Good Luck in the New Year

George Bush says there is no inflation. Go look for yourself. Check out the price of a dozen eggs, a quart of milk, a pound of hamburger. Compare your utility bills with what they were a decade ago. Put 20 gallons of gas into your pickup truck and read the bottom line on your receipt. After you've done that, then look at you're paycheck.

It isn't exactly true that George Bush is a lying little cocksucker. On the one hand, you'll find that you are living on about the same amount of money year after year. That's what George is talking about. On the other hand, you are paying a lot more for the stuff you need. George is rich and he's President. He never handles money, so he doesn't have a fuckin' clue.

The big news for you, is that the price of your house is going down. At the end of this year, which is rapidly approaching and you find that your credit card debt has started to get out of hand again, your choices are going to be limited. Banks are not going to line up to refinance your house and give you the money you need to pay off the plastic and the 20+ percent interest rates that come with it. They are worried now that you can't afford the payments on the mortgage you already have. They might be willing to make some sort of adjustment about that, especially if they don't think they can sell your house for anything like you owe but they aren't going to give you any more money. Even if you can stay off the plastic, which is unlikely, they compound that 20 percent interest daily. Make your minimum payments and in a couple of years you'll owe them half again what you owed them when you charged the last item and they'll want every cent of that before you're off the hook.

If you are like most of the people in this country, you make your living by doing something for somebody. They pay you to do it because they don't want to do it themselves. As money gets tighter, competition kicks in and you will find yourself having to do whatever it is you are doing for less money. There could be a real possibility that eventually, nobody will need you to do it at all. If fewer people are running to Walmart every day, it stands to reason they're going to need a lot fewer greeters.

When they finally kick you out of your house, you can sell your stuff but who is going to want to buy it. Maybe you've got rich relatives that will help you out, I don't. Maybe your family still has a little farm somewhere you can go to, mine doesn't.

Maybe I'm just deranged and everything is going to work out great. Maybe George Bush is not a lying little cocksucker. I hope so. I'm not any better off than most people. I've had a little more experience living on the street than some. It's not recent experience though and my back gets all twingy in the cold.

"LSD is Groovy. Kill the Pigs!"-Jeffrey McDonald

There is one thing that the fundo-fuckfaced, Bible thumping, neo-night riders want more than anything else from the American Left, violence. As the factional separation of our political system becomes more pronounced, they become increasingly desperate for it. They went to Washington when Cindy and her Ladies in Pink marched, to try and provoke a scuffle, no matter how minor. When no incidents occurred, they claimed to have been spat upon. In truth, many of the poor dears lisp, especially when excited and if you get too close, you do so at your own peril. They talk of being menaced by large groups of bikers on the streets of San Francisco and Minneapolis. It turns out they weren't the fearsome Vroom-Vroom Harley types but the ones powered by Campaignolo and Shimano, with their little plastic teardrop helmets and Lycra tights with padded crotches. It's hard for them to kick ass, when their feet are bolted to the pedals. Har-Har-Har! They desperately hope unsavory ruffians will disrupt the Republican National Convention next summer but so far, no such luck seems to be in store.

There is little politically motivated violence in this country. The occasional openly gay college student will get beaten half to death and then hung up on a barbed wire fence to freeze. The odd Black or Hispanic or Indian boy will be tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged along the two lane blacktop for a few miles. Every once in a while a Planned Parenthood clinic will be bombed, or one of its physicians will get their head blown off by a high powered rifle from a few hundred yards away. These are just isolated incidents though. They are not sanctioned by any legitimate Right Wing organization. Really, just ask them. They'll tell you so.

Last year there was a soldier, in uniform, who claimed he was picked up on a road in rural Washington State, by "hippies" and roughed up. I looked for some follow up in the local news for several weeks and never found a single word. I suspect it was a hoax, rapidly hushed up by the soldier's command.

Last week there was a great story, all over the media. Some little Princeton boy, who belonged to a chastity society, wrote a story for the school paper, against the school policy of giving out condoms, free of charge, to the student body. Hey, I can get behind that. Any kid who can afford the Ivy League, should be able to buy their own rubbers. Anyway, after the publication of his story, he claimed to have gotten death threats. Then, he turned up at the Campus Police, claiming to have been beaten up by two young men in dark watch caps and overcoats. Presumably these two young men were fellow students, who felt threatened that their supply of free condoms would be cut off. This story was all over Fox News, talk radio and the blogosphere. I haven't seen Brit Hume so outraged since the title General Betrayus was coined.

It turned out this was just a sad, lonely boy with sexual, religious and political identity problems who made the whole thing up. I feel sorry for this kid. I hope he gets some help and they don't kick him out of school or worse, throw him in jail. I wonder if the local gun shops have been given this kid's name and photo. Hmmm.

Don't despair fundo-faggots, there may be some deranged hippies out there, willing to do some violence on you, yet. Bide your time. Keep your hopes up.

Why Don't They Quit Calling Themselves Evangelicals and Put their Kluxxer Hoods Back On

They are tearing down the projects in New Orleans this week. These are old, barracks like neighborhoods, with names like Calliope, Magnolia and St. Bernard. They housed maybe 5,000 families, every one of them black, most headed by women. The residents were evacuated during Katrina and never allowed back. The white developers say that the projects were too damaged by Katrina to be repaired. They will be replaced by "mixed use" developments. There will be some residential, some commercial. There will be some rental units available, none will be government subsidized. It's unlikely that any of the former residents will be able to afford any of the units their housing is being replaced by, nor would the new landlords want them.

Although the ladies that head the families of the projects are poor, life in the projects has made them politically active. They vote. They organize and attend community meetings. They make their impact felt. These are exactly the kind of black citizens, that the white racist Republican rebuilders of New Orleans, do not want back in their fair city. This is a clear case of economic genocide against the predominantly black population of New Orleans. In the "new" New Orleans, there will be no place for these black women and their families. No place for them to live. No place for them to work. Most important of all, no place for them to vote.

This is no different than the displacement of the residents of the 9th ward and other black neighborhoods of the city, except for one small and inconvenient fact. None of the projects sustained any damage from the flooding or hurricane. They were evacuated, the utilities were cut off, services ceased but they sustained no damage. HUD, which runs the projects, simply never let the residents move back in. Now they have given the land over to the developers bulldozers. The new populations of these neighborhoods will include few , if any, holdovers from the old.

The redevelopment of the projects in New Orleans exposes the lie that the rebuilding of the city is simply the inevitable change brought about by the repair of the damage wrought by the flood and not a carefully choreographed program, carried out by the racist Republican infrastructure, to build a white city in the deep south. It's all right. Those people will have their own places. They will be happier. Everybody needs to know their own place.

Good times there are not forgotten.

So, what does George want us to call them now?

Iran has some light infantry. They have some littoral naval capability. They have some jet fighters but they're pretty old. What they don't have is a nuclear weapons program.

Hugo Chavez tried to make himself president for life and nationalize the major industries in Venezuela. He lost the vote and let it stand, for now.

The North Koreans are doing what they have been for the last 60 years, slowly starving to death. They are, on average, half a foot shorter and at least 40 pounds lighter, than their brothers and sisters in the South. They don't have nearly as many teeth, either.

So, what does George want us to call them now?

The Axis of Guys We Don't Like but are No Longer Afraid Of?

We knew George wanted to be a cowboy when he grew up. We didn't think it would be a midnight cowboy.

He doesn't even measure up to the standards set by Joe Buck.

George Bush supports a don't ask, dont tell policy. On the truth!

From this point on, The Onion, will be the official news organ, of the executive branch, of the United States government.

Merry, Merry King of the Bush is He

I watched the President give a little speech this morning, in the Rose Garden. It was amazing. He pretty much admitted, that he and his entire administration, had it's head up it's ass, for the first 4 years of the Iraq War. He went on to admit that it wasn't until the Democrats gained control of Congress in 2006, that he was forced to make much needed changes in strategy. Now, he says, that those changes in strategy are causing progress to be made in Iraq and the Congress supposedly owes him support because of it. He wants them to rubber stamp administration requests for additional War funding, without attaching riders that require troop withdrawal. He looked sick and hung over. I think that he probably was both. This is a different President Bush. Not a better man but definitely a broken man.

The administration released intelligence estimates this morning that assert Iran does not have a nuclear weapons research program and has not had one, in at least four years. This is information that intelligence agencies have been urging the President to release to the American people for at least two years. The release of this information has been suppressed by Vice President Cheney. Up until today, the administration has been citing Iran's nuclear weapons research program, as well as other largely unverified threats, as reason to mount airstrikes or even outright invasion of Iraq.

Karl Rove, yesterday, began a campaign to blame the Democratic minority in Congress for pushing the administration prematurely into military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has no evidence or documentation, of any kind, to support this claim. He has no other person to support him in this claim. He has never even intimated such a claim, prior to yesterday. Curiouser and curiouser.

The administration's Middle East policy is in total disarray. It is based on lies, administration reports of progress have been lies and even today they continue to lie about what needs to be done. We need to disengage in the Middle East with the utmost speed. We need to sort out what happened over there and begin to try, convict and impose justice on those responsible. This has been an episode of infamy by an administration out of touch with reality and out of control. Their actions have been an inexcusable offense against the people of the United States, the armed forces of the United States and the citizens of the rest of the World, who have had to tolerate this outrage of armed aggression, by the most powerful nation in the World, against peoples who posed no threat and were unable to protect themselves.

