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.

Don't Make Me Laugh

GWB started the war in Iraq. He claimed we needed this war to "protect the homeland". Never mind that this was exactly the same thing that Hitler told the World when he invaded Poland and what Tojo said when he bombed Pearl Harbor. They were more widely believed than Bush, probably because they were more sincere.

Bush has now come before us with his same sorry little story, dressed up in tawdry, whorish, new clothes. We are doing so well in Iraq that we can begin to withdraw forces, when we really lack the forces to maintain the current troop numbers anyway. We are going to form a long term strategic alliance with Iraq, meaning we will keep their puppet government in place indefinitely, propped up with American lives and money.

Will anybody believe him? Of course. Will it be enough?

I Don't Think This is Spinnable.

Anybody who is the least interested has watched the Senate testimony of the Ambassador to and the Commanding General in Iraq over the last two days. It was mesmerizing. Heartrending.

It's like when, as a young boy, your dog runs into the street and is run over by a truck. Lying in a pool of blood, bones crushed, entrails spread out over the pavement, the poor pooch is still alive, whining and looking to you for help through large liquid brown eyes. You are overcome by emotion. Totally helpless and inexplicably ashamed. That's what it was like.

Democratic and Republican Senators alike seem dumbstruck. Everybody agrees that there is no connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq. Everybody understands that Iraq is irrepairably broken. Everybody understands that the American forces are doing the best they can but there is no indication anything they are doing will be of any help at all.

One way or another, this situation is going to be resolved soon. It simply cannot go on.

Silly Austrians

Ratzo is cruising Austria this weekend. He's not getting much of a reception. The vast majority of Austrians still consider themselves Catholics but they're a little pissed at the Church. The first reason dates back to the end of World War II. Hundreds of Austrian Catholic priests were arrested and put in concentration camps by the Nazis for their opposition to the policies they imposed. You know, the denial of God, Jew extermination, stuff like that. The Austrian Church didn't allow these priests back into the mainstream of the Church after the War because it made the other priests feel "funny". The Austrians never understood that decision. they are still mad about it. The other reason is more recent. Like America, they had a lot of problems with pedophile priests. Most Austrian Catholics would like to have women priests and allow all priests to marry. It's not a big idealogical thing with them. They just want to attract more "normal" people into the priesthood and allow them normal sexual outlet. They think maybe then, they wouldn't spend so much time sodomizing the children. The Pope, of course, will not discuss foolish ideas like this with them.

Silly Austrians, they really don't understand what the church stands for at all.

First Pop

It looks like the SoCal real estate bubble is going to experience its first big pop in a novel location, Mexico.

Over the last couple of years, developers, having optioned land on the Pacific coast, between Tijuana and Ensenada, have been taking 20-25% cash deposits on condos to be built there. The first phases of these developments are now nearing completion. Most of these condos sold for between $300,000-$500,000. In order to take procession, the buyers must come up with the balance in cash or secure a Mexican mortgage at 11-13% interest.

It turns out, most of the people that bought these Baja bungalows, did so for purposes of speculation. They planned on picking up a quick 20-30% on the purchase price, doubling their money, by flipping the property before it was even completed. The problem is, they haven't gone up in value. Nobody knows what they are worth, because they aren't currently selling at all. To compound the problem, many of the buyers refinanced their US homes to come up with the down payment and now face unsustainable levels of debt even without the burden of a Mexican Beach condo.

They have been marketing these things as the answer to the baby boomer's retirement dreams. I guess they will have to get new answers or new dreams.

Pin Money

Saturday Night.

We went out to the Olive Garden for a late supper. Soup and salad combo X2. One glass iced tea and one small glass house wine. About as cheap as you can go. Real good. With tax and 20% tip, came to $36 even.

Given the rate of inflation, in about ten years, it'll cost about twice as much. In ten years I'll be eligible for Social Security. $1500 a month. Soup and salad and ten gallons of gas, twice a week. That's what it will get me, by then.

Bush says Social Security is broken and needs to be fixed. Seems to me that inflation will do it for him.

Pin money.

Brits Beat Feet in Reverse Surge

The British are, by far, our biggest ally in the war in Iraq. Their troop strength there currently is at 5,500, compared with our 130,000+ and double that if you add in "defense contractors". That's a little less than 20:1 or 40:1, depending in how you want to look at it.

Over the last year, they have abdicated responsibility for military oversight of all but one of the provinces that they were originally given to administer, with the exception being Basra, on the Southern Border with Kuwait. Today, they pulled out of Basra, moving their troops out of town, to fortified positions surrounding the city's airport. The airport, is not strategic in any sense, except as an excellent position from which to flee.

