Dave found this beautiful, spiritual hymn sung by presidential candidate Ben Carson. Or at least about him.
Segment originally aired Nov. 14, 2015, as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full show with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast: Full Episode
All content (c)2015 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
OH DAT BEN
When I be nine years old, I hit my momma with a hammer.
When I be ten years old, I bashed my brother with a brick.
When I be eleven years old, I went apeshit with a baseball bat.
Oh lawd, I remember.
Vote for me in November.
When I be twelve years old, I hit my momma with another hammer.
When I be thirteen years old, I stabbed a classmate in the hip.
When I be fourteen years old, somehow I got hold of yet another hammer.
Oh lawd, I remember.
Vote for me in November.
But now I’s a different man, and I gots no anger
I’s got a Yale degree, and I done surgery
So listen, America, from Maine to Alabama
Vote Ben Carson.
And hide yo’ motherfucking hammers.
Here is the 523rd episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio Aug. 22, 2015. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Dave chats with Michael Paul Smith and Gillian Pensavalle and with UNC General Manager Matthew Davis. Plus: Rabbi Sol Solomon‘s Rabbinical Reflection on Jimmy Carter, Inside Broadway, My Sick Mind, Saturday Segues (Tori Amos, In the News), Bob Dylan – Sooner & Later (Bob Johnston).
Host: Dave Lefkowitz
Guests: Michael Paul Smith and Gillian Pensavalle (“The Residuals”), UNC Radio General Manager Matthew Davis.
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN (back to school, commercials) 00:19:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – Tori Amos 00:44:00 GUESTS: Michael Paul Smith & Gillian Pensavalle 01:24:00 INSIDE BROADWAY 01:47:30 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (Bob Johnston) 02:13:30 sponsors 02:22:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #131 (Jimmy Carter) 02:32:00 Update: The Miracle of Long Johns 02:38:00 Friends 02:44:30 MY SICK MIND 02:52:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – In the News 03:08:00 GUEST: Matthew Davis 03:41:00 Weather 03:44:00 DAVE GOES OUT
Aug. 22, 2015 “Hey Jupiter” (00:24:30), “You Can Bring Your Dog” (00:30:30), “Original Sinsuality” (00:34:30) & “Crucify” (00:37:00; Tori Amos). “The Entertainer” (01:44:00; Scott Joplin {via piano roll}). “To Be Alone with You” (01:56:30) & “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” (01:58:30; Bob Dylan). “Human Bomb” (02:53:00; Donovan). “The Subway Diet” (02:57:00; John Pinette). “Throw the Anchor Away” (02:58:00; By the Beautiful Sea 1954 Broadway cast). “Sad News from Korea” (03:00:00; Lightnin’ Hopkins). “Ashley” (03:03:00; Big Jean). “School Days” (03:50:00; Phil Ochs).
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of August 23, 2015.
Two weeks ago, 90-year-old former president Jimmy Carter announced that he was battling an advanced stage of cancer—or, as Jewish people call it (whispers) cancer. Snipped from his liver was a tumor, but they also found badness elsewhere, which is not surprising since both of Carter’s parents, his two sisters, and his brother all died of pancreatic you-know-what.
Jimmy still has his 87-year-old wife, Rosalynn, who says she will be “right there with him” throughout his treatment. So will the town of Plains, Georgia, and a lot of Americans who remember Carter as one of the smartest, most honest, and most decent of men to occupy the oval office.
My feelings are a mite more mixed, however. Just because Carter was a mensch doesn’t mean he was a good President. In fact, up until George W. Bush, he was the worst Commander in Chief in a hundred years. And considering that crop included Richard Nixon and Warren G. Harding, that’s saying something.
In case you weren’t around from 1977 to 1981, what you missed was the recession, the oil crisis, the hostage crisis, the Cold War, and the confidence crisis. You know your President is a bona fide schlemiel when he has to go on television to tell everyone, “It’s not me, it’s you. Have a little faith.” Faith is hard to come by when you’re idling at the gas station for two hours on odd and even days, or when you can’t find a job to pay what gasoline costs, or you’re turning your thermostat to 50 because the Mullahs at OPEC want you to.
And speaking of the Arabs, the Carter years were also, of course, the years of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Fifty-two American hostages were taken prisoner as part of the Iranian Revolution. I suppose we should be grateful all the hostages survived. If they were captured now, Isis would cut their limbs off and rape the stumps. Still, these Americans remained in captivity for a year and a half, until Ronald Reagan made backroom deals to have them released on the first day of his presidency.
