Märchenheim

Readers of this blog, redux

2006-04-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, whatever friends of this blog may remain, I have a new blog the link to which may be found below.

aardvarknews

Please, com'on over and let us continue the discussion.

Readers and Participants of this Blog

2005-10-14T04:10:00.000-07:00

I’m afraid this space must grow dark, at least for a while, and while I may find it possible to pick it back up in a few months, I cannot guarantee that. Know that I have had as much fun as a barrel of monkeys (or of Dubya[s] – take your pick) writing this blog, and that the pleasure has certainly been all mine.

Those who have read and commented and otherwise participated hereabouts, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I feel you are some of the most enlightened on this earth, and wish you all the best for whatever may lay ahead.

Keep up the good fight and do not tarry until the foul deeds of Dubya and his minions have been erased from this earth!

2005-10-13T09:11:00.000-07:00

Students at Columbine

Ten Years of Terror

2005-10-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

Writing in his seminal work, “Escape from Freedom,” exploring the socio-economic conditions that allowed Adolph Hitler to come to power, Erich Fromm makes the point that the middle classes, much denigrated in the period following the Great War, were living in a sort of unexpressed, even subconscious, fear. The fear was that of becoming immaterial in their society, and of losing their authority even over their own children:

“It was not only the economic position of the lower middle class that declined more rapidly after the war, but its social prestige as well…the last stronghold of middle-class security had been shattered too: the family. The postwar development, in Germany perhaps more than in other countries, had shaken the authority of the father and the old middle-class morality. The younger generation acted as they pleased and cared no longer whether their actions were approved by their parents or not…The decline of the old social symbols of authority like monarchy and state affected the role of individual authorities, the parents. If these authorities, which the younger generation had been taught by the parents to respect, proved to be weak, then the parents lost prestige and authority too. Another factor was that, under the changed conditions, especially the inflation, the older generation was bewildered and puzzled and much less adapted to the new conditions than the smarter, younger generation…the younger generation felt superior to their elders and could not take them, and their teachings, quite seriously any more.”

Never mind for the moment the generalized fear of living within a capitalistic society, where nothing – one’s social place and ability to survive – is guaranteed, and where everyone else is a potential competitor and enemy, but also imagine that the restlessness engendered by young people who go around shooting each other; who often laugh off their parents prescriptions for life; who understand technologies coming forward at speeds approaching that of light; and of feeling helpless to affect them in any productive manner. Such fear might well cause you to want to turn back the clock, reassert some sort of authoritarian role in the life of your children, and into the mainstream of society. Add to that the new sexual liberation that allows for homosexual relationships, and for sex-education in schools, and that even manages to shrug off sexual misconduct by a President, and you have a society severely threatening, subcutaneously terrorizing vast percentages of the population.

Then comes 911 and the real palatable threat of terrorism, in its full glory, coming to a venue somewhere near you, and you can understand how a people, how vast numbers of people, might feel much more comfortable with something solid to hang onto, something which promises shelter from the twin storms of socio-economic turmoil, and violent terrorism striking from the skies, like thunderbolts from Zeus. O, please dear God, save us from this unprecedented attack upon our way of life, and upon values long held dear by many in this Nation. Fear, helplessness, unpredictability, and the vicissitudinous nature of a terrifying serendipity combined to undermine our faith in ourselves and in our society.

While there may exist many more sources of terror in the modern capitalistic state, one more in particular might bare mentioning here: the fear of overwhelming demographic change. By all accounts, the unchallenged demographic reign of the white European male in America is headed for extinction. Over the next several decades the United States will become a republic of minorities, with none maintaining their previous majorities. The rule instituted by enlightenment philosophies, along with the vigors of capitalism as visualized by Adam Smith, might very well find themselves challenged by alternative methods of organizing society. The roles of wealth, privilege, class, and genetic make-up stand to suffer in the coming age of turmoil, and the once stolid oligarchy may very well stand depleted and impotent in the re-mixing of society. Another, perhaps conscious, perhaps unconscious, source of terror thus is added to the blend, and that, too, threatens status-quo America in ways we can not even pretend to understand.

A perfect storm of terror, then, has been working its will upon this Nation, and rising up from among us the most unscrupulous of the demagogues history has recorded. George Dubya Bush has been riding these breaking waves of terror like some blond-headed Norse God riding his surfboard through the pipeline. Let us hope then, collectively, that as the waves begin to collapse around his protecting tube of sheep-dip, that somehow a progressive leader emerges from the foam, like mighty Venus on her half-shell materializing from the depths.

2005-10-12T07:57:00.000-07:00

Daryn Kagan

I Spent not an Inconsiderable Amount of Time This Morning

2005-10-12T07:52:00.000-07:00

I spent not an inconsiderable amount of time this morning trying to figure something good, and fun and happy to write about today, and so far I’m coming up empty. Sure, I’m still alive (not a trivial matter perhaps) this AM, and the sun rose in the East, and I read a number of informed accounts about this, that or the other thing, but something that really stood out as exceptionally well done or positive escaped my perusal. Maybe I’ve simply lost the knack of seeing such things, and have become partially, selectively blind in my dotage here, or maybe I just don’t have the correct bookmarks for such things, but nothing really appeals as being particularly positive, other than isn’t it all just wonderful sort of stuff (which, admittedly, is wonderful in the way that refrigerators are wonderful, but still).

No one has been hanged for crimes against humanity this morning, although there are a plenum of candidates, and no one has been fired from this administration – without being almost immediately hired right back – for sheer incompetence and folly (again, the number of candidates are legion). A few sacrificial lambs have resigned, but not recently, and certainly not today. Also I’ve just learned that at least one of the CNN announcers is the “mistress” of Rush Limbaugh, which tells you just how objective the damn MSM has become.

So, I’m trolling this morning looking for something to lift spirits and raise a glass or two to. Anyone have any suggestions?

2005-10-09T18:12:00.000-07:00

Dubya I & II

A Bush Trilogy of Horror

2005-10-09T18:03:00.000-07:00

Horror 1) Afghanistan: following 911, Dubya and his associates decided to invade Afghanistan to go after Osama bin Laden. They drop various bombs, scour the countryside killing sometimes indiscriminately, miss getting Osama bin Laden (I leave it to the reader to decide whether or not that is on purpose), set up and prop up a U.S. puppet government, make promises, build a trans-Afghan highway, and then call in NATO. Today, Afghanistan is sliding back into the feudalism it has been for the last who knows how many centuries, is once again growing and distributing opium, and is as lawless and dangerous in the countryside as it has always been. As we did following the ouster of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, we have left them high and dry with only empty promises to keep.

Horror 2) Iraq: we oust Saddam Hussein and then proceed to screw up the country worse than it existed before we invaded. Although the division of Iraq into three segments: Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd may have existed in some degree prior to our entrance, it has now been exacerbated far further than it was before we arrived. Bombs go off on a regular basis; numerous towns and cities have been obliterated; people die on a daily basis; and it has become a training ground and nest of insurgent terrorists. Mission not nearly accomplished.

Horror 3) United States of America: prior to 911 we were a hopeful, somewhat respected Nation with a surplus in our treasury, with a stable economy, with a somewhat progressive tax structure, with reasonable gas prices, and with a functioning democratic system. Now, none of the above is any longer true. Instead we have been, like Iraq, split into various self-identifying factions, stand deeply in debt to various Nations, have a stupid, silly war on our hands that no one seems to know what to do about, no longer believe in ourselves or in our destiny, have religious whackos running around dictating policy, have become a neo-fascist crony-corporate state mired in our own misery, have kindled age old religious and racial hatreds, and would seem to have very few pleasant prospects for the future.

Personally, I hope someone tars and feathers the son of a bitch, and casts him into the eternal fires of Tutivillus.

2005-10-08T04:59:00.000-07:00

Nickel Creek

2005-10-08T04:56:00.000-07:00

Here are the lyrics to one of Nickel Creek’s songs, Sweet Afton:

Sweet Afton

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream

Thou stock dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen
Ye wild whistly blackbirds in yon thorny den
Thou green crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear
I charge you, disturb not my slumbering fair

Oh, how lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills
Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills
There daily I wander as noon rises high, oooh
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye

How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below
Where, wild in the woodlands, the primroses blow
There oft, as mild evening sweeps over the lea
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave
As, gathering sweet flowerets, she stems thy clear wave

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream
So flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dreams

2005-10-06T07:46:00.000-07:00

Kids

I Am Sometimes Asked Why I Don’t go Back to Teaching

2005-10-06T07:19:00.000-07:00

I am sometimes asked why I don’t go back to teaching. Assuming the question is being legitimately asked – and not just as a way to shut me up when I am being overbearing – there are several layers of reasons why at the moment I find that to be impossible. Some of the reasons are health related, those with enlarged prostates (or pregnant women) should be able to identify; and my heart, though not necessarily terminal, can get so out of rhythm that my concentration is occasionally absorbed by the old ticker’s irregular thump, thump, thumping (it’s called atrial fibrillation, which gets better or worse on a schedule commensurate with Dubya’s press conferencing – i.e. there is no rhyme or reason). Still, there are opportunities, though not full-time schedules, that I could maybe fit in with. I am frequently asked by my old principle to come back and teach this or that class, but I admit I have instead learned to mostly avoid him – which is a shame, because he was among the two best bosses I ever had. But the real reason I hesitate to return to teaching young people is as follows:

Although I have taught regular kids, most of my experience has been in teaching shit heads (I can call them that, because I love them and they know it). I also seem to identify with and correspond well with that other odd breed of kid known as exceptional children. The latter are relatively easy to deal with…you let them do what they want. Your job is primarily to ease and facilitate their learning, and help them decide for themselves their learning goals, and then play the policeman. No big sweat there. Oh, and you don’t have to necessarily be brilliant – just smart enough to know that they are smarter than you are. Most such kids are, as a Wally Parker could tell you, at a minimum three standard deviations from the norm. They live in a very precious, strange land of otherworldly enchantment, and are joyous to be around.

The first kind of kid, the real shit-heads, require far more structure and supervision, but are just as enchanting in their own way as are the geniuses, and, besides: “folly in a child is easy to love.” If you’ve ever had psychological or emotional difficulties these kids are very easy to deal with, provided you’ve learned empathy for others experiencing similar histories. There are a few truths about such kids that are almost universal (though there are always exceptions): they come from dysfunctional families (and that’s putting it euphemistically); they have a problem with drugs; their learning shut down in grade school when they began to use the drugs; they don’t believe they will live much beyond 25-30; and they all think that society and the world sucks.

About the only thing you don’t want to teach these kids, within a high-school setting, is that the world is actually as screwed up as they think it is. Please allow me to clarify. It’s okay to tell the kids the truth, they all know it intimately anyway (most of their homes are like a Jerry Springer show). But you shouldn’t over-emphasize the negative. It can’t be all one way, and one dark, foreboding perspective. There has to be some good.

Kids deserve, in my estimation at least, to be given hope about the future. They just have to believe, and to be given it to believe, that if they learn how to become human beings, learn how to function within a social setting, learn how to work and play, and learn how to stay the hell out of jail, then, through hard work and due diligence they can make a respectable and dignified life for themselves. They shall be rewarded somehow in some measurable dimension for the effort they put forth, outside of dealing drugs and stripping in a club. They have to believe there are options, and that such options are available to them, although it may be a Herculean task to get there. To offer kids less than that is in my estimation a criminal behavior.

Now, because they haven’t yet had their total spontaneity beaten out of them, kids sense when truth is being told, and when bullshit surrounds them…it’s a visceral reaction. You cannot lie to them for very long before they ferret out the truth. If you’re having a bad day, the news spreads like wildfire. Every kid in the school will know it before very long. Kind of like employees always know when the boss is in a foul mood. They also know if you are having other sorts of difficulties, and depending upon how well they like you, they will either ease you troubles, or compound them. In many ways these kinds of kids are like your pets; they know how to manipulate you. In fact, for many of them, their survival depends upon their having such skills, at home, on a daily basis.

I could not today enter a classroom and for very long give a positive assessment of our culture and our society. I could not explain the logic, though remote and abstract, of a system so that it appeared to be actually helping out the majority of the citizenry. I could not apologize, with a straight face, for our government or our economy. I could not tell them how wonderful their country is, and how it is the standard of the world. I could not tell them that if they work hard and diligently they can make a dignified life for themselves. I could not tell them what wonderful leaders in industry, and in other areas, their Nation has to offer them. I could not tell them what wonderful jobs and opportunities await them – most of them already work at McDonalds or the car wash, or somewhere as equally unrewarding. I could not explain why virtue and morality are their own reward, and why such knowledge will help them. Not these kids, from the shit end of town, I couldn’t tell that to. They watch Tee-Vee; they know what’s going on and did go on in the flooded streets of New Orleans.

For the vast, vast majority of these kids, America has no prospects, no grand designs, no upwardly mobile societal ideals for the future. At this point in our history, what these kids need is practical knowledge in survival skills – how to farm, how to raise a few goats and sheep, how to milk a cow or two, how to butcher chickens and clear land and raise a-frames and log cabins. They need to know how to love and how to value their neighbors and each other, and how to survive on next to nothing. In short, these kids need coping skills that I don’t even begin to have, and cannot give them to learn. I also know the old saying that you are never too old to learn, but at this point, after quadruple incarnations, I am about psychically worn out, and will do well to survive among the remnants of a dying culture which I do understand and can deal with. It would be a cruel thing if I ever stepped back into a classroom. The kids, all the kids on this planet, deserve much better than that.

2005-10-05T07:42:00.000-07:00

Capitol Building

Find & Write Congress

2005-10-05T07:35:00.000-07:00

I am certain that most (if not all) of you do things like this on a regular basis. Just for show, however, I have posted this letter to my Senator in hopes that you out there (if not hundreds of times already) will follow suit, and likewise contact your Congressmen. Go here

Dear Senator,

Good day to you, Sir. As a constituent I have several items I am particularly concerned about.

One of the most urgent is Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. I am concerned not only about her lack of experience as a judge, but more particularly with George Bush’s contention that even 20 years from now, she will not have changed her mind about anything. People who do not have the capacity to grow as human beings, Senator, concern me quite a bit. Certainly, you’ve grown and evolved over the past 20 years, and congratulations to you for having done so! It might also be pointed out that if, as a judge, nothing will change her mind, why is she then even bothering with the charade of a trial? I am sorry, Sir, but I just don’t get this. Just remember, Senator, Michael Brown, and what a man-made disaster he turned out to be!

Another immediate concern to me are the people down in the Gulf States, where things are in – to put it charitably – one hell of a mess. Following a few grandstanding appearances by Bush, things have returned to their old level of demonstrated governmental incompetence…by design from what I am able to gather. This is not the type of government I would wish for my Nation, nor for our State either.

Penultimately, but equally as important, and perhaps more so even than the two concerns above, is the penchant this administration seems to have for capitalizing, both literally and figuratively, on the misery of others. Iraq, of course, is there for all the world – save perhaps domestic Republicans – to see, in its misery and its horror. But the Gulf states region now is also full of hapless human beings, waiting for some humanitarian effort by their government to rebuild and repopulate their towns and cities, following two of the most powerful hurricanes to have ever hit our Nation. In both instances, however, in Iraq and in the Gulf States region, the only ones who seem to be benefiting from our government’s largesse are not those who are in need, but rather outfits like Halliburton, and Bechtel, and KBR, and all those other crony client corporations (or is it the other way around) of this present administration. These, Senator, are not the machinations of America at its best. I also suspect that following whatever rebuilding that takes place, the city of New Orleans will have been surreptitiously redistricted (and gentrified) in the Republican’s favor.

Finally, here, we seem to have the eroding of restrictions placed upon posse comitatus. I would most likely be uncomfortable with such action ever under FDR, but under this current administration, with its penchant for jack booted military action (and the hiring of civilian BlackWater security outfits), I am become extremely agitated. These are not the right signals for our government to be sending, Sir, and I really must protest.

I am certain that when the Democrats caucus they have some informed, rational, powerful strategic view in sight, but those of us out here in the tules are finding it more and more difficult, Sir, to find ways to apologize for our Party’s seeming lack of direction and cohesion. Trust me, Sir, many of us are begging and praying for the Democrats to stand up and do something significant.

Hey, we love you man, we just want to see some opposition!

Truly,

2005-10-04T05:38:00.000-07:00

Battlements

Is any Law & Order (no matter how horrendous) Better Than No Law & Order

2005-10-04T05:27:00.000-07:00

As we speak, there are those out there in the real world who are even now forming alternative communities and attempting to live their lives outside of the mainstream of America. Which is all well and fine for the moment. But consider:

Were everyone to do that (and we’re admittedly a long way from that), there would be a problem. Those isolated and removed communities can only work because there are others not living in such a fashion. For instance, take the matter of security. Were there no civilization nearby, there would arise roving bands, like wolf packs, of plunderers stalking the tules looking for vulnerable alternative communities to invade, rape and otherwise violate. Which would require a security force within the community to protect itself, and even then which would in some instances most likely prove insufficient to the task. Such was the situation following the fall of Rome; not only was a millennia of progress (in both some good and bad dimensions) lost to the world (how to mix and build with concrete, for instance), but it also heralded the need for the protections only an organized state could provide. We all know what happened next; the feudal era began. A few centuries later, someone named George III became King of jolly old England. Where have we seen this pattern before?

Isolated communities could probably not exist either without a few other trappings of civilization: like water and sewers and trash collectors, and governments, and all sorts of things it verily boggles the mind to comprehend. From whence cometh such things? Why, from civilization, of course. So while it is hopeful to imagine that there are isolated alternative communities to run away to, the real nuts and bolts of running such a place becomes more difficult the more such places become attractive, and successful…i.e., they are not in their innocence self-sustaining. While they might happily shelter a few from reality, they cannot be made to suffice for the majority of any modern nation. Vast forces are afoot that will seek to corrupt them the moment they begin. Should you at the moment enjoy the luxury of living in such a community…sssshhhhhhhhhhhh! Don’t tell anyone. Keep it under your felt hat. Or else, law and order (somebody’s law & order) will come to prevail and that always turns out to be nasty. If by some miracle your isolated community suffices for your lifetime, it most certainly won’t for your progeny.

Consider also the situation in Iraq. Saddam was a nasty, crazy, sadistic madman, but while he ruled you could, if you wanted to, manage to survive simply by following a few basic rules of living in a fascist dictatorship, and lying and feigning a lot. You could probably even get yourself educated, raise kids, run a business, whatever. Are those in Iraq better or worse off today (living in chaos) than what they were under Saddam (living in a manageable fear)?