Little Scarlett has a Dream, Stars and Bars style

The 9th ward is only a symbol of the genocidal transformation that the Department of Homeland Security, an organization forged in the fire of race hatred and tempered in the evil of class warfare, is bringing about in the Bay City. The dwellings of the poor, most of them people of color, most of whose families have lived in them for generations, will never be allowed to be rebuilt. Rents for the cheapest apartments, around $300.00 before the onslaught of 2005s Hurricane Katrina, are now at $1,000.00 a month and rising, beyond the reach of most. In any case, these rents apply only to the most basic habitation and are not suitable for the often extended families which the African American population of the city are composed of. The kind of residences that they require, simply no longer exist, or would cost thousands a month more than they can afford, to rent.

FEMA has been systematically evicting the residents of the temporary trailer parks, even though the trailers themselves have no resale value and thousands more rot, having never been used, while displaced black residents still languish in outlying areas and far away cities, told they cannot return to their homes. Roads, sewers and utilities are not returned to the old neighborhoods. Building permits have not been issued. There are no plans to let the black majority return to New Orleans, not to old homes, not to new, there never were, not from the earliest days, when Brownie was doing such a great job. The ranks of the homeless in the city are swelling. They will, no doubt, be dealt with, in time.

Hundreds of millions of US government dollars are pouring into New Orleans, the developers are getting rich. The rebuilding and refurbishing is going on around the clock. This work is being done by workers brought in to do the job, from out of state, from out of the country. No jobs here, for the citizens of New Orleans, you know how THOSE people are.

In the end, when the Corps of Engineers has established flood control, when FEMA has delivered all of their grants and loans to the developers, when all of the construction is done, what will there be, down on the Delta, at the mouth of the Mississippi? It will be a city of dreams, a shining, WHITE city. It will be a beacon in the DARKNESS. It will be a beach head, from which the real people of the South, the WHITE people, can begin to take back their land, their culture, their way of life.

All things take time. All things must have a beginning. Within the dreams of madmen, a new reality takes form. The real people of the South seek a solution to the DARKNESS that blights their once shining land, a final solution. Look Away, Look Away, Dixie Land.

I've Got My Story and I'm Sticking To It

I love how the fundo fascist dog soldiers are able to integrate the deranged spoutings of their hallucinatory leaders into their world view and never miss a beat. One of the main scientific truths of modern times that they have to negate, in order to continue on the path toward the dictatorship of the stupid by the greedy, is the reality of global climate change. In the face of global warming, the endless masturbatory economic expansion in the pursuit of more output to support an ever increasing and affluent population makes no more sense than the moth's inexorable plunge into the flame.

A guy by the name of Charles David Keeling has spent his entire life documenting the increase in atmospheric CO2 over the last 50 years. By using data from air pockets trapped in glaciers, he has shown that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was stable for several thousand years, prior to the 19th century, when it began to increase at a rate of between 1.5 and 2 ppm per year. This increase can be shown to correspond with a steady increase in world temperatures. It also corresponds with a rapidly increasing population and utilization of fossil fuels. It's not rocket science, check it out. The vast majority of the scientific community around the world understand these correlations to be valid. The way that the oligarchy of greed responds to this data, kind of like a hydrophoby skunk doused with a bucket of cold spring water, tells us that their response is something more than mere disbelief. Their response is much more indicative of extreme fear and loathing.

I don't think the world will end tomorrow because of global warming. I think we are releasing carbon into the atmosphere that has been trapped in subterranean deposits for eons. It's going to have an effect. I would guess things will get more tropical but I'm not an authority on anything. I do think it's something we should be interested in. In the end, there is only just so much carbon that is available to be released back into the atmosphere. I doubt it's enough to end all life on earth or even all human life.

So, hey, FundoBubba, it's winter. Who knows how many more we'll have. Tune up that big two-stroke snowmobile out in the shed, gas her up and head on out. Have a few drinks. Spotlight a few dear. Get in some ice fishing. Litter up the landscape. Remember, God gave you dominion and all that kind of crap. Religion ought to be worth somethin', right?

Fresh Fruit

The White House is heralding the news that stem cells may be made from any number of human tissues, not just fetal tissue, as if George the Turd did the research himself, down in the basement, with his little science kit. The scientists that are doing this research receive no US government funding and couldn't care less about the "culture of life". They're just doing what scientists do, finding out new stuff. While this news seems like a vindication of Bush's fundo-political pseudo-theology, it may not be the answer to all his dreams. It may turn out that fetal stem cells are easier, cheaper and more versatile to use, for medical purposes, than other types of cells, which will put the US competitively behind the efforts of other nations. It may be that any number of other dark anti-fundi scenarios will emerge.

It turns out, that if you can turn non fetal tissue into stem cells, you can also produce zygotes and gametes artificially, without the products of testes or ovaries. Not only is this true but you can produce sperm from the tissues of a female and eggs from the tissues of a male, just as easily as the other way around. So, what is a male, if not a producer of sperm and what is a female if not a producer of eggs. In the future, a person with no sexual organs or secondary sexual characteristics, whatsoever, could be either a mother or a father, or both, having a child entirely composed of it's own genetic material, completely different from a clone. Is this news going to be hailed as a victorious milestone by Poindexter Bush, down in his little basement science lab? It don't seem likely, do it?

This is the kind of scientific advance which will call into question everything we have previously thought about sexuality and gender from a purely clinical perspective. It is likely to incite debate about what constitutes parenthood and the nature of family. How will this kind of scientific advance affect the theological stylings of such uberfundofaggots as Pope Ratso, Dr Jimminycricket Dobson or Patmyprostate Robertson? God only knows.

Who?

Sun Myung Moon, founder of the World Unification Church and self proclaimed Christian Messiah, reincarnation of Jesus Christ, here on Earth, is many things. He is an industrialist, a convicted felon, and social philosopher, as well as the self proclaimed son of God. He is also the number one supporter and advocate of the Bush political dynasty. For obvious reasons, his personal support is worth worse than nothing. He has other things to give and he gives them unstintingly.

He funnels money into the Bush campaign coffers, his own and that of his whack job friends. He can gather votes for the Bush machine in places where even the fundo fascist culture warriors fear to tread, deep into the bizzarro world of religious cults, the Moonies, Hari Krishnas, Rashnishis and others whose beliefs are far beyond the pale of even the tongue talking, snake handling, cousin marrying, mouth foamers of the Christian fundamentalist movement. He has used the wealth he has amassed as the messiah to millions world wide, to build up a media empire including the influential Washington Times newspaper and the United Press International wire service. This media empire he has placed entirely at the disposal of Bush and his minions, to spread the fascist propaganda of hate, war and greed that is their stock and trade.

Next time you see a newspaper article that touts Bush's policies or praises his courage of convictions, check to see if it was carried by the UPI or originated by the Washington Times. If after that, you still think George Bush is a great American and the natural political leader for these troubled times, perhaps you will want to seek out the services of a deprogrammer. Thanks to Sun Myung Moon, there are a lot of good experienced ones around. Make sure you get one that doesn't torture because as we all know, torture doesn't work.

Pope a Dope?

In his second encyclical, Spe Salvi, Pope Ratso, leader of the Roman Catholic Church and Fester Addams lookalike, takes godless communism to task and councils people to turn away from science and technology and instead embrace Christian faith as the answer to World Peace and eternal salvation.

So what's the deal? Has he been smokin' the fringe off his little golden shawls? Has plunging his love hammer into an endless succession of altar boys caused a plaque to form on his brain? Is cable TV not available at Castle Gandolfo?

What communists? The evil empire of the Soviet Union and it's iron curtain is no more. The Chinese are in the midst of the greatest capitalistic revolution the world has ever seen. Is he mad because Fidel is still alive? Does Hugo's promise of plumbing and basic health care to a few million campesinos frighten him? Maybe he's upset because those Che T-shirts are still such hot sellers.

Science? Not since the Catholic Church excommunicated and imprisoned Galileo have scientists been so at odds with popular conception. No one believes or wants to hear about global warming, the ecological implications of pollution, overpopulation, stem cell research, or virtually anything else scientists have to say, unless it has to do with quick and easy weight loss. A majority of those that attend church regularly apparently don't even believe in evolution of the species. Man, that's black dirt ignorance at it's sweet loamy finest.

Christian faith? As George Bush and his zomboid VP keep telling us, we are on the verge of World War III. Christian versus Muslim. I guess we could call that a pan jehovan conflict, especially since the senior Jehovist branch of religion, Judah, is likely to figure into the conflict somewhere. Jehovah worship, in any form, is clearly a most toxic poisoner of social tranquility. It's hard to understand how it could positively affect anyones life, much less eternal salvation. Anybody with any sense of self preservation at all, should be eschewing religion and catching a tramp steamer to the Falkland Islands.

I'm sad this pope is really old, he could get to be a lot of fun. It's gonna be great to see who those wacky cardinals will come up with next, though.

Pullin' that White Soul Train

Hot time in the old town tonight.

