A Heathen's Perspective

How's The Weather in Here?

2007-04-02T19:12:00.000-07:00

My, my how time flies when you're fun is having, huh? It's "this type thing, I'm a thinkin' so," ya see. Let's look at the human psyche as a weather system, shall we? With different stratas of activity, from upper level lows to Gulf of Mexico moisture being sucked inland as the low moves towards the Texas Hill Country from the Panhandle. Throw in a trough or two and you've got yerself some weather! By god, I've had me some weather in the head these last couple of months. But it looks like the front has moved on through, and Spring is POPPING all over Lake Travis!

So..."like I say, if I'm 'sessful - yer 'sessful." And before I forget, and erupt in a volley of brainfarts followed by a middle-aged moment, allow me to posit this explanation of one's survival of an authentic nervous breakdown:

It's all about two things - protecting the mind and the survival of the very organ we know as "the brain."

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THE MIND'S PROTECTIVE MASTER CIRCUIT BREAKER

Ya see, the rational mind believes that it's in charge of itself, the heart, and the place that cannot be fooled. BUT, in truth, the mind is our mental model of survival. It certainly has its place, above the heart, but by creating an opaque membrane between itself and the heart, the mind can trick itself and the heart...buying into the "power" of this mind...this feeble leaf in the wind...while bloated and bellowing, hoping to avoid any contact with the place that cannot be fooled - at ALL costs.

Well, dammit, that just doesn't work. So, when one has been grabbed by the short hairs, uninvited, and with no way out, by a huge burst from the place that cannot be fooled...bubbling up through the heart directly to the mind, whether or not the mind is ready to listen, look, and experience that nasty bubble of unvarnished, tactile truth...well the mind's circuit breaker goes off, and the hard drive shuts down in an attempt to salvage as much of the rational mind as possible - WHOOPEE!

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SURVIVAL OF THE VERY ORGAN KNOWN AS THE BRAIN

When all of the above converges in one's psyche to form a perfect storm, the brain automatically performs a fundamental shut down in order to survive. This shut down is fundamentally more powerful than the mind's attempt at saving itself, because the entire organ is at stake. The brain knows what it's doing. The organ itself survives in almost all cases.

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TELL ME, HEATHEN MONK, HOW DO YA COME BACK FROM ALL THIS SHIT?

Well, my sweet SaddlePals, it ain't easy. First the brain restarts when the storm passes. Then the mind's circuit breaker reconnects. The heart starts up again, bruises and all, and the rational mind begins to get the lay of the land. As one begins to find just enough focus to read a menu from Denny's, the mind assesses just how much of itself has been salvaged, how much of itself laying there in tatters is salvageable, and looks around the the burnt embers of places it once thought were necessary in order to engage with the world, crying like a newborn baby. If you're lucky, in this state of fragility, you may have salvaged enough to work your way back into the everyday world within 6-9 months. And you may find your groove in about 18 months...if you're lucky that is. And I sure as hell hope you're lucky. I know I am.

The Clinically Delusional Mind of George W. Bush(or "How I Waited For the Bloodless Coup That Never Came")

2007-01-22T06:55:00.000-08:00

He sat at his daddy's knee, but The Boy must've been drawn to the "cut 'em off at the knees" strategies of the late Lee Atwater. I wonder if BoyGeorge ever asked his dad, "Daddy? What did you do as a congressman? What did you do as U.N. Ambassador? What did you do as the head of the C.I.A.? What was it like being Vice Pwezeedent? Or Pwezeedent? Huh, daddy, huh?"

Nope...The Drugstore Cowboy, unlike his father, who, when approached by Cheney, Wolfie, Perle, and Kristol, among others, with the Grand Gamble of the Doctrine of Pre-Emption, told them to STAND DOWN ~ The Boy bought the whole store - hook, line, and sinker! Any layperson, like you or me for instance, could've googled our way to the same conclusions I came to with at my Original Anti-War Page, March 17, 2003.

Anyone could've found out that James Baker was or still is the senior counsel for The Carlyle Group, a huge hedge fund invested in by both the Bush and Bin Laden families.

But let's get down to delusional thinking, shall we? From a British study, "Role of distress in delusion formation," comes this:

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CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

* Psychotic experiences are common and transitions to clinical disorder are in part determined by emotional factors.
* Not only the presence of an unusual perceptual experience in itself but also the emotional appraisal by the subject is an important risk factor for subsequent delusion formation.

(more from this section, on cognitive behavioral therapy, left out on purpose)

Full Article, Hanssen et. al.. Copyright assumed to be owned by the authors and/or educational institutions. Used here for contextual purposes only.

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Now, let's see here. We know from Scott Ritter that 90-95 per cent of all weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were destroyed during the mid-1990's. We know that way back when, during the Reagan administration, rules were loosened for American corporations (and many European corporations as well), so that they could sell chemicals to Saddam during the Iraq/Iran War. The paper trail is there for all to see.

And yet The Boy wants us to buy into his new "surge." An "augmentation," according to Conda-Lies-A-Thrice.

Hmmm...let's see here....we lost the good will of the entire free world by invading Iraq, when millions around the globe protested BEFORE the invasion occurred.

The Boy CUT TAXES during wartime - possibly a first in the history of civilization.

Wolfie and others claimed the war would pay for itself. Oil revenues alone would make the whole thing a piece of cake.

We're now engaged in a civil war, and we've passed the time "in country" that the U.S. spent during WW II.

We've lost more than 3,000 of our soldiers, and seriously wounded more than 20,000 others. According to some estimates, more than 240,000 Iraqi citizens have died during the war, and today we've learned that many of the Iraqi refugees are being turned away or forced to return to Iraq.

We've drained our country's coffers to the tune of almost HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS.

And yet, even if it comes down to just "Laura & Barnie" BoyGeorge will see this "war on terror" through to the bitter end - OR until he leaves office, passing on all the good end-game stuff to someone else.

The Boy told us, out loud and in english that:

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" That's why I'm pressing the Greater Middle East Reform Initiative, to work to spread freedom. And we will continue on that. So long as I'm the President, I will press for freedom. I believe so strongly in the power of freedom.

You know why I do? Because I've seen freedom work right here in our own country. I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country's gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom."

full text of "President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference, 2004" from the White House Web site.

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The Almighty? You mean the God of Abraham? The same God that Jews, Christians, and Muslims pray to? Oh - THAT God - silly me...

Delusional thinking. With a Democratic majority and a stiff rebuke of his Iraq war policy from the American citizenry last November. And come tomorrow night, we'll see a clinically delusional man at the podium, talking about tax code changes to help lower health insurance costs, etc. Gosh, whatever happened to his brave stand from 2005:

"Taking on gang life will be one part of a broader outreach to at-risk youth, which involves parents and pastors, coaches and community leaders, in programs ranging from literacy to sports. And I am proud that the leader of this nationwide effort will be our First Lady, Laura Bush."

Laura Bush, GangBuster!...

my entry, "The State of DysUnion".

And so, as the safe laundry list unfolds in front of a new majority in Congress, let's see how well it goes, with The Dick having to sit next to Nancy Pelosi, and members of The Boy's own Party turning their backs on him. It should be a sad feast indeed...

UPDATE, Jan. 27, 2007: BBC News reports on The Boy's reaction to that "uppity" Congress and their claim to oversight:

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"US President George W Bush has made it clear he will ignore any attempt by the US Congress to question his sending 20,000 extra troops to Iraq.

Mr Bush - who faces tough opposition in Washington to his new Iraq strategy - said he was the decision-maker and would not rethink his plans..."