These are serious questions we perhaps need to be asking ourselves as we begin to contemplate quo vadis (where are we going?), as a Nation, and as an assemblage of 300 millions seeking meaning, and an at least minimally ordered existence. Ultimately, of course, we must also consider what price we are willing to pay to maintain law & order. I’d be pleased, and happy, to hear and read your thoughts.

2005-10-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

Kingston Trio

Mariah

2005-10-02T07:54:00.000-07:00

When I was a young man I used to love what was called "Folk Music," and one of the biggest names around at the time was "The Kingston Trio." Among the more beautiful of their pieces was a song called "Mariah."

Away out here they have a name for rain and wind and fire.
The rain is Tess, the fire's Joe and they call the wind Mariah.

Mariah blows the stars around and sets the clouds a-flyin'.
Mariah makes the mountains sound like folks was out there dyin'.

Mariah. (Mariah).
Mariah. (Mariah).
They call the wind Mariah.

Before I knew Mariah's name and heard her wail and whinin',
I had a gal and she had me and the sun was always shinin'.

But then one day I left my gal.
I left her far behind me
and now I'm lost, so gol' darn lost
not even God can find me.

Mariah. (Mariah).
Mariah. (Mariah).
They call the wind Mariah.

Out here they have a name for rain and wind and fire only.
When you're lost and all alone, there ain't no name for lonely.
And I'm a lost and lonely man without a star to guide me.
Mariah blow my love to me. I need my gal beside me.

Mariah. (Mariah.)
They call the wind Mariah.
Mariah!
Mariah. (Mariah.)
They call the wind Mariah.

2005-10-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

The State of Bush

Every Hate Group in America

2005-10-01T06:06:00.000-07:00

As a young man in high-school I never really belonged to any one particular club. O, I was president of this, and representative of that, and because it was overseas and I had been there the longest, the other kids would come to me to ask questions of their new surroundings and environment, but I never really was joined at the hip, so to speak, with any particular group or clan. I was, and always have been I guess, a sort of social enigma who visited and partied and laughed and cried with them all, but never really put more than one egg in any one basket. I belonged everywhere and nowhere simultaneously and always felt as if everyone should participate widely and joyously.

Perhaps that is what disturbs me the most about the present state of our Union. In sixty very long years, for I have almost compulsively chosen the more difficult path, I have never experienced such manifold divides amongst the American people. I fear it is leadership that is lacking, and not just as a trivial observation - every hate group in America has done nothing but flourish under this current regime. Divide and conquer, the oldest trick in the book, and yet it has split us apart like so much caution tossed into the wind. We are all but shards in some kaleidoscopic nightmare of George Dubya Bush’s bizarrely twisted concocting. Right against left, red against blue, Conservative against Liberal, North against South, all manner of factions are we spanning the gamut of the good, the bad, the ugly. Yes, O yes, even the damned Churches.

Brotherly love, acceptance, caring, sharing, nurturing, tolerance and prayer have all become as sectarian as the voices swirling down from Babel. Today we have congregations with web sites labeled godhatesfags.com, and the tribulationists would like nothing better than to see all outsiders go directly to hell. Kill, assassinate that commie-pinko Chavez counsels one reverend of National repute. Meanwhile another Church urges its members not to vote for any who have crossed theological lines. God him-or-her-self has been appropriated in the megalomanical struggle to force one will or another down the throats of our countrymen. Jesus, sweet Jesus is nowhere to be hailed.

Class genocide is underway in America, with the poor and the downtrodden being left to swim against the tides that are rending our land. Meanwhile the sour stench of unmitigated corruption oscillates across the countryside like sheaves of wheat in the dry Kansas wind. There is no longer any topsoil to hold the earth in its bed – it floats away on the air currents generated by corporate misdirection. Our highly touted experiment in democracy has gone South for the duration, and only unprecedented give-away-schemes for the oligarchs remain.

Just yesterday, the Conservative author of a well-known book of virtues declared that aborting all black children would reduce the crime rate in our Nation. Previously the man had served as both education secretary and as a czar to root out drug abuse and its associated crime. I suppose no one bothered to tell him that if we simply laid down a strategic nuke or two we could probably reduce crime to less than zero, albeit at the cost of the entire planet. What a goddamned dumb stupid thing to say, and what a failure of human morality does it signal to whomever may remain.

Nope, every hate group in America is on the warpath to utter destruction and chaos. The surface of civilization has been too deeply scratched, and the roiling infection just beneath the skin has shown its gangrenous machinations. Rotted to the core, this once great land of ours, with rivers, lakes, streams, oceans polluted, and with holes in the ozone, and acid rain, and an entire litany of neglect by those who know only the profits realized by raping. Left-wing blogs, and right-wing blogs, and Ann Coulter versus good decorum, all alike shrill voices raised in blame, and in vituperative attacking.

Somewhere in this cold, dark night there lurks a leader worthy of the title. O, please good sir or lady, won’t you now step forward from the mist, and heal this troubled Nation?

2005-09-30T05:32:00.000-07:00

The Hammer!

An Open Letter to Republicans

2005-09-30T05:28:00.000-07:00

(RINOs in particular)

Please, please, please, Republicans, we on the left need your help badly. Please help us to rid ourselves and our wounded Nation of this travesty of an administration that would seem to know no bounds. Recount most horrid tales told on the web: John Ashcroft has been ordered to testify regarding violating the rights of Muslims in the wake of the 911 attacks; former FEMA director and now Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff is seen as having ties with characters you wouldn’t want your daughter to be seeing; House majority leader Tom (the Hammer) DeLay has been indicted on criminal charges re: campaign finance abuses; the Pentagon, receiver of more than $80 billion per year in tax-payer funds, may have set up an illegal shadow intelligence outfit, and once ran (and perhaps still is) an office of disinformation within the hallowed halls of our government; journalists within Iraq are beginning loudly to complain that the U.S. military is harassing, detaining and even shooting some of them in order to keep the wraps on an ever deteriorating situation; “good job” Brownie has not only ruined FEMA’s response to hurricane Katrina, but his legacy still persists in the agency’s lackluster response to Katrina’s twin sister, Rita; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is more than likely guilty of some fairly rambunctious insider trading; the situation within Iraq is by all reports eroding on a daily basis, and in fact civil war there may have already begun; Cheney has been shoveling money to his cronies over at Halliburton and KBR like crazy without the necessary courtesy of allowing for public bid contracts; and Dubya’s poll numbers are tanking (rumor has it he is drinking again), and this Nation can no longer tolerate his looting of the National treasure for purely selfish and immature reasons. None of this, as you well know, is going to look good on the old Republican resume when it becomes time to start running for office again (within a few month’s time, actually).

So how about giving us a hand, here, Republicans. Help us to impeach the impeachable, fire those responsible for massive fraud and abuse, and simply let go those whose only agenda seems to be their selfish own.

2005-09-29T07:43:00.000-07:00

Administration Press Conference

One of the Most Irritating Things

2005-09-29T07:33:00.000-07:00

One of the most irritating things about the Bush administration, is its eagerness, hunger really, to take advantage of another’s misfortune. There is no compassion here, Conservative or otherwise, nor is there any sense of fair play or Christian rectitude. It is all dog eat dog (although real dogs seldom do), and Darwinian (although the theory is discounted by them) survival of the fittest - “all red in tooth and claw,” as they say.

For example, following 911, and until this day, the Republicans have milked the terrorist attack upon the Twin Towers in any and every, way, shape and form conceivable. They have ridden that horse, without water or nourishment, for their entire tenure in office. They have displayed no shame, nor have they done, apparently, the slightest thing to make America any safer since. Billions of tax dollars later, they have still not figured out how to deal with catastrophe, either at home, or aboard. Meanwhile they have invaded our freedoms, and our system of justice, by passing legislation such as the Patriot Act.

There is still neither an entrance excuse, nor an exit strategy for our little foray into Iraq, and while three entire Iraqi towns have been all but obliterated from the map, and while hundreds-of-thousands of mostly innocent Iraqis have died, along with going on 2000 American service-men, this administration has still not accomplished any one of its (moving) goals for having invaded. Iraq remains a nightmare of broken promises, ghoulish dreams, and messianic catastrophes. A real hell-hole, and a burgeoning training ground and recruiting poster for future Islamic terrorists.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, those running (and I use that word advisedly) this country have taken every opportunity of screwing the little guy, along with the middle-class. Wages continue to decline in actual value; there is no dignified wage even on the horizon; poverty has increased at alarming rates; good jobs have been replaced by low-paying substitutes in the service industries; health care has gone down hill; Medicare has been eroded; the current drug benefit is shameful; overtime pay has been violated; worker’s workplace protections have been lowered or alleviated; the integrity of social security is everyday in question; pensions and benefits have gone the way of the North end of a South bound skunk; and this administration still clamors to give tax cuts to the wealthy, welfare to the corporations, and an end to what is disgracefully referred to as the death tax.

Now comes the twin hurricanes, Rita and Katrina, and the Bush administration has moved in for the kill. Rather than doing their jobs of watching out for America’s citizenry, this pitiful White House of arrogance and greed, not to mention incompetence, has instead been full time engaged in handing out orchids to their corporate lovers, and onions to those displaced or otherwise discombobulated by the horrors of high-wind calamity. Halliburton, Bechtel, KBR, and every other co-conspirator associated with the crooked cartel at the helm of America are being rewarded hand over fist, with little or no accountability, and certainly no transparent bidding process to establish their claim. Instead the money is being shoveled in the direction of those connected quicker than you can utter, “Way to go, Brownie,” or, “Let them eat cake.”

Using the unprecedented misery we all observed for five long days (and longer, horrifying nights) in New Orleans, and elsewhere, as a springboard into establishing corruption in its cruelest and most hideous configuration, this administration has quite deliberately set out to overturn environmental protections; to do away with worker wage protections; to eliminate entire classes of human beings from the dregs of the flooded city; to import Mexican and Latino workers from down South (and more power to them, but let’s give those displaced first shot, eh?); to accuse the Democratic leadership of being dysfunctional; to begin a process of gentrification that will no doubt result in a Conservative redistribution of parishes; and to overturn long standing laws regarding the restrictions placed upon posse comitatus.

It is hard to conceive of a more ruthless, dissembling, less humanitarian government in this nascent 21st century. It ranks among the more heartless demonstrations of oligarchical hubris ever to be witnessed in history. It is, in fact, the very epitome of a despicable rule.

2005-09-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

Protesting Dubya in Britain

When the History of this Surreal Era is Written

2005-09-28T07:14:00.000-07:00

When the history of this surreal era is written, 100-200 years from now, it will no doubt compare favorably with the interregnum between World Wars I and II, and with the chaos associated with the Weimar Republic. It will reflect a total breakdown, within the Empire, of any objective measure of value or competence whatsoever. The records will show that the Constitution of the United States itself was contorted and mangled to support the most hideous of interpretations; and that America’s rulers, themselves no better than late 17th century French aristocrats (Versailles fops), in their unprecedented ignorance and imbecility, presaged the finally fall of the world’s remaining superpower. The ruling parties of the time, the Republicans and the Democrats, both equally enslaved by the manipulators of capital, paid scant attention to the people, and concerned themselves almost exclusively with propping up their class, and leaving the devil to take the hindmost. Meanwhile, the corporate state that by that time America had become, began to drain and transfer its riches elsewhere, and to establish new frontiers from which it might this time rule the entire planet. A mass exodus of wealth, remaining talent, youth and corporate headquarters was underway. No more could America boast of itself as being the “shining city on a hill,” or the “last best hope of humankind. “ From that time forward, there would be no hope for the masses of individuals left standing in the lurch.

For a taste of what such times may have been like, go here.

Today, in front of a House Committee investigating the disaster in New Orleans, and along the entire Gulf Region following the twin hurricanes of Rita and Katrina - a committee meeting largely boycotted by the Democrats (in hopes of winning approval for an truly independent investigation) - the former head (now resigned, but not from the government) of FEMA, failed horse trader and falsifier of resumes, Michael Brown, had this to offer in response to a question. “My biggest mistake was in not, by Saturday (prior to Katrina), recognizing that the Louisiana government was incompetent.” A few hours later, New Orleans police chief, Eddie Compass, announced he would be leaving his post, and that he hoped the media would allow him his dignity, and that he be left alone.

It really is hard to know from where America might draw its future leaders. At the moment, there seems to be no one ready, willing and able to lead America anywhere productive, and the media, who should have all along been documenting, pointing out, questioning, and raising the population’s hackles over the lack of meaningful and moral direction has simultaneously become corrupted by the wealth earned from yesteryear’s labors. In future, there can be no objective reporting because no one even today remembers how it was once done, and for certain there is no one any longer competent to teach the young pups only now beginning to matriculate. In short, when it rains, it fucking pours!

2005-09-27T04:21:00.000-07:00

George! You put that right back into your head, this instant! Do you hear?

Is Money Thicker Than Blood

2005-09-27T04:15:00.000-07:00

Sadly, under most normal (whatever that may mean) circumstances it frequently is. However, the nearer the end-game the more important blood becomes, and the less valuable money. Oswald Spengler writes in “The Decline of the West,” that, “A power can be overthrown only by another power, not by a principle, and only one power that can confront money is left. Money is overthrown and abolished by blood. ‘Life’ is alpha and omega, the cosmic stream in microcosmic form. It is ‘the’ fact of facts within the world as history.”

Which brings me to a couple of my friends. One is a vet who I visit with while at the VA Hospital who most of the time is either a-political, or sort of Republican in a not very concerned way. That was until now. He has suddenly learned that his Military Retirement, for which he worked for 20 years, and which was presented and guaranteed to all who lasted that long as having regular COLA (cost of living) adjustments included, will now not be keeping up with either inflation or the cost of living. He is, to put it mildly, genuinely pissed, and quite vociferous in his opposition to such a move. BINGO.

The other dear friend is a lady who I met in an apartment complex a few years back (she makes the best pot-luck deviled eggs in existence), and over the intervening years and months since I left have maintained an active e-mail correspondence with. She’s of an age where she can remember FDR very well, and is a lifelong and determined Democrat. It is nothing new for her to detest this present administration – indeed that is why she and I initially connected; we both preached to each other’s choir. This past week she has told me how Dubya and the Republicans have eaten into her rather limited social security benefits (on which she depends to survive): “They raised the money (Medicare part A, I think) that is deducted from the SS check before we get it.” She writes, bringing tears to my eyes. “I do pay a co-pay, as well. They've been doing this since the Idiot was elected; but this time the deduction will be egregious, and more than cancel the automatic cost-of-living raise.”

Both of the above examples, from a certain perspective, confuse the blood vs. money debate still further, because it is now a loss of money in particular (not “big-time-Texas-like” money, of course, but dear to an individual) that is causing both of them to want some of Dubya’s blood. Cindy Sheehan, on the other hand, wants blood (at least metaphorically so) in exchange for her brave son’s blood. All of which adds up to a growing and ever angrier dissatisfaction, if not outrage, at the crooks who are running this country.

Add to that the list below of recommended program cuts by the Republicans, taken from the MoveOn.org newsletter, and there is certain to be – God I hope there will be – a huge outcry now that people’s pocketbooks are being summarily violated.

Proposed Program Cuts

$225 billion cut from Medicaid, the last-resort health insurance program for the very poor.
$200 billion cut from Medicare, the health care safety net for the elderly and the disabled.
$25 billion cut from the Centers for Disease Control
$6.7 billion cut from school lunches for poor children
$7.5 billion cut from programs to fight global AIDS
$5.5 billion to eliminate all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
$3.6 billion cut to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities
$8.5 billion cut to eliminate all subsidized loans to graduate students.
$2.5 billion cut from Amtrak
$2.5 billion to eliminate the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative
$417 million cut to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency
$4.8 billion cut to eliminate all funding for the Safe and Drug-Free schools program

And the list goes on and on.

This, of course, is but more of the “let them eat cake,” scenario that Barbara Bush has recently come out of the closet about.

What a freaking outrage! OutRage! OUTRAGE! You will notice that in order to pay for the devastation in NOLA, and some in East Texas and South-Western LA, that the bulk of these cuts come straight from the programs helping poor and disadvantaged people – including Dubya’s magnanimous pledge to help fight AIDS in Africa, and globally. The great percentage of the monies being spent in the Gulf Coast region will anyway go to the friends and cronies and crooks allied with the Dubya(nostra), and not to the displaced evacuees from the twin hurricanes.

You really do have to wonder how long until money ignites the spark that calls for Dubya’s blood. This has long since surpassed being anything but oppressive and dictatorial rule by a neo-fascist junta!

Worse, I can’t really imagine the Democrats doing the first damn thing about it save for perhaps carping around the edges, equivocating as usual. The blood of the oligarchs is united in that; they smell danger in the air, and hence are huddling together.

2005-09-25T15:30:00.000-07:00

Automaton (Three-Cheers)

Two Americas – Two Realities

2005-09-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

Former Senator, Democratic Vice-Presidential Nominee, John Edwards has a stump speech he delivers (I’m certain you’ve all heard it, where he splits America in two between the haves, and the have-nots; between the rich and the poor; between those are technologically literate, and those who are not, etc. It’s a damn good speech, and to my mind, of course, terribly effective. I think he is right on the money with it.

There is another divide, however, that is equally as devastating within America, and that is the divide between the world picture (or myth) as the current administration portrays it; and the real world, the feet on the ground, tootsies on the ground let us say, empirically verifiable, actual world that the Republicans just don’t wish us to see (and in some cases may not even be aware of themselves). Certainly anyone who has not been in Iraq (and I must admit I haven’t been), probably has no personal clue what is going on there. Dubya was on the ground there once for about 47 milliseconds carrying around a fake bird – like all those macho men who like to hang dead animals on their walls – pretending he was feeding the troops. That was like eons ago, though, and he hasn’t been back since (pity, really, think of all the good pot-shots someone could take…maybe they’d even get lucky). Nor has he ever really been in Iraq outside of some mess-tent they set up for him, far, far, far from the maddening crowd.

I get a glimpse in my mind’s eye of Iraq because I can imagine well; and because I actually went to Vietnam; and because I bother to look at the pictures on the web; and read other’s reports and blogs, etc., of what it is like to actually be there; and because of the articles some of the returning GIs write, or offer to others to write; and because I am curious; and because I sincerely hope I am not as megalomanical as is our Dufus Maximus. And what I can thereby imagine is, trust me, one huge unholy hell.

Bombs go off continually over there; cities are almost regularly being bombed into oblivion; there are bodies, and worse yet body parts, lying helter-skelter all over the place; wrecked and fire-gutted vehicles lie scattered about, like some skeletal dinosaur burial area, having been devastated by a fire-breathing ghost dragon; there are holes in the street, like kicked over trash cans, littering the cityscape; blood and hot sweat runs freely along the stone and cement; and that is just all on the way to work each morning! Can you imagine having to live, or raise a family, in such a place? Or worse yet, what it must feel like to die there? God what a freaking nightmare!