We are making progress in Iraq. It doesn't matter that Afghanistan and Pakistan are disintegrating. It doesn't matter that it's costing us a trillion dollars a year. It doesn't matter that Iraq will never be able to form a democratic government. It doesn't matter that there was no reason to go there in the first place and no reason to stay now. George Bush triumphant.

We are winning the world wide war on HIV/AIDS, proving once and for all that abstinence education was what was lacking in the godless, secular humanist, World Health Organization's pitiful attempts to stem the tide of the dredded epidemic. George Bush triumphant.

By not factoring in rampaging domestic inflation and the precipitous fall of the dollar against world currencies, the US economy can be statistically shown to be expanding. So many of our workers have been laboring in the underground economy, for so long, that unemployment figures remain low. The economy is booming. George Bush triumphant.

Despite the fact that the participants of the Annapolis conference would have accomplished more toward Middle East peace if they had spent the time banging Thai bargirls, mission accomplished Baby! Peace Train a'Commin'. George Bush triumphant.

Hilary Clinton has no experience in government. Not as an executive. Not in domestic affairs. Not in foreign policy. She's fat. She's ugly. She's a terrible public speaker, with no affinity for the masses. Her polling numbers show a very high level of name recognition but it's all negative. She's still kicking Republican ass. Doesn't matter though, she's muff divin' that Saudi girl at her campaign headquarters. Prince Bandar says he can get pictures. He's going to bring them along the next time he has a sleepover with the President. Poor little Huma has a date with the big golden sword, if she ever tries to go home again. George Bush triumphant.

Jenna is still too ashamed to get married at the White House, looks bad. They're working on her though. Tricia's been calling. She'll crack. If George will sober up and he and Laura start sharing a bedroom together, Jena will go for the June wedding. She's a loyal daughter. George Bush triumphant.

Besides all that. Kelsey Grammer's still onboard. Everybody loves Frazier!

So, Tell Me Again Why Churches Don't Pay Tax

Churches don't pay any taxes. Makes no sense to me why. They have a lot of money, they certainly could afford to pay taxes. They may say they are charitable institutions but about the only people they are charitable to are themselves. Most of the money they collect, seems to come, mostly, from exactly the kind of people that need to keep their money. Most of the people that end up spending the churches money already seem to have plenty.

One of the reasons that churches are granted tax immunity is that the money they collect is used to do good works. The biggest expense, by far, in the last 20 years, of the Roman Catholic Church, has been paying off the children that the clergy has sodomized. While I certainly think that the sodomized children deserve remuneration, I don't necessarily believe that sodomy should be a tax exempt activity.

Maybe we could establish some specific activities, the support of which, would qualify as charitable and therefore tax exempt. Maybe, any of us, if we spend our money supporting these activities, could write it off our taxes. On the other hand, if any of us decides to spend our money on recognizeably non charitable activities, like say, sodomizing young boys, you would be required to pay taxes on it.

I pay a lot of taxes. Sales taxes, property taxes, income taxes, none of which churches have to pay. I try to be a good neighbor. I don't get down on others as long as they don't bother me. If I need money, I work for it. I don't go around whining and begging from the old and the poor. I help out my family and friends, if they need it. Also, I really make a point of not sodomizing young children. I may be old fashioned but that's just the way I am.

I realize churches have a right to exist, even in my neighborhood, although we have to make sure to keep track of the kids, all the time. It just seems to me that we all ought to shoulder the burdens of society equally. Maybe it's time to look at this tax free status for churches.

The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms, Shall Not Be Infringed

The Constitution of the United States doesn't say anything about abortion or assisted suicide. It doesn't really say anything about prayer in schools or whether or not this is a "Christian" nation. There is one thing it's pretty clear about, though. The right to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. The Constitution doesn't say you can only have semi-automatic "sporting arms" of a certain caliber. It doesn't say those guns can only have five shot magazines. It doesn't even say guns. It says arms. Arms is, by definition, pretty much everything you can use to kill other people with. AK-47s are not legal in this country. The main reason is that they are very efficient at killing people, in large volumes and they sell for about thirty dollars on the World market, making them just about the perfect self defense weapon for everybody. RPGs are not legal for individuals to own, neither are SAMs. They are arms, none the less, and if I was interested in protecting me and mine from enemies both foreign and domestic, I would want them. I am and I do. The next time some gaping soccer twat, in her Lincoln Navigator, balancing her cell phone in one hand and her Starbuck's sippy cup in the other, hauling six screaming brats and a golden lab across town, tries to run me down, while I'm riding my little red, plastic moped innocently along in the gutter, I'd feel a lot better if I had an RPG strapped to my back.

If the little fuck faced Catholic boy's club that controls SCOTUS is really serious about being strictly constructionist, which is a total laugh, let them give the people of this great nation their due. Let us arm ourselves.

The Race is not Always to the Swift, nor the Battle to the Strong

Whether your favorite scribe is stuttering Charlie Krauthammer, smiling Billy Kristal or Hugh "the Conqueror" Hewitt, the word that is spreading across the land is the same, al Qaeda in Iraq is beaten. Their fighters killed and reeling in disarray. Their influence among the Sunni tribes gone. We have won, they say. Nation building, a concept they loathed at the beginning of the Afghan/Iraq debacle, is the happy quest they now urge us to embark upon. All that is needed now, to set Iraq on the right track is a continued presence and a trillion or so dollars a year over the next couple of generations. Of course, that's just for Iraq. Can these neocon lights possibly strive to burn any dimmer?

Have the jihadis run out of eager young men to enlist in the fight against the West? Have they run out of money? Have we caused them to lose faith in their religion and ideology? Have we truly foiled the Wahhabi menace?

I think it is more likely that many have returned to the lands of their birth in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere around the Arab world, maybe to a neighborhood near you. They will be greeted as heroes. Camels will be roasted. The returning heroes will have their pick of the little domestic girls from the Philippines or Indonesia. Others, with a different preference, will be given the camel jockey boys, from the slave markets of the Sudan. The heroes will be cleansed with fragrant oils and dressed in the whitest robes and presented in the mosques, accepted into the councils of wealth and influence. In time they will venture out around the World, as missionaries, to spread the word. They will speak to the men in the mosques and to the boys in the madrases. The men will raise money, the boys will journey to the training camps. The seasons will change, the cycle will start again. Let the Americans grow fat and lazy in their fortified bases. Let them pay the Sunni Chieftains for awhile. When their purses grow light, the Sunnis will soon enough change masters again. The Shiia will never allow the Sunni a place in their government, nor would the Sunni accept it. The Kurds have their own concerns. Nation building is for fools that believe in nations. Allah is the one God but his people are many tribes.

For those that have not had enough fighting, there is plenty of fighting still. The brothers in the Taliban are taking back the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan. The warlords there are busy guarding and selling their opium and will soon be sated by the treasure they receive for it. They feast and sing and dally with the young dancing boys. Bush's lapdog dictator in Pakistan has lost the trust of the people and they need leadership in the violent fight against him that is sure to come. It is better to fight where the enemy is weak than where he is strong.

The enemy that we fight in Iraq and Afghanistan is not a nation. The armies of the enemy do not travel in mass. They appear and disappear in their own time, to their own advantage. They do not need to win any battles, they simply need to keep the pot stirred. They do not need to worry about funding, budgets or support at home. They have all the time in the World. Every effort we make can be turned against us.

You want to know how this is going to turn out? Read a little Mesopotamian or Afghan history. For that matter, a little history of the American Revolution would do as well. The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong.

Thanksgiving Day in the Gulag

George Bush has the right to monitor your every move and communication. He can take you into custody and detain you indefinitely. You don't have the right to legal representation. You don't have to be charged with any crime. Trial by a jury of your peers plays no part in this process. He can have you transported out of the United States, to a foreign prison. Once there, you can be held in conditions not unlike those experienced by prisoners several hundred years ago in some Balkan hellhole. You can be tortured. It could be by foreigners that he has contracted with to do it or it could be by Americans, his call. When he is through with you, he can assassinate you and never tell a soul.

George will tell you that he would never do this to you. He loves you and all your loyal, fellow Americans. These kinds of extreme measures are only used to protect the American people from foreign terrorists and their domestic enablers. You can certainly understand why he must be given every tool necessary to combat these agents of the Axis of Evil.

The bottom line is, he can do it. If government can do something, you know that they will. Justification, especially when none is required, can be the slipperiest of slopes. He might not be disappearing your loved ones today but rest assured, he is disappearing someones.

Springtime Comes Too Soon

I know this kid. Well, maybe he's not a kid. He's probably 24 or 25. We're not really friends. We say hello, talk a little. I met him because he waits tables at a restaurant in my neighborhood. It's not really a high class place, an Olive Garden. It's clean, foods OK, you don't have to wait too long. They move people in and out quick, without being rude about it. You can get a meal and a glass of wine without it taking all night or cleaning out your wallet. The kid stands out there because he's quick, friendly and attentive, without being too slick. I think he makes pretty good money, I always leave him more than I normally do and like I say, they move a lot of people through the place. He's there 3-4 nights a week.

Mornings, I see this kid sometimes down on the beach. Usually at the Bolsa Chica, where the crowd is a generation or more older than him but he hits all the spots. He never saw a surfboard before a few years ago, so he doesn't have all the moves. He's too tall and skinny to ever really be any good. He's strong though and has good balance. When he gets up, he follows the break and sometimes he stays up pretty good. He's learning fast. He's been down to Baja a few times. It's a lot less crowded down there, a different atmosphere. He says he'd like to go to Oahu and try riding a gun down the twenty footers on the North shore. I don't know if he'll ever be ready for that but who am I to say.

