Occam's Razor's Edge

2009-08-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

I’ve learned a lot in the last several months carpooling with a guy who really likes his conservative talk radio and working for two years at a place that is by and large conservative. Now I understand the need for conservatives in the political debate. Those who want fiscal responsibility and limited government serve as our political doting mothers. They do not want to see us rush foolishly here and there and everywhere and not scrape up our knees. They want success for us but want us to be careful about it. Much like Chris Rock has said “I don’t condone it but I understand.”

In the past conservatism has brought us fine thinkers and even a few good presidents like Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt. Modern conservatism is sadly such an unholy mess of ideas that I can’t see anyone worth a damn coming out of it until conservatives and the Republican Party change. The GOP is horrible mix of plutocratic policies, religious fanaticism and thinly veiled bigotry against women, minorities, homosexuals and the poor that I have no idea if this party can even make it another decade. Sure it worked temporarily. The religious right voted en masse for the GOP and white suburban folks ate it up. Eventually however their fortress made of sand got washed into the sea. The policies of Reagan of don’t tax the rich, spend endlessly on bullets and bombs and not bread or books and let the market do as it damn well pleases have bit us in the dead square in the ass. Reagan was little more than a really good used car salesman. He sold America a Buick with a broken transmission and we loved, for a while anyway.

Most people are wising up to this ideology and are turning away. But some do however cling to it ferociously. Why the ferocity? Because conservatives are playing the only card that has worked for them recently, fear.

Vote for a Democrat and there will be another 9/11!

They will take your guns!

National Health Care will kill old people and ration health care!

Death Panels!

Gay marriage will ruin marriage and turn everyone gay!

Is this blatant fear mongering? You bethca!

Dwight David Eisenhower once said that he would rather convince a man than intimidate him because once the fear was gone the man was lost but if you convinced him he would stick with you forever. Sadly this sort of thinking is lost on the modern conservative movement and the GOP. All the noise and fear and piss and vinegar in the world will not convince the people.

2008-02-15T23:14:00.000-08:00

I‘m sitting at work today and I overhear a conversation. This one guy starts to ask this guy about how if man and apes are related how come apes don’t have to shave, which is pretty damn funny. Then again I’m easily amused.

But anyway the other guy as soon as he hears something about apes and people being related started making snotty comments about evolution. The witty gent avoids confrontation because he’s smart like that. I avoid it in the interest of keeping my job and also keeping my blood below a low rolling boil.

But the sad fact is the anti-evolution guy doesn’t really understand his own beliefs. Let us examine shall we.

The whole argument the guy used was basically that there was no way that by sheer happenstance that simple single cell organisms could have formed into people. If I would have been feeling frisky I could have kneecapped the poor little feller. It would go something like this.

OK so you find in totally impossible that over the course of billions of years that human could have evolved from a far less complex life form but you’re willing to buy into that there is a never-ending being who is omnipotent and omniscient and that being has no beginning or end at all. You’re willing to blow off years of research and evidence but you’re willing to put your unwavering faith in something you have only one book to substantiate this being’s existence? That seems highly illogical to me.

Of course I have zero idea what reaction I would have gotten and I’m not curious to find out. I have seen enough rage in the name of religion for a million million lifetimes.

I know why lots of religious people reject science. It’s because faith is such a fragile thing and if you are not strong in your convictions it is easily fractured. I find it odd that some of the most faithful people on the planet have also been refreshingly pro-science. The last two Popes have said that evolution is fact. The Dalai Lama has written on the convergence of science and religion. Yet these people whose faith is so utterly concerned about their own salvation and nothing else always have such fragile beliefs. Any evidence that forces them to think or consider that God really does work in mysterious ways just throws them for a loop. They haven’t any real strength of conviction so they can’t afford any.

I’m not saying I am the possessor of all answers. I am however just brave and just curious enough to ask questions of everything I think and believe. Sometimes I even change my mind. It happens and it’s a good thing. If we are not receptive to new ideas and information we might as well be dead. To never challenge your own beliefs and ideas is dangerous because start to think that you have the only correct ideas and beliefs and that never works out well.

2007-08-15T19:39:00.000-07:00

Things are not going well for George Bush's unholy crusade in Iraq.

First of the report set to be delivered to Congress in September by Gen. David Petraeus will not be written by him it will be written by the White House.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/08/15/petraeus-white-house-report/

Tomorrow the Pentagon will release a report stating that suicide rates in the military are at their highest rate in 26 years.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070816/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/army_suicides_11

Of course there was that bombing the other day in Iraq that killed at least 250 people. As the insurgents simply moved away from where the US military is the strongest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/15/world/middleeast/15cnd-iraq.html

First off the White House is going to evaluate it's own war? The same White House that is the only source of blindly loyal support for the war? Well that just makes this report about as legitimate as a three dollar bill doesn't it? What happened to listening to the troops on the ground? Bush wants this war to continue regardless of the facts.

Now onto the 99 suicide victims who were serving in our armed forces, about a quarter of them were on duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. So not only are the “bad guys” getting our troops but also now there are those in the military that would rather die then continue to serve. Of course this number is for active duty military. It says nothing of those servicemen who returned home with PTSD and ended up dead as a result or that will someday.

The horrific bombing in Iraq the other day that killed at least 250 and maybe many more has illustrated the futility of us playing policeman in Iraq. We simply lack the manpower to do a sufficient job. It is not slight on the soldiers that they were sent in without enough troops to do the job at hand. It is the fault of leadership as is most military failure. Now our surge has led to the deaths of hundreds of Iraqis in an area that was relatively peaceful until now.

George Bush is the type of man that makes me happy I believe there is a Hell for him to fry in. Just when I think he has hit bottom he finds a way to sink even more. He has cemented his legacy as the worst president in our history so far. He is now jockeying for position in the race to be the worst leader in the history of the free world. January 20th, 2009 cannot get here fast enough.

2007-08-04T19:38:00.000-07:00

Barrack Obama is doing something quite odd for a politician, at least in my own personal experience. The more he talks the more I like him. Usually when a big presidential race is picking up steam my faith in the candidates dwindles away into utter despair. But Obama is shocking me right and left. Of course he’s taking heat for it from the Washington establishment. But it’s a well-known fact that they suck. So no worries there.

First he says that in the first year of his presidency he wouldn’t rule out talking to leaders like Hugo Chavez. Hillary Clinton says she wouldn’t talk to leaders like Chavez in her first year. I tend to favor Obama. Our leaders are always feeding us this line about never taking options of the table militarily. So why take diplomatic options off of the table? Is our foreign policy now written on the bottom of bombs we drop on our enemies? If all options are to remain open they must include diplomacy even with those with which we may disagree. For Obama to have the courage, the honesty and the intelligence to say this is rather encouraging. Of course courage, honesty and intelligence are not encouraged in DC much anymore.

Then Obama says he wouldn’t use nuclear weapons against terrorists in the Middle East. Hooray for our team! Of course our team is minute compared to the fear-mongering jackals that just have to keep their precious nuclear option on the table. It’s sort of like the snotty little kid in elementary school who always used the threat of having his older larger brother beat the tar out of you. Only the big brother wasn’t as unthinkable as nuclear weapons. I question anyone who thinks using nuclear weapons is a good idea. Even in Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan and we knew where we were, even if he had a nuclear weapon. Would us using a nuclear weapon truly be worth it? Would all the innocents dead and poisoned and sickened be worth it? Wouldn’t be advisable and saner to use all other possible options before opening the gates to Hell ourselves? One small nuclear weapon could potentially kill millions of people. Is that ever worth it? So again Obama has shown the courage and honesty and intelligence that is so rare in our leaders anymore.

While I’m on the topic of politics let me mention that the Senate decided that the President having the power to spy without the way of any real oversight is all right. So let’s see habeas corpus is deader than Elvis in this country. The 4th Amendment is barely worth the paper it’s printed on. We have secret prisons on foreign soil. Our military budget is sacred. Our schools and infrastructure and health care system is paid no mind what so ever. So when did we turn into in the old Soviet Union? Was I out of town? Did I not get that memo?

OK, I’m joking about us turning into the old Soviet Union. But I have to crack jokes because to think about what the President is doing to my country and what the Congress is allowing him to do is far too sickening and infuriating.

I now dedicate this song to Congress and the President. I think it fits.

“Go straight to hell,
All you government personnel,
Sittin' awf'ly well
In your big, white house up on the hill.

You say now, give me a home
Where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and antelope play.
You can bet your ass we'll blow them all away.

Fuck it up until it's bent,
Then a-wonder where it went.
Thinkin' you was a-heaven sent, ha ha ha,
You're nothin' but hell!

Go straight to hell.”

“Government Personnel”

Tesla

2007-07-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

Recently I’ve heard it said a lot that religion is to blame for this problem or that war or that religion is the worst thing to ever happen to humanity. While I do agree certain people have used religion to achieve ends that are far from holy. I can’t blame religion for the world’s ills. I can’t blame religion any more than I can blame xenophobia or greed or prejudice or any of a thousand other reasons people have sought to hate and destroy one another.

I know there seems to be a growing resentment towards religion. Christopher Hitchens has made a tidy sum of money banging the drum against religion. But really you can’t blame religion.

Here’s the real problem. Religion has never really started a war or a crusade or an inquisition. Religion has never tortured anyone. Religion has never blown up an abortion clinic. The sad truth is it’s us who does that. It’s a basic fault of the human race. We have this nasty streak in us and I’m pretty sure it’s as much nature as it is nurture, if not far more.

We like the cold comfort of being led. We look for leaders. We like it when someone seems strong and confident and seemingly has all the answers. Even if we forget to ask the really important questions like “Why am I listening to this person?” or “Is this going where I really want to go?”

Humans are territorial. We like our land and our house and our possessions and our money. We sure as Hell aren’t going to share it either. It’s mine and keep your filthy hands off of it. Of course being territorial on a 4.5 billion year old planet that we get 100 years on, if we’re lucky is pretty silly actually. We exist for but a bat of an eyelash of Mother Earth we really don’t own this planet. It owns us.

We seem hardwired with this behavior. Other primates, our animal cousins, have been shown to declare wars and murder and to defend their corner of the jungle or forest. Fortunately they haven’t figured out how to make sub-machine guns and H-bombs yet.

I think we have it hardwired into our DNA to defend our stuff and gather into groups. It’s our nature no matter how inhumanely it makes us act.

So I don’t buy that religion really causes wars or hate or jihads or any other unspeakable evil unleashed on humanity. It’s us. Only us.

God has never waged a war. Jesus has never tortured a prisoner. Allah has never ignited a car bomb. Moses has never ordered genocide. The Holy Spirit has never dropped an atomic weapon. It’s us. Only us. Just because some self-important megalomaniac does something in the name of this god or that god doesn’t mean anymore than if he did it in the name of money or country or race or his favorite football team. The actions are what are evil. The evil little bastard simply chooses the path that allows him to manipulate the most people. Sadly this often is religion because too often the necessity of having faith and reason isn’t emphasized. Having faith without reason is like handing a blind man a gun. You just know someone is going to get hurt.

If you’re going to get all excited about getting rid of religion to end all the world’s ills. You jolly well better be ready to get rid of nationalism and greed and property ownership and everything else that has ever sparked a conflict. But because nationalism and greed don’t try and dictate people’s sex lives or chemical intake it seems to me that those who are so zealous to eliminate religion aren’t quite so hot to eliminate that other stuff.

Also people like Christopher Hitchens are always so excited to tell you all the bad things religion has done, but why do they never mention the good? Why do they never bring up the schools and hospitals built by religions? Or why don’t they talk about the humanitarian aid done by religions? Why don’t they talk about the people who have gotten through severe hardships because of religion? The late Kurt Vonnegut postulated that what Karl Marx really meant by “Religion is the opiate of the people” is not some dictum against religion. Rather Marx was simply comparing religion to opium, the primary painkiller of Marx’s time, which Marx had used. He was simply stating that people took comfort from religion. Selective observation is an intellectual fallacy. You’d think there people who claim to be so skeptical would know that.

So getting rid of religion will solve absolutely nothing. Wars would still go on and people would still commit atrocity upon atrocity. The reasons might change but the blood would still be red and the deaths would still be just as painful.

The real solution is for everyone to realize they have a very powerful tool. They have the power of the question. They have the power to ask why. The power to demand answers. People need to realize that they have to ask questions of those who would tell them what to do. People need to take this responsibility seriously. Even when the asking these questions makes them uneasy as they already deep sown inside know the answer and that answer makes them very uneasy. It sometimes requires that you stand alone and go against the grain and that might just not be in everyone’s nature.

I know this idea of mine won’t suit a lot of people. As they already have made up their minds and religion is evil and has caused this war and that problem or whatever. But I can’t see how religion is to blame. It’s always human behavior that starts all these problems. The National Rifle Association has a slogan that goes, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” And so it goes that, religions don’t start wars. People start wars. Religions don’t protect child molesters. People protect child molesters. Religions don’t teach people to hate. People teach people to hate.

It’s all our fault. God help us all.

2007-07-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

President Bush,

I know in the past I have called for your resignation. I meant those times in the past and I mean it now. For the sake of the nation and maybe even the world you must resign.

Today the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby was commuted. He will spend not even a millisecond in jail for obstructing justice. Even though he was convicted in a court of law. Libby is now essentially a free man. The fine and community service will hardly impede him in getting some comfy cozy lobbyist job or sitting on the board of some ivory tower think tank. Libby for all intents and purposes has gotten off Scot-free.

Need I remind you of your job President Bush? The job of the executive branch is to enforce the law. How is commuting the sentence of convicted man who has neither set foot in jail or exhausted his appeals enforcing the law? How are you fulfilling your duties as President of the United States of America by commuting the sentence of man the nation as a whole wanted to see go to jail? The nation did not favor a pardon or commutation. Only the most hardcore of the Republican base favored a pardon or commutation. The rest of the nation wanted to see justice served.

You spoke today of Libby’s sentence being harsh.

Need I remind you the God only knows how many men and even boys you have detained at the prison at Guantanamo Bay without the benefit of even a trial?

Need I remind you of how the Military Commissions Act suspended habeas corpus for so-called enemy combatants?

Need I remind you of America’s use of water boarding and sleep deprivation and sensory deprivation with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay?

Need I remind you of how the Constitution was violated to wiretap American’s phone calls without warrant and go through their bank records?

What is more severe President Bush, two and a half years for being a convicted criminal or ignoring international law and denying people their God given human rights and their Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms?

This whole incident reeks of putrid politics. Instead of letting justice take its course you instead protected your lackeys and coddled your dwindling political base. There was no intention on your part to ever uphold the law was there President Bush? You instead played politics to protect your crony and ultimately yourself.

You also played the coward today. You released a press release on the Monday of an unusually long 4th of July weekend. Congress is not in session. So you tried to slip this one under the radar, so to speak. You didn’t even have the courage to speak the words aloud. You just released a written statement. At least when Ford pardoned Nixon he said it in front of a camera.

President Bush your presidency has been a miserable failure both domestically and internationally. You have read children’s books while America was under attack and eaten cake and played guitar while thousands were abandon in hurricane ravage New Orleans. You started a war in Iraq that we should have never fought to begin with. All the while you allowed veteran’s to lose their benefits. You have dragged your feet in stopping pollution to protect the profits of your corporate allies. You have borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 presidents combined. Now you have let a convicted criminal walk away a free man for your own political well-being.

President Bush please resign and resign now. The damage you have done to this county’s reputation and psyche and future is immense. We can ill afford another year and a half of you as our president. Please resign and let America start trying to repair the damage you have done now.

2007-06-13T23:21:00.000-07:00

Senator Lieberman,

Recently you said that it might be necessary to use air strikes against Iran whom you say is arming Iraqi insurgents. While I can understand but not condone the use of this tough talk rhetoric. I don’t think now is the best time for the United States to rattle its sabers.

I know there is a very real possibility that Iran is in fact arming Iraqi insurgent groups. Of course the United States has recently suggested that it should arm Sunni insurgent groups to aid in the fight against Al Qaeda. So I’m not totally positive that we have much of a moral high ground to take here. Certainly Iran is far from helping calm the violence in Iraq but given our own stance of arming insurgent groups I’m not sure we’re doing enough to calm violence either.

Also do you really think that bombing Iran will solve anything? If there is one clear fact about the Middle East it is that they do not cower in the face of violence, even violence from a far more technologically advanced enemy. So I fail to see how bombing Iran would do anything but fan the flames of violence and hatred that already burn far too brightly in the Middle East.

If we were to bomb Iran and if the Iranian military was to retaliate is our military have the capacity to fight back? Our military by most estimates is already stretched dangerously thin, if were to engage Iran would we have the manpower necessary to fight them?

I know I do not reside in your state but I feel it important to voice my opinion. As a member of the US Senate you have tremendous power and it must be use wisely and in the best interest of the American people. What you are doing know seems to ring more of empty tough talk rather then deliberate reason.

Please reconsider your words Senator Lieberman. I know you’re steadfast in your support of the war in Iraq. But escalating the conflict to include Iran isn’t the way to make the situation in Iraq any better and will do nothing but increase the body count and further damage the United States’ already considerable damaged international reputation.

2007-06-05T22:54:00.000-07:00

I know I’ve been neglecting this little corner of the blogosphere. My life is in a bit of a transition and I hope it all turns out for the better. That being said I should have more time to write things and leave them on here. It will be the usual hodge-podge of thoughtful essays and ranting and raving. So if you’ve read it before you’re in for more of the same old same old. How good or bad this is totally depends on your opinion of my writing.

There has been a lot going on lately. There have been terrorist plots revealed that don’t seem all that terrifying. A friend of mine who lives in the Czech Republic, pointed out that when the Czechs lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain the government announced threats on a regular basis. I’m not saying we live under a totalitarian communist government or anything it’s seems to be more headed for a totalitarian capitalist government. I wished I were kidding more about that.

Scooter Libby has been sentenced. I’m not sold he’ll ever see the inside of a jail cell or that he won’t get pardoned by Bush. But it’s also nice to see justice at least try and get served. I know Scooter Libby is just a career lackey who only keeps his job because he knows whose ass to kiss and how to hide evidence really well. But anytime one member of this band of inept criminals goes down in flames I’m pleased.

Bush wants to put a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. Then it hit me. Think back to when Reagan died. What was the one moment the news channels just hammered at you? It was Reagan telling Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. See they way I got it figured Bush wants the Cold War back on so he can win it again and get his approval ratings back up from where they are now, which is in the neighborhood of an earthworm’s testicles.

Paris Hilton is going to jail. If there were any justice they’d keep her.

The Presidential Race for 2008 is starting way too early. I only have any real hope for a few candidates so far. The Republicans are all pretty much scary or pathetic. Even Internet darling Ron Paul doesn’t get me too excited. Libertarians are little more then Republicans who are unapologetic about their partying and screwing. So my interest is relatively low. The Democrats are trying to figure how to oppose the war in Iraq and still look all pro-military and macho. Sure there’s candidates like Kucinich and Richardson that I hold out an iota of hope for. I’m certain Kucinich can’t get elected, even though his wife Elizabeth would be a stellar First Lady. Richardson is a dark horse but I fear without Hollywood and the other big money factions that back Democrats he might be sunk.

I intended this entry to be a brief one. I ended up with over 500 words of random rambling and complaining. I guess that does mean I’m back.

2007-05-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Congressional Democrats,

Recently you were locked in quite the heated struggle over funding for the war in Iraq. You were making demands of the President. Of course then the bill you sent to the President was vetoed and Congress didn’t override it. So now you’re making all manner of concessions to the President. The benchmarks are optional and more or less the President is getting what he wanted all along.

So if I may be so bold let me ask you a small question. What the fuck?

In November of 2006 when the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress it was said that your victory was referendum on the war. You held parties and thumped your chests and promised change. Well let’s see some. Oh you took a hard line stand for all of a few weeks and now you went and crawled back into your hole. Nice job. The Hollywood chapter of the Republican Party has shown its lack of spine one more time. Don’t give me this wishy-washy wait for September nonsense when there will be a report on whether or not the surge is working. The hundreds of American troops and thousands of Iraqis who will die between then and now can’t wait for September. The thousands of mentally and physically injured American soldiers can’t wait for a politically convenient time either.

I know your job is brutal. I mean you work about half of the year isn’t it? You get all sorts of retirement and health benefits that aren’t offered to the common laborer. You get invited to parties and wined and dined all the time. It’s got to be just brutal. But I’d like to think maybe you could try a bit harder. Maybe you could take a bit harder stance. Maybe outwit a guy who can’t ride a bicycle without falling off or pronounce nuclear. It can’t be that tough.

I know you’re afraid of being unpopular. But guess what nobody really likes politicians. I mean if you really talk to people there is an intrinsic distrust of you folks in Congress. Plus most of your districts are so gerrymandered that you’d have to get caught doing something pretty awful to not get reelected.

I know politics is all a power play and so forth. Normally that only mildly nauseates me. But when it comes to a war that we should have never fought. A war, that when we did fight it, had no plans for what to do with Iraq after we toppled their already crippled government. I tend to get pretty sick to my stomach over it. You acted a few months ago like you were going to end to this war and now you’ve caved in. You’ve backed off and emboldened a President is already far bolder than he is bright. You’re falling your country and the rest of the world who wants this war to end.

The American people want this war over and the Iraqi people want us out. It might help to remember that. If Congress doesn’t deliver and this war goes nowhere but downhill, 2008 could be a political revolution across the board.

“I've got no patience now
So sick of complacence now
Sick of sick of sick of sick of you”
“Know Your Enemy”
Rage Against The Machine

2007-04-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

Recently the First Lady Laura Bush appeared on the Today Show she proceeded to stick her foot in her mouth so badly she almost kicked herself in the butt.

Video Clip

ANN CURRY: Do you know the American people are suffering… watching [Iraq]?

LAURA BUSH: Oh, I know that very much, and, believe me, no suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this. And certainly the commander-in-chief who has asked our military to go into harm’s way.

AC: What do you think the American people need to know…

LB: Well, I hope they do know the burden of worry that’s on his shoulders every single day for our troops. And I think they do. I think if they don’t, they’re not seeing what the real responsibilities of our president are.

AC: It must be hard for you to watch him in this.

LB: It’s hard. Of course, it’s absolutely hard.

Why gee I believe there is something in there that bears repeating. “Believe me, no suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this”. OK let me see if I can calm down enough to write something mildly coherent.

Laura Bush dares compare her suffering to that off all the soldiers who have come back with missing limbs, eyes and skull. Laura Bush dares to say her and her husband are suffering worse than the mother or wife of a dead soldier. She seems to think that they are the burdened ones. The president who has taken more vacation than any other in history is horribly burdened by this war. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want to invite Cindy Sheehan in for coffee. He has a guilty conscience. Though I kind of tend to doubt that. If he had a conscience he would have been institutionalized after all the suffering he allowed to go on in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

It’s not a matter of conscience it’s an utter lack of context. Let’s face facts. The Bush family hasn’t missed a lot of meals or paychecks or had creditors knocking on their door or buried a lot of their young because the hospital refused them. I would guess the Bush family’s definition of suffering is a might bit different than other people’s. Remember after Hurricane Katrina hit and all those people have to go sleep in the Astrodome and Barbara Bush, the president’s mom said this stupid spiteful thing? “Almost everyone I've talked to says, “We're gonna move to Houston.' What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas... Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality, and so many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway. This is working very well for them.” [Source] You see kids the Bush family doesn’t seem to have a really good handle on this whole suffering thing. To them suffering means only one type of bottle water available at the tennis court or getting to the restaurant too late to get the risotto. It would seem that somewhere in Laura’s mind she really is suffering worse than anyone. She’s too insulated to realize anything else. Living in the White House and being the governor of Texas’ wife and having a husband that went from being addicted to nose candy and hooch to being addicted to Jesus can’t leave one terribly grounded in the reality the other 300 million Americans endure.

So Laura either needs to live the life of a single mom trying to raise three kids or the reality of a young wife carrying for her husband who is now a brain damaged veteran of the Iraq War or she simply needs to get better handlers to tell her what to say. I doubt she would do the first two.

2007-04-24T23:06:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech there has been a renewed interest in the debate over gun control. Of course this fervor over gun control will last about another week and then the public will move on and worry something else. Perhaps another celebrity will pass under odd circumstances. Those seem to be quite the attention grabbers.

But that aside what about gun control? What of this “hot button” issue? It does seem to stir up rather vigorous debate. Of course by vigorous debate I mean people yelling at each other and solving nothing. It does spark some rather passionate responses. But I think most of that can be attributed to the fact that gun control, like abortion, really seems to stir up the extremes of the issue. You don’t hear a lot out of the moderates on gun control. You only seem to hear from the NRA that thinks Americans need .50 caliber machine guns and assault weapons or you hear from the ban guns and let’s all go share our feeling over a latte crowd.

So what’s a sane person to do? Let me try and explain where I stand on the issue, which is an odd mixture or pragmatism, realism and maybe dash of resignation.

Let’s be honest for a moment. But just a moment I don’t want to seem pushy. Americans are armed to the teeth and that isn’t going to change. This is an armed madhouse we live in and the inmates are running the asylum. So unless we send in, rather ironically, armed guards into every house and have them forcibly remove all the guns we aren’t going to disarm. So we need to be a bit smarter about guns. Plus I realize that there are legitimate non-criminal reasons for owning a firearm.

If you want to hunt I say go for it. But the weapons that are actually good for hunting are stuff like shotguns and rifles. The shotguns aren’t off the sawed off variety. The rifles aren’t of the semi-automatic kind. So if someone wants to own a 30/30 bolt-action rifle for hunting I’m ok with that. If they want an Uzi for the same purpose I have issues.

If some wants to target shoot I’m ok with that. Though I would suggest that archery is a more ancient and more difficult discipline and might also be worthy of your time. But if you want to stand around shooting clay pigeons and paper targets fine. So be it. But again you don’t need Uzis and such for this purpose.

If you feel the need to protect your home and family with a firearm, I’m sort of ok with that. Though I have doubts about how effective a burglar deterrent a gun really is. I recognize that some people, for whatever reason derive piece of mind from having a weapon at the ready. If you do I think there needs to some restrictions. Licensing would be a nice touch. Somehow having a well-educated gun owner makes me sleep better. Having someone brandishing a weapon that learned all their firearm skills from Clint Eastwood movies makes me uneasy. So some licensing and gun education would be nice. Also you don’t need some high capacity firearm to protect your invaluable collection of Don Ho records. Chances are you will never discharge the weapon. Much less put 15 rounds into a guy. So a six shots tops seems logical to me.

As you can tell from my tone I’m not a fan of guns. I wish we had never invented the stupid things. The Chinese when they invented gunpowder used it for fireworks. Then those goofy blue-eyed Europeans got a hold of it and the rest is blood soaked history. Some days I wish I were born a rattlesnake. It would be an improvement. At least I understand why rattlesnakes kill.

I know we’re not going to disarm. The pro-gun folks are right in that if somebody wants somebody else dead bad enough they’ll find a way to kill them. Cain and Abel started a downward spiraling trend. But the problem guns have mad killing to easy to impersonal. It used to be if you wanted a guy dead you at least had to lay your mitts on the guy or look him in the eyes. Now with the modern technological curse that is the gun. You can drive by a guy’s house and kill him without even seeing his face. The weak can slaughter the strong and the coward can kill the brave. It seems horribly unnatural to me.

I know the NRA is fond of trumpeting every time someone stops a robbery or whatever with their personal firearm. They don’t seem to trumpet all the drive by shootings and armed robberies. They’re not so quick to point out all the accidental gun deaths. They’re none too proud of all the people that think this life totally sucks and put in a gun in their mouth to end their pain. Selective observation gets us nowhere. We need to understand that guns while unfortunately necessary are powerful and horrible machines.

I know this debate is really about human nature and not guns. Anything that gives people power needs to be addressed with some skepticism be it guns, government or religion. As much as I want to be hopeful for the human race it‘s hard. We keep finding new ways to destroy and control our fellow human beings. Ultimately this gun debate will rage on until people decide to not live in fear and to treat each other more considerately.

2007-04-10T21:51:00.000-07:00

So what have I learned by watching the news today? Well Don Imus said some very naughty things about the Rutgers women’s basketball team and got suspended from his job as a radio talk show host. I also learned who the daddy of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby is. Since it’s not me and it was no one that would make the media have a seizure, like OJ Simpson, I don’t care. Never really did think the kid was mine or care for that matter.

I’ve also picked up that John McCain thinks that Baghdad is as safe as Mayberry to walk around. Of course when 22 armed soldiers flank you, 10 armored Humvees and two Apache helicopters escort you, safety is kind of relative.

Of course the media covered McCain’s visit so well, because he is running for president. Apparently now the Presidential elections start in earnest right after the mid-term elections. This is a bad idea. Let me explain.

For one having these long drawn out elections makes for a lot of political burnout. If you think it’s rough seeing attacks ads on TV for a few months during an election. Try sitting through years of talking heads blabbering back and forth on TV about it. The apathy could be overwhelming. Americans are already alarmingly apathetic towards voting and politics in general. Force it down their throats for two years and their going to stay home on election Tuesday.

Also these long drawn elections favor the well-connected politicians with lots of ability to raise money. Generally this money comes from people who expect something in return. You would have to be a naïve little monkey to believe that candidates are drawing tens of millions of dollars from people making small donations. If we are ever going to end the cycle of presidents who are beholden to big business, we have to change the way elections are run. By allowing candidates years now to have fundraisers where big businesses pay thousands for a dinner and later expect to have the ear of the candidate we are never going to break this cycle.

Of course the media will more than likely coronate a candidate on February 5th 2008 when 20 states have their primaries. The media has taken to calling it Super Duper Tuesday. I’m not making that up. I wish I were. So all the primaries that follow good old Super Duper Tuesday might be utterly irrelevant. Somehow the idea of one day to hold all the primaries and caucuses just gets more tempting all the time. Why shouldn’t the whole country have a say in who gets to run for President from each party? We don’t hold the elections on separate days why hold the primaries on widely separated dates and make so many of them essentially meaningless?

As you might be able to tell, I’m suffering burnout. I know it’s necessary to keep an eye on the news and politics and I don’t hate it but I don’t love it either. It’s easy to burn out when so much of it seems so wrong.

2007-03-30T23:43:00.000-07:00

First off excuse my rather lengthy absence from updating my humble blog. Life is odd sometimes and I just wasn’t able to update with anything I felt good enough. Of course some people argue that I never update my blog with anything good but that’s another entry.

Pat Tillman was a rather atypical athlete. He was well read. He was selfless. He was loyal to the team that drafted him, the Arizona Cardinals, and stayed with them turning down millions from the St. Louis Rams. After the attacks of September 11th the enlisted in the Army turning his back on a successful professional football career. He wanted to help bring those who perpetrated the attacks to justice. On April 22, 2004 Pat Tillman was fatally wounded while serving in Afghanistan. His death was held up as heroic. Sports writers said he should be enshrined in every football stadium in the NFL and placed in the Professional Football Hall of Fame. He was a war hero. He was straight out of a John Wayne movie. He sacrificed a privileged life to fight and died at the hands of the terrorists who sought to harm us. While forsaking a career in the NFL to serve one’s country is indeed noble and he was undoubtedly brave. He did not die from a terrorist’s bullet or bomb. Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire. Of course the military as they so often do dragged their feet in this instance. Just today it was reported that, and I quote this article, “Just seven days after Pat Tillman's death, a top general warned there were strong indications that the NFL star-turned-soldier did not die in an ambush in Afghanistan, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press. But it was not until a month afterward that the Pentagon told the public and grieving family members the truth — that Tillman was mistakenly killed in Afghanistan by his comrades.
The memo reinforces suspicions that the Pentagon was more concerned with sparing officials from embarrassment than with leveling with Tillman's family.” So the military was more concerned with covering their asses than the truth. The military was more interested in selling Pat Tillman as a hero than as a victim of a tragic mistake. Pat Tillman’s family deserved far better.

Look at this picture.

In it you see Marine Sgt. Ty Ziegel and his fiancée Renee Klein before Ty was shipped of to fight in Iraq. They are a typical young engaged couple full of hopes and dreams and looking forward to a life together.

Now look at this picture.

That’s Ty and Renee on their wedding day in 2006. In 2004 a roadside bomb in Iraq injured Ty. That’s what Ty looks like after 19 surgeries, loosing sight in one eye, melting most of the skin off his body and so badly damaging his skull it had to be replaced with plastic. Look at Renee’s face. She is not the usual blushing bride. She looks like someone who has had all her hopes and dreams ripped away. She looks like someone who can’t for the life of her understand why this had to happen to him.

