Porschy (not her real first name) is a part Pyrenees, part Golden political novice running as a respresentative of the t-bone wing of the GOP (Grassroots Organization for Pooches). The pooch party’s t-bone faction, a burgeoning social and political force among animals in captivity, espouses a single-message social agenda: Personhood for dogs. The loosely organized coalition contends that in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Citizens United in 2010, dogs, like corporations, should be granted First Amendment rights as citizens. Some more extreme member groups additionally espouse the principle that personhood (and citizenship rights) should date from the point when sperm and egg combine to create a canine embryo. Porschy has not indicated a position on this controversial contention.

In a prepared statement, Porschy characterized her Vice Presidential pick, Louie-the-Pug, as a “a tireless and unflagging advocate for the principle of animal personhood.” Louie, who lives in a California coastal county, “has passed the litmus tests for honesty, personal dignity, and sensitivity to issues of justice for animals in captivity,” Porschy noted, stating: “As a Beltway outsider, Louie is unlikely to be swayed by the persiflage of Washington pundits or led astray by specious reasoning. He will stay on message.”

Louie-the-Pug will make an ideal vice president, Porschy added: “He is pugnacious and tenacious. Louie will hound legislators on behalf of my agenda as Commander in Chief. He will also stand up for the little guy.”

“Together,” she added, “we will make a winning team, which can capture the White House and achieve real changes for the condition of ordinary animals everywhere. We are the real outsiders.”

The golden-haired candidate tends to be wary of the press. In a rare interview with buckdata.com, Porschy explained that she, like Louie, has a busy schedule “occupying the yard.” and cannot take out much time to speak with representatives of the human media. She has not appeared on Fox News and prefers to stay home Sundays with her human family, rather than appear on talk shows.

Buckdata.com has learned, however, that selection of other members of the t-bone transition team is already quietly under way. Under consideration at this time, according to a highly-placed source with the campaign, speaking not for attribution, are Massachusetts residents, Daisy and Tucker, who are being vetted for cabinet posts at State and Homeland Security, respectively. Both reportedly have the winning charm of able politicians and impressive pedigrees in inter-species relations.

Porschy has not yet opened a campaign office in Iowa, but contends that that is not a problem. “The caucuses will be able to hear me from the West Coast,” she said, adding: “My bark is definitely bigger than my bite.”

Porschy declined to comment on the failure to include her in the recent Iowa debate, noting only that her participation at last week’s event would probably have leavened the quality of discourse.

It shouldn’t just be votes for dogs. Porschy should aim higher. She should run for president herself. She’s qualified. She is smarter than Perry, better informed than Cain (I talk to her a lot about public affairs, and even a casual listener would have an idea what’s going on in Libya.) Unlike Gingrich, she has never orchestrated a government shut-down.

She is not cruel: she has never promoted waterboarding or executing anybody; she is firmly opposed to electrified fences. She would take me to the vet if I needed it without even asking whether I was insured.

Porschy has been consistent and unwavering about these positions. Further, she is popular with pets and pet owners to boot. She has never, ever, put anyone into a dog carrier on a luggage rack (even one with a windshield) during our seasonal trips to the inlaws’ place in L.A.

If the GOP frontrunners were all who were running, I wouldn’t hesitate to form an exploratory committee and set up a Super PAC: Pooches for Prosperity. I’ve already taught her to answer to the words “President Porschy.”

But oops – she’s probably too smart, I might not be able to talk her into running. I’ll have to beg.

We don’t live in a metropolis. Our town lies in a rural area which only recently achieved public bus service for one of its outlying communities. Before that, some of the area’s students had to hitchhike to get home from high school. Near the center of our tiny town, there is a library maintained on a volunteer basis. Though I’m sure the volunteers do what they can, whenever I pass by, it isn’t open. Now the library in the nearest town to the south may suffer a similar fate.

We talk a lot about civil society but not so often about what goes into to making and maintaining one. Like public education, a library is essential. It’s a meeting place where ideas are important, a setting where where elders can tutor struggling students, where kids can research their term papers, and where the unemployed can use the Internet connection to apply for jobs. (And that last is especially important: At Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2010, local residents hoping for charity turkeys at the mission on the main highway had to stand in a long line to get one. It’s not likely they’ll have the spare fuel to drive long distances or excess funds to spend at online bookstores.)

I hope the library board considers the following: A short while back, we were all snickering about Texas, where extremist officials voted to take evolution out of the school textbooks. Those Texans must be eyeing us here in Santa Cruz County with astonished wonder, now. For without a library, right-wing ideologues won’t have to make the effort to ban an idea or censor a book to keep it out of circulation: Why bother to ban a book, when the library has already been closed down?