Until then, Jimmy Carter had three responses to the Iranian hostage crisis: He barricaded himself in his office for a hundred days, because as any eight-year-old knows, if you hide in the closet, nobody knows you’re there, and all the bad stuff goes away. His second tactic was to wear sweaters, because that’ll show those big bad oil sheiks we can live without heat. And finally, he sent helicopters to try a rescue mission—and they all crashed in the desert.
It was right about then America stopped laughing at Billy Carter and turned her woeful eyes on his older brother. If Watergate was a cancer on the Presidency, Jimmy Carter was a herpes all over it.
Still, lousy as Carter’s term was, I would still want to respect the man. After all, he brokered an impossible deal between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat to create a small piece of peace in the Middle East. It truly was and remains an unbelievable, wonderful, and, alas, one-of-a-kind event in that region. And yet, can peanut boy leave well enough alone?
No, he spends the last few years bleeding through his sleeve for the poor, poor Palestinians. He writes a damn book with the inflammatory title, “Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid,” equating Israel with racist South Africa—even though the Palestinians are demanding land that belongs to Israel, land Israel annexed after being attacked, land that should be for Jews and Israeli citizens because the Arabs have a zillion other places to live.
Carter tries to play both sides of the fence. He sometimes makes nice-nice to Israel, saying he doesn’t support a boycott of the country over its policies. But then he turns around and chastises Eretz Yisroel for the way she conducts a war against an enemy that’s lobbing rockets in her backyard.
Like so many liberals and misinformed do-gooders, Jimmy Carter loves to invent a moral equivalency when there isn’t one. “Both Israel and Hamas are equally wrong and share equal blame,” which is not true; and let’s harp on Israel but be really gentle with the Arabs because we don’t want to make them mad. After all, Islam, the religion of peace, blows a ton of shit up, peacefully.
My main point is: considering his failure at almost every aspect of domestic and foreign leadership, and how he was humiliated by the Ayatollah—a guy who looked like Sean Connery wearing a microwavable heat wrap on his head—Jimmy Carter has as much business telling Israel what to do about the Muslims, as Michelle Duggar has telling the Pritzkers how to raise children. Of all people, Jimmy Carter should be the last one to believe you can reason with radicals, bargain with bullies, and mollify murderers.
After all, as we speak, Jimmy Carter’s body is being invaded by cancer cells that mean him only harm. Should the president’s doctor say, “Well, it’s not right to kill these invaders; it’s your fault for having a desirable host they want to live in. But tell you what. Why don’t you sacrifice so you can live in harmony with your cancer. Let them take your pancreas, your liver, your balls and your bones, and you can live side by side. And they promise never ever ever to move into your blood. Or least not for a week or two. Whaddya say?”
I say, “Jimmy Carter, you’ve done some good in this world, so I don’t wish you prolonged suffering. Still, if you had to get the big C, couldn’t you have gotten it in your mouth?”
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York.
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #122 (4/19/2015): Campaign 2016
(aired April 18, 2015 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/h-wdAa7RXFM)
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of April 19, 2015.)
Well, the Presidential race for 2016 officially began this week when Hillary Clinton threw her hat into the ring as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Her decision to run came as a shock to an order of Trappist Monks in Burkina Faso, but pretty much everyone else in the universe was expecting this, oh, seven-and-a-half years ago.
And why not? For all the negative publicity and setbacks, the past six years of Obama-America has been moderately successful—spectacularly successful if you compare them to the previous eight years under Shrub. The economy slowly turned around, real-estate is up, gas prices are down, we managed the wars that Dubya started, gay marriage and legal pot became the norm (and, astonishingly, the empire did not collapse), people who couldn’t afford healthcare . . . still can’t afford healthcare but now they have to have it, we’re making nice-nice with Cuba, and we turned bin Laden into fish food. Not perfect but not bad, considering Obama inherited a country that was so rotten, it could have been a Renny Harlin movie.
Through it all, Hillary Clinton took her lumps in 2000 and bided her time visiting a million countries between then and now in order to keep us out of new wars and, let’s face it, to avoid spending quality home time with her husband. The GOP is gonna hammer Hillary over Benghazi and ISIS and her seeming inability to answer a direct question, but half the Republican candidates won’t answer a direct question, either–`cause they can barely speak English.