For the life of me I can’t understand it either. Why so many people have had their lives taken or forever changed for a war that should have never been fought. There was no good reason for us to go into Iraq. There was never any noble cause. There was never any justification or provocation. Whether or not is was a lie or a mistake isn’t as important as us admitting we need to leave. But Bush is forever belligerent. Bush will neither listen to Congress or the American people that it is time to end this war in Iraq. We need to end our occupation. We need to get our troops out of harm’s way. I know this will not resurrect Pat Tillman or heal Ty Ziegel’s wounds. But we can ill afford more deaths and injuries such as these. We need to shout until Bush listens. Sadly enough I’m not sure he ever will. The foolish consistency that has been the hobgoblin of his administration seems to be unrelenting. Bush seems bound and determined to fight this war forever. Of course his twin daughters won’t come home in a casket or with melted flesh.

I hate this war with a fervent passion. I hate this war not because as the proponents of this war assert that I have no will to fight or I am somehow morally weak. I hate this war because I am strong enough to be heartsick when I hear stories such as these and empathetic enough to not want to happen to anyone else.

Though Pat Tillman did not die in Iraq he did fight there and was not happy about it according to his family. The war he died fighting in Afghanistan is also failing as the Taliban has regrouped and strengthened and Osama Bin Laden still is a free man. We should end our occupation there as well. We have accomplished little with Bush’s War on Terror. All we have to show for it our lies, death, horrific injuries and shattered dreams.

I can stand little more of Bush’s belligerence. Bush now is so bereft of any real positive news from Iraq he has to quote Iraqi blogs in his speeches. He threatens to veto Congress’ spending bill for Iraq that requires we have a timetable for exiting Iraq. How is threatening to cut off funds to the soldiers supporting our troops in any real way? Bush has never really changed course in Iraq. There have been many other plans offered to him and he has by and large ignored them all. He stands ever defiant. He defies logic and reason and conscience and faith. He vacations at his Crawford ranch while 500 to 1000 veterans of the War on Terror are now homeless. He needs to be told that the War on Terror needs to end and needs to finally listen.

2007-02-21T18:36:00.000-08:00

I what follows is a letter I am presenting to Rep. Gillmor's office tomorrow. I will be meeting with him next Friday.

Dear Representative Gillmor

I am writing you to express my opposition to the planned troop escalation in Iraq. In light of the news that Great Britain intends to start a withdrawal of at least some of its forces and other nations with smaller forces are considering a total withdrawal of their forces. It begs the question, why are we escalating ours?

Sending approximately 21,000 extra troops to increase our forces in Iraq to about 150,000 will, according to most experts, accomplish little. We have had about 150,000 troops in Iraq before and it did not make Iraq any safer for either our forces or the Iraqi people. So at best this escalation can be seen as an easy solution to a much more difficult problem. At worst it can be seen as putting 21,000 soldiers unnecessarily into harm’s way.

We need to not escalate our forces but rather to use them in a different capacity. The Baker Commission suggested we need to start pulling our troops back and using them to train Iraqi forces and I agree. If Iraq ever has any hopes of being truly free it must learn to solve its problems with its own people. Is the US presence there thought of as an irritant by the Iraqis? If the Shi’ites and the Sunnis have such long standing religious intolerance for one another no amount of foreign military might will solve it. Only the Sunnis and the Shi’ites can resolve these issues. We might be able to assist in negotiations but armored divisions and cavalries are hardly the stuff of negotiations.

We need to follow the British example and start to withdrawal in addition to the reassignment of American forces. If there weren’t the American troops to attack, then we might see the violence abate. If the Iraqis were left to forge their own destiny we might be surprised how well they might do. However as long as the US military is seen as an occupying force we might never see any change. Also polls have shown that most Iraqis would like us to leave and that most view us occupiers rather than liberators. If we are there to help establish a democracy shouldn’t we take heed of the Iraqi people’s will?

I also think Congress and the military need to rethink this concept of the War on Terror. If this is as President Bush has suggested a long war without the victories we are accustomed to from past conflicts, then maybe we need a whole new way to fight it. If we are no longer fighting nations but rather rouge factions, then maybe we need to fight without occupations and large numbers of troops. If our enemy has so drastically changed from large empires with vast military force and highly productive industry to one that hides in the shadows and uses improvised weapons and sneak attacks then maybe we ought to reconsider our strategy as well.

I write you only as a citizen who is concerned that his country is not acting in manner that is best for both its citizens and the rest of the world. I know there are no easy answers but to find any answers we need to ask the hard questions.

2007-02-13T21:57:00.000-08:00

I haven’t inflicted a random thoughts column on you in a while. Since I’m stuck in my house because the blizzard outside I figured, why not? So here goes nothing.

The New Congress: OK, so this new Democratic majority was voted in for a new direction in Iraq, if I heard correctly. So what do they do? They propose non-binding resolutions. OK Democrats here’s a little piece of advice for you, the Constitution doesn’t stop this President. A non-binding resolution might as well be printed on toilet paper. Hell in the Senate there can’t even be a debate. The House had a debate that seemed to be a whole lot of talking loud and saying nothing. Somebody needs to grow a pair and do something. Even if it’s holding hearings that expose the incompetent nature of this war and destroy any credibility this President has so he has to play nice with the Congress. So if I may use a local phrase, either shit or get off of the pot. Do something. Or it will all just be like The Who once sang, “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” This was has gone on for too long and too much has been wasted in terms of lives and dollars. We can ill afford to continue down the road we are on.

Barrack vs. Hillary for Hollywood’s support: I saw a piece on a newscast about who would Hollywood support, Barrack Obama or Hillary Clinton. I can only reply with the words of the great Chuck D of Public Enemy fame, “Burn Hollywood Burn!” Hollywood is to the left what the fundamentalist Christians are to the right, a bunch of disconnected loud mouths who lean a little too far to the end of the political spectrum to really matter much to Main Street America. The only reason anyone gives a damn what they think is because they are famous. Their opinions are no more valid than any other you might in say the local barbershop. The Hollywood set just has the fame and fortune to afford a bigger megaphone. Sure they’re entitled to their opinions, I would never deny someone that, but they are no more or less important that John or Jane Q. Public’s opinions. They are simply able to afford the means to be heard better and have the social status to rub shoulders with the elite politicians.

Anna Nicole Smith dies: OK she’s dead I get it! I don’t care about who fathered her child or the struggle over who gets her earthly remains. Get this meaningless nonsense off of the news and cover something meaningful. The Scooter Libby trial is getting next to no play compared to this. That’s just sad.

Iran: With the recent allegations of Iran supplying weapons to Iraqi insurgents and the two carrier groups waiting off of Iran’s shore, I’m getting a little nervous. So I will just say this, doing anything militarily to Iran would be a catastrophic error. We haven’t the military resources to deal with fighting three countries at once. This paranoia about them having nuclear weapons is ludicrous. They might have one eventually and we have at least 10,000. I somehow don’t think Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is that crazy. We need to enter talk with them and deal with them diplomatically, end of argument. Just like we finally started to do with North Korea.

2007-01-31T22:02:00.000-08:00

Mr. President,

In the past I have written you usually complaining about this catastrophe you mismanaged or that war you lied to get us into and then mismanaged that as well. Well I know that a constant complainer is annoying. They get tuned out so to speak. Seeing how I have no desire to get tuned out I have to you with a compromise. It’s a solution to both our problems. I hope you like it. OK, so enough of the dilly-dallying here is my solution for us both. Now I can’t take total credit for this. Howard Zinn wrote a fine article that has helped inspire this idea. Let me help in a nation wide effort to get you impeached. Don’t worry about your friend and Vice-President I will help get Dick Cheney impeached as well.

You see President Bush this would be the best of both worlds. The United States would free herself from a very unpopular and incompetent president. The USA could get to start anew with a new leader could lead us out of the quagmire you’ve taken us into. Also by impeaching you the power of the Congress and the people would be reaffirmed that would strengthen many an Americans faith in our precious and fragile democracy. HOORAY FOR OUR TEAM! By our team I mean the entire planet.

What’s in it for you? I’m glad you asked. You would get to blame someone else for your failure. After you get the boot you could always look back and think that if those nasty Senators and Congressmen had only allowed you to finish your term then you would have succeeded. Your mom and you can just sit around pissing and moaning about how the secular progressives did you in. You can sit around blaming Hollywood. You can blame Al Franken or Molly Ivins (God rest her soul). You can blame me for all I care. I have given you a scapegoat to blame for your failed presidency. I say seize the opportunity and get out of the White House.

You see President Bush your presidency is not going well. Your approval ratings are abysmal. Your plan to send more than 20,000 additional troops in Iraq has met with stern disapproval from both Congress and the people. You ignored the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast in your State of the Union address, which angered more than a few people. You keep saber rattling with Iran though we do not have the ground forces to fight Iran. So you see President Bush I’m just trying to ease your burden. Which I would assume you would like. Given that you have spent so much time in Crawford, TX, at Camp David and at your parents' compound in Kennebunkport, Maine I would assume you don’t enjoy being burdened.

But there’s something else I need to mention. Today it came to liAnd you do want what's best for America. Don't you?ght that hand-written notes from Dick Cheney imply that you knew about the whole Joseph and Valerie Wilson affair. You knew what was happening when Valerie Wilson was exposed as a CIA agent, even though she was a covert agent. You knew about the attempt to discredit Joseph Wilson. If you sir knew that an undercover CIA agent was being exposed to protect your own political motives. Then you have violated the very laws, which you are sworn to uphold and have no business as the President of the United States of America.

So please accept my little compromise. I really do think it works out best for all involved parties. And you do want what's best for America. Don't you?

2007-01-28T19:54:00.000-08:00

Once again I packed myself up and took a bus ride to Washington DC for a rally. It was another rally calling for an end to the war in Iraq. Maybe you’ve seen the media reports about the “tens of thousands” who protested or maybe that Jane Fonda spoke at it, more on both of these things later.

First off Jim, a friend and local activist, and myself drove up to Toledo, OH to catch the bus to DC and mill about at the rally they were having. The rally itself was a bit uneven. I was intrigued by one speaker’s call for Congress to use the War Powers Act to bring our troops home, also the performance by a Black Muslim youth group was impressive. So we gathered and bordered the busses an hour late and away we went. The ride there was uneventful until we arrived at an understaffed restaurant and had to go the convenience store next to acquire breakfast. What I bought was identified as a breakfast burrito. Given that there was a tortilla involved I will assume it was a burrito but I cannot positively assert that it was food though. The next few hours were spent in constant prayer that my colon wouldn’t explode.

We get to DC and I gained several new fans simply because I understand how the DC Metro works. Apparently my bus was full of rally rookies or they all had short memories, because many people followed me as we made our way to the National Mall. The DC Metro system is a fine one indeed. It’s easy to follow if you do your research and know where you need to be. Which apparently lots of people didn’t but that’s ok, that’s why obsessive people like me are there.

So I arrive at the Mall at about 10:15 AM for the 11 AM rally and started hiking towards the east end of the Mall. When I got to the rally’s location I was a bit dumbstruck as there were only about 3000 people there. The rally got awfully unimpressive very quickly. But as good fortune would have it we just happened to get there early. As the day went along the crowd grew rapidly. It’s always tough to estimate a crowd you’re standing in. But the media’s “tens of thousands” seems a bit low. I would say 250,000 wouldn’t be an unreasonable estimate. But I have not seen any aerial crowd shots so it’s hard to be certain. Though I will say from the stage in front of 3rd Street to 4th Street it was packed. From 4th Street back to 7th Street was heavily populated but not as tightly packed as from 3rd to 4th Street.

The speakers were a generally good bunch at least the ones I heard. I particularly enjoyed Rabbi Lerner and Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Now I will admit that I did not hear all the speakers. About halfway through the rally my friends and I decided to wander about the rally and check out the tables and larger protest exhibits. So I did not hear a word Jane Fonda had to say. Of course Jane Fonda is infamous for her perceived sympathy for Communist regime of North Vietnam. I won’t get into that mess but Fonda did draw attention away from the other speakers and in some ways the entire rally and that’s a shame.

As always the rally crowd was wonderfully diverse and couldn’t have been nicer. It didn’t matter how tightly packed in you happened to be the people were always cordial and understanding. This was truly a peaceful gathering and the people were as inspiring as any speaker there. It’s the people I meet no matter how briefly that draw me to these rallies more than anything else.

So the time came for us to board the bus bound for Toledo. So again we returned to the same restaurant we attempted to get breakfast at expect this time they were adequately staffed and I got to sit down to my first real meal in over a day. Though the food was honestly mediocre I couldn’t have been more pleased to eat an actual meal unless it was served to me on Diora Baird’s naked body.

I would be remiss not to thank my new friends Pam, Jack and Steve for making the bus ride more tolerable thanks to their pleasant and engaging conversation. I would also be remiss to not mention that Moon Beam (the female) and Sun Ray (the male), whose names I have changed, should learn to, as that greatest of modern philosophers The Rock has taught us, know their roles and shut their mouths. When the most memorable line from an overheard conversation is, and I am not making this up, “I’ve always had a good relationship with squirrels”. The conversation isn’t going so well. I should also mention that they consider the study of science to be critical to the understanding of the supernatural and paranormal. Oddly enough I’m an admirer of many a scientist and moderately well versed in science and I have yet to meet a good scientist who gives any regard to the supernatural or the paranormal. Towards the end of the journey they wondered aloud if other people resented them having this conversation because other people, as they put it, didn’t think as deeply as them. No it’s that the other people don’t think as deeply as you it’s that they don’t get as stoned as you. It’s not a matter of education or philosophy. It’s a matter of chemical intake. Now you can believe anything you want but stoner philosophy is best reserved for those quiet personal moments shared with a few friends over your favorite bong not sitting on a bus behind an easily irritated German-Irish skeptic.

Anyway enough of my pissing and bitching, though I’m sure you’re used to it by now. If you have never been to large rally like this I encourage you to go. It’s energizing and helps get you through those days when you feel like the journey is straight uphill.

2007-01-23T22:47:00.000-08:00

I don’t why I do it to myself. I really don’t. I’m not a political junkie. I’m not blindly loyal to either of the two major parties. But I still sit through things like tonight’s State of the Union Address. Hell, I even took notes so I could remember the especially pathetic bits. You’d think I like stuff like this. You’d swear I enjoy it. I really don’t. It’s annoying and frustrating. Yet I think it’s my duty to sit through the barrage of lies, half-truths and spin that constitutes a political speech anymore. This president is particularly awful at it. He seemingly lives in a world only he can see.

First off President Bush’s call for bipartisanship was almost funny. When did the Republicans reach out to the Democrats during Bush’s first six years in office? When while Republicans held the majority in both the House and the Senate did they reach out to work together? The short answer is they didn’t. The Republicans operated both the House and the Senate as if the majority gave them the right act like thugs. Now that power has shifted they want to play all nice and have everybody hold hands and get along. It’s almost laughable really.

I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be cooperation, far from it. Our government works best when the opinions are the most diverse and people actually listen and debate and compromise. The false dichotomy we’ve been under of the last few years of the donkey and the elephant hasn’t really done a whole lot of good. We need cooperation and diversity. But to hear a President that has been downright bullheaded at times ask for it was somewhat pitiful really.

Bush claimed he wants to eliminate the federal deficit. Never mind he took office with a budget surplus and squandered it like a teenager with a pocket full of hundred dollar bills at the mall. If Bush was serious about not having a deficit he would have maintained course with the previous administration’s policies and kept us in decent fiscal shape. As is with his tax cuts for the wealthy and his horrid policy of borrowing foreign money. He has borrowed more foreign money than all of the previous 42 presidents combined. He has dug us into a deep hole. Now in an effort to cover his ass he’s going to act like he cares. I’m not buying in to it.

Related to his wanting to lower the deficit, Bush mentioned earmarks. Earmarks are little pet spending projects that politicians slip into bills to benefit themselves and their supporters. Now I could lash out at Bush about his saving 18 billion dollars by eliminating earmarks when we spending about 8 billion a month in Iraq. But something else struck me. Bush talked about how these earmarks aren’t voted on and not really signed by him into law. Well President Bush is making himself out to be a raging hypocrite. Bush has used signing statements to do things like give the federal government the power to open mail without a warrant. Of course, warrants are easy but he can’t be bothered with that. Bush is writing laws that are never voted on by Congress. He is just bypassing that pesky Congress and gets laws into effect that he feels are necessary. Now if given the choice between some politicians getting some pork into a bill and a president who might be subverting the Constitution he is sworn to uphold. I’ll take the pork. Not that I support wasteful and corrupt spending. That’s got to stop as well. But Bush’s actions are more serious than the congressmen’s actions.

Bush used the tired old idea of taking the fight to the terrorists to keep us safe. Of course he always seems to forget that after 9/11 terrorists successfully attacked both Spain and Great Britain. So much for fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here huh? The daily attacks on our troops in Iraq probably don’t count either.

On a related note Bush said and I quote. “Our success in this war is often measured by the things that did not happen. We cannot know the full extent of the attacks that we and our allies have prevented…” Are we now basing our success and failure on things that haven’t happened and they we can’t even prove would have happened anyway? So we are just to assume that had we never fought this awful war in Iraq that we would be under perpetual siege by terrorists in this country? This is the most awful kind of fear mongering imaginable. He’s not even twisting facts anymore. He’s trying to convince us of things that have never even happened to begin with. Of course he threw out a few examples but most of those have met with some pretty harsh scrutiny and have been shown to not be as severe as initially reported. In the attack of Los Angeles that was stopped Bush didn’t even get the named the name of building right when it happened. He called the Liberty Tower when in fact it was the Library Tower. But the facts aren’t important it’s the bad stuff that might have happened that we might have stopped is what you need to worry yourself about.

He also said and again I quote, “We have a diplomatic strategy that is rallying the world to join in the fight against extremism.” We do? What is it? So far we have refused to talk to Syria or Iran. We strong-armed UN inspectors out of Iraq so we could bomb them back to the Stone Age. After having the world’s support and sympathy in the aftermath of 9/11 we’ve squandered it by invading Iraq. So what is this strategy to rally the world? I haven’t seen us effectively use diplomacy yet. So I’m not getting my hopes up that we will start using it in the future.

Bush also said this, “To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred, and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and to come and kill us. What every terrorist fears most is human freedom ... Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies -- and most will choose a better way when they're given a chance.” This is utter nonsense. If terrorism flourishes it flourishes most when there is freedom. It is the irony of freedom that you have to be willing to sacrifice the comfort of being absolutely watched over and protected to have freedom. Was Timothy McVeigh not part of a free nation? How about the Unabomber? The only way to eliminate terrorism and violent extremism is with despotism. Since nobody other than the despot wants that we have to accept that people will do evil and prepare for it and do our best to prevent it. Freedom is no cure for terrorism.

If you noticed I didn’t go after specific policies mentioned as much as I did this president’s mistakes in logic and his bending of the truth. Now granted politicians are notorious for bending the truth. Spin doctoring in an art form inside the Beltway. But this president seems to be so hypocritical and distant from reality that he appears to be unfit for his duties as president. I have called for him to resign in the past and my opinion remains unchanged. This president needs to either understand that the presidency is not like being a CEO. It is not top down management where what you say goes and if anybody gives you any lip you can fire them. The presidency is a diplomatic position where you must listen and learn and weigh all the options and make compromises. This president still doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that his leadership matters. When he played guitar and ate cake with John McCain while New Orleans was devastated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina the nation was aghast at his seeming indifference. He just doesn’t get it.

2007-01-14T22:23:00.000-08:00

When the midterm election results were final I wondered how Bush would deal with a Democratic Congress. This was a President who spent six years with basically a rubber stamp Congress. Now he would face opposition. I figured either he would learn to tolerate diplomacy and compromise or he would go all bullheaded and fight Congress tooth and nail. So far the latter has proven true.

Today it was reported that Bush doesn’t seem to have much concern for the opposition of Congress to his plan to add over 20,000 additional soldiers to the forces in Iraq. He said and I quote, "I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I've made my decision. And we're going forward". Bush has reduced himself to a spoiled child sitting in the corner and throwing a fit and getting his way. He seems to care not for the advice of experts or the concerns of Congress or even the will of the American people. He is bound and determined to win this war. Victory seems to be his only goal. Even though he recently said victory will not look like it did in previous wars. Even though back in May of 2003 when he put on his precious little flight suit and landed in a jet plane on the deck of an aircraft carrier he sure did his damnedest to make it look like an old time victory celebration. Even though we have little idea what victory really is an Iraq because our goals have shifted more than the desert sands. First it was WMD, and then it was democracy in Iraq, now it seems to be stability in Iraq. Victory is impossible to achieve when your standards of victory keep changing.

Even Cheney has entered the fray on this one railing again war fought by committee. Given how this war has been fought so far, by a small cadre of neo-conservatives who were given carte blanche to do as they pleased with our foreign policy and military, I would suspect a diversity of opinion might be beneficial to the war in Iraq. Maybe listening to multiple experts and formulating your ideas on those experts opinion might move us ever closer to peace in Iraq. But this administration was given that opportunity and they ignored the input of experts and forged ahead with an unpopular, and by all accounts unsound, plan to increase troop levels in Iraq.

Now there is opposition in Congress that might slow their aggression. Rep. Jack Murtha has said that he would like to cut the funds and shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. He also wants to hold hearings to prevent troop escalation in Iraq. If Murtha is successful it will most likely not come without a long arduous struggle. Bush seems to believe himself a war president with unlimited powers to do as he sees fit to protect the nation. He will not relent easily. Murtha has to do this. So far the Bush administration has gone on unchecked by Congress. He has used signing statements to alter the law. He has spent money at a rate that could damage our economy for generations. He needs to be opposed. The point of having a system of checks and balances is that no branch of government operates unchecked. Bush has operated without the oversights outlined in our Constitution for far too long. Should he fail to be able to work with a Congress not of his own party then he is a failure as a President. Both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton has Congresses that were controlled by the opposition party for at least part of their times as President. Now both are icons of the respective parties. Bush has to be able to do the same. Given his most recent behavior I’m not sure that he can.

2007-01-12T22:40:00.000-08:00

Every once in a blue moon I get down in the mouth. I look at our crooked world and begin to despair. Then as it always seems to happen inspiration strikes. As usual it originates from one of my significant betters, in this instance, Mark Twain. The following is from the notes for a posthumous book “Glances at History”. Time has marched on but sadly little has changed. I could write more but why should you read my feeble attempts at writing when you can read Twain’s wondrous prose? I hope you like it as much as I do.

I pray you to pause and consider. Against our traditions we are now entering upon an unjust and trivial war, a war against a helpless people, and for a base object--robbery. At first our citizens spoke out against this thing, by an impulse natural to their training. Today they have turned, and their voice is the other way. What caused the change? Merely a politician's trick--a high-sounding phrase, a blood-stirring phrase which turned their uncritical heads: Our Country, right or wrong! An empty phrase, a silly phrase. It was shouted by every newspaper, it was thundered from the pulpit, the Superintendent of Public Instruction placarded it in every schoolhouse in the land, the War Department inscribed it upon the flag. And every man who failed to shout it or who was silent, was proclaimed a traitor--none but those others were patriots. To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?

For in a republic, who is "the Country"? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant--merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. Who, then, is "the Country"? Is it the newspaper? is it the pulpit? is it the school superintendent? Why, these are mere parts of the country, not the whole of it; they have not command, they have only their little share in the command. They are but one in the thousand; it is in the thousand that command is lodged; they must determine what is right and what is wrong; they must decide who is a patriot and who isn't.

Who are the thousand--that is to say, who are "the Country"? In a monarchy, the king and his family are the country; in a republic it is the common voice of the people. Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catch-phrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country--hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.

Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time.

This Republic's life is not in peril. The nation has sold its honor for a phrase. It has swung itself loose from its safe anchorage and is drifting, its helm is in pirate hands. The stupid phrase needed help, and it got another one: "Even if the war be wrong we are in it and must fight it out: we cannot retire from it without dishonor." Why, not even a burglar could have said it better. We cannot withdraw from this sordid raid because to grant peace to those little people on their terms--independence--would dishonor us. You have flung away Adam's phrase--you should take it up and examine it again. He said, "An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war."

You have planted a seed, and it will grow.

2007-01-10T22:52:00.000-08:00

Mr. President,

Tonight you gave a speech about your plan for Iraq. You want to send in more than 20,000 additional US troops. You want them to help the Iraqis stabilize their own country. You also threatened Syria and Iran for helping terrorists. You also spoke of sacrifice. Mr. President I have a question for you. Have you lost your mind?

First early in your speech you talked of all the consulting you did and how you apparently reached this conclusion. Even though almost no one supports the idea of more troops, not the American people, not military leaders, not the Baker Commission or even the troops on the ground in Iraq. Where did this idea come from? If it is so clearly opposed on so many levels by so many people with extensive knowledge why are you going forward with it? What will this accomplish when so many are saying a mere 20,000 is not enough? When General Shinseki suggested that over 300,000 troops were necessary to win in Iraq he was fired. 20,000 more troops just mean less responsibility for Iraqi security forces and more targets for insurgents.

Why are you saber rattling at Iran and Syria? We barely have the military forces to deal with Iraq. Why are carrier groups sitting in the Persian Gulf poised to disrupt Iran’s support of terrorist in Iraq? You already started one war you weren’t prepared for why start more? Do you want World War 3? The Baker Commission advised engaging them in dialogue not threatening them with cruise missiles and smart bombs. Do you even listen to what people advise you to do or do you just sit there with your mind made up pretending to listen? Or are you like some incompetent parent who thinks the only thing he needs to make his kids listen is a belt to beat them with?

You spoke of sacrifice. What precisely are you going to sacrifice? Will you enlist your daughters? Will you miss a day of vacation? Will you attend a funeral for a fallen soldier? What exactly is your sacrifice Mr. President? What exactly are you giving, other than income to the war profiteers and grief to the families of the fallen and injured?

One more thing Mr. President, you dared bring up 9/11 again. Even though 9/11 and Iraq are not connected. Do you still stand there with the bullhorn and the fireman leading this nation? Have you never moved on from that moment when America believed in you and looked to you to lead it? Times have changed sir. You need to as well. The fog of fear that was the aftermath of 9/11 has lifted and people are questioning you. You need to learn to give good answers.

You seem desperate Mr. President. You seem desperate to win this war. You seem like an addict begging for one more drink or one more hit. Just 20,000 more troops and this will all get better will it? Increasing the troop levels by this relatively small amount will solve nothing. We have lost Mr. President. Your unholy crusade has failed. We have done nothing but allow terrorism to reestablish itself in Afghanistan and allowed it a new breeding ground in Iraq. We have done little to make our own country truly safer. You need to admit failure in Iraq and move on or you need to resign and let someone else do it. This war has cost too much. We need to start moving on and healing from it.

2007-01-04T20:50:00.000-08:00

George W Bush signed H.R. 6407, The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, into law on December 20, 2006. He however did not merely sign the bill. He also issued a signing statement to it. The gist of it being that the president reserves the power to open mail without a warrant if he feels it necessary for “foreign intelligence collection” or to “protect human life”. Never mind that getting a warrant to search suspicious mail is easy or that there is legal precedent to open mail without a warrant when it thought to contain explosives or poisons.

In light of previous events, such as the suspension of habeas corpus or the wire-tapping without a warrant it is becoming increasingly obvious that this President has no concern for the law. Which if you paid attention in high school civics class is the president’s main function in our government. The president is to enforce the law. He is not to add statements to legislation to add powers to his office that are clearly unnecessary. He is not to violate the Constitution of the United States of America. He is not to operate separate from the other branches of government. He is to enforce the law. The laws established by our forefathers to protect the citizens from the government.

Ever since George W Bush started this war on terror. He has sought to expand the powers of the office of president. He has sought to dwindle away the freedoms that he claims the terrorists hate and is the reason they attacked us. He claims that he needs these powers to fight this war. In reality, with FISA courts getting warrants is easy as can be and there is no reason to operate without one. There is no reason to repeal the freedoms granted by the document he is sworn to uphold. He swore to uphold the Constitution on a Bible, a book he claims to hold dear, and does he want to disgrace his God as well as country?

Early on in his presidency George W Bush quipped “If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.” A statement that previously could almost be disregarded as a glib is now almost prophetic. Maybe Bush is just lazy and he’s just out to make his job as easy as possible. Maybe he’s not smart enough to realize the damage he’s doing to the country he is sworn to protect. Maybe he’s more sinister than we are giving him credit for. Maybe he’s worse than Nixon. Maybe he seeks to shape the country in his own image without regard to the laws and life, liberty and happiness of the people.

I have a sneaking suspicion on what is wrong here. This president is known to ignore dissenting advice. He surrounds himself with people who prop up his opinions. He has no need for challenges or debate, just like a bad CEO of an oil company or lousy owner of a baseball team. George W Bush like some spoiled child in a heated tantrum is bound and determined to prove himself correct and be a winner. He cares not for what is right only what he sees as benefiting him. He is a small man in a big job. If he is unable to execute the office then he needs to resign and let someone who can do the job. I’m not sure how much longer the United States of America can afford to have him as president.

2006-12-29T22:33:00.000-08:00

At 6 AM local time for Baghdad Iraq, Saddam Hussein was hanged. Pardon me if I don’t share in the joy of some. Instead I’m rather angry. I’ll explain why.

First and foremost I’m unwavering in my opposition to the death penalty. It’s not justice and has no place in any civilization that wants to pretend it’s civilized. If the act of killing another human being isn’t dastardly enough, Saddam was hanged. Hanging is a brutal and horrible method full of snapped neck and crushed windpipes. Yet it was still used to execute Saddam. Also hanging in Iraq is reserved for lowly criminals. The method of execution was an insult to a fatal injury.

Piling on insults is horrific idea. As this December has already been one of the deadliest months for US troops since we entered this unholy crusade of the neo-conservatives over three years ago. So let’s kill Saddam Hussein with a brutal and humiliating method and throw more fuel on the out of control fire that is burning in Iraq. The civil war between the Sunni and the Shiites continues to worsen and the insurgency refuses to yield or weaken. Let’s just give them another reason to hate the United States.

Let’s not forget some little details here. Saddam Hussein was found guilty of one crime, even though he was accused of many others. Why was he not tried for all his crimes? Why wasn’t he treated like Slobodan Milosevic and sent to The Hague to face an international court? Why in God’s name was he put in front of some Iraqi kangaroo court? Did someone need him out of the way? Was someone in a hurry to see him dead? I’m not sure we’ll ever get good answers to these questions but they need to be asked.

Of course when it comes to international law the Bush administration has a shameful record. Remember when Alberto Gonzales said the Geneva Convention was “quaint’?

Of course those who support the execution of Saddam Hussein have countered with arguments like “he deserved to die” and “one trial is enough” and have even accused me of sympathizing or empathizing with Saddam Hussein. Here are some counters to all of these.

If a person is accused of multiple crimes then that person should be tried for them all. That’s justice. The accused must face trial for the crimes they are said to have committed. To not put the accused on trial for all their crimes is no better than a kangaroo court. If they were worried about security send him to The Hague. Let him stand trial for that which he is accused don’t just pick the crimes which are easy to convict him because that’s not justice and justice is what all courts must do.

Killing Saddam is an awful idea. Not only will it probably escalate violence in an already violent country it is not fitting punishment. Wouldn’t it be more punishing for Saddam Hussein, a megalomaniac, to sit in a lonely maximum-security prison cell with no power than to make him a martyr?

I do not empathize or sympathize with Saddam Hussein. Hussein was an evil man who had no business leading a nation. But my opposition to his hanging stems from both my opposition to the death penalty and my passion for justice to be served.

Since Saddam Hussein is dead I have a small favor to ask. Can we please get US troops out of Iraq? I’ll even let George put his flight suit on and land on the aircraft carrier and talk about “Mission Accomplished” if he’d like that. I’ll even let them spend the twenty million in the federal budget for a victory celebration. Just bring the troops home now before it gets worse. We are closing in on 3000 dead American men and women. God only knows how many Iraqis have been killed. It’s time to end this horrible blood soaked fiasco and bring get the troops out of the violent quagmire of Iraq. It has to end before The United State’s has lost all her dignity.

2006-12-26T21:29:00.000-08:00

Today the total number of US soldiers killed in combat in Iraq exceeded the total number that died in the terrorists attack on September 11th 2001. Is the mission accomplished? Is the insurgency in its last throes now? Is the army we have, not necessarily the army we might like mind you, on the verge of a sweeping victory? Will the twenty million dollars in the federal budget for a victory celebration finally get to be spent? Of course the answer to all these questions is a resounding no.

George Bush’s fiasco in Iraq has killed or wounded over 25,000 American soldiers. It has cost at least 350 billion dollars. It has killed somewhere and between 40,000 to 665,000 Iraqis. What do we have to show for it? Is Al Qaeda dead and gone? No. Is Osama Bin Laden in jail somewhere? No. Well we do have Saddam Hussein awaiting execution by hanging but since he had less than zero to do with 9/11 his removal from power and execution isn’t a big win in the war on terror. We have in Iraq that is in the middle of a brutal civil war. We have set our troops up to be target practice for every radical in the region.