It’s the same thing, really, in New Orleans, with dead bodies floating down the streets; and with corpses pushed or kicked to the sides of whatever structure people are cringing, dying and going out of their minds within; and with young girls being raped in the pitch darkness; and with shots ringing out from no one knows where flying through the acrid thick air, fouled with the stench of ten-thousand frightened people. O, my God, what a vision of hell right here in the United States; what a vision of devastation and hubris and fucking criminal neglect!

Those are but some of the realities of the tootsies on the ground, the empirically verifiable truths that all the world, save Republicans and sycophants, manage to see, and are forced to deal with while attempting – in many cases unsuccessfully – to survive, and to somehow maintain what little sanity they may have remaining to them. Iraq or New Orleans, take your pick, these are the realities of George Dubya Bush’s monumental incompetence, as a leader, and more tellingly as a human being. Absolutely, vomitingly, disgusting!

Dubya’s reality, on the other hand, as experienced (if at all) from the cramped windows of Air Force One, or from some war room stuffed away in the protected bowels of the Colorado Rockies, is of a completely different, sanitized and hallucinated reality, worlds apart from what is truly going on. In this faux space, “Brownie” is actually doing a good job; and Iraqi nationals are actually being trained in their own protections; and invisible WMD (not until someone squirts lemon juice on them will they appear…you just wait and see, ya know) are hidden across the sand dunes, along with chemical, biological and nuclear filled rockets aimed at our, or at Israel’s largest cities - clear and present dangers, every last one, to the good old boys’ U.S. of A.

Meanwhile the tired, the hungry, the poor here at home, along with the protesters “mad as hell” at the torture, the murder, the bombings being conducted in Iraq (and in their name) are “invisible” to Dubya and clan, along with those who are wondering when this brand of conservatism – fascism really – becomes compassionate at last. Dubya doesn’t see them, and neither do the compliant MSM, because that’s not the myth the cheerleaders wish us to witness. It’s unpatriotic, you know, in Dubya’s reality to point out the facts of the situation, or view draped caskets coming home from the front, or the corpses stuffed into refrigerator trucks heading out of New Orleans. These are not part of the myth that Dubya would have us to see, or to think about, or to concentrate upon.

So, yes, we have two Americas, and two realities, both wedged apart by the “unifying” mythology Dubya promised to bring. There is the America of the Kenneth Lays, and the Enrons and the Tycos, and the Halliburtons and KBRs of this world, and there is the reality all the rest of us poor suckers are left to deal with that Dubya and clan can grow wealthier still. How long, wonders Robert Reich, until the two Americans, “snap and then break?”

2005-09-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

Snake in the Grass

I Got Had Today

2005-09-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

I got had today. I was commenting on the TruthOut blogsite, and there was this idiot who had previously put his two cents worth in - all vituperative slander - who had then left a nice long article for the bloggers to read. It was very well written, well argued, reasonable and rational enough, and because I had previously invited such clowns to seriously participate, I bought into it.

It was my ignorance (arrogance?) that caused me to trust that this jerk was finally gonna voice his opinion in a reasonable way. To me, all evil is ignorance, although not all ignorance is evil (like all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares), and deep in my heart I feel that if the ignorance is somehow removed, so will be the evil. I don’t, even under the best of conditions, believe that it is easy to wipe away or argue away ignorance, but I do believe that it sometimes happens, and so I put my trust in the world to task by attempting to converse with this clown. I got had.

Having left my response to this jerk, I left the blog to go take care of other things, and when I returned I discovered, much to my chagrin, that other bloggers had read this guy’s article also, and noticed that it was an un-attributed reprint of one of John Tierney’s editorials in the NY Times. I was pissed, and embarrassed that I had so easily fallen prey to this a-hole. I don’t read Tierney’s editorials (or didn’t up until Monday when I stopped reading all of the NY Times editorials because they now charge for them, which I cannot afford), and one of the reasons I don’t read Tierney’s articles is because when you click on the editorial page it comes up with a picture of Tierney. Terrible though it may sound, I can’t stand to look at the man’s face. Nevermind the aristocratic stance the man always seems to have, I don’t like to look at him because he looks like one of those spoiled rotten little kids, with baby fat faces, that appear to have never had to struggle in this life (which, of course, is probably BS, but all the same).

Now on the blog itself, there are many individuals who have been seriously hurt (in a multitude of ways) by this country of ours, and our arrogance towards blacks, the poor, the downtrodden, other racial or cultural minorities etc., and there is frequently a lot of raw emotion there (understandable under the present circumstances), along with a number of experience hardened psychologies. Many of the blog’s participants are extremely leery of those who come on the blog, attempting to yank people’s chains, and gird them into stupid arguments. It was one of those sorts of pranks I had fallen for.

It took some little while, but finally I decided that either you can go through this life trusting in other people and in your beliefs, or else you can become hardened by experience to the point where you essentially cut yourself off from such trust, and live a more protected, albeit less valuable, experience. So, while I am still fuming about being had, and, yes, my ego I suppose has been damaged, I cannot see my way clear to completely give up on it all. There are days, frankly, when I don’t much give a damn about much of anything, but usually it is a short lived period and I try to get back into life again.

What is going on in America is not at all a healthy thing. It gets continually worse and worse. If we all become so alienated from our better instincts that we can no longer trust (or accept) another’s viewpoint, I greatly fear that our society is doomed.

2005-09-23T03:32:00.000-07:00

Rita (Baby!)

Rita (you dominatrix, you)

2005-09-23T03:20:00.000-07:00

At the moment, everyone’s eyes are on hurricane Rita, blowing across the Gulf of Mexico and threatening life and property along the coasts of Louisiana (as if they haven’t already had a tough enough time) and Texas. They’ve evacuated tens-of-thousands (maybe hundreds-of-thousands), many from the towns of Galveston and Houston, creating what had to have been the world’s largest traffic jam, and so at the moment there are a lot of ghost towns along the hurricane’s projected path. Coming as it is on the heels of Katrina, people are pretty freaky to get the heck out of the way. We all watched in horror at what went on in New Orleans. I wish them all the very best of luck down there along the coast, by the way – I suspect they are going to need it.

There are at the moment other sources of trepidation in the air, however, which I can’t quite put my finger on, but it is as if many of us are waiting for something fairly profound (or significant) to happen. Perhaps it is tied up with George Dubya and his ridiculous-deadly-serious-incompetence, or maybe it extends beyond, involving somehow all the new trade agreements, and reordering of the globe which is manifestly under way. I dunno, but the feeling keeps getting heavier and heavier. People appear to be reaching their breaking point, and that’s not always a good thing when you live in a highly sophisticated society such as ours. It doesn’t take much to upset the apple cart. Although it’s rarely that I find myself quoting (paraphrasing actually) Henry Kissinger, he does say something to the effect that civilization (meaning civilized behavior) is very thin, and you don’t have to scratch it very deeply to get beneath it – and the gods only know what may lie down there. It’s like blindly reaching into a New York sewer.

I do know that for all the wonders technology and commercial enterprise have brought us - like soap, for instance, which kills all those pesky little bacteria that used to limit the human life span in dozens of ways – that the corporate world at the moment seems to be out of control, and is barreling along hell bent for profit heading somewhere maybe no one has carefully enough considered. Or so it seems, at least, to little guys like me. From what I can gather, checking the internet and occasionally watching news on the TV (which for months I didn’t do, because of Dubya and all the Republicans that mostly make me ill), things with all these new trade agreements aren’t going well for anyone, save for corporate contributors. Which in turn raises all sorts of red flags about the coming era of neo-fascist, crony-corporate hegemony.

Guess, we’ll just have to wait and see whether its just indigestion bothering me, or if something really is afoot, as Sherlock Holmes used to say.

In the meanwhile, batten the hatches, stay dry, and be safe out of the wind somewhere.

2005-09-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

Bush in Black and White

I Can Not Recall

2005-09-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

I can not recall, in sixty years on this planet - at least 40 of which have been at least marginally conscious - a time when serious people, in serious positions and jobs, have been so disrespectful of our National leadership. This is not in the least way said to fault them, but rather to point out the sad, sad state that America is in.

Molly Ivans refers to Dubya as “Shrub;” Maureen Dowd calls him, “The boy in the bubble;” MoveOn.org labels him, in a prime time commercial advisory, in big, bold black-and-red lettering as a “Misleader;” and various others simply refer to him as either Bush or Dubya or some other mildly derogatory name. No one calls him, “Mr.…you know what…I won’t speak it.” Outside of the National columnists and editorial writers, Dubya is likely to be known as anything from “Asshole,” to “Mother F----r.” How can such enmity exist towards just one man, who is arguably the most powerful man in the world?

The short answer is simple: Dubya is entirely unqualified to be in the position he holds. The long answer might take books to articulate, and already many have been, or are in the process of being, written. Most feel as if he is a joke – a very sick, sad and unfunny joke, but a joke nonetheless. And this joke has killed hundreds-of-thousands of human beings – I won’t say fellow human beings because at the moment that is a highly debatable proposition! Dubya may be from Uranus. Or maybe from Ann Coulter’s anus, or someone else’s anus somewhere. Maybe he is an anus, - in its, and his, entirety. That would explain all the farting around he does down in Texas, anyway.

Also apparent with this misleader, and with no other I can recall, are the calls for some sort of extra-constitutional action - secession, perhaps, or maybe even civil war. Those against him are adamant, frustrated, pissed off, thoroughly disgusted by his arrogance and hubris and downright, obvious incompetence. Nationally known poet, and Professor of Creative Writing at NYU, Sharon Olds, in a letter turning down an invitation to speak at a book festival hosted by Laura Bush, explains to the First Lady: “So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.” These are all fairly strong sentiments to be issuing forth from what has been billed as the most wonderful place on the planet to live, or to hail from. Guess that whole commercial spot needs to be recapitulated, huh? It ain’t gonna work so well anymore.

Myself, I’d like to drown him in elephant dung. If he fell off his mountain bike and broke his neck, the stock of that company would probably go up, rather than down. I talked to one gentlemen who says he now hates pretzels; when I asked him why, he said, “because one had a chance to choke him, and didn’t.” Among those not enamored of Dubya, there is hardly a torture or hell-like repentance that is too gruesome for the man-child. Universally, as has been measured in several polls, Dubya is simultaneously disrespected, feared, laughed at, mocked and hated as no Nation’s leader has ever been in my time – he even polls beneath Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Forgotten. Only a sicko Mother, or others of her ilk, or else the politically illiterate, could possible like this man.

Word is that even Dick Cheney hates him now. No one likes Cheney much, either, in case you were going to ask. I wonder how his pace-maker is doing? Wouldn’t it be cool if his widow had to file suit against some sleaze-bag corporation because his ticky-tocker failed? Jeez, what a National tragedy that would be. You suppose all the guys from Halliburton and KBR and Bechtel would attend Cheney’s funeral? Or would they have “other priorities?” I’d bet on the latter. Cheney would understand. At times he’s had other priorities too. Don’t tell the Swift Boat Vets that, though, they’d no doubt be crushed.

Nope, I simply can’t recall when we’ve ever experienced a man as deadly and as Banty-Rooster like as is George Dubya Idiot, or was as detested by so many of the world’s people, including many of those in America.

Hey, you ever notice…he’s got beady eyes, too.

2005-09-20T14:36:00.000-07:00

Poverty in America

In America, Poverty, Drugs, Latent Racism, etc. are Deliberate Socio-Economic Policy

2005-09-20T14:19:00.000-07:00

Much of the early-on economic success of the nascent United States of America was built upon the institution of slavery. Rice, indigo, tobacco, and eventually King Cotton plantations sprang up everywhere throughout the South, and eventually reached across the Plain States into Texas and Missouri. In the North, where plantation farming was impractical, slaves were nevertheless used within construction, and heavy laboring.

Once the Civil War had been fought, and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were passed, the former slaves ostensibly became free-persons, but not without newer, in many ways more difficult, problems to face. An economy built around slave-labor cannot suddenly afford to be paying the costs associated with hiring well-paid workers. So the newly emancipated African-Americans simply swapped legal slavery for wage-slavery, and things went on in much the same conditions as before. The former slaves were free, yes – but also free to starve. There was no absence, either, of white businessmen willing to take advantage.

From that day to this, the wages of America have been kept down in order to economically enslave the African American, and enslave as well almost every new group of Asian and European émigrés that have made it to these shores: the Chinese, the Italians, the Irish, et al. While others may eventually work their way out of poverty and wage-slavery, however, the African American has had to carry his or her color with them everywhere they go – and the prejudice has followed.

I can still recall, having been a military dependent following World War II and being raised in Europe, that when I returned to the United States after graduating high-school in 1963, and went to stay for awhile in Kentucky with my step-brother, that there were still water fountains separately labeled “white,” and “colored.” The restrooms were similarly distinguished. In restaurants as well, “colored” folk were forced to go to a set-aside window to both order and pick-up, take-out style, their meals. In the community buses, the “coloreds” were made to sit in the back. I’d never experienced segregation like that before, and it shocked me beyond belief. When at times I tended to make light of such distinctions, by drinking from the wrong fountain, for instance, or going to the back of the bus to sit down, I was quickly brought into line by the local residents. They were dead serious about this shit. I had placed myself in great peril. One-hundred years following the abolition of slavery, and yet the South was still as segregated as ever. I was amazed – I hadn’t been brought up with such values.

Unbridled capitalism, on the other hand, thrives under such conditions. Following the Civil War, the Industrialization of America, along with the Transcontinental Railway, obtained, and our economy began shooting towards the stars. But the perceived necessity of continuing to have cheap (and un-or-under- represented) labor available, in vast quantities, kept the poor, poor, and the rich as those exclusively benefiting. Things have not substantially changed since that time. Poverty in America, as a social policy of the capitalists, persists in almost undiminished form unto today. The poor are there to point to, and to use as a negative example to (or to terrorize) all those who may feel as if they are being underpaid, or mis-treated by their employers. “Just feel lucky to have a job at all.” How many times have you had that thrown in your face?

Meanwhile, un-and-under-employed peoples can after awhile become fairly hostile, as they did during the “race-riots” of the early 1960s, and then later on in Los Angeles following the Rodney King verdict. Such discontent, when it bubbles up into violence, threatens the ruling classes and forces them to show their hands in ways they might not otherwise wish to publicly display. One of the best solutions, is to allow discontent to funnel itself into alcohol and drug abuse, which then ameliorates the situation from one of mass insurrection, into millions of individual addicts who’s only agenda is scoring their next fix. That is a far easier problem to deal with, and masks the underlying conditions – wage-slavery and abject poverty – which gives rise to the high rates of drug addiction. Hence, drug addiction is facilitated, surreptitiously, by the ruling classes and the capitalists such that what we witnessed in New Orleans remains hidden from view, out of the limelight, and away from most Americans’ consciousness.

In an article by Nicholas D. Kristof, entitled, “The Larger Shame,” he speaks to the prevalence of poverty in America, and some of it most insidious ramifications: “The U.S. Census Bureau reported a few days ago that the poverty rate rose again last year, with 1.1 million more Americans living in poverty in 2004 than a year earlier. After declining sharply under Bill Clinton, the number of poor people has now risen 17 percent under Mr. Bush. If it's shameful that we have bloated corpses on New Orleans streets, it's even more disgraceful that the infant mortality rate in America's capital is twice as high as in China's capital. That's right - the number of babies who died before their first birthdays amounted to 11.5 per thousand live births in 2002 in Washington, compared with 4.6 in Beijing. Indeed, according to the United Nations Development Program, an African-American baby in Washington has less chance of surviving its first year than a baby born in urban parts of the state of Kerala in India. The national infant mortality rate has risen under Mr. Bush for the first time since 1958. The U.S. ranks 43rd in the world in infant mortality, according to the C.I.A.'s World Factbook; if we could reach the level of Singapore, ranked No. 1, we would save 18,900 children's lives each year.”

Although we have had previous wars on poverty in America, with little or no lasting effect, today perhaps we have an opportunity to air our grievances over the matter once again, and demand of our system that it finally rectify this great injustice left over from our earliest awakenings. It simply won’t happen, however, without significant revisions to our way of doing business.

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore –
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over –
Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes – Lenox Avenue Mural

2005-09-19T03:14:00.000-07:00

Bush Sucks (a big one)

I Don’t Know What Your Definition of a Police State is, but as far as I’m Concerned We Live in One

2005-09-19T03:12:00.000-07:00

Even though I haven’t entertained much doubt about it every since Dubya stood atop the rubble in New York with a bullhorn and announced a crusade, there is now no room left to wiggle. This is a police state, with jack booted goons enough for everyone.

For five years now it has been impossible to approach the leader of our nation. You can’t ask the man a question, you can’t get anywhere near his residences, you dare not attend his rallies (ditto in New Orleans) without being prescreened and measured against some sort of MMPI to ensure you are stupid enough to support this monster unconditionally (remember the two little old schoolteachers who tried to attend one of his dog and pony shows, wearing Free-Speech T-shirts?). In short, the man is inaccessible, evidentially to his own staff most of the time as well. Even Laura Bush complains about his “inaccessibility” after 9 PM.

The same, or psychologically similar, mercenaries that now roam the streets of what is left of New Orleans looking for African Americans to shoot or harass – gotta protect the rich-bitches property you know – are seemingly those who prohibit access to Jackass Maximus himself whilst he’s on the road, or grand standing in N.O., or slipping away for a whatever at the United Nations.

New Orleans itself has, judging by all reports, become an armed camp of governmental hegemony. There are the BlackWater security people, the National Guard, 82nd Airborne, special operations troops complete with black helicopters flying overhead, the local police force, and who the hell knows how many others all roving around maintaining the oligarchy’s prerogatives. Dubya announced the other night that we can look forward to a greater military presence - to protect and serve us all, of course.

As a Nation (although signs are emerging that begin to challenge that description), we are now incarcerating people clear across the globe, torturing and murdering them, holding them without due process or any representation, and, like some tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition, having our way with them - in essence, burning them at the stake of public opinion whilst trashing their lives and Qurans and whatever previous reputation they may have had.

We have a unicameral government, an unholy trinity, in three euphemistic branches, falling all over themselves to accommodate the madmen at the helm. We have a doctrine of effective open warfare and belligerency at the times and places of the Chief Psychopath’s choosing. We inflict terror and pain upon those not willing to kowtow, replace regimes at our convenience, and rove the world as some rampant, out of control superpower run amok on its own insanity.