I kid, I kid, but look at what the Red States are throwing at the next election: Jeb Bush. Do we really want to hear that last name connected with the White House ever, ever again? Sure, comparing Jeb to his brother George W. is like comparing Steven Spielberg to the guy who directed “Gummo.” But Jeb’s intelligence is a danger in itself. Let’s not forget who was governor when Florida hijacked the presidency from Al Gore 15 years ago. (In case you forgot, it was Jeb Bush.) And while he’s pro-education and more sensible than most in his party about immigration, he would decimate social services and be so right-wing on abortion, he’d make jacking off illegal because you’re killing a bajillion potential human beings in spermatozoic form.
Then you’ve got Ted Cruz. He looks like Joseph McCarthy, sounds like Rick Santorum, and comes off like a Sunday preacher on acid. Gotta love him for being pro-Israel, but no Federal money for Hurricane Sandy? No leeway on gun control? No compassion for unwed mothers? No comprehension of global warming? No remorse for shutting down the government in 2012? No admitting that he can’t even run for president because he was born in Canada? (Actually, he can `cause his mom’s American, but why isn’t he up north shooting moose and ordering Terrence and Philip to get a haircut?)
Then you’ve got Marco Rubio, who makes one crowd-pleasing speech, and suddenly he thinks he can run the free world. (Remember how that hot-speech thing worked out for Sarah Palin?) Anyway, he’s Latino, and he’s got charisma. Good for him. I liked Desi Arnaz, but I wouldn’t’ve voted for him. Rubio is anti-same-sex marriage and has so little experience in foreign policy, he makes pre-2008 Barak Obama look like Henry Kissinger. Including the glasses. Worst of all, Marco was mentored by none other than Jeb Bush — the guy he’ll run against in the primaries. Who says there’s no loyalty in politics? I do; I say there’s no loyalty in politics.
Also in the hunt: Rand Paul. He’s so right wing, he makes the Koch Brothers look like Emma Goldman. Paul is another of those religious fundamentalists who thinks conception begins in the nut sack, and he is the epitome of the Republican who believes the way to govern is to block anything and everything the Democrats wanna do. If Obama says walruses have tusks, Rand Paul will filibuster to make sure they’re called “long teeth” instead.
Other rambunctious Republicans who might give Jeb a jolt include Chris Christie, who was desperate enough to accept a Democratic handout but arrogant enough to clog up the George Washington Bridge. Rick Perry, who is currently under indictment, hates gays, hates abortion, and worst of all, comes from Texas. Scott Walker comes from Wisconsin, for which he deserves sympathy. And I hear he’s very much an advocate of two-year colleges – by which I mean that he’s cut so much funding from state universities, they won’t be able to afford four years of teachers.
And did I mention Donald Trump was running again? Just take a moment to process that. Donald Trump, who went bankrupt three times and yet brands himself as a financial genius. He does have a magnificent knack for self-promotion, but he spends money he doesn’t have like it’s going out of style—so why isn’t he running as a Democrat?
Oy. It’s gonna be an interesting year and a half. Night after night of Rachel Maddow shilling for Hill and Sean Hannity sugarcoating anything the Republican party scrapes off its shoe and smears on a ballot. My parishioners tell me, “Rabbi, you bitch and bitch and bitch but don’t offer an alternative. Why don’t you run for President, you’re so smart?” The answer is, I’m smart enough to know my limitations. If I were President, the first thing I’d do is declare war on every country threatening Israel. The second is to make it illegal to use the New Testament as anything more than literature or a doorstop. And the third would be to make pastrami a mandatory part of all school lunches. As for immigration: look, my wife and I have 21 ½ children. Where the hell are we supposed to get nannies for less than six bucks an hour if we send back all the illegals?
Global Warming? Half my relatives live in Florida, and their skins are like komodo dragons from the sunshine. For the sake of the Jews, let’s at least get some umbrellas down there and maybe a few icemakers. Quality of life crime, like graffiti or noise pollution? A simple and effective plan. First offense, 25 hours of community service. Second offense? Death penalty.
As you can see, I am not meant to be the leader of the free world. `Cause I’m a schmuck. I’m saving you the trouble; I’m telling you, I’m a schmuck. The hard part is keeping some other schmuck from becoming president. For 227 years, we have failed at this almost uninterruptedly. I wouldn’t hold out much hope for the next four.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Here is the 506th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, April 18, 2015. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with animator Bill Plympton (“Cheatin’,” “Your Face”). Plus: Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflection on the 2016 candidates, Inside Broadway, Saturday Segues (Percy Sledge, In the News), The Wretched Pun of Destiny (Hangover), Greeley Crimes & Old Times.