Copyright 2007, BBC and BBC America (if applicable). Used here for contextual purposes only

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Read all about it HERE.
_________________________
For those of you trying to cleanse the palate, as it were, during and after the State of DysUnion Address on Tuesday, a more international Look at Eroding Support for the U.S. from BBC News might help return things to some semblance of reality...HMonk

Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

2006-12-27T02:27:00.000-08:00

I don't quite understand "WHY" our snewz media in America can't quite bring themselves to present clear and convincing numbers concerning the number of human beings killed in Iraq since our invasion. It's kinda strange, ain't it?

Just a couple of clicks to BBC NEWS online and...why, it's as clear as country water used to be!

For instance:

A simple, tabbed overview of all those folks killed, and casualties counts too, can be found HERE at BBC News online.

Perhaps, we might need to know how many and where the sectarian killings have occurred, adding up to more than 231,000 as of October, 2006. Again, a simple click to

RIGHT ABOUT HERE at BBC News online should show you a clear map which includes the numbers of misplaced families who've arrived "in province" since February, or maybe you're curious as to how many Sunni, Shia, Sunni/Shia/Arab, Kurdish, and Sunni/Arab/Kurdish people have been slaughtered, ya think?

It's all right there to see, on the BBC, but damned hard to get ahold of on our "illustrious" American snewz media, doncha think? Boy, HOWDY!

An Open Letter to President Bush: Blow Me!

2006-12-21T08:23:00.000-08:00

There he was, finally uttering the words "we aren't winning, but we're not losing" in Iraq during a radio interview. Then there he was, in of all places, The Indian Treaty Room, 'splaining what he "really" meant. Oh, and the air of open dish-cuss-shuns with every commander, diplomat, and DumboCrat. When all was said and done, it was obvious the Drugstore Cowboy will send the naval flotilla to the Persian Gulf, increase troop strength in Baghdad, and try to kill Al-Cider. What a man! So deft, so good-read, so "subliminable."

Well yew can jus' kiss my nasty ol' ass, BoyGeorge - twice. I took a look back at the dusty old archives, and found this citizens' petition originally posted at the old AlterNet forums back in 2003 I think it was, now archived at Never Give Up. I did a tiny bit of editing, and for anyone who's interested here's how the final draft looked by 2005:

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Friday, January 28, 2005
Mr. Bush, Step Down!

(3rd draft - 2nd draft posted at AlterNet's Human Rights forum {HumanRights.169.21-}, Dec. 10, 2003, revised here, in part to reflect Ashcroft's resignation)

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CITIZEN'S PETITION: MR. BUSH, STEP DOWN, NOW. GIVE ME BACK MY COUNTRY!

Dear George W. Bush,

I am a citizen of the United States of America. However, it seems that America has been taken away from me. I feel that this Administration, this Congress, this Department of Justice, and this Supreme Court have betrayed America, and are now in the process of selling America off piece by piece.

As an American citizen, I hereby petition your administration to step down immediately. I demand that a caretaker administration be put in place by Congress, and that an impartial, impeccable Board of Civilian Review be created to examine your entire record, including the pathflow of your administration's correspondence, meetings and attendees, along with executive orders and directives created by the your administration, leaving no federal agencies exempt from scrutiny.

I call(ed) for the Senate to vote "No" on the confirmation vote for Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. Should Mr. Gonzales be confirmed, I demand that he tender his resignation immediately. I call for the full repeal of The Patriot Act, as well as any riders to any passed or pending Bills containing any provisions included in Mr. Ashcroft's "wishlist" known as "The Patriot Act II," as well as any and all subsequent attempts to do the same by AlBarfo.

I call for the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the armed forces to order our military forces to stand down, world-wide.

I ask that the Supreme Court be precluded from handing down any new rulings if and until it can be shown that their decision concerning the election of 2000 was not a gross, impeachable offense on the Court's part.

I call for a moratorium on Capital Punishment. I call for an end to mandatory minimums for sentencing. I call for an end to overzealous prosecutions. I call for the return of federal judges' discretion.

I call for foolproof legislation to prevent any former elected federal official, as well as all family members of elected federal officials now holding office, from working on behalf of any registered lobbyist or other special interest group concerned with any issues on which said elected officials have cast a vote, whether in committee, by voice vote, or by roll call on the Floor of either branch of Congress.

I call for every federal ballot to include "none of the above" as a valid choice for every election of every pertinent federal official. I demand an end to any method of voting, electronic or otherwise, that does not include a verifiable paper trail open to full public scrutiny through straightforward recounting procedures for any questionable or contested federal races.

I demand that Congress call for new elections of the entire House and Senate at their earliest opportunity, and without delay, following the transition of power from the Bush administration to a caretaker administration.

Until these matters have been fully addressed, I hold the federal government, as it now composed, to be in violation of the Constitution.

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I refuse to either leave my country or give up my citizenship. Should your administration not step down, now that you have been elected to a second term of 4 years as my president, I pledge NOT to contribute any more monies to the coffers of what I now consider to be an illegal, thus unconstitutional "government." In the event any federal income tax policies and/or other salary restrictions preclude or prevent me from withholding my financial resources from your stupefyingly Un-American administration, I pledge to join other citizens in every effort to buy, barter, lobby at the grassroots level, demonstrate, and engage in other non-violent acts designed to undermine, and hopefully end or slow down the murderous meanderings of your Doctrine of pre-emptive war which masquerades as the "war on terror."

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Finally, I urge every American without children, without a life-threatening disease, without other critical life circumstances that could jeopardize their safety, to join me in this petition.

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Mr. Bush, you have taken my country away from me. I will give my very life, if necessary, in order to help bring about a return to the Spirit of the Principles this country was founded upon, and thoughtful re-engagement, through diplomacy, with the rest of the entire world. My actions, unlike yours, will remain entirely non-violent, but I will exercise every fundamental right I may have as an American citizen until my country's government has been returned to its own Citizenry.

Very truly yours,

__________________________ signed, ______________, 200_

I have signed and sent copies of the above Petition to:

______________________________, my Representative

______________________________, my senior Senator

______________________________, my junior Senator

______________________________, Attorney General, State & Federal

______________________________, Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court

______________________________, my local newspaper

______________________________, my local TV stations

______________________________, my mayor

______________________________, my county's officials

______________________________, my state's governor

______________________________, other

______________________________, other

This Petition, while composed by The Heathen Monk is intended for the free use of any interested party. No standard copyright restrictions apply to its use, unless edited and published without written permission.

Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

Update: To The Board of Directors, Apache Shores Property Owners Association

2006-12-20T02:58:00.006-08:00

Well, I've done a little more research on the "per lot" vote a couple of years ago pertaining to our assessments. You'll find the update HERE.

HMonk

Perry Raises Cig Taxes by $1.00 Per Pack

2006-12-08T15:38:00.000-08:00

Head O'Hair Perry, governor of Texas, has decided to raise taxes on cigarettes by $1.00 per pack starting in January, 2007, bless his heart. Now Texas joins other states in making smokers pay more taxes per purchase than on any other product on the market.

What does this mean, other than an extra buck per pack to smokers? Well, it will mean a strong black market for smokes, and an increased danger to store clerks, now that ciggies have become so valuable. With a quarter of the nation still smoking, unless you have a reservation nearby, you may have to choose between smokes and cheap booze to settle your nerves. Yessir, between state taxes already in place, and the federal excise tax, I'm more than proud to be a contributor to the crooks in our state legislature who, like all the states that received money from the last smokers' settlement, will most likely spend the extra money on pork, the other white meat.

Black markets, dead store clerks? Is that the goal of Rick Perry? Has the asshole even thought this through? I think not. I hope that some attorney comes up with the notion that smokers, yes smokers, are exposed to second-hand smoke just like non-smokers. Maybe that'll keep 'em in court for awhile.