Yep, this is Adolph Hitler reincarnated, all right, with delusions of some corporate mega-state forcing 1000 years of ersatz freedom and democracy, and, O yeah, American nuclear exclusivity, down the throats of any not wacko or Christian enough to satisfy the whims of empire. We have unleashed a blitzkrieg of bullshit and bunker busting bombs from Baghdad to Afghanistan, and we shock and awe all those who might be insubordinate enough to suspect our messianic might. Its not living space (lebensraum) we crave so much as it is control of the world’s petroleum, and towards that end we will annihilate every enemy no matter how deeply they are entrenched. MOAB (Mother Of All Bombs), you say, and MOAB it is, and now we are willing to use nuclear weapons as well (hello, Iran, are you listening?).

Even a deaf and blind man, and maybe even particularly a deaf and blind man, might intuit that America is become an armed fascist state. State guards to the slaughter for the Emperor’s megalomanical ego, and Neo-cons along with Calvinists are marching through our streets, and across the many Nations’ highways seeking retribution for having challenged the fiats issued from our shores. You’re either with Caesar or against him, and the rest…well the rest can simply “bring it on.”

Clomp, clomp, clomp.

2005-09-18T10:02:00.000-07:00

Nuk'em

An Open Letter to the World: Please Cut-off This Madman’s Funding

2005-09-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

Not being an economist - which is usually an advantage because I don’t have to continually spin around pointing in all directions – I don’t know intimately how this all works out, but rumor has it that if you would simply go off the dollar reserve, and use some other value, then our butts would all end up in the poor house.

Okay, then, believe it or not, that is what I would now beg of you to do. Crash this damn economy, and along with it our present government, so that finally we can wake-up and smell the offal that our crazy leaders have been brewing! Believe me, there are madmen in charge who will stop at nothing, repeat nothing, to have their way with the globe. That would be terrible for us, and for you also. Please, our government is way out of control! And they’ve got all that damn firepower hanging over all of our heads. So, whatever you do don’t start a war with us, simply crash our economy. Once we can no longer fill-up our SUVs, or go to the stores to shop, and have run out of brie to eat, we will (or at least many of us will) finally begin to do those things we have been so sadly neglecting.

There is no hope that most of the crazies here are going to wake-up in time to stop the looming Armageddon, so if you’ve been waiting for that, forget it. It just ain’t gonna happen. The only hope, the world’s only hope, is to bankrupt us immediately. Don’t worry, we can learn to survive on almost nothing should we have to, and when we come back, and sooner or later we will, we will come back as a much improved stock of human beings, and as better neighbors on your planet.

Okay, well, thanks in advance, I guess. We appreciate all that hopefully you will do for us. Face it, it’s the only solution left short of all out nuclear obliteration.

2005-09-18T05:50:00.000-07:00

Dixie Chicks

Subterfuge: An Open Sentiment to the Conservatives

2005-09-18T05:43:00.000-07:00

It has long been the accepted practice of debate, and of most of the history of the United States, that political viewpoints take issue with one another through a dialectical process of argument. That much is all well and good, and this Liberal in particular would just as soon that it remain so.

Today’s debate, however, has exceeded the bounds of dialectical argument, and has ventured into the far murkier depths of subterfuge, dissembling and falsification. To wit (many of which examples can be found at: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091705Z.shtml): legislation proffered under such titles as “Clear Skies Initiative,” or the “Healthy Forest Act,” are intended not to institute measures designed to improve the quality of the skies or the forests, but rather to improve the profits of those corporations who would rape and raid and pollute such resources without restriction. Had they been instead titled as: Legislation Aimed at Lessening Environmental Restrictions to Allow for Less Hindered Economic Expansion,” then that would be acceptable. At least then the pubic, upon hearing of such bills making their way through the various chambers and committees of Congress, could understand their true intent.

To take but another example: the invasion of Iraq was so bound and tangled up with the atrocities of 911 that the public actually felt as if our invasion were for the purposes of exacting retribution for the attacks upon us. That was not the case – and the subsequent arguments about WMD, nuclear holocaust, clear and present dangers to the United States and its allies, the removal of a bad man from power, etc., were equally revealed to be false – and yet the administration continued to link the two so as to reinforce, and not lessen, the original link hinted at between Saddam Hussein and the events of 911. This could have only been done on purpose, and served only to confuse and confound the electorate as to our true purposes for going to war.

During the election campaign of 2004, John Kerry, a thrice decorated veteran of that war, was painted by the Conservatives as some sort of traitor to his comrades, and as a traitor to the United States of America. While those opposing him, damn near one and all, had somehow found either excuses or deferments from ever entering that conflict: George Dubya Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Tom DeLay, Dennis Hassert, Rush Limbaugh, etc., among them. And yet they persisted in both wrapping themselves in the flag, and in posing as patriotic heroes! Should ever an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution be proposed and adopted concerning the disposition of our National flag, it should be to prohibit, upon pain of being tarred and feathered, the subterfuge involved in such a manipulation.

The upshot of all such subterfuge, dissembling, and falsification, is that the meaning of all language and symbolism has been rendered inert. Words and actions become meaningless in such an environment. It has all been relegated an illusion done with smoke and mirrors. There is no truth - nor any God’s Truth - and the climate has become entirely one of deception and manipulation. Lies, damn lies, and goddamn lies!

Ergo, in the meanwhile the rhetoric from the Liberal opposition has become more and more harsh, less and less based upon factual information, and increasingly as shrill and vituperative as have been the Conservative attacks upon us. The whole thing is making us crazy! And crazy people don’t make for the most contented of subject populations.

So would you Conservatives please, please, please become politically literate, start holding your leaders responsible, and get rid of the illusionists (they have no place in our National government). Maybe then we can get back to discussing and resolving, or at least compromising upon, our differences, and working out our problems as we have previously done - as well informed, and not purposefully mis-informed, adults. And then perhaps you guys can quit beating up on the Dixie Chicks!

2005-09-17T04:58:00.000-07:00

Welcome to George Bush's America

This is Really Nuts

2005-09-17T04:50:00.000-07:00

This is really nuts. Dubya gave a grandstand speech about New Orleans, and seems to have pissed off everyone in the country. The Conservatives (the real whacko ones anyway) hated the speech because what they heard was that Dubya was going to start some sort of a second New Deal to rebuild New Orleans. The African-Americans remain unsatisfied (and who, Who, WHO can blame them) because they detect, and why wouldn’t they, a note of disingenuousness in his promises, which they’ve all heard before. Most Democrats or Liberals or Progressives, whatever the appropriate nom de plume is these days, didn’t like it because they are both worried about its sincerity, and see hidden within it another damn excuse for doling out billions for Dubya’s buddies. And I didn’t like it for all of the above, minus the first, but plus what follows.

Georgie boy said he sees a need for a “broader military participation” in relief efforts of this kind. Whoa! That sets me back a few paces. If ever there was a fascist dream, it lays precisely in having a domestic military (posse comitatus) force that can almost instantly coerce into submission any movement that the administration feels threatens their position. We are already being coerced into silence and submission (witness the MSM) - by the Patriot Act, and by Republican cries of not being patriotic enough - just by the Conservatives’ demagogic rhetoric. Worse, someone, and it is still unclear who although FEMA is part of it, has hired and let loose in New Orleans the BlackWater mercenary forces, plus the National Guard, and who knows who else, to basically put New Orleans under Marshall Law. All of this ostensibly because a few hungry and tired and crapped upon people relieved a few dime stores of their water and food, and, O yeah, a trinket and television or two. As if that were some big freaking deal!

Okay, here’s what we’re left with. For 4-5 days no one at the Federal level does squat. Then, having (boohoo) cut short his vacation, Dubya tries to force the governor into allowing him control over the Louisiana guard forces, which Madame Blanco resists (given Dubya’s track record as a fascist), but then eventually, apparently, concedes to. The next thing you know, Lt. Gen. Honore comes riding into town on his white stallion and, admittedly, finally begins getting things done.

Unmentioned in all of this is that Michael Brown, the moron appointed by Dubya (because he hates anything that means to help or to aid people), is sucking his thumb and wondering what O what to freaking do. Mark one up for Dubya; he and his have now proven the government is inept at responding to emergencies.

Which then allows Dubya to come to the rescue of a situation he and his bullshit have created, or at least exaggerated ten-fold, with his John Wayne like cavalry entering upon the scene. Which he then subsequently uses as an alibi, during his grandstand speech, to launch the idea that National military forces should probably have a bigger role to play in large scale emergencies. Meanwhile, you can almost hear Donald Rumsfeld’s calculator going crazy adding up the few extra tens of billions of dollars he can now ask for in his already astronomical Defense budget, seeing as how he is being further taxed with the responsibility of responding to National disasters. He’ll probably buy some new missile system with it and claim it’s to protect the flooded areas, or some damn bullshit. So mark up a couple more for Dubya. But, wait, there’s more.

First off, they get the MSM to quickly poll those living under domes somewhere, who have only just escaped with their lives from some of the most horrendous conditions imaginable, to say that only 40 plus percent of them would like to return to New Orleans. You know what? That’s great because New Orleans was a Democrats’ town prior to the stinking hurricane, and now all those demographics are up for grabs again if only Dubya can get the rich bitches to move in, in their stead. Chalk up another one for Dubya. But we’re nowhere near finished yet.

Proposing massive Federal outlays to rebuild New Orleans, and the realtors are already selling property down there like hot cakes in an all out assault at gentrification (to which New York Times’ editorialists are adding their voices), Dubya “shapes” the battlefield for his legions of you-know-whats to move in and begin sucking the treasury’s teat on no-bid contracts awarded in the dead of night (smells like Dick Cheney’s work). Chalk up another half-a-dozen or so for Dubya.

Now $2-3 hundred billion is going to be spent here, you know, and that will require some belt-tightening. Do you suppose for one second that will come out of the Defense Department’s budget, or the DHS budget, or out of any other macho man fascist program these jerks are running? Hell no. This is yet another excuse to cut programs that help the poor and the middle class, and gives Dubya another opportunity to show how supposedly bankrupt the social security system is. Chalk up another 3 or 4 for asshole.

At the end of the day, you’ve got Dubya having won all the rounds in both political and economic dimensions, although his poll numbers do drop somewhat. So what? He ain’t gotta run again, and by the 06 elections all this will be just so much water over the levy. Meanwhile, he has cleared the way for a military takeover in times of stress; for massive increases in Defense Department and corporate welfare give-away programs; for surreptitiously redistricting New Orleans to the Republican’s advantage; and for massive cuts in domestic spending programs he hates anyway.

O, yeah, he’s still gonna ask for a tax cut, and will and has used the disaster as an excuse to gut environmental and worker protections.

So let me ask you; from a Conservative’s perspective, what’s not to like? Like I said, all this pissing and moaning is nuts. This is freaking Christmas for the corporations! This is nothing at all like the New Deal which was established to help people – this is all about greed, massive, ungodly greed!

The only ones hurt by this are all those poor folk you saw on your TV screen. And, well, you know…they are all underprivileged anyway and are getting a good deal over at the Astrodome.

Finally, you may ask what Congress is going to do about all of this? Last I heard, there are going to investigate themselves!

In other news, Dubya said today that in a cost saving effort, he was going to replace the dike and levy system in downtown New Orleans with a choir of Mendicant Monks, and by hiring three little Dutch boys, with strong fingers.

2005-09-16T15:39:00.000-07:00

Bong

Would Somebody Please Bring Back the 60s

2005-09-16T15:37:00.000-07:00

Compared with today, the problems of the late 1960s and early 1970s seem miniscule in proportion. Nixon, about the worst political operative we had, was not about to unleash fascism upon the United States, and even at the time did a few good things for the little guy. He believed in government, at least. He was, however, responsible for the deaths of 4 college students in Ohio, for all sorts of atrocities in South East Asia, and didn’t take at all kindly to having political enemies. He was also pretty tricky. But he wasn’t stupid (although paranoid perhaps), and truly believed in the United States and its promise to create a relatively free and fair society for all. It’s not that we’ve forgiven Nixon for what he did, but rather that next to Dubya, RMN looks pretty tame today. We all hated him then, though.

There was also about the 60s and 70s a sort of hope springing eternally. Things in America were chaotic but not terminal. The corporations hadn’t taken over complete control. Republicans were still for the most part fairly decent human beings – albeit with a different philosophy about some things. Also, the grass wasn’t lethal (or prohibitively expensive) – it mostly made you laugh. The music, ahhh the music, was much better back then…but maybe that’s just a matter of taste. The loving was also freer in a way that’s difficult to describe, more relaxed, more spontaneous, less inhibited by information and edification and more real, unrehearsed and clumsy – then again I was a lot younger back then, and tons more ignorant. I certainly hope the young folk today have found ways of loving that aren’t entirely structured by consumer reports. It appears from the perspective of an older American that things are far more serious today, more apt to bring you down, and bum you out. Back then it was damn near anything goes, culturally anyway. Today’s freedoms seem learn-ed and orchestrated by comparison.

The was also about those times a sense that as screwed up as everything was, it was going to be getting better. There was something we were all working towards and hoping would come to pass. Much of it did at least begin to come to pass, though awkwardly and by fits and starts, but then Vietnam eventually bummed everyone out to the point of being clinically depressed, and then Nixon resigned, and then, well shit, everything has sort of been going downhill ever since. And now we have Dubya, and a neo-fascist crony corporate regime, and life in these United States has become totally unrecognizable. I can’t imagine anyone preferring this over anything (crazy damn conservatives). This is just depressing, depressing, depressing.

Can’t we all just learn how to get-a-bong?

2005-09-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

The White Tornado

New Evidence of Link Between bin Laden, Saddam Hussein & Hurricane Katrina

2005-09-15T16:37:00.000-07:00

Archeologists digging around the ancient Sumerian city of Ur (of the Chaldees) today revealed that they had uncovered one of a pair of 4th Century BCE oil lamps, that when rubbed produced a miniature tornado from which had sprung a genie.

The genie, dressed in Black robes, turban, and an AK-47 assault rifle, with a bandoleer packed with 7.62 ammunition slung around his shoulders, materialized from the miniature tornado wanting to know where his older sibling, Osama bin Laden, was at present located, promising to reveal to the archeologists how to most efficiently use the lamp if the information was quickly forthcoming.

“Look,” said the genie, in perfect English (evidently genies have a lot of time on their hands, and most use it to study foreign languages), “My brother has been outside of his lamp for too long, and I’m worried that he might start random mischief, such as dust storms and hurricanes, if he isn’t returned to his lamp soon. The longer he’s out, the more and greater mischief you can count on him to perform.”

When asked where Osama’s lamp was likely to be, the genie answered, “Oh…well, let’s see, some guy named Saddam Hussein had it the last I heard. He was using it to sow confusion with the American administration. Maybe Saddam rubbed him wrong…and Osama began dropping hints about vast quantities of stored-up WMD...that’s one of his oldest tricks, you know, sowing false information and creating dissension amongst the nations. But that’s nothing, really…unless we get him back into his lamp soon, there’s no telling what he might do. Dust storm after dust storm, hurricane after hurricane…he’s destructive as hell when he can’t get back into his lamp. Last time that happened, he created a virtual dust bowl out of the prairie states of America.”

When asked why his brother, Osama, seemed to pick on American a lot, the genie answered, “Well, I don’t recall about the dust bowl - something about Errol Flynn maybe…I dunno - but lately he took exception to his image being used as Mr. Clean, the white tornado. He hates cleaning toilets.”

Although the archeologists have begun an intensive study of the lamp, its missing twin, and the genie which they conjured, it will be at least 5-6 months before they have anything concrete to report.

Asked about whether or not the U.S. government couldn’t put pressure on the academics to hurry up the research, the government’s spokesperson said, “At this time, we have no comment on the incident.”

2005-09-15T07:51:00.000-07:00

Storming the Bastille

What Caliber is This

2005-09-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

Before I begin:
Neither being litigious nor a lawyer, and just to demonstrate my ignorance, answer me this:

If the State of Louisiana can take the owners of several critical care centers to court for either gross negligence or involuntary manslaughter, could not also some enterprising legal mind take the government (Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown, whoever) to court for the very same things?

And, if so, couldn’t the government additionally be taken to court for the awarding of contracts to cronies, like Halliburton and KBR, etc, without competitive bidding, to do the clean-up in New Orleans?

Finally, does anyone know anyone who is a legal-eagle, who is maybe independently wealthy and perhaps wishes to exercise a little civic responsibility by finding those to bring suit, and then pursuing such options?

It’s hard to believe this government should be left alone to so flagrantly violate their responsibilities, and then parley that omission into profit for themselves and their buddies.

What Caliber is This?

Jesse Jackson said the other day something to the effect that: “the real looting is about to begin in New Orleans.” What he meant, of course, is that the looting of the U.S. Treasury, by what Jackson refers to as “crises capitalists,” friends, relatives, whatever of the ruling junta, is about to begin in earnest. Rather than handing out money – cold, hard, usable cash – to the Katrina evacuees, which might smooth their way to recovery, this administration now means to organize a colossal give-away program to its most favored (and best connected) corporate interests, and allow them to profit at someone else’s misery. In the end, probably somewhere around $200 billion worth.

This of course raises the question as to what caliber of individuals we have running our nation?

Well, the Grand Pooh Bah we all know is a drunk, and was wet, wet, wet until he was 40. Then he found Christ and, without any professional help at all, simply laid off the booze. So now, he’s a dry drunk, but still carrying around all the garbage, and as addicted to religion as he once was to alcohol. His wife, by the way, in one of those “Oops” moments in her youth, ran down and killed some other human being – for which she never paid a public price. Sort of like those Aristocrats in Paris whose carriages would flatten the peons on their way across town.

Georgie Boy’s Mother, Barbara Bush (Antoinette), has said of the evacuees in the Astro-Dome that they were underprivileged anyway, so the temporary accommodations were working out all right for them, irregardless. Shows just what a down-to-earth mother this travesty of a Matriarch turns out to be. Almost makes you feel sorry for Dubya.

Dubya’s Daddy, Poppy Bush, has always been a marginally competent aristocrat (inbreeding, you know), and while tediously checking his watch during Presidential debate, was probably wondering how to slash capital gains taxes even further, or maybe even perhaps offering a public refund for anyone invested in the market, which his own cronies have long been running. If not for Poppy, by the way, Dubya would still be sweeping the streets around Galveston, or somewhere.