Host: Dave Lefkowitz
Guests: animator Bill Plympton, Dave’s wife Joyce
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (dandruff, potatoes, egg creams, costumes) 00:24:30 GREELEY CRIMES & OLD TIMES 00:53:00 DAVE GOES FURTHER IN (Blackout!, Dave’s solo show) 01:16:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – Percy Sledge 01:36:00 INSIDE BROADWAY 02:05:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Bill Plympton 02:30:30 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (Altria) 02:50:30 Sponsors 02:57:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #122 (2016 Candidates) 03:07:00 Friends 03:19:00 THE WRETCHED PUN OF DESTINY #33 (hangover) 03:47:30 Weather 03:49:30 Thanks & Upcoming 03:55:00 DAVE GOES OUT
April 11, 2015 Playlist: “Ketchup” (00:15:00; Tom Paxton). “Sudden Stop” (01:20:00), “Out of Left Field” (01:23:00), “When a Man Loves a Woman” (01:26:30) & “You Really Got a Hold on Me” (01:29:30; Percy Sledge). “Come to the Fun Home” (02:02:00; Fun Home 2014 off-Bway cast). “Your Face” (02:25:30; Maureen McElheron). “Things Have Changed” (02:33:30), “Simple Twist of Fate” ({live 1975 version} 02:38:30) & “Pay in Blood” (02:43:00; Bob Dylan). “Master Song” (03:22:30; Leonard Cohen). “Your Tax Dollars at Work” (03:28:00; Henry Phillips). “The Prisoner” (03:33:00; The Both). “Bussboys, McDonalds and Minimum Wage” (03:37:30; Chris Rock). “Hillary Will Survive” (03:39:00; The Capitol Steps). “The Happy Happy Joy Joy Song” (03:57:00; Wax).
The 27th Wretched Pun of Destiny segment aired Feb. 28, 2015 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
All content (c)2015 TotalTheater Productions. More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
* 27. Shalom, Dammit! this is Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. Since it is Purim time, I am proud once again to be an honorary guest reader for The Wretched Pun of Destiny:
A terrible hurricane strikes the east coast, doing untold damage to the farmlands. Hearing about this, the first Jewish President cuts short her vacation to come survey the destruction.
First, she visits a sugarcane field in Louisiana, where the crop has been depleted by the storm.
“Oy,” she says. Then the she flies up to New York to see a cabbage farm that has been torn to shreds. “Oy,” says the President.
Finally, they drive her to Massachusetts to see the twisted remains of what had been a thriving vineyard. “Oy,” says the president once more.
The next morning at her press conference, a reporter asks, “Madame President, what were your thoughts on seeing what happened to the sugar and the cabbage and the grapes?”
“Well,” comes the reply. “Oy Cane, Oy Slaw, Oy Concord.”
click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Here is the 483rd episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, Nov. 18, 2014. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Dave chats with theatrical composer Neil Berg, veteran broadcaster Bob Cudmore, and UNCRadio programming director Matthew Davis. Plus: Inside Broadway, Saturday Segues (Smither & Young), Dylan – Sooner & Later (From the Basement) and The Wretched Pun of Destiny (Murrow).
Guests: composer Neil Berg, broadcaster Bob Cudmore, UNCRadio Program Director Matthew Davis and Dave’s wife, Joyce Weil
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN 00:22:00 DAVE GOES OFF – The Mid-Term Elections 00:53:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – Chris Smither 01:09:00 Sponsors 01:23:00 GUEST: Neil Berg 02:03:00 INSIDE BROADWAY, Part 1 (news (02:04:00), 100 Years of Broadway (02:17:00)) 02:29:30 GUEST: Joyce Weil 02:42:00 INSIDE BROADWAY, Part 2 (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (02:42:00)) 02:54:00 WRETCHED PUN OF DESTINY 02:58:00 Weather 03:01:30 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (From the Basement) 03:25:00 Guest: Bob Cudmore 03:52:30 Guest: Matthew Davis 04:27:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – Neil Young 04:50:30 Friends 04:56:30 DAVE GOES OUT
Nov. 8, 2014 Playlist: “Don’t Make Promises” (00:55:30), “Help Me Now” (01:03:00), “Seems So Real” (01:03:30; Chris Smither). “Is this Love” (01:19:00) * “Bows” (02:00:00; The Prince and the Pauper studio cast). “How Much Richer Could One Man Be?” (02:53:00; Sheldon Harnick) “Million Dollar Bash (Take 1)” (03:05:00), “900 Miles from My Home” (03:07:30), “Ain’t No More Cane” (03:11:30) & “All You Have to Do is Dream (Take 2)” (03:12:00; Bob Dylan & The Band). “See the Sky About to Rain” (04:28:00), “Such a Woman” ({live}, 04:33:00), “Jellyroll Man” (04:38:00), “Reason to Believe” (04:40:30) & “Hawks & Doves” (04:43:00; Neil Young).