This war is going nowhere but straight to Hell. We have to demand that it ends soon. There is no hope of victory or winning or saving face. We need to exit and let the Iraqis settle their own differences. Of course with Saddam to be hanged maybe within a month or so the violence is sure to escalate. There are still people in Iraq loyal to the despot and they will riot in response to his death. The execution was at one point scheduled in a soccer stadium. Officials were smart enough to realize that security would prove difficult. So they moved it to a prison on a US base. Which is sure to just fan the flames. Now there is a chance that it might be televised, like how we allowed his Saddam’s sons corpses to be paraded through the streets to prove they were dead. So maybe they’ll put it on TV over here and all the vultures can tune in and stare and laugh.

As we speak George W Bush is in Crawford TX considering his next move in Iraq. He has already mentioned increasing troop numbers. There is a carrier group in route to the Persian Gulf to try and intimidate Iran. Wait? Is that a typo? Iran? No friends we’re saber rattling at Iran to. Apparently messing up in Iraq and Afghanistan isn’t enough for this President. He wants to screw up in a third country. What George needs to do is walk in the bathroom, look into the mirror and call himself a moron. It’s over George. Pick your toys up and go home. Let’s bring our troops home and end this awful fiasco.

2006-12-13T21:54:00.000-08:00

OK since the 2008 Presidential election now starts in nanosecond the 2006 mid-term elections wrap up, I thought I would throw my two cents out there.

Now granted Tom Vilsack and Dennis Kucinich have both announced they will run, but honestly they’re both long shots at best. Though I will enthusiastically support Kucinich until the bitter end. Kucinich is one of the few politicians that stand with me on the vast majority of the issues. So I’m a Kucinich man.

But let’s talk about the big name possible candidates. None of whom I’m horribly excited about.

Barrack Obama is the media’s darling. Sure he’s articulate handsome and charismatic. But I can’t get all that excited about him. In his two years in the Senate he hasn’t exactly taken the lead on much of anything. Of course if I listened to some in the media I would think Obama is the second coming of MLK and JFK all rolled into one. I think Obama is a good guy who maybe someday may make a good president I just don’t think it will be in 2008.

Some consider Hillary Clinton a lock, but I have my doubts. One strike against her is she will forever be in the shadow of her husband and Democrat poster boy, Bill Clinton. The second is she has always seemed to me to be more of a politician than someone who really took stances on issues. She always seems a bit too eager to play the middle. The third is the perception of Hillary as aloof. People do not warm up to Hillary the same way they did to Bill. Three strikes she’s out.

I used to like John McCain. Hell I supported him in 2000. That’s no lie. But John McCain has changed. He’s started moving towards the far right of the Republican Party. He’s started cozying up to the fear mongering religious right. I can’t say that I feel the same about McCain in 2006 as I did in 2000. Plus I’m not sure Republicans are all that in love with him.

Rudy Giuliani is a big time front-runner. I wouldn’t elect him dogcatcher. Sure he was popular after 9/11 and all. But remember before 9/11 he had lots of controversy surrounding him concerning his wife and lover and all that nonsense. Also there is no way in Hell will a pro-gay and pro-choice Republican makes it out of the primaries.

I have one more thing to bitch about before I put this puppy to bed. I have sneaking suspicion that religion will play a huge role in 2008. I have a hunch we will see lots of campaign ads with candidates touting their faith. If this occurs you may also get to witness me beating my TV to death. I would advise these candidates to be not like the hypocrites who pray in public but prove your faith by your deeds.

Anyway I’m not looking forward to the next two years. I’ll get to support Kucinich and that’s a good thing. But the people looking like they will make a serious run in 2008 are not doing much to get my hopes up.

2006-12-01T22:32:00.000-08:00

In the last week the amount of time spent by the United States Armed Forces in Iraq has exceeded the amount of time it took us to win World War II. Granted we had much sterner allies in WWII than we do now. But still the threat of European fascism and Japanese imperialism was put down in less time than it has taken us to overthrow the despotic leader of a crippled nation and establish a stable government there. Of course our leadership during WWII and its aftermath was some of the finest we’ve ever been lucky enough to have, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, McArthur and Patton. Now we have a leader, George W Bush, that can’t even ride a bike without falling off.

This leader hasn’t even allowed himself to say that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. He prefers the term, sectarian violence. Politicians, when they’re up to their butt cheeks in trouble, don’t like to use real honest language. They seem to think it helps gloss over the situation. Civil war would paint a fairly vivid picture of the situation in Iraq. Sectarian violence just makes people run to the dictionary to define sectarian. Of course if you think about it sectarian violence basically translates to civil war. If you have warring sects in a country both vying for control, then you got a civil war. It also bears noting that some people don’t think it’s a civil war either, they think it’s ethnic cleansing. Of course if they used honest language they’d call it what it is genocide. I hope it’s not. Civil war as awful and unspeakable as it is pales in comparison to the horror of genocide.

Getting back to our leader’s refusal to use the term civil war. It reminds me of a similar behavior and given our leaders past it has some relevance. If you have been in the company of heavy drinkers, those people that drink until their body shuts off the means of consumption, you’ve seen this behavior. Back in the days when George used to visit New Orleans to enjoy many a fine libation I’m willing to bet he was a belligerent drunk. You’ve seen the belligerent drunk. The guy or gal who sits there barely able to speak or stand and claims to hardly be drunk at all. They can drive home. They’re just fine. No matter how much the people around them tell them not to drive or that they’re hopelessly drunk they refuse to listen. A few friends near and dear or maybe even a little afraid of retribution if they don’t condone the behavior go along with the drunk’s little game. But these people are small in number and are greatly outweighed by the number of people who don’t want the drunk behind the wheel or to even try to walk home for that matter. The drunk just doesn’t want to listen though.

Our dear and belligerent leader has been behaving like this lately. No matter how many people call it a civil war or want our troops home he doesn’t listen. Sure his administration in an echo chamber for his faulty ideas but the voices against them is growing louder every day. He still talks of completing the mission. Never mind that big Mission Accomplished banner he spoke in front of over three years ago. Never mind that the mission has changed and shifted over the course of this war. The president refuses to yield. Never mind he won’t admit that this war was based on bad intelligence. The president needs to sober up and face the reality of the situation not what he would like it to be. If he does not come to terms with the worsening situation in Iraq and take the appropriate steps that are best for the United States, the Middle East and especially Iraq itself, then his legacy will be that of a president too stubborn or incompetent to do what is right or even logical. This president needs to sober up and face the reality of Iraq and not stagger around in the belligerent drunken haze of denial.

2006-11-27T22:28:00.000-08:00

Here’s some fascinating stuff I picked up watching Nova Science Now, which is news magazine focusing on science on PBS. Anyway about 250 million years ago there was a tremendous loss of life on Earth dubbed by some scientists as “The Great Dying”. About 95 percent of all species on Earth were lost. What caused “The Great Dying” or, if you must be all scientifically correct, the Permian-Triassic extinction? Scientists aren’t positive but they have a fascinating theory.

The theory goes a little something like this. At the time of the extinction the region now known as Siberia was extremely volcanically active. All that volcanic activity released a tremendous amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide then started to warm the atmosphere, as the atmosphere warmed so did the oceans. The oceans as they got warmer became less able to hold gas, warm water can’t hold onto gas effectively as colder water. The weakened ability to hold gas meant they could hold less oxygen. As the oxygen levels decreased in the ocean bacteria that thrive in wet low oxygen environments began to multiply. These same bacteria give off a gas called hydrogen sulfide, which is toxic. The hydrogen sulfide then began killing aquatic life and eventually began poisoning the air on the surface.
Now scientists aren’t certain that this is what happened. But they do feel like they may be on to something. Now what you need to do is notice any parallels between what wiped out 95 percent of all species a quarter billion years ago and what is happening today. Now I’m not saying anything bad is going to happen. But if you notice a lot of dead fish and the air smells a bit like rotten eggs don’t say you weren’t warned.

2006-11-24T22:49:00.000-08:00

So we’re a couple weeks out from the mid-term elections and I’ve been thinking. As you know the Democrats have taken control of both the House and the Senate and have promised a few things like ethics reform, a higher minimum wage and lower interest on federal student loans. Those are fine things and should be perused. But as Mark Twain once advised, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” Now I’m by no means a staunch Democrat so I’m not sure how much of a majority I’m in here. But the party that at least is somewhat closer to my ideals is in control of both houses of Congress. So I feel it necessary to consider what it is that I would like to see done.

First and foremost is ending the war in Iraq. It is a war fought on lies and was a poorly fought war on top of that. I’m not demeaning our troops, rather the Pentagon, especially Donald Rumsfeld, tried to fight the war on the cheap. That never works. So bring our troops home as soon as we are able. The fight in Iraq has bogged down our military and has made no real progress in winning the “war on terror”. So declare victory, if you have to, pack up our troops and leave this awful bloody civil war once there is a cooperative effort of neighboring nations and the international community to help rebuild Iraq.

Universal health care would be also very high on my list. We live in a country when people squander millions on cosmetic surgery and kids can’t get flu shots. There’s elderly that must decide between heat and medicine. Before the bankruptcy rules were changed about half of all bankruptcies were filled due to medical expenses. We simply cannot live under these conditions in good faith or conscience. There is no intellectually sound or morally just alternative to ensuring that all people have access to health care.

Our schools need fixed. College costs are out of control. Many public schools systems have inadequate facilities. If we do not do something as a nation to fix our broken education system then the democracy will suffer for it. A well-educated population capable of critical thought is essential to a democracy’s well being. If our schools fail so does our democracy.

I’m sure these three things will be given at least lip service. I’m not sure they will be given much else though. Which brings me to the fourth thing I’d like to see done. I’d like to see the power of lobbyists and corporations diminished exponentially. Lobbyists should be treated like the cockroaches and vermin they are and kept far away from Capitol Hill. The funding of all elections should come from public moneys and all advertising should be free and available to all candidates. Let’s level the playing field and let the candidate with the best ideas win not the one with the deepest pocket book. Gerrymandering also needs to stop. The only basis for Congressional districts should be population not demographics.

Something else struck me as I was reflecting or ruminating or staring into space or whatever you want to call it. There’s a quote by Thomas Jefferson, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” As lots of people are all exited about how good things are going to be I feel I must issue a warning. The government at best has been helpful in social change but it doesn’t initiate it. The people are the origin of all social change in this country. Whether it’s the worker’s rights movement or the civil rights movement or any other movement that has demanded freedom or equality or justice, it has always started outside of the mainstream of American politics. Whether it was Mother Jones or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. demanding justice it has always taken root far away from the corridors of power. It has always sprung forth from the basements and churches of Main Street America. We are not reliant on some political party to protect our freedoms and ensure equality and justice for all. Rather, that responsibility rests on the shoulders of the people and the people alone. So no matter who is in power, no matter what party has control, it is always the duty of the citizens to write, call, march and protest and demand justice and protect their rights.

We live in curious times. The next two years could either be fruitful or catastrophic. It all remains to be seen. We must never forget it is our duty however to tell the leaders what we want and when they have made mistakes. If left to their own devices they will attend to only their own needs and not those of the people. So we should keep a weary eye on DC and as always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.

2006-11-15T22:31:00.000-08:00

It’s odd how full of coincidence life is sometimes. Take today for example. I’m off driving and I see a car in front of me with a few bumper stickers on it. I think you can tell a lot about someone relative to what they plaster on their rear bumper. This particular car had one that read, “If you can’t feed em. Don’t breed em.” So as usual I get to thinking about what really is behind this sentiment. I figure it out pretty quickly. It’s the usual nonsense that somewhere there is this almost infinite amount of poor women who are breeding like bunnies to get more and more welfare money. Now I’ll admit that there are women who take advantage of the system, probably. The funny thing is I never see bumper stickers that bitch about corporations that funnel money through foreign backs to avoid paying taxes. Or whine about corporate farms rakings in insane amounts of money from farm subsidies. Or complain about corporate welfare or no bid contracts. Or even raise a whimper about how the wealthy get tax cuts and the poor can’t even get a living wage.

Then tonight I’m surfing around the Internet and I come across this story. So apparently the Catholic Church now has a “secular progressive philosophy”. I must have missed that in my Sunday bulletin from Mass last week. Just remember kids; if you don’t play along with the Republican talking points you’re a godless pinko commie. Heaven forbid that anyone show Mexicans, who just want a job, any compassion. If Bill ever had an original well informed thought he’d realize that mercy for the poor is a pillar of Catholic social justice. The Catholic Church would also have issues with the bastards that pay these immigrants inhumane wages and treat them like animals, but talking heads like O’Reilly can’t be bothered with that.

Both of these instances are related because they both show a total lack of compassion for the poor. After Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans rapper Kanye West said that George Bush didn’t care about black people. He missed the mark. The bigger problem is that America really doesn’t care about poor people. Sure Congress is thinking about upping the minimum wage but where is a living wage, a wage that allows someone to be fed and housed, for all? Where is universal health coverage? Where are the great public schools for all Americans so that people may lift themselves out of poverty more easily? Why aren’t these issues on everyone’s lips? Why has compassion been demeaned to a sign of weakness? Why is this particular administration that is so fond of its faith not doing more to eliminate poverty especially when the Gospels tell us that will be judged on how we treat the least among us? Why was Lyndon Johnson a president who left office over forty years ago the last president to do anything about poverty? It is because Americans in large part believe the lie that the poor are lazy or stupid or crooks. They have been fooled into thinking that we can ignore the needs of the poor while catering to the needs of the wealthy. They’ve been told as long as the Dow Jones is high that economy is just booming, even while the middle class withers away and more and more people slip into poverty. A new economic class called the “working poor” emerges and America hardly shrugs.

John Edwards during the 2004 Presidential campaign liked to speak of two Americas. Of course right wing pundits accused him of class warfare. Sadly he couldn’t have been any more correct. America’s divide between the poor and the wealthy is growing every year. Now I know there are people out there that are thinking you can’t possibly want the government to intervene because that would be socialism. To which I would reply, “so what?” Socialism has a bad name because the hardcore capitalists want you to associate it with communism, especially Soviet communism. But socialism about equality of all people, a good Christian principle if I must say so, so in matters of education and health care where equality is a must socialism is really the only fair practice.

These same people would also want charity to help these people. To which I would quote St. Augustine “charity is no substitute for justice withheld.”

2006-10-31T23:23:00.000-08:00

As I sit here writing this we are about a week away from the 2006-midterm elections. I’m sure you’ve noticed a few political ads on the TV lately. As I have just finished a voter awareness program at my local church I thought I would share a few thoughts with you. This will not be as intense as that asinine “Vote or Die” campaign during the 2004 elections. I would never burden you with such hyperbole. Instead they will merely be the thoughts of someone who is both concerned for and irritated by the current state of affairs.

First let’s approach the concept of wasting your vote. By wasting your vote I mean voting someone who neither Democrat nor Republican. Usually when someone votes for a member of the Green Party or the Libertarian Party people far too beholden to the two major American political parties chide them for wasting their vote. I say the only way you can waste a vote is by not using it. You have the freedom to vote for the candidate you feel is best qualified for that position. It doesn’t matter if it’s the mayor of a small town or the President of the United States of America you have the right to vote for whomever you see fit.

The reason people use this weak wasting your vote concept is rather simple. They don’t want their party to lose. Since I’m not particularly cozy with either the donkeys or the elephants, I don’t care. Sure I’m not happy with what the Republicans have accomplished in the last twelve years of controlling Congress and six years of having the White House. In fact I’m rather irate with them. But I’m not blindly loyal to the Democrats. In fact if you really look at what the Democrats and the Republicans stand for a whole lot doesn’t separate them. In fact the two party system in this country is a joke everyone is afraid to laugh at, if I may twist Voltaire. I really think we need to use our votes on candidate outside the two main parties to shake the system up a bit. As it stands right now both parties are in bed with special interests. If the people were to start voting in candidates from outside the current system however you would see a major shift in the paradigm. It’s either that or the Democrats and the Republicans would make it next to impossible for the other parties to get on a ballot.

When you do vote it is mission critical that you are informed. So I have a few suggestions. One is ignore the political ads. The advertisements employed by campaigning politicians are pathetic narcissistic nonsense. If political ads were translated into what the candidates would really like to say they would sound like this, “I’m great and my opponent is an asshole.” This is not exactly the stuff of the great Lincoln Douglas debates. You could look to newspaper endorsements but most newspapers have an editorial bias and seldom venture from it. So my advice to you is to keep an eye on sources that are impartial. One is C-Span. Sure C-Span can be as dull as a nature special on the mating habits of the Nicaraguan fruit fly but there is a lot of good unvarnished information there. You just need the dedication to go get it. The other source I really like is Project Vote Smart. Project Vote Smart is a fine non-partisan gathering of information indeed. Everything you need to make good decisions is in there somewhere.

I must now whine and complain about one of my pet peeves, single-issue voters. You’ve seen them. Usually they’re all worked up over some emotional hot button issue like abortion or gay marriage. I swear they would vote for a Nazi if the Nazi promised to ban abortion or never allow gays to marry. The problem with these people they are usually poorly informed. If you truly press these people on let’s say abortion they have nothing to offer to the conversation. Let’s say you ask them if they would rather vote for a candidate who wants to ban abortions or a candidate who doesn’t want to ban them but rather offer things like a living wage, guaranteed maternity leave, bigger tax credits for adoption and universal health care in an effort to make abortions rare. They will almost invariably get all excited and tell you how wrong abortions are and how it should be outlawed. When you press them on bringing babies into a world that treats them as if they are expendable, they usually don’t give a shit. So there is the problem in a nutshell. Their single-mindedness leads to complete lack of willingness to compromise and the ignorance of assuming they are absolutely correct.

One last thing before I put this puppy to bed. Please I beg of you, be active politically. Voting is simple thing and no one should be too busy to do. The voter turn out in this country is pathetic. I don’t know if people don’t care or if they don’t realize the awesome responsibility they have. Yes you must feel it is your responsibility to vote. You are responsible to vote because it is your country. Thomas Jefferson once said, and I’m paraphrasing because I’m too lazy to look the exact quote up, we don’t have a country that is run by the majority, rather our country is run by the majority of those who participate. If that doesn’t inspire you to act I don’t know what will. If you want the country to do well by its entire people they must make their voices heard. They must vote, write letters, speak out, rally and protest. You must always remember that the politicians work for you. We elect representatives not exalted and beloved rulers of all they survey. It is we the people that rule this wonderful country not the special interests or the corporations or political parties. It is the people’s responsibility and their responsibility alone to steer this country in the right direction. It isn’t easy but the price of freedom is vigilance. We must be willing to pay that price because the alternative is too awful to consider.

2006-10-23T22:25:00.000-07:00

So I’m checking my E-mail and one of friends sends me this little blurb from Democracy Now.

“U.S. Moves Closer to Building New Stockpile of Nuclear WeaponsThe Washington Post is reporting the United States has moved a step closer toward building a new stockpile of nuclear weapons that would last well into the 21st century. Late last week, Bush administration officials announced the start of a multiyear process to repair and replace eight facilities where the nuclear weapons would be developed and assembled. The Bush administration is planning to replace its aging stockpile of warheads with two thousand two hundred new nuclear weapons that would last for decades. The nation's two nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore, are competing to design a new nuclear warhead.”

Am I the only one here who sees the belligerent hypocrisy in this? For the last several months the news has been full of stories about what it would mean to the world’s safety if North Korea or Iran developed nuclear weapons. Now we find out the Bush administration thinks our nuclear stockpile needs tidied up. I mean we can’t let our nuclear weapons get old and obsolete can we? That arsenal of about 10,000 warheads we have isn’t adequate. We need more.

We might have to fight North Korea who maybe has a missile that’s roughly effective as a slingshot.

Iran might use them on Israel. You mean like Pakistan and India almost used them on each other a few years back?

They might get into a terrorist’s hands. Let’s see the former Soviet Union had trouble with people trying to smuggle out fissile nuclear materials after the fall of Communism. Pakistan bought nuclear materials off of North Korea then sold them to Libya. Because Pakistan is our ally in our “War on Terror” their government was not held accountable.

The point is not that nuclear weapons in the hands of despots and radicals wouldn’t be bad. It would be horrific. But the point, if you’re honest with yourself, is that no one should have nuclear weapons. Since the Manhattan Project built the first nuclear weapons over 60 years ago we have loosed a terrible evil. The horrible arms race of the Cold War followed by that technology becoming available to almost any government that can afford it has left us, the human race, in a precarious position. As it stands now we are a people armed with the means to make ourselves extinct. No one should be entrusted with that kind of power. Both Oppenheimer and Nobel thought they could invent weapons horrible enough to prevent men from ever fighting another war. They were wrong. As long as the human race is ruled by fear and greed we will always fight and no weapon will be deemed to terrible to use on the enemy. There used to be something called “Mutually Assured Destruction” which was appropriately abbreviated MAD. MAD what was said to keep the United States and the Soviet Union from using nuclear weapons. They didn’t want to blow one another straight to Hell. So they restrained themselves from using them. Seeing how the United States and the Soviet Union never fought each other directly during the Cold War, only indirectly, I would say MAD was never put to the ultimate test. We’re on an even more dangerous precipice right now. It’s no longer us against them. It’s now several nations with the key to Pandora’s Box. We need to eliminate all nuclear weapons. They are too dangerous for anyone to have. We need to put an end to this before it puts and end to us.

2006-10-05T22:53:00.000-07:00

If I have learned nothing else in watching the tragedy unfold from Pennsylvania Amish Country it is this, The Amish are shining examples to us all. In the wake of having five of their precious daughters killed so senselessly. The Amish people raise their voices in anger or whimper in fear. Instead they forgave the killer. They forgave his family. One family of a slain little girl invited the widow of the killer and his family to her funeral. The Amish have set up a charity for the family of the killer, redirecting some of the half of a million dollars donated to them in the wake of this tragedy.

Where did we go wrong? These simple people have had their world invaded by man who murdered their daughters, and by some accounts even wanted to molest them, and they still forgave him. They still carried on with their lives. The Amish shun modern convenience for a simple life. They live their faith every day. They have the strength to forgive this obviously sick man who caused them so much pain. There was no call for vengeance. There was no call to judge anyone. There was no outcry to even the score. There was only forgiveness.

We could learn a lot from the Amish. I just hope we do.

2006-10-03T22:46:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the Mark Foley scandal the cable news networks are losing their minds trying to find every possible angle. So I’m watching MSNBC and Pat Buchanan is one of those talking head shows, Hardball. Anyway Pat is on there and he spouts of about three to four percent of the population are homosexual and about forty percent of child sexual abuse cases are committed by homosexuals. Immediately my nonsense radar goes on high alert and I start to examine the big steaming shovel load of crap he has just dished out. Of course the host, Chris Matthews, just sits there and doesn’t really try and correct his numbers or challenge his facts because God knows these shows are about politics not the facts.

So as I ponder what nonsense Pat Buchanan has wrought I go off to Google and see what I can find out. Lo and behold there is information a plenty about how gay men are nothing but child molesting machines. Of course it’s all on right wing propaganda pages that think bashing gays gets them a lot closer to Jesus. So I roll my eyes, curse under my breath and continue the search. I finally find some fascinating and, Heaven forbid, logical writing on the subject. The fine Website Religious Tolerance.org has a good piece on this very subject. It also cites an equally wonderful piece of work by Gregory M. Herek. They both offer quite a provoking statement, that while homosexual, bisexual and heterosexual people do sexually abuse children. They do so fairly rarely. In fact the vast majority of child sexual abuse is committed by pedophiles. Pedophiles are adults that are sexually attracted to children. Now according to Herek, not all pedophiles are sexually abusive. Some pedophiles have the attraction but never act on it. Herek also states that we shouldn’t define molestation cases as heterosexual or homosexual but rather male-male, a man sexually abusing a boy, or male-female, when a man sexually abuses a female. This sort of thinking is both intriguing and very logical which is to say it will never make it on a talking head show on a cable network.

Now there are some causes for pedophilia, such as fixated and regressed. Since I am not a psychologist I shall not go into there, please read Herek’s work. I think thought it extremely important that we understand pedophiles and recognize them as separate from the usual distinctions we make about a person’s sexual orientation. Pedophiles should be a distinction all to themselves. We should also stop throwing around the term homosexual to describe child sexual abuse. Of course there is a reason a certain element of population doesn’t want this to stop. They want to demonize homosexuals. They want to blame every instance to male-male child sexual abuse on homosexuals in general and use it as an excuse to oppress them. Of course notice that my relatively meager amount of effort offered intriguing evidence contrary to that.

As for what Mark Foley is I have no idea. I do not know the man or have knowledge of his sexual history. I know that it was no secret that he is gay. I do not know if he was a pedophile or maybe, and if anything more likely, a hebephile, a person attracted to post-pubescent children under the age of 18. The facts will tell us the answers here. But is important that because a male public figure was sexually suggestive and salacious with teenage boys that we do not demonize gays. Homosexuals in this country and on this world in general have suffered enough. We must not make them suffer further indignity by accusing them of things that are false.

2006-10-02T21:58:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while a good idea comes at me out of nowhere. I have no idea why this happens but it does and it’s usually best if I act on them as soon as possible. The longer I let them sit and do nothing with them the less interesting they seem to get. So I had an idea today. Actually it was more of an epiphany really. Any more it seems as if my moments of lucidity are getting fewer and fewer so I enjoy it when a good idea comes to me. So enough yapping about my thought processes and let’s get to the thought. Here you go I am not political.

Oh pick your jaw up off of the floor. It doesn’t mean I don’t observe and care about what is now generally known as politics. I do care about the truth, justice and the common good. I do have causes I stand for and will support with great vigor indeed. I just don’t like the mess American politics has become and I simply choose to view it with great disdain. My ideas and beliefs are my own. I do not follow platforms or worry about planks or how something tests with a focus group. I am not interested in compromise or popular opinion. I have no use for straight party line voting. I feel no affinity for either party really or as Chuck D once said. “Neither party is mine not the jackass or the elephant.” Certainly I will support candidates from time to time. But I will do so because I support what they stand for not because they are red or blue. To be honest I have spent the vast majority of my time as voter apathetic towards my choices. I regret not writing in “None of the above” for the presidential elections I have voted in. I consider it a missed opportunity. Of course I will continue to vote. You know the rule, “You can’t bitch if you don’t vote” and I like to bitch way too much. But from here on out I will vote what my conscience, reason and faith dictate and nothing else. I will not hesitate to abstain from races where all the candidates are far less than desirable. I will no longer choose the lesser of two evils just to make a choice.

If being an activist has taught me anything it is this that you really don’t see any issue clearly until you look at it from the outside. Until you remove yourself from the current political system and look at it as an outsider you really don’t see all the traps you can fall into. Until you look at your own set of beliefs and ideas you really don’t stand for much because you are too busy falling for everything.

“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

2006-10-01T23:10:00.000-07:00

Once again I have had to take a few steps back before I wrote something. Yes friends, politics is becoming that infuriating to me. This is not some partisan rant either. My fear that our democracy is failing is growing.

Recently both the House and the Senate passed legislation, the US Military Commissions Act of 2006, that suspends the right of habeas corpus to alleged enemy combatants. You know, the bad guys those crazy Middle Eastern guys that want to take away your freedom. This legislation also allowed for the use of torture and effectively puts US agents who use torture above the law. HOORAY FOR OUR TEAM!

Relax I’m kidding.

Let’s examine these one by one.

The only slight upside I see to this suspension of habeas corpus is that the judicial system should strike it down as unconstitutional. Note that I said should and not would. With how the Republicans have been packing the courts with conservative judges over the last several years, I’m not betting the farm that it will happen. It should happen but I’m not guaranteeing it. Now our Constitution does allow for suspension of habeas corpus in times of rebellion or invasion. Last time I checked we had neither of those. So until the courts strike it down hopefully, the United States can hold people in jail on suspicion of being a terrorist for as long as they want without any kind of court hearing. So even innocent men can now sit in a jail for what would seem like an eternity just to keep America safe. If given the choice between guys with shoe bombs and a government that can imprison people for as long as they like without habeas corpus, I’ll take my chances with the shoe bombs.

I’ve already written that torture is both immoral and ineffective. So it is essentially worthless. So apparently it makes someone, an ex-cheerleader perhaps, feel awfully manly to have it at his disposal. If Bush’s favorite philosopher truly is Jesus Christ maybe he should reread what Jesus said. He should read all that “Blessed are the peacemakers” goodness. Maybe “Blessed are the merciful” is a little too advanced for him. I can make no sense of a man who spoke at the 2004 RNC about a “mission from beyond the stars”. Which I must admit at the time made me think that Bush was an alien and thought that would explain an awful lot. But, I must get back on topic so pardon my little off topic remark. Anyway If Bush is truly this devout Christian there is no way he could condone water boarding or sexual humiliation. There is no rationalization for the way he treats these alleged terrorists. Notice I said alleged because they have not faced trial and have not been convicted. Also if these are criminals let’s put them on trial, convict them and put them in a real jail. Let’s not hold them forever in these new gulags.

Now in so far as US officials not being subject to prosecution for torturing detainees that were captured before 2005 all I’m going to say is this. If you need to know why the United States of America is not universally loved. If you need to know why foreigners resent us just look at this provision. America has a nasty tendency to consider itself above the rest of the world. If we don’t abide by international laws or even our own law and treat people fairly what reason is there for the rest of the world not to treat us like thugs? If we refuse to obey international law then why should any nation have any respect for our laws? This is a dangerous position we put ourselves in. If we really want to keep ourselves safe from terrorism we need to build bridges not burn them.

We live in dangerous times. We have been wiretapped, our phone records collected and now habeas corpus has been put aside. We are now a nation that endorses torture. We are a now a nation that considers civil liberties a hindrance in the war on terror. When this nation was founded it was truly revolutionary. This nation placed the power in the hands of the people and gave them protection from the government oppression. Now those freedoms are fading. A quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin has been tossed around a lot lately, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It’s been used a lot lately because it’s germane to our situation. We are allowing the very ideas that made our nation so great be swept away in the names of fear and ignorance.

2006-09-29T22:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to the story that NBC 24 aired about our presentation to Rep. Gillmor.

NBC24

2006-09-28T21:13:00.000-07:00

This being the last day of the Declaration of Peace week the local Pax Christi chapter decided we needed to do something that would get some attention. So a chain with 3000 links was made. One link for every American soldier killed in the war on terror. Also one link for about every 33 Iraqi soldiers or civilians killed in Iraq. The chain was a city block long, several hundred feet, and took about two-dozen people to move it from the street up to Representative Gillmor’s third floor office. One of the Toledo television stations, NBC 24, even covered the event. They did a fine job indeed. I’ll post a video link if there is one eventually.

Once in Rep. Gillmor’s office, we made a presentation and Gillmor’s staff was accommodating and accepted the chain. They said they would forward a picture of the chain to Rep. Gillmor, which translates to they are going to pitch that big old chain as soon as they can get it to the dumpster.

It may seem like a small thing a few dozen people making a presentation to a congressman who was 600 miles away. But if more people made their voices heard in small ways it would add up to quite a roar and much better nation.

2006-09-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

In light of recent events I’ve been waiting to calm down so I could write some reasoned piece about them. The thing is I have not calmed down too much. While I’m not at the stark raving lunatic phase, I am far from calm.

So let me get to the cause for what has me so riled up. How can anyone support George Bush anymore? The man is a failure on every possible level as a president. He has not only started a war under false pretenses that has quite possibly made us less safe. He has hesitated when he should have leapt into action after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. He has ignored the Constitution. He has squandered the good will of the world. Bush’s constant assertion that we need to fight them over there so we don’t need to fight them here is lie. It has only bought us a temporary sanctuary from the jihadists. Also note that this safety from terror attacks did not protect Spain or Great Britain from attacks by terrorists.

When the National Intelligence Estimate was leaked and it was revealed that the United States’ own spy agencies think the war in Iraq has indeed made us less safe. It has not only increased the number of jihadists but also their geographic diversity. This could pose a dire threat to the world’s safety as these jihadists spread across the globe.

I have just read a piece by Jed Babbin where he plays the apologist. He asserts that since the terrorists perceive Iraq as critical that we must stay and defeat them there. He over looks the most important piece of information. We never should have invaded Iraq in the first place. Iraq was not a threat. It had no weapons of mass destruction. I t was far less of a threat than North Korea, Iran or Pakistan, who helped North Korea acquire their nuclear arsenal.

There is of course the right’s claim that this is merely the liberal media bias rearing its ugly head. Is this the same liberal media that gave Bush a free pass when he wanted war in Iraq? Is this the same liberal media that sat on its hands when it was revealed that Iraq in fact did not have weapons of mass destruction? The liberal media is merely a convenient bogeyman for the right to bring out to cover for its own ineptitude.

So we now not only have a war that that taken at least 45,000 lives and was fought for false reasons and has embolden our enemies and made the world more violent and less safe. We also have a brazenly incompetent president and administration that are so concerned with proving what they believe to be correct instead of searching for any real truth. We have a country full of people that support this president and his party in spite of what the facts have proven. People so concerned with their party that they are willing to ignore the well-being of the nation.