Dick Cheney, the Consigliere of the bunch, is an ex-CEO of Halliburton, and along with selling his soul (considering his own daughter who is gay) out to those who even wish to amend the Constitution for the first time in history to restrict people’s rights, is also and simultaneously the Chief Magus for the energy corporations’ secret White House cabals. It is there that he ensures that he and his will profit handsomely from any and every move that the Grand Pooh Bah may make. Consequently, Halliburton is cleaning up nicely in Iraq, and now promises to profit yet further in the New Orleans catastrophe. Cheney, by the way, was delayed by a few days in getting to the Gulf area due to a previous commitment closing the deal on a new $2.9 million piece of real estate on the East coast he was buying.

Michael Brown, we all now know, was a ne’er-do-well Arabian horse manager (and he couldn’t even do that right), who lied on his resume, and who simply lucked into the job as FEMA director (i.e. a political appointee rewarded for his stupidity in supporting Dubya irrespectively). That his utter incompetence managed to inconvenience (most likely including many deaths) hundreds of thousands of people is a story whose extent has not yet been calculated. His (in)actions bring to mind the words of Alexander Pope: “Wretches may hang that jurymen may dine.”

The list unfortunately goes on and on, and yet those running this government continue to intone their mantras about tax cuts for the wealthy and unconscionable give-away programs for the corporate interests, while hundreds-of-thousands lay dead and dying in Iraq and in New Orleans, and 2000 American GIs with perhaps ten times that number wounded and maimed, return to the ZI (in the dead of night) either in flag-draped coffins or limping and stumbling their way down the blood shadowed tarmac.

What caliber, I ask you, of human beings do we have running this Nation?

2005-09-14T05:37:00.000-07:00

John Roberts Confirmation

Pro Forma

2005-09-14T05:35:00.000-07:00

Whether or not Judge Roberts is to be confirmed as the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a foregone conclusion (in the affirmative). What the public is currently being treated to is simply a pro forma exercise by the Senate of the United States designed to assuage the populace.

In reality, no Senator at this moment really wonders how she or she is going to vote (with a possible rare exception discussed below), and the questions currently being asked of Roberts have been carefully scrutinized to offer the appearance of some sort of conscience deliberation.

The real determinants of the Robert’s case, are who at the moment holds the upper legislative hand within the Senate (the answer is obvious, the Republicans), and whether this is or is not a situation where the minority (the Democrats) are willing to risk Bill Frist's threatened “nuclear option,” to implode the entire Senate, and turn it into even more of a rubber stamp for Dubya (rhetorical though the question may be)? I believe the answer to that is also already clear - Roberts will be confirmed without major opposition.

The key here to understand is not that any particular Senator is actually making up his or her mind as the proceedings go along (they have long ago done so), but rather to make a show of voting in the people’s interest. That is to say, those Democrats, who perhaps face a tightly fought re-election campaign, in 06, and who cannot stand to publicly support Roberts’ nomination, will be allowed to vote in the negative, and even perhaps to make a big public display about their opposition. Those other Democrats (let us say) who find it necessary to support Roberts for their own sake in the next election, will vote in the affirmative. In other words, the voting will go according to how the parties perceive their needs, and not as the individual consciences of the Senators are concerned. The whole thing is a dog and pony show designed to assuage the public. Should too many votes go according to individual consciences, based on the actual arguments of the case, then one or two (or as many as necessary) will ask to change their votes (as frequently happens) to ensure that the pre-scripted outcome prevails. Any Senator actually caught in the act of going against such a system (due to conscience, or arguments presented, etc.) does so at their own peril.

The real process is to maintain for the oligarchy, in the eyes of the public, the illusion that the government of the United States is working as advertised in the Constitution. The reality behind the mask, however, is that everything is being carefully orchestrated to maintain the present status-quo. The oligarchs remain oligarchs, and the rest of us remain the slobs we’ve always been.

When we have witnessed such a disaster as Katrina was, and knowing full well that in previous times such a calamity has precipitated the fall of more than one established hierarchy, the privileged classes become especially sensitive to any growing unrest. You will notice, though, that the poll numbers on Dubya are already climbing back to normal, and that CNN for instance, only last week criticizing Dubya, today has devoted hours to the Roberts confirmation (so the people can witness the charade and feel good about their government), and then cut away to a scene showing an Iraq leader (in reality an American puppet) praising Dubya as he stands in front of the American flag. The whole damn thing being nothing other than a choreographed stage show!

In times of stress upon the corrupt and bankrupt system, which nevertheless benefits the oligarchy enormously, the oligarchy pulls and functions together in order to pacify the masses. Hence, just last week we were treated to GHW Bush and Clinton (almost arm in arm, no less!) both offering mealy-mouthed explanations for the disaster that is and was New Orleans. We are being 24 hours a day manipulated. There is simply too much wealth, power and prestige on the line here to let such an exercise proceed un-scripted!

I know, I know…as if that were news to anyone!

2005-09-13T05:15:00.000-07:00

"Walking In New Orleans"

Behind Katrina’s Skirts

2005-09-13T04:45:00.000-07:00

While attentions have in the past few weeks been centered upon the devastation in the Gulf States’ area, the administration has been zeroing in on something else entirely. Hiding, as it were behind Katrina’s skirts, the Pentagon has drawn up plans to employ nuclear weapons as a first-preemptive-strike against those who may be using or “about to use,” WMD on us or our allies, or who are otherwise deemed to be threatening. The Rove White House, I am certain, could spin such language forever, as they did in Iraq. What it basically means is that Dubya can once again instill ungodly fear among us, declare some state or group belligerent, and, without the approval of anyone, involve us in a nuclear war.

The only reason I can imagine for such an occasion is that Dubya’s poll numbers may be down, or maybe Republican hegemony appears to be in the least wise threatened, or the end of Dubya’s term is rolling around, and he desperately needs yet another excuse to assert the Conservatives’ will upon us. The easiest way to do that would be to de facto declare a nuclear war by using the “first strike” capability upon some hapless location, and then claiming to have saved us, along with the rest of the free world. By now, such tricks are all too well known. The damnedest thing, though, is that it would all work so marvelously!

The Conservatives could really care less about why anything is being done, so long as it is their party doing it; and all the rest can either be intimidated (as they were during the Iraqi Freedom hogwash); or sent quivering in fear into their most paranoid, offensive posture; or being otherwise made to shut up by Republican attacks upon them, and upon their patriotism. In effect, Dubya and the Conservatives can at the moment do damn near anything they please, and there is really no recourse. Congress is certainly not going to investigate any charges brought up against this administration; the people are most likely not going to hold the Republicans to account due to either fear, or flat-out not giving a damn, and there is precious little else which can be legally, or peacefully, done. Just like that, Armageddon will have started.

In other matters, we now know at least one of the reasons why BlackWater Security were hired for the New Orleans area, and why for a few days there had been a genuine push on to evict people from what was left of the town. George Dubya wanted to do a photo-op there, in an open-air vehicle, and as he sure as the hell isn't prepared for meeting with any real citizens, the area needed to be super-sanitized to allow for his dog and pony show.

2005-09-12T05:14:00.000-07:00

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan: Shelter from the Storm

2005-09-12T05:10:00.000-07:00

I was in another lifetime one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness a creature void of form
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm".

And if I pass this way again you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death and men who are fighting to be warm
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm".

Not a word was spoke between us there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm".

I was burned out from exhaustion buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile ravaged in the corn
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm".

Suddenly I turned around and she was standing there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm".

Now there's a wall between us something there's been lost
I took too much for granted got my signals crossed
Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm".

Well the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much it's doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker he blows a futile horn
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm".
I've heard newborn babies wailing like a mourning dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love
Do I understand your question man is it hopeless and forlorn
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm".

In a little hilltop village they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation and they gave me a lethal dose
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm".

Well I'm living in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor's edge someday I'll make it mine
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born
"Come in" she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm".

2005-09-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

Confederate Flag

Historical Forces in Conflict

2005-09-11T18:45:00.000-07:00

There are times in the unraveling of the world’s time line when opposite forces can no longer be reconciled, and when large and powerful ideas find themselves at such contradictory points of view that individual perspectives give way to mass movements no longer controllable. Such a time, I fear, is now.

Yes, I finally do get it, and it has very little to do with George Dubya, or with infusions of new information. Dubya may be thought of as a pimple on the epidermis of a landscape ripe for eruption – somewhere a pimple shall appear, the conditions dictate that it will, and it makes very little difference whether that pimple is George Dubya, Adolph Hitler, or the Roman Consul Cornelius Sulla. All were symptoms rather than causes of underlying conditions too compelling to assuage.

Although history is replete with instances of such nature, the United States itself has previously undergone a similar phenomenon: the advent of our Civil War. At that point irreconcilable forces met across a dividing line between North and South, between slavers and those who would abolish it, between Unionists and those who argued for nullification, between obtuse conservatism and the forces championing an evolutionary society. In many ways, today’s conflict echoes back to such times.

Abraham Lincoln managed to coerce the Confederacy’s cooperation, and its ultimate capitulation. Never were the Southerners convinced of the North’s argument, however, they were simply beaten into a quiet submission. For all of my life I have heard the refrain about the “South rising again.” John Wilkes Booth was the first to act on that impulse, tragically. Even today, the Confederate Flag is displayed proudly on the radiator of transport vehicles, on the tops of state houses, in the center of memorial gardens, and in a thousand and one other venues too numerous to articulate. Hurtful though it may be to many, the flag nevertheless provides inspiration to millions of those uncomfortable with the previous century’s status-quo. They still chaff at the bit of what they consider to be an unreasonable society, with values both foreign and abhorrent to them. For these people, the Civil War has not ended.

To conclude by that, however, that the arguments still center primarily around the question of slavery is to misunderstand completely from whence their present anger and hatred grow. While a complicated question, and beyond the scope of this simple blog, the Conservatives quest is rather inspired by their abhorrence of what they consider to be Liberal ideology: accepted homosexuality; abortion; State welfare; far ranging religious tolerance; integrated school systems; cultural relativism; non-Biblical, situational law; excessive litigiousness (they’d rather settle their disputes by a punch in the nose); psychological interpretations of behavior; scientific and dispassionate methodologies; a tendency towards reasoned and appeasing settlements concerning cultural conflicts; and so on, and so forth. To the Southern Conservative (in particular) all of these phenomena elicit frustration and even outrage. Were it not for the oppressive rule of those sons and daughters of the enlightenment, the Conservative individual might find his or her existence far easier to navigate through. To a conservative, most values are absolute, literal and revealed only through scripture.

As for racial prejudice and xenophobic behaviors, these are not the prime motivations of the Conservative movement – at least among the young – but might easily be rekindled should the achieved global isolation most of them crave be made manifest. Most would have little patience with the tolerance necessary, for instance, to treat among the various and sundry viewpoints offered at the United Nations. That is why, for instance, they continually seek to frustrate international efforts, refuse to attend the World Court, disengage from global treaty and agreement making, and if and when engaged in overseas adventurism it is only to impose their will, and their values, upon others. Like the Mohammedans of Islam’s great dispersal, their motto appears to be: convert, pay the tax, or die.

There are in fact numerous parallels to be drawn between Christian and Moslem fundamentalisms, and may be why the two wish to fight each another, without compromise. There is no compromise possible when your world is a world of absolutes. “You’re either with us, or against us.”

Cherishing no compromise, their eternal truths having already been revealed (through scripture), and their values hardened and set as if in stone, the Conservative cannot be swayed by word, or argument, or scientific demonstration. You’d be better off pissing into the wind. Ever since the Civil War (if not before), they have stoically awaited their deliverance, and now that the government has been delivered unto their hands, they are adamant about not wishing to entertain any reasons why their philosophy may be wrong, or incomplete, or incompatible with the twenty-first century, or incompatible with a global community, or any other reasoning methodology – indeed if Jesus Christ appeared before them to sway them in their deliberations, they would be forced to crucify him all over again. These people are not going to listen to reason, or to anything else I can hallucinate. Their mind and their way, is set, and that’s that.

As the geography of today offers no physical means of separating the reds from the blues, except for in the most general way, I have no solutions short of mayhem to offer, and indeed I am not even recommending that. The Confederate States, when they more easily might have, were not allowed to secede, and hence today we are stuck in a rather profound quagmire of our own design. Yet, speaking for myself, I can find no answer to the puzzle. I am hoping somebody here perhaps can offer a workable solution. I know that personally I do not wish to live amid the Conservative’s ideology. I imagine many others feel the same.

2005-09-11T04:50:00.000-07:00

RCR, Kevin Harvick

NASCAR

2005-09-11T04:45:00.000-07:00

I’ve always loved automobile racing, almost all forms of it. I can live without truck racing, and without BIGFOOT, etc., but any other form is all right with me. Although I myself was once a road racer, and I still prefer that form – Formula One, Sports Cars (Le Mans, Daytona, etc), Touring Sedan racing and such, along with the Champ Cars, and the Indy Cars (particularly on road courses), NASCAR racing in general, and even Swamp Buggy racing (which is really exciting) - I have of late become particularly offended by the NASCAR rallies being held at the beginning of each race, intended to instill Nationalism in the place of patriotism.

It’s been turned into a recruiting poster for the military, and for the present administration. And, yes, my father was a veteran, I am a veteran, one of my step-sons is currently a Green Beret (wounded in Afghanistan), so it’s not that I am necessarily anti-military. But the military recruitment business has become intricately tied up with the Dubya agenda, which is each day more obnoxious to me. That, plus the fact that the invocation offered increasingly is being done in Jesus’ name, rather than in God’s. That doesn’t offend me so much spiritually and religiously as it does politically. This administration has politicized Christ, or visa-versa, and it’s enough to make me want to puke.

I see all those young, shiny, eager faces in the crowd, and I can see them getting themselves all hyped up about wearing a uniform and enlisting in the service, and then being sent to Iraq to be slaughtered in a useless war that this country should have no part in. Vietnam was bad enough. The current war in Iraq has even less moral justification than did that one, and it is just as hopeless, and as devastating to an entire generation of young men and women. Go after Bin Laden if you must, but get the hell out of Iraq.

Many of my generation still wander the alleyways and back streets of America, bouncing off the walls, getting drunk or stoned, sleeping in the gutters and on the stoop of buildings in order to keep warm, wandering aimlessly, listlessly and crazily around town, and I could almost cry that another generation is going to follow suit.

O, they all love you now, but they won’t once the war becomes a total exercise in frustration. They’ll tell you to “snap out of it,” or “get your shit together,” but they’ll have very little sympathy or understanding for what you are really going through. Dubya needs his cannon fodder, but he doesn’t care anymore for you than he did for his military obligation, or for the victims in New Orleans. You’d better enjoy your moments in the sun because they will be all too short lived, and soon you’ll return haggard and haunted and eaten up inside by what you’ve been persuaded by a generation to do.

So, please NASCAR, stop recruiting young men and women at your events, and praise God and not Jesus, and don’t sell out wholesale to the corporate interests that Dubya represents. It really isn’t you or your future that they really give a damn about.

2005-09-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

BlackWater Security

Terminator America

2005-09-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

Hang onto your hats, folks.

Although California has already done so, albeit in a political capacity and not in a military one, our governments may soon be hiring trained killers, mercenary personnel, to use against the U.S. citizenry. And while Schwarzenegger may only have “acted” as one in the movies, others have gone far further in their training to become flesh and blood terminators.

In the most troubling of reports I have read coming out of the hurricane Katrina disaster, Jeremy Scahill, a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, and Daniela Crespo, on assignment in New Orleans, are reporting (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091005A.shtml ) that some U.S. governmental agency – it is unclear which, but may have been both the Governor’s office of Louisiana in collusion with the DHS – has hired the private “Blackwater Security” agents to operate in New Orleans (and their websit blackwaterusa.com confirms it). It is hard to imagine anything more chilling than that!

In case all this is new to you (as it was to me), Blackwater Security are those mercenary forces hired both by the Paul Bremer and John Negroponte contingents in Iraq, as well as by numerous private contractors involved with operations within the theatre of war, to ensure their safety. These guys are incredibly well armed and mean nothing but business - dirty, rotten, killing business. If true, and there is no reason to suspect that it is not, this raises the ongoing political difficulties and class wars within the United States to an entirely new level. In other words, this is very serious shit, indeed!

I don’t know how many of you have noticed as well, but I have found quite a few posts on websites, as well as on any number of personal blogs, treating of the carnage in New Orleans as a ‘washing out,” of the area, or a “culling of the herd,” or “Thank God for Katrina.” Couple that with statements like, “Kill all their leaders and convert all the rest to Christianity,” by Ann Coulter, or “We really ought to go ahead and assassinate Chavez,” by Pat Robinson, and you have a right-wing culture that recognizes no civilized bounds to their intolerance, and arrogant hubris. These sorts of people are more animal than human, and are every bit as carnivorous as is a Komodo monitor. If you really want to know how they think, check out one of their websites: godhatesfags.com/. Warning, the website is not for those truly sensitive to racial and social bigotry, or intolerance. Mostly, it’s for very sick people. A visceral pall hangs over me on those rare occasions I visit it (as I just did) in order to garner information – the first time I was actually shaking.

All things considered (sounds like a good name for a radio program, huh?) when mercenary forces become coupled with the type of mentality mentioned above, bad things, very bad things are likely to happen. There can be only one slipperier slope in the universe.

For openers, where does any governmental agency (be it local, state or Federal) get off on using tax-payers’ money to hire mercenary forces within the U.S.? Even worse is the conclusion that such forces must have been hired to employ against U.S. citizens – they sure as hell weren’t hired to deal with the Mexican Marines helping out in the gulf regions, or in San Antonio. I don’t know about you, but the thought that governmental bodies may now hire mercenary forces to maintain whatever sort of order some governmental bureaucracy decides upon is way beyond the pale. I simply do not wish to live in a fascist state devoted to militaristic intimidation. Worse, mercenary forces are typically answerable to no one except for themselves: witness, for example, those who reprocess automobiles, or go after bail jumpers.

What I greatly fear, is that soon America shall become an armed camp pitting the forces of intolerance against those who simply wish to live life free of armed strife and turmoil. We may very well be witnessing the onset of the resource wars which shall occupy, and devastate, this used-to-be great state of America. Only hell can be realized from that!

2005-09-10T05:55:00.000-07:00

Brownie

Close(r) but No Cigar

2005-09-10T05:51:00.000-07:00

Following a hurricane of complaints about FEMA director Mike Brown, and revelations that he lied on his resume, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff today announced that Brown would be replaced as the on-site director of the clean-up and restoration efforts along the Gulf, by Coast Guard Vice-Admiral, Thad W. Allen. The Coast Guard being the first and only Federal agency to have responded in a timely and effective manner to the original crises in New Orleans.

Although I have mentioned it before, the Coast Guard has done nothing short of a heroic and other-worldly job of saving people’s lives and pets and property and just about anything else you can think of. All hats off to the Coast Guard for an outstanding and exemplary job!