The situation in Basra is not good. While the official British position is that they are retreating in order to effect a supervised turnover of power to the Iraqi civil authorities, no one expects that to happen. The city will be divided up between the various militia groups and partisan fighting will ensue. This has been the pattern as the British have left province after province in Southern Iraq. The unofficial rationale for this staged withdrawal in Iraq, is that no progress in Iraq is being made and none is likely, given the resources in men and material in Iraq. " We've done all that we can do", is the term heard most often to describe the unofficial British policy in Iraq. While British forces are not likely to be pulled out in mass, another 10% draw down of 500 men are scheduled to leave no later than November and no one doubts that more withdrawals will be announced soon.

In England, this weekend, two retired Generals and a former Foreign Minister all publicly castigated the Bush administration for it's slipshod and short sighted planning for the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. These men were all directly involved in the invasion, highly placed and universally admired, at least up until this point. In a nutshell, they stated that the Americans bet the farm that they would be welcomed as liberators and a stable civilian government would soon be in place. They lost the bet and now the wager must be redeemed.

The war in Iraq has never had great popular support in Britain. The unpopularity of the war is eclipsed by the revulsion the populace commonly hold for George Bush and his Neocon handlers, a revulsion shared by most of the civilized World.

President Bush today made a surprise visit to Anbar Province in Iraq, landing Air Force One at the heavily fortified al Asad airbase, in a much needed attempt to bolster American public opinion of the war. He expressed satisfaction with the progress of the war and went so far as to say that some forces might soon be withdrawn. This news was well received by the troops, most of whom are near or beyond the end of their projected deployment dates and many of whom are veterans of multiple deployments.

Whether you agree with the war in Iraq or not, I think it is safe to say that the war is at a critical juncture. I think that we, the American people, are also not being given all of the real facts about the situation, as it stands, in Iraq. I realize that there is often a great deal of censorship in the name of operational security during wartime. This is only possible, however if the populace has some small modicum of trust that the leadership is acting in their best interest, or at least can be relied upon to act with minimal levels of competence. Neither one of these things is evident to anybody in this case.

A Rectal Retentive Approach to Retirement Planning

President Bush has learned that the country is on the verge of an economic crisis. He is determined to intervene, with the help of his hand picked advisers and avert a slowdown in the economy. We have already seen his initial responses. We will be seeing more in the weeks and months ahead. I am sure that he will act swiftly and decisively.

Like he did after 9/11.

Like he did after Katrina.

Like he did with the deficit.

Like he did with the trade imbalance.

Like he did with illegal immigration.

Like he did with Social Security.

Like he did with Medicare.

Like he did with Public Education and illiteracy.

Like he did with Terry Schaivo.

Like he did with stem cell research.

Like he did with the war on drugs.

I could go on but you probably get the idea.

As a citizen of this country, rapidly approaching old age and dependent on modest personal savings and investments for income and security in the years to come, I'm doing what any reasonable person would do.

I'm selling everything I have and buying diamonds. I'm going to put the diamonds in a little bag. I'm going to grease up the bag. . . .and shove it up my rectum.

Greedy Rich People Killing the Poor, Republicans at Work

If anybody has any lingering doubts about the abiding evilness of Republican party politics in this country, this should put them to rest. Several weeks ago there was a tragic mine cave-in, at a coal mine in Utah. During the immediate aftermath, as rescue efforts were being organized, the owner of the mine went before the assembled press and went on a rant about this tragic event being the result of an earthquake and not negligent mining practices and specifically one practice, known as retreat mining. He lambasted the liberal media for assuming the culpability of greedy management in the cave-in, when it was simply an act of God. The problem with this was, nobody, in the liberal media or otherwise, had brought up the subject of retreat mining or negligence.

A common way of shoring up the chambers in a deep mine operation, once the mined material has been removed, is to leave pillars of the substrata in place, to support the ceiling. Once all of the valuable substance has been removed and no more excavation is planned, these pillars, which are, of course, composed of the valuable substance, are blown out and recovered. Once this is done, the chamber, no longer supported, collapses. The trick is not to have it collapse on the miners removing the last of the mined substance. Turns out, retreat mining is not an illegal practice. Turns out, it's quite common. Turns out, miners will do it if you pay them enough. Turns out, mine operators are willing to pay them enough. Voila, the free market economy in action.

The day after the unfortunate news conference, the mine owner appeared, bolstered by the presence, by his side, of his old friends, the senior Senator from Utah and the Governor of the State, both Republicans. They all reassured the families and press that everything that could be done to rescue the trapped miners, would be done. No more mention was made of the factors which may have contributed to the collapse of the mine.

I suspect the reason that retreat mining is not illegal is that no one, outside the mining industry, believes anyone would be stupid enough or greedy enough to do it. This kind of thinking is always a mistake. As far as I know, there are no bills pendind to limit or control retreat mining.

The Spice must flow, Maud'Dib

After a turbulent time of denial and self flagellation, the conservative movement in America, is coming to grips with a terrible truth. The demons they have been fighting against, in an attempt to exorcise the evil from American culture and return to traditional values, are, in fact, themselves.