© Shelley Buck, 2011. Used with permission.

We can do better for ourselves and the planet. And we need to do it now.

This is worse than a mistake. It’s hubris.

Even Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s 1818 horror classic regrets constructing his monster: “Would you also create for yourself and the world a demoniacal enemy? Peace. Peace. Learn my miseries and do not seek to increase your own.”

Think of a person that neither poops nor dies, does not need doctors or schools or diapers or houses, catches no H1N1 viruses, and does not wake these gowned officials up at night with teething or with adolescent woes: A person with a proper attitude toward money and authority. A person that’s all theory, no needy flesh, no messy bones.

Already a public relations firm, Murray Hill Incorporated, has announced its candidacy for Congress, according to the New York Times. On a campaign video, the company promises to bring “enlightened self-interest and corporate accounting to government.” The company says it will enter a primary election for a Maryland Congressional seat, according to its website. A statement on the website indicates the corporation plans to use “automated robo-calls, ‘Astroturf’ lobbying and computer-generated avatars to get out the vote.”

I imagine the move is tongue-in-cheek, but consider the possibilities: Maybe the Supreme Court will go further and grant corporations the ballot, perhaps limiting the rest of us to three-fifths of a vote apiece. Or perhaps do a 50-to-one reverse split and grant us even less.

All this makes me ponder: My dog Porschy is born in the U.S. She has rights, too. (She wants the right to bare teeth.) I am looking into incorporating her in Delaware. Votes for dogs!

P.S. See the Supreme Court’s decision.

As with many other instances during the George W. Bush administration in which legitimate duties of government (such as statesmanship) became conflated with and ultimately displaced by punishment, pure and simple, we are all of us coming to realize that Bush-era techniques employed in efforts to extract information from unwilling and even uninformed “informants” went way too far. Not only international conventions but also our own laws and morals were savagely violated by actions taken with a veneer of government approval.

As ever more reeking information continues to seep from the closed drawers of the military and spy agencies, it is clear that the heritage of America’s own dirty war will not go away on its own.

The problem now seems to be what to do about it. Should we go on talk shows and claim that torture wasn’t really torture? Should we-Nuremberg-style-prosecute and punish those who carried out illegal policies endorsed by our then-government? Should we convene a truth and reconciliation commission, so that those who carried out the torture can ‘fess up and hug their surviving former victims? Should we talk the issue onto its deathbed, bury it in paper, smother the legal and moral outrages in subtleties, and move on to health care, global warming and other pressing matters? Or should we see-to paraphrase the late folksinger, Phil Ochs– the pictures of the pain?

What to do? In this case, although I consider myself a progressive, I really would like to see Washington run more like a small business. I ask: “What would Main Street do?”

If I identified an embezzler in my business, I would likely institute controls to identify financial misdeeds earlier and more readily. I might choose not to prosecute the culprit due to concern about publicity. But would I keep the embezzler around to do next season’s taxes?

If I were a small town editor who discovered one of my writers was plagiarizing, I would probably increase my future scrutiny of news stories prior to publishing them. But would I continue to accept articles from the freelancer who burned me?

If I were a carpenter who discovered that a vender sold me wood for a house that was so weakened by wormholes that the house I was building could not stand, I might devise new methods for stress testing my materials before beginning construction. But would I buy again from that vender?

If I, a hapless householder, hire a plumber who recklessly breaks a pipe and lets a stream of sewage spew into my front yard, will I call the guy up again when the garbage disposal stops grinding?

I am not a carpenter or accountant. I do my own cleaning. My business does not earn enough to have employees, let alone ones who embezzle, and my garbage disposal is not broken, but you get the idea.

If I were a new president who discovered his employees had engaged in torture, I would likely devise new methods and policies to keep torture out of government. But would I continue to keep people who authorized it or did it on the payroll?

C’mon. Really? Would you? Would anybody? –buckdata

For her part, buckdata is wondering why money isn’t getting to the people most hard hit by this depression, such as those on the verge of losing their homes, those who have already lost them, and those for whom a tarp is not a government program but a literal roofing strategy in tent cities around the country.

To aid the President—on this issue at least– the following modest solution is hereby submitted:

Let’s all be bankers! Maybe it’s time for the poor and dispossessed and the rest of us to found some banks. Buckdata has a few in mind: First Foreclosure Bank in Stockton, Credit Default Swappers Bank in the New Orleans Ninth Ward, Toxic Assets Bank in Flint, Bonus Plus Bank with a nice Manhattan address, the Bank of Kaput in New Shock, Pennsylvania, and, of course, the online Bank of Buckdata.