Admiral Thad Allen, then, seems an appropriate choice for the job. He and the Ragin’ Cajun (Lt. Gen. Honore) together ought to make a dream-team relief and recovery agency. Finally!

Of course, the example of these men and their organizations puts everyone else to shame, and all others, with the exception of some unique individuals (the one doctor with a stethoscope in the Convention Center for instance, and others like him), appear even more incompetent when measured against people of value. Although it may be difficult to believe (particularly if most of your adult experience has been only in the last 4-5 years), there was a time when most people at the Federal level in this Nation were equally as apt. Sad to say, those days are now primarily gone. There are many more poseurs like Dubya and Brownie today, then there are Honore(s) and Thad Allen(s) around. Floor-flushers like Dubya and Brownie are all the rage currently, though. Spoilt little brats mostly.

The big question now is what about Brown? It is very difficult, in fact impossible, to argue that he should be anything other than fired, permanently and publicly – only Dubya himself is more deserving. Personally, I wouldn’t give you ten cents for the lot of em. The problem is, Brown in still on the government payroll, which means it’s okay to lie and fabricate and be 1000% incompetent. Meanwhile, of course, the American people will be paying his salary. He should be outta the government yesterday, or at least by sundown. It’s also an object lesson in just how outrageous are the baby-faced progeny of the privileged classes. Brown, for instance, couldn’t even do Arabian horses right.

How is it possible, by the way, for the government of the United States, in a domestic incident non-terror related (unless God is terrorizing or punishing us for Dubya), to issue a gag order about how many corpses are being pulled from the New Orleans area? By what act of government is such a thing possible? It sure as hell isn’t a matter of National security, unless they figure the people would be so pissed they might revolt. Was glad to discover yesterday afternoon that CNN is suing the government over access to information.

I’m also highly suspicious. I hate to be, but this administration makes me crazy (it’s so damn secretive and composed of a military-industrial-governmental cabal). Yesterday we begin hearing that maybe there won’t be as many corpses coming out of N.O. as first we thought, and then the government issues a gag order on both photos and stories of the dead being pulled from the carnage, and the directors (or whatever they have) of the funeral-burial places are not allowed to speak either. Makes my antennae twitch like tuning forks!

This whole Dubya dictator business has really gone too fucking far! It was long ago time to rid ourselves of this anti-Christ, anti-American boy in the bubble. Language fails in its attempt to describe just how disastrous, dangerous and arrogant he is.

2005-09-10T05:30:00.000-07:00

Shelter From the Storm

Shelter from the Storm

2005-09-10T05:15:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched the “Shelter from the Storm” Concert, broadcast simultaneously over at least a dozen television stations and networks. I am sixty years old, cynical, crusty, tired; up to my eyeballs in hatred for our socio-economic-political system - and for sixty minutes all I did was bawl like a baby. I cannot recall having ever been that moved by anything in my entire existence.

About halfway through it finally dawned upon me. New Orleans, the port through which slaves entered America and were sold into abject slavery, was where the slaves had left behind them their souls. The Big Easy is the soul of Black, African-American culture. It was where jazz, the blues, and all other renditions of black soulness were born. Cut out New Orleans, and you have cut out the soul of Black America.

It may also be, little beknownst to us white folk, where whatever soul we may borrow is likewise centered in America. As Jack Nicholson said towards the end of the program, “They’re playing our song.”

We ignore its tribulations at our peril.

2005-09-09T05:13:00.000-07:00

Abbott & Costello

Who’s on First?

2005-09-09T04:50:00.000-07:00

Realizing, of course, that there is nothing particularly funny about thousands of lives lost, and tens-of-thousands of others in some way, shape or form being violated, this whole finger pointing business surrounding the Katrina disaster has begun to take on gargantuan proportions.

The crux of the political argument, as reported in the NY Times, is basically that Dubya didn’t want to be seen as instituting anything tantamount to Marshall Law over a female, Democratic governor in Louisiana.

Even were we to take at face value the administration’s recounting of their thinking, the mere fact that Dubya, who promised to bring this nation together and unite us all, after five years in office, couldn’t simply ring up Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and say the following, is in itself a National tragedy: even more so given the eventual outcome.

“Hey, Madame Governor…Dubya here. Look this Katrina thing is likely to overwhelm you. We’re ready and wanting to help, but you’ve got to help me dot the Is and cross the Ts here, or it’s all gonna be a big mess. Please ask me to help you, so we can get our butts down there and save your population from utter disaster. We promise to allow you the lead, and we’ll be there simply to serve…but…you’ve got to ask. Okay…okay…thanks. Hey, next time you’re in Washington, or in Crawford for that matter, why don’t you stop by and we’ll have a few laughs.”

Instead, what went on is that an unqualified FEMA director, Michael Brown (can that be his real name?) who lied and fibbed on his resume to get the job, and who it took three days to initially wake up, bungled around until Lt. Gen. (Ragin'-Cajun) Honore, who at least has his head on straight, went down to New Orleans and exercised enough authority (real or legal or not, and who cares) to begin to get the mess under control.

Anyway, for a slight bit of comic relief, which we all at this point could use, I have included below the famous Abbott and Costello bit, “Who’s on First,” which reminds me of all these sadly deficient bureaucrats trying to figure out what in the hell was going on in Louisiana. Courtesy, by the way, of http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor4.shtml

Who’s on First?

Abbott: Well Costello, I'm going to New York with you. You know Bookie Harris, the Yankee's manager, gave me a job as coach for as long as you're on the team.

Costello: Look Abbott, if you're the coach, you must know all the players.

Abbott: I certainly do.

Costello: Well you know I've never met the guys. So you'll have to tell me their names, and then I'll know who's playing on the team.

Abbott: Oh, I'll tell you their names, but you know it seems to me they give these ball players now-a-days very peculiar names.

Costello: You mean funny names?

Abbott: Strange names, pet names...like Dizzy Dean...

Costello: His brother Daffy.

Abbott: Daffy Dean...

Costello: And their French cousin.

Abbott: French?

Costello: Goofè.

Abbott: Goofè Dean. Well, let's see, we have on the bags, Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third...

Costello: That's what I want to find out.

Abbott: I say Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third.

Costello: Are you the manager?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: You gonna be the coach too?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: And you don't know the fellows' names?

Abbott: Well I should.

Costello: Well then who's on first?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: I mean the fellow's name.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy on first.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The first baseman.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy playing...

Abbott: Who is on first!

Costello: I'm asking YOU who's on first.

Abbott: That's the man's name.

Costello: That's who's name?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: Well go ahead and tell me.

Abbott: That's it.

Costello: That's who?

Abbott: Yes.

PAUSE

Costello: Look, you gotta first baseman?

Abbott: Certainly.

Costello: Who's playing first?

Abbott: That's right.

Costello: When you pay off the first baseman every month, who gets the money?

Abbott: Every dollar of it.

Costello: All I'm trying to find out is the fellow's name on first base.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy that gets...

Abbott: That's it.

Costello: Who gets the money...

Abbott: He does, every dollar. Sometimes his wife comes down and collects it.

Costello: Whose wife?

Abbott: Yes.

PAUSE

Abbott: What's wrong with that?

Costello: Look, all I wanna know is when you sign up the first baseman, how does he sign his name?

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: How does he sign...

Abbott: That's how he signs it.

Costello: Who?

Abbott: Yes.

PAUSE

Costello: All I'm trying to find out is what's the guy's name on first base.

Abbott: No. What is on second base.

Costello: I'm not asking you who's on second.

Abbott: Who's on first.

Costello: One base at a time!

Abbott: Well, don't change the players around.

Costello: I'm not changing nobody!

Abbott: Take it easy, buddy.

Costello: I'm only asking you, who's the guy on first base?

Abbott: That's right.

Costello: Ok.

Abbott: All right.

PAUSE

Costello: What's the guy's name on first base?

Abbott: No. What is on second.

Costello: I'm not asking you who's on second.

Abbott: Who's on first.

Costello: I don't know.

Abbott: He's on third, we're not talking about him.

Costello: Now how did I get on third base?

Abbott: Why you mentioned his name.

Costello: If I mentioned the third baseman's name, who did I say is playing third?

Abbott: No. Who's playing first.

Costello: What's on first?

Abbott: What's on second.

Costello: I don't know.

Abbott: He's on third.

Costello: There I go, back on third again!

PAUSE

Costello: Would you just stay on third base and don't go off it.

Abbott: All right, what do you want to know?

Costello: Now who's playing third base?

Abbott: Why do you insist on putting Who on third base?

Costello: What am I putting on third.

Abbott: No. What is on second.

Costello: You don't want who on second?

Abbott: Who is on first.

Costello: I don't know.

Abbott & Costello Together:Third base!

PAUSE

Costello: Look, you gotta outfield?

Abbott: Sure.

Costello: The left fielder's name?

Abbott: Why.

Costello: I just thought I'd ask you.

Abbott: Well, I just thought I'd tell ya.

Costello: Then tell me who's playing left field.

Abbott: Who's playing first.

Costello: I'm not... stay out of the infield! I want to know what's the guy's name in left field?

Abbott: No, What is on second.

Costello: I'm not asking you who's on second.

Abbott: Who's on first!

Costello: I don't know.

Abbott & Costello Together: Third base!

PAUSE

Costello: The left fielder's name?

Abbott: Why.

Costello: Because!

Abbott: Oh, he's centerfield.

PAUSE

Costello: Look, You gotta pitcher on this team?

Abbott: Sure.

Costello: The pitcher's name?

Abbott: Tomorrow.

Costello: You don't want to tell me today?

Abbott: I'm telling you now.

Costello: Then go ahead.

Abbott: Tomorrow!

Costello: What time?

Abbott: What time what?

Costello: What time tomorrow are you gonna tell me who's pitching?

Abbott: Now listen. Who is not pitching.

Costello: I'll break your arm, you say who's on first! I want to know what's the pitcher's name?

Abbott: What's on second.

Costello: I don't know.

Abbott & Costello Together: Third base!

PAUSE

Costello: Gotta a catcher?

Abbott: Certainly.

Costello: The catcher's name?

Abbott: Today.

Costello: Today, and tomorrow's pitching.

Abbott: Now you've got it.

Costello: All we got is a couple of days on the team.

PAUSE

Costello: You know I'm a catcher too.

Abbott: So they tell me.

Costello: I get behind the plate to do some fancy catching, Tomorrow's pitching on my team and a heavy hitter gets up. Now the heavy hitter bunts the ball. When he bunts the ball, me, being a good catcher, I'm gonna throw the guy out at first base. So I pick up the ball and throw it to who?

Abbott: Now that's the first thing you've said right.

Costello: I don't even know what I'm talking about!

PAUSE

Abbott: That's all you have to do.

Costello: Is to throw the ball to first base.

Abbott: Yes!

Costello: Now who's got it?

Abbott: Naturally.

PAUSE

Costello: Look, if I throw the ball to first base, somebody's gotta get it. Now who has it?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: Who?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: Naturally?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: So I pick up the ball and I throw it to Naturally.

Abbott: No you don't, you throw the ball to Who.

Costello: Naturally.

Abbott: That's different.

Costello: That's what I said.

Abbott: You're not saying it...

Costello: I throw the ball to Naturally.

Abbott: You throw it to Who.

Costello: Naturally.

Abbott: That's it.

Costello: That's what I said!

Abbott: You ask me.

Costello: I throw the ball to who?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: Now you ask me.

Abbott: You throw the ball to Who?

Costello: Naturally.

Abbott: That's it.

Costello: Same as you! Same as YOU! I throw the ball to who. Whoever it is drops the ball and the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What. What throws it to I Don't Know. I Don't Know throws it back to Tomorrow, Triple play. Another guy gets up and hits a long fly ball to Because. Why? I don't know! He's on third and I don't give a darn!

Abbott: What?

Costello: I said I don't give a darn!

Abbott: Oh, that's our shortstop.

2005-09-08T09:05:00.000-07:00

This is one of those banned photos no one is supposed to be showing

Ignorant Voters Exist in America in Vast Numbers

2005-09-08T08:59:00.000-07:00

While Americans must be some of the savviest bargain hunters in the world, and never miss a sale or a coupon, they seem to know next to nothing about their political existence. As Britain’s “Daily Mirror,” asked following the 2004 election, “How can 59,059,087 people be so dumb?” Good question. It might even lead one to believe that in America we have the exact type of leadership we deserve.

This was confirmed recently when CNN released a series of polls (by various firms), all of which showed that following a week’s devastation in New Orleans, less than one-quarter of the population felt there was any particular failure of leadership concerning the molasses slow response by Federal, State, and local authorities. Huh? How can that be? Worse, of those concerned at all with the leadership question, roughly twice as many blamed it on local governments rather than on the Federal response. No one (or next to no one), by the way, felt as if any governmental authorities should be fired. So go figure!

While disheartening to the max, the results do point out that most Americans just don’t understand politics, or the vast sums of their tax monies which go to support partisan political maneuverings, at all. The budgets for DHS and FEMA run into the billions of dollars, and those directing such programs are more or less free to reward their own cronies with governmental contracts, and do so (KBR, for instance, gets a huge slice of this latest disaster for America), all the while free of criticism for dragging their feet, or engaging in time-costly turf battles, while hundreds of thousands either die or suffer needlessly in the devastated areas. In any other Nation, or at some other time in this Nation, the people would be taking to the streets demanding reforms – and firings, by the bushel load!

Let’s consider for a moment. The usual quaff being offered (by Tom Delay, for example, who every time his lips move spews forth acidic hallucinations) is that the locals must ask first ask for State help, who then must ask for Federal help, and therefore the totally impotent response by the macho Dubya administration is somehow excused. It is, admittedly, hard to even believe such crap is being offered, and what’s worse being eaten up by the populace, but trust me, I heard it myself (much to my amazement) on the Tele. So it is impossible to underestimate the American people’s awareness of what government is, and what it is supposed to be doing with all of our monies. Most, I will wager, have no clue as what the social contract even is!

Anyway, in the instance of hurricane Katrina, authorities all over America, and virtually every American who turns on their television set or listens to the news or trolls on internet must have known a monstrous storm was heading towards the Gulf States area, and that if it should happen to land on New Orleans, the shit was going to hit the fan. How could any conscious person have missed such a warning, 2-3 days in advance yet?

So what do you do if you’re Dubya, for instance, or FEMA director Mike Brown, or DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff? Kick back and say to yourself, “No sweat. They’ll call if they need help?” Gimme a freaking break! If nothing else, you’d have thought Dubya’s old man would at least have called and said, “Hey, look kid…I got hammered pretty bad for dragging my feet during one of these deals, so you’d better make certain you’ve at least got your own ass covered.”

Nope, not a clue! Nancy Pelosi says of Dubya that he’s “oblivious, in denial, and dangerous.” Amen! Must be that those in power just assume Americans’ ignorance, and know that it doesn’t really matter to them politically whether the government functions correctly or not. You can, of course, almost immediately discount the idea that any of the Republicans would feel any sort of personal responsibility or remorse for so many dead and suffering. That’s something only “wimpy” Democrats do.

The real upshot, though, is that at numerous places, including the Federales own web-sites, there is evidence presented that the local and State authorities did ask for help in a timely fashion, and that for 4 ½ days nothing significant happened, except that people died or got raped or something. No skin off of Dubya’s ass, of course. Or, given the usual scenario in such instances (oft repeated in this administration), off anyone’s else’s ass either. Most will probably be given medals when it’s all over. They’ve already been publicly praised by Dubya. Unless the polls indicate a shift in American attitudes, all of this will be over and done with in a few weeks time, and Dubya will be back selling used cars…or is that the war in Iraq and private social security accounts? Meanwhile, Barbara and Herbert Walker will be off on another shopping trip or something and will have gotten away scot free for having raised up a monster. Perhaps even with William Jefferson Clinton lapping at their heels.

Or…perhaps, just perhaps, this thing constitutes such a horrendous failure of the entire system that ex-officials everywhere - such as Clinton, and George McGovern and others – all recognize its hidden dangers and have all pulled together to strengthen the bullshit! Maybe they too recognize it for the earth shaking calamity that it is, and are praying to who or whatever that the American people don’t finally flash on the real scope of the snafus every day being revealed by this worst of all possible failures of institutional leadership. Talk about the shit hitting the fan then!

2005-09-08T05:53:00.000-07:00

Sham City, USA

The Sham that has Become America

2005-09-08T05:45:00.000-07:00

I like to think of myself as someone who can not only accept change, but who can actually embrace it. Yet, the one thing I just can’t seem to wrap my mind around is the new status of the United States.

I’m still stuck in the 1950s when the U.S. was not only the most powerful Nation on the globe, but also the most righteous. Sure, we had our problems then, and our hubris was already beginning to show in our foreign and domestic policies concerning economic interests, but things were still primarily aimed at benefiting everyone.

Those were the days, remember, when Eisenhower - both a military man and a Republican - was going out of his way to warn us about the rise of the then nascent military-industrial complex. Unfortunately, everyone was having too good a time making money to worry about it much.

Comparing those days to these, there is no comparison. The only thing constant is that the money managers, the big-wheels in the financial district, along with the Corporate officers, are making obscene amounts of money. All else has changed entirely, and not for the better.

Democracy within the United States has never been more threatened, nor more at risk than it is now. The neo-fascist elements have parlayed the combination of 911, a deteriorating educational standard and public awareness of politics, along with corporate brainwashing into a coup of the American Government. We no longer, in essence, enjoy a democracy, although the empty forms remain, but rather an oligarchy wherein the wealthy, the privileged, the financiers, the Nation’s corporations, and the powerful control all that transpires. All that’s left of a true democratic system of government, is that we still somehow believe that we have one, when the sad fact is that we don’t.

Sadder still is the belief that we have, through the ballot box, the power to control our government (and hence our corporations), when we no longer do. Twenty-five or more years ago we might have still halted the inexorable march towards utter corruption, but we failed, and every since there have been no real choices offered the public about policy. Since Ronald Reagan, a corporate wolf in jovial clothing, there have been no choices of substance offered to the electorate to make. Today, it is always a choice between lesser evils, and the in the end it makes very little difference which supposed choice we make.

Limited, in perpetuity it now seems, to two political parties, both of them wholly owned subsidiaries of the corporate oligarchy, Tweedlydee and Tweedlydum, are essentially one and the same enterprise. There is no meaningful choice which has been made. Either we bought a red SUV or a black one; either we select a Nokia cell phone, or one from Nextel – these are not choices but severally limited cosmetic options. Both parties represent, and vote in behalf of, the corporate interests time after time. Since the early 1980s no legislation has passed which has significantly aided either the poor or the middle classes. In the meanwhile, vast sums of wealth have been transferred to the oligarchical structures.