The conservative philosophy is based on the premise that Americans are self sufficient, that they will take care of their own. They will do this through hard work, fiscal responsibility, creativity, education and faith; Faith in God and faith in the system. Their natural leaders are those who have demonstrated the ability to overcome initial hardship and become successful in the free market system.

Over more than two centuries of history, our society has accepted immigrants from all over the world. These immigrants have struggled to succeed, to carve out a place for themselves and they have done it. Group after group, culture after culture, have come here and made a place for themselves. America is a meritocracy in its purest form, not everyone succeeds but everyone can try. It's the way the system is designed.

The American system has worked in ways that its designers never intended. In virtually every society in the World, women were chattel. America has given them the chance for independence and equality and they have taken it. Large numbers of people were brought here as slaves. The law said that they would always be slaves. And their children. And their children's children. Didn't work. Asians were barred from coming here and denied participation in the system. They're here. They participate. Gypsies and Jews have wandered the World for millennia, always apart from those among whom they lived, until they lived in America. We originally wrested large portions of this country away from Hispanic control and drove them South. They're back. In business, education, government and entertainment, homosexuals are some of the most prominent and influential leaders. They are out of the closet and aren't going back. A juggernaut has no on/off switch. The faster it goes, the faster it goes. There is no guiding the way. There is no turning back. What we have done here, has changed the World. What's happening in the World will now change us.

The conservative movement in America would like, now, to put on the brakes. They would like to institute a society of law. There are no brakes. There is no law. People will do whatever they want, whatever benefits them. Placing a restraint on trade simply makes the trade more lucrative, thereby attracting a better class of people into it. Legislating morality will not sway people who have labored to live according to their own desires. People will only pay those taxes which they see benefit from. Any "help" the government seeks to give to people will be abused. Blocking the entrance of people into our society only makes entrance more valuable.

The Spice must flow, Maud'Dib.

The Surging Truth Will Out

We are winning the war in Iraq. We are winning because GWB and his generals tell us we are winning. We have previously made missteps but everything is on track now. The insurgency is on it's last legs. It's only a matter of time before things are under control. The Iraqis are building a functional coalition from which they can effectively govern the country.

We have heard these same statements from the administration since the beginning of our military involvement in Iraq. It's different this time, though. Something has changed. Through the first three years, one of the main points the administration pounded away on, over and over, was that the troops, the enlisted combat troops, on the ground in Iraq, supported the mission and wanted to stay to complete it. They have stopped saying that. Have you noticed. I have.

I don't think that support for the war was ever as universal as the administration made it out to be among combat troops. I do think they saw the mission in Iraq as their job and kept their opinions to themselves and their mouths shut, the way soldiers always have. I think the administration realizes that as the years drag on and more and more Iraq veterans rotate out of the war zone and then out of the military, they will begin to give vent to their true feelings. They will express their opinions about the reasons we went to Iraq. They will express their opinions of the strategies employed by their military leaders. They will express their opinions of the competence and character of the officers that led them. They will express their opinion of exactly what was accomplished by the sacrifice of their youth and blood and lives.

No, the administration no longer talks of the support for the war by the troops on the front lines. Make no mistake though. We are winning. GWB and his generals tell us so. The insurgency is on it's last legs. It's only a matter of time. And money. And blood. And lives.

What do Cowboys, Lumberjacks and Hard Rock Miners all have in Common

Time to weigh in on the Larry Craig situation.

Here's a guy who is obviously gay and has been all his life and yet he has always played by the rules that society has set for him. He obviously believes strongly in family values. He is obviously a religious person. He has demonstrated beyond a doubt that he believes in the conservative political philosophy he espouses. He has devoted his life to public service. He doesn't believe in gay marriage or domestic partnership or the open acknowledgement of homosexuality as a legitimate sexual preference. He married a widow lady and raised her children as his own. He represented his constituency, in Congress, in a manner that pleased them for a generation. He has repressed his sexuality and become exactly what society, as he understands it, wants him to be, a toilet queen. He feels most comfortable and sexually responsive, engaging in anonymous sex, in the restrooms of transportation terminals. Even while engaged in this gritty and nefarious pursuit of toilet sex, he remained polite and gentlemanly. He did not expose himself. He made no lewd proposition to another. He made his approach through a carefully choreographed and time honored code, known only to other homosexuals and in this case, undercover police officers. In this way was he exposed, his secret life brought to light, his career ruined.

Now he will be forced to resign. His old friends and colleagues in politics will shun him. If he returns to his home in Idaho, he will be a man alone and apart. The double standard by which he has lived all his life, will now condemn him to a life ostracized by those he has served so faithfully. Ted Stevens, who stole billions, remains a powerful senior Senator. David Vitter, who admitted to having sex with prostitutes, after having been exposed by a notorious madam, remains a Senator. Larry Craig is guilty of a far greater offense, he is gay in a World that believes it to be an offense against God.