An old friend of mine remembers when his dad used to put two dimes in a cigarette machine, retrieve a pack of Luckies with 4 pennies left in the pack, for a total of sixteen cents per pack. They were just thirty five cents a pack when I started smoking. I only hope that the rest of you don't become the focus of "criminal" behavior, and find yourselves paying outrageous taxes on clothes made in China, or songwriter/publisher royalties diminished to the point of no return. Hey, nobody's lookin' - what's say we download this new movie for free?!

Keep it up, kidz. Sooner, rather than later, smokers will join the homeless, the damaged veterans, and the mentally ill on your streets. Please, do your best to sidestep them, won't you?

Fast Food Notion

2006-11-21T11:29:00.000-08:00

My, oh my! What are we gonna do with all these fat people?! Well, the answer is simple - CRIMINALIZE THEM, JUST LIKE WE DID TO SMOKERS! Yes, after they lowered the threshold for obesity back around 1998, the pill pushers and insurance companies had a clear field in which to work. Just in case you missed it, CNN noted that:

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"Under the proposed guidelines, which are to be announced later this month by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 25 million more Americans would be considered overweight -- including two baseball third-basemen: Chipper Jones of the Atlanta Braves and Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles."

Full Article, copyright 1998, Cable News Network. All rights reserved. Used here for contextual purposes only.

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Junk Food

Sure, we're all happy to know that Taco Bell is moving to canola oil. Wendy's makes a pretty good side caesar salad, and if you're lucky, there's a Subway nearby, but most folks who drive thru or eat in at fast food joints have jobs that pay $6-8 dollars an hour. Many of these workers get a half hour for lunch. So add gas to that, and lunch costs these workers an hour's pay. Now, if you're making $20-30 an hour, most likely you get a full hour for lunch, and just a furtive glance if you're a half hour late back to work. So go ahead, have the steak, potatoes, and salad, not to mention a refreshing martini, with ambiance to boot! Fast food stays in business because the working poor, teenagers, and folks on fixed incomes can't afford to pay more than five dollars for lunch. That's it, that's all. Where are the entrepreneurs ready to fill the fast food niche with tasty organic and/or veggie delights and a drive thru window?

Tax The Bums

Yeah, that's the ticket. Just like smokers. Let's add a fat tax to junk food. In fact, let's add a federal excise tax to any fatty food that moves across any state line, And while we're at it, let's add a new tax to fortified wine, cheap beer, and malt liquor too. These poor people just have to learn that their "vices" have consequences.

Luxury taxes? Who needs 'em? Corporate loopholes? Gotta keep taxes low, don't we? As a smoker, I must pay more than a dollar fifty per pack in taxes. If all of us smokers quit right now, we'd break the medical establishment in twenty years, just by living longer. So, the next time you see a busy worker scarfing down a burger during a thirty minute lunch break, just remember - THEY CAN'T AFFORD FOOD THAT'S GOOD FOR THEM, AND THEY DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO WAIT FOR IT.

The only saving grace? Those loving couples where one or both make their lunches before leaving home each day. Oops, but then there's daycare...whaddya gonna do? Seeya at the yacht club Sunday brunch!

The Shortest Honeymoon in History?

2006-11-10T00:18:00.000-08:00

Well, he tossed Rummy out for Bob Gates", (read Gates' view on Iran from 2004), most likely in order to soften the Baker/Hamilton report. But, the Boy wants the Surveillance Act passed before January. And he wants the recess appointment of the Walrus Bolton to the U.N. as ambassador. I imagine the Drugstore Cowboy will do everything in his power to prevent the public airing of his many "signing statements" over the years. You know, the ones he used to circumvent the Constitution. Yep, the honeymoon ended less than 24 hours after it began. Only this time, not only has he lost both Houses of Congress, he's got runaway Rethuglicans who won't carry his poisoned water because they need to be re-elected in 2008 and later.

The subpoena power, the forced opening of all the classified material Bush used to suppress documents going back to his father's presidency, with Gates in charge, and the honest remarks expected from our generals on the field, there seems to be just one way BoyGeorge can move. DOWN, DOWN, DOWN. It may take an entire generation to rebuild our foreign service, and begin to reestablish our credentials with foreign countries, both allies and enemies, but at least we have a chance today. And if Bush tries to buck the change, the bronco he imagines he rides will buck his sorry ass in a heartbeat. Unless the DumboCrats are as beholden to lobbyists as the DeLay/Norquist bottom feeders, America has an opportunity to become America once again. I'm not holding my breath, just keeping my fingers crossed...at least until next March. After that, Congress should return to a five day workweek, or, if not, expect the same cosmetic changes, signing statements, vetoes that may or may not be overridden, and business as usual until 2008 at the earliest. Good luck, and Good Grief!

I'm not dead, just disgusted

2006-09-24T15:47:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

Sorry to have been away for so long. And I won't be here for long right now. With the BlowHards bellowing about Iran just like they did about Iraq, and returning to the delusion of trying to connect Iraq with September 11th again, and with the DumboCrats sitting on their thumbs with just weeks to go before the mid-term elections, I'm planning to vote early...and often, of course...and wait to see just how badly the Dumbs blow their best chance for seizing some kind of power in either House this year. Whee!!!

HMonk

p.s. November 10, 2006 -- My GAWD! How happy I am to have been so wrong. Go, DumboCrats, GO!

Johnny On the Spot

2006-07-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

The smoke has cleared, and the dust is now settling on John Roberts' first term as Chief Justice of the Supremes. Turns out, the boy is a fine writer! Professors everywhere are rejoicing in Roberts' "elegant" use of "economy" in his opinions, while the blogosphere remains unimpressed with his use of sports analogies, from boxing to hockey.

What we may have here is authentic competency coupled with a hidden, personal system of fairness that should expose itself as the years go by. How much and how often Johnny decides to let us in on his secret self remains a mystery - a Mystery For the Pages!

In "His Hipness, John G. Roberts," Linda Greenhouse writes (from NYTimes, July 9, 2006):

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Prof. Akhil Amar of Yale Law School praised the Roberts style for "elegance and economy" as well as for the "occasionally snappy line" that could crystallize a case for lay readers. He gave two examples. One was a majority opinion that rejected the government's application of federal narcotics law to stop a Brazil-based religious group from importing a hallucinogenic tea for use in its rituals. "The government's argument echoes the classic rejoinder of bureaucrats throughout history: If I make an exception for you, I'll have to make one for everybody, so no exceptions," the chief justice wrote.

The second was a majority opinion that found that the state of Arkansas had denied due process to a homeowner by seizing and selling his house for nonpayment of property taxes without taking reasonable steps to notify him of his jeopardy. Referring to Gary K. Jones, the homeowner, Chief Justice Roberts wrote: "In response to the returned form suggesting that Jones had not received notice that he was about to lose his property, the state did — nothing."

Full article here.

Copyright 2006, The New York Times Co. All rights reserved. Used here for contextual purposes only.

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As you can see, this early in Roberts' Chief JusticeDom, it's hard to tell: Is he a peyote chewin' dude who steps up for the little guy between 'shrooms? Or, is he a complex individual who may not follow The Boy & The Dick's cartoonish agenda of stripping individuals of their rights while telling the world that "they hate us for our freedom."

I suspect that JohnnyOnTheSpot may turn out to be a thoughtful, and believe it or not, somewhat flexible Chief Justice. I can't say that I see any real evidence of the imposition of a rigid sense of morality on his decision-making process, but hell, I'm a layman, not a doktor, Jim! What we may have here is a firewall between the Thomas-Alito "well, whatever the prez wants, he gets" Stance of the Spineless, and the dark, demonic one - Scalia. That leaves the "liberal" Justices with the real power to build consensus within the Court. It points to the possibility of balance. It may actually prove to help undo the right-wing steamroller now paving its way over generations of decisions made on behalf of Americans everywhere. So, I'm not holding my breath, but I'm not raging against the machine either. I think I'll just hide here in the weeds for awhile.