Later in the day, he's on Main, downtown, sitting in the sidewalk bistros, scheming on the little tramp stamped, tongue studded beauties that come out to play from their parents new McMansions in the old oilfields. He doesn't seem to have much trouble with them, there are always a few in attendance. I think he probably does a least as good with the young beauties as he does with the waves. He's kind of an impressive kid, calm and laid back. A lot of the beach bums today seem a lot like the guys on Jackass, all hip-hop, ADD and tattooed. I used to wonder what he was doing, just hanging around the beach, at his age. Not that it's a bad thing, just a little unusual, for a kid like that. Then I found out why.

He's a U.S. Army Ranger. Into Afghanistan at the very beginning, backing up Delta Force missions. Tora Bora and a lot more. Then into Iraq in the first wave, same thing. Three years in the field, well, maybe a little more, out of the last five. During his leave time, between deployments, he discovered our little corner of the world, with it's surf, pellucid sunlight, and the bold young beauties, with painted toes, bronze skin and golden studs, in so many amazing and improbable places.

He has completed his active duty, so he has more time to spend here. He's not tired of it yet, not by a long shot. Besides, there really is no point to getting on with his life. In the Spring, his reserve unit will be activated. He will be going back to Iraq or Afghanistan, for at least a year, maybe more. After that, he can come home again but he still has time for one more reserve deployment, after that, before his enlistment is up. This is not a kid who is shy about relating his combat experiences but he moves on, to more pleasant topics, after a while. He is not political, at all. As far as I can tell he has no real personal convictions about the War one way or another. I would be surprised if he's registered to vote. He freely admits that he feels he's done his share and would rather not go back, ever. He's signed up to go though, so he's going.

I gotta tell you, this is a really nice kid. Doesn't seem to be too messed up by what he's been through. He's no rocket scientist but his brain must be bolted together pretty good. He's a good lookin' boy, not a scratch on him. I know a lot of guys have come back from a lot less action in a lot worse shape and will be paying the price for the rest of their lives. No surf or studded beauties for them, ever. Still, I can't help but think he's right. He's done enough. He's paid the Devil his due. They need to find someone else to handmaiden Delta Force in the Spring.

Wake Up and Smell the Shit Running Down Hill

The stock market is stagnant and drifting lower. There is no reason to believe it will break to the upside and every reason to believe we are poised on the brink of free fall. Over the last six months, the market has charted a classic double top. There ain't no triple tops, folks. The price of bonds is high, relative to the paltry interest rates available but long term outlook for bonds relative to inflation is poor. The government continues to force interest rates even lower, in the hopes of pushing money into the moribund equity markets. Real estate prices decrease as foreclosures skyrocket. There is not a single segment of the US economy showing any signs of growth. The value of the dollar, relative to other major world currencies is eroding as the government continues to borrow money like there is no tomorrow and the trade deficit skyrockets. Other major economies, around the world, show signs they are decoupling from that of the US. Energy and food prices are up, way up. Americans are deeper in debt than ever before, way deeper.

The government continues to tell us that we have virtually full employment. The government continues to tell us that there will be no recession. Yeah, tell me that soft landing bed time story again, Daddy.

How many of those jobs out there, that we are working at, are real jobs, long term jobs, that pay a living wage, with benefits, enough to keep your family safe and healthy? If the government is fudging on the inflation rate by several percent and the economy grows a lot less than that, is the economy really expanding? If it costs you a hundred and fifty dollars more in gas a month to get to work, is that a pay cut? Do you belong to a country club? Did you take a nice vacation this year? Did you get your wife a big diamond ring for your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary? Are you saving money, faster than the home equity and credit card debt are piling up? Are you paying off all your utility, mortgage, tax bills and car payments without having to borrow more? If everyone in your family lost their jobs tomorrow, how long til you're living on the street?

It's All About Economic Growth, Baby!

The military establishment of the United States is enmeshed in the tarbaby that is Iraq and Afghanistan. Our grab for control of a major oil producing region in the Middle East, in an attempt to stay in the game of international oil pricing, is a failure. As long as we are there, Iraq will produce little. We will spend much, to simply stay in for the next hand.

In the meantime oil prices soar and the US must pay the going price, just like everybody else. Look at the major oil producers around the World. Russia, the Gulf States, Nigeria, Venezuela, none of them are our friends and even if they were they wouldn't cut us a break. Why should they? England and Norway share the rapidly depleting North Sea fields but that production is easily absorbed into the EU. We buy our oil just like we buy everything else, in Dollars. The countries that sell us the oil take our Dollars and put them away. Dollars are a better deterrent against US aggression than nukes. Calling in our debt is the ultimate doomsday weapon.

The third world floods our country with cheap goods. Goods we cannot afford to produce for anywhere near the price for which they sell them. Our clothes, household goods, processed foods, office supplies, electronics, cars all come from lands far away, via ships that burn oil, that we pay for. We buy all this stuff in Dollars. They take all these Dollars and put them away.We laugh and say, "Stupid Foreigners", then print up more Dollars to buy the next batch of cheap goods or petroleum. All the while though, the Dollars leaving the country suck the value out of our homes, the vitality out of our economy, the Dollar becomes worth less and less. Our nation becomes worth less and less.

Eventually, we find that what little we have left in this country, that is worth anything, is owned by individuals and entities from other countries. Inflation has made even the ridiculously cheap goods from third world sweatshops, beyond our reach. What jobs are available can easily be done by immigrants from Latin America. The government attempts to print more Dollars to stimulate the economy but Dollars are now worthless. The government can no longer afford to maintain the infrastructure. They can fund social programs but the recipients can't buy anything with their checks. The military is long since disbanded, the weapons sold to those that can afford war.

We look to our leaders for guidance. They all have Swiss passports and are living quietly abroad.

We are the World, We are the Children

In the United States, we strive to grow and to accept the new reality, whatever it is, good or bad. We also try to preserve the old. We try to maintain our family and cultural identity. Whatever changes are necessary to adapt to the future, we try to integrate the new with the old, so that there is continuity in our culture, our family, our lives. In most parts of the country, ethnocentric origin used to determine to what extent a person could participate in society. It is difficult to face up to the fact that we are all racists. There is some comfort to be taken in the realization that it afflicts us all and we can face the problem together. As a society, we have determined that racism is an unwise cultural path to continue. Changes like this don't happen in a day, or a generation, or even in a century but we don't give up. Little by little, things change. Things gets better. We are not discouraged by how far is left to go, we resolve to keep trying.

Not everyone is traveling the path with us toward equal opportunity. Some people like the way it was before and want to go back, not forward. They see the changes as threatening to their position in society. They feel it may cause their families to suffer. They may be right. For whatever reason, these people remain vested in a system which denies participation based on ethnocentric differences. It is not a large group but it is significant. For these people, the political party of choice, is the Republican party.

One of the principles that this country was built upon was freedom of religion. In most parts of the world, one particular brand of religion predominates. Even in the best circumstances, it is difficult for people with beliefs different from those in the majority, to live comfortably. There is always social ostracization, sometimes persecution. There are usually legal proscriptions against religious practices that deviate from the norm. People of different religions are often forced to live according to the religious laws of the majority religion. It is not uncommon for people with different religious practices to be dispossessed from their homes, their wealth confiscated, they and there families driven from the country or even killed. We have tried to build a society here, that is not like that. People here can worship as they like, or not. They respect the rights of their neighbors to do the same.

Some Americans are vested in a system of religious persecution. They feel so strongly about their own religious beliefs that they are unable to tolerate others whose beliefs vary from theirs, past a certain point, or those who deny the need for religion. These people seek to mold a society more like other parts of the world, where people of the predominate religion require the rest to conform to their standards. There are not a huge number of people who feel this way but their numbers are significant. For these people, the Republican party is the party of choice.

For the thousands of years of human civilization, mankind has struggled to survive and to elevate himself above a mere animal existence. The main tool we use to do this is our ability to communicate with each other and agree on new cooperative behaviors rather than to endlessly repeat the behaviors that went on before. Up until the modern era, male and female roles in society have been strictly defined. Men dealt with things of the world. A woman's place was relegated to child bearing, child rearing and domestic duties. With the population of the world at around 6 billion, we would seem to have solved the problem of mere numbers, in regard to survival as a species. A woman's value to society can no longer be gauged simply by how many new individuals she can bear and rear to adulthood. In just the last two centuries, since the founding of our nation, women's roles in society have been undergoing constant change. There has been little of a voluntary nature in these changes. The changes in the roles of gender were dictated by the times and were often radical and abrupt, upsetting the status quo going back to the dawn of time. Most of us foresee more changes coming in gender roles, although there is a lot of different opinion as to what direction those changes will take.

There are some, in our society, who are very uncomfortable with the rapidly changing roles of gender. They would like to move back toward a model where women would more closely follow a traditional pattern of child rearing and domestic behavior and would defer to men responsibility for all other matters. They feel fear and disgust at the rapid breakdown in traditional gender roles. The numbers of these people are not great. They are, in fact, surprisingly small, given the huge changes that have taken and are taking place and in so short a time frame. For these people, the political party of choice, is the Republican party.