Hundreds of closeted gays remain in the upper hierarchy of the Republican party. They will do nothing to help Larry Craig. There is nothing they can do. I hate those fundo-fascist, Bible thumping, Republicans. I suspect when they meet Jesus on the other side of the Pearly Gates, he'll want to have a little talk with them about respect for the sexual preferences of others.

Bailout Who?

Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, has lowered interest rates and has signaled that he will continue to do so, to keep the stock market liquid. This action has the effect of propping up the practice of making highly leveraged and unsound investments by Wall Street fatcats. It also drives pension funds and more modest private investors into riskier areas of investment, in an effort to meet their obligations. It causes inflation, so that people who have spent their lives saving, end up with nothing. It is a bail out of the wealthy, at the expense of those of more modest means.

President Bush has announced that he will relax the standards that the Federal Housing Administration uses to insure mortgages. This does not so much mean that the homeowners who have been enticed to borrow too much easy money from Wall Street, will be able to keep their homes. It means that when they finally lose their homes, It will be you and I, Joe Taxpayer, who takes the loss.

It's clear that the Bush Administration is worried about the wellbeing of it's constituents an is taking action to protect them. Unfortunately you and I are not members of that constituency.

Two strokes is about as much as an old man like me can handle

I drive a 1986 Honda Spree. It looks like an old Vespa, only smaller. The body is made out of cheap, pliable plastic. It has a 49cc 2-stroke engine. The transmission has no gears. It has essentially two speeds, stop and 26 mph. It gets around 90 mpg. I use a gallon of gas a week or less. It costs $40 a year to insure and $40 dollars a year to register. If you tried to ride it in traffic, you'd be dead in a week. Where I live, all the streets have bike lanes. Nobody much uses them, so I do. It's illegal but the cops don't bother me. Works out well for both of us. It has a little rack on the back. When I go to the store, I bungee a plastic milk crate to the rack. That and the little backpack I habitually wear, holds everything I'm ever likely to purchase. I paid $300 for it. In three years, it's never given me any mechanical problems and doesn't seem like it's likely to soon.

For the size of the engine, it's not fuel efficient, or low emission. I don't care. Honda currently makes some really nice small urban motorbikes in Southeast Asia. They are fuel efficient, 4-stroke, water cooled, fuel injected. They are clean burning and FAST! I'd love to buy one of them. They won't sell them here. They would certainly cut into the sales of the larger bikes that they do sell here. You can't even pay to have one shipped over, it's illegal. You wouldn't want to anyway, no parts, no service would be available. When government and corporations tell us that they are working hard to provide clean, fuel efficient vehicles for us, they are lying through their teeth.

I don't care about global warming or the depletion of fossil fuels. Why should I? I'll be dead in 20 years or 76 years old, which, let's face it, is the same as. I just want to get around town in the cheapest most fun way possible. I'll just keep ridin' the Spree.

The Republicans can always win

We generally think of the Republicans as a political party and technically, that is what they are. They are more than that, however. They are a coalition. A construct of several groups, each with a specific area of concern. They are apathetic to areas of policy outside their specific concerns but are willing to support the agendas of others, as long as those others reciprocate.

The first group is composed of those people with high net worth and actively involved in consolidating and increasing their wealth. Their primary interest is to be able to engage in their commercial activities without regulation, intervention or oversight. As a voting block, their numbers are insignificant. The contributions that they make are purely financial. They hedge their bets and will support anyone in power but prefer the Republican party because of it's greater pliability.

The second group are the neocons. They are highly educated and extremely intelligent. They are well represented in the most respected, admired and productive segments of society. Their sole concern is that the State of Israel be preserved, nurtured and protected, at all costs. The tremendous respect they command makes them invaluable as molders of public opinion. Their intelligence, knowledge and skill allow them to generate coherent policy and direct it's implementation.

The third group are the xenophobes. These people feel discriminated against and threatened by, their peers in society who may not share their same set of beliefs or origins. Their primary motivator is fear. They fear the known. They fear the unknown. They fear what will happen. They fear what will not happen. Their fear makes them easily led. They want, above all else to preserve what they have, no matter how little or insignificant it may be. This is a constantly shifting group. If they lose their fear, they fall away. If they become more afraid, their numbers swell. They are an easy group to manipulate, because the worse you make it for them, the stronger they believe.

Something's Wrong With The Beaver

My wife and I have lived in our place for twenty years. At this point, we've been here longer than anybody else in the neighborhood. It's a beautiful place, quiet, spacious, nicely landscaped. Nobody thinks of our town as luxurious, partly because it's next to Newport Beach, which, on a per square foot basis, is as expensive a place to live as you can find anywhere in the country. It's pretty nice, though. I don't care how much my place is worth. I don't care if property values plummet, though I suspect they won't stray too far down. I'd never move.