HMonk Quickie! ~ Frontline's "The Dark Side"

2006-06-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

Damn, I hope you didn't miss this week's episode of Frontline on most PBS stations. But, in case you did, here's the direct link to WGBH's page on this latest and perhaps most disturbing report concerning the manipulation, manhandling, and political steamrolling by The Dick, Rumsfeld, and others as they beat the drum for the war in Iraq:

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"After 9/11, Vice President Richard Cheney seized the initiative. He pushed to expand executive power, transform America's intelligence agencies and bring the war on terror to Iraq. But first he had to take on George Tenet's CIA for control over intelligence."

The Dark Side

Copyright 1995-2006 wgbh educational foundation. All rights reserved. Used here for contextual purposes only.

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I've added this link to my old Protest Page at The Human Trust.

For a concise review of the program, read the Raw Story's Frontline: The battle between Vice President Cheney and CIA to control the 'dark side'. It's a tasty little tidbit that may cause you to run screaming to your nearest video/DVD rental outlet.

Don't forget to click any "Frontline" links you may find at my Protest Page either. Links to an earlier Frontline program on the war, and a follow-up Frontline are linked from there as well. Okay then...it's been a long day ~

And the "Beat" Goes On

2006-06-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

You've probably read my little rant on intolerance. In today's unstable climate of fear and intimidation, hate murders continue at an alarming rate, and not just here in the US, but around the world. Here's one of the most recent gay murders, from England:

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"Mr Dobrowski, an assistant manager at Bar Risa Jongleurs, in Camden, north London, was on his way home from a friend's house when he was attacked at about midnight.

He was found unconscious but died later in hospital from head, neck and facial injuries.

He was beaten so severely his own family did not recognise him and he had to be identified by his fingerprints."

full story: Men Jailed for Gay Barman Murder

Copyright 2006, BBC. All rights reserved. Used here for contextual purposes only.

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Here in 'Merica, we've got that nasty old homegrown sumbitch, Fred Phelps. You remember Fred, doncha? He's the "minister" who had his group holler and hold up signs saying "God Hates Fags" etc. at Matthew Shepard's funeral, following Matt's beating in Wyoming at the hands of two locals.

The Southern Poverty Law Center keeps a close eye on folks like Fred. I do too. In fact, I've coined the term "Phelpsian." Here's the latest on Fred from SPLC:

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"While attending a military funeral in Michigan, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., says he and other mourners were bombarded with "chants and taunting and some of the most vile things I have ever heard."

Rogers was alluding to the homophobic signs and jeers from members of the Westboro Baptist Church led by Fred Phelps."

full story: Tolerance In the News: New Law Won't Curb Hate

Copyright 2006, www.tolerance.org. All rights reserved. Used here for contextual purposes only.

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And so, yes, the "beat" goes on. Whether you're a gay soldier who died in service to 'Merica, or a prostitute who just happens to resemble the obsessive focus of an angry serial killer. You might simply be a child whose parents are hated by someone else for a reason you can't even fathom. Hate is not vengeance. Hate is a kind of battery acid that melts down what's left of a heart, and feeds the rage left behind. I hate "hate."

A Young Girl From West Texas

2006-05-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

If you saw Greg Palast on Democracy Now last week, and, aside from his new documentary, how he wired himself for sound in London, spoke the magic word "Enron," and gained access to 10 Downing Street, not to mention how pleasantly surprised Tony Blair's "poodles" were to visit with someone from EndRun after Blair had already signed the waivers making a fine money pie for Ken "Betcha Can't Cheat Just One" Lay in England, you might be disheartened deeply enough by this global web of energy mobsters to go back to kerosene and wood stoves.

When this kind of immense betrayal sinks in, I usually find myself thinking of all of the lives, and the life stories of "regular" folks around the world, ya know...from "Joe Six Pack My Ass" to "Annie Got Her Gun and You'd Better Watch Yer Mouth, Mister." Living human beings whose lives have been made even more difficult by the greed and arrogance of a few hundred families and transnational corporations, and not just for this generation, but as far as this generation's eyes can see.

All of that takes me, in one of my infrequent lucid episodes, to the lives of the people in my lifetime. One of them is my mother, and believe me, our relationship has been everywhere from mutual love and the deepest affection to "say, I'm all alone, this Smith & Wesson might make my pain go away, and LOOK, IT'S LOADED! Yippee and goodbye cruel world and crepe soles...now where DID I put those old clam diggers from 1960? Gotta look my best when the sheriff finds me!"

But today, as I have a few times recently, I called my mom, against my doctor's advice, and made a promise to her, and knowing her hardscrabble childhood as a middle daughter from nowhere, her exceptional organizational skills, and years of taking dictation from full bird colonels at Ft. Meade in the 50's and 60's, I gave mom my lifetime gift to her. A promise to edit, archive at the county courthouse, and make copies available at the Heart of West Texas Museum of her "regular" life, seen through the eyes of a young girl growing up in West Texas on a poor ranch in Silver (don't bother looking for it on a map, it's been gone for years, but you might find Silver Creek near Colorado City, Texas).

Raised by a father who was from the first set of white twins born in the history of Nolan County and later, as a young man, rode on one of the last true cattle drives before finally leaving ranching to become the deputy sheriff of Mitchell County, and raised by a mother who'd actually come to Texas as a child from Alabama in a covered wagon, and went on to become a beloved school teacher in the days of one-room schoolhouses. This "regular" person has a life story, one affected by wars, the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the days when the entire free world fell in love with America through John and Jackie Kennedy, and didn't really fall out of love with us until the Drugstore Cowboy came along.

Came along with his daddy's and his ancestors' buddies to mash down on the authentic spirit of America like no group has ever been able to do, and in a mere five years. These gigantic, Nixonian, Trickle On, They Hate Us For Our Freedom assholes affected the life of a young girl from West Texas. And she happens to be my mother. And that makes it personal, very, very personal. And this "regular" woman, with all her talents and warts is now in her 90's, and still sharp as a tack. Still able to drive herself. Still living unassisted, and managing her affairs. SHE represents West Texas, NOT some nitwit who should have peaked as "Man of the Year" by the Midland Chamber of Commerce after opening his second Western Auto store in the "suburbs." SHE has a story to tell, one that hasn't damaged the reputation of her county of origin, much less West Texas.

So, after my mom passes, the story of a young girl from West Texas will be available at the county courthouse or the museum, for the curious and those interested enough to do a little research on what life must have been like for folks living in West Texas during the first half of the twentieth century. Her story is real. The Boy's is real too...all too real, and for a small time shithead like BoyGeorge to claim West Texas as his own is a betrayal so deep, a few of us from West Texas would like to invite him NOT to set up his presidential "liberry" in Midland or Waco, but maybe up in New Haven, where he was born.

Now, don't you feel a little less disheartened? I know I do. Mom has already started writing her life story. She's been working on it for...oh, about ninety years now.

Stephen Pizzo's Piece in Alternet

2006-04-21T03:43:00.000-07:00

It's fun to read a nice, concise look at the Drugstore Cowboy. The danger of his idiocy. The shame of his ruination of American foreign policy. I don't have anything to add here, I just hope you'll click your way to Stephen Pizzo's piece, "Forrest Gump's Evil Twin" at Alternet:

Click Here to Read All About It

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AND, with thanks to Cousin Chris for the heads up, here's Rolling Stone's cover story:

THE WORST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY?

Medicaid Schmedicaid

2006-04-16T04:40:00.000-07:00

Oh, what a loverly Easter Gift The Boy has given to America's poorest of the poor. The "Deficit Reduction Act." Yes, older, mostly African-American and Native American folks will soon be required to provide things like birth certificates and other documentation just to continue being eligible for Medicaid. Surely, our poor and/or homeless people ALWAYS carry their passports and birth certificates with them wherever they go!