In a bit of serendipitous timing all this has come into the public spotlight during the Declaration of Peace week. If the recent information about incompetently fought war on terror is not enough to make you oppose this president and the war in Iraq then I do not know what is. I know there is a value to calm reasoned debate. But sometimes that reason needs a megaphone. I have called for Bush to resign before. I still want him to and to take his band of criminals with him. I’m not sure we can survive another two years with him and his administration leading us down the path they’ve paved with their good intentions.

2006-09-20T21:48:00.000-07:00

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about the United States use of torture. Now if you’ve been paying attention torture violates the Geneva Convention. There is now some debate of whether or not we should compromise the Geneva Convention.

OK kids this is a really easy so pay attention. This is going to be short and sweet or at least as short as I get.

Torture has absolutely no moral basis in any faith or in any humanistic school of thought. There is no moral basis for torture at all. The only people who try and justify its use are fear mongers and sadists. I did hear one fool call into the Randi Rhodes radio show and try use the “eye for eye” argument. What a goof. Eye for eye is a call for just punishment not a free pass to behave like the lowest of the low. Since there is absolutely no moral basis for torture our use of it gives absolutely no reason to ever claim we have any sort of moral high ground. We are stooping to the level of those we claim to be evil. How can you overcome anyone or anything by descending to its level? How can the United States claim any moral high ground by water boarding and dripping menstrual blood on prisoners?

Torture is also is not a reliable method of getting information. If the police arrest you and they torture a confession out of you it’s inadmissible, because the information is unreliable. People will say anything to get the torture to stop. There are other more effective means of getting information. Interrogators are smart. They know how to get information by using psychology in ways that don’t involve humiliation and sleep depravation. Torture because it is unreliable is worthless.

Now I’ve heard the argument that goes a little something like this. What if we knew a bomb was hidden somewhere and we had in custody someone who know where that bomb was, wouldn’t torture be acceptable if it saved lives? OK, I’m helpful and all so here’s what you do. You call Agent Jack Bauer from the television series 24 because that’s where you got this crappy idea!

So we have learned that torture is immoral and unreliable. So why does anyone want to use it ?

2006-09-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

Recently there has been some discussion about our declining school system. I’ve heard people like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates discuss what awful shape our schools are in. They are in some less than wonderful condition. I was a substitute teacher for a while and I saw it first hand. I wasn’t even in the big inner city schools where it is truly depressing. The smaller rural schools and schools in smaller towns that aren’t very affluent aren’t doing so well either.

Before I offer my solution to this problem let me state something first. The education of our nation’s students should be one of this nation’s most urgent priorities. The military and infrastructure and such are just window dressing without a well-educated nation. The democracy cannot function, as it was intended to function without a well-educated nation. So we must regard education as high priority.

The solution I offer is two-fold. One is to build more schools and limit class sizes to no more than 20 students in a class and 15 would be even better. Smaller class sizes make life much easier on the teacher. Once the class is manageable the teacher is free to teach the students. Also the teacher will become more knowledgeable of each student. This allows the teacher to cater to each student’s needs more specifically. Children also have this odd dynamic where the more of them you gather together the more hyper they seem to get. Smaller classes equal less opportunity for mischief and better education all around.

The second thing is to make sure kids get the basics down when they are in elementary school. They must have mastered what used to be referred to as the three R’s, reading, writing and arithmetic. I’ve seen junior high students who couldn’t do simple arithmetic without a calculator. I’ve seen junior high students who could barely read. Schools need to make absolutely sure that every student gets these fundamentals down pat. Without these three basic building blocks the rest of your education is wasted time.

The solutions are simple. But I know someone out there, reading this is wondering about the money. How are we going to fund this? Well first off the way a lot of states do it by basing it on property taxes is discriminatory. Poor communities get less able schools than do the wealthier communities. This is horribly unjust, instead there needs to be a pool of money that is equally divided among all schools. There needs to be a flat rate tax that all working citizens pay that goes towards education. Everyone benefits from a strong education systems therefore everyone gets to chip in.

Those are my ideas and as always you’re free to disagree.

2006-09-06T23:03:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I wrote my feeling on how the term “Pro-Life” needs to apply to much more than just being against abortion. Most of the reaction I’ve gotten has been very positive. It has even been published on another web site, Peace Takes Courage. One thing has taken me a bit by surprise. Of all the criticism I’ve gotten for that essay, it has almost all been focused on one issue, gun control. It wasn’t abortion. It wasn’t capital punishment. It was gun control. Sometimes the unexpected reaction can force you to think on your feet. I have done that. So here’s a bit more about gun control.

I know why people want guns. They’re afraid. They fear criminals and the government and everything other thing that makes them uneasy. They fear harm to themselves and the one’s they love. I’m not naïve enough to think that guns aren’t one hell of an equalizer. They are. A weak man with a big gun can do a lot of damage and end the lives of far stronger men without much work. The bad guys all have guns to. So us good guys got to have them as well. Fear is an effective motivator.

I also don’t think it will work to outlaw guns. The United States’ citizens are already more heavily armed some countries’ armies. So there is no real practical way just short of fascism to get rid of all the guns. What I would like is better licensing and control of guns. You need a license to get married or go fishing. You need training and a license to drive a car. Why shouldn’t you have to be licensed and trained to carry a piece of machinery that can end a life in the blink of an eye?

I don’t think guns are evil. I own a gun. It’s an old double barrel 20-gauge shotgun. It used to belong to my grandpa and then my dad. Now it sits in my closet. It hasn’t been shot in about 20 years. I guess it’s a family heirloom and it stays with me. But it sits in my closet with no ammunition. So guns are not evil, they are merely tools. They can be used for things like hunting and target shooting, which I have no beef with. Other tools like baseball bats and hammers can kill to. Yet I don’t want special licensing for them. It’s just that guns are such efficient killing machines. To kill someone with a hammer takes quite a bit of effort, to kill someone with a gun only the motion of one finger. So we must recognize this potentially lethal nature of guns and take it very seriously. If you must wear a seat belt to protect yourself while driving a car (which is horribly paternalistic but the topic of another entry), then why shouldn’t gun owners be required to take measures to protect themselves and others?

Of course anyone who wants gun control gets the 2nd Amendment tossed at them, so I must discuss it. The 2nd Amendment reads as follows, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Now always keep this in mind, there are no absolutes in out freedoms. Freedom of speech is limited. Freedom of religion is not unbounded. So why should the right to keep and bear arms? Why should anyone not in the military have access to a .50 caliber weapon or an automatic weapon? Why does any one need to carry a concealed weapon?

I’m not so full of myself to think that this will end the criticisms people had of my original essay. But this is what I think and as always you’re free to disagree.

2006-08-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

I never got to meet Clyde Tombaugh. I know someone who did though. By all accounts he was a nice and thoughtful man. Clyde Tombaugh died back in 1997 thinking he had discovered a planet, Pluto. Recently the International Astronomical Union (IAU) changed all that. They redefined Pluto. Pluto is now a dwarf planet. It has Ceres, the largest known asteroid, and 2003 UB313 , affectionately nicknamed “Xena”, to keep it company.

Now don’t feel too bad for old Clyde because he lost his planet. Rather it’s quite remarkable that his discovery helped us discover a whole new class of objects, these dwarf planets. As we discover more objects in the Kupier Disk and the Oort Cloud we shall more than likely discover many more of these dwarf planets.

Never mind that the term, dwarf planet, really sucks. Couldn’t they have come up with something a lot cooler than dwarf planet? What happened to planetoid? Now there’s a name a nerd can love! Dwarf planet sounds like they just gave up. The stress of deciding that the solar system was now eight planets instead of nine was just too much. Getting a name out of these people was going to be like pulling teeth. So we got dwarf planet. Maybe if they are going to call the dwarf planets we should limit their number to seven and rename them; Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy and Dopey. But, I digress.

Also what’s going to happen to pneumonic device used to learn the planet’s names? You know it, “My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas”. What’s is going to be now, “My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Noodles”? What kid wants noodles instead of nine pizzas? Oh the humanity!

What about the wonderful Nine Planets Web site? Will they change their domain name?

I don’t mean to seem as if I am making light of these exciting times. We live in extraordinary times. Of course most people are far more worried about a ten-year-old murder case in Colorado than things like this. The first observation of dark matter isn’t even a blip on the media’s radar. But a wedding video of some psycho who likes little girls playing guitar at a wedding is all over it. People who wonder why our schools are failing need to only investigate the media’s priorities to understand.

Rest in Peace Clyde Tombaugh. Your diligence in discovering Pluto has helped lead us into new and exciting times. I just hope more than a few science lovers notice.

2006-08-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago George Bush said, rather emphatically I might add, that as long as he is president we would have troops in Iraq. We won’t leave until the mission is accomplished. Never mind I seem to recall something with an aircraft carrier and a big “Mission Accomplished” sign. Never mind that the plans for and the conditions that would signal victory in Iraq are only slightly more vague than the ending of The Blair Witch Project. Never mind that the reasons we invaded Iraq to begin with have changed over time. Never mind we’ve been in Iraq for about as long as were in World War II. Never mind how our handling of the war in Iraq has damaged the United States in the eyes of the world. Never mind the potential crises with Iran and North Korea. Never mind how overworked our military is in Iraq or how few people want to volunteer for military service.

On Hardball tonight Van Taylor, a Republican from Texas who's running for a seat in the House, and Paul Hackett who’s not running for anything because the silly Democrats told him not to, were discussing the war in Iraq. Both are Iraq war veterans. Hackett thinks it’s a bad idea. Taylor is all for it. Never mind that when the host of Hardball, Chris Matthews, pressed Taylor on issues about the Iraq War that Taylor had no real answers. Never mind that Taylor spewed the same talking points we’ve been hearing for years in regards to Iraq. Never mind that nothing ever gets said that really has any importance on these shows so I don’t know why I bother.

Tonight it was reported that eleven of the suspected terrorists in Britain were indicted today. Two of them have been released and the rest are in jail. Never mind that the British media, the Internet and some American media outlets have been skeptical about how advanced and dangerous this alleged terror cell was. Never mind that the demonstrations of the liquid bombs they were going to use were slightly impressive than the Diet Coke and Mentos concoctions that people use to make a big mess in their driveways. Never mind that the United States wanted them arrested not the British who actually were conducting this investigation. Never mind that these terror plots always seem to get reveled when it is politically convenient.

Jon Benet Ramsey’s alleged killer was extradited today, oh never mind.

2006-08-20T22:14:00.000-07:00

Hey kids! No this is not the long form piece I mentioned earlier, it’s coming. Please be patient. Instead it’s a help to some people that I know that would like to write their ideas down but are apprehensive. A good many of these are ideas are not my own. I got them from the wonderful On Writing by Stephen King. If you have any interest in being a better writer, it is a good read.

My first piece of advice is since you will be writing non-fiction it to make sure that your facts are correct. If Ann Coulter has taught us nothing else it is not all writers bother to fact check. You should. Factual errors make your argument weak if not completely invalid. So get those facts right.

Now onto the writing itself, but I ask you to remember these are but suggestions. If you have a different method you like then go right ahead. I’m just trying to help the more timid writers out.

First step is to write the rough draft. You should write everything that comes to mind. Do not edit yourself. Write like there’s no tomorrow. You need to get all your ideas out there. Remember this is but the rough draft so it’s ok to be long-winded. Do not worry about grammar and whatnot at this stage. That comes later. One little suggestion here is to write the first word that comes to mind. Do not get obsessed with your word choice or crack open a thesaurus. You just need to need to write what comes out naturally. An honest writer beats one with a complicated vocabulary any day.

Now that you have several hundred words if not well over a thousand you need to save the article and put it aside. Let the article just sit there and walk away from it for a while. You might wait a few hours or even a day or two. Just clear your mind from the heat of writing passion and collect your thoughts.

Now read it. It’s time for the second draft. A rule of thumb is the second draft equals the first draft minus ten percent. So go through it with a fine-toothed comb. Now is the time to worry about grammar and such. Now is also the time to make it as concise as you feel comfortable with it being. If you’re writing for the local paper now is a good time to take a word count. Most newspapers have word limits on editorials. So now is the time to make sure it conforms to whatever guidelines there are.

Now that you’ve hacked your baby down to size, it’s time for final revisions. This is a good place to let someone else read it. Another viewpoint can be very helpful in making sure what you are writing is clear.

Oh for those of you who have crappy grammar, like I do. Just go to Google and type in the rule your looking for like, “book titles quotations or italics” and it will bring up many sites that have the answer you need.

Now take it up to the local paper and wait for your fifteen minutes of fame. It wasn’t that hard now was it?

Of course if it’s a fairly short piece, like this one, you could just do what did. Sit down and write it one fell swoop. If I can do it so can you.

2006-08-15T21:54:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I posted anything. So in lieu of any long form post like the previous post I shall now just throw a few ideas out there. I am starting work on another longer post though. Which was oddly enough inspired by a conservative blog. For whatever reasons the woman who writes this blog was listing various things. Well one of the lists was “Things you don’t understand”. The first thing she listed was pacifism. As always I am here to help. So I shall do my best to explain pacifism, to anyone who wants to read it. Hopefully I can knock it out in about a week.

Anyway on with the random scattered thoughts.

Lamont vs. Lieberman: I’ve opposed the war in Iraq from it’s beginning. I’m pretty far left on the political spectrum. That being said I really don’t give a damn about whether or not Joe Lieberman is in the Senate or not. My problem rather was with this whole political battle was that it played out like a mob hit. Joe went against what the members of his party wanted. Well the Senate Democrats have voted for very un-liberal things like the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act almost unanimously over the last 5 years, but let’s not weight down this pathetic little episode with the facts shall we? Anyway so Joe defies his little party so they get rid of him. Now as far as I know Joe never woke up with a horse’s head in his bed. But he did lose a primary election, which is quite rare for an incumbent senator. So apparently you defy the party and you go down in flames. This bothers me greatly. I don’t like this blind loyalty nonsense from either party.

So here’s a suggestion. Let’s just abolish political parties all together. Let’s make them illegal. Let’s see what all these people who want this power really have going for themselves. There will be no more talking points and the party to back you for an election. Just the candidate and their ideas will be on display. You think that this is a radical idea? Well George Washington didn’t want political parties to form either. He thought that would cause too much division in the young republic. Do you want to argue with George Washington? I swear the man was right about everything. If you don’t believe that go read his farewell address.

Israel and Hezbollah: Here’s the scariest thing that has come out of this awful conflict. Hezbollah is now promising to help rebuild damaged Lebanese properties. They will apparently do this with some financial backing from Syria and Iran. Let me say this in plain terms. If our president is as intent on spreading democracy and freedom as he says. Then his first priority right now should be to back the UN to go in and rebuild the damage in Lebanon. If the Lebanese people see Hezbollah as this benevolent benefactor who cares about them while the US and Israel are the aggressors. Then we have lost badly in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East.

Liquid Bombs in the Sky: First go read this article. This whole episode strikes me as political. Bush and Blair’s war is going to Hell in a hand basket and miraculously another threat appears. I know I sound awfully crass but this administration has a history of using the threat of terrorism as a diversion. I doubt this is much different. Like the article said those guys were on watch lists their chances of bordering a plane were minimal at best. So where’s the threat? Ten years ago the band Rage Against the Machine released their CD, Evil Empire. On it was a song was a song titled “Vietnow”, whose refrain contained the phrase, “Fear is your only God.” They were prophets I swear.

2006-08-02T23:22:00.000-07:00

I’m pro-life. I’m not really pro-life in the sense that it is used in current American political vocabulary. I’m a bit broader reaching than most of those people. I think if you are to even consider calling yourself pro-life you have to defend all life not just those lives, which have yet to be born. If you’re going to get in a rage over abortions and stem cell research, you better get enraged about the humiliatingly high infant mortality rate. If you’re going to protest the anniversary of Roe v Wade, then you ought protest every incident of capital punishment. If you’re going to have chutzpah to call yourself pro-life then you ought to defend all life without prejudice. To not be concerned with all life is hypocritical. I think there a few issues that really ought to concern anyone who wants to label themselves as pro-life. Granted I will not talk about all issues but these are crucial.

The issues that are most important to pro-life, in my opinion, are abortion, capital punishment, gun control, poverty, human rights and war. Some of these are quality of life issues for sure. But of what sense is it to hold life as sacred and then expect people to live a miserable life devoid of any comfort and security?

I’ve said it before; abortion has become a political litmus test. If you favor keeping it legal you are a liberal, if you opposes it you are conservative. I know these stereotypes do not hold in the real world but that’s the stereotype and we’re stuck with it. Both sides use incendiary language to describe their opponents, which I will not waste my time with here. Both sides are very passionate about the issue. It’s shame really because most polling data shows the country as centrists on the issue. They want some restrictions but by no means want it outlawed entirely.

So where do I stand on the issue? I will admit I don’t like abortion. I find it an ugly solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancy. That being said I do not want it outlawed. If I am to be serious about holding all life as sacred I must also hold the life of the pregnant woman as sacred. If we were to outlaw abortion she would have to get illegal abortions that may not be safe and put her own life in danger. This is unacceptable. So what does a guy sitting on the fence do about this issue? We need to solve the problem of unwanted pregnancies. If were up to me we would do a number of things.
One is national health care with access to free birth control including Plan B or the morning after pill. More birth control equals less pregnant women and that means less abortions.
Also along with national health care there would be increased minimum wages and guaranteed maternity leaves. Less financial burden on the mothers means more of them are going to carry the pregnancy to term because the child won’t be a financial burden.
There would be actual honest sex education in schools. None of this abstinence only teaching. Abstinence is the most effective birth control to be sure and should be included as an alternative. But, since I sincerely doubt kids will stop having sex anytime soon, we must prepare them for what can possibly happen.

I absolutely oppose capital punishment. I will not support the execution of anyone no matter what crime they have committed. Capital punishment is more about vengeance than justice. What justice is there in taking a life? What if the courts accidentally convicted an innocent man? Can you think of a more heinous act than killing an innocent man?

Don’t even use that old “eye for an eye” argument on me either. “Eye for an eye” was a call for fair punishment not to even the score. Punishments at the time that was written were extremely harsh. So an “eye for an eye” was just a call for fairness. Isn’t locking someone away for the rest of their lives in some brutal hellhole that passes for a prison punishment enough?

Also note that Canada, Mexico, most of Central America and all of Western Europe have abolished the death penalty. Russia still has it, but has not used it in ten years. So why the United States so far behind the rest of its contemporaries? Why are we in the same class as Middle Eastern countries that still have the death penalty and also horrible human rights records? Shouldn’t we be doing better than the countries we point the finger at so often as being evil?

On to the issue of gun control, this is a more derisive issue than it needs to be. I’m not quite idealistic enough to think our nation will ever disarm. But there a lot of changes that if made would help curb gun violence. I’m willing to allow for guns for hunting and even some self-defense. But our nation is armed to the teeth and it’s not helping us in any way.
Outlaw assault weapons: They’re called assault weapons for a reason. No citizen has any business with semi or fully automatic weapons. They have no hunting value so out they go.
Outlaw concealed weapons: Some states have laws allowing you to carry a concealed weapon if you get a license to do so. Why? Are we that fearful? Do we really need a bunch of people running around with concealed weapons? No we don’t. Concealed weapons laws are just more macho nonsense.
End these laws that allow for lethal force if you feel threatened: Florida and Colorado currently have laws that allow citizens to use lethal force if they feel threatened. In most other states your live has to be in obvious danger. Again is more needless fear mongering and needs to be stopped.
Stricter licensing for gun ownership: You have to have a license to drive and get married so it would seem logical you need one to own a gun. Or is that way too logical?
Stricter sentencing for crimes committed with guns: I know so far most of what I have suggested has only affected the gun owning average citizen. So I threw this in to not seem unfair and imbalanced. But I do think there should be fairly severe penalties for crimes committed with guns. Let’s keep these armed criminals behind bars.

Gandhi once called poverty the worst form of violence. He was understating it a bit. The fact we live in a world that could feed and house everyone but doesn’t is criminal. No one should be denied the most basic of human needs. Everyone should have access to food, shelter and medicine. There is no good reason why people should be denied these things. All arguments for people not having them all boil down to greed and ignorance. For one nation to have food rotting in warehouses while in another children starve is morally repulsive. If we are to ignore the most basic needs of people we will never find peace or justice.

Human rights ought to be inalienable. By human rights I mean those things that are essential to the people’s well being and happiness: food, shelter, medicine, education, the right to property and freedom. If we are to hold life as sacred and worthy of our protection, then shouldn’t we also be equally passionate about those things that make life better? To only hold the state of being alive as important and to have no concern for the quality of life people live is hypocritical. To bemoan the destruction of a frozen embryo for medical research but not to worry about the millions of children living in poverty in the United States is sickening. For someone to be blindly passionate about the over one million abortions that take place in the United States but yet that same person remains silent about the staggeringly high infant mortality rate in the United States is also hypocritical. The infant mortality rate in the United States is about 6.4 deaths per 1000 live births. This rate is higher than Cuba’s, a country we have crippled with economic sanctions over the years. It is simply not enough to worry about that life which you deem innocent and nothing else.

As Edwin Starr once sang, “War. What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing!” I am a pacifist. I oppose war. It’s that simple. War at it’s best is necessary evil. Even that most glorious of wars, World War II, was by no means unavoidable or as glorious as some would like you to believe. Yes, stopping European fascism and Japanese imperialism was necessary. The 20 million dead Soviets, the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the Holocaust, the bombing of Dresden, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, none of these horror stories is especially inspiring. The result was good, but the means to get there were humbling to say the least. I know someone reading this is about to snap. I know someone reading this is thinking, “He can’t speak ill of WWII! That’s sacrilege!” I bear no malice against the men who fought so bravely in that war or any war for that matter. But I feel it imperative that we as a human race lose our taste for war. General Sherman said that, “War is Hell”. There is little glory in war other than surviving it.

Isaac Asimov once said that, “Violence is the diplomacy of the incompetent.” Unless we advance as a human race past the need to violence to solve our conflicts I fear the worst. As we keep developing more terrible weapons we might be the very means that causes out own end.

I write these thoughts because they are my own. I am not trying to win an election or start a political party. Though they are vaguely similar to some Catholic teachings I took influence from many sources. I do not write them for my own ego. Though I must confess that writing is therapeutic. I write them because I think that this the way to a better world for all people, not just Americans or Catholics or the wealthy or whoever. We will never move forward as a human race until we all do it together.

2006-07-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

The escalation of violence in Lebanon is troubling enough. The fact that Syria and Iran and the United States all are involved to one degree or another is even more disturbing. But there is something even more disturbing out there. Yes friends there are forces even darker than the ones at work in the Middle East. There are people out there, Christian in name only, who think that if the conflict in the Middle East escalates enough that Jesus will return and these will be the End Times.

So as the horrible violence escalates in Lebanon, there are fundamentalist Christians running around in the USA with their pants unzipped because they think Jesus is going to take them to Heaven. The End Timers are on the verge of yelling, “I told you so” at the world. Now granted many a faith has foretold the end of civilization before. They were wrong of course. But, fundamentalist Christians who thrive on fear instead of love, which is what Jesus wanted us all to do, are still prophesizing the end of the world. This website even has a handy clock so you can plan your damnation to the eternal fires of Hell accordingly. It’s in six days as I write this. So I wouldn’t make any long-term plans or maybe you should. They haven’t been right before.

Now fundamentalist Christians have been waiting for Jesus to come back since he left the first time. I had a history professor in college who talked at length about how antsy early Christians got the further they got from Jesus’ departure from the Earth. Imagine if you were one of those early Christians being told Jesus was coming and then you waited and waited some more and no Jesus. I can see how they might get a wee bit antsy. But it has never stopped.

At one point fundamentalist Christians got so antsy they even invented a new term, rapture. The term actually appears nowhere in The Bible and neither does the concept. Which has always caused me to chuckle. Consider that the vast majority of the proponents of the rapture are very much Bible literalists. They take every word of the Bible as literal truth with no room for interpretation at all. So that they would use something that never actually appears in the Bible is rather odd. I mean they found the one phrase in the Bible that allows them to hate gay people as much as they want. But they deeply believe in this rapture even though it’s never in the Bible at all. So if it’s not in the Bible how is it true? This is a question that would make a fundamentalist Christians very angry, which I recommend you never do, unless you really enjoy arguing with hysterical people.

There are also some out there who believe that Israelis are God’s chosen people. I think God loves all his people equally. He’s like a really good parent. He may occasionally become very disappointed in one of His children, but He never stops loving them. So I really doubt that God holds Israel in higher regard than he does Omaha or Guam or China. We are all God’s children and therefore He loves us. The idea that God has a specific chosen people is ignorant and arrogant.

I’ve said it before I shall say it again and again until someone listens, religions based on fear and fear alone are bad and can lead nowhere worth going. All they do is make people afraid and people who are afraid become hateful very easily. Any group of people that is hopped up on fear and convinced that they and they alone are right is potentially very dangerous. This fear mongering defeats the whole purpose of religion, which is to become a better person and make the world a better place. Not that fundamentalist Christians have any use for this brand of religion. Nope, they have the end of the world to get ready for so they can ascend to Heaven and spit on the heathens as they go off to the eternal reward.

I try not to look down on other faiths. Fundamentalist Christians seem to be an exception because they thrive on fear. Fear is precisely what we have far too much of in this country. Fear is what makes people buy guns and point the finger of blame at everyone else. Fear is what drove George Bush’s approval rating to over 90% at one point and got him reelected. People who live in the fog of fear never take time to really appreciate this life. They’re so busy preparing themselves to avoid whatever it is that they fear, that they never let their guard down and see the world for what it really is. That we are one people separated only by what we want to believe are differences. I think it is best said by this quote from prayer written by Mary Stewart, “Grant that we may realize that it is the little things of life that create differences, that in the big things of life we are as one.”

The situation between Israel and Hezbollah is horrific. Why aren’t these allegedly devout Christians out doing something to promote peace among all people? Why are they only worrying about their own salvation? Maybe that last question was it’s own answer.

2006-07-21T22:10:00.000-07:00

I think this really needs to be said. I know that it might not sit really well with some people. I’m ok with that. I am really. Sometimes you have to say things that seem a little unpopular.

Often I see people talking about the causes for war, the things that inspire nations to clash. Often you see land, resources, religion and political power cited as reasons. I will grant you that those things have caused wars, at least on the surface. But there lies a deeper and darker reason for all man’s hostility against his own kind. The reason is that we are intrinsically flawed creatures. We seem to be naturally violent. We are smart enough to invent the weapons that may lead to our undoing but not smart not say that things ought never be used and destroy them before anyone can use them. Man is seemingly destined to fight to try and bring about his kind’s own Armageddon.

No religion has ever dropped an atom bomb. No pile of money has ever raped a woman. No oil well has ever shot hundreds of bullet into a house full of children. No political ideology has ever tortured a prisoner. In the end there is only us to blame. We are a part of a species that is a dichotomy. We are capable of acts of incredible kindness and incredible sacrifice. But unfortunately the acts of violence and fear and greed outnumber the good acts.

Chimpanzees, our cousins genetically speaking, often hunt, torture and kill other chimpanzees for reasons other than food. They will as a group hunt down another chimpanzee and will beat and kill them. Dolphins, usually regarded as a very smart mammal, have a violent streak in them as well. So maybe this violent streak is instinctive.

I once got into a rather heated discussion with someone about human nature. I argued that we are born with an instinct for self-preservation and little else. When we enter this world our goal is stay alive. We have to be taught generosity and compassion. Some people learn better than others. Some people seem to never learn. They want or need to believe that every problem can be solved with force and violence.

So am I a total pessimist? Do I think we are destined for war after war? I hope not. I really do. But it’s going to take a major shift in the zeitgeist. As long as wars make people money and people think that violence makes them safer I’m sure it will not happen any time soon. People that support a large military and being aggressive militarily always look to World War II. They use it as the last great, noble and just war. But what they never mention is it wasn’t the atom bombs and D-Day that really ended the threats of Germany and Japan. It was the fact that Japan and Germany were rebuilt and not allowed to suffer after defeat like Germany was after World War I. It’s not mentioned in history books very often that it was an action of prudent kindness that ended the German and Japanese threats not military might. Had they been left to suffer who know what might have risen from the ashes of defeat?

Again our nature seems to lead down the path of self-destruction. But I’m quite sure that the reason for all man’s lackluster history of violence and bloodshed is himself and nothing else. If you outlawed religion, property ownership and governments tomorrow it’d take about day before people were gathering into groups and fearing other groups. We like the safety of a group. It’s much easier to hate and want dead a nameless faceless group member than an individual. That seems to be part a large part of the problem. We are territorial animals. We mark our precious territory and don’t want anyone crossing over into. We fear anyone that is alien to us. I’m quite certain though that if we let our guard down just a little we wouldn’t be so afraid. We would see that the common ties that bind us all together are much stronger than any of our differences.

Maybe there is hope for us after all. Maybe it will all work out and eventually there will be a utopia. I certainly hope so. Though given the state our world is I have my doubts. We had thousands of years of civilization to work out our differences and move towards a less violent planet. We’ve just made it easier to kill more people. When the crossbow was invented the Catholic Church was shocked and terrified because it could so easily penetrate armor. The Church thought it too awful to ever use on the battlefield. It almost seems quaint now. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, thought that he could create a weapon so horrific that humans would never use it and wars would cease. He was wrong.

I don’t mean this essay to seem like an indictment of the human race. There are many wonderful inspirational people out there. They are truly angels in our midst. But the angels aren’t very loud. They seldom seem to run the governments and corporations and churches. Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut have both implied that the problem with the US presidency is that no sane person would want the job. Only lunatics would want to be in charge.

I hope it all does work out. I hope I’m wrong and sometime soon this species of ours turns the corner and starts behaving itself. Maybe we’ll get smart and let the angels in our midst be in charge. Either that or we’ll get to meet the real angels.

2006-07-17T22:40:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was different at other schools. But when I was a wee lad in elementary school they used to try and teach us that fighting was wrong. We were taught to turn the other cheek. We told that if someone hit you or kicked you responding with something even worse was wrong and lead to nothing good. Some days I swear I’m the only person that remembers this stuff.

The states of Colorado and Florida both have laws that allow a person to use lethal force if they feel threatened. The standard throughout the rest of the states is in self-defense. You have to see that they pose an imminent and very real danger before you are allowed to kill. Not in Florida and Colorado. In Colorado after two men broke into someone’s house and delivered a beating. The victim went got his gun, chased them into the streets and shot and killed one of them as they were in a car trying to get away. The shooter was found not guilty because of the law allowing lethal force.

My town is currently under a zero tolerance plan intended to curb drug dealing and trafficking. Of course any sane rational person realizes that zero tolerance roughly translates to “let’s arrest lots of the poor and minorities”. People have been pulled over for nothing other than being in the part of town known to have drug dealers. Yes you read that correctly the police because of where the citizen is not what they are doing have harassed citizens, who are doing nothing wrong. The legal term for this I believe is bullshit. Of course the city isn’t out a lot of money for this new-fangled police state because a private citizens group is paying for sheriff deputies to come in and assist in this program. You see if you a rich enough you can pay for your own police force. Hooray for fascism! Of course the man largely responsible for this lives on the outskirts of town with a “no trespassing” sign in front of his mansion.

The great comedian Bill Hicks, whom I quote probably too often, said that life was a choice between two things, love and fear. Fear makes you buy guns and hire police officers to harass citizens. Love is more patient and tolerant. You look for the virus causing the problem and not just the symptoms. You want the world to be a far better place not for just those who can afford but everyone.

Sadly though people don’t want to hear about how we ought to be following the path of love and not fear. They see all these shows on TV about awful crimes and are told about all the evil that is out there and they get scared. They are told that criminals are everywhere and they need protection. They need bigger locks and bigger guns. They need protection from this evil. The government will be happy to provide it for you all you have to do is sacrifice some freedom. Let the police harass you and the drug dealers will go away. Get a gun and shoot people that make you feel scared. It’s ok. They’re criminals. They deserve to die. All bad people do.

Maybe the world just needs more forceful elementary school teachers to reinforce that violence and escalating violence is wrong. It would be better than right to kill laws and zero tolerance.

2006-07-16T22:21:00.000-07:00

John Dear’s Declaration of Peace has inspired me. I know I sporadically update my little corner of the blogosphere with whatever has crossed my mind. But for the next two months or so it shall be a bit different. I will be writing about nothing but peace. Yes I shall now have a singular focus. I know John Dear’s work is focused largely on Iraq but I’m reaching in a slightly different direction that will hopefully end up at the same place as John Dear.

This is couldn’t have came at a more appropriate time. Tensions between Lebanon and Israel are running higher every day. The war in Iraq is not getting any better. Africa, the cradle of civilization, is being brutalized with genocide, famine and disease. North Korea and Iran are rattling their nuclear sabers. These are contentious times we live in. If we don’t act now to make the world a better place for all people we might not get another chance.

So there you have it. My plan up until September 21st is to write about peace as much as I am able. In fact I shall start right now.