The Supreme Court, by the way, has not been one bit free of such political posturing. Embracing the idea that money equals free speech, for instance, or that corporations have the same rights as individuals has effectively marginalized the electorate away from the process of government. Couple that with a dumbed-down educational system and you have a prescription for democratic oblivion. Which is where we are at today.

Worse, not only have we lost our democratic form of government, but the values representing the United States have been entirely morphed. Today, we believe in and practice torture; we invade states for our own economic and corporate interests; we coup and assassinate leaders at our convenience; we attempt to militarily bully other nations into becoming terrified client states of the United States. We actively seek, and lie to our people about, our millennial goal of achieving full spectrum dominance.

No one any longer believes that the United States represents the values of our contractual founding documents. No one any longer believes that we actually practice democracy, or that the American people retain meaningful freedoms, or that life here is good or safe, or that we only use our might for disinterested and unselfish reasons, or that we represent what is finest among human beings. Those are all illusions that we simply cannot shake from our heads, but which are no longer reflected by the reality here on the ground.

In reality, we have all become automatons serving our corporate masters. In reality, our economic policies all aim at reducing the wealth of the masses in favor of further enriching the few. In reality, we have no effective worker protections – you cannot, for instance, rely upon any sort of forthcoming pension. Nor is you economic status protected by social legislation, nor is your health (or access to care) guaranteed, nor are your investments safe. Nor has this great, highly heralded, economic de-regulation of the past 20 plus years added in any measure to the well-being of the vast majority of the population. In fact, all such indicators have been going South for the previous quarter of a century, and continue to do so at an accelerated (not to mention alarming) rate.

In reality, America, as measured by the status of at least 30% of the population, has become a 3rd world nightmare of unimaginable wealth existing side by side (or in gated communities, actually) with some of the most cruel and inhuman poverty on earth. Witness, for instance, the pictures coming out of New Orleans. Every major metropolis within the United States has a similar social structure hidden from view.

In essence, America has become a sham, still masquerading as something wondrous and wonderful. In reality, our continued existence now hangs by a thread.

2005-09-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

Censorship!

Unbelievable – Redux 10,000!!!

2005-09-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

I read somewhere in the last few hours that the Bush administration is attempting to blame those truthfully (for the first time in 5 years) reporting from New Orleans of hampering the efforts at clean up. Jesus Christ! Here we go again!

Worse, I just now read (from Reuters I think it was) that FEMA is attempting to place a moratorium on reporters trying to take or to show pictures of dead bodies from New Orleans. They claim it’s blah, blah, blah!

Okay, here’s the pipe dream response: no reporter from any news organization whatsoever should bother to either show up at, or broadcast, anything this F---ed Up administration has to say. Boycott news conferences; don’t publish their press releases; ignore the government entirely; write, show or print nothing! Not a damn word!

All the while, fly every damn helicopter in the United States equipped with a photographer, or camera, with a super-zoom lens, into New Orleans, and film nothing but bodies being recovered, along with other activities of governmental agencies. Speculate like crazy about what the bastards are doing, and categorically refuse to air their side of whatever stupid, freaking arguments they make.

This shit really has gotten completely out of hand! No one has yet entirely abrogated the 1st Amendment, you know!

2005-09-07T04:40:00.000-07:00

Hey, There…Boy in the Bubble

2005-09-07T04:26:00.000-07:00

You know, if you were any other Chief Executive this Nation has had during my lifetime I would address you with your assumed title. As it is, I’m afraid I just can’t bring myself to do that. I know, I know…the title goes with the position and not with the man, but since your assumption I have lost all respect even for the office. I have no respect left for any Federal governmental functionary at all. You are all a bunch of unconscionable crooks in my estimation, and have thoroughly trashed our government.

Myself, I would never want any of your jobs because, let’s face it, I’m just not good enough to be where any of you are. I don’t deserve it, couldn’t handle it, and would make such a goddamned mess it would take years to straighten things back out again. It’s not that I don’t have the brains, I just don’t have the stability of character required. And even though I suspect I know perhaps 100 times as much about the world and about America as you do, I still don’t really know enough. Running the Country and running the World requires a life long commitment. I spent too much of my youth jacking around…like you did, actually. Only it wasn’t booze or drugs that I wasted my time on, but rather it was my immaturity that prohibited me from matriculating quickly enough. Also, unlike you, I never really felt as if God or Jesus had anointed me with some particular holy mission to accomplish. So mostly I spent a dozen years in the military, and then taught high school for about ten – in-between I worked in casinos.

Seeing as how I feel you are not much better prepared for your job than I would be, why do I despise you the way that I do? It’s because I would know better than to ever offer myself as a candidate for the offices you and your cronies hold. Those are pretty heavy jobs with some awesome responsibilities and I’m afraid I would screw it all up the way you have, and then wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I mean, just look at how many human beings are dead largely because of your ineptitude - over 100,000 in Iraq, perhaps tens of thousands in the Gulf Coast areas. That’s not including the rise in terrorism world wide due to your incompetence, and the deaths attributable to that little detail.

Yet, somehow, you manage to go on, with the same basic moronic grin on your face, and the same arrogant smirk. Right in the middle of all this killing you even managed to check out for a month’s long vacation. How the hell do you do that? With all the protestors at your front door…didn’t that ruin your vacation for you? How the hell do you sleep at night? Or enjoy mountain bike riding? Or tell stupid inappropriate jokes? Or relate some drunken bash you once had in New Orleans? Or kid about not being able to find weapons of mass destruction now that you’ve killed 2000 American troops based upon your lies? Sounds to me, kid, as if you’ve got some rather serious problems with sociopathology. Better have that looked into…wouldn’t you think?

Okay, here’s the deal. Excluding all those making $300,000 a year or more, name one thing, one policy, one piece of legislation, one decision you’ve made designed to help the little guy, or the environment, or any of our progeny and I’ll promise to think real hard about beginning to give you the benefit of the doubt. Until then, kid, to me you’re just a bag of hot air, a poseur, a three gallon noggin in a ten gallon Stetson. You’re a dog who can’t and won’t hunt. Face it kid, you’re a loser. Always have been and always will be. Un-scripted, you wouldn’t be able to think your way out of a rat’s maze.

Better go back to the booze, George, you were much better at that.

2005-09-06T06:30:00.000-07:00

Lying in Repose

2005-09-06T06:26:00.000-07:00

Beginning with last Monday, and for long as it takes, the bodies of thousands, perhaps tens-of-thousands, of New Orleans’ residents will be lying in repose for full public viewing.

These people were all part of the “Gumbo” that symbolized the area’s multicultural heritage, and syncretic art, music, theology and philosophy.

Reflecting back to the times slaves were bought and sold on the open markets of New Orleans, the area’s rich cultural heritage was symbolized by the wealth of its multifarious traditions and sundry architectural designs.

New Orleans and its residents, past and present, were to America as the four golden stripes of the Chief Justice’s black robe were to the traditions of an otherwise staid Supreme Court.

May those lying in repose receive God’s blessing in their journeys onward and upward. Each of them will be sorely missed.

2005-09-05T12:55:00.000-07:00

Eiron

History is About Irony

2005-09-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

History is full of irony. At times it seems as if it’s about very little else.

For openers, it should have been Osama bin Laden standing in front of some sign reading “Mission Accomplished.” More than $200 billion later, the terrorist is still at large. He hasn’t been caught, much less brought to justice. His organization has grown, not shrunk, in size and importance.

In the meanwhile, the United States has been torn in two. The Reds and the Blues stand everywhere ready to tear each other’s throats out. Whatever latent divisions (from as far back as the Civil War) may have existed in America, they have now been re-awakened and exacerbated beyond control. Whatever nominal freedoms of expression we may have once enjoyed have now been either severely curtailed, or absented altogether.

Outside of Wall Street the economy is in shambles, at least from the wage-earner’s point of view. We have a hidden Nation – comprising as much as 1/3 of our populace - living in 3rd World like conditions, and staggering poverty. High paying jobs are being exported faster than Lou Dobbs can list the offending corporations on his bad-boys registry. We are approaching an $8 trillion deficit, with no relief from inappropriate tax-cuts in sight. We still have no medical program worth mentioning, and a newly formulated drug-program that only made matters worse. Every State is in deep deficit and finds it impossible to maintain even a bare-minimum of social programs for the needy. Never has the United States borrowed so heavily, or lagged so far behind in its economic vigor.

Thanks to Iraq, the Kyoto protocols, the torturing of prisoners, and other such acts of belligerence, the United States has completely lost whatever credibility and moral authority it may have once carried across the World. No one believes us anymore, and almost everyone is scared half spitless about how we might use our military power next. We have de facto become the most feared terrorist entity on the globe.

Thanks to the utter incompetence displayed by our leaders, during the Katrina apocalypse in particular, although also in our inability to run fair elections, for example, our moral and functional bankruptcy has been displayed for all the world to witness. Though still fearful, as you might be watching a wild animal dying in front of you, most on this planet can probably muster little more than a laugh about the efficacy of the seat of the empire – once so mighty, and now a Hollywood caricature of the Keystone Cops.

“Mission Accomplished?” Osama could retire yesterday and still go down as the most successful strategist ever. Almost single handedly he has felled an entire empire.

2005-09-05T04:44:00.000-07:00

The Rot Exposed

The Rot Within

2005-09-05T04:34:00.000-07:00

There is within America a deep, pustulant, gangrenous rot, invisible from the façade but all too obvious once the surface has been breached. The real cause of this rot is greed, although it is closely related to numerous other symbionts equally as devastating. The cultural medium, the agar-agar in which such rot is grown is ideologically speaking the unbridled application of capitalistic doctrine. The material medium, or fertilizer, from which the rot emerges is oligarchical hubris. Both are and have been operative, and on the ground in New Orleans, for centuries. Only with hurricane Katrina has the extent of the rot become undeniably obvious.

Although New Orleans, measured by the percentage of those living beneath the poverty level, tops all other U.S. cities in its rates of poverty, the State of Mississippi (by use of the same measure) is even poorer than is Louisiana itself. Numerous other states are closely behind in the race for overall impoverishment. Worse, the poor in America exist in vast numbers hidden just beneath the surface. No longer, either, does anyone named Hortio Alger exist. The dream of success within this fetid swamp of corruption and dissembling is no longer relevant. In many areas and in numerous situations, it requires Herculean efforts simply to maintain the social status quo. Very soon, and maybe already, there will be no lower-or-middle middle class left within our borders. Only the upper classes, the political classes (those able to donate substantially to a political cause), will remain free and vibrant just beneath the oligarchs. All the rest of us shall soon, if not already, be relegated to the economically enslaved.

Already as many as 90% of Americans are currently being forced to work within a system that benefits only the very wealthy. Each day, each of us must, at least tangentially, contribute to a system whose goal is to pander some worthless material thing, or some ridiculous service required by the system, to someone who needs it not, and who shall only become further impoverished by its acquisition. In other words, the poor, and the economically un-free, are subtly coerced to feed upon each other in endless rounds of corporateering. In America, the majority of us are feeding upon ourselves. This is euphemistically referred to as free-market deregulation. It is nominally heralded by our leaders as freedom, the right to private property, the democratic or American way, or any number of other misleading examples of newspeak. Currently there are only two visible figureheads for this degenerative system: Ronald Reagan and George Dubya Bush – and only one of those is extant.

The figureheads, however, represent all of those several thousands who would suck the teat of America dry, ostensibly prior to moving on to exploit some other location, such as India or China. They know all too well the foreseeable future of our own land. To them this is both convenient and self-justifiable by several and sundry ideologies that balm their minds with utter nonsense – ‘the survival of the fittest’, for instance, even though they may not necessarily agree with Darwin. Also into this mix must be added some sort of megalomanical psychosis convincing its victims of their righteousness, or peculiar election by God. They somehow believe they have been chosen for their worthiness to rule the planet absolutely.

Slightly below these vaunted individuals exist those few who believe or feel that by their own proximity to unlimited power, they too shall participate in the greatness surrounding those chosen ruling or controlling entities. Then they too can participate in the greatness. Currently, such individuals are known as Neo-conservatives, or Neo-cons, with a rather large emphasis upon the con. For cons they are, of historical dimension. They are to the oligarchs of today as Tolkien’s ‘Black Riders’ were to the evil Sauron. Together, they mean to rule the world. As George Orwell once alluded to, it is perhaps not so much that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as it is that corrupted individuals seem inexorably drawn to situations of absolute power. So let it be said of Ronald Reagan and the entire Bush dynasty. The true and blue-blooded oligarchs, such as Dubya, are irresistibly drawn to power; they see it as a birthright.

Hence, once physical and legal slavery was abolished, the oligarchs turned ever more to economic enslavement, which offered the added incentive of providing unearned profits to their larder. So have they always existed, and so also do they exist in America today, little differently than have the oligarchs stretched across the millennia. All empires, you see, have been built upon the backs of de facto slaves. Today it is unbridled capitalism that provides sufficient cover; yesteryear it was the Divine Right of Kings; and before even that the almost universally acknowledged Right of Conquest, or perhaps Aristotle’s philosophical justification of slavery. Only the rationalizations have changed, but certainly not the realities.

Currently, though, there is danger that the oligarchs have pushed too far, and that very soon what was once entirely invisible and out of mind, shall become all too obvious and apparent – as it is in New Orleans at this moment. Then, as the NY Times editorialist David Brooks (no screaming Liberal he) mentioned in yesterday’s column: “We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore.”

Urgently we need to turn away from corporatism for the corporatists to a long overdue replenishment and nourishment of those who represent the boots on the ground of this exploitive economy. Considering the vast wealth and economic potential of America, there is simply no excuse that such a rot as Katrina has uncovered should be left to fester even further. Amputation, then, would be the only solution.

2005-09-04T07:01:00.000-07:00

Mad Max

Mad Max: Beyond Superdome

2005-09-04T06:51:00.000-07:00

In the second of his movies, inspired by mythologist Joseph Campbell, dealing with the “Road Warrior” Mad Max, Mel Gibson plays the role of a hero whose exploits center upon an large gasoline tank-truck, the most precious commodity left on the planet. All of the characters will do almost anything, and do during the course of the movie, to obtain for themselves this tanker full of liquid gold. Life, and much of the surviving human technology, literally depends upon its energy producing qualities.

Since the hurricane Katrina devastated most of the coast line running along the Gulf States, and along with it the entire city of New Orleans, the production and refining of petroleum in America has been significantly hampered. From the port of New Orleans, and from its refineries and storage tanks, along with the oil rigs located in the Gulf of Mexico, flow much of the gasoline and other petroleum products required by our present way of life. Without gasoline, nothing much would move. At this sitting it is impossible to know (as a layman, although I’m quite certain the oil execs know this stuff intimately and just won’t tell or reveal) what the eventual impact of such a loss of production might mean for oil prices, and its availability, around the globe.

One who is willing to hazard a guess, however, is the head of the European IEA (International Energy Agency), Claude Mandil, who speculates that: “If the crisis affects oil products then it's a worldwide crisis. No one should think this will be limited to the United States…They are already buying gasoline in Europe. If the refineries are damaged, that will only increase. Then this will become a worldwide crisis very quickly.'' Wonderbar, nicht var?

Although for the moment energy stocks seem to have shot upwards, that may be due to the windfall profits the oil companies expect to reap from the sudden rise in prices they are now able to cram down our throats. At least one gas station in the South raised their prices above $6 a galleon immediately following the breach of the levies in New Orleans. While attorney generals of this and that state swear to look into such price gouging, you can almost bet very little, if anything, will ever materialize from such promises. These guys know very well who butters their bread. There have also been pictures shown on TV of mile plus long gas lines waiting at closed stations, in some instances for as long as 5 hours, simply due to a ‘rumor’ that gas might be forthcoming. How many entrepreneurs do you know who would be able to resist such a temptation? You can already hear them intoning their mantra – “Supply and Demand,” as if that actually referred to something in the real world – in actuality, most such things (commodity prices and commodity supplies) are being manipulated from afar.

You will notice that Dubya, while pushing for gas tax relief in the South, has not convinced (nor has he probably tried to do so) his buddies in the energy corporations to lower their prices, rather than raise them. Instead, the taxpayer and not the fat cats will be shouldering the burden, one way or the other. This, of course, is a regressive as hell tax to begin with, and by lessening it or temporarily alleviating it, it will only in the end rebound upon the poor, and the middle-class (if there still is such a thing). More profit making from someone else’s misery.

A world wide oil scarcity, or a scarcity of the refined products, could lead to scenes eerily reminiscent of the Mad Max sequences in the movies. So, dig out your old muscle car from the 60s and 70s, put a blower on it, and batten your hatches for the wars yet to come. An oil crisis may very well be waiting for us beyond the Superdome.

2005-09-04T06:45:00.000-07:00

Chief Justice

2005-09-04T06:42:00.000-07:00

Chief Justice William Rehnquist (long time Supreme Court member, blah, blah, blah), in life always a pain in the keister, has now become an even bigger pain in the keister in death. He died Saturday night of thyroid cancer which he had been battling for the last year (or so). Politics aside, my condolences to whatever family members survive him.

His death, however, couldn’t have been more disastrous from a Liberal’s point of view. It comes at a time when the main stream media had finally woken up for a week, and many of them had actually deigned, albeit tentatively, to criticize the monstrous administration currently operating in our Nation’s capital. Now, the situation has changed to the point where, if I didn’t know better, I’d think Dubya had probably slipped Rehnquist a Mickey. This is tremendous news for those currently masquerading in power, and terrible news for everyone else. The next few days and weeks will surely be given over to the politics of appointing, or trying to appoint, a new Chief Justice rather than concentrating on those still dying in New Orleans, and along the Gulf Coast, as well as the ongoing insurrection in Iraq. This is like ten-Christmas presents for Dubya all rolled into one, and delivered instantaneously, if not surreptitiously.

Once again, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist, dead at the age of 80. And to his three children, my condolences.

2005-09-03T06:51:00.000-07:00

No More Victimization!

It’s Now Up to Us and the Newly Liberated MSM to Ensure that those Who’ve Died in New Orleans didn’t Die in Vain

2005-09-03T06:38:00.000-07:00

Wow! I’m shocked. I guess what has been going on in America, ever since 911 anyway, is that this Administration has cowered the MSM, by threatening them with the “un-patriotic” label, and subsequently coercing the media into following the party line (no one was deaf to what happened to the Dixie Chicks). Think of it as media appeasement of Dubya & Crooks. When you have a major bully loose on the playground it’s best to hold your tongue.