With a heads up from Slate, here's an excerpt from Robert Pear's piece in today's New York Times:

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Under the law, the Deficit Reduction Act, states cannot receive federal Medicaid money unless they verify citizenship by checking documents like passports and birth certificates for people who receive or apply for Medicaid.

In a draft letter providing guidance to state officials, the Bush administration says, "An applicant or recipient who does not cooperate with the requirement to present documentary evidence of citizenship may be denied eligibility or terminated" from Medicaid.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research and advocacy group, estimates that three million to five million low-income citizens on Medicaid could find their coverage at risk because they do not have birth certificates or passports.

--

full article: Medicaid Hurdle For Immigrants May Hurt Others

Copyright 2006, The New York Times Co. All rights reserved. Used here for contextual purposes only.

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So, now the States and all the hospitals and nursing homes have a brand new layer of paperwork to wade through. And all in the name of "deficit reduction." And THIS is what we call "compassionate conservatism?" Like hell it is! Bush, his buddies, and everyone on Capitol Hill who voted for the damn thing should cancel their government-funded health insurance, sell off their assets until they become eligible for medicaid and medicare, and see how the other half lives...and dies.

Shame on this sham of a government. They deserve to be removed from office, one by one, and the sooner the better. If trying to prevent "illegal aliens" from applying for medicaid you instead put up impossible roadblocks for legal citizens to get the help they need and used to get, our government has shown its ass, and let me tell you, that is one UGLY ass! Pffffffft!

A Dark Moment, if You Please

2006-04-13T08:26:00.000-07:00

Global warming, the internal combustion engine, coal, and other forms of generating electrical power. Pitiful attempts at creating hybrid cars that help in miniscule ways to cut down on fossil fuel production. And that's just here in America and across Europe. What does the future hold?

Seems simple enough. As we work to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, China, India, Pakistan, and others are growing at alarming rates, and of course they'll be sucking up as much oil as they can to improve their economies and automotive mobility. They'll also be searching for deals with Iran and others so that they can trade expertise on nuclear technology in return for favored deals on oil. It's entirely possible that these emerging nations will overwhelm greenhouse gasses to the point where our attempts at weaning ourselves from oil will more or less be pointless over the long run.

Increased global competition, along with South American oil finds, and coastal African oil finds, will continue to raise the price of oil. And of course those profits go directly to fundamentalist Middle Eastern countries with no incentive to play ball with the West, while the windfall profits play directly into new nuclear technologies, as in the case of Iran, surrounded by American troops, and Israel's nuclear weapons program. Not to mention funding radical Moslem fundamentalist agendas. And guess what? We're footing the bill.

And so, with America dragging its heels on moving towards hydrogen-powered vehicles, and at least biodiesel stop-gap measures, not to mention mass transportation, by the time we're seriously less dependent on fossil fuels, the rest of the developing world will be filling the atmosphere with more and more unregulated dirty fuels.

Do we have the luxury of time in which to save our own atmosphere? Probably not, in today's climate. So, keep a close eye on the medium term as to global warming and radical climate changes. Sorry to say, we may be on the losing side when it comes to saving our own species on this planet. Although I feel sure the planet will survive, I won't be surprised it the planet decides to chew us up and spit us out in order to preserve what's left of the Earth. "Free will" and the arrogance available to promote it in so many distorted forms remains a fundamentally strong urge for human beings. Making the planet intolerable for our species is a real possibllty in the next century. And it may be unavoidable. Time will tell. Our obvious disdain and many serious mistakes do not, in my judgment, bode well for our children in the next 50 years. Our absence, leaving them with monumental problems of climate and the pollution of our own creation is hardly a gift for the future of the human race. We oughta be ashamed, but we're not. We just continue to exacerbate the problem, and emerging nations are hungry to do so exponentially. It's a dark picture from where I stand. One that once was avoidable, but now may be too far gone to make any real difference. In truth, the planet may, in the long run, be better without us. And that's a sorry state of affairs.

Son Of "Tales From the Archives!"

2006-04-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, I admit it. A fine bout with authentic melancholia blossomed over the past few months, and among the last things I've been capable of imagining has been to put a string of sentences together that might amuse and make some sense to myself, much less to you, dear reader. And so, allow me to lazily throw a couple of stinky old nuggets your way as I try my best to regain my wits, won' t you?

By request, a sentimental favorite:

Through the Eyes of a Ten-Year-Old, 1960

From last November, for all you Tom DeCay, The "Hummer" gloaters out there:

Blood In the Water

And in a lighter vein, from last February:

Puddles Gets a Press Pass!

OH! And I'd be a bad uncle if I didn't link you to The Grand Moff's recent post:

When Drooling Superstitious Freaks Attack

(a tasty lil' ol' excerpt that's copyright 2006, Grand Moff Texan, All Rights Reserved):

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"This is just like the phony "War on Chist-mas/ians" crap. Crackerstan is useful to the right and the right has an awful lot of news to distract Crackerstan from, so they have to tell Crackerstan that they're under attack. There's nothing left of the right except a convulsive twitch and the people who know how to use it."

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And now, if ya pleez, I'm off to have a couple of double Crown on the Rox, and drive to my weekly electro-shock therapy outpatient excursion! Hmmm...I wonder what's worse - drinking and driving BEFORE day shock therapy or after? I'll let ya know...

Nuevo Laredo: Murder Capital of Texas Border Towns

2006-02-19T13:38:00.000-08:00

You may or may not have heard of the many journalists and others murdered just across the border from Texas in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Between bribes, governmental blind eyes, and the pressure from drug cartels, people are being killed in an effort to use the conduit of Laredo, Texas as a primary point of entry into the the United States. Unlike American journalists, these Mexican papers and reporters are risking their lives and their offices to get the word out, in the face of lip service from both sides of the border. It is failing miserably. Below is an extended excerpt from IPS on the matter. I recommend you keep a closer eye on the situation, as an example of the Mexican government's nonchalant approach to the smuggling of drugs and arms into our own country:

_____

MEXICO:
Reporters Targeted by Drug-Related Violence
Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Feb 7 (IPS) - The most dangerous place in Latin America to work as a journalist is northern Mexico, along the U.S. border, where drug traffickers threaten, kidnap and even murder reporters with impunity, according to the Inter American Press Association (IAPA).

The latest incident occurred Monday evening, when several masked gunmen stormed the offices of the El Mañana newspaper in the city of Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, firing assault rifles and tossing a grenade. One reporter, Jaime Orozco, was seriously injured and is in critical condition.

"What happened in El Mañana went beyond the pale and it is clear that the government is unable or unwilling, or does not know how, to confront this wave of violence against reporters and freedom of the press," Eréndira Cruz, director of the non-governmental National Centre for Social Communication, told IPS.

In its Tuesday edition, the newspaper, whose editorial director was murdered in 2004, stated in an editorial that Monday's attack was "one more page in the violence that reaches the level of terrorism." It added that "the drug trafficking problem has gotten completely out of the hands of the authorities."

The attack on El Mañana occurred in the midst of a turf war between drug trafficking gangs that has left more than 100 dead so far this year and claimed around 1,500 victims in 2005.

Twenty reporters have been murdered in Mexico since 2000, when President Vicente Fox took office, according to the Federation of Associations of Mexican Journalists and the Federation of Latin American Journalists. Nineteen journalists were killed during the term of Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), and 57 under the administration of Carlos Salinas (1988-1994).

Copyright 2006, IPS - Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

Full text: Reporters Targeted by Drug-Related Violence

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You'll find the link to IPS at HMonk: Sites Worth a Vist

"Goddamn the Pusher Man"*

2006-02-02T04:40:00.000-08:00

Some of us still remember those lyrics from Steppenwolf's classic, *"The Pusher." I believe it was the first time we'd heard "goddamn" on a record! Well, it seems a fitting assessment of an administration full of oil barons that have brass balls big enough to tell America that we're all "addicted" to fossil fuels. How much bullshit can one people take, I ask you?

