in the wall…someone will be there to suck it. Have to take a piss? Retire to one of the restroom’s infamous “shower stalls.” So many images remain burned in my brain to this day, but by far the most sickening was the main event on night two…Sticking it to the Big Apple. The “Big Apple” in question was an overweight Puerto Rican prostitute in a too-tight, crotchless red teddy. I’ll leave it your imagination how many times she had it “stuck to her,” but I think it’s safe to say she didn’t walk home that night. Club Liberal was far crazier than the Limelight at its heyday, far more sinister too…a surreal experience made all the more surreal by the knowledge that these guys were aspiring right wing power brokers by day.

There’s nothing like Club Liberal this year in St. Paul. Nothing I’ve been able to weasel my way into, at least. But I was able to weasel my way into the Xcel Energy Center to witness First Lady Laura Bush’s speech. Less than four minutes by my watch, and nearly every second of it devoted to the Gulf Coast and the Hurricane. The line that struck me to the core: “our first prioty now, today, is to ensure the safety and the well being of those living in the Gulf Coast region.” There was plenty of respectful applause, and I was pretty sure that at least ninety percent of the audience missed the horrible irony of that statement...something more despicable than any of the goings-on at Club Liberal.

_________________________________________________
[1] The name of the real place has been changed to protect the guilty.

TAKE AIM, SHOOT STRAIGHT

There's a little RIFLEMAN in all of us.

MCCAIN GIVES BIRTHDAY GIFT TO DEMS

Just what do you give an opposing campaign that has everything?

The response from the Obama-Biden camp: "Thank you, Johnny. You shouldn't have."

HAPPY SEVENTY-SECOND BIRTHDAY, JOHN MCCAIN!

You don't look a day over 83.

Your Friend,

The Rifleman

TAKING AIM AT THE DNC

They say politics is local. So you’d better believe I was hunkered down in Denver this past week as that great blue tidal wave crashed down upon the mile high city. I was planning on sending a series of dispatches as the Democratic Convention progressed. After my first minute-and-a-half inside the Pepsi Dome[1], I scratched that idea. I make this personal pledge to you, my dear readers, the day you see within these pages my in-depth coverage of a Mark Warner speech is the very day I turn my own rifle on myself.

As a rule, political conventions are dead dull. Especially those held by the Democrats. I hate to say this, but if you’re looking to get down and dirty, you don’t chase the liberal donkey, you follow the path of the raging red elephant. The Republican Party has long been a “do as I say, not as I do” in-crowd. Those in the know call it the GOPoPPP – the Grand Ole Party of Perverts, Pederasts, and Panty-sniffers. Nothing at a Dem Convention can come close to the Gomorrahan depths of depravity that pass for status quo at the Republican bash. Yet on that base level, this Denver convention will always be about that curly haired young lady with a different Holly Golightly dress for every night of the week. If you’re reading this, Shelley, we’ll always have the RFK Memorial.

But I digress. Back to the boredom. The DNC – the convention of Greenpeace, not golden showers. The floor of the Pepsi Center was littered each day with a bunch of young policy wonks, sporting their bad haircuts and ill-fitting suits, talk-talk-talking about everything yet acting upon nothing. They’re tomorrow’s pols in training. It’s hard to fault them. After all, it’s the way of nature. These wonks are not unlike any other ape…obeying the rules of society as defined and directed by the silverbacks that came before them.

Of course, this is a different kind of convention for a different kind of candidate. And as such, there were only two seismic events that registered this as a “change” convention. The first, the speech of Sen. Hillary Clinton. Hillary, a silverback Dem if ever there was one, finally did the right thing. Realizing a Darwinian shift has occurred in her party, she willingly conceded to the next evolution of Democrat. And she did it with aplomb. It was not only the most important speech of her political career, it was her finest.

As expected, the most important event of the convention was the acceptance speech of Sen. Barack Obama. Standing there, at the 30-yard line at Mile High Stadium, I was moved by the furious sense of desperation throughout the house. These people need Obama like the air they breathe, and I’d be willing to wager that sense of necessity resonated throughout the country. Finally, a Democrat stood up against the Rove cabal and held a mirror to the gruesome, disfigured policies and tactics that have torn this country to pieces in the past decade. What’s more, Obama stood strong, proud, and ready to lead. For the first time, I felt his election was inevitable. Old McCain might as well give up the ghost, because change is coming to Washington.

On the way out of Invesco, I bumped into Pat Buchanan, a former Nixon speechwriter and Presidential hopeful who now sells his punditry to MSNBC. He commented that he liked my hat. Thanks Pat, but what do you think about Obama?

“I think the Rove era has finally met its end.”

I agree with Buchanan. It was only a matter of time. Karl Rove is a power broker, not a patriot. And in times like these, it takes a patriot. For more than once, the flame of America’s promise has nearly been extinguished. And in those last flickering moments, when the glow has just about gone gray, a true leader has always risen to the challenge, by luck or by destiny, to breathe oxygen onto the embers and nurse the flame back to life. Abraham Lincoln was one such man. Franklin D. Roosevelt, another. Tonight, Barack Obama didn’t just blow air on the embers, he poured gasoline on the mother fucker! In doing so, he renewed the very definition of patriotism, snatching it back from the withered, dying grasp of the GOP who once wielded the word like a blunt instrument.