Along comes Katrina, however, and even this bunch of obfuscating Administration slime-balls dare not refer to those whose only interest lies in the protection of American citizens, as being un-patriotic. The media, like Rip van Winkle, has finally woken up. What this Administration has arrogantly allowed to transpire in New Orleans, and the way in which poor African American citizens have been treated, has enraged Americans, like a wild fire spreading across the continent. Editorials everywhere, even in many Conservative papers, have begun to take this bunch of sociopathic monsters (Michael Brown, Head of FEMA, being a particularly egregious example) to task for their poor planning (what if this had been a terrorist weapon, for instance), and for their delusions and utterly incompetent administering. Suddenly, reporters have decided it’s time to report, and not simply pass along the spin – and many have been choked up and crying as they do so. Any fool can see this is no way to treat a fellow American.

Not that the Republican spin machine didn’t attempt to blame those who are dying and suffering in New Orleans; first by labeling them as stupid for not having evacuated (a favorite tactic of Brown), and then chastising them for looting. The American public knows better, however, and this time at least can see through the smoke screen. Desperate people do desperate things, and the poor have not a pot to pee in when it comes to evacuating the town. What, are they supposed to swim their way out? They’re broke, and have no hope of making their way anywhere, even if they are or were ambulatory, which many were not. Now, they’ve been left to die alongside of helter-shelter walls, or are floating through the grim streets of their once wondrous town.

As some comment I read on a blog somewhere in the past few days said, I too would gladly allow Dubya to shine like the Sun if only he would have evacuated these people, and treated them right, and in a timely fashion. Instead, this administration has engaged in the de facto genocide of an entire population of hapless citizens, too poor (thanks to an obscene minimum wage, and a Republican social system which could care less) to fend for themselves, or to make their way out of town. That such a happenstance should be true in America is beyond embarrassing, and qualifies as criminal negligence, and extreme prejudicial bias.

It is now up to us, and to the newly liberated MSM, to ensure that those who’ve died in New Orleans, thanks primarily to the hubris and pathology of our supposed leaders, will not have died in vain. The blinders have in many instances come off, along with the muzzles, and now is the time to call this lowly bunch of criminals to task. Let us make something from these hapless citizens’ sacrifice. That is the least we can do to honor their humanity.

2005-09-02T18:10:00.000-07:00

Beam Me Aboard Scotty, There is no Intelligent Life Down Here

You Can’t Get There From Here

2005-09-02T18:05:00.000-07:00

If anyone in America, save for the very wealthiest of the wealthy, are satisfied with the way this country is being run I’d be very surprised. Republican or Democrat, what we have in America today is leagues removed from any vision we may have collectively shared only a few decades ago. Let’s face it, this is the end game of an overextended empire, the end of the American era.

We are divided as never before (save for the civil war period); the gap twixt wealth and poverty continues to grow; forgetting the profits still to be made on Wall Street, which is essentially a process of farming the farmers, our economy is in fundamental disrepair; the good jobs are all going elsewhere; our status in the world can now be symbolized by Castro’s offer to send to the United States several score of doctors, and tons of medicines to help with the disaster in the Gulf; our war machine, and the way we seem to be using it, has become not only belligerent but also anachronistic to the majority of Nation States on the globe; and our children are no longer, other than athletically perhaps, world class competitors in the global market for brains and talent.

Furthermore, all of our social-economic-political systems have become corrupted to the point where extrication from our present difficulties is no longer even a remote possibility. Our operative values have become so disfigured that wealth accumulation trumps all other concerns; our politicians serve only their own limited, myopic, self interests; and down on the street we are tearing, or getting ready to tear, each others throats out. Business ethics has become an oxymoron, there is simply no remembrance of what fiduciary responsibility may mean; and our entire culture has been politicized to the point where even the simplest, most basic function of government is no longer possible (witness New Orleans).

The question before us, therefore, is what went wrong, and how can we salvage what little may be left. How can we move on from this point, because it is long past time to throw the hand in and begin anew? Otherwise, what future our progeny may enjoy will be tantamount to a life lived in the early Middle Ages. There is no hopeful future down the path we are presently treading. Worse, we may well take the rest of the globe down with us – either environmentally or militarily.

Voting in the next crop of politicians, playing the same games - whether hell bent on staying the present course, or on retribution for yesteryear’s harms – seems inadequate at best. What is required is fundamental change. Without, as it were, throwing the baby out with the bath water, someway must be found of amending our founding documents, bringing them up-to-date with 21st century realities, reorganizing and re-regulating our economy, re-educating our populace with values more lasting and profound than “he who dies with most toys wins,” and re-stating our shared values as universal goals impinging upon all who claim residence.

The quest for such re-organization must begin now, before the storm hits, or else we shall all become chattel for the mega-corporate cartels.

2005-09-02T05:20:00.000-07:00

Holding the Looters at Bay

Locked & Loaded

2005-09-02T05:11:00.000-07:00

It appears the hapless folks in New Orleans have finally figured out how to get the attention of the Republicans currently running and ruining America – threaten the right of private property.

The one way to raise the hackles of this government is to challenge the supremacy of private property and to begin to institute street law in favor of Dubya’s law. That got their attention all right!

Now, New Orleans is suddenly being flooded with security personal from all services and agencies who are, according to the Republicans, “locked and loaded,” against any lawlessness. They are going to restore order, literally come hell or high water, both of which seem to be manifest within the fish bowl that once was New Orleans. Isn’t it all just wonderful, wonderful?

Having tried pleading for 4 days without effect, those underclasses left to rot in New Orleans without governmental attentions finally took matters into their own unsettled hands and began hitting the government where it really hurts, in their penchant for order and control.

They’ve now become street terrorists determined to get the U.S. government’s attention, much in the same manner that the 911 terrorists got America’s attention by violating the right to property.

While lawlessness that effects the innocent as well as the guilty (and there are very few guilty on the streets of New Orleans – most of them are in TV studios telling people what a wonderful job they mean to do) must be condemned, in the same manner that the 911 terrorists must be condemned, it does illustrate what hapless, powerless, confused and frustrated people will resort to when being totally ignored by Big Brother. They will get someone’s attention, whether that attention is positive or negative.

In other matters, there probably isn’t enough praise to be offered to those Coast Guard personnel that have since the disaster been on the scene working their butts off and their hearts out attempting to rescue people. They appear to have been the one governmental agency doing anything constructive. Now, however, the big boys (FEMA and DHS) have stepped in and will no doubt screw-up that also. In the meanwhile, however, hats off to these guys and gals for an extraordinary, and truly humanitarian, effort.

2005-09-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

Nero Fiddling while Rome Burns!

Disaster in America

2005-09-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

Having spent the last couple of hours watching Main Stream Media reports from the Gulf Coast area and from New Orleans, I am both personally devastated and sick at heart. It is surrealistic that America has actually come to this. We have no leadership left in America, whatsoever. Everyone of the oligarchical class in this Nation is a crook of major proportions, and incompetent to boot.

Neither political party, nor the Government, nor the highly vaunted private sector, nor the military in America seems any longer capable of conducting America’s business. On CNN they interviewed former Presidents Clinton and Herbert Walker Bush and neither one could offer anything other than mealy-mounted, lame excuses for the leadership of this land. I was thoroughly disgusted! They are also both to begin fund raising efforts! For what, in order to bury the thousands already dead? My God, what a tragedy.

America has become a third-world dictatorship, with a greedy ruling junta. It is not simply a matter of being like a 3rd World Nation, we are one!

What is transpiring before our very eyes on the MSM is not just class warfare - it is, whether consciously or purposefully or not, class genocide. The ruling classes could just care less about America or Americans.

That the bright promise of the American dream could have come down to this is absolutely despicable.

Kick every damn incumbent out of every office every election until a true people’s democracy is restored. It won’t save the empire, but at least it might offer some sort of limited future down the line for some of our progeny.

In the meanwhile, impeach Bush, boycott every corporation, and don’t enlist! Create as much noise and static as you can!

2005-09-01T06:57:00.000-07:00

A Casino in Biloxi

Poetic Injustice

2005-09-01T06:50:00.000-07:00

First, the news: Hurricane Katrina walloped the Gulf Coast of the United States over the weekend and throughout Monday, and in the process wiped out the better part of three States’ tourist industry. Tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people are now completely hapless and homeless, thousands have most likely died, and the area has been flattened by wind and storm-surge to the point where nothing much is left of the vicinity. Even once everyone left alive becomes re-settled, the dead and floating bodies nestled almost everywhere are discovered and properly disposed of, and the human debris of the holocaust is somehow accounted for, the entire area requires what will no doubt be months of work to clean up the remaining mess from that area’s now defunct civilization. Thinking about even one of the above is an entirely overwhelming exercise.

New Orleans itself is a total disaster, and has been declared unsafe for habitation – yet thousands still live among its carnage. A great and unique and altogether fun city of the earth has been effectively demolished. It will never again be the same wonderful adventure.

This site’s condolences certainly go out to all those who have suffered during this tragedy. Watching on the news it is hard not to notice that as many as 90% of those severely displaced (i.e. at risk of their very lives) are of African-American origin. One-hundred-and-fifty years after slavery became illegal in America, and 40 plus years after Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs and Civil Rights legislation, blacks in American continue to receive the short end of the stick. There has to be some reason for that other than ‘genetic’ or ‘cultural’ inferiority. Along with the African Americans, one can also lump in all those ‘others’ who are forced into virtual economic slavery by an economic system de-regulated to the point where people are coerced to work for less than sufficient wages. A large pool of un-or-under-employed human bodies seems to suit the unbridled capitalists well, and may even be necessary to their grandiose practice of unconscionable profit taking.

Many of these hapless individuals are being criticized for not having evacuated (the now typical new Republican tactic of blaming the victim). It may be hard for some to comprehend, but many of these individuals probably had not a vehicle in which to escape, nor money with which to purchase gas, and once they had gotten out of town where is a flat-broke person to stay? I am more than certain that they, too, would have loved to have jumped into their Cadillac Esplanades, and taken the family to some posh motel somewhere for a few days relaxation. Such is not, however, either the privilege or the possibility of the poor. Being poor, you see, is a 24 hour a day hustle just to survive, even when all things are going normally and smoothly. There should be a law against suggesting such people should have evacuated.

Dubya & Co. – a few days late but what the hell – has finally come around to leaving Crawford and mouthing mushy trivialities about how everyone should be praying. Give me a freaking break! Even from out of utter disaster, you see, the oligarchs represented by Dubya mean to turn this disaster (as they did with 911) into a boon for themselves. First off, the Federales have now asserted Republican control (FEMA and Homeland Security) over the disaster areas. They have already begun to dismantle environmental controls in order to refine petroleum (or so they at least claim), but because it includes the collusion of the energy corporations their explanations cannot be in the least wise accredited. The energy companies themselves (all charter members of Dubya’s secret cabal), even prior to the hurricane’s landfall, began to talk up gas prices, no doubt to prepare the unsuspecting for the rip-offs to follow, as per usual. In some gas stations in the South prices have already been raised beyond $6 a gallon!

Many of the Homeland Security and FEMA types are simultaneously talking about working with the private sector to house the thousands of homeless. Guess who is going to profit obscenely from that not-so-little adventure? And guess who will pay? What you won’t see are any of those deserted barracks, and family houses, on numerous military bases being utilized to house these people – who, beside the taxpayer, would stand to benefit from that? This will turn out to be yet another Halliburton-like government give-away program for Hyatt International, or something – you can just feel it in the air. Ditto, by the way, for those ultimately hired to fix whatever medical problems (and they will be legion) may arise – they too will be well placed to make a killing off of someone else’s misery. Of course, tax cuts for the super wealthy will nevertheless continue on as usual. The Red-Cross alone will collect enough from this disaster to satisfy their salaries for the coming decade ahead – they, too, have their well-rehearsed rational justifying such practice. Dubya has already suggested that folks send in their money donations.

While the oligarchs are licking their chops over the possible windfall profits to be manipulated and realized, those in the disaster areas are left with little comfort, and very few workable choices. They took the cops off the task of rescuing people in order to stop the looting. Should the right to private property trump the right to survive? Trust me, if I were in that mess, was hungry, had a family to feed, and no other recourse, I would in a millisecond loot whatever I required to ensure the family’s survival, although I would not go beyond that. Going beyond that is sort of silly, anyway. What the hell are you going to do with something extra to lug around, and where O where are you going to plug it in? Beats me why people are taking things absolutely ridiculous to the circumstances. Although, being dirt poor, having to watch others enjoy the benefits of this condemned culture, and not being able to participate might provide an answer to that dilemma. Being able to own, if even for only a few moments, that which has for so long been denied might provide sufficient incentive, even knowing that is was all ultimately going to be in vain. Were there a Ferrari parked somewhere along a dry street, with a few other dry streets surrounding it, I too might sorely be tempted. After all, who would have blamed the Helots if they had revolted?

The saddest thing, of course, is to watch these thousands of individuals, their personalities devastated by the circumstances, as they try to come to grips with an already cruel existence that has suddenly been made astronomically far crueler. I watched on some channel as some female reporter interviewed an older gentleman who had lost in his wife somewhere as they were attempting to escape the rising flood waters within their home, and both he and the reporter were crying. Others in the media are finding it just as difficult to ignore the human devastation around them. Just watching at home is an overwhelming experience. What must it be like to actually find yourself caught up in such a mess? And why do we have so many citizens too poor or too wretched to safely evacuate? What sort of social contract have they gotten themselves caught up in? Beyond that even what is happening with everyone’s pets and livestock?

It has been reported in the last few days that some terrorist outfit somewhere has said of the disaster that it is more or less poetic justice that the United States should be made to suffer. I disagree. Were those terrorists here to witness the events, and feel the pain, they would quickly realize that those suffering are not the problem, but rather those flying overhead at thousands of feet removed, in their air conditioned cabins, are the ones that deserve God’s retribution. After all, since Dubya assumed office the world has done nothing but suffer the consequences of his reign. Once, that would have been enough to dispose of any so-called leader.

God Bless you, victims of the disaster.

2005-08-30T05:33:00.000-07:00

Zoroaster

What’s Left of America?

2005-08-30T05:29:00.000-07:00

Sad to say, but these days the question constantly on my mind is, what’s left of the America we used to know; what does it represent; and what noble cause does it any longer pursue?

Sadder to say, there is nothing left of the America I (at least) used to know, and what it represents to me now is as repulsive as almost any society or regime I can imagine. That I should feel that way about my own country is sadder even still.

O, they still wave Old Glory about with as much gusto as ever, and it is still serves as the last refuge for the scoundrels at bay, but its meaning is absent and only its empty form appears to wave in the breeze. Maybe that’s why there is such a push to protect it among the rooting boars in the House of Representatives, or why it hangs behind Dubya Inc. in every photo op taken – its form being as meaningless thus as the legislation passed by this Congress has been to the well-being of 99% of the population. It’s just another colorful rag quivering in the wind.

Once, America (partnered with the Soviet Union, England, France, et al) saved Europe, along with a large percentage of Asia, from the ravages of unmitigated fascism encircling the globe, and brought substance to those ideals which championed freedom and democracy, justice, economic opportunity, self-determination, openness and freedom of the press.

Once, free peoples of the globe – or those who would be free – looked to America as its roll model par excellence, and secretly wished for our success so as to prove the loftier ambitions of humankind, to demonstrate they were indeed obtainable, and sustainable. We had, at least de jure, purged ourselves of racism and slavery; brought our energies to bear against misogyny and violence towards women; sought to integrate all races and faiths under a single broad banner of brotherhood; made manifest an abiding mutual respect, cooperation, and even admiration for all the differing ethnic intensities found in this land.

Once, we had set out to demonstrate that regulated capitalism could indeed be used to bring economic dignity to its kaleidoscopic citizenry, and to establish an economic morality to the great undertakings of industry. No one, either able to work, or legitimately prohibited from work, would starve in America. No one would be forced to labor 40 hours for less than a reasonable standard of living. Once, the money managers knew well the meaning of fiduciary responsibility and the moral duty attendant upon superior information.

We didn’t always succeed absolutely, but the values remained embedded and each effort made aimed at advancing our own little practical utopia. America was where lofty ideals could become hard reality.

None of that, of course, any longer applies. Now we have degenerated into the morass of partisan patriotism, have used our great and persuasive treasure in ventures selfishly intended, have enthralled our citizenry in countless schemes of material addiction, and have become as secret and ill-intended as any example taken from history. America today is an oligarchy of carnivorous ambition.

We have invaded Iraq with not so much as a ‘by your leave’ from the other nations of this globe. We have demonstrated our disdain for global accord through despicable acts too numerous to mention (Bolton, Kyoto Agreements, etc). We have trampled human rights in all dimensions possible (Abu Ghraib, secret “gulags” around the world, sanctioning of torture, etc), and have smeared the visage and good faith of the United States in anyone with eyes to see. We have reneged upon and abdicated our responsibilities as “fair broker” in the Middle East.

Likewise, have we trampled human rights within our own borders; established “acts” that makes of our government the de facto “Big Brother” of the globe; have denied to millions the equitable succor of our government; have actively and purposely dug up, activated, and legitimatized social animosity and hatreds; have hidden behind the skirts of women, and behind the newspeak slogans of an archetypical demagoguery, the true neo-fascist intentions of our crony-capitalist directors; and have created of these United States a hellish nightmare of deceit and religious fanaticism.

Similarly also, have we now forgotten our economic imperative – to create not a privileged oligarchy, but a just and honorable livelihood for all. Instead our gormandizing managers have sought hegemony over all life functions, and seek to work the flesh from our bones without due and adequate compensation. Rather than loyalty to America, these Komodo capitalists demonstrate only the privileges of birth and the willingness to sell out even their own children to the immediate profits of the moment. Well paying employment has given way to jobs within the service (mostly fast food) sector, and the exigencies of a hallucinated market dictate every move the elite hierarchy makes, while conveniently justifying every lame excuse they offer. For most of us, there is no existing real economic opportunity which ranges beyond the gratification of our immediate needs. All the capital now belongs in perpetuity to others.

The Stars and Bars of our once great and nobly inspired society have become less inspiring than the swastika of another’s design, which had at least an honorable and historical connection to ancient aboriginal ideals. Today, war and assassination mongers substitute for leadership in the hierarchies of American Imperialism. Today, full spectrum dominance is the value we seek. Today, the flag of the United States stands for nothing whatsoever commendable, only the forgotten dream of a Nation under internal siege by forces of the gravest darkness. Today, it appears as though Angra Mainyu (Zoroastrian God of all things evil) will at last defeat his rival, Ahura Mazda (God of Light) – at this time in this empire at least.

Auld Lang Syne, America, Auld Lang Syne.