Consider the possibilities: Laid off attorneys can volunteer time to help with the charters and incorporations. Laid off Wall Street employees can help us set up the books. Laid off web designers can devote their graphics talents to creating suitable online presence and branding. Impoverished retirees can exhume their mothballed suits and ties to lend us all gravitas at the headquarters front office.

Once the banks are set up, perhaps the homeless, the foreclosed, the evicted, and the about-to-be dispossessed will be able to approach Washington politely, hats (if we still have them) in hand, in search of generous bailouts. After all, a democracy, too, involves a contractual obligation, doesn’t it?

The proposal has a further benefit: If the sheriff’s deputies should arrive to evict us before the bucks start rolling in, we can always live in the vault. –buckdata

Note to readers: This is a satire. The above banks do not now exist. There is no Bank of Kaput in New Shock, Pennsylvania. There is no New Shock, Pennsylvania. No intention to single out particular existing institutions should be inferred from this blog post. This caution is necessary because of an unusual initiative reported in the New York Times on April 8. The article by Graham Bowley and Michael J. de la Merced details a scenario in which ordinary citizens may  be cajoled to invest in private mutual funds which are to be set up with government support to purchase other private institutions’ soured assets. The writers suggest such citizen investments may be envisioned as similar to the patriotic purchases of “Liberty Bonds” during the World War I. In such an audacious climate, formal disclaimers truly become necessary. Without such disclaimers, even well-informed readers may find themselves unable to distinguish pastiche from reality.

Here are a few direct responses from Buckdata: Palin is not a team player. She disagrees with McCain about oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. She said so. In the event of her succession to the presidency, would she carry out McCain’s policies? She already likely has plans for expanding the vice presidency.  She said at the debate that the  U.S. Constitution allows this: “I’m thankful that the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president…. Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position….”

Palin does not understand how things work or even perceive the need for that understanding. Witness her discussion of climate change. Palin said she would act on its impacts but did not want to “argue about the causes.”

She was not willing to deal thoughtfully and respectfully with the questions posed by the debate moderator standing in for the American people, stating that she preferred to address them directly.  As vice president or president, she would likely choose which questions to answer, or not, as baldly as she did in the debate.

We are already weary of those who smirk, glare, wink, and refuse to account for themselves thoughtfully. We don’t need any more on the public payroll. And, regardless of gender, we cannot–especially at a time of economic crisis–afford a chief executive (or even deputy chief executive) who cannot understand cause and effect.

For additional commentary on the debate, see Don Monkerud’s astute analysis, “Are you Ready for President Palin?”

Watch the debate again, readers. Ponder it somberly.

Another dimension of Palin’s character was not explored at the debate, however: Palin lacks compassion for those in different circumstances. On her blog, Fierce Desire, author and artist Judith Pierce Rosenberg explores an additional issue very important to women that the debate never touched on.

And the federal government is sort of progressive, too, when it comes to protecting children. For example, it is against the Mann Act to bring a minor across state lines for sexual purposes.

But what about when the purposes are political? Are there any penalties—local or federal–for bringing a minor across state lines to display her—unmarried and pregnant–on podium and television for political gain? Legal or not, like Chris Kelly at the Huffington Post, I find this pretty disturbing.

About 20 years ago, when an angry mother in California planted her youngster out in her front yard with a sign around his neck, detailing what she perceived to be her offspring’s wrongdoings, her public humiliation of the child provoked public outrage and disgust.

So we’ve abandoned the stocks and moved beyond Hester Prynn and her scarlet letter. Or haven’t we?

The American heartland was once exemplified by a Grant Wood painting depicting an upright rural family. In Wood’s iconic “American Gothic,” a staid farm couple pose before an arching farmhouse window. He is in overalls, pitchfork in hand, gazing straight at the viewer. She is in a patterned apron and looks to her left with a world-weary face. Times are tough, as their faces show, and they appear a bit puritanical, but neither appears a likely candidate to publicly humiliate a pregnant teen.

But the times are apparently a’changing. Now we have new images for the heartland: a candidate for president whose recurring mantra in his acceptance speech-–kind of like the chanting of a Cold War-era high school pep rally—is “fight.” A man who needs his wife’s assistance to get onto the Internet and who in his maverick independence has plucked up a caribou hunter from Alaska to serve as a political ideal of motherhood and women’s achievement. An honored vet whose vetting is in question. And his choice for vice president is a parent who would do this to her own kid. Wow.

Readers, would you let either of these people carpool your child to soccer practice? Would you hand either one the keys to the car? To the country?

This goes way beyond gothic. It’s American grotesque.