By now, I imagine that almost everyone has seen through the astounding absurdity of a failed oilman, surrounded by oil and other corporate predators, looking straight into the camera and telling us:

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"America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world."

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I haven't found a word yet that best describes the moment when absurdity passes its peak and simply becomes pitiful, but there it is. The pusher blaming the addicts for their addiction that he's promoted, and continues to promote day in and day out. Remember way back when, that extree warm and ozoney alerty day when The Boy decided that global warming needed "further study?" And who can dare wag their finger at an administration hellbent on lowering environmental protection standards, putting forth programs and then not funding them, and sending a crony from South Carolina to Canada as our ambassador? Canada - where we happen to get a helluva lot of oil. Is Canada unstable? Does it not make sense to tap into the best and brightest of both Canada and the US in order to invent and implement methods of actually weaning ourselves off of oil? Naw...let's send ol' David Wilkins up there and continue to play hardball with our neighbor to the north.

Hell, it's obvious that BoyGeorge's loving reference to ethanol was intended to help Republicans up for reelection in the farm belt, but this "Texan" from Connecticut can't even take a hint from Willie Nelson! BIODIESEL. I don't know...do The Dick and his Pumping Buddies have a stake in biodiesel? I'll have to check that one out...

But aside from the small laundry list of proposals, small because of the war in Iraq, the "mission creep" in Afghanistan, Katrina and the fumbling response that seems to get worse every day, huge - I mean HUGE tax cuts helping to drain the Treasury's coffers, and of course the "innovative" outsourcing of jobs which leads to the outsourcing of our own talent pool, Georgie tells us:

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"Tonight the state of our Union is strong - and together we will make it stronger."

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More than all of the political machinations, what disturbed me most about the speech was the last-minute wording of BoyGeorge's "tribute" to Coretta Scott King. It started off just fine:

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"Today our nation lost a beloved, graceful, courageous woman who called America to its founding ideals and carried on a noble dream."

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But in the definitive ending sentence of his opening words, he said:

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"...and we are grateful for the good life of Coretta Scott King."

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"Good?" Not "exemplary?" Not "inspirational?" But..."good." On the eve of Mrs. King's first wake, and the beginning of Black History Month, by golly, she led a "good life." Bush, you sorry sumbitch. Did your speechwriters struggle over how to remember Mrs. King without offending the bigots who voted for you? In my opinion, you don't deserve to sit in the back of the church, or up in the balcony at Coretta Scott King's funeral. Just stay away, won't you? Please! We don't wanna ruffle the feathers of all those grassroots UltraChristians who'd rather not mix with all the "mud people."

He may have appeared confident and cool, but come November, after people have absorbed the bumbling paper trail on Katrina first published by The Washington Post, and the Ken Lay/Jeff Skilling trial is distilled into a form that's not "too complex" for "regular folks" to understand, and all the dicey details of the Abramoff plea deal work their way through the Republican leadership, "cool" won't feel so cool. I predict an early winter this year, with "frigid" temperatures in early November, but that's just me...

Official text of the 2006 State of the Union Address.

And what "bipartisan" deficit-cutting bill passed the day after the speech? Why, The One Referred to By Rep. Waxman Right Here!

(please note: additional informational links may be added to this entry later)

Looking Forward to This Year's State of DysFunction Address

2006-01-28T11:26:00.000-08:00

Gosh, it seems like just a year ago when The Boy reported to Congress and the American people on the state of the union. Today, as we watch the same, tired techniques of equating dissent with treason, co-opting programs they've done their best to kill for years, and working ever so hard to bolster those polls before Ken Lay goes to trial and Jack Abramoff gives up the goods, the Supreme Court reviews Tom DeCay's second round of gerrymandering in Texas, the effects of leaving Sharon to unilaterally decide the fate of the "road map to peace," only to have a major stroke, followed by the surprising Hamas victory in the Palestinian territories, oil and gas pipelines blowing up in Georgia during one of its coldest winters, Iran thumbing its nose at us, and all of the "progress" we've made dealing with North Korea, you remember, part of the "Axis of Evil" that came out of the blue during a previous State of the Union address...well, I can't help but take a look back at last year's Address and have a looksee at how many proposals have come to fruition since then:

Last year's post on Wubya's Address

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One of my favorite, forgotten programs was the Laura Bush, GangBuster! program BoyGeorge put forth last year. Thank goodness we've solved THAT problem!

And I know we're all just as pleased as punch that our pwezeedent has lived up to his famous quote last year:

"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else."

Yessir, and it's so heartwarming to see how the Drugstore Cowboy has reformed Social Security, the centerpiece of his second term. Hell, look at the beautiful job he and Congress did with the Medicare prescription bill! I don't think you can call that a mess, when only two dozen or so states had to pass emergency bills to make sure poor people didn't die because the federal bill, written by lobbyists most likely, just didn't seem to address their needs. No, it seems it was more important to add a new layer of bureaucracy that won't even allow for competition in purchasing bulk amounts of drugs from the drug companies. Wow, such innovation!

About the only thing that's come true since last year's Address is the state of the Judiciary. He wanted pro-life, executive branch-friendly, who gives a shit about checks and balances judges ~ and he damn well got 'em! Yippee! I can't wait to see how the Supremes behave for the next 25 years.

And so, dear readers, if, like me, you have a tough time even looking at that scrunched up mouth and that kindergarten teacher's approach to public speaking, you can count on me to download his Address from the official site, and bloviate over the BlowHard's Big Picture for 2006. Maybe this year Laura can have a sit down with all the major meth lab bigwigs in the country, and convince them to just say "no" to meth and "yes" to Pell Grants! Oops ~ we might have an itty bitty problem with funding these poor, unfortunate souls. Oh well, at least they're still livin' large on K Street.

Having Fun & Access Going Lo-Tech

2006-01-14T05:26:00.000-08:00

I suspended my DirecTV at the start of 06. Please, no hushed gasps! Yep, and down at the sweet little thrift shop I found a beautiful glass (for use in the parlor, pleez!) kerosene lamp with a new wick! Wouldn't ya know, HDepot carries Klean Heat, a fine kerosene alternative. And I live near the big hills where all the local broadcast towers are, and now that they're having to upgrade those towers to carry analog and HDef signals simultaneously, I get as good a broadcast signal as Austin's TimeLifeWarnerCableDigitalThingy. And yes ~ it's free!

What do I really miss? Why, Jon Stewart and The Daily Show of course. Don't miss CSPAN, because I can stream its audio, INCLUDING CSPAN 3. Don't miss Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, cuz I can stream her show as well. Don't miss those pesky $60 per month satellite TV bills. Don't mind knowing that Rupert Murdoch and NewsCorp have one less subscriber as they maintain a virtual monopoly on global satellite television networks. Naw, that doesn't bother me at all. I could give a flying flea's fart!

So, I keep my sweet little Grundig radio tuned to KUT FM (of course, I could stream KUT at kut.org), and listen to ESPN radio when an NFL game is on cable. To me, it's like listening to the Tigers win the 68 World Series on my NEW transistor radio!

And, as for privacy and data mining, I'm not concerned. As an individual and a sole proprietor, I simply went to PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and paid for the software necessary to obtain a lifetime license (about $60.00). Now, if the NSA decides to peek in on my email, they'll have to go find out whether or not I've published my Public Key to the worldwide PGP Directory, and then they'll need to decrypt my email in order to find out whether or not that particular email was encrypted using my Public or my Private PGP key. If I used my Private key, well...too friggin' bad for the NSA!