Homosexuality has been proscribed throughout human history and yet it has always been with us and in about the same numbers. It is pretty clear that homosexual urges in some individuals are naturally occurring and cannot be suppressed or eliminated. No culture has ever stopped homosexual activity. It is usually enough that the homosexual fulfill his or her heterosexual societal role and then practice homosexuality nefariously. Don't ask, don't tell, has a long historical precedent. Much like the subjugation of women to domestic and reproductive roles, the suppression of homosexuality would seem to be a function of optimizing reproductive capacity. It was important that the only societally sanctioned sexual pairing be a reproductive family group. The place of homosexuals who choose to live openly in society, without also seeking membership in a heterosexual family unit, is rapidly evolving and I have no idea where the present trends may lead. All indications point to increased autonomy by openly homosexual individuals, although it is by no means clear that all homosexuals want to engage in an open lifestyle.

Some segments of American society are opposed to the idea that homosexuals should be able to live openly, according to their own desires, within society. One of the most interesting groups to oppose the openly homosexual are closeted homosexuals, who often have very successful lives and enjoy positions of high status. The political party of preference for those that oppose the destigmatization of homosexuality, for whatever reason, is the Republican party.

America has a proud military tradition. It is the tradition of the citizen soldier, who comes to the colors during times of threat to the nation and returns to civilian life when that threat has been met and eliminated. Military service was also widely seen as a rite of passage for young adult males in society. When all of the families of America, from the most exalted to the most humble, joined in sending their sons off to fight in times of challenge, it acted to weld all Americans together. War was declared when we faced genuine aggression that challenged our national sovereignty and a consensus of the population had come to understand and agree on the threat.

The military tradition in America has radically changed. The propaganda machines of ever more imperial Presidencies, after involving the nation in ever more political, partisan and unilateral conflicts, over several generations, are unable to rouse the citizen soldiers to the colors anymore. Large segments of society distrust the motives behind current military activities and council their young against enlistment and will not tolerate conscription. They don't perceive a legitimate threat. The armed forces have taken on a more insular nature, with some families becoming multiple, multi-generational providers of military members and most families sending no one at all to fight. The lower levels of the enlisted ranks of the infantry, who actually do the fighting and bear the brunt of the casualties, are increasingly difficult to recruit and standards for recruitment have been lowered to the point, where the functionality of the troops we are able to produce, is inconsistent, at best. This remains true even though pay and benefits are at an all time high and casualty levels are lower than in any previous combat theater. Because most families shy away from sending their members into the military and because the military itself has become insular from the mainstream of society, a communication gap has opened between the military and the general population. Military members and their families often believe other segments of society do not support them. They believe because the theaters of conflict in which they or their family members serve, are not viewed positively by most of the population, that they themselves are viewed negatively. They are encouraged in this view, by their leaders in the military and the government, who would rather deal with division in society than mutiny in the trenches, especially when such mutiny would be embraced by the ever waxing political opposition to the current administration.

The military is not a large segment of American society but it is one of the most important and powerful. Due to the increasing insularity of the military and the increasing distrust of the military toward the population in general, the Republican party has become the party of choice for the military.

Support the Troops

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We've Won!

George Bush, a man possessed of no personal insight and certainly the least introspective man to ever be President of the United States, has actually admitted that some of his pugnacious, bring it on comments about the war in the Middle East, while not actually mistakes, might have been ill-advised. Dick Cheney has never gone as far as that.

Pretty much everyone else with any believability at all, from Secretary of Defense Gates to General Petreaus to Micheal Yon don't mind saying that we went into Iraq with nowhere near enough troops and no real plan at all as to what we were trying to accomplish.

It might not have been a good idea to let the Iraqi Army disband and go home. It might not have been a good idea to fly several C5-As loaded wall to wall with pallets of hundred dollar bills into Iraq and pass them out to tribal leaders, in effect front loading the financing of the insurgency. It might not have been such a good idea to use a French, Dien Bien Phu style, fortress garrisoning of the occupying troops. Everybody in authority is still pretty silent on these issues and many others just as troubling and important. It seems to me that if the administration expects, after all this time, so many horrible failures and the nightmarish conditions we have wrought in Iraq, to be believed or supported by the American people, they ought to start being honest with us. Some might think it's too much to ask. Some might plead national security issues. I just don't think they have any honesty in them.

The whispering campaign on the zionist neocon blogrolls is that it's over, we've won and now we need to remain and supervise the Iraqis as they rebuild or even rebuild it for them, you know, to show them there's no hard feelings. The fundis are still going with that same old all things Muslim are evil line, the new talking points must not have got out to them yet. I don't know if it's over or not. It's quiet though, I believe that.

What's interesting is why it's quiet. Davey P has made some promises and probably given some money to the Sunnis at the tribal level. We don't know what the promises were or how much money was involved. We do know that George the Turd wants 50 billion more right away. That this action could have such a profound effect, so quickly, tells us that this is where the balance of power lies. We remain committed to a Shiite government that the Sunnis have vowed to never recognize, a government which does not recognize the legitimacy of tribal authority. How will these two actions be reconciled?

It will be interesting to see how things play out. A lot of different things could happen. I don't have a clue. I do know one thing though, nothing is over.

The State Department is setting up shop in Syria. They are going to start sorting out the Sunni refugees there, with an eye toward sending the ones who aren't suitable for repatriation to America, at least a few hundred thousand, maybe more. I talked about this a while back. Now it looks like it's going to happen. I can hardly wait until they start getting to SoCal, I don't think it should be more than another year or so. Between them and all the reservists who come here for the Sun and surf between deployments, we should get the story about what really happened over there straight. I love it when new people come here, they smoke, they drink, they still think sex is dirty, gives me someone to hang around with. What larks, Pip!

Don't blame me when Hilliary gets elected

It's official, with 14 months left to go in his second term, Bush is the least popular president in the nation's history. At least 65% of Americans strongly disapprove of him.

What is truly a measure of his effectiveness as a politician is that the core of the Republican Party still strongly supports him. Sure, they think a few mistakes were made and the PR wasn't handled very well but by and large, GW is still their boy.

They are OK with the War in Afghanistan and Iraq. They want to invade Iran now, just as bad as GW does. They are good with torture, indefinite imprisonment without trial and warrantless wiretapping, with no judicial oversight for any of it. They don't mind that we have never made a serious effort to eradicate the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, capture its leader Osama bin Laden or identify the source of its funding. Tripling the national debt, to 3 trillion dollars, no problem. All those black families from New Orleans, stuck forever in Houston, serves them right. Gas prices through the roof, dollar not worth the paper it's printed on? YeeHaw! They are pretty sure that by the time the elections roll around, a year from now, the wars will all be won, the rest of the country will have come to their senses and will vote to continue on the brave path that George Bush has led us down.

Hey, everybody is entitled to their own opinion. That's why they have opinion polls.

Is he afraid they won't let him into the VIP lounge in Hell?

The color of Dick Cheney's skin is ashen gray. He is often seen panting while seemingly at rest. He is given large daily doses of diuretics and still his lower extremities and lungs fill with fluid. This is why his voice is faint and raspy. This is why he has to be helped in and out of vehicles, up and down stairs and why he never stands up out of a chair on camera. Even if he doesn't have more heart attacks, he is dying of end stage cardiomyopathy. Even though he is dying, he is still hard at work.

Before the invasion of Iraq, the intelligence services of the Armed Forces and the various civilian intelligence gathering organizations, all agreed that Iraq did not fund or support terrorist activity anywhere, was not likely to threaten the United States or any other country militarily, did not possess weapons of mass destruction and had no nuclear research program. Dick Cheney bullied these organizations into suppressing their findings, all of which later turned out to be true. He suborned the Central Intelligence Agency into providing false findings that all of these things might be true and continues to publicly say, even today, that they all are true. He has never admitted that there have ever been any problems with the invasion or occupation of Iraq and has maintained for the last five years that the whole thing is for all intents and purposes over and will be wrapped up soon.

Today, the Armed Forces and all the various civilian intelligence gathering agencies agree that Iran is not a major causative factor of the insurgency in Iraq. There is not even any evidence that they are doing nuclear weapons research. Iran is, in fact, the closest supporter and ally that Maliki's Iraqi government has. They are willing to make this evidence public and have been for at least a year. Dick Cheney is suppressing the release of this information. It is clear he will continue to do so until he draws the last tortured breath from his foetid, fluid rotted lungs.

Is he afraid they won't let him into the VIP lounge in Hell?

Bush and Cheney, Sons of Liberty

For several years now, we have been subjected to ever more heated rhetoric, delivered in ever more shrill, hysterical tones, by the minions of King George the Turd, about the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran. A nuclear armed Iran threatens the United States not at all. It does threaten Israel though and that makes Bush's Zionist neocon catamites squeal like Ned Beatty bent over a beached canoe.

Now, Pakistan, which actually has nuclear weapons and every intention of using them against its perennial enemy, India, has fallen deeper into the clutches of right wing military dictatorship. The military is doing what it always does in these situations. They are rounding up the educated, the intellectuals, the advocates of democracy, and disappearing them into the same prisons the American CIA have been disappearing "suspected terrorists" into for the last several years.