If I have one thing that really irks more so than anything with the President it is this. On September 12th, 2001 George W. Bush, the President of the United States of America, was given a golden opportunity. In the aftermath of the terrorists attacks on the United States George Bush had the world’s support. He was tantalizingly close to making the world a better and more peaceful place. He had to make a simple choice. He had to choose between the paths of love and fear. He had to choose between inspiration and intimidation. He chose fear and intimidation.

The United States attacked Afghanistan to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network of terrorists he led. It is almost 5 years later and we do not have Bin Laden and Al Qaeda is still planning and executing terrorist attacks. The Taliban, the organization that we took out of power is now slowing returning to prominence.

In March of 2003 we invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein had connections to Al Qaeda and terrorism and he also had weapons of mass destruction, or so we were told. We were lied to. Hussein had neither ties to Al Qaeda or weapons of mass destruction. So after more than 2,500 American soldiers have been killed and as many as 100,000 Iraqis have been killed and we have spent almost 300 billion dollars what mission was accomplished? We have a shaky Iraqi government that wants us out. We have an Iraqi population that is growing more resentful of the American presence there by the day. Iraq has become a training ground for new terrorists.

The world that on September 12th stood behind the United States has largely abandoned us. They view us with suspicion and contempt. We are the thugs and bullies of the world.

We must change course it’s no longer a matter of if it’s a matter of how soon. If we continue down this path we never recover financially, politically or morally.

2006-07-07T21:04:00.000-07:00

HOORAY FOR OUR TEAM!

We foiled a terror plot today! Isn’t that great news? Don’t you want to go salute your flag? I mean sure the people arrested really didn’t get much past talking about doing it. They had not done any reconnaissance or bought any explosives yet. Sure no one was totally sure which tunnel they were about to blow up. I will grant you that their plan was asinine at best. Blowing a hole in a tunnel and waiting for it flood a city above sea level has the ring of something from a bad Jerry Bruckheimer movie. (Is there a good Jerry Bruckheimer movie?) Not to mention the laws of physics were totally against them. I mean we captured bad guys right? This is just like in Miami when we got those guys who didn’t really have ties to Al Qaeda. I mean sure they were probably slightly less dangerous than all the concealed weapons laws and all the militia groups out west. By God though we got us the bad guys though.

This couldn’t be some crass political ploy could it? Sure the CIA officially has disbanded the unit charged with hunting Osama Bin Laden. Sure violence in Iraq hasn’t abated since the death of Al Zarqawi. Sure the Iraqi government has made some overtures about a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces from their country. But the US government wouldn’t use an arrest like this to their political advantage. Would they? Isn’t that what the color-coded terror alert system is for? Hey whatever happened to the old terror alert system? They seemed to have stopped using it after the 2004 presidential elections. I wonder why?

I mean the US of A takes the “war on terror” very seriously. I mean we invaded Iraq didn’t we? Sure they didn’t have any ties to Al Qaeda. Sure they didn’t have any “weapons of mass destruction”. But we sure did invade them. We invaded Afghanistan to get Bin Laden and overthrow the Taliban. That worked out great! We haven’t gotten Bin Laden yet, and I emphasize yet, but we will someday more than likely. The Taliban maybe returning to power in Afghanistan but we’ll just invade them again. That’ll teach them but good.

Oh and North Korea with their long-range missile that flew all of 42 seconds. Of course our fearless president will use every diplomatic avenue possible, just like he did with Iraq. I mean North Korea may actually have more than one nuclear warhead. That’s only about 10,000 less than we have. That’s scary.

I mean, as these terrorists get scarier and scarier I need to vote for and support a leader that will stop at nothing to protect me. Even if it means I have to sacrifice my civil rights and the human dignity and the very lives of others. Because the only thing we have to fear is the terrorists.

This message was brought to you by the letter S as in sarcasm. It’s all that keeps me sane in these maddening times.

2006-06-30T20:53:00.000-07:00

If you watch as much news as I do, and if you don’t you’re probably far saner than I am, you’ve noticed a trend. It seems that every time a Democrat brings up the idea of pulling the troops out of Iraq and redeploying them the right-wing noise machine kicks into overdrive. They seem to have a few catchphrases they are brandishing about. As with all pre-manufactured catchphrases they are of no real use. They bring zero clarity to the debate. Of course the use of these catchphrases has been around for a long time. They have always been half-truths at best. Let me explain using some newer examples and a classic model.

First off is the phrase, “cut and run”. You just know some Republican strategists sat around in some conference room thinking up this trite little phrase. They probably had a really big board with lots of different phrases and they set out to pick the best one. They needed something simple so everyone could remember it, even the Republican base. So they needed something brief with small words that had some real kick to it. It would have to be like the Fifth Commandment, “Thou shall not kill” but something that Republicans would actually retain and get some use out of it. I’d like to think at some point they had “Shit and Get” on the big board. But they decided to drop it after they asked “What Would Jesus Do?” So they came up with “cut and run”. Cut is a nice violent word for a nice violent bunch of people. When you’re responsible for the deaths of about 50,000 people you qualify as violent. It also has run in it, which has the connotation of being a coward. Never mind that neither the President nor the Vice-President has ever served in combat. They just want the people who oppose their war to look bad. So they settled on “cut and run”. Of course no one that has suggested leaving Iraq has wanted what the Republicans would like everyone to believe. They Republicans are trying to paint those who want us out as unpatriotic and cowards. Rep. Murtha and Sen. Kerry merely want the troops out of the chaos of Iraq and used elsewhere, like maybe finding Osama Bin Laden. Republicans don’t think our mission is complete however. They want us to “stay the course”.

OK may I be so bold to ask a few simple questions? Do we even have a course? What precisely are our goals in Iraq? Does Bush even know? Would any of these steadfast “stay the course” Republicans even recognize this so-called course? Would they recognize it if it crawled up their asses and bit them on their sphincters? I sincerely doubt it. You know what this “stay the course” translates to? What they are really trying to do is save face. These egomaniacs with neither their own personal safety or the well-being of a loved one at stake don’t want to leave Iraq looking like anything less than a conquering hero. They can’t stand the thought of having to admit, even if it is just the mere insinuation of it, that this war was fought for the wrong reasons and we should have never went in the first place. So we are left to “stay the course’, no matter how far away from the truth, justice or the American way that course leads us.

Please stop comparing this war in Iraq to World War II. World War II was a just war against two powerful nations that both sought to become an empire. We had to fight in World War II. There wasn’t an alternative. Also the people that point out how iron-willed we were in World War II need to study the Lost Division. The Lost Division, the approximately 19,000 soldiers who went AWOL while fighting in Europe. Not everyone was a hero. Some cracked under the pressure of fighting a brutal war. War is never glorious. War is Hell. So please stop bringing up World War II every time you want to justify a war.

Republicans seem to be good with these little catchphrases and comparisons. They must have better marketing people. It seems like about an election rolls around a new phrase of two pops up. Do you remember “family values”? There’s a nice vague piece of language. Aren’t the values of a family variable from family to family? Do you really think the Manson Family had the same values as the Brady Bunch? Well do you?

There’s a perfectly good reason I loathe these precious little catchphrases. It is because the people use them and then have nothing else to offer to the debate. The next time some on drops a “cut and run” or a “stay the course” press them on it. I guarantee they will go silent. We’re a sound bite culture. We seem to have the superficial nonsense down to a tee. But when asked for deeper meaning there is usually very little there. This is why politicians can get away with murder. People only retain the little blurbs and never look deeper. These catchphrases are at best half-truths. If you scratch away at a half-truth long enough you’ll always find the lie.

2006-06-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

Here’s a perfectly good example of why I don’t watch a whole lot of political shows that rely on talking heads. I’m flipping through the channels tonight and I notice on Scarborough Country they’re discussing global warming. Who do they have on to discuss this issue that could potentially alter the fate of the human race? Could it be scientists? Nope. They have on two talking heads. One of who was John Stossel. I find Stossel about as useful as a tit on a boar. He claims to be a skeptic but all he is a polemic. He never fully examines both sides of the issue and always sides with people on the political right. Tonight, and I’ll admit I didn’t see it all, but he claimed that the reason people back global warming is that they have something against capitalism. He could have had other shoddy science like he has in the past when he attacked people that support the idea that our planet is getting warmer and we are at least partly to blame. He usually finds the three or four scientists who have doubts and acts like that proves him right, but enough about John Stossel and his asinine attempts at skepticism. Let me move on to my original point, talking heads are useless.

Usually on these political talk shows they have guests on that are far from experts. If you want to talk military strategy then having someone on who served in the military, preferably a commander of some sort would be a good idea. If you want to discuss the environment might I be so bold as to suggest a climatologist or a meteorologist. If you want to discuss the economy an economist would be a sound decision. See where I‘m going with this? If these shows want to have truly informed debate then they need truly informed people. They need to stop booking people trying to sell their books and get people to attend their lectures.

Is Ann Coulter really any better informed about current events than most of the people on the blogosphere? I doubt it. So why aren’t they one CNN and Fox News? Well some people think Ann’s 5’9” 98 lb frame with her 9 lb Adam’s apple is sexy, but I digress. Then again other than the fact she is an insane pain in the ass, can think of no other reason to allow her such a large public forum. She is in spite of really being of no exceptional value to any discussion on my TV all the time. Isn’t there anyone else with a valid opinion out there? Couldn’t someone else better discuss the current administration’s policies? Yes they could but because Ann is such an insane pain in the ass she draws ratings. So Ann gets to hee-haw like a jackass on TV and real experts are almost never heard.

There is a danger to this, a very real danger. You see because people are chosen because they are entertaining or because their corporate overlords approve of their message people never get to see the whole picture. Real debate is dead presently. Even Presidential debates that ought to be intellectually stimulating exchanges between to people well versed in rhetoric have become little more than simultaneous campaign speeches. The public never sees real scientific debate that never really makes into the newspaper and has to be found in magazines devoted to science. Political debate is a shouting match burdened with hyperbole and platitudes. It’s no wonder why no one cares about politics or science.

People like John Stossel and Ann Coulter and the countless others who are “Talking loud and saying nothing”, to quote James Brown, ought to be largely ignored. These noise machines are in it largely for their own egos and bank accounts. There are many real experts out there who have real information based on tireless work and very tedious research that could make us all smarter and make the world a better place. But they are hard to find because they avoid inflammatory language and don’t look like they want to be on the cover of a magazine. If the talking heads keep being placed out there as if they are real experts on anything other than how to be on talk shows then I fear we may keep sliding in the wrong direction. We may keep sliding away from reason and towards ignorance.

“Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”-- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man: Being An Answer To Mr. Burke's Attack On The French Revolution, Part the First, Conclusion

2006-06-24T22:32:00.000-07:00

I’ve got good news and I got bad news. Well by the end of this post it will look like mostly bad news. So I got to give you kids a little sugar to help the medicine go down.

First the good news, I believe soon they may very well be a unified Iraq. Yes you heard it here first. Little old anti-war me thinks that there will soon may be a unified Iraq. All the Sunnis and the Shiites and the Kurds will all be in this together. They will function as one unified Iraq.

Well hooray for our team right? What possibly could be bad about a unified Iraq? What could there possibly be that could make that a bad thing? It would really be “Mission Accomplished”. Wouldn’t it?

Well I haven’t said yet what I think will unify Iraq. I haven’t told you what just might bring all Iraqis together in spite of their religious and tribal differences. What force could unify Iraq? They might all soon unify to kick the Americans the Hell out of their country. If we thought the insurgency is bad now just wait until Iraq unifies. If Iraq comes together with one mission and that mission to kick the American military and contractors dead square in the ass, then we will soon long for the days of only 2,500 dead American servicemen and women.

Today it was reported by Newsweek that the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has plan. That plan wants a timetable for US troop withdrawal from Iraq, amnesty for Iraqis that have killed American troops, compensation for victims of coalition military operation and release all security detainees in US and Iraqi prisons. I somehow doubt the Bush Administration will be happy to see this plan. This really doesn’t seem like it fits with this administration’s new mantra of “stay the course”. I’m pretty sure this is not the mission they wanted to accomplish.

Things in Iraq continue to remain hellish. Go read this report from The Detroit Free Press. Baghdad is currently under a state of emergency, in spite of an attempt by Iraqi soldiers to restore peace to Baghdad.

Killing Al-Zarqawi wasn’t a deathblow to the insurgents. This was not a case of chopping the head off of the serpent. Al-Zarqawi wasn’t that important to the insurgency. These insurgents will keep fighting no matter who dies, be it Al-Zarqawi or even Bin laden. Think about it. If one of our leaders died would we expect our troops to stop fighting? The dead leader will simply be replaced and the fighters will keep on fighting. That’s just how wars work.

So here’s the decision that President Bush has got to make. The Iraqis clearly want us out. Iraq is a violent out of control civil war. So will he start working with Congress and the Iraqi government for us to leave? Will he defy all the neo-conservatives and oil companies that wanted this war? Will he take a stand and do what is not only prudent but what is right? Well he stand down as the Iraqi government stands up?

I fear that he won’t. After over five years of watching this New England born, Ivy League educated, heir to old money pseudo-cowboy operate, I’ve lost all faith in him. He didn’t act quickly on 9/11, he didn’t act quickly after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and I doubt he will show any real eagerness to act here.

If the President or Congress doesn’t agree to work with the Iraqi government and start allowing them to control their own destiny, I fear the situation in Iraq may worsen. The Republicans must drop this macho nonsense of not “cutting and running” and start to give the Iraqis what they want. Which is obviously control of their government, the right to self-rule. Wasn’t that our mission anyways?

2006-06-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

Lately with the release of Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth there’s a bit of chatter in the media about global warming. So let me get in my two cents worth.

First, no matter what people like John Stossel try and sell you global warming is very real. The planet’s average temperature is rising as is it’s oceans’ temperature. We are clearly in the midst of a trend. There is no denying it.

Now there are those who will debate as to why the Earth is getting warmer. Maybe there are other factors. I know the Sun is getting more energetic. I know the Earth’s magnetic field is weakening and soon will reverse poles. I know the Earth has endured some pretty brutal climate changes before. However the scientific consensus is that people are a significant portion of the problem. Meaning if we weren’t burning fossil fuels like madmen the problem would be substantially less.

I know why fossil fuels have remained popular. They have remained in favor because a bunch of greedy bastards got rich off of them. They then went and bought some politicians and the fossil fuels kept our vehicles running and electricity generating. So because some gaggle of greedy little men had to get greedier and more gluttonous we now have a planet increasingly hostile to our existence. This is why greed and gluttony are among the seven deadly sins.

How anyone could put self-interest ahead of the condition of this precious blue and green ball is bewildering. This greatest gift we could ever be given. This wonderful world is teeming with nourishment and remedies and awe-inspiring beauty. Yet we treat it like an unwanted birthday gift. We ignore it and pile our crap on it and forget that it was even a gift at all. If we forget what a precious gift this planet and forget what precious gifts this planet has given us then this planet will forget us.

This planet is in no danger. This planet will survive all our greed and excess. We won’t survive it, but Earth will. So if all out pollution makes the planet inhospitable to people, then we will go away forever. Earth will simply put pennies on our eyes just like she did to the dinosaurs and dodos. Earth does not need us. We are totally dependant on it.

This glorious third blue-green rock from the Sun is the only home we have. It is the only place we know where we can survive. We must not forget how much we need planet Earth. We are not the demigods we imagine ourselves to be, capable of conquering any foe. We are but small helpless children sheltered in Mother Earth’s warm embrace.

2006-06-14T22:32:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note the letter you are about to read was originally intended for the editorial page of the local newspapers. Then Divine Strake got cancelled. One of the peace groups I belong to wanted me to pursue the issue anyway. Well, since most papers have words limits and reserve the right to edit your submissions I decided to throw it on my humble blog. I wasn’t able to edit to length that would makes the papers happy. I also didn’t want to trust my baby to some editor who doesn’t give a damn about my viewpoints.

Even though the test has been cancelled the threat is still very real. That’s why I posted it here for your reading pleasure. Much more information about Divine Strake can be found here.

On June 23rd 700 tons of ammonium nitrate fuel oil will be detonated in the Nevada desert. This test, codenamed Divine Strake, is to test the class of weapons called bunker busters. The purpose of these bunker busters is to penetrate and destroy underground weapons caches and other underground installations. Bunker busters carrying conventional explosives have been used before and have been less than effective. In fact those used in Afghanistan were said to have hardly damaged the targets at all.

So the United States is now testing a large amount of explosives in the Nevada desert. It’s not that the fact that they are testing explosives that is disturbing. It is the sheer amount that they are using. The 700 tons of ammonium nitrate fuel oil that they are using have the explosive force equivalent of 593 tons of TNT. The size is so important because no aircraft known has the capability to deliver a payload that large. No military aircraft, including the immense cargo planes, has the capability to deliver a payload in excess of 500 tons. The C5 Galaxy, an immense cargo plane, can only get airborne at about 837,000 lbs or 418.5 tons. That is less than 60% of the weight of the Divine Stake test. The C5 is not a bomber and would be a poor choice to drop bunker busters. The B-52, our largest bomber has maximum take off weight of 488,000 lbs or 244 tons.

So why test such a large amount of explosives if we cannot deliver them? There is only one logical solution. It is preparation for the construction of a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator or RNEP. An RNEP is simply a bunker buster that uses a nuclear payload instead of conventional explosives.

According to the Department of Defense’s own analysis a 1-megaton nuclear weapon dropped in Iran, the most likely target for these weapons, would kill about 3 million people and expose another 35 million to levels of radioactive fallout that could cause cancer. The fallout would no be restricted to Iran however it would spread through Afghanistan. Pakistan and India. To put that 3 million number in some sort of perspective it is approximately equal to twice the population of Columbus, Ohio or 1000 times the number of lives taken in the September 11th attacks.

Nuclear weapons are horrifying. Every President, from Eisenhower to Clinton, did something to either limit their testing or reduce their numbers. President Reagan even eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons, medium range missile launched warheads in Europe.

The effectiveness of these nuclear bunker busters is under scrutiny. The Union of Concerned Scientists has reported that an RNEP would lack the destructive power to destroy a target that is fairly deep underground. Also unless the strike was a direct hit the detonation of the nuclear warhead would not completely destroy whatever nuclear or biological weapons components present.

Divine Strake and the testing and proliferation of all nuclear weapons must be opposed. Nuclear weapons are too destructive to be ever be used again. No nation on Earth, including our own, can be trusted with this terrible weapon.

2006-06-13T22:34:00.000-07:00

At a forum I like to frequent a new term as thrown out, pseudo-Christian. I do love new words. The thread was about that most explosive issue, homosexuality. Of course this term pseudo-Christian was used in the heat of disagreement like any other put down. But are there really pseudo-Christians out there? I think so. Well as my mind got to think I decided to write about my topic today, which is a little bit of both issues, pseudo-Christians and homosexuality.

As I have said before religion is based on faith and therefore it is difficult, if not impossible, to prove anyone right or wrong. This is why I dodge a lot of religious arguments because they tend to lead to some very ungodly behavior. That being said I think most faiths tend to come from a place that is good and pure. I bear no malice against mainstream faiths. I believe there is goodness in Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, Methodists, Muslims, Buddhists, Quakers and many other wonderful faiths. There are many pathways to Heaven. However there are not infinite paths. Some religions are bothersome. Scientology is fascinating and all but is it really a religion? It seems from what I am able to understand to be more of method of self-help than a religion. Anything founded by a mediocre science-fiction writer probably isn’t worth worrying about anyway. Well they are a bunch of goofy bastards but that’s another essay. I shall also spare the leader of these so-called mega-churches. You know these slick looking ministers in their big ostentatious monuments to their religion. They may be over the top and have a shaky understanding of religion at times but they’re not that bad.

No if you want find true pseudo-Christians you have to look to Topeka, Kansas and the Westboro Baptist Church. The Westboro Baptist Church is led by Fred Phelps, who hates homosexuals. The Westboro Baptist Church even has a website called “God hates fags”. I could just sum this up in one little phrase, “God loves, man hates”. But, I know you humble reader expect me to be chattier, so I shall do my best. Phelps goes so far to claim tragedies like Hurricane Katrina were caused by America’s tolerance for homosexuals. Members of his church also protest at the funerals of soldiers who were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. They protest there because Phelps and his followers believe the soldiers died because of America’s tolerance of homosexuality. A brief side note, I have protested the war in Iraq many times but I would never protest at a funeral of a fallen soldier. The families and friends of these soldiers deserve their time to heal.

Getting back to Phelps and his followers, I can imagine nothing less Christian than hating in the name of God or Jesus. To understand this a little better let’s examine the Roman Catholic Church’s stance on the issue of homosexuality. As usual I use Catholicism because its what I am so I understand it the best. Roman Catholicism does not condone homosexuality. The Roman Catholic Church does not however preach hatred towards those who commit this act. They regard in the same regard as other sins of the flesh, such as pre-marital sex. The sinner must ask forgiveness but there is never hatred towards the sinner. Hating someone who is a sinner is a most un-Christian thing to do.

Oh by the way, Phelps also hates Catholics with a passion. He took full advantage of the sexual abuse scandal that still hangs shamefully over the church. He claims a third of all priests are gay and they are seducing innocent children and women. Why would a gay man seduce a woman? That seems like a poorly thought out insult. Most of the pathetic shameful venom that Fred Phelps regurgitates is less than well thought out.

Now people like Fred Phelps aren’t big threats. By their own admission, the Westboro Baptist Church has about 100 members and roughly 80% of those are related to Phelps by either blood or marriage. Plus they all live in walled off compound. So I doubt the Westboro Baptists are likely to overrun us all anytime soon. What is troublesome is however is that they know how to draw attention. Their protests have gotten them on the cable news stations on a pretty regular basis lately. Why they bring these people on is totally beyond me. What do they hope to learn? How will this make the world any smarter? Are they that desperate for ratings? I’m not for suppressing these followers of Fred Phelps. It’s a free country to believe whatever you want, no matter how loathsome. But giving these idiots attention just emboldens them. I fear what a truly emboldened Fred Phelps might be hateful enough to attempt.

Enough about Fred Phelps and his doctrine of hatred let me return to my original thoughts. They are many paths to Heaven. Just remember that any church that preaches hatred or intolerance or fear isn’t one worth following. Remember that one of the most important things in the Bible is how we shall be judged. It is not based on how many people we convert or how many sinners we point out. But rather, we will be judged on how we treat the least of God’s children. Don’t homosexuals who are outcast in most cultures and forced to live out their love lives in secrecy for fear of the repercussions among those most in need of kind treatment? I tend to believe so.

2006-06-09T22:19:00.000-07:00

I love it when I learn new things. I’m fairly curious by nature so I’m always looking around and hoping to discover something new. So I’m just surfing around and I find this article by Eric Alan Beltt entitled, “Liberalism is a Psychology”. It’s bad enough I got Michael Savage trying to convince people that liberals have mental disorders and Ann Coulter saying liberals are Godless now I find this. Please read the article if you can make it all the way through.

Oh by the way, I was going to copy the article and annotate it but alas Eric Alan Beltt is a bigger windbag than me.

The most nauseating thing is says is that liberals believe things that are “patently wrong”. Of course he offers no evidence he gives no substance he just says that liberals are wrong. Liberals never have a good damn idea. That seems a bit arrogant. So was Social Security wrong? Is wanting everyone to have access to health care wrong? Are civil rights wrong? You can’t just say the other side is wrong and offer no proof.

Also I think Mr. Beltt should understand that in a democracy it functions best when it has a diversity of opinions. There must be ideas from all sides to make this country as strong as it can be. I bear no malice against traditional Republicans who want smaller government and fiscal responsibility. Those are sound notions and they belong in the national debate.

But to call a school of thought patently wrong is just arrogant and shows a lack of ability to really debate the issues.

Another annoyance is the notion liberals do things to help people because they feel superior to them. I cannot pretend to speak for all liberals but in all honesty I feel superior to no one. We are all in this together, created equal in the eyes of God. To call liberals arrogant in this regard shows how little Mr. Beltt really knows about liberals. I wonder if he has ever talked to a Quaker or a Catholic Worker or a humanist. I wonder if the words empathy and sympathy have any real meaning for Mr. Beltt. I wonder if Mr. Beltt has any concept of being a humble servant of God and man.

Mr. Beltt also tries to demonstrate that liberals are elitists. He claims the liberals that dominate the legal, academic, entertainment and media professions choose to go into those fields just for their egos. He claims they have elite social circles. So apparently all the wealthy conservatives that belong to country clubs that won’t admit blacks or Jews are just common folk. All the wealthy conservatives that pour money into the Republican political machine are regular Joes. All the Republicans in their gated communities are just the salt of the earth. It’d be funny if weren’t so sad.

One more thing before I put this puppy to bed. This is just one more example of someone slamming liberals. Liberals are so marginalized in this current political climate it’s hard to find any of them at all in power. Liberals have been the victim of a two decade long plan to mold the USA into a country that pleases them. I remember back during the 1984 Presidential debates Reagan called Mondale “a card carrying member of the ACLU” and a liberal. The crowd cheered like Reagan just landed a really good yo momma joke. Liberals are under attack because they stand between the Christian-Neo-Conservative-Corporate right and their agenda of running America with an iron fist.

OK I lied. I have one more morsel for you to chew on. It would have been so easy for me to attack Eric Alan Beltt in the same fashion he attacked liberals. But I took a pass. I could claim to know the conservative mindset and make a lot of generalizations and take about 150 cheap shots but I passed. Trust me it wasn’t easy. This country will not ever get anywhere if we lose the ideal of real debate. We have gone from the classic Lincoln –Douglas style debates to the less civilized Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage shouting matches. I think we can do better.

2006-06-07T22:14:00.000-07:00

Recently I was sitting at Mass when the priest said something that would shock a lot of Christians. He said that not all the answers are in the Bible. That you cannot find the solution to every problem that life throws at you in the pages of the Good Book.

The Bible is wonderful thing. It is a tremendous guide in how to live a loving, humble and charitable life. It is not however a textbook. It says nothing of nuclear weapons. It says nothing of cloning. So what is a good Christian to do? A good Christian must you the gifts of reason and compassion that God was kind enough to give us. Just because you can’t fine a Bible verse that specifically backs your ideas or decisions doesn’t necessarily make them any less close to God’s ideal.

People have unfortunately used the Bible for less than noble purposes since Guttenberg started printing them. Hideous and despicable things like slavery and gay bashing have been justified by Bible quotes. The Devil has been citing Scripture to get away with his evil ways, to paraphrase Shakespeare. So it’s always best to question Bible-thumpers who use biblical references to justify immoral behavior. The Westboro Baptist Church comes screaming to mind, with their repulsive “God hates fags” campaign. If someone could be kind enough to show me where in the Bible anyone preached hatred, especially Jesus since this is in name at least a Christian church.

Speaking of things that are repulsive, Ann Coulter has a new book out. Godless: The Church of Liberalism is maybe the most ironically titled book ever. Ann Coulter herself could be no farther from God if she were to masturbate with a crucifix in St Peter’s Square during Easter Sunday. Just because you proclaim God is on your side does not make it so. Ann Coulter who has made a career of being spiteful, hateful, fallacious 98 lb bag of monkey crap is no closer to God then all the rest who lie cheat and steal in His name. We must always remember what Abraham Lincoln said, “I can't say whether God is on our side, but my great concern is to be on the side of God.”

I must also bring this up because it irritates me so. The Bible though wonderful in its own right is not a science text. God was kind enough to give us free will and reason to think and solve problems. Just because one of those solutions does not appear verbatim in the Bible does not prove it untrue. So just relax. The Bible never bothered to tell us about medicine or transportation yet that doesn’t mean you’re free to ignore advances to does it? Yes I know about the ironically named Christian Scientists but they are in a minority. It just always confounds me when people take the Bible oh so literally. If you do take it literally may I ask you the same question Bill Hicks used to ask? What about dinosaurs? If the Bible is the only book you need to understand everything then where are the dinosaurs? If man existed at about the same time as all the animals why didn’t someone write about a T-Rex or a raptor? You’d think if oh say Moses saw a big old sauropod it would have made the Good Book.

You can get a lot of good stuff from the Bible. But it is not the solution to everything. You must use the good sense and compassion God gave you. As the old Indian proverb says, “Call out to the Lord, but row away from the rocks.”

2006-06-05T22:42:00.000-07:00

June 6th, 2006 is fast approaching. In fact as your read this it may have already passed, but that is neither here nor there. If you pay attention to the media some people think that June 6, 2006 will be a very bad day because it’s date can be written as 6/6/06 or 666. For those of you who or missed the movie The Omen or aren’t big Iron Maiden fans, I’ll try and help. Some people claim that the number 666 represents Satan. It is the number of the beast. This overlooks the fact that a lot of biblical scholars disagree. The number 666 was probably just code for Caesar Nero. Also the Book of Revelations was not a book of prophecy rather it was a coded critique of the Roman Empire’s treatment of early Christians. But while all that is an interesting argument there is a greater evil taking place. It has nothing to do with Satan or religion. It has to do with your eroding rights.

Florida recently passed a law that fines organizations for turning it forms late. It is currently being challenged in court as being unconstitutional. These fines would make it next to impossible for organizations like the League of Women Voters to register voters. The League of Women Voters has been doing this for decades.

Washington has a law denying anyone the right to vote if their data does not match a state database. We all know how efficient and accurate our government is. This will disenfranchise potentially thousands of voters in Washington.

There is some talk of a national voter ID card or requiring photo ID to vote, but this is slow moving. Apparently even Bush, who seems to love needless bureaucracy, has rejected it. But it does bear watching.

Never mind the long standing practice of gerrymandering, which divides districts into regions of invincibility for the incumbent. Yes your district is more than likely been nicely divided into something that has the demographic makeup to always favor your incumbent politicians.

So this brings me to the scary part. Why are these moves being made to make it harder to vote? Isn’t voting essential to a representative democracy? Which is what we really are.

I know there has been talk recently that the 2004 elections, especially in Ohio, were less than earnest. But this is going deeper than that. It’s bad enough we have no national standards for voting, even in national elections. Are we going back to the days when voting was restricted to the white and wealthy?

Sadly I know why this is happening. It’s not totally the politicians’ fault. I mean sure they have seem to forgotten that their job is not that of divine leader but rather it is that of public servant. It is the politicians’ job to best serve the welfare and interests of the citizens. It is the right of the citizens to remove those politicians who are not fulfilling that obligation. Sadly in a lot of places that’s more difficult, because of gerrymandering, than it ought to be.

But as much as I’d like to sit here and write a thousand words or so on what a bunch of worthless snakes inhabit our halls of power, I won’t. I mean sure it’s true but they’re not who needs the swift kick in the pants.

It the American people who have to burden the bulk of the blame. I’ll say this early it’s a shame the mainstream media doesn’t get as angry with this as they should. It would make the citizen’s life a lot easier. But unfortunately this is the information age and being informed has never been easier. Sure there’s a large amount of crap that has to be sifted through but the truth is out there. You just have to willing to find it. So I can’t totally blame the mainstream media.

It’s the American people that have let the government do this to them. American’s are totally apathetic about their government. Recently an election in Israel had a 63% turn out. It was considered low by their standards. If 63% turned out in the USA it would be cause for celebration. The American people are also woefully ignorant of their own civil liberties as guaranteed by the Constitution. Most aren’t even aware of who represents them in government. If you want to see it for yourself start asking people who is the Representative in the United States House of Representatives. I’d bet that most couldn’t tell you even that. Or ask them to name the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment. You’ll get blank stares.

The people of this wonderful country need to realize that freedom is fragile. It can be broken and taken away quite easily. You have to defend it. The people need to vote, educate themselves and make sure that those is government never forget who the real boss it. It is not they or their donors. It is the American people. We must never allow ourselves to forget that or let that change.

2006-05-31T22:36:00.000-07:00

So I’m reading through AlterNet’s fine website when I come across and article called “The Clownification of America”. The main gist of the article is the media is feeding us a big line of crap of keep us placated. For instance the day that Ken Lay was convicted MSNBC talked more about the American Idol finals than the conviction. I wanted to spit.

I know most people don’t want sad news. They don’t want to be confronted by the sadness and heartbreak. They need some pick-me-ups. They need some light frothy nonsense to breakup all that news about war, famine and man’s own brutality to his own kind. Just give them a big old heaping shovel full of celebrity gossip disguised as news.

Here lies my problem with this. I know it upsets people. It’s not easy to see kids suffering malnutrition. It’s not easy to hear about families being gunned down in a war. It’s not easy to read about how the environment is slowing dying. But do you know what? It’s not supposed to be. But there’s a good and wonderful reason you’re not comfortable watching the so-called bad news. It’s because you care. That’s a glorious thing.

I don’t care if it’s the suffering in the Gulf Coast after Katrina or the suffering in Indonesia or the genocide in Darfur or the plight of the nightwalkers in Uganda or the teenage girl who only brought home 600 dollars to her pimp so he hit her so hard her vision is ruined.