Next door I have a retired Air Force O-6 who used to fly B-47s for Curt Le May. He and his wife have 5 or 6 children, all grown up and out a generation ago. He and his wife are the children of Mexican immigrants. Next to him is an old Marine Gunny, 30 years in and 30 more as a civilian DOD contractor, all in the Far East. His wife is Korean. They have kids almost as old as me. Next to them is a young, 2nd generation, longshoreman. His wife is Vietnamese. They have a 2 y/o daughter.

On the other side, the house is shared by 4 very nice young men, attending beauty college, over in Costa Mesa. Hardly even know they're there. Next to them are 4 more nice young men, only not quite so young. Kind of super-annuated skater boys. No drugs but I'm pretty sure they're filming porno in there on the weekends. We have to keep on them about parking violations and the beer bottles and cigarette butts get a little thick out front sometimes. They police them up the next morning, usually.

Across the street is a lesbian lady of color. Big corporate exec. Travels the World on business. Very down to earth. Never flaunts her material success. Next to her is an older gentleman and his wife. They are almost never there. Their children are all police officers in local communities. They spend most of their time up in Idaho, in a place with no phone or mail service, so they say. I suspect he has a military title but that it isn't used outside the compound. He and the corporate lady next door are thick as thieves. She watches his place for him when he's gone.

Just another SoCal neighborhood in the 21st Century. We all pretty much get along, just like Rodney wanted. I'm sure glad I don't live somewhere out in the middle of America, in the middle of all those Baptists and Pentecostals, with all their trashy, hateful, behaviour. I know it makes me a bigot but a person has got to maintain some standards and a little peace of mind is important when you get older. I guess what I mean is, a person reaches a stage of life when they want to be with their "own kind".

Geniuses, Hard At Work

This doesn't have to be a long post at all. It's pretty self explanatory.

Capital One, the credit card giant, is closing down it's mortgage business, because it's too risky.

They would rather concentrate on their much safer core business, holding huge amounts of completely unsecured consumer debt.

Smart move.

I think I'll take my life savings and load up on their stock.

Gee! I'm Glad Those Nice Policemen Didn't Get In Trouble

About a year ago, I posted about the police force in my town and how they have a habit of using unnecessary lethal force, notably when witnesses are not present. In this case they gunned down a high school girl, distraught from a sexual assault, earlier in the night. The ER doctor who examined the corpse documented 23 bullet holes in her body.

The "impartial" investigation of the case, by the county sheriff, found the shooting to be justified and no disciplinary action was taken against the officers involved. There were several officers on the scene, with two discharging their weapons. She was, at the time, menacing them with a 3" paring knife, from her Mother's kitchen.

I recently read in the paper, that to avoid going to court, to defend the officers actions, in a lawsuit brought by the girl's family, the city has offered a $2,000,000 settlement. Seems like a lot, for a justified shooting, although it does work out to less than $100,000 a hole.

Gee. I'm glad those nice policemen didn't get in trouble.

Thailand Remains Our Friend.

Elections were held Sunday in Thailand, to ratify a new constitution, authored by the military junta, which seized control from the democratically elected government earlier this year. The new constitution calls for a nominally democratic government, while actually leaving it in control of officials appointed by the judiciary, drawn from the same pool of hereditary elite as the military officers who make up the junta. The vote on the new constitution passed with ease, considering that the previously elected majority party has been outlawed and it's leaders muzzled by threats of detention and retaliation against their families.

Thailand is and remains America's staunchest political ally in Southeast Asia. The military coupe transitioned the country into autocracy without a peep from the Bush administration and virtually no coverage in the American media. Thailand has a strong economy and a rapidly developing industrial base, though they still rely on their traditional mainstays, smuggling, piracy and the slave trade for most of their economic strength.

Bangkok, the capital, is where the junta draws its strength from. Bangkok is the shipping point for opium distillates from the fields of the Golden Triangle. It is the clearing house of pirate booty from all over Asia. It is a Mecca for sex tourists and pedophiles, the World over. It is, in short, the preferred recreational destination for American military personnel, corporate executives and especially clergy, now that they cannot rape young American boys and girls with impunity.

It is good to know that Thailand remains our friend.

We Certainly Deserve Whatever Terrible Times Lie Ahead.

We don't have much of a savings rate in this country. Most families just get by. They have a car and a house that they owe money on. They pay a lot of taxes. Property taxes. Sales taxes. Income taxes. Gas taxes. Social Security and Unemployment withholding come out of their checks every week, right off the top. Those are taxes too. By the time they get down to the money they have left to feed their families, it isn't very much. Not enough. It isn't that they don't want to save. They do. Save to give the kids a good education and a decent start in life. Save for their old age, so they won't be a burden. Those things are important. The money is just not there. Ya do the best with what you can, today. You hope maybe there will be a little left over to save tomorrow.