The really sick twist of this situation is that the military in Pakistan has been able to build up their power and their nuclear arsenal, which has allowed them to put a deathgrip on Pakistani democracy, using the billions of dollars in aid from the US that they were given to fight bin Ladens merry band but never did.

Wake up to the big lie. George Bush and Dick Cheney couldn't care less about terrorists, Islamic of otherwise. Their real enemies are the forces of democracy around the World. Their real aim is to turn the US into a totalitarian fascist state. Look at the scenes of crushing violent repression coming out of Pakistan for a preview of what Bush has planned for your neighborhood soon. Listen to who it is the Bush brownshirts blame for all of the troubles in our land. The educated, the intellectuals, the news media, those leaders of the democratic voices opposing his systematic dismantling of our once proud republic, in the name of homeland security. He would have already come for them if he could have and he will if he is able.

Can We Go Now, Please ?

Gomer Bush, his little chihuahua Petreaus and all of the chattering rightophile blogging heads are crowing the the Iraqi turnaround. Fighting and casualties down. Al Qaeda in Iraq, whatever that means, defeated. Refugee Iraqis returning to their homes. Personally, I think that most of it has to do with the fact that Davey P is pouring hundreds of millions out in bribes to the tribal Chieftains, to take a break. I do not argue. For whatever reason, things are quieter than they have been. Good.

Let us use this opportunity to pack up, turn things over to the Iraqi government and get out. Now is as good a time as we're likely to get anytime in the foreseeable future. The British are pulling out of the South. The Turks are going to start killing Kurds in the North. The retard prince in the oval office and his fat, flatulent, cardiac sidekick, want to go to war with Iran in the East. The brutal military dictatorship in Pakistan, one of our "democratic allies" in the region, is getting ready to suppress their political opposition in a decidedly non-peaceful fashion. Israel is getting ready to kill even more Palestinians than usual. Syria looks like it wants to legitimize it's defacto annexation of Lebanon. The Taliban has regained control of large parts of Afghanistan. The Saudis, another staunch ally, have used the situation to jack up the price of oil to intolerable levels and will surely use a tithe of their new found wealth to further the cause of Wahhabi Jihad throughout the World.

The troops are tired and want to go home, just ask them. The Iraqi people are tired of the killing and want us to go, just ask them. The American people do not want the war to continue, just ask them. The other countries of the Middle East don't want an American military presence in the region, just ask them. Condi's diplomatic corps don't believe the situation in Iraq is salvageable and are refusing to serve, even in the trillion dollar armored monstrosity George the Turd has built to protect them, just ask them.

To all the Zionist neocons and Christian fundamentalists who have feared they will lose face through their failure to persevere in Iraq, now is your chance. You have won. Iraq has been pacified. They certainly aren't going to be threatening anyone anytime soon. Let's git while the getting is good. Bush can claim the legacy of a peacemaker. You guys can go back to supporting your true interests, sending foreign aid to Israel and criminalizing abortion.

Let's develop some new right/left antipathies to fight about. It shouldn't be that difficult, as cruelly loathsome as the neocons and as malignantly hateful as the fundofascists are. Let's try to find some that don't cost so much money or kill so many of our soldiers.

What to do, What to do

108 UN peace keepers from Sri Lanka are being sent home after being charged with sexual abuse of Haitians, including underage girls. The question being asked is what, if anything, will happen to these troops, once they return home?

The answer, is simple. They will develop HIV/AIDS and die.

TSA Airport Officials, They're not just a bunch of morbidly obese ex-welfare recipients and pedophiles

I have a friend who is a Red Cross volunteer. This usually takes the form of teaching community outreach classes. He does CPR, First Aid, Disaster Preparedness, stuff like that, several times a month. At large charity functions and athletic events, he runs First Aid stations. What he really likes to do is volunteer during disasters. Hurricanes in the Gulf? Floods? Tornados? He's always there. Driving Aid vehicles that carry food, blankets and fresh water to those in need. Setting up and managing shelters for those dispossessed. He does it for free, usually several weeks a year. It isn't that he thinks the Red Cross is the World's greatest organization but they are in charge of doing the stuff he thinks is important, so he's on board, 100%.

He's out here in California, now, from his home in the deep South. The Red Cross didn't know exactly what would be needed, so they sent people that could do a lot of different things. He's working in a big facility the Red Cross is using in San Bernadino to stockpile and distribute materials as they are needed. He's been there about a week.

Flying out here, he decided to take along on of those multi-tools you see a lot of these days. He is an accomplished mechanic and can do just about anything with one of those things. He was careful to put it in his checked luggage, that rides in the luggage compartment of the plane. With it, he included a note, in easy to read block printing, explaining he was a Red Cross volunteer, going to the fire in California, etc, etc, etc.

The Homeland Security goons stole it. They left one of their little notices in his luggage.

What a bunch of fuckin' scumbags.

Abortion, through a Glass Darkly

Many South American countries have long had fairly liberal policies on abortion. Bolivia is a good example. Abortion has been available there for what is, by Western standards, a small fee, since the early seventies. This is true even though Bolivia has had, during this time, fairly conservative governmental leadership and an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic population.

With the collapse of the Monroe Doctrine, many of the poorer countries of South America are experiencing burgeoning populist movements, with the indigenous majorities, mired in a cycle of ignorance and poverty for centuries, seizing power through the ballot box, as US supported, right wing oligarchies, founder.

An interesting thing is happening as the poor, native population gains power. In Bolivia, for example, abortion rates have always been high, at least as high as in the US. The populist sentiment though, is to outlaw abortion. It has not been done yet but it looks like it's coming.

Why is this the case? The new, young, Indio President of Bolivia, has been condemned as a communist, in everything but name, by Condolezza's impotent stammerers. The Catholic Church is in virtual schism in Bolivia, over the fact that so many of the parish priests in the hinterlands are ordained locally and married. Rome exercises little real power over the people. While there is no feminist movement in Bolivia, women's traditional roles in society are strong.

It turns out that the sanitary, efficient abortion clinics in Bolivia were for the elite, Mestizo population. Indian women, in their homespun rebozos and bowler hats were not welcome. In any case, the $150 to $300 fee required by these clinics, is likely more than most of these women will ever see at one time. Indigenous women see these clinics as just another entitlement, lavished for generations, on the mestizo class and resent their presence. While their actual rates of abortion are as high or higher than those of mestizo women, Indians were and are, forced to pay what little they can afford, to back alley practitioners and suffer high rates of infection and hemorrhaging, often resulting in sterility or death. Whether abortion remains legal or not in Bolivia, this will not change for them.

This is the kind of moral victory that the pro life movement, who glory in the death and suffering of innocent women at the hands of back alley abortionists in filthy, third world privies, can expect. They enjoy this kind of situation, when women who have engaged in fornication get their fitting punishment. These hippocrites are truly an abomination against God and will burn in Hell.

Where is that Third Stooge?

Bush wants another 50 Billion for the War in Iraq. He and Dick Cheney both say they want to invade Iran and start World War III. They say it's OK, they don't want your tax money for this. They say they will just have the Treasury print up the money and that the economy needs more liquidity anyway.

Sounds good to me.

Support the Troops!

BABY KILLER

The Spring of 1970 was a busy time in America. Even though Japanese cars were only starting to be seen on the highways, the writing was on the wall. American mills, mines and factories were already shutting down. Jobs were already going overseas. OPEC was tightening the screws and the oil embargo was just around the corner. Nixon had been elected 2 years earlier and his secret plan to end the war turned out to be a secret war in Cambodia. College campuses around the country erupted in protest.

I attended a large suburban State College in Southern California. It was a pretty ironic situation. A lot of the guys attending were there for the student deferrment from the draft. A lot of the guys attending were Vietnam vets using the GI Bill to take a breather before going on with their lives. You'd think there might be some tension between the two groups. There was not much. Some of the vets grew their hair long, some were establishment guys. The president of the student body was a vet, so was the president of the campus chapter of the SDS. It was ironic that in this time of the Kent State massacre, Vietnam vets were just as likely to be fired upon as to be doing the firing. A year or so later, while living at a commune in the Pacific Northwest, I found that many of the leading members of this "hippie" community were Vietnam vets.

It was during this time, the early '70s, that I first started hearing stories about soldiers returning from Vietnam, through San Francisco and being spit upon and called baby killers by "hippies". It seemed unlikely to me at the time but it was a time when a lot of unlikely things were happening. I always heard these stories in the third person, never from someone it actually happened to and the stories were remarkably similar. Who knows, it might have really happened.

The Right has used this story over the decades to conjure up images of an un-patriotic anti-war movement that doesn't "support the troops". I feel the same about the veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan today as I did about the guys coming home from Vietnam 40 years ago. I want to hear what's going on over there and what's going on in their heads. I don't see them as in any way responsible for the war or it's consequences. They are welcome in my home. I'll get them on at work with me if I can. I may think there are war criminals but I think they are in the Whitehouse and the Pentagon, not patrolling the streets of Baghdad.

I suppose I'll keep hearing the story of the "dirty hippies" and the returning Vietnam Vets for the rest of my life. I don't care. It wasn't me that did it. It wasn't anybody I knew. If it happened at all, I suspect the person that did it was pretty impaired and pathetic. The returning serviceman it happened to probably felt pity for the perpetrator. Certainly he had gone through much worse during the course of his military service and the restraint he showed does him credit.