It was a night of historic significance. Forty-five years after Dr. King spoke of his dream, an African American man stood on stage to accept his party’s nomination for President of the United States. Obama represents a change that runs far deeper than the reversal of George W. Bush’s failed policies. He represents the first small step toward the colorblind ideal that King died dreaming about. I've said it before and I'll say it again - America needs Barack Obama.

In the coming weeks, I’m sure my enthusiasm will subside as I watch John McCain attack like a stubborn old soldier, performing the same Rove-era divide/conquer strategies to paint Obama as a dangerous threat to the status quo. But in these moments, let’s not forget that it is the status quo itself that threatens. In this moment, to quote the great change candidate of the last century, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Good night, Denver. Good night, America. Tomorrow I ride for Minneapolis/St. Paul.


__________________________________________
[1] A political convention with “brought to you buy” corporate sponsorship…hardly a solid signifier of change we can believe in.

COUP D'ÉTAT?

With Mark Penn's recent praise for McCain's desperate attack-ad campaign, Bill's decision to speak at the DNC, and Hillary's assertion that her delegates should be counted, one can't help but wonder if we're in for a Clintonian coup d'état. I hope all those happy delegates pack their ponchos, because I think they may be in for a bloodbath.

REAL ESTATES

The US Military's New Strategy for Affordable Housing

US families suffering the gut-twisting blow of foreclosure need worry no longer. The US Military, with the assistance of the Bush Administration, has unveiled a new strategy for affordable housing. Called "segregation boxes," the lightweight, mobile wooden homes are currently all the rage in Iraq. There, hundreds of young men have been able to stretch out and relax in the lushly apointed, personally customized 3x3x6 foot residences.



Based on their success in the Mid-East, demand for segregation boxes is growing here on the home front. Four segreation boxes cost less than an average monthly mortgage payment, meaning an average American family can now live cleanly, humanely, and best of all, cheaply. It's another of the Bush Administration's sweeping initiatives to ease the nation's current economic woes.

Those of you interested in purchasing your own segregation boxes can write to:

W. Enterprises
P.O. Box 666
Washington, DC 20500

LETTERS FROM THE RANGE

The Rifleman Opens His Mailbag

Rifleman,

I have a question for you, rather the Obama campaign-- when are they gonna release the hounds?!? john mccain was in the keating 5 for fucks sake!

Respectfully,

T-Bone
Ballard, WA


Dear T-Bone,

Thank you for your letter. That graceful note of collegial esteem in your salutation is something I always appreciate. You're obviously a straight shooter, and your question is a good one, as it begs for a common sense approach to politics. I've got some bad news for you, mi amigo. You can beg all you want, but there is little common sense to be found in politics...especially when your politics are those of the Democratic Party.

Barack Obama has a lot of things going for him. He's young. He's a brilliant speaker. He has a good head on his shoulders. He has plans for the FUTURE of this country. A lot of people have taken him to task recently for jockeying toward the center on a lot of issues. His position shifts should come as no surprise. McCain's gdoing the same damn thing. This is the natural course of a Presidential race. As soon as the candidates are announced, they both pander to score the maximum number of votes. Common sense, right? Can you imagine any Democrat dumb enough to jockey hard left before a general election?* Unfortunately for America, this mad dash to the center is where common sense ends for the Democrats.

As you probably know if you've taken to writing me, I'm no fan of candidate McCain. But the old buzzard is doing it by the GOP book (I believe the title is The Necroneocon). He appears to be getting results. Comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears may seem desperate and out of touch to you, me, and anyone else who's learned to read...but the polls don't lie (any more than they are designed to), and if you believe that hype, Johnny Mac is gaining ground.

Now common sense should dictate the course of action from the Obama camp. They should hit back...HARD. If you're a "long-time" reader of my dispatches, you'll remember that I advocated a take-no-prisoners approach early in the primary season. Same is true today. I think Team Obama should cut together their own advertisement that shows McCain to be the slobbering, doddering, ill-tempered, money-grubbing, war-prolonging, big oil-fucking, graft-abiding, old-crow party-pol that he most certainly is - in every way, shape, and form the WRONG choice for President at this crucial crossroads in our Nation's history. It wouldn't be hard to do. Any 16-year-old with a laptop could find enough Youtube clips to bury the undead Senator a thousand times over.

But is Obama willing to beat the Republicans at their own game? I think HE is. But don't overestimate that stubborn blue ass to which he’s hitched his wagon. The Democratic Party has, of late, bolstered the masochistic "grin and bear it" philosophy to counter the Rove Republican’s "slash and burn" strategy. The result - Dem candidates stand stoic as Michaelangelo's Pieta while Republicans pull a Laszlo Toth trip all over them.

Obama only stands to loose by standing idle. Flip-Flop Kerry stood idle. Nation-Builder Gore stood idle. Willy Horton Dukakis stood idle. My advice to Barack Obama is my advice to you:

Take Aim. Shoot Straight.

The Rifleman

_______________________________

*Remember, Kucinich didn't get the nod.

THE IMPOSTER

I don't know who this Chuck Stevens yahoo is, but word around the campfire is he's been sullying my name all over this wide, open range. If you're out there, Chuck, I'll meet you out front of McCall's Saloon at twelve bells.

And bring yer rifle...

WONDER WOMAN - RIFLEMAN WANNABE