The Russians are Comming, The Russians are Comming!

So in all the TV chatter about Tom Daschle and his tax evasion/withdrawing from nomination problems, one commentator said that he was not only going to have his cabinet position, but was also to be the new Health Czar.

Can we stop this crap? Please? First of all, the word is Tsar. That's how the Russians pronounce it T-sar, not zar, so there is no way to pronounce czar that reflects the actual pronunciation.

Now we have to stop the rest of the crap. (note I'm watching my language, unlike the last blog, and not saying "shit", but using the polite version, "crap") We have appointed drug Czars, Energy Czars, and plenty more I can't think of yet, and we still have drug problems (i.e. prescriptions still cost too much, too many drugs are over-prescribed, the street drugs aren't as pure as they used to be and are also more expensive (so I'm told)), and still have energy problems (i.e. We're running out of oil, people think windmills are ugly, at my age I'm lucky I have the energy to get through a day without a nap) with no end in sight. Maybe that's because we are appointing czars, not Tsars.

If we appointed a few Tsars, maybe things would get cleaned up. Remember, friends, the Tsars were pretty awful tyrants. Despots. Supreme rulers who believed they got their powers from God. Just the other day our local PBS channel showed Dr. Zhivago. Great movie, better book (I had tea in Pasternack's house outside of Moscow in the early 90's, but I digress) and there's that one scene where the communists are having a peaceful march through the streets, playing music and carrying banners. Zhivago watches as the Tsar's mounted police charge them with swords flailing, trampling and cutting every non-violent protester they can. This is what Tsars do.

Let's get a drug Tsar in position in Washington and he can order the troops to go into every suburban high school and kill every pot smoking and cocaine snorting teenager, go into the better neighborhoods and kill the meth and e taking party boys, and go everywhere and shoot up the heroin users (pun intended).

Let's get a real Energy Tsar and he can order troops to shoot every driver of a big gas guzzler, kill that damn teenage girl who refuses to turn off the lights when she leaves the room, waterboard oil company executives for not developing new technologies, or for hoarding reserves, or whatever it is they do or don't do.

Maybe we could appoint a marriage Tsar to protect the sanctity of Marriage. Let's see, put up in front of a firing squad for abusing the sacred vows between one man and one woman: Zsa-Zsa Gabor, Elizabeth Taylor, Brittney Spears, and especially that lesbian couple from Massachusetts -- they really have some nerve fighting for the right to get married and then not staying married to set an example for all these straights who can't figure it out. Hell, even my mother was married twice and that was a loooooooong time ago. -- Sorry ma, but I think, we've got to back you up against the wall, put that blindfold on, that cigarette in your mouth and...no, wait, no cigarette.. our new Tobacco Tsar won't allow that.

We need to stop the war on drugs, the war on poverty the war on crime, the war on Christmas, the war on peace (sorry Tolstoi) and all these Czars/Tsars and maybe try to come up with some new, less despotic, less violent ways of handling our problems. Of course, Russia did get rid of their Tsars, and it didn't help them much. Just go watch Dr. Zhivago, if you don't believe me.

P.S. Maybe I'm thinking about the Tsars so much because there's still so much snow and ice here on the farm with the thermometer hovering at 11 fahrenheit that I feel like I'm in Siberia.