President Bush Awarded Prestigious Multi-Million Dollar Peace Prize

The White House announced today that President George W. Bush has been awarded the Atlantic Foundation International Peace Prize for his efforts to bring peace and democracy to the Middle East. The President is said to be excited and pleased with the award.

More details of the $2,000,000 award and the upcoming, gala, presentation ceremony will be announced after further communication with the Chairman of the Atlantic Foundation Awards Committee , Godwin Okuli, whose offices are in Lagos, Nigeria.

Wag the Dog

Al Gore is fat. He has a big head. He has a huge house, with a lot of bathrooms and real high utility bills. His garage is full of gas guzzling SUVs. He married his childhood sweetheart, who got fat along with him. She's kind of prissy and would like to take the sex and drugs out of rock and roll. They have a couple of nice girls that seem to do all right but their youngest child is a son who's surly and has a drug and alcohol problem. And he's a lard ass. And he has a big head.

Al Gore is awkward in public. He spins parables and makes analogies that seem simplistic. People perceive him as talking down to them. When he shows affection for his family, it seems contrived. He never really seems comfortable in front of a crowd and he knows it, after a while he starts to sweat and stutter. He always suffered when he was on the same stage as Bill Clinton. He didn't even come off that well against George Bush and George Bush is a genuine retard.

We decided to give George Bush the job as President, instead of Al Gore. He's got better hair. He's not fat. His head's not so big. He might be a retard but he cleans up nice. He looks real good in a dark suit. It was a mistake. He wasn't just a retard. He was a thug and a bully. He fancies himself a modern day Theodore Roosevelt, Great White Fleet, speak softly carry a big stick sort of thing. He's not. He's not even close. He's just a nasty little poser who struts around the neighborhood with his stick, exacting tribute and enjoying the cringing and fawning of the oppressed.

Gore might not have been a great President. He might not even have been a very good one. He would have reacted to 9/11 in a very different way, though. Bush used 9/11 to begin a plan of aggression in the Middle East that was already on the drawing board and had nothing to do with defeating terrorists. It wasn't a very good plan and look where it got us. We lost three thousand citizens in 9/11. Bush has killed hundreds of thousands and none of them had anything to do with 9/11, not one.

BIRTHDAY GREETINGS

CONGRATULATIONS AMERICAN WAR OF AGGRESSION IN IRAQ!!!

You are five years old today.

You are already the third longest and most expensive war in American history.

Your ratio of innocent civilian to combatant casualties is right up there with the Rape of Nan king.

Your refugee status as a percentage of the total population has not been seen since the establishment of the modern Israeli State after the UN partition of Palestine.

You have managed to accomplish so much, so young, with the promise of a long life still ahead.

You have made all of this happen with no plausible justification whatsoever.

WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH! YOU'RE THE BEST WAR EVER!

The Four Horsemen

Pimpin' the Print

Everybody is always saying how slanted and selective the news media is in their presentation of what is covered and how it is covered.

My favorite beef with them is how they cover literature. In the first place, they never cover the release of fiction, unless your name is JK Rowling. Even Danielle Steel, the "Novelist of Light", who sells more books than Jesus, can't get 2 minutes on Nightwatch at 3 AM. The most commonly covered authors on talk shows are, surprise, talk show hosts. Every six months or so Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, or one of the other vanilla flavored talking heads makes the rounds of all their buddies shows, pimping their new little $29.95 volume of wisdom. Do we really need another installment on how "Big Russ" managed to win World War II, hold down two jobs and still find time to spend several hours a day swilling down suds in the family garage. At least, since they are no longer gainfully employed, we won't have to hear about Don Imus' latest coffee table tome or any more of Tom Brokaws heartwarming tales of growing up retarded in Montana.

Then there are the vanity books, collections of anecdotal wisdom, completely fabricated, written by ghost writers, for people who while they may possess rudimentary literacy skills, are no more capable of writing coherent prose than a hydrophoby raccoon. In recent weeks we have been enthralled by the Mother Teresa-like work that Jena Bush has been doing in the slums of South America, pu-leeese. Then there is the little volume of homespun, hometown wit and wisdom by Lynn Cheney. In reality, she kicked the dust of Wyoming off her heels 40 years ago, splits a carton of Kents with Laura Bush every day, downs a half liter of Stoly, dresses designer and never looks back, in fondness or anything else.

Doris Lessing is 87 years old. She won the Nobel prize for Literature this morning. She has been pumping out controversial, cutting edge, contemporary fiction of the highest literary standard for half a century. I've never seen her wares displayed on the cathode alter once. I've never seen a review of her work in print. I doubt I ever will.

Just a little life affirming thought for the day.

Jimmy Carter was the last American President to consistently tell the truth to the American People. He was the last American President to actually be a Christian and live a Christian life. He is the only American President I remember ever admitting he was a sinner, or even to have made a mistake, about anything. He does not play golf or belong to a country club. He lives simply, in a small house, in his home town, in the middle of nowhere. He has devoted the almost 30 years since he was president, exclusively, to charitable and humanitarian efforts. As far as I know, he is the only President to serve as a career officer in the regular navy. I have never heard him to be connected to any scandal. He seems to have genuinely admitted and overcome the deep, bred to the bone racism implicit in a childhood spent growing up in rural Georgia of the 1930s. His mother was a gadfly. His brother drank a little beer. His cousin was a faith healer. He never denied or disassociated himself from them. He is pretty close to ninety years of age.

He says President Bush and Vice President Cheney have done great damage to America and the American people. He calls them liars. He calls them warmongers, without the personal conviction or courage to have served themselves. He calls them torturers. He thinks that they have conspired to usurp the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.

He didn't always speak highly of Bill Clinton, either.

Unlike me, I don't believe he speaks this way because of a deep gut-wrenching hatred for these men. Unlike me, I don't believe he'd like to see them tarred and feathered, run around the National Mall on a splintery rail, pelted with stinking, rotten vegetables, dumped into the most polluted basin of the Potomac at low tide and then made to live out the rest of their miserable lives in a windowless, plumbingless, electricityless lean-to on Diego Garcia, under strict guard.

But it is nice to know that he agrees with me, basically, about the character of these men.

Hiding in his Foul Lair, with his Scurvy Minions, the Blood of Innocents dripping from his Rotting Fangs and Diseased Mouth, HE SPEAKS!

George W. Bush, the cringing Curr that calls himself our President, proves himself to be a Holocaust denier. Today, he warned Congress against passing a resolution recognizing the Turkish Genocide of the Armenians at the dawn of the modern Turkish Republic. He cautions that to do so would damage our relationship with Turkey, a valued ally in his unspeakably immoral war against Iraq.

Arnold Toynbee, historian and dean of British intelligence during World War I, stated he believed that 650,000 Turkish Armenians died in 1915-1916 alone. The genocide, in fact, took place over the years between 1896 and 1923. At its high point, the Armenian population in Turkey was upwards of 3 million. At the end of the genocide, the population was effectively zero. The ethnic Armenians in Turkey were dragged from their homes, men, women and children. They were beaten, burned, mutilated, raped, murdered and buried in mass graves. When this proved to be inefficient, they were herded, barefoot and in their nightclothes into the burning wastes of the Syrian Desert, where the bones of those who did not perish along the way, bleach to this day. Pitifully few escaped in a diaspora that sent the survivors to the far corners of the World. The numbers are even more staggering when the deaths of at least 650,000 Turkish Assyrians and 250,000 Turkish Greeks, slaughtered during the same period, are added in. The populations of these ethnic minorities, in Turkey, after the genocide, was also zero. You also must add to this the murder of virtually every prominent religious, social and business leader of the Kurdish community in Turkey and their families, in an attempt to suppress all vestiges of Kurdish culture and autonomy among the large Kurdish minority, approximately 20% of the population of Turkey, during this same time period. This adds at least another few hundred thousand deaths to the total and probably substantially more.

Most of the countries of the free world and 40 of the 50 United States, as well as hundreds of municipalities around the world, have long since passed resolutions in support of calling this heinous act of ethnic cleansing exactly what it was and is, a cold, calculated, remorseless, governmental policy of genocide carried out over the period of an entire generation by a State intent on establishing a racially pure society.

The President would like us to believe that it didn't really happen or if it did, not for the reasons that are apparent. He would like us to believe that it is in the nature of an unfortunate accident. Perhaps, like Global climate change, it is an unexplainable Act of God. There is nothing to be done about it now. Nobody really is to blame or should be held to account.

Bullshit!

Who supports the President in this spineless act cowardice? The Neocons, of course, once again asserting that the Jewish Holocaust is the only official, patented genocide deserving of recognition in the World community. All other genocides are cheap imitations, not the genuine article, possibly even deserved.

This man and the community of soulless golems that follow him are a plague upon the shining countenance of a once great nation. This diseased appendage must be cut away and cleansed by fire, lest we all perish from it's foul virulence.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Larry Craig is breaking new ground in closeted gay liberation. Like most gay Republican politicians, his sexual preference has been more or less common knowledge since puberty. Usually, as long as no major public exposure occurs, nothing threatens a boring, conservative, political career. As society has become more liberal, over the last several decades, standards of allowed sexual deviancy among closeted, gay politicians have relaxed. Presently, it is to the point, where a Republican politician can pretty much live openly as a gay American as long as he/she does not present as gay while engaged in official activities, in public. It has always been the rule, however, that if caught in homosexual behavior that comes to light as a result of an investigation into immorality, or arrest by a law enforcement agency, the closeted, gay, Republican politician will immediately resign his/her position and leave Washington for at least a token period of shame and disgrace.