There is nothing bad that can come of caring. It offers you the opportunity to do that most noble of deeds, help someone in need. It doesn’t matter if it’s money, time or just letting people know the problem exists. Helping people is really the most worthwhile thing you can do.

I know there are a lot of religious zealots out there who would like you to believe that all this suffering is because of gay people and abortion. They say it’s God’s wrath. I say they’re wrong. I don’t believe God casts down suffering upon His children. But if I was to play along and say that God did cause suffering on this planet I would say he does it to test the depths of our compassion not to get back at gays or women who get abortions. But as I’ve said it makes no sense for God to punish the innocent. So these zealots need to stop pointing a finger at everything but their own hearts. (Thank You Maynard)

Getting back on course here, the media needs to make the population aware of the extent of human suffering. Not because it is pleasant to watch but because then maybe we could do something about it.

“In charity there is no excess”
Sir Francis Bacon

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
Aesop

2006-05-25T22:41:00.000-07:00

I watch a lot of cable news and read an awful lot about politics, as you may have picked up on by now. But as this midterm election approaches something has struck me. The poor Democrats lack a plan. All they seem to be able to do it badmouth the GOP. While I enjoy verbally assaulting Republicans as much as the next easily irritated liberal. The Democrats need a bit more. A plan of action would be handy. So as always I am here to help. Now mind you I find most of the Democrats in Congress ineffectual power hungry sheep, double ditto for the GOP. So I will present my platform were I to run. Which I doubt will ever happen. I am really uncomfortable in a tie. I will hit issues I find most important. I will be intentionally skipping the issues that seem to come up for no good reason like gay marriage or abortion. Let’s solve the big problems first.

Terrorism: We must effectively protect Americans, bring terrorists to justice and prevent the spread of terrorism.
-Protection: We must have better port security (screening of 100% of the cargo entering this nation), airport security (including better protection on the airplane and more effective and efficient screening on baggage and passengers), and better border security. We must cooperate with foreign intelligence agencies to have the ability to track and identify known terrorist. We must also invent in training the people necessary to do this vital work and pay them generously. We can ill afford to have over worked and underpaid people doing such critical work.
-Bringing them to Justice: We can ill afford to more wars like the one in Iraq. We must take out terrorists with surgical precision. We should have our special forces thoroughly trained in counter terrorism. We must have the intelligence gathering capacity to track and anticipate their actions. Then strike them with smaller more efficient fighting forces. Also Osama Bin Laden’s capture should be a priority. We have let him go free too long.
-Prevention: We must not be seen as a rich arrogant nation. We must be seen as a force for positive change in the world. The United States is a wonderful generous nation. We should be seen by the whole world as that. Therefore we will use a part of our defense budget to supply arid climates with potable water, we will send medicines to areas ravaged with disease (especially AIDS), we will send food to areas devastated by famine and we will encourage service in organizations like Peace Corps with tax credits or college grants.

Patriot Act: The Patriot Act and all related laws should be repealed. They are simply unnecessary. We have been able to track and capture terrorists in the past without these laws. So we do not need them now.

Immigration: The United States is a nation of immigrants. We must not forget that. But unfortunately there is a great deal of controversy about immigrants, especially those from Mexico, who come here illegally. Here is my plan to solve that.
-Amnesty for all immigrants here without a criminal record.
- Fines for businesses that hire illegal immigrants.
-NAFTA will be abolished. We will then work with Mexico to revitalize its economy so the citizens of Mexico have less reason to cross the border.
-Making English our national language is both unnecessary and exclusionary and should not be allowed.

Iraq: We follow the advice of Rep. John Murtha and leave Iraq as soon as possible. We have nothing to gain there. The Iraqis must be allowed to govern themselves. We were in the middle of a civil war in Vietnam and it got us nothing but dead and broken soldiers and a divided nation. We must not repeat that mistake.

Minimum Wage: The minimum wage should be at least $9.00 an hour. $5.15 is simply not enough for people to survive on.

Health Care: Health Care is a right not a privilege. We must have national health care for all citizens. We are simply too wealthy a nation to allow people to go without adequate health care. We have too many people deciding between medicine and food and an infant mortality rate that is humiliating. We can do far better.

International Monetary Policy: The United States will pull out of the International Monetary Fund, The World Bank and World Trade Organization. These organizations serve no other purpose then to keep poor nations poor and wealthy nations wealthy.

Department of Peace: We will have a department whose sole purpose will be the avoidance of conflicts both domestic and abroad. Also it will coordinate efforts to lessen violence in our own nation. This department will follow the design of Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

Education: Portions of the Defense budget will be allotted to both improve public elementary and high schools, as well as lower tuition at public universities. As our schools go so goes our nation. We must not allow them to fail.

No Child Left Behind: The No Child Left Behind act will be abolished. As will all standardized testing in public schools, other than what is voluntary.

Energy: We will again allot money from the defense budget to get the United States to no longer have use for fossil fuels as soon as we are able. We will explore all possible renewable energy sources, especially those that pollute as little as possible.

Environment: The United States will sign the Kyoto Treaty and work to lessen the emission of “greenhouse gasses” and all other pollutants. We will not explore for oil in our precious national parks or any other land that is pristine and basically free of human intervention.

Taxes: For the United States to thrive all citizens must share in the responsibility. We must all shoulder our share of the burden. This especially includes the wealthy and corporations. There will be no trickle down economics. Everyone will be asked to pay his or her fair share. The tax scale will be graduated with the wealthy and corporations being asked to pay more than the poor simply because they are more able to do so.

2006-05-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I’m doing things odd little thoughts pop into my head. I like this one a lot. So I shall share it with you constant reader.

There’s been a good deal of commotion lately over the fact that some time in the not too distant future there will be more people of Mexican descent in the United States than there are people of European descent. I say it is just karma. You see a good many of the European colonist and the United States government did an amazingly efficient job of eradicating the tribal people that were here before us. The tribes that predated Europeans by centuries were decimated with war and disease and broken treaties. What would come to be called Mexico was the same as in what would later be known as the United States. The Mayans and Aztecs were advanced cultures that were crushed under the cannons of the Conquistadores.

Now for the fun part, the descendants of the Mayans and the Aztecs are threatening to overrun the United States. You see the very same Mexicans we are hearing so much about in the news are Mayans and Aztecs by origin. So the tribes are trying to reclaim what was once theirs. Hooray for karma! I know the Mayans were more Central America and southern Mexico and the Aztecs were more central Mexico but the fact the descendants of those people who were so viciously ran off of their land are now taking it back is enough to make a guy happy. I care not if it was originally their land.

You see the United States will survive with or without white people. Our government is not color-dependant. My Mom told me the story of back in 1960 when she was a high school senior Father Hunter told them eventually America would turn brown. This was because of the fact there was more interracial dating and he thought that eventually our colors would be come more homogenized. So the good old US of A will still be there it’ll just be a little less white.

One a completely unrelated note it was revealed today that the personal information, which included names and birth dates and social security numbers, of 26.5 million veterans was stolen. How did it get stolen? Was it hackers? Was it some cloak and dagger operation? No. An employee took the data home, then his house got robbed and the thieves got the data.

You think maybe this information shouldn’t be allowed off of the premises? You think that given all the stink about identity theft that the government could do a wee bit better job protecting the personal information of these veterans. I hope that this was just a tremendous blunder. I’d like to think that the VA is just incompetent. I would hate to think that an employee would deliberately take this information. But, something doesn’t smell totally right here. I hope I’m wrong. As much as I detest war I respect the men and women who had to fight in them. If there is any group of citizens who have earned the full support and protection of the government it is our combat veterans.

2006-05-16T22:45:00.000-07:00

I know I mention the news media an awful lot. But I got to talk about some things or my head is going to explode.

So I’m sitting there watching Tony Snow’s first day in from of the camera as Press Secretary. He never looks really comfortable. He has look of a little kid trying to keep all of his lies straight. Then he goes and drops a turd. He makes a remark about not wanting to “hug the tar baby”. Which according to ThinkProgress.org tar baby can mean “A situation almost impossible to get out of, a problem virtually unsolvable”. Tar baby is also a racial slur directed at black children. Gee, Tony Snow’s stint as Press Secretary might be totally fascinating for all the wrong reasons.

So then I watch some MSNBC and they’re discussing the immigration debate. So they have on two talking heads to discuss it, just like they do for every other issue. One thinks that the President’s plan is peachy. The other thinks that the President’s plan doesn’t go far enough. Gee that’s really showing all sides of the issue. I’m amazed they left out the guy who wants to nuke Mexico. Were all the liberals out of town? What about a nun who ministers to these people who doesn’t want to be branded a criminal accomplice? I wasn’t totally shocked though. MSNBC is also home to the “Hotshots” segment on Hardball. For those for you lucky enough to have never seen it I will explain. “Hotshots” is three conservatives sitting around discussing the issues. Nothing quite like seeing the big picture is there?

I settle in to watch The Colbert Report and have a few good chuckles. It is truly a great show and very worthy of your time. There was a segment on taken from John Gibson’s show on Fox News. In a nutshell John Gibson wants white folks to make more babies. Why? Because in 25 years Mexicans will have white people outnumbered in the USA. I’m largely indifferent. I don’t care if whites are no longer the majority or plurality. But, “Mr. War on Christmas” John Gibson does. I’m not sure why white people being a minority is such a bad thing. Could it be John Gibson is a racist skid mark in the underpants of humanity? Or maybe he’s just playing to Fox News’ base of ignorant twerps. Either way it’s wrong and John Gibson should be slapped.

I must almost mention this about the last two days. MSNBC has had two breaking news stories dominate its newscasts the last two days. Yesterday it was an indictment in the Duke rape case. Today it was new footage of September 11th. Neither one was really all that newsworthy. The Duke rape case is a regional story at best. The new footage was images that I had already seen. So let’s ignore the NSA violating our constitution or the war in Iraq for things that are not news. I’m not paranoid but I swear some days they don’t want us to know or to think about what’s going on.

2006-05-15T22:47:00.000-07:00

The media is in a sad state. It’s bad enough that they mostly suckle at the teat of corporations and are either unwilling or unable to challenge this administration. Today it just got worse. You see today a CIA agent admitted they were spying on reporters from ABC News. If they’re spying on ABC then they more than likely spying on every other news organization they can stink their teeth into. Well except for Fox, they’re such good little soldiers.

If there is one positive thing about this it is this, maybe the media will get its pecker back and start going after this administration. I’m not positive that they will but I can dream.

Let’s see a war fought on false pretenses, wiretapping without warrants, phone records collected without a warrant, troops at the Mexican border and spying on the media. Can you smell that? That’s the smell of your freedom burning. Yes friends we are on the downward spiral.

But I want to talk about the media so excuse my little departure from the subject. Let me offer some opinions about what is important currently in the news and what is gossip and distractions. As always you may disagree and you are free to.

First up is anything involving those rat bastards at the NSA. It was the NSA that oversaw the wiretapping and phone records scandals. It was the NSA head Gen. Hayden who didn’t know that the 4th Amendment had the term “probable cause” in it. It was the NSA that told the Justice Department that they lacked the necessary clearance to investigate it. So the NSA is worthy of keeping an eye on. Also remember that the NSA is to protect us from foreign threats not spy on US citizens.

Iraq is also worthy of my interest. We have troops they being killed. Their government would be a total failure if it were slightly more successful. So Iraq remains worthy of observation.

Iran is another situation worthy of monitoring. Iran was always more friendly to terrorists than Iraq. Yet we did nothing. Now Iran is pushing towards having nuclear capability. I’ve said my peace about this in the past so I won’t dwell on it. I will tell you this if you think Iraq is a quagmire Iran would be a great deal worse if we attacked them.

Let me mention something that as far as I’ve seen has gotten next to no coverage in the mainstream media. Divine Strake, which was recently postponed due to a lawsuit, will take place in the Nevada desert. They will detonate 700 tons of Ammonium Nitrate fuel oil, which is the equivalent to 593 tons of TNT. They are testing bunker busters, which are bombs designed to destroy underground targets. If you read the official line on this they are making it sound as if they are merely testing conventional weapons. There is almost no way in Hell that is what they doing. You see we have no way of delivering a 700-ton payload. This has to be a test to determine the size of nuclear warhead necessary. Iran’s nuclear sites are underground. We are testing weapons to penetrate underground targets. Do you see the connection? Divine Strake is most worthy of vigilance.

Immigration is a fascinating one. I know having secure borders is important. But wasn’t it important back on September 12th 2001? Why is it now such an issue? I know HR 4437 started all this. And a worthless pile of crap that resolution is. Let’s put all the humane people that offer comfort to those in need in jail. We are such a fine Christian nation. Anyway this issue bears watching because you just know Bush is going to screw up. He wants guest workers and the military to seal our southern border? Can’t have both. He also wants infrared cameras and drones. Oh good we can so count Mexico as another lost ally.

Forgive me but I must veer off course here for another second. Do you want to know why Mexicans are heading up here? It’s because the USA has screwed over their economy. Yes sir we sure have. Thanks to NAFTA we have flooded the Mexican market with cheap produce crippling their farmers. All those brutally low paying factory jobs we sent down to Mexico have wandered off to China. So there you have it. They’re desperate and I doubt a fence will stop them.

Also putting troops on the border is an awful idea. How long before we hear of Mexicans being gunned down in the desert or as they try and cross the Rio Grande? They military is not a police force. Do not try and use them as such. Now back to regularly scheduled programming.

The Duke rape case is a non-issue to me. It’s a local story. Let’s leave it at that. Why is it even on the national news? Is it because the suspects went to Duke? How is that more interesting if then say, a group of fishermen did it? Is it because they were on the lacrosse team? Did you even know Duke had a lacrosse team before this story broke? Could you tell me how lacrosse is played or name a lacrosse player? It’s not national news so I ignore it.

I largely ignore anything pertaining to the bird flu. Why? Do you remember SARS? How many did that kill? See where I’m going with this? You should survive the bird flu quite easily.

I posted this because I watch a lot of cable news, but about half the time I feel like it makes me less aware rather than more. So I’ve learned to be a picky bastard when I watch. I’m the same way when I read the paper or listen to the radio. You have to learn to filter. Otherwise you’ll end up like that old James Brown song, “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothin’”.

2006-05-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

The band REM once sang, “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine”. Well it may soon be the end of the world as we know it, but I don’t feel too good.

Some days I worry. I wish I didn’t. I wish I could just shut up, shut down and become a shut in addicted to reality TV. But alas I’m a sappy old school Democrat, who borders on being a Socialist really. Plus I’m a guilt-ridden practicing Catholic. Who will keep practicing until I get it right I tell you. So I worry. I’m good at it and see no real reason to squander my gifts. I’d like to think that what has me rather worried right now isn’t a big deal. I’d like to think it would all just go away. I’d like to think this is all going to work out well. I worried I have a perfectly good reason to worry.

Remember back to all the fuss over the wire-tapping without a warrant? Even though there are these little things called FISA courts that basically hand out warrants like Halloween candy. God I miss the good old days.

Now we have learned that the National Security Agency or NSA is collecting the phone records of almost all the calls made in the United States. The NSA is not alone in this act. Three of the largest telecommunication firms have allowed them to do it. AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth all allowed the NSA access to their records without so much as a single warrant. Those three companies have allowed the NSA access to some 2 trillion phone calls. This may be the largest database ever assembled. The NSA are such overachieving little Fascists.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re reading this without a care in the world. You’ve doing nothing wrong so you have nothing to fear. Let the NSA go through your phone records. It’s only the terrorists that need to worry. You see friend one of the costs of freedom is being forever vigilant against those would take that freedom away. If you really don’t see the problem with the NSA accessing your phone records then what else would be just fine? How about if they go through your bank statements or credit card records? How about if they mount cameras on every street in America to monitor your activity? How about if all cars have to be equipped with GPS devices to track where you travel?

There’s some fascinating irony in all this. Despite the fact the NSA is intruding on Americans privacy without so much as a warrant, they are themselves highly secretive. They are such a secret organization that they blocked a Justice Department investigation into the wiretapping controversy because the Justice Department lacked proper security clearance. You read that correctly. They even consider themselves above the federal government.

Something else caught my eye as I was getting ready to write this and I feel it relates to this. President Bush wants to use National Guard troops to keep out illegal immigrants coming in from Mexico. . It’s not like our National Guard isn’t over-burdened as is anyway. This despite the fact we not of a single terrorist who has ever came in from Mexico. One did come in across the Canadian border, but they’re white, so I guess that’s not a big issue

If you’ve read this blog for a while you remember I wrote quite a bit about fascism some time ago. There are two overpowering components of fascism. One is the dominance of the military. The other is the power that corporations possess. Let’s see, the NSA, an organization ran by a Gen. Hayden, is operating as if it is above the law. Large telemarketing corporations are willingly surrendering people’s personal information to the government without a warrant. Also let us remember the amount of money that corporations and the military have drained from the government for this so-called “war on terrorism”. Please remember that many of our soldiers lack proper body armor and regularly lack things like clean drinking water. Halliburton however is making a fortune from this horrible war. Our military budget is about 450 billion dollars. China spends the second most at about 50 billion. Our military budget is greater than the next 20 largest foreign military budgets combined.

When people find out I’m a pacifist I hear the line about how the military protects my freedom and I should appreciate them for that. I bear no malice against the military. I want all our soldiers to be safe and sound. Actually I would like the world to be safe and sound, but that’s just me. Anyway I find it odd that in spite of all the death and destruction Iraq and Afghanistan for our freedom. We are losing our freedom here every day. Every day something new is uncovered about this government that makes me more apprehensive. I hope Congress gets a backbone and puts an end to this madness, if not it’s going to be up to us. It’s the price we pay. If the government fails us we have to stand up and raise our voices and say, “Enough!” George Bush and his band of criminals have done enough damage. If Congress doesn’t put an end to this God only knows what he will do next. God only knows what he may have done in addition to the things we know. It’s truly scary.

As much as I think Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice need to go spend some time at the Guantanamo Bay hotel. I would settle for Congress ending this search of the citizen’s private records, destroying the database that contains those records and ending the wiretapping without warrant nonsense. I hope they can do this. If they cannot then we will have to. If we have to fight back it may get messy. If we don’t fight back then our freedoms will continue to erode. Then all that great minds like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and all our forefathers gave to us. All that so many sacrificed so much for and that so many lives were lost for will be gone. It would be a terrible tragedy to be given such a wonderful government and to lose it. I worry we may have lost too much already.

“The basis of a democratic state is liberty” Aristotle

"We hold in our hands, the most precious gift of all: Freedom. The freedom to express our art. Our love. The freedom to be who we want to be. We are not going to give that freedom away and no one shall take it from us!" Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." George Bernard Shaw

2006-05-11T23:11:00.000-07:00

If the current trends hold out until November then the Republicans will take a colossal beating in the midterm elections. I know a lot can change in 6 months but the Republicans have been sinking steadily over the last year or so. The GOP is weighted down by indictments and convictions and scandals that make the Nixon years look downright rosy.

Yes, I think at this point when November rolls around the Republicans will be the minority party in at least the House and maybe, though it’s not as certain, the Senate.

This however has little to do with the superiority or inferiority of either party. It just always seems after a while in power either party is like to crumble under the weight of its incompetence. I’ll grant you the Republicans right now look to be filthier than the Sopranos. That being said all parties seem to falter.

I really doubt no matter what is said by the pundits and polemics that the USA has a real political identity. As long as jobs are good, goods are cheap and the trains are running on time most Americans are placated. We’re a simple people. Now, I know there are diehards on both sides. I also know there’s an ungodly amount of one-issue voters out there as well. But I also a whole lot of people who do not vote a straight party line. I know I don’t. A lot of people vote for the lesser of two evils as well. It’s nice to see people aren’t cynical.

Over time neither party can seem to hold onto power. Whether it’s the economy going south or some scandal parties seem to lose favor. Maybe Americans are a moody lot that can’t hold a commitment. That would explain the divorce rate.

But as always I’m here to help. So I’ve devised an oath for the Senators and Representatives and even the President to take. I hate to see those crazy kids suffer and all. I hope it helps.

“ I [insert name here] do solemnly swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. I will even uphold the Constitution of the United States of America when it does not suit my own political agenda. I also solemnly swear not to fuck up. By fucking up I mean to include, but not totally restricted to, the following: taking bribes, sucking up to lobbyists, favoring the interests of the wealthy over the interests of the majority of Americans, taking loud and saying nothing, using fear to control people and invoking the name of Jesus Christ every other syllable. I also solemnly swear to not have any manner of sexual contact be it oral, genital, anal, manual, cyber or phone with the following: interns, assistants, reporters, hookers, teenagers, bosses, superiors and anybody with the last name Hilton. Also the aforementioned sex partners will never be found dead anywhere under suspicious circumstances, especially in the trunk of my vehicle. I solemnly swear to hire a really bright five years old to run all my ideas past. If the ideas don’t make sense to him or her then I promise to revise them until they do. I solemnly swear to not to speak in platitudes or just read off of my party’s talking points. I solemnly swear to pause and reflect before all action and speaking. I solemnly swear to defy my party if I think it will help the nation. I solemnly swear to never try and be funny or dance if it doesn’t come naturally. I solemnly swear to keep my drug, alcohol and pharmaceutical intake to a minimum. I solemnly swear to always have transparency and to never hide information essential to the citizen’s well being. Above all I solemnly swear to be honest. So help me God.”

2006-05-09T22:13:00.000-07:00

Some days I hate being right. If you read my little rant yesterday I complained about how similar the Republicans and the Democrats are. Well today it was proven. I’m not merely a paranoid delusional blogger. I have proof. What proof do I have? Hillary Clinton is having a fundraiser. Rupert Murdoch is throwing that fundraiser.

Egad!

For those of you who aren’t up on who’s who in politics I will do my best to explain.

Hillary Clinton in the wife of former President Bill Clinton and currently the Junior Senator from New York. She is considered the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008. She is also considered by some to be the poster child for liberals.

Rupert Murdoch is a media tycoon. He owns, among other things, FOX News. Murdoch has long been known for using his media empire in support of conservative causes and ideas.

So how exactly does the guy who owns FOX News decide to throw a fundraiser for the Queen of the Democrats? I mean it is for her re-election campaign for the US Senate and not for her Presidential campaign, but still.

I thought it was awfully creepy when Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush started acting all chummy. I almost gasped when on 60 Minutes Bill Clinton said that he thought George W. Bush’s idea of campaigning, as a “compassionate conservative” was brilliant. Of course Michael Moore did say once that Bill Clinton was one of our best Republican Presidents ever. I doubt he wanted to be so correct.

Also somewhat puzzling is the seemingly warm and fuzzy relationship between Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York City. Bloomberg is another staunch Republican who has warmed up to Clinton.

I take some comfort in this; it is over two years until we elect another President. I don’t care what all the pundits say now, two years is an awful long time. There’s a lot that can change in two years. Because the pundits are handing the nomination to Clinton almost ensures one thing; she will not get it. At least that’s the hope I’m clinging to.

I’ve never been a Clinton fan. Neither Bill nor Hillary impresses me as anything more than people who love the idea of being in office. They seem to be more politicians than people concerned with the real well being of the nation. Sure Bill left office with a budget surplus. He also signed NAFTA. NAFTA has crippled Mexico and opened the door for other bad free trade agreements like CAFTA and FTAA. Hillary supports making flag burning illegal and is pro-Iraq War and voted for the Patriot Act and all of its renewals. I’m not a big Clinton fan.

Mark Twain used to say that we would always elect the wrong people because only people that want the nomination run for office. Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe we need to draft someone. Quite frankly I don’t think it would make government any worse that it is right now if some outsider shook up the system.

2006-05-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

Sweet Home Alabama!

No I’m not from Alabama. I have no intentions of moving to Alabama. But I must say I do have one reason for wanting to live there. I want to vote for Loretta Nall for governor.

If you’re not familiar with Loretta Nall’s campaign allow me to fill in some blanks. Ms. Nall is a Libertarian. Ms. Nall sees little separation between the Democrats and the Republicans. Ms. Nall is for legalizing marijuana. Ms. Nall is opposed to the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. Ms. Nall is for ending the “War on Drugs”. Ms. Nall is for prison reform. Ms. Nall is for ballot reform to allow third party candidates easier access to state ballots. Ms. Nall wants to naturalize all the illegal immigrants so they can become productive citizens. Ms. Nall rocks my freakin’ socks.

Unfortunately Ms. Nall has not received national media attention because of her fascinating platform. She has received national media attention because if you donate to her campaign you can watch a Flash animation of her strip. You see Ms. Nall is a fairly attractive woman who is said to have large breasts and does not wear panties. I can confirm neither, but she denies neither so I’ll just believe her. I must say I like the idea of a candidate with a sense of humor. Of course if she got naked for real she’d probably win the election in a landslide, but I digress.

Anyway let me comment on some of the planks of her platform that I particularly agree with. Though I must admit I could very little to disagree with her.

There is little if any separation between the Democrats and the Republicans. Let’s take the issue of immigration. The Republicans will say, “Let’s round up all the illegals and ship ‘em back to Mexico. Then we’ll build a wall with a moat in front of it. And we’ll fill that moat worth alligators. Yeah! I like alligators.” The Democrats will counter with, “Let’s ship all the illegals back to Mexico. Then we can build a big electric fence.” Wow! There’s some separation there. We need some diversity in our political structure. We need some outsiders to come in and shake this system up. Let’s own up to the fact that the same few dozen corporations own most politicians. We need some fresh faces and new blood.

She has the right idea on immigration as well. We should make the people that have been here for long periods of time citizens. The vast majority of these immigrants are hard working decent people. So I say let them into this country and let them pay taxes and not have to live in fear of being deported. The whole fence along our border idea with Mexico is asinine as well. Entering this country and crossing the rivers and deserts or being stuffed in the back of a semi trailer is already a life or death proposition. You think a fence will stop them?

Let me state I have never smoked marijuana. I hate the smell and high people are annoying. That being said I think marijuana should be legal. I adhere to the Harm Principle quite emphatically when it comes to laws. For those of you know familiar with the Harm Principle allow me to explain. In John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty he outlined what he called the Harm Principle. It can summarized in this sentence, “That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” See isn’t that simple? I couldn’t care less if someone lies around the house all day smoking a lobotomy for himself. If all he’s hurting is himself it’s not the government’s business to intrude. If his family decides he needs tough love or rehab, so be it. It’s a family matter anyway. The government should keep it’s nose elsewhere.

Loretta Nall also makes a good point that we preach to kids how they should stay off drugs but then as soon as they act up we ship them off to the pharmacy. Does the word hypocrisy mean anything anymore? When I was a substitute teacher I noticed it seemed as if about a quarter of the kids were on something their doctor ordered them to take. I live in fear we’ve cured the next Picasso or Da Vinci with all this medication to get these poor kids in a mood their teachers and principals and parents approve of.

I wish there were a bunch more candidates like Loretta Nall. I get bored with all the “cookie cutter” candidates I must endure. I would love to see more honest opinions in our candidates. I would love to see less catering to what might get you elected and more devotion to being honest.

Vote for Nall Y’all indeed.

2006-05-03T22:38:00.000-07:00

If you have turned on your television lately I’m sure you know about United 93. United 93 details the September 11th flight that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. While the families of those passengers who lost their lives on that flight seem firmly behind, I doubt I will ever see it. I might be more interested in the events of September 11th 2001 weren’t so fresh in my mind.

I was sitting at my job when they came across the radio and announced that a plane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center. There was much speculation about whether we were being attacked or if was an accident. When the second plane struck the other tower all talk of it being an accident ceased.

Then came word of a crash at the Pentagon and then a plane down in Pennsylvania. The media were overwhelmed. A nation sat in shock. The rest of the day was watching and listening to the media scramble for facts and show those horrifying images of the planes slamming into the World Trade Center towers and eventually the footage of the towers collapsing again and again.

I remember getting home from a college class that evening and not being able to get into my own driveway. We live just two doors down from a gas station. People were panicked that soon gas would be four or five dollars a gallon. The line stretched back as far as I could see. According to police reports two people even got into fights over the gasoline.

I finally got into my driveway and sat down to watch the news a bit more. I was like that cliché, a deer caught in the headlights. I didn’t finally turn away until CBS showed footage of someone falling to their death. At least that’s what Dan Rather told me it was. I stopped watching. In fact I avoided the news in general for quite a while. I skipped the benefit concerts and all the specials. I was numb to it all.

The evening of September 11th I did one thing that was in hindsight a bit out of the ordinary. I sent out e-mail to a few friends urging them to do things to help people and assist in the recovery and the healing. I soon found out I was in a vast minority. It seemed as if the rest of the nation wanted to turn the entire Middle East into a glow in the dark parking lot. Fear does feed anger rather well though. So even though I didn’t condone it, I understood.

Another reason I probably won’t see this movie is the reasons some are telling us we should. They’re saying that we can never forget the tragedy of that day and we must not forget how evil our enemies are. I hate to break the bad news to anyone but we’ve already forgotten our enemies. Don’t believe me? OK then, tell me where Osama Bin Laden is.

Also what purpose is there in reliving that awful day over and over? Does being reminded of all that death and destruction of that day serve any real purpose? Even before that day anyone who was familiar with foreign affairs knew that Osama Bin Laden was a threat to America. Certainly he attacked on an incredible scale. But we knew he wanted to strike in the United States. He just struck with more force then we allowed ourselves to think he could.

I have nothing against remembrances for those who lost their lives on that day either. In fact, I rather like Keith Olbermann’s idea of just rebuilding both World Trade Center towers and making one of them exactly one inch shorter for each life lost that day. It would be a fine tribute. I just have zero desire to see that day re-enacted. I’ve seen enough footage of the event. I have no need to see Hollywood’s version.

In all fairness I usually don’t go see movies that re-enact horrible historic events. I did not rush to see Schindler’s List or The Passion of the Christ or Saving Private Ryan. In fact of those three I have only seen Schindler’s List and that was just because I didn’t have anything else to watch on television. I get it. War and death and Nazis are bad. I do not need it beaten into me by Hollywood or Washington.

Of course I know why some want us to go see this movie and revive those feelings from that terrible day. I’ve noticed it’s all come from the right wing to. They want everyone all back in their box of fear and give President Bush back all the political capital he squandered. President Bush has an unprecedented opportunity to make the world truly a better place. He blew it.

I’m certain anyone who is old enough to remember September 11th 2001 will never forget it. So please spare me all the reminders.

2006-05-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

I know May 1st is the 3rd anniversary of George Bush’s now infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech. I know almost no one thinks we’ve accomplished the mission in Iraq. Don’t believe that? Go read this. See? The American people are not a totally gullible lot. Partly gullible they might be, but not totally.

Maybe I’m wrong though. Maybe the mission was indeed accomplished. Maybe Bush wanted to get us bogged down in a civil war and risk bankrupting the USA. If that’s the case then he has overachieved indeed.

I know you expect me to go on some 750-word rant about how awful this war really is. But I feel like I’ve said my peace on that topic. So I shall instead discuss happier things.

Sixteen years ago the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched. It has changed the way we look at the Universe. We have seen galaxies where we expected to see very little. (The Hubble Deep Field) Back in 1996 astronomers took an extremely long exposure in an area near Ursa Major. They had wanted to see what inhabited this otherwise empty looking tract of sky. They were hoping for maybe primordial galaxies. What they saw instead were over 1,500 galaxies in various stages of evolution. It was one of HST’s most spectacular moments.

The HST has also helped us date the Universe with greater precision. It’s about 13.7 billion years old, if you’re curious. It gave us a front row to Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9’s collision with Jupiter. It gave us a truly spectacular view of M16, the Eagle Nebula, showing us newborn stars.

The Hubble Space Telescope has truly been a revolutionary instrument. I hope it can go on for years in the future. Though there has been sporadic talk to abandoning it. That would be a crime. Why would we want to abandon an instrument that makes us more enlightened as to our place in the cosmos? It makes no sense. Then again, neither does most of government.

I love to write about stuff like this. Astronomy is one of my tethers to sanity in an increasingly insane world. If standing under the infinite dome of the sky doesn’t give you religion I don’t know that will. In this world of accomplished missions where very little makes sense, the symmetry and beauty of the sky makes perfect sense.

I mean astronomy isn’t the only thing that I lean on. Music is another. I mean I’m practically giddy that Pearl Jam and Tool are both releasing CDs on May 2nd. As Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “Without music, life would be a mistake.”

But the sanctuary I fine under the night sky is quite hard to beat. In fact I recommend it to everyone. Just take yourself, you can take friends if you want, out to somewhere free of the glow of streetlights and find a comfortable place to sit. You won’t need books or telescopes or anything other than your eyes. Then look skyward and drink it all in. Don’t worry about what that constellation is named or where that star is. Just sit back and gaze at the sky in all its infinite glory. The ancients used to put their gods in the sky for good reason. People that don’t sit in awe of the glorious night sky make me a bit nervous. I fail to see how any right-minded individual wouldn’t be amazed by the most spectacular sight in all creation. I somewhat fear these people are a little dead on the inside.