There are people in this country whose lives aren't like this. Percentage wise, they aren't many but there are a lot of people in this country. There are hundreds of thousands of them, maybe even a million or two. They have real nice houses, more than one. They have shiny, expensive cars, more than a few. Boats, nice ones. They travel, a lot, 1st class. Golf, twice a week. Pick up the tab for lunch with the guys, more than I make all week. Their kids go to Name schools. Their shoes aren't made in Bangladesh. It's all about percentages. Percentage wise, they don't pay many taxes. Percentage wise, they don't spend that much on their very comfortable lifestyles.

These people serve an important purpose. They hold America in trust for us. They own the land. They hold the stock in the companies where we work, of the banks that loan us money, the companies that sell us gas, the hospitals where we go when we're sick, the cemeteries where we're buried when we die. These people control the Capital that make our way of life possible. They take the risk. They need to be protected. Like the whales. Like the redwoods. Like the spotted owls. They are the foundation of our social ecology. Think green. Green is the color of life. Green is the color of money. Same thing.

We have done the Capitalists an insult. We have borrowed too much, for too long. More than we can pay. More than we are worth. We have lived our lives and fed our children with their money and now we can't pay them back. They are left holding worthless paper. An empty promise, from those for whom they have held America in trust, for so long. I feel so ashamed. We certainly deserve whatever terrible times lie ahead,

Tiny Bubbles in the Wine, Tiny Bubbles Make Me Feel Fine

Just taking a break from cleaning my neighbor's pool, lounging on my deck, enjoying a cold drink. I wonder if there really is anything to this whole real estate bubble theory some people are talking about? My condo is pretty nice. Good neighborhood. Nice weather. Couple miles from the blue Pacific. They have been going for $600,000-$650,000. Still, It's nowhere near as nice as the house I grew up in a few miles away. I wonder how much that's worth now? My parents paid $17,000, late in 1959.

It seems to me that the Japanese had a situation like this in the eighties. Yeah, I remember now, they were selling each other urban real estate, generating inflated equity, and leveraging the equity to buy more inflated real estate. I remember a Japanese real estate investor saying, with a straight face, that a several square block area in the center of Tokyo, was worth more than the entire state of California. It all came unraveled in 1990. Real estate values dropped like a shot. They had some problems with bad real estate loans, too. Not really a stock market problem. All the economic fundamentals were good. They did have to lower interest rates to Zero, where they pretty much are to this day and the Nikkei 225, almost two decades later, is still less than half what it was then.

It's not the same though. The Japanese economy is not the same as ours here in America. Do you want to know why?

THEY STILL ACTUALLY MAKE STUFF IN JAPAN AND SELL IT TO OTHER COUNTRIES! FOR A PROFIT!

News from the Western Front

Unless you have perfect credit and you want to borrow less than $400,000 you ain't going to get no mortgage, baby. You can find a few houses in the LA basin for less than half a mil but you better be ready to invest in body armour and pittbulls. Not many houses are going to be changing hands any time soon. New construction for less than $500,000, forget about it. Housing starts may look good for the last couple of months, housing finishes are going to be another story.

Three more months, tops, a whole lot of real estate professionals are going to be out of a job. Escrow officers, loan officers, and a raft of related workers, ditto. The construction trades are shutting down. Lumberyards and building supply houses will go into moth balls. When the construction trades come to a halt, so do the remittances to Mexico and Central America. Instant recession for our neighbors to the south. The sale of the durable goods that go into the domiciles that change hands? Nope. And on, and on, and on.

Unemployment is going to start going up. Money is tight. There's going to be less of it around. SoCal is a service economy. Mostly, we make a living out here cleaning each others pools. Can everybody say, domino effect?

There's nothing to worry about. We've had this kind of thing happen before. We just need to generate some liquidity. No problem.

I've got just two words to say to you.

PYRAMID SCHEMES!!!

Summer Song

It's summertime. The best time of the year. you can keep your winter sleigh rides, autumn leaves and spring wildflowers. Summer is long days and warm nights, the beach, no school, first loves and last freedoms.

Back in the days of AM radio, they used to play little pop songs especially suited for summer. Usually, by the end of the season they began to wear on you. Sometimes a lot earlier than that. Some of them, you cherish all your life. It may be the song. It may have more to do with the memorability of the summer during which it was popular.

My all-time favorite is "Brown Eyed Girl", by Van Morrison. I don't even remember what year they first started playing it. Sometime in the late sixties, I think. I wouldn't want to be 35 again, or 25. If it could be 1969 again and I could be 17, that's a different story.

What's your favorite summer song?

Karl, we hardly knew ye

A lot of left wingers are going to be real happy that Karl Rove is going back to Texas to "spend time with his family". I'm not one of them. Karl doesn't make political policy or decisions. I don't think he's personally political at all. He works with public relations and advertising. He didn't have anything to do with the war. he got involved with Plamegate only after it became a public relations problem. He is a master of dirty tricks and personal smears but that is the meat and potatoes of partisan politics today, on both sides of the fence. You can't criticize him because he's better at it than anybody else.

