Grave Error

It’s hot, too hot. The daytime temperature in Madrid has not gone below 90F (30C) since the beginning of June, and I don’t have air conditioning. Three months of this continuous, unwavering heat takes its toll on you.

I could cool off at the local public pool, but that would be communism, right? Actually, I don’t go because a recent Leonard Lopate Show podcast totally turned me off to water leisure.

Sure, I would love to let myself get all worked up about

• More torture
• Outsourcing the assassination program and arming drones to private, non-uniformed (and arguably unlawful) combatants scamming the tax payers out of millions without any congressional oversight (as required by law).
• Former Bush era Homeland Security Secretary admitting to bogus heightened terrorist threats for purely political gains (always coinciding with any time I had to travel). Is anything that we have been told about the War on Terror, Iraq or Afghanistan true?
• Americans continue to be unforgiving when it comes to the treatment of dogs but indifferent towards the torture of other human beings.
• Health Care, even the free marketeers at The Economist are calling the Republican propaganda dishonest and unhealthy to the US economy.
• Armed Americans who increasingly resemble the Taliban, are reminiscent of the Oklahoma City bombers, and were they Muslim, they’d be labeled Al Qaeda for their rhetoric alone.
• Mike Huckabee’s religious fanaticism and extremism towards Israeli settlements that break with two decades of official American policy, countless U.N. resolutions, and the entire international community. Veiled as patriotism (though he would blindly defer American interests to a foreign state that is bankrolled by the U.S. taxpayer), the Huckabees of America base foreign policy on an anti-Semitic reading of the Rapture that requires the return of all Jews to Israel and their total subsequent destruction.
• The Gang of Six senators, representing less than 3% of the U.S. population now deciding health care for the entire country.
• Obama’s willingness for a “compromise” that only benefits the health insurance industry, regardless of the fact that politically he doesn’t need to reach a compromise. By punking his base and losing progressives, Obama is safeguarding the health insurance companies from real competition, as reflected by their soaring stocks in response to the Gang of Six’s anointment.

But it’s just too hot. Instead, I would rather spend time wedged between my fan and humidifier, finishing Olive Kitteridge, re-reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, watching the new seasons of Mad Men and the continuously disappointing Weeds, following the revived Real Madrid, and stressing about my upcoming Moroccan wedding.