Neil Berg
Matthew Davis
Bob CudmoreChris Smither
Neil Young
Dylan’s Basement TapesThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Here is the 482nd episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, Nov. 1, 2014. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with xylophonist Ian Finkel; Inside Broadway; Saturday Segues (November, Wild Man Fischer); Wretched Pun of Destiny (doves); Dylan – Sooner & Later (elections).
Guest: musician Ian Finkel
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce Weil (Marcia Strassman, Jack Bruce, couch mess) 00:55:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – November 01:17:00 Sponsors 01:27:00 INSIDE BROADWAY (news 01:27:30; reviews: Signal Failure (01:43:00), Bedbugs! (01:46:00)) 02:01:30 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Ian Finkel 02:41:30 THE WRETCHED PUN OF DESTINY – Doves 02:45:00 Friends 02:51:00 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (elections) 03:27:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – Wild Man Fischer 03:50:00 DAVE GOES OUT
Nov. 1, 2014 Playlist: “Remember November” (00:55:00; Juliana Hatfield). “November” (00:59:00; Duncan Sheik). “November 5” (01:04:00; Love Spit Love). “November” (01:08:00; Tom Waits). “Mr. November” (01:11:00; The National). “Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite” (01:56:30; Bedbugs! 2014 off-Broadway cast w/ Chris Hall). “S’Wonderful” (01:58:30) & “Not on the Top” (02:38:00; Fyvush Finkel). “I Shall Be Free” ({Witmark demo} 02:57:30), “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” (03:02:00) & “Highlands” (03:07:30; Bob Dylan). “Merry Go Round” (03:35:00), “Cops and Robbers” (03:37:00), “I’m the Meany” (03:38:30), “One of a Kind Mind” (03:40:00), “I Light the Pilot” (03:40:30), “Love Love Love in Everything You Do” (03:41:00), “Teen Age Idol” (03:42:30) & “Start Life Over Again” (03:45:00; Wild Man Fischer). “Take it Back” (03:58:00; Cream).
xylophoneIan FinkelWild Man FischerSignal Failure (w/ Sasha Ellen & Spencer Cowan)Bedbugs (with Grace McLean)
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of October 6th, 2013.
Idiocy and nonsense! Selfishness and stupidity! Pride and prejudice! Welcome to the United States Federal government, Fall 2013. As I write this, the Fed is in its fourth day of shutdown. Why? Because Republicans won’t approve a budget unless the President kills his healthcare plan. And Obama won’t even talk to the G.O.P. unless they kiss his boots and keep his baby. It’s an impasse created by two sides of impass-holes.
Now, I’m not saying both sides are equally at fault. That’s an easy trap and one that the media loves to fall into – especially when they’re discussing, say, the Palestinians. Arabs bomb and kill and bargain in bad faith; Israel protects land she rightfully won in the war. And yet, because the strife is ongoing and expensive, the world says, “ehhh, a plague on both their houses” and “Oh, the Jews are the oppressors.” That is reductive and retarded. And while there’s reason to blame everybody for our current federal fakaktehness, the Republicans and their tea-party poopers are absolutely the instigators of this fiasco.
I don’t care what you think of Obamacare. I mean, me? I’m running to the doctor every two weeks for a high colonic, so I need affordable health coverage or else my prostate is gonna start looking like one of those frosting bags on “Cake Boss.” But even if I wasn’t crazy about the Affordable Care Act, it’s the law, it passed, Obama beat Romney with the plan already on his platform – deal with it. If it’s not going perfectly, make small adjustments while it’s already in progress, as we do with voting, or cunnilingus.