Maybe that’s the problem; all the politicians and business executives live in cities that can’t see the stars. Maybe if they’d get out of the anxiety that is a big city and gaze at something bigger then any of us we’d live in a better place. It wouldn’t hurt to try.

“Though my soul may set in darkness,
It will rise in perfect light,
I have loved the stars too fondly
To be fearful of the night”

Sarah Williams

2006-04-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

HOORAY!

This post marks my 100th post. Wow is seems like only yesterday I was attacking the Bush administration for their awful performance following Hurricane Katrina. Now I’m ripping them for other things like wire-tapping. My how time flies.

Anyway I suppose making it to 100 posts really isn’t that big of a deal. I’m sure lots of bloggers have posted for more than I ever will. But it’s my blog and I’ll do as I please.

I blame my excitement over the 100th post on comic books. Every time a series got to issue #100 there was some sort of special event. There could be a guest star or the death of a supporting character. Sometimes it would be the finale to some multiple issue story arc and you just knew it would rock your socks. I’m such a pathetic nerd.

Anyway since I can’t kill any characters off or get guest stars, I had to come up with something. I mean I’d love to have a guest star on here but usually no one even comments on my blog. So where am I going to get a guest star?

So what did I come up with? I wrote a joke. I hope you like it. I will warn you, it is a bit randy. So if you don’t like such things feel free to skip it. I think the joke is a hoot. So do what makes you a happy camper.

But before I get into the levity, I as always have some random thoughts to inflict upon you.

So I’m at Mass last Saturday when I notice someone sitting in the pew in front of me is wearing a t-shirt. On the sleeve is written “Catholic to the Max.com”. I’m a practicing Catholic and I will keep on practicing until I get it right. I however never have felt the need to be a Catholic to the max. I’m more of a Catholic to the median. Some days I’m a Catholic to the minimum. Depends on my mood, I guess.

I’m not even sure what the max for Catholics would be. I know there are people that beat themselves and hang on a crucifix and actually have nails driven through their hands to show their devotion. I appreciate passion but that borders on fanatical. I have always failed to see how me bleeding like a stuck pig gets me closer to God. Well I mean other than the fact I might die from the blood loss.

I got on the Internet and went to the Catholic to the max website. I found out they sell t-shirts that say “Get Holy or Die Tryin’”. Wow! If you follow the logic of that t-shirt it translates to “Get Holy or Go to Hell!” since unholy folks get to surf the lake of fire for an eternity. I think this statement is a bit on the extreme side. Don’t you?

I’m not a big fan of wearing your faith on a t-shirt or a ball cap or whatever. Shouldn’t your deeds and words give some kind of clue to your faith? Shouldn’t the “Jesus is my co-pilot” bumper sticker be too much of a good thing? Didn’t Jesus chase the moneychangers out of the temple? Do you really think he wanted some schmuck to build a wacky t-shirt empire?

Anyway, enough of those brain droppings on to the chuckles. Remember this joke is a wee bit randy. So if such things are not your cup of tea then feel free to stop reading right here. Of course this warning is only worthwhile if I haven’t already offended or angered you.

Here goes nothing.

Two men are sitting at the bar talking.

One guy looks at another and says, “ I figured out how George and Laura Bush have sex.”

The second guy looks at him and says, “How do you know George and Laura Bush have sex?”

The first guy replies, “I notice things.”

“What have you noticed?” the second guy asked.

The first guy looks the second dead square in the eyes and says, “When George and Laura do it Laura is always on top.”

“What? How in the Hell do you know that?” the second guy asked.

The first guy smiles and says, “Well all George does is fuck up.”

Come On! Laugh! It’s Funny!

As always thanks for reading, especially those of you that have read all 100 posts. I promise I’ll try harder the next 100.

2006-04-26T23:01:00.000-07:00

I don’t know how many people that read my blog are old enough to remember the show, Growing Pains. If you do then you will remember Kirk Cameron, who played the oldest son Mike. Well Kirk Cameron is no longer in sitcoms. It seems Kirk has gone off and started a church. Kirk and Ray Comfort (I must know if that is his real name) have founded The Way of the Master. That would make for such a kick-ass kung fu movie title. Alas gentle reader it is the name of a church.

Anyway, The Way of the Master has about a million free videos you can get off of Google Video. One of them concerns atheism. If you watch that video pay extra close attention to learn what is an atheist worst enemy. If you lack the patience for such things I shall inform you. It is the banana. Yes gentle reader the humble banana is the nemesis of all that is atheism. It’s not faith or hope or love. It’s a banana.

How is the banana an atheist’s kryptonite? Well you see it fits our hand perfectly. It also is easy to peel. It has a non-slip surface for gripping the banana. It’s easily digested. When you open the contents don’t squirt in your eye. It’s curved shape makes eating it easier. The color of its flesh tells you whether it’s ripe, under ripe or over ripe. Wow! Those twelve years of religion classes at St. Wendelin were worthless. I could have gotten all the faith I need from one minute of video about a banana.

I’m kidding of course.

You see friends, what Ray and Kirk did was anti-science, if I may coin a phrase. To understand what anti-science is you must first understand the scientific method. As any attentive eighth-grader can tell you, the scientific method relies on observation and experimentation to draw your conclusions. You must first find the facts then formulate your conclusions based on those facts. It just makes good sense. What Ray and Kirk did was have a conclusion and then look for things that support it. Kind of like what the Bush administration did in Iraq, but I digress.

If you try and follow their logic it all gets messy really fast. So since a banana is so healthy and convenient what about food that’s less so? Let’s take a watermelon. I mean sure they’re delicious, but they’re high in sugar and a pain to slice up and you got to spit seeds and it's sloppy to eat. So then are watermelons a sign God doesn’t exist? Maybe the Devil made them. They are red on the inside after all.

Also here’s another fun fact the banana is actually a product of years of human intervention. Bananas are so domesticated that the plants are sterile and therefore need human intervention to reproduce. That seems hardly like God’s gift to humanity.

I bring this up not to mock other religions. Though I do find the Way of the Master a bit odd to say the least, but that’s another essay. I bring it up to try and point out how people use so-called logic to fool people. The banana as proof of God is laughable at best. Yet they are those out there that will swallow it whole. Fortunately the Way of the Master seems fairly benign. It’s when people believe illogical things that make them do irrational things that trouble starts. Look at Al-Qaeda or Janjaweed or the people that bomb abortion clinics or any of the other radical groups killing in the name of God or Allah.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Voltaire.

2006-04-25T22:23:00.000-07:00

If you have never been to the fine website Peace Takes Courage I highly recommend you do so. I have enjoyed that website a great deal. It features a great many animations set to music, most of which oppose the war in Iraq. I was unaware until today that the website is run by a fifteen-year-old girl named Ava Lowery.

Ava must be a fairly impressive girl to do such moving work. Also to be so intelligently against the war at such a young age is mighty impressive. One of her more recent creations, entitled “WWJD” (“What Would Jesus Do?”) shows images of wounded Iraqi children with the voice of small child singing a song “Jesus loves me, this I know”. It ends with quotes from the Beatitudes. Imagine that in our so-called Christian nation someone quoting Jesus’ keynote address The Sermon on the Mount. The “WWJD” animation is rather poignant and worthy of your time as are the rest of her animations. I particularly recommend the one titled “Someone’s”.

Ava isn’t getting all praise and love and heaped on her however. She has been threatened. Go read about it here. Not that this surprises me. All the “pathetic flag-waving ignorant geeks” (Thank you System of a Down) get all irate when someone dares challenge the zeitgeist.

I wish I didn’t have to do this, but I feel I must. I want you all to remember that one of the truly great things about the United States of America is that all opinions are free to expressed. It matters not if you’re a Democrat or a Republican or a Libertarian or a Socialist or a Communist or an Anarchist. All opinions are free to be expressed. If you disagree then I suggest you try and prove them wrong. To threaten or use insults to prove your point, especially directed at a fifteen-year-old girl, shows you haven’t the slight idea what you are talking about.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Force shites upon the back of reason” or in it’s more G rated version “Might makes right”. I get the feeling that Franklin was pointing out a chink in our armor as opposed to condoning that awful behavior.

This is one of the reason I usually ignore those talking head political shows. Every attempt at a debate degenerates into talking points or platitudes or ad hominem attacks. Who cares? We see or hear so little substantive debate that I’m not sure a lot of people would recognize it if it did happen. If the Lincoln-Douglas debates occurred today they would probably be to dry for CNN or Fox News and thus relegated to the 6 AM slot on C-SPAN.

“The highest treason in the USA is to say Americans are not loved, no matter where they are, no matter what they are doing there.”

Kurt Vonnegut

2006-04-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

My mom, who grew up on a farm, always used to tell the story about how if a dog would kill an animal on the farm they had to “put it down”. “Put it down” is a nice was of saying shoot it in the head. If a dog tasted blood than the farmer knew that the dog would want more blood. So they could no longer trust that dog near their important animals.

I fear humans operate in much the same way. Once they know they have a weapon that has such awful power as to tip the scales on any conflict in their favor. They will not surrender it.

Dave wrote a comment in response to my post about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He asked so what do we do about Iran having nukes?

I’d like to say that if everyone got rid of their nuclear weapons it would end the problem. I wish it were that simple.

It’s bad enough they were ever developed in the first place.

It’s bad enough that they were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It’s bad enough that was an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union where both nations accumulated tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.

It’s bad enough that the know-how has been leaked to the world, allowing anyone with the money and technology to make one or thousands.

How that the dogs of war have tasted nuclear power I fear that they can no longer be trusted. To rid the world of nuclear weapons, including Iran’s, I fear there are only two options. One option is good. One option is awful.

The first would be a change in world leadership where there was more trust than fear. Nations would start working together to eliminate existing nuclear weapons stockpiles and work together to keep anymore from being built. I fear this is not likely, because on June 2nd, 2006 the United States will engage in “Divine Strake”. “Divine Strake” is the test explosion of 700 tons of explosives to test the new nuclear weapons class called an RNEP (Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator). The RNEPs are the so-called “bunker busters” that we may purportedly use in Iran. Why are we testing weapons? Is there some plan we need to know about?

There is a good deal of skepticism about the effectiveness of these RNEPs. Please go watch this animation from the Union of Concerned Scientist. You can watch it here.

If the Unites States with the most powerful military in the history of the world still feels the need to develop new nuclear weapons, then what do you expect from the rest of the world?

The second option though less desirable is the one I fear more likely. Someone is going to use one and cause a disaster of an unimaginable scale. Of course the two nuclear bombs used on Japan to end World War II did little to sour world leaders on nuclear weapons.

But even one of the RNEPs has a payload sixty times more powerful than the bomb used on Hiroshima. So the ensuing disaster would be far worse. If the Union of Concerned Scientists are correct and the use of one RNEP would kill 3 million people, then maybe leaders could be shocked into action. It’s truly horrid that it would take 3 million deaths for leaders to act though.

I hate not to have a good solution to this dilemma. I’m sorry to sound so dire. I sincerely hope and pray I’m wrong. But the dogs of war have been in the nuclear henhouse way too long to be trusted.

2006-04-19T22:51:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the Dr. Hook song, “On the Cover of the Rolling Stone”? It was all about how he was so happy that he was a cover boy for Rolling Stone. He was, if memory serves, “gonna buy five copies for my mother”. Apparently he didn’t get any issues comped to him. Anyway I don’t think President Bush is going to be so happy to be a cover boy for Rolling Stone. You see, gentle reader, they ask whether he is the worst president ever.

Please go forth and read the article. Worst President Ever?

If you read my blog regularly you know I’m not a Bush fan, to put it mildly. So I won’t spend a whole lot of your time bashing him anymore. But I will bring up a few things from the article that grabbed my attention.

President Bush has borrowed more money from foreign governments and financial institutions than the previous forty-two presidents combined. Let that sink in for a moment. It’s been said that if China or any of our foreign creditors ever decided to call us on our debt we’d be doomed. The national debt is about 8.4 trillion dollars. Bush took office with a budget surplus left from President Clinton’s administration. Bush is also the only president to ever give a tax cut in a time of war. The war is Iraq has cost us about 275 billion dollars. That’s enough to insure over 164 million children for one year.

The other thing that grabbed me was the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, "a foolish consistency . . . adored by little statesmen,” By God if that doesn’t sum up Bush I don’t know what does.

I know that I said I was not going to bash Bush as much anymore. I apologize for my own thoughtlessness. I just didn’t think the man could keep screwing up. But he does! It’ staggering.

Neil Young has recorded a song called “Impeach the President”. But I suggest to you that he had already written what should be the anthem of this administration. It is simply titled “Fucking Up”.

2006-04-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

All I got today is random observations. So be prepared to be disappointed.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes gave birth today. Well only Katie gave birth. Tom just stood there bouncing on the furniture and telling Katie to be quiet. They named it Suri. This has inspired one sweet joke.

“Did you hear Tom and Katie named their kid, Suri?”

“Suri! You can’t be serious!”

“I am serious and don’t call me Suri.”

Come on! Laugh! It’s hilarious!

If you notice in recent appearances President Bush has seemed a bit agitated. I know he claims to not pay attention to polls or even read the papers. But somehow I think George knows his presidency is in dire straits. His poll numbers are bottoming out. Seven retired generals and admirals are calling for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not going well, to say the least. The situation in Iran is looking rather bleak. Gas and crude oil prices are at record highs. It looks like the Republicans could lose control of either the House or the Senate, maybe both, come November.

Yes I think George realizes the party is over and it’s going to be a rough ride for this lamest of ducks. But I feel no mercy for him. He has made his own mess. Let’s see if he can even come close to cleaning it up. Of course if you know anything of George’s history then you know this how he seems to work, usually. He gets a job. He messes up. He leaves it for someone else to clean up. Yes it’s par for the course for George W. Bush.

If you watched any news today you heard that today (April 18th) was the 100th anniversary of the earthquake that devastated San Francisco. Interestingly enough when that earthquake struck President Roosevelt and War Secretary Taft had the Army on the scene in a day. Congress had the money approved by 4 PM the next day. By the end of the week every tent the military had was pitched and ready to offer shelter to those in need. In light of how poorly our government responded to Hurricane Katrina it makes you pine for the good ole days doesn’t it?

I leave you with a good quote.

“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

2006-04-17T22:13:00.000-07:00

If you’re old enough to remember when Iran held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, then you should remember the novelty song, “Bomb Iran”. It was sung to the tune of the Beach Boys’ song, “Barbara Ann”. It was a catchy enough little ditty. The irony is that we never did bomb Iran but given all the saber rattling we might soon.

Iran will not fall as quickly as Iraq did, should we attack them. Iran still has a standing military. Iran has 42 million more people than Iraq and is much larger. Iraq was crippled by a previous US led invasion and over a decade of crippling UN sanctions. Iran doesn’t have these problems. Certainly our Air Force has the raw firepower to cripple Iran’s military. As we have learned in Iraq a nation without a military isn’t necessarily defeated however.

Also according to a good many experts if the US were to attack Iran. Iran’s first move would be to strike Israel. If Israel gets involved the whole Middle East would become involved. This would open the gates to Hell.

Our military is already stretched dangerously thin. If we were to get involved in another conflict we would be pushed beyond our capacity. Do you really want another draft? Do you really want to see our guard and reserve units called to even more combat duty?

But that’s neither here nor there. The question that really needs to be answered is this: does Iran have the right to nuclear capability?

Is a nuclear Iran worse than a nuclear Pakistan or a nuclear North Korea? Hell, is a nuclear Iran really worse than a nuclear Russia with all its unsecured nuclear weapons? Remember it was Pakistan that helped North Korea acquire nukes. Did we bomb Pakistan?

When you consider that the US has about 10,000 nuclear weapons what are we really afraid of? We have the firepower to turn this precious blue ball into a glow in the dark parking lot. Why should we only have the destructive power of the wrath of the gods? Let’s arm everyone! Let’s arm Chad and Bolivia and Lichtenstein. Let’s arm the whole wide world until we all have the power to annihilate each other. If the USA, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea get to have them, then why shouldn’t everyone? Let’s arm each other to the teeth and wait for someone to get an itchy trigger finger. Remember that the US is the only nation to use nuclear weapons in a war.

If you don’t feel like tempting Armageddon, I have an alternative. Maybe we should just outlaw nuclear weapons. Maybe, just maybe, no one should have them. You see if everyone engaged in total nuclear disarmament then we might have a more legitimate complaint. But when you got 10,000 of something and someone else might have 1 in ten years I fail to see your logic in complaining.

Sure Iran could sell the nukes to terrorists. But, so could any other nuclear-capable country. We have unleashed an unholy terror on this planet. Nuclear weapons are so terrible that they make confident cowards of all those who possess them. Nuclear nations feel secure in raw destructive might they possess but they fear terribly their enemies ever acquiring similar power.

Iran armed with nuclear weapons would be indeed very troublesome. But then again any nation armed with nuclear weapons doesn’t make me sleep any better.

“If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”

Albert Einstein referring to his role in creating nuclear weapons.

2006-04-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

In all the noise made lately about immigration, I notice that something has gone unsaid. So I will say it.

Now if you notice there seems to be two culprits in this debate. One is the immigrants themselves. The other is the people that offer them aid. But there is a real culprit here, one that doesn’t seem to be getting any heat at all. Those culprits are the business owner that hires these people to do these difficult jobs for inhumanely low wages.

See the talking heads on the cable news are always bitching and whining about the Mexicans who walk through the scorching desert and cross polluted rivers to work for these immoral wages. They keep screaming, “It’s illegal!” Technically it is illegal. What they don’t tell you is why they are so willing to break the law. It is because they are desperate. They have so little opportunity in Mexico that they are willing to risk almost everything to work in the United States.

I know they took it out of the bill before it left committee, but they almost made it as illegal to help these people as the act itself. So all the Catholic churches that offer these people food and have special masses for them would be in trouble. My own church does these things so I guess the feds would have to raid the place. God forbid we offer comfort to those in need. I mean it’s only in the Bible like a million times. Some guy named Jesus seemed awfully fond of the idea but His teaching don’t seem very important in this governments decisions.

Let me get back to the real cause of all this commotion, the business criminals who pay these people squat. You see if there were no opportunity for the Mexicans here, they would not come, because there are business criminals who will hire these illegal immigrants. They come. These criminals care not for the safety or the well being of these poor people. They only care for their profits. They only care that they are paying as little as possible to get the work done so they can profit as much as possible.

I know there’s that tired old argument of they have to have cheap labor to pick the produce otherwise the prices would go up. Don’t you think that if everyone was paid a decent wage we could afford to pay a bit more for our produce?

I live in an area that sees a pretty steady influx of Mexicans to do farm labor and a few other things. They cause no trouble really. In fact if you didn’t know where they were you’d probably miss them. So I really doubt they are a threat to our security. In fact, a good number of immigrants that come up do stay. They seem to become hard working, honest members of the community. Apparently we need less of those.

The government can be bothered to crack down on the real cause of the problem however. Instead of going after the real cause they go after all the easy targets. Just like they do in the war on drugs or the war on terror.

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!!”

“The New Colossus”

Emma Lazarus

2006-04-03T23:10:00.000-07:00

Run for the bomb shelters! There’s a war on Christianity!

I just heard of this global conflict today and I must say, I agree. There is indeed a war on Christian values and beliefs.

Want proof? Oh you know you do!

In the United States there are 12 million children living in poverty. There are 38 million people on the verge of living in hunger. Yet the government has cut programs to aid the poor repeatedly. I guess all the money for those programs was lost in the tax cuts for the wealthy. Heaven forbid someone has to forsake a second BMW so a kid can eat.

The United States has invaded a sovereign nation with no provocation. All the reasons that United States government used to enter into this conflict were proven false. In all at least 36,000 irreplaceable souls have been lost. Does “Blessed are the peacemakers” or “Thou shall not kill,” mean nothing to them? Heaven forbid we admit we screwed up and go home.

The Catholic Workers and the Quakers have been the target of surveillance. Apparently the Quakers promote among other things, pacifism. Heaven forbid we learn to solve our conflicts without violence. The Catholic Workers are said to be almost communists. Heaven forbid that anyone lend a helping hand to those people crippled with need.

I know that this so called War on Christianity isn’t what I’m writing about. But it should be. I know what it really is a campaign to rile up the extreme right wing Christians and get them to hate gays a little more and maybe go blow up an abortion clinic.

This is why Christianity is getting such a bad name. People on the outside believe we are all a bunch of raving lunatics. We are not.

If one truly reads the teachings of Jesus you can’t help but be struck by the beauty of it all. Jesus preached forgiveness and tolerance and compassion. He did not preach violence and bigotry and hatred. Jesus’ teachings are so profound that even non-Christians find them inspirational. Kurt Vonnegut, a humanist, said he rather not even be human if Jesus hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

You see I’ve become convinced that this is all a power play. The Christian right has made a grab at power. They’ve done this in conjunction with neo-conservative movement that has infiltrated the Republican Party. They’ve used hot button issues to get the sheep all riled up. Once they’ve convinced them that they are in danger, it all starts to fall into place.

Notice they use the issues of abortion, homosexuality and loss of religious freedom. You got to use the hot button issues if you want to start a fire.

I know I’ve said a lot about abortion before so I won’t beat that fossilized horse any more. But I will say this; the Republicans have a golden key with this issue. So many Christians, especially Catholics, vote strictly on the issue of abortion that it drives a large number of Christian voters away from ever voting for a Democrat. So they have to make sure this is always out front in the campaigns so that good Christians don’t ever even think of voting for a Democrat.

Homosexuality as an issue really has always befuddled me. I personally don’t care one way or another what two consenting adults do. But for some reason Christianity is opposed to being gay. I will admit I have never fully understood why. But since the rise of the movement to give gay couples the same rights that straight couples have especially when it comes to insurance and inheritance matters the Christian right has pounced. I have no idea how gay marriage will ruin marriage, like the right-wingers claim it will. Maybe the gay couples will make all the marriages be extra fabulous. Other than that I’m lost.

Loss of religious freedom is almost laughable if they weren’t so damn irate about it. The good ole US of A is exceedingly Christian. How the hell is someone going to take your religious rights away from them? It isn’t going to happen. You see what they really want is to have reminders of their religion everywhere. They want their religion to be dominant. It’s not that Christians are being oppressed. It’s that these Christians to the far right aren’t as powerful as they’d like to be.

So you see gentle reader the real war on Christianity is on those humble servants of God and man who seek to make the world a far better place for everyone. It is not being waged on those who preach from mega-churches and bankroll politicians.

I leave you know with the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

2006-03-28T22:01:00.000-08:00

Please go read this. Click Here

It’s about time someone in the government asked why the Bush twins aren’t in Iraq. They could also take all of the chicken hawk young Republicans with them.

That’ll be all.

2006-03-28T21:45:00.000-08:00

It’s funny how life works sometimes. Not laughter funny more odd funny. Anyway while I was at the Peace Rally in Columbus a guy asked to take a picture of my sign. I obliged. He then brought up Alex Jones and I said I had never heard of him. He was still nice enough to give two DVDs with two different editions of the movie Loose Change on them. I’ll be honest I had never heard of this movie beforehand. Also, just so you know, Alex Jones has nothing to with Loose Change. He runs the Website Prison Planet. If you’re cynical about conspiracy theories feel free to take a pass. I would say the same for the movie, most of which feels like hyperbole and speculation. I’ll try and post a review soon. If you really want to view it you can go to Google Video and watch it there, just type in “loose change” into the search box. I recommend watching both editions so you can see all the evidence the movie has.

Usually I’m not a big fan of conspiracy theories. Why? Because most of the evil takes place out in the open, it’s just that most people don’t pay enough attention or the media totally drops the ball in covering it. So most of these elaborate conspiracies are flights of fancy. But if I were a wee bit more paranoid I’d say there is a conspiracy. I’d say our government was trying to destroy our schools.

I know this isn’t a conspiracy. I wish it were. It would make for a far cooler story. Our schools are in trouble. They’re sinking a little deeper everyday to.

Here’s just the latest example. The State of Florida wants high school students to declare majors, because they think that students will like school better if they only study what they like. I say this reeks of maybe the worst idea since the My Mother the Car. You see high school is there to provide a foundation of learning. It is there to leave you well prepared to for the rest of your life, whatever that may be. To allow these young students to close themselves off from the broad spectrum of education is downright dumb.

It’s bad enough that because of all these awful proficiency tests those schools are teaching less science and art and history to focus on the subjects, math and reading, which they are so harshly judged on. If a school doesn’t go well on these tests then they may lose funding. So schools are forced to teach kids just to do well on these examinations. The schools should be broadening the students’ minds not training them to take a test.

It’s bad enough that in Ohio the funding for schools is based mostly on property taxes, which means the wealthier neighborhoods get better schools than the poorer ones. Silly me, I thought segregation was over. It’s not. It’s now wealthy and poor instead of black and white.

It’s bad enough that schools start at ungodly early hours, which makes it harder on everyone involved to do their best. The high school and middle school around here start at 7:35. That’s too early for the chickens let alone teenagers. Schools have no business starting earlier then 8:30. There’s lots of research that shows later start times reduce discipline issues, raise attendance and improve overall academic performance. But for some reason administrators want schools to start earlier and earlier.

I got so upset about the failure of public schools because as they fail the country fails. A democracy cannot function without an educated population. If a population grows ignorant the snake oil salesmen and charlatans would seize control. That benefits no one but the charlatans and the snake oil salesmen.

“We must not believe the many, who say only the free ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.”

Epictetus

Discourses

2006-03-24T22:35:00.000-08:00

Remember when I said I was going to take it easy on George Bush? I was in error. Sorry about that.

Our fearless leader has shown his true colors yet again. When he resigned the Patriot Act he added an addendum in which he stated that he does not feel obliged to inform Congress of how the FBI is using it’s expanded police powers. You read all about it here. Link to the article

OK, this might be nothing. But I doubt it. This administration has already done everything in its power to operate under a cloak of secrecy. I sincerely doubt that W would add this addendum unless he had some motive to do so. That’s what scares me.

According to ole W, freedom is on the march or it’s spreading or words to that effect. Anyway in Afghanistan right now a man by the name of Abdul Rahman is facing death for a crime. What grievous criminal act did he commit? He converted to Christianity. It’s nice to freedom’s march was so vigorous it went right by Afghanistan.

You see when people are far more devoted to their faith than their country; equality for everyone is kind of rough sledding.

Want another reason to dislike the Bush family? Good, because I got one. Barbara Bush, the President’s mom not his daughter, made a donation to the charity that her husband and Bill Clinton set up to aid Katrina victims. This would be a good thing except she earmarked a portion of it go to purchase educational software manufactured by her son Neil. Nepotism is so ugly. Does this woman even have a soul?

I know I goofed. I promised to leave George Bush alone for a while. But it’s just so damn hard! He keeps making mistake on top of mistake. How people haven’t stormed the White House with torches is totally beyond me. This president makes Richard Nixon look like Abraham Lincoln.

I’d say more but I might come off like a stark raving lunatic. Not that I have never sounded like that before I’m sure. It’s just that this administration does so much wrong that I tend to get a little frustrated.

I like the good ole USA, really I do. I just wish her people were a bit more active and proactive with regards to their government. It’s your country. Take charge! In this light I shall leave you with the wit and insight of Mark Twain, I feel this really applies.

” Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

“The citizen who sees his society's democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry out is not a patriot but a traitor.”

” In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.”

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.”

2006-03-23T22:36:00.000-08:00

I got some good news for those of you who are unsettled by my Bush bashing. I’ve largely given up on this president so there may actually be a decrease in my tirades against this president. I’m not saying they will stop but you might see a lot less of them.

Why the change of heart? Well since Bush has acknowledged that the war in Iraq will be up to other presidents and future Iraqi governments to decide, I’ve decided to back off. I figure if he’s quitting why should I bother? I mean this has been Bush’s legacy in everything he has done. He gets a position, which he royally screws up at, and then walks away. He makes a profit off of some “golden parachute” and he ceases caring.

Now for those of you who find my little rants cute and lovable, fear not constant reader, I will most likely have to slap good ole W around at some point. Can he possibly not screw in the last three years of this term? For the sake of this nation I hope he can. But I doubt it.

In far better news, I’m very happy that the three remaining member of the Christian Peacemaking Team were rescued today. Tom Fox, the one who didn’t make it out alive, will be missed. The world needs more people like Tom Fox. People devoted to making the world a better place are far too rare.

I continue to hope and pray for Jill Carroll and the rest of the hostages in this most unholy war.

Just so you know, I really want Russ Feingold to be my next president. He’s the last man of principle left in the Senate. He’s stood against the Patriot Act and wanted President Bush held accountable for violating the Constitution. Hooray for Feingold! I mean sure it’s been about 25 years since we’ve seen any one of any real character in the White House, but I can dream.

2006-03-20T22:50:00.000-08:00

It’s required reading time! Oh stop your whining! Anyway, please go here and read this story about James Hansen. Link Or if you’re lazy you can here and watch the story. Link

Done?

Am I the only one who finds this totally disturbing? The government is rewriting science to meet its political ends? James Hansen can’t speak in public without a government handler present? We have, according to Hansen, ten years until we reach a tipping point and the Bush administration does not care?

Please understand this is not merely about polar bears and penguins. This is about the planet. If this planet fails so do we. We cannot afford to be indifferent here. We must act to slow this process of global warming. If the ice caps melt and the oceans rise and weather turns for the worse and species start becoming extinct at an accelerated rate, then we will suffer as well. We have only one place in the whole universe we can call home. We must take care of it or it will not take care of us.

2006-03-20T22:32:00.000-08:00

Bush was in Cleveland today. He’s out and about trying to sell the American people on why we should stay in Iraq. All the cable news channels covered his speech. I didn’t watch it in its entirety. I had a few other things to do and I can only watch Bush speak for so long before I get the shakes. It’s not entirely his message either. It’s all those pauses he takes and that stupid little smirk he gets. It makes me lose my religion.

What I did catch however left me questioning two things he said. Yeah I know what you’re thinking, “Only two?” Like I said I didn’t see the whole speech so I got little to complain about.

Someone asked Bush about our policy of pre-emptive strikes. Bush said we must strike before a threat fully materializes. But I wonder this, if a threat hasn’t fully materialized is it really a threat? Aren’t there many other ways to deal with a possible threat? Aren’t there ways far less violent than pre-emptive military action? Also if we allow for pre-emptive action against a potential threat how sweeping will this definition of potential threat be? How much does this policy of pre-emptive strikes allow us to attack whomever we can drum up some paranoia against?

This strikes me as doctrine based on fear. Fear is a scheme used by someone who wants control. Fear is a tactic that can circumvent reason. Fear is the tool of the fascist not the democrat.

Later Bush was speaking about his plan to permit certain Mexicans in to do labor, mostly agricultural. His line is, and he’s used this before, that the Mexicans will be doing jobs Americans don’t want to do. Do you think Bush has asked himself why Americans don’t want these jobs? Could is possibly be because they involve beak breaking labor at appallingly low wages in hazardous working conditions? What Bush isn’t saying is the truth. That what Bush wants is for his buddies that own these corporate farms to be able to maximize their profits. Never mind that they are already bleeding the system dry with federal subsidies. They also want people to work for them for as little as possible. Do you think Bush realizes that if these same jobs only the Mexicans will do paid decent wages and had safer working conditions people would do them. Americans do all sorts of hard and dangerous labor. They just won’t do it on the cheap.

2006-03-20T09:35:00.000-08:00

On March 18th I ventured with a bunch of likeminded folks down to Columbus to commemorate then 3rd anniversary of the war in Iraq. Mission accomplished indeed. The crowd was smallish there was 800 people there according to the papers. I would have guessed a hair bit higher, but that’s not too important.

The prayer service beforehand was very sincere. Sincere is good I just wished it had been a tad less somber. Here I am looking to get my seditionist groove working and I’m sitting in a somber prayer service. Oops.

The rally itself was good fun. The speakers were a good bunch. Nikki Robinson, a senior at Kent State, was especially good. Youthful enthusiasm is always so contagious. My “Axis of Idiots” sign was quite popular with the crazy kids at the rally. I got videotaped and photographed more in that one afternoon than I had been in the past year. So either I was beloved by my fellow protestors or the NSA was spying on me. I’m not totally sure anymore.

Speaking of not being totally sure I must admit something. I know I write here often about things I find troubling. I write about things that ought to change. I often write about things that I feel would make the world a better place for us all. Some days I feel like quitting though. I would never give up on my beliefs and go to the right on the political spectrum. God forbid. Some days I wonder if the human race is worth all the effort.

My inner cynic is a noisy little twerp. I read that some of my significant betters, like Albert Einstein, Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut, have given up on the human race. I wonder if I should abandon it as well.

I mean it’s not like I have a lot of fuel to keep that flickering flame of hope burning. All the wars and oppression and abuse and greed make my hopes sink. I see people willing to sacrifice freedom for the cold comfort of protection and I fear that maybe people don’t really want freedom.