I've also begun to change my method of payment habits. Sometimes I'll use cash, sometimes a check, sometimes a credit card, and sometimes an automatic bank draft. And I might use any combination of the above to buy anything from a BlogShares coffee mug to a thumbdrive to a pair of OshKosh B'Gosh overalls. Is he a geek? A stock broker having some fun? A farmer? Who IS this mystery man? Is he a man at all? Look, he just started a complimentary subscription to Vogue...hmmm...Aha! It's a geeky SheMale who left the big city to start an organic tomato farm! Yeah, That's The Ticket!

Pffffffft!

Feel free to bookmark HMonk: Sites Worth a Visit and start discovering how much fun you can have with a dialup, free TV, and a candle ~

Jack Splat ~ The FatCats' Pajamas!

2006-01-03T00:38:00.000-08:00

Like Jagger sang in "Street Fighting Man,"..."tell me what can a poor boy do, 'cept to sing for a rock & roll band," what can a poor SuperLobbyist do 'cept to sing for Uncle Sam? Oh Jack ~ we hardly knew ye...come to think of it, we hardly knew what you were up to.

Jack Abramoff, once the King of K Street, has a tough decision to make, now that his co-defendant, Adam Kidan, has begun to unload his own gordian knot of Tales From the BackRoom. Oh, but that's not the whole story, now is it, Jack? Before Mr. Kidan went and Konfessed, there was someone else, in a separate but related court case, now wasn't there? What WAS his name?!

OH! I remember now ~ Michael Scanlon! You remember Mikey, doncha? The former aide to Tom DeCay, ya know..."The Hummer?" Yeah, seems the smiling fella under the umbrella has already spilled his guts. Why, lookie here, Jack - you even made the pages of Science Daily.

As we gently begin our FanTabulous New Year, I just KNOW Jack Splat will do "everything within his power" to come Klean, and do the "right thing." At least, that's what the Houston Chronicle and others are expecting to happen this week.

Gosh, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy, Jack. You've just ensured the complete meltdown of the Republican leadership. The Democrats didn't do it (cuz so many of them are, well - chickenshits). The Media didn't do it (they're still learning how to read from a teleprompter). They're all still catching up to you, Jack. YOU, JACK! You're my hero!

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And here's how I suspect things will come down between now and 2008:

Oh, it's gonna be a rough mid-term election for "Bush Country" Republicans up for reelection. My, my, my...it could even change the balance in the Senate! Goodness gracious me, who's gonna be there to stymie all the investigations, huh?

The Republican majority in the House is sure to get a bit slimmer. And the BlowHards are gonna have to tone things down between now and November. What a cryin' shame.

Should November turn out to be the nightmare I've always dreamed it would be, I believe that The Dick will decide to resign the Vice Presidency sometime in early 2007, for "health reasons," much like folks did way back in them Soviet Union daze.

In a final attempt to display "integrity and leadership," I imagine that BoyGeorge will appoint someone like, say...Senator Elizabeth Dole. Ah yes, the woman who helped ruin the American Red Cross. You remember Libby's Oprah-like, staged informal chat session with all the friendly folks at the 1996 Republican Convention, don't you? It was sooooooooo realistic, in a kind of unrealistic way. And finally, I look forward to that day in January, 2009, when The Boy limps out of office, stops by Crawford on his way to Kennebunkport, and maybe stops for High Mass, has a taste of The Blood, and won't let go of the communion tray, popping shot after shot of that sacred wine, finally losing it, and running from the cathedral shouting, "The Power of Krist Compelled Me!"

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So, thanks Jack. You're a real pal...(ahem)... WERE a great pal.

____________________
UPDATE: 12:30 p.m., CST ~

Abramoff pleads guilty

In the words of sportscaster Barry Tompkins, "How do you like it? HOW DO YOU LIKE IT?!" Oh ~ somebody PINCH ME! Lookie here at what the LA Times reported a short time ago:

(by LATimes staff writer, Walter F. Roche, Jr.)

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" Abramoff's plea opens up the prospect that he could begin unraveling for prosecutors a web of ties with members of Congress that has for weeks kept officials Washington on edge.

Abramoff would presumably present evidence about favors he provided to some members of Congress and their aides."

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times. All rights reserved. Used here for contextual purposes only.

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Read all about it in the Los Angeles Times.

Whee!...

To The Board of Directors, A.S.P.O.A., and Pioneer Property Management Company, as of Jan. 7th, 2006

2006-01-02T20:32:00.000-08:00

It's January 7th, do you know what day it is? I'm terribly sorry, but time's run out for any friendly negotiations regarding the ASPOA's 2005 Annual Meeting ballot, especially concerning the "ASSESSMENT" that, for the first time in Apache Shores' history, was billed on a PER LOT basis, rather than a PER IMPROVED LOT basis. From today forward, please remember that any communication between The Apache Shores Property Owners Association and/or Pioneer Property Management Company MUST be lawyer-to-lawyer, as far as dealing with yours truly is concerned.

Forgot to bookmark the old Apache Shores Warrior page? NO PROBLEM!

THE APACHE SHORES WARRIOR

Thank yew...

HMonk

UPDATE, DECEMBER, 2006: After reviewing the assessment by the ASPOA on a "per lot" basis with my attorney, I've discovered that that the vote to change from "per improved lot" as clearly spelled out years prior to the above-mentioned vote on a "per lot" basis may indeed be what is legally referred to as a "contractual issue." If that's true, and it carries any weight, there may still be a chance to throw the "per lot assessment" right out the back door, and I'll be more than glad to stand there and keep the door open...JW

___________

(note: original post date changed to make "Jack Splat" listed as most recent)

Frank Rich Wishes You & Yours the Very Best of Holidaze Wishes!

2005-12-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

I knew it, I knew it! I've been keeping my fingers crossed, and sure enough, Frank Rich wrote on OpEd piece for the New York Times, exposing the "myth of the war on Christmas." Not only that, but the excerpt below includes a text link to Michelle Goldberg's piece at www.salon.com. Who could ask for more than that on this, the holiest of days? Now, I ask you ~ WHO?!

Happy reading, as the kidz say...

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(From Frank Rich's column, today)

Secularists, Jews, mainline Protestants and all the other grinches failed utterly to take Kriss Kringle down. Except at those megachurches that canceled services today rather than impede their flocks' giving and gorging, Christmas is alive and well everywhere in America. Last night NBC even rolled the dice and broadcast "It's a Wonderful Life" in prime time. With courage reminiscent of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's defiance of Stalin, the network steadfastly refused to redub the final scene's cries of "Merry Christmas!" with the godless "Happy holidays!"

As Michelle Goldberg wrote last month in her definitive debunking for Salon, there was in fact no war on Christmas, but rather "a burgeoning myth of a war on Christmas." Most of the grievances cited by Christmas's whiniest protectors - red and green banned from residents' wardrobes in Michigan, "Silent Night" censored in Wisconsin - were either anomalous idiocies or suburban legends. The calls for boycotts against chain stores with heathen holiday trees lost their zing when it turned out that even George and Laura Bush's Christmas card had called for a happy "holiday season."

Entire Frank Rich column, "I Saw Jackie Mason Kissing Santa Claus" (requires TimesSelect)

Copyright 2005, The New York Times Co. All rights reserved

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Oh, how I hope John Fibson and every talking head at Faux Snewz chokes on their egg nog today!

And a Merry UnChristmas to All You UnChristians
thanx 4 the pic, Val

Mary Christmas & A Hippie New Ear, Everyone!