Larry Craig is changing the rules. He has decided not to resign. He has also decided, even though everyone in the country knows who he is and harbors no doubt as to his sexual preference, to stay in the closet. What he is saying to the Republican establishment and the Idaho voters is, it's OK, you can trust me. Even though I'm gay I will continue to vote in keeping with the covenant we have always had. Kind of like those little powdered wigs that Officers of the Court wear in England, Larry is offering to wear a surrogate authoritarian, heterosexual guise while acting in his official capacity a a Senator. He is getting some resistance but not much and certainly none that will force him to leave his Senate seat before his term is up. This is important, because it signals a major achievement in conservative political goals, relative to the separation of reality from relevancy. The requirement for Republican politicians to give personal lip service to the restrictive and often conflicting codes of behavior and prejudice that make the Republican coalition possible, is making it increasingly difficult to find people willing to accept political office. This is one of the reasons that closeted gays are often the only ones willing to accept it, other than complete idiots. In the end, if conditions don't change, the Republicans will be left with only candidates like George W. Bush and my Congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, to offer up to the voters, who are both closeted gays and complete idiots.

This is a painful transition for the Republican infrastructure to make but the highly diverse nature of their coalition demands it. If they are to have any hope of bringing new groups into their coalition or even maintaining the present one, they must make it.

A Shepardess, With Crook and Sling, Guards the Flock

Hilliary Clinton was raised and active in the Methodist Church, until she married, when she began to attend the Southern Baptist Church of her husband.

Her husband has been a serial philanderer, a condition so common among Southern Baptists that it is almost universal, even among the clergy. She has not engaged in adultery, nor has she sought separation or divorce from her husband. She does not smoke, drink or use drugs and never has. She does not personally believe in or advocate abortion or euthanasia. The daughter that she raised, also does not smoke, drink or use drugs, nor is she sexually promiscuous. Her demeanor is modest and she strives to stay out of the public eye and lens.

Hilliary supported Bush's war until the fourth set of progressively weaker rationale for it proved to be fallacious. She admits, now that we are so deeply enmeshed in the Middle East, militarily, it might be years before we can extricate ourselves.

She does not support gay marriage.

Her position on illegal immigration is virtually the same as the current Republican Presidents.

She believes everybody ought to have access to health care.

She is committed to a balanced budget and fiscal responsibility.

A coalition of leaders of the fundamentalist Christian movement met this week and announced that if no candidate emerged who was acceptable to them, they would have to support a third party candidate.

One can only intuit that their bulbs shine very dimly.

Who is the "Phoney" soldier

Rush Limbaugh is a man who dodged the draft. He is a man who abuses drugs. He is a man whose relationships with women are coercive. He is also a man who speaks for large segments of the fundo-fascist heart of America.

He has, in the past, criticized the educated, the poor, the undocumented, the entertainment community, the gay community, racial, ethnic and religious minorities, the young, the old, the female. He has accused them all, at various times, of being un-patriotic, un-American, and criminally misguided. He even impugns the integrity of senior leaders of the conservative movement, people like John Warner of Kentucky, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who have, at times, found themselves at odds with the President on the correct way to prosecute the war in the Middle East.

Rush has found a new group to castigate, the "Phoney Soldiers". These are the members of the Army and Marine Corps in Iraq who have had the temerity to develop independent thoughts about efficatiousness of the mission that they are carrying out. Independant thoughts are now apparently treasonous. These men are not "real" soldiers.

Rush is scum. A man without courage. A man without conviction. A man without intellect. A man without honor. He plays to the lowest common denominator of our fears and prejudices.

There is one freedom we have that is not in the Constitution. It is a freedom that no tyrant can outlaw, that imprisonment cannot suppress, that torture cannot stop. It is freedom of thought. This is the freedom, the exercise of which, Rush criticizes.

What an asshole.

Bush Fights Global Warming

George Bush is hosting his own Global Warming Summit this week. It is dedicated to the proposition that every country and each individual will do all they can voluntarily to curb carbon emissions, while realizing that some things are out of our control.

Sounds reasonable to me. First of all, the military should be exempt. The reasons for this are obvious. Anybody calling for the military to curb its use of energy is a treasonous coward. Likewise, the government and its service agencies should be exempt. Corporate and business endeavors should be exempt because they provide jobs, goods and services we all need. Utility companies should be exempt because we all need power and can't be expected to pay exorbitant rates for it, or cut back. Gasoline is a sacred cow, because it is every good Americans birthright to drive a huge, lumbering SUV as many damn miles as he/she pleases, whenever they want.

That being said I'm sure that the President's voluntary energy conservation initiatives will be a great success. I know I'll sleep easier tonight knowing the planet will be safe and secure for future generations.

If you don't like the way things are, just lie about it

The Bush Administration, in the person of Condi Rice is "shocked, shocked" to find the Blackwater Security Group is engaging in the indiscriminate murder of Iraqi civilians and has canceled their contracts in Iraq and ordered them out of the country.

Right, like they didn't know what these guys were doing all along and in fact, ordering most of it done. Now that Bush has instituted a "kinder, gentler war" in Iraq, it is no longer convenient to have the Blackies around.

Another good one is that Bush administration spokesmen announced last week that torture has been banned for interrogation purposes. They also state that no torture has been performed in over 18 months and was never performed in prisons on American soil.

The problem with that is, they have stated unequivocally, that they have never tortured anyone, ever and that there are no American prisons on foreign soil. Go figure.

One last Bush lie of the week. In his annual report to Congress on the International War on Drugs, Bush reports that 2 countries have made inadequate progress in combating drugs, whatever that means. Venezuela, whose President has become Bush's new main bogeyman and Burma, which used to grow much of the worlds opium, before we transferred the franchise to the Afghans. We are not even trying to be friendly with either one of these countries, for reasons that have nothing to do with narcotics. They just needed to point the finger somewhere and didn't want to tattle on the countries where drug production and trafficking are rampant, because we are trying to be friendly to them.

BLOOD FOR BLOOD

They are coming home soon. Coming home to the towns and cities in the American heartland where the soldiers grow. They will be spending time with their families and friends before they have to go back again. Not the officers. Not the REMFs. The Dogfaces. The Ground Pounders. The guys in for one or two hitches, with one or two stripes and a Combat Infantryman Badge.

They'll talk. Not about what they did or what happened to them, so much. There will be interesting anecdotes about the things they saw. The comrades they admired and those they didn't. They'll talk about what's been going on over there and what has been accomplished and what hasn't. They will talk about their leadership, from company commander to commander in chief. Their families and friends will listen carefully, because they care about what has happened to their own. They care about what will happen to them in the future. They will measure what they have heard and seen from the leaders of our country on their televisions against what they are told by the soldiers who have been there and come back to them, for awhile. They will think about what they have heard, long and hard. These are patriotic people. People with strength. People with spine. At home, at work, at church, in politics, they do what has to be done, the right thing. If they have been misled. If they have been lied to. If the blood of their own has been shed on no account, it will not be a matter of simply putting a stop to it.

EYE FOR EYE. LIFE FOR LIFE. BLOOD FOR BLOOD.

No Thanks

George Bush wants political reconciliation. He thinks we all ought to be able to get together and decide on a way to work out our problems. Where was political reconciliation when he lied his way into the war in Iraq. Where was it when he packed the Supreme Court. Where was it when he set up secret prisons in foreign countries, where who knows what went on or who was held. Where was it when he went on his meglo-messianic rants about being moved by God to lead the country into a new era of righteousness and turned over the most critical functions of the Executive branch to tongue talking, mouth foaming, cousin marrying, snake handlers. Where the fuck was it then.

I guess I'll just take a pass on political reconciliation for now.

Adventures in Global Warming

For the first time in recorded history, the northwest passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is open and navigable. It won't be open all year, at least not for now but there should be at least 3-4 good months from late summer into the fall from now on. In another 10-15 years it may be open most of the time.

This means that container ships from China can sail directly to the East Coast of the US and into the Midwest via the St Lawrence Seaway to unload shit loads of cheap Chinese crap that the households of America so depend upon. This will relieve congestion in the West Coast ports and save on secondary and tertiary transportation, warehousing, and distribution costs that dilute the cheap, chewy goodness of Asian products. It means that Asian immigrants, by the countless containerful can now directly access the job markets of the East Coast and Midwest. It also means that the Panamanians can concentrate on their primary mission in life of making sure America gets plentiful supplies of the narcotics that we so vitally need at a price we can afford.

Cruise Ships will now have an exciting new destination to offer. Legions of retirees and swinging singles will soon be partying through the passage, dining on all you can eat buffet and watching the polar bears frolic on the sea ice before they are lost forever in the pages of history. Innuit villages will become colorful ports of call and the money it brings in will quickly quench their ardor for long kayaking trips in search of blubber.

Just when you think life can't get any better in the good old USA, something like this happens and globally warms the cockles of my heart.