But then it happens. Something inspires me. Something comes along that lifts me out of the doldrums and gives me a reason to believe in the human race again. Whether its people sacrificing careers to help total strangers rebuild after some disaster or people suffering the brutality of oppression and poverty dancing as if they don’t have a care in the world. Then I pick my sorry self-pitying carcass up and keep on keeping on.

I remain cautiously optimistic for the fate of humanity. Maybe, just maybe, if enough people toss aside their bullets and bombs and pick up books. Maybe, just maybe, if enough people realize that there is no love in fear. Maybe, just maybe, if learn that every person has an inalienable right to housing, food, water, health care and education. Maybe, just maybe, if learn that differences between people ought to be understood rather than feared. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll all work out. I hope so anyway.

2006-03-09T22:36:00.000-08:00

I love good news. Well this isn’t precisely good news. More like news that should cause cautious optimism. But given the current state of affairs our planet is in I’ll take what I can get.

This has nothing to do with the Dubai ports deal. Something still stinks there I just haven’t figured out what yet.

It also has nothing to do with George Bush signing an extension for the Patriot Act. Don’t you just love the smell of our constitution burning? I’m kidding.

Rather it is far more hopeful news. I love hopeful news. One of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, has geysers that shoot water miles into space. The geysers are similar to Old Faithful at Yellowstone Park. Go read about it here.

Why is this so cool? Because this is the first time that we have been able to confirm that liquid water exists anywhere but here on ole Mother Earth. Where there is water there is the possibility of life. Also they have detected methane and CO2, both of which give scientists hope that there are organic materials on Enceladus. It could be microbes or bacteria or jellyfish. It could be fish. There may be nothing at all. We do not know. Which is precisely why we must look.

Imagine if we discovered life on another world in our own solar system. Imagine if we could prove that we are not alone in the infinite void of space. Our whole perception of the universe may have to change. It would be a magnificent change to live through.

Ok, I’ll grant you some religious leader would wet his pants. But I wouldn’t care. If we could discover alien life it would make the discovery of the New World look like finding a nickel in your pocket.

I know have made some rather extraordinary claims and as Carl Sagan used to say, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” We lack that extraordinary evidence. But that should not hinder us from looking.

I know it may seem a bit odd that I’m so jazzed about this. But it’s things like this. It’s the things that make my imagination take off even for a few fleeting moments, that help make this life truly bearable. I’m able to forget about the mess in Iraq and the troubles here in the USA and the rest of old Mother Earth. I’m able to put my personal concerns aside and dream big dreams.

Isn’t that what makes life better?

2006-03-07T21:53:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting at home eating lunch when the phone rings. Since it’s a given that an afternoon phone call is a telemarketer, I don’t answer. So the machine picks up and this recorded message drones on for about three minutes about how gay marriage would ruin the fine institution of marriage.

I’ve said it before I’ll say it again, the only time anyone should worry about gay marriage is if they are planning one.

Also gays won’t ruin marriage because the straight people have already ruined it. A country with a fifty percent divorce rate and reality television dedicated to getting people married already has no respect for marriage.

But, the whole gay marriage issue isn’t what caught my short attention span. It was a little phrase in the middle of the message. The person reading the message stated that this was a fight between “average Americans and the liberal intellectual elite”. Good God Almighty do I have issues with that.

Not to burst the bubble of the conservatives out there, but this country was founded by the liberal intellectual elite. We seemed to turn out ok. Oh you want proof that they were liberal intellectual elite? Fine by me.

Our Founding Fathers were indeed liberal because they established a government that was not only a democracy but gave the citizens protections against the government. They prevented active duty military from being President. They founded separation of church and state. They gave the people freedom of speech and the press and protection from illegal searches and cruel punishment. The Founding Fathers were downright raging hippies. Given the times they were in they were unbelievably progressive. Liberals founded us.

Our Founding Fathers were intellectuals the likes of which our country has rarely seen since. They were almost to a man Renaissance men. They had deep interest in the arts and science and philosophy. John Kennedy once quipped to a gathered throng of intellectuals in the White House that never had so much talent resided in that room except when Thomas Jefferson dined there alone. Benjamin Franklin was an inventor and a scientist and writer. Intellectuals founded us.

Our Founding Fathers were quite elite. Benjamin Franklin was so wealthy he never patented the Franklin stove, the bifocals or the lightning rod. Why? Because he was so wealthy from the sale of his printing company that he didn’t feel he needed the money. The rest were mostly wealthy landowners. A rather elite class of gentlemen founded us. So elite was they that they only gave the right to vote to other white landowners. No one’s perfect. The elite founded us.

If I may be so bold I have a question. What wrong with being an intellectual? Did I miss a meeting? Why is it bad to be a thinker or a skeptic or philosopher? Of course the attack on intellectuals has been going on for a while in this country. It seems like a thinly veiled attack on dissent really. Who needs facts and reasoned debate? Who needs people who can substantiate their arguments? Who needs science and skeptical inquiry? Kurt Vonnegut thinks we are living with a lot of guessers running our government. I fear he’s right. There’s no need to follow facts just make it up. Then go out and win the people’s hearts and minds. There’s no need to speak the facts or, Heaven forbid, the truth.

Now the whole phrase, “average Americans and the liberal intellectual elite” is especially annoying. It’s just another scare tactic and damn it gets my blood pressure up. Anytime an organization tries to tell you it you, the poor underappreciated unloved misunderstood American against some evil class that is out to destroy you, please ignore them. It’s all the big false dichotomy of American politics. It’s us against them. They always feel free to ignore the middle. If people saw there were fifteen ways to look at an issue they might actually take time to think about it. Can’t have that. It’s always the polar extremes to. You either pro- or anti- whatever issue they are trying to scare you about. You’re not allowed to see the plurality of opinion that’s out there. You see if people are led to believe there are only two ways to look at an issue. Then they are more likely to not like the other side and never get anything resolved. This is a bad thing.

This scare tactic has been around for quite some time. In fact, Hitler used it on the Jews. It’s just a ruse to get the people to believe that danger is imminent and if the government doesn’t protect them then their precious way of life will be destroyed. It’s all based on fear and not reason. It’s yet another reason we need some more intellectuals around.

2006-03-06T22:00:00.000-08:00

I know a lot of people think that aliens visit our planet. I tend to be skeptical. But if they did I think we should have a little plaque on the Moon just to greet them. We got to make sure they know what they’re getting themselves in to. I think it should go a little something like this.

Welcome to Earth!

We’re the third rock from the Sun and one of nine, eight or fourteen planets, depending on whom you believe. We’re wet and warm and getting warmer. Whether or not this warming is natural depends on whom you believe. We’re either the favorite children of our Creator or random cosmic serendipity, depending on whom you believe. One of the nations on this planet is truly head and shoulders above all others. Which nation it is depends on whom you believe. There are nations of nothing but evil people. Which nations these are depends on whom you believe. There is one true path to happiness. Where that path is depends on whom you believe.

As you can see we have a lot of beliefs. We are rather fond of them. We are so fond of them that we have been known to kill people who believe differently. I guess proving them wrong isn’t enough.

We have had some tremendous examples of how to live. People like Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Thomas Paine have tried to show us the ways of peace, justice and equality for all people. We didn’t listen really well though. The first three were killed and the last one died ostracized. I guess some people believed someone else.

We are a planet of great diversity. We have warriors and pacifists. We have addicts and the abstinent. We have people with no food and people who eat too much. We have sinners and saints. We have dogs with sweaters and homeless children. We have intellectuals and illiterates. We have people with gold plated toilets and people who have to pee behind a dumpster. Some days you a greeted with a glorious sunrise, other days it rains on your picnic. Sometimes diversity is better than others.

We’ve made a bit of a mess of this planet; you’ll have to excuse us. We’re just smart enough to make things work but not smart enough or brave enough to admit when those things are bad for us. Just don’t breathe the air or drink the water or sit too long in the sunshine or eat the food and you’ll be fine.

I hope you enjoy your stay on Earth, because not all Earthlings get to.

2006-02-28T22:26:00.000-08:00

I heard Jon Stewart say something and it got me thinking. Larry King asked who fascinated him most in the current administration. Stewart answered “the people”. Stewart credited their seemingly inexhaustible patience in spite of a seemingly totally indifferent government.

Now I must admit I think Jon Stewart is one of the more gifted political observers. But I’m not sure he’s right. I’m not totally sold that the American people are so patient. I fear they may be apathetic.

In my home state of Ohio we have a governor who has been convicted. Tom Noe, a prominent Republican fundraiser, has been indicted on 53 felony counts stemming from an investigation of his handling of 50 million of the Ohio Bureau of Worker’s Compensation money. An audit finds 13.5 million of that money missing. So are the people up in arms and ready to shoot anything closely resembling a Republican? I wish. Instead the reaction has been very blasé. Apathy reigns here. People seem to expect the worst from politicians.

That’s sad.

It’s really sad because it’s our fault. We expect so little from them and make our voices heard so infrequently that they don’t care. Without the constant pressure of high expectations and the oversight of the voters our government officials act like spoiled children. It’s all about winning and political capital. Unless of course they’re campaigning, then all the feel good warm and fuzzy “let’s help the poor” stuff comes out. Trust me, they don’t man a word of it.

I, like Jon Stewart, am fed up with both parties. I’ve said that before though so I won’t belabor the point. But I will belabor this it’s really not their fault we’re in the mess we’re in. It’s ours. Our condition will not improve until the rightful leaders of this nation, the American people, take their country back.

2006-02-26T21:35:00.000-08:00

In my latest post I talked a bit about fascism and the rather creepy similarities between it and out current state of affairs. Now I’m going to comment about the 14 characteristics common to fascist states. In the interest of full disclosure I am going to use the list of Laurence Britt. There are other lists, which vary slightly. But more or less they all state the same thing. I will however pull two things off of another list because I think they bear some discussion.

The Laurence Britt list and some fairly extensive documentation can be found here.

All three lists and very good essay on the subject are here.

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism: When does patriotism go too far? I tend to regard it in a similar vane to how I regard faith. Faith is in and of itself a fine thing. But when someone has blind faith is when things start going bad in a hurry.

It’s perfectly fine to love one’s country. But when that love becomes spite for other nations is when trouble starts. When there is no respect for other cultures or ideologies and there is assumed superiority is when patriotism morphs into nationalism or jingoism or even worse xenophobia. It’s fine to love one’s country but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily superior to the rest of the world.

Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights: Let’s see where ever do I start? Let’s just list some. Guantanamo, the black ops prisons in Eastern Europe, warrantless wire-tapping, Abu Ghraib, consistently stonewalling investigations, leaking a CIA covert operatives name and leaving tens of thousands of people to suffer in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina while the President played guitar and ate cake with John McCain. Do I need to mention any more?

Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause: The United States has always had a bit of a superhero complex. In that, we have always needed a villain to fight. We’ve always had communists, terrorists, blacks, gays, Indians and liberals to lay the blame on. It seems as if America isn’t happy unless it has someone to fight or at least blame for its problems. The problem here is that a doctrine based solely on fear. Fear is no way to run a country or a religion or a family.

Supremacy of the Military: Our military budget is sacred. Any attempt of slash military spending is seen as an attempt to make America less safe. Even attempts to cut programs that are largely money pits like the F-22 fighter are met with much resistance. The United States spends over four times as much on its defense as the next two closest nations, China and Russia. Since I doubt we’ll be at war with either China or Russia any time soon this is borderline criminal.

Rampant Sexism: Gender roles aren’t as rigid as in past times. But then again that’s mostly because most families need two incomes to survive. Prejudice against gays remains high however. The whole non-issue of gay marriage from the 2004 elections still sits wrong with me. Not only because it took time away from real issues like poverty but also because gays were portrayed as less than human.

Controlled Mass Media: Voltaire has a great quote, “God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh.” If you substitute “The Media” for “God” in that quote and you have my feelings on most media. Hours spent on non-issues (e.g. Natalee Holloway or Terri Shiavo) and celebrity gossip makes it seem as important as real news. This is complete violation of the trust they should have with the public to keep them informed and aware. The government still doesn’t have the media in its death grip yet. But its odd they go ballistic with Cheney accidentally shoots a guy but stay quiet when it was revealed Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. That’s a little suspicious.

Obsession with National Security: Do you want to be a speechwriter for George Bush? Here’s all you have to do. When you write a speech just mention 9/11 and terrorism every other word. Also feel free to throw in how you’re working to keep them safe and sound. Remember there are enemies everywhere and your rights are meaningless. So just let big brother wiretap whomever he wants and all will go well.
“Mother America is brandishing her weapons.
She keeps me safe and warm by threats and misconceptions.”
“Fly Me Courageous”
Drivin’ n Cryin’

Religion and Government are Intertwined: I remember during his acceptance speech at the RNC, George Bush said he was on a mission from beyond the stars. At first I was nervous because I thought aliens might have abducted him. But then I realized that this was just more of Curious George’s brand of Jesus juice. I know all politicians throw Jesus’ name around so much He should get an endorsement fee. That’s kind of ironic because Jesus’ teachings and our current state of affairs are almost completely contradictory. Go forth and read the Sermon on the Mount people. Anyway, remember one of my previous rants. Religion is based on faith, which is fine. Politics however should be based on facts. You should never have faith in a politician. You should always demand facts. So keeping the two separated is only logical.

Corporate Power is Protected: I just want you to remember one thing I picked up from my time in business classes. Corporations are imaginary. They aren’t real like say people. So you should always support people over corporations. It’s only logical.

Labor Power is Suppressed: Unions have been largely neutered in the USA. The NY transit workers go on strike and all I hear is how it’s illegal. Reagan fired the air traffic controllers that went on strike. People actually believe it’s the union’s fault that jobs don’t stay in America. Remember that last point I made about corporate power? It applies here as well.

Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts: George Washington once said, “Knowledge is in every country the surest basis on public happiness.” Ronald Reagan said’ “Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?” Need I go on?

Obsession with Crime and Punishment: We are a country of zero tolerance and the guilty must be punished. What does this solve? Is there any research that shows punishment deters crime? I’d love to see it.

Rampant Cronyism and Corruption: This is book waiting to be written. Do the names Michael Brown and Jack Abramoff ring any bells?

Fraudulent Elections: There’s nothing quite like disenfranchising and entire block of voters to make an election look bad. The lines to vote in Ohio in 2004 were heart breaking. The hanging chad nonsense in Florida was pathetic. Of course there have been other elections that have stunk to high Heaven, such as the 1960 Presidential race. Until there are national standards and transparency in our elections they will probably always stink.

OK that’s all for Laurence Britt’s list here’s some more things from the other lists.

Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak: All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. I substitute taught for over a year. In the school district I was in not every child had a book for the class they were in. The budget was blamed. Most kids want job training and not an education. If our schools are not giving the children the skills necessary to make decisions based on reasoned thinking. Then what shall they do when the democracy is theirs?

Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake: Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. We now have laws in Colorado and Florida that allow people whom feel threatened to use lethal force. There is some lobbying being done to see these laws instituted in other states. My state of Ohio has a concealed weapons law. As Benjamin Franklin rather succinctly put it once, “Force shites upon the back of reason.”

2006-02-22T21:31:00.000-08:00

Some days I wish I were one of those bloggers that wrote about how their dog always poops on the new furniture. But I get to reading and watching and listening and ideas strike. Some are far better than others. But I usually at least make a go of them. If you saw all my unfinished blog entries you’d be shocked. I’ve left a good many ideas unfinished because I just couldn’t find the words and ideas to finish them.

But enough about my lack of writing skills, I have an idea. I’ve been reading and listening and watching and hearing a lot about how America is in some ways resembling a fascist state. Now I’m not going to attempt to convince you that the good ole US of A is letting her democratic government slide into the pit of fascism. But there are some things that have given me pause. I think it’s always good to remember that democracy is not forged steel but rather delicate china. It can be easily broken if the citizens are not careful to protect it.

For those of you not well versed in politics I shall now offer a definition of fascism. Please note however there are many definitions of fascism. So I picked one straight from the source, Benito Mussolini. The following is from his book, The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism.

"Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the 19th century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State."

Now what did we learn there? We learned that fascism favors the state over the individual. Mussolini also stated that fascism could also very well be called corporatism. Because fascism is government in which both corporations and the government act as one.

Now what does an Italian fascist have to do with modern American politics you may ask? Well there are some unsettling similarities between fascism and current US policy. I want you to go to the following link and read something. It’s an article by Henry Wallace from 1944. Wallace was the Vice-President under FDR. He preceded Harry Truman. Fascism Column.

OK now that you’ve digested that fine bit of writing let me comment on a few points.

First this fine quote, “The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

Does what this administration has done with the tragedy of September 11th sound eerily similar to this? Every time this administration gets into trouble they seem to play the 9/11 card. They have used this war to evade Congressional oversight. The powers they claim being at war gives them to stonewall investigations.

Now this, “If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort. They are doing this even in those cases where they hope to have profitable connections with German chemical firms after the war ends. They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.”

War profiteers used to be considered evil. Now corporations like Halliburton make billion s in the war effort and no one says a word.

This administration has consistently put corporations and power ahead of people. Just look at the state of affairs in Iraq or New Orleans.

OK I’ve given you enough to chew on for now. But there is a lot more to come soon. Included will be the 14 points common to fascist governments and how the current state of our own country compares.

2006-02-21T22:23:00.000-08:00

By now I’m rather sure that you’ve heard that Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates, has bought a British company that controls six major US ports. I hope you’ve been made aware of the following facts.

1. The United Arab Emirates has ties to Al Qaeda. Their banking system was one of the one used to by the terrorist organization to fund the attacks on the United States. When the US wanted to trace the money trail of Al Qaeda the United Arab Emirates blocked those efforts. Also, two of the nineteen hijackers on those four hijacked plans were from the United Arab Emirates.
2. The United Arab Emirates is one of only three governments on the planet who still recognize the Taliban as the rightful government of Afghanistan.
3. The United Arab Emirates sold equipment necessary to have a nuclear program to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
4. The United Arab Emirates is also a prime mover in the international drug trade.

Allowing the United Arab Emirates control of our ports would be the equivalent of allowing Fascist Italy control of our ports during World War II. The fact that we have so much foreign control of our ports is troubling enough. But, to allow a country with such strong terrorist ties to have control is downright scary.

George Bush has threatened to veto any attempts by Congress to block this sale. Hopefully Congress will have the resolve to override the veto. Congress can do these things you know.

Why is Bush so adamant about this sale? I’ll admit I’m only speculating here but my guess is he’s just following form. His usual MO is to put corporate interests ahead of those of the people. He’s doing that here like a champ. Two of Bush’s aides have ties to Dubai Ports World, Treasury Secretary Jack Snow and the nominee to head the US Maritime Administration David Sanborn. You can read more about them here.

I must admit I find something almost poetically ironic here. National security is the issue that has carried George Bush to two terms in the White House and has given the Republican Party firm control over Congress. Now with this firestorm of controversy it could be the issue that hobbles both the President and the GOP. The notion of selling our ports to a country with ties to the most brutal terrorist attack ever on American soil will not sit well with Middle America.

I hope ultimately Congress blocks this sale and we can put this issue to rest. But if by some chance it goes through I fear for the safety of the cities where those ports are.

2006-02-13T21:28:00.000-08:00

Our fearless leader Dick Cheney shot a guy a couple days ago. I could make a lot of jokes about his five deferments that kept him from serving in the military or how he lived in a cave for about 6 months after 9/11. It was awfully nice of him to wait about 21 hours before letting the rest of the world know. Yeesh!

Anyway I have a question. It’s been bothering me and maybe one of you will be good enough to help me out here. I’ve been watching a good deal of programming about the President’s wiretapping sans warrant. You know, that brazen violation of the 4th Amendment. But anyway, I’ve been watching and reading about it and something has struck me. Politicians are making the argument that since this wiretapping program has been outed. They are trying to claim that the program is now ineffective. How does this work? Are they trying to say that terrorists aren’t smart enough to realize their every move may be recorded? Of course they realize they’re being wiretapped and taped every second of their lives. How does having public knowledge of our Constitution being violated by the man sworn to uphold damage our intelligence gathering capability?

If anyone can help a brother out. I’d certainly appreciate it.

I will not accept the “we are at war” argument either. It’s crap. It’s crap on a stick. It’s all fear and no reason. Remember what Benjamin Franklin has taught us. “Those who would sacrifice liberty for order will lose both and deserve neither.”

If you don’t believe it’s illegal. You’ve been tricked. Here read the 4th Amendment and tell me how it’s not being violated. Remember the Constitution is ultimate law of the land. It has final say in all federal laws.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Also the fact they are monitoring foreign calls coming into the country is irrelevant. If one party is on American soil they’re under Constitutional protection.

Some days I worry.

2006-02-09T22:15:00.000-08:00

I know I mention Bill Hicks here all the time. But, please humor me on this one. He used to have this routine about the show COPS. Where he would talk about some of the more interesting domestic disputes that they would show. It always seemed that no matter how bad the situation was the woman would defend her man. She would invariably extol the virtues of this letch, no matter how bad the beating was. “Oh he’s a good man,” she’d say over and over again.

What does this have to do with anything you ask? Well I swear the American people act just like this towards their government and corporations. No matter how bad the people are getting screwed over they just lie there and take it. The American people have clearly learned to love the abuse.

Oh how are government is keeping us safe. So don’t you worry your pointy little head about those unimportant civil rights.

Please don’t lose any sleep about the softening job market and the steady decline in real wages. It’s gay marriage that you ought be out in the streets protesting.

Forget the 38 million people in the United States who don’t have enough to eat. Worry about one brain dead women in a Florida hospice or maybe a missing teenager in Aruba.

Don’t even bother yourself with the 45 million or so Americans who have zero health insurance. Instead why not worry about a celebrity’s sex life.

Most American’s are so unwilling to stand up to authority it’s troubling. We act like we elect not a representative government but some horde of despots who demand absolute loyalty. It always helps to remember this, rebels founded America. We rebelled against Britain when we didn’t like the taxes. People took to the streets to free slaves and give women the right to vote and demand equal rights for all citizens.

Stop being so docile people! Demand information. Never just completely trust the government I don’t care who’s in charge. The people are getting screwed every day and they do nothing. It’s disheartening. Educate yourself and get on your representative’s butt. Never let them forget who’s boss. Don’t just sit there and take what they feed you. The government will always do what makes the government happy until the people raise a stink. So it’s time to stink the place up people.

2006-02-07T22:03:00.000-08:00

Hey kids!

I’m starting to think that I watch a bit too much cable news. Then again it’s the only decent thing on in the afternoon while I’m eating lunch. So I guess I see a fair amount. So as usual when I see a bit much of something I tend to find things that bother me.

So today I’m watching the bits and pieces of the funeral for Coretta Scott King. During this fine memorial President Bush, who was in attendance, took some heat from the speakers. What’s the first thing the talking heads on MSNBC start yapping about? How being at this funeral will help Bush politically. It will also be beneficial to Hillary Clinton as well. You know what? I DON’T CARE! The networks never do any real fact checking or call anyone on their mistakes. Gen. Michael Hayden, principal deputy director of National Intelligence and former director of the National Security Agency, couldn’t even correctly quote the 4th Amendment the other day. For the most part the media said nothing! Instead of giving the public what they need, the truth. They instead tell us how they think it will alter America’s opinion. They need to stop this nonsense. The media’s job is to give us the truth, no more no less. Why they stopped doing this, with a few exceptions, is beyond me.

If I hear one more right-wing polemic utter the phrase, “The military protects your freedom” or “The military gave you those freedoms” or any similar nonsense I will begin slapping people. The military has only a scant few times really protected our freedom or gave us new freedoms, like say the Revolutionary War or World War II. Every other time a freedom has been protected it has been by the citizens. They protested or sued or took some other action that prevented the government from infringing on their rights. Every time a right has been granted it has been of the people as well. Movements like the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Suffrage and the Labor Movement had nothing to do with the military. It is that most wonderful of documents, The US Constitution and the actions of the citizens that has expanded and preserved our freedom not the military.

Yesterday I was reading my morning newspaper, The Toledo Blade, and I read an article about members of Al Qaeda escaping from a prison in Yemen. Most of these prisoners were tied to the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. So I eagerly turn on the cable news networks to get some new information about this troubling story. So what do I hear? I hear nothing. They were silent on the issue. Why? Shouldn’t this be a major story? Shouldn’t all those 24 hour news networks had reporters all over this story? I guess not. Why though? Could it be so we don’t really know how well or poorly the war on terror is really going? Just give me some truth people that’s all I ask.

Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, said recently and I quote, “President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale.” Write your own joke. This is almost as pathetic as the fact that he was not under oath for his testimony. It’s nice to see that politics trumps the truth in Washington these days.

OK rant mode is disengaged for now. I don’t want it to seem like I want anyone to avoid the news, because nothing could be more false. But you need to watch it with a sharp mind and ask lots of questions. Though I’m starting to doubt the media will answer them anymore.

2006-02-04T22:45:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have felt my commentary on the State of the Union Address was a bit harsh. I’ll grant you I did write in a bit of an irritated mood. Then again every time I listen to Bush speak I get irritated anymore. But ole George did say one thing that was rather amusing. During his appeal to outlaw cloning he brought up the issue of animal-human hybrids. Yes, I’m serious. When did this become an issue? Does George know something we don’t? Was some terrorist or despot out to make an army of mants to attack us? Did Laura read George an H.P. Lovecraft story before bed that week? Do you remember during the whole gay marriage stink when some yahoos were saying that gay marriage would lead to man and dog marriages? Maybe George just got that confused. Maybe he’s fallen off of his bike too much. I guess we’ll never know.

Speaking of man and animal confusion. I was watching TV the other day when a commercial for some pet supply place came on. Normally I don’t care one way or another about stores I don’t use (I have no pets). But this one grabbed me. It used the phrase “pet parents” when referring to pets owners. Am I the only one who finds this a bit on the mentally ill side?

Some people take their pets far too seriously. People buy sweaters and booties for their pets. There are pets in this country that eat better than a good many children. That’s wrong on so many levels. Now I understand why people like their pets so much. Hell, I cried when my dog Scooter died. But as much as liked Scooter he was just an animal. I moved on rather quickly. His death affected nowhere near as much as my father’s or any of the other loved ones I’ve lost. I think it’s best to remember something I learned in elementary school. You love people and people only. You like objects and things, like animals.

While I’m talking about annoying commercials, let me get this in. Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday. Millions of people will gather around their televisions and watch the game and if MSNBC is correct about two out of five will be watching for the commercials. So about two out of five Americans now have their obedient consumer lobotomies. I personally will use the commercials as God intended, for bathroom breaks and channel surfing if the game sucks. I’ve never seen a commercial that was so good that I wanted to sit through a four-hour program just to see it. A commercial has never inspired me to buy a damn thing. I think in this case it’s good to remember what Bill Hicks has taught us. If manufacturers could make the commercials they wanted they would look like this. There would be a picture a beautiful woman’s face. The camera would back up and reveal that she was topless. The camera would move back farther and show that she was totally nude. Then above her would appear a sign that says “Drink Coke”.

2006-01-31T22:37:00.000-08:00

Oh goodness gracious wherever shall I begin?

I’m sure you were at least aware that George Bush delivered his State of the Union address tonight. If you missed it you didn’t miss much. It was just same crap deeper pile.

First off Cindy Sheehan got arrested. She was invited to attend and was wearing a t-shirt with the number of American fatalities in Iraq on it. She was lifted out of her seat by the Capitol Police and arrested. Wearing a t-shirt is apparently illegal. Who knew? Some media has reported that she unfurled a banner of some sort. But there is no photographic evidence to support that as I write this.

Now Cindy could have been a good little patriot like the family of the fallen soldier who were there. I know that soldier wrote a letter that makes George’s little crusade seem worthwhile. But given that George Bush will not attend funerals for fallen soldiers trotting them out for his own political gain is pathetic. The standing ovation they received seemed unnatural to me. It’s not that I don’t feel sorry for them. I do. I’ve lost enough people I care about to empathize. But what’s with a standing ovation? It seems a bit too rah rah for my tastes. Would you applaud at a funeral? No. So please just offer the family your condolences and prayers and leave these people be.

Speaking of standing ovations, why in God’s name does the President get one about every paragraph? Sit down shut up and listen to the speech. Is this Congress or Wrestlemania? Every single time he made a point up and at them they went. Our President has made a point, now it’s time to applaud like he told us we were all getting a new car.

The President is going to off of foreign oil but converting us over to coal. Wow! You know, because we really need more people in those super-safe coal mines. Coal is such an inexhaustible resource to. He said something about ethanol made of saw grass and wood chips. Also we need more nuclear power. Unlike Iran that can’t have any because they’re bad people.

The President also defended his illegal wiretapping program by using the same old crap. He always tells us that it’s protecting us and he would never spy on Americans. Don’t believe him. You should never surrender your freedoms in the name of protection. It never works out.

For those among you who doubt that it’s illegal. Let me tell you this much, Bush as said previously that wiretapping requires a warrant. Why did he flip-flop? Or was he just lying to us before?

The President then gave his little spiel about how freedom is on the march. Democracy will insure that we will have a peaceful world. Yet when Palestine elected a government that we disapproved of, Hamas, we told them to disarm, disavow terrorism and grovel at the feet of their American overlords. Isn’t the whole point of democracy that the people can determine their own destiny? Didn’t George also say that the Middle Eastern democracies wouldn’t completely resemble our own because of cultural differences? Why can’t he accept Hamas?

He also wants the rich to keep those spiffy tax cuts forever. God I wanted to throw up. You see all that tax relief isn’t really helping the middle class or the working class or the working poor. No it only helps the wealthy few. That’s the only people this administration has ever really helped. The reason our deficit is so bad is because we have no tax income from the wealthy particularly the big corporations. Remember we have 38 million people living on the verge of hunger living in this country and wages relative to inflation are not increasing. Those tax cuts aren’t going to do squat for majority of Americans.

Personal savings accounts for health care are an unfunny joke. We need price controls and better low cost of free health care. But no one wants to keep the pharmaceutical bosses from getting fat off of their pills so that won’t happen anytime soon.

Also Bush keeps harping on how lawsuits are driving doctors away. So he wants to limit the ability of patients to sue their doctors for malpractice. I’ll just say this; if my doctor screws my health up I want justice. Of course Bush had to use the old OB/GYN example, I could make several jokes, but I digress.

When Bush dared compare his struggles to those faced by Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I wanted to break stuff. This is especially true considering Dr. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, had just passed away the same day. Please let the historians decide whose struggles yours most closely mirror. Comparing yourself to great leaders like Lincoln and King just comes off as shameless.

Ok, I’m done for now. I need to go flush the Republican nonsense out of system. As always I welcome your insights to my little rants.

2006-01-30T22:30:00.000-08:00

Let’s start off with some facts. One, the average CEO makes 475 times what the average worker does in this country. In Japan that ratio is about eleven to one. Two, Exxon posted a record profit for a US corporation last quarter of about 10.7 billion dollars.

Is anyone else as pissed off as me about these things?

I don’t begrudge someone an opportunity to get wealthy. But isn’t a ratio of 475 to 1 a little out of whack? Especially when corporations are habitually downsizing and sending what were once good paying American jobs to China where people get paid squat. Also we live in an age where retirement plans and health insurance at your job is getting more and more expensive or just fading away like a sigh.

Have you ever heard the term golden parachute? Well if you haven’t let me explain. A golden parachute is clause in a corporate executive’s contract that if they lose their job then they get a big old payday. That’s pretty messed up right there. So are the 30,000 Ford workers about to lose their jobs going to get a big fat check with stock options?

You see friends and neighbors the average worker is getting screwed. While his boss is well protected. If Joe Worker fails at his job it’s hit the road. If the CEO fails he gets rich. Is there any justice at all in that? Can anyone justify that and do it with a straight face?

About that second fact, we live in a time where gasoline prices are as high as they have ever been and some people cannot afford to heat their homes. But, Exxon is posting record profits. You see in most economies the price of something raises when the demand exceeds the supply, the greater the imbalance the higher the price. So if the prices were raised because of some dearth of oil on the market just how did Exxon profit so much? Or maybe, and I hate to speculate but I will anyway, they were just price gouging. You think maybe that’s it right there? I tend to.

Greed and gluttony are two of the Seven Deadly Sins for good reason. This corporate greed and gluttony has got to end. It serves no purpose. What’s the worst that could happen you ask? A bloody revolution is the worst that can happen. If the gap between the have-nots and the have-way-too-muches continues to widen and more and more people continue to struggle to meet their most basic needs of health care and shelter and food. Then they will fight to get them. And if our government is still beholden to corporate interests and refuses to dictate change or provide help then I fear the worst.

There is a theory that every 80 years the United States goes through a great crisis. Around 1780 we were in the Revolutionary War. Around 1860 we were in the Civil War. Around 1940 we were in the Great Depression and fighting World War II. I’m not predicting that around 2020 we will be in the middle of another revolution. But if we don’t act now to make change peacefully and without blood shed then it wouldn’t surprise me at all.