Karl was responsible for the perception that GWB was a regular guy, down to earth, self depreciating, with a wry sense of humor. I think that in coaching the President to show these traits to the public, some of them might actually have rubbed off on the unfortunate dolt. It might have at least, temporarily, made him a better, more reflective and empathetic person. Who will do that for him now?

In his public life, Karl has been positively shy. He does not make bellicose, doctrinaire, pronouncements. He doesn't respond to personal attacks. He is not afraid of innocent sponaneity. I thought his pogo dance, on the podium of the recent Washington annual press dinner, did more for the image of the administration, than a hundred "mission accomplished" speeches ever could.

He doesn't cultivate that macho, "chickenhawk", schtick. He doesn't gild his image with phony academic degrees. He doesn't make a beeline for the spotlight at every opportunity. He never portrays himself as the long suffering martyr. In short, he never does for himself, the things he is so good at doing for others.

Karl, we hardly knew ye.

A little too stable

Max Weber postulated well over a century ago that the State is defined as the monopoly of force within defined territorial boundaries. Nobody has come up with a better definition yet.

As long as they have plenty of force, dictatorial states have no problem maintaining power. Democratic states have a harder time but since they are operating under a consensus, need less force. When consensus is no longer possible, democratic states have two options. Find a new consensus or become dictatorial states. We have frequent elections, here in America. This is our mechanism for maintaining consensus.

The left is afraid that the right will foment a military coupe or subvert the electoral process and thereby remain in power indefinitely. The right is afraid that the left will make voting mandatory among the general population, knowing that the larger percentage of the non-voting underclass will support the left's more liberal social entitlements.

What's going to happen, instead, is that the governmental establishment will co-opt the political establishment, of the right and left, so that it doesn't really matter who gets elected. Things will pretty much continue on, the same.

Voila, dictatorial state. Take a close look at your elected representatives in Washington and tell me it isn't true. Look at the front runners for the next Presidential election. If they were any more dumbed down they'd need feeding tubes. Can you think of one real change in policy thats happened in the last several years? The only thing that's changed about our government is more.

More power. More money. More control. MORE FORCE.

The last thing we need to worry about is the stability of our government. Unless you think it's a little too stable.

Buddy, can you spare a dime.

The administration has been wheeling out George W. Bush the last couple of days to tout the strength of the US economy. At least they say it's Bush. I personally think it may be some kind of Max Headroom/Meet Mr. Lincoln video enhanced robot.

He says that the US can handle the current market volatility. He says that the US economy is the envy of the World. He says that inflation is under control. He says we should lower corporate taxes and leave corporate CEO and big player compensation alone. What a maroon.

The US doesn't produce anything. Home ownership is beyond the reach of the working family. Those that do own homes have been leveraging them for years to finance a lifestyle they can't afford. We import most of our fuel, durable goods, consumables and even an increasing percentage of food stuffs from foreign markets. The top 1% of the population controls all of the countrie's wealth and resources. The rest of us actually owe more than we're worth. Most people have virtually nothing put away for retirement and expect that the Government will take care of them.

The dollar, increasingly, is worth garbage opposed to foreign currencies. Market strategists continue to expect strong consumer spending, even in the face of evidence that the American consumer is tapped out. The American consumer will continue to spend, as long as credit is extended and payment is delayed.

The mortgage market is in shambles. Credit card debt will be next. Consumer spending will follow. The American economy is not the envy of the World.

Hey, don't you remember, they called me Al. It was Al, all the time. Say, don't you remember, I'm your pal. Buddy can you spare a dime.

Someone is in for a surprise ,soon

I was reading an article on market analysis on the Fox News site today. The gist of it was that there is no real threat to the markets or economy from the sub-prime meltdown. The default of sub-prime mortgages, they say, is manageable. The problem is psychological. Earnings are high, as is employment. Corporate balance sheets are flush. They are missing something, I think. They aren't looking at the way people are living. They aren't listening to what they are saying.

A lot of people say they are worse off than previously. Even though employment is high and income is up, a lot of people say the economy is already in a recession. What's going on? Are they dim?

The truth is, people can't afford their lives. Even though they have income and benefits, they can't afford the things they need. They need a car, so they go into debt to buy it. They need a house, so they go into debt to buy it. The house and car note, as well as the attendant costs of operation and ownership, eat up most of their income. To obtain the other necessities of life, they use their credit cards. When the credit card debt becomes unmanageable, they refinance their home and pull out equity to defray costs. Their already unmanageable mortgage becomes more unmanageable. They get promotions and raises at work, they moonlight. These people don't golf, don't dine out, take vacations, buy nice clothes, or send their children to private schools.