I have never seen such sore losers as Republicans. They lose the election in 2008; they all vow to spend the next four years making sure nothing the Democrats put forward gets passed. And if something should somehow, by accident, get through, they’ll just repeal it when their guy wins in 2012. Except he didn’t. America looked at Mitt Romney like a used-Rolls Royce salesman – and said, “No thank you. We’ll stick with the guy who’s done next to nothing, but the country’s turning around anyway. We’ll stay the course.”
This left the G.O.P. in shellshock. After four years of mocking and blocking, retching and kvetching, moaning the blues all night on Fox News – where did they wind up? Hemorrhaging on election night. But, of course, there’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal. Well, apart from George Zimmerman with a gun permit. The Republicans are lashing back, hurting the Democrats any way they can, even if it means bringing the government to a virtual halt and jeopardizing the recovery that their last president made necessary in the first place.
The G.O.P.’s idea of a compromise is saying, “Look, we’ll pass your budget; just delay Obamacare for a year.” Sounds reasonable – even though we know that would be a year of legal wrangling, political blackmail and further ways to dismantle the program. What we must not forget is that a “one year” delay is a smokescreen. Republicans have been delaying healthcare reform for two goddamn decades. Back when Bill Clinton was in the White House, his darling and incredibly tolerant wife, Hilary, made it her number-one priority to reform the out-of-control insurance business. She could’ve done it, too, had the Republicans not despised her and Bill so much, they brought his presidency to a standstill. Then George W. Bush was in the White House for eight years. Eight long, long, long, long years. In that time, Republicans had every opportunity to make their own health plan, to devise their own strategy to help a system in crisis. What did they do? If I had a sound effect of crickets chirping, you’d be hearing it right now.
Since then, Barack Obama has been in office for five years, which is more than a thousand days for Republicans and Democrats to have worked in tandem to create, maybe not Obamacare, but OBoehner-Care, or Clintingrich-Care. But no, all the G.O.P. did was plot and scheme. And now, when they don’t get their way, they sit in a corner, they pout, and they hide daddy’s wallet in revenge.
It’s happening elsewhere, too. In beautiful Colorado, where the G.O.P. hates gun laws, legalized pot and renewable energy, right-wingers want to secede and make their own state. I think they’re gonna call it “Spoiled Bratville,” or something. Funny, I didn’t hear them squeal about socialism when the rains came, and they had to go hat-in-hand to Joe Biden for flood relief.
Republicans whine that Obamacare means lack of choice; a curtailment of freedom by making everyone get insurance whether they want it or not. But folks, if you have a car, you gotta get car insurance and wear a seatbelt. If you have a baby, you gotta give her shots. If you kiss Miley Cyrus, you gotta buy Abreva. Obligating people to do something does not automatically cause the collapse of capitalism. I mean, we’ve all gotta eat, unless you wanna starve to death. Eating is not a choice, it’s a mandate, but there’s still room for choice. I might have roast chicken, you could have salmon, or pay extra for prime rib. Okay, now I’m hungry. But still angry.
Republicans say that most people hate Obamacare and don’t want it to go forward. That is not true. Most people are scared of Obamacare and don’t know what the hell to expect. But we also know that insurance is insanely expensive, and that millions of people without it are playing Russian roulette by not going to the doctor, or draining our taxes if they’re at a free clinic with the sniffles every week. Or, if they’re Republicans, with accidental bullet wounds.
But enough elephant bashing. After all, they embarrass themselves more than I ever could. Let us also not ignore the arrogance of Barack Obama and the donkeys. For weeks, the sequester is building to chaos, yet he can’t pick up a phone? He can’t get in a room with Boehner, et. al., and say, “okay, we’ll take out the medical-device thing, but you’ve gotta leave in abortions.” He can’t even say, “You know what? We will not delay Obamacare for a year, but three months? To work the kinks out? Sure, It’s not gonna kill anyone. Well, maybe some fourth-stage cancer patients, but other than that…” For a community organizer, Obama couldn’t organize paint cans in a Home Depot. And the Democrats are so cocky about winning the last election and so sure they have the Republicans cornered, they’re not even faking being interested in compromise.
These aren’t difficult times for America; these are ridiculous times for America. Maybe we need a third party again, only this time without Ralph Nader, or Ross Perot, or Roseanne Arnold, or Lyndon Larouche, or – you know what? Two’s more than enough.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
Segment aired Aug. 3, 2013, as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
All content (c)2013 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information on Rabbi Sol Solomon: www.shalomdammit.com