Fast forward 20 years. They are making more than twice what they used to make but the house that they paid $150,000 for is now in hock for $500,000. Something went wrong with the last car before the 72 month payment schedule was over and now they owe $20,000 on a car that cost $14,000 and is worth $6,000, maybe, at 13%. The credit card debt is worse than ever. What can you do? The money always runs out before the end of the pay period, way before. The oldest boy is married now, with two kids and lives in an apartment. He's a good boy. He and his wife live like church mice but it's soccer season. The kids need shin guards, shoes and uniforms. They also need dental work. What are you going to do?

What's going on here is a lot more than psychological. George Bush and his rich friends are driving along in the beautiful, barge-like, SUV of State. The stereo is playing some sweet sounds. The cell phones are out. The air conditioning is blasting. There's a case of cold ones in the cooler. The engine is running sweet and the fuel line is still full but the tank is empty.

Someone is in for a surprise, soon.

Slue Foot

There is a trick that rich boys learn when gambling and GWB has apparently learned it well. Double down when you lose and go for broke. It doesn't matter how much you lose or how bad things get, If your pockets are deep enough and you've got the guts, you will eventually win and come out ahead. That's what he's doing in Iraq. It's a strategy that will certainly work. The only question is, are his pockets deep enough and does he have enough time.

Bush is betting everything he has left on David Petreaus and the surge. William Kristol, the quintessential neocon, has crowed, that in Petreaus, Bush has found his Ulysses S. Grant. I think that Petreaus is cast more in the role of Eisenhower than Grant. As Eisenhower was able to unite the diverse and antagonistic Allied factions to subdue fortress Europe, Petreaus must convince the Iraqis that it is in their interest to unite and form a stable and democratic society. Petreaus is a good choice. He is smart, confident and a hard worker. Whether he will succeed is still in question.

The question is not whether Petreaus is up to the job but whether the Iraqis are ready to lay down their arms and work together. All of this talk by the administration, about Al Qaeda terrorists being the real threat in Iraq, is not helpful. It should be clear to everyone who is in the least informed, that the Iraqis themselves are the real roadblock to resolution of the current chaos. Even if Al Qaeda is responsible for significant disruption in Iraq, they could not function without at least the tacit support of the majority of the populace. I see no indication that the Iraqis are ready for peaceful coexistence, not the man on the street, not the religious leaders, not the army or police, not the civil service or elected leaders. Petreaus can lead them into a secure and prosperous future, of this there is no doubt. I don't think that's where they want to go. I don't think Petreaus has the tools to make them want to go there. I truly wish that he did.

Pollsters seem to agree that less than 30% of Americans still believe that Bush is doing a good job. There are still slightly more than 40% who don't believe we should we should precipitously withdraw from Iraq. I don't believe that the President's personal popularity can go any lower. Those who are with him now will be with him til the end. If Petreaus fails though, I think it's probable that the war fails with him. Support for the war will continue to erode if he fails.

I do not expect that Bush will give up. He has shown that his resolve transcends mere stupidity. He is the John Henry, the Paul Bunyan, the Joe Magerak of retards. He is the Pecos Bill of the thirty percenters, although he may have more in common with Slue Foot Sue.

While Bush may have nothing more to lose and everything to gain by his current Iraq stand, this is not true of the Republican Party. If we are still embroiled in an unsuccessful foreign war in November of 2008, the election will be a decided on that one issue. Hilliary Clinton will be President and the Democratic majority in Congress will go from marginal to overwhelming. What a waste.

I Think We Probably Just Die

The Pope says that the Roman Catholic Church is the only real church because the papal succession leads directly back to Peter. He says it's OK to say the mass in Latin again. I got no problems with this but do you really think it's the kind of thing Jesus would be interested in?

I don't think Jesus cares about the church much. Whether he gets worshiped and sung to. Whether he gets recognized as the Lord and Savior. I guess the question is, do we do the right thing so we can get eternal life or because that voice that's inside each of us tells us it's the right thing to do? A lot of the time the things the Church says to do conflict with the voice inside. A lot of the time what I know is the right thing to do conflicts with how I've chosen to live my life. The bottom line is, I don't do the right thing all that much of the time and I know it.

I worry about myself too much. I save money because I don't want to be old and poor but there are poor people all around me.I should be helping them but I don't. I get bored in church and think it's stupid. I never meet clergy that I like and respect and very few Christians but I'm no better than they are. Jesus taught good things but set a standard that none can achieve. It's like we have to pay for that by accepting him as a God and then we get to be saved, even though we're bad. That seems nasty and mean, not like something Jesus would come up with.

I don't really believe in God the way most Christians do. No omniscient being could ever come up with that holy trinity thing. I believe in positive and negative, good and bad, Ying and yang. The problem with that is, since you can't have one without the other, good can never triumph over evil. Another big problem is the promise of eternal life. Believe and you get it, deny and you don't. Even Jesus had doubts though, so you know there's got to be some kind of continuum, one too many wrong moves and you go to hell. It's too much like a spelling bee. I think we probably just die.