2005-12-18T05:41:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. Ya got yer basic Pat Robertson, yer Bill O'Really, and yer basic John Fibson at Faux Snewz tellin' us ALL about that nasty "war on Christmas." Did you happen to catch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart last week? When he showed O'Really's claim that both Plano, Texas schools and Saginaw, Michigan had banned Christmas colors or some other equally clueless thing? It got so bad in Plano that the superintendent of schools had to call all the parents to let them know Buh-Bill was talkin' out of his hat! And I hear it was Big News in Saginaw! Fake News...kinda like The Daily Show - Now THAT'S! what I call the XXX-Mas Spirit ~

From Nicholas Kristof's OpEd piece today, here's a prime quote from Mr. Bill:

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(I'm tempted to think that Mr. O'Reilly is actually a liberal plant, meant to discredit conservatives. Think about it. Who would be a better plant than a self-righteous bully in the style of Father Coughlin or Joe McCarthy? What better way to caricature the right than by having Mr. O'Reilly urge on air that the staff of Air America be imprisoned: "Dissent, fine; undermining, you're a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the F.B.I. and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything.")

Kristof's "A Challenge for Bill O'Reilly" (Times Select required)

Copyright 2005, The New York Times Co. All rights reserved

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So, I'll say it...you can't stop me...hell, here I come, dammit ~ MERRY FREAKIN' CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD GESUNDHEIT!

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Are you like me? Would you enjoy copying and pasting some lovely, warm and unfuzzy pictures from the DrugstoreCowboy's "family album" for yourself and your friends? I'll just betcha you are! So, here's a fine, fine, slow to load, but worth every penny, link to one of my favorite, unappreciated Web Humorists ~ we're talkin' fantabulous fotos here! Click your way to:

The Wizard of Whimsy!

...and hang with the Wizard for a few. Might bring a smile to your face. Seeya in 06!

HMonk

HMonk: Sites Worth a Visit

2005-12-01T12:03:00.000-08:00

Alternative News and Forums
AlterNet
Never Give Up (formerly the AlterNet Forums, now located at CafeUtne.org)^
Air America
KOOP radio, Austin (now streaming audio)
Inter Press Service (IPS)
Democracy Now! (also on LinkTV)^
ACLU TV (Freedom Files)
BuzzFlash.com
Austin Chronicle
Liberation Video^
The Village Voice
CJR Daily^
GOP Hypocrite of the Week (from BuzzFlash)
Velvel's Book Outlines, compiled for the TV program "Books of Our Time"

Bloggers
DailyKos
Texas KAOS
firedoglake^
MediaGirl.org^
Moment of Triumph
Campus Progress
Hullabaloo
BopNews
Smirking Chimp
Boing Boing
Remain Calm
Velvel on National Affairs
Talking Points Memo
World O' Crap
The Free Speech Zone
Media Matters
PERRspectives
TomPaine.com
Whiskey Bar
Jeff Barr's Blog^
Writer's Blog
Talk Nation^
C|Net's Music Blog (featuring John Borland)
The Daily Mac (All things Mac, and a whole lot more)

OpEd Columnists, Decent Online Mainstream Newspapers
The Los Angeles Times^
The Houston Chronicle
The Guardian, UK
The Washington Post
Slate (includes email option to daily stories from top newspapers)
NYTimes Columnists
Recommended - Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, and Frank Rich:
UPDATE, OCT. 2005 ~ The NYTimes is now charging you for access to their OpEd pages, rather than allowing
registered users a week's access to their articles.
BBC News, International

Blog Directories, Updated Blog Subjects, Entries of Interest
QuackTrack^
BlogCruiser ^
Technorati^
Blogwise
blogs now
Peek: The Blog of Blogs
BlogHub

Online Activism
The Apollo Alliance^
A.C.L.U.
Equal Exchange
STATS (what's behind the numbers, & who screwed with 'em)
True Majority
The Justice Project.org
Progressive Activism in Austin, TX
FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)
Campus Progress
BuyBlue.org | Vote With Your Wallet!
National Priorities Project
Center For American Progress
Save Our Springs Alliance (SOS)^
MoveOn.org
act for change (from Working Assets)
BlogPac.org
Veterans Against the Iraq War (VAIW) (direct link to Kevin Benderman's "A Matter of Conscience")
The Apache Shores Warrior (a local citizen watchdog Web site, Travis County, TX)

Non-Profits
Southern Poverty Law Center
Tolerance.org
The Intelligence Report
The Center for Public Integrity
Doctors Without Borders
ReligiousTolerance.Org^
Driftwood Wildlife Association

Streaming audio, live political events
C-Span

Music, PBS, BBC, NPR news and entertainment
KUT FM
CBC.ca
Frontline^
Sundance DocDay
Weekend Edition (link from Oregon PB to both Sat & Sun programs

Online Research
The Internet Archive^
The Center for Constitutional Rights
Columbia School of Journalism (Who Owns What)
Cornell's Legal Information Institute
Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC)

Language, Translation Helpers
Merriam-Webster Online
Michael Quinion's World Wide Words
Language Tools from Google
Babel Fish Translation
Blue Pencil Online

The Blogosphere's Stock Exchange
BlogShares

Stocks to Watch
The Heathen Monk

Tech News
c|net news
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Wired
Red Herring's Tech Business Blog
Broadcasting & Cable (has one fine blog, too)

Humor
The Onion
The White House
Daily Show w/Jon Stewart
The Beast
eBaum's World
The Wizard of Whimsy
The Frown
StrangeCosmos

Indie Publishers, Record Labels, Photo Exchanges, etc.
Intervention Magazine: War, Politics, Culture
Chelsea Green Publishing
stock.xchng*
Jaded Bum Music (editorial & link to file-sharing articles, 2003-2005)
Utne Magazine and the forums at Cafe Utne

Web browsers
Firefox (the" firefox.com" domain was granted to Mozilla from Kevin Karpenske)
iCab

Blog News Readers
Atom Enabled

Site Design, Scripts for Bloggers
RSS Validator
Motet Conferencing Software
Dynamic Drive
The Template Factory

*the "on the rox" pic & hidden link to "Sites Worth a Visit" comes from the stock.xchng collection of xtapis
__________

| Home |
_______________

(note: Please ignore the posting date of this entry. It's intended simply to ensure that "Sites Worth a Visit" always appears below the list of archives).

Please note and comply with any and all copyright terms and policies you find at each of the Web sites shown above.
Finally, in order to maximize disk space, certain entries are deleted after a suitable amount of time has passed. For example, the American Amnesty International conference held in Austin months ago, and International Women's Day from March of this year, have been deleted. This in no way detracts from the blog owner's support for either group or annual celebration.

Blood in the Water

2005-11-02T00:44:00.000-08:00

Harriet Miers. Scooter Libby. The Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal. The closed session held in the Senate. Katrina. The war in Iraq. The no-bid contracts abroad and domestic, with Halliburton and its subsidiaries. The sealing of records by BoyGeorge going back through the Clinton administration, and including his father's administration. Karl Rove, sometimes referred to as "Official A". Tom "Smiley" DeLay. Bill Frist and his family-owned HCA stock, suddenly sold before the stock took a nosedive. The Ohio vote in 2004. Hell, the 2000 election. Yes, there's plenty of blood in the water, and that means tongues will begin to loosen in D. C. A town without pity even Gene Pitney wouldn't want to live in.

Beyond the glee of everyone who's been screaming against the wind for five years, is a deep sadness for this country, and a call for authentic accountability from an arrogant, sometimes ignorant, and certainly Imperial presidency. The unraveling has begun. Even Tom DeLay, who must believe he's playing it smart by politicizing the judge who is now removed, has done his own defense a disservice. Travis County operates on a rotating judgeship. DeLay is not guaranteed a friendly judge. And Ronnie Earle, our D.A. for 27 years, is now free to make the same challenge should the newly-appointed judge be a Republican who's given money to any Republican candidate in the past. On top of that, the indictments, both for conspiracy and money laundering, do NOT include all of the facts Earle has at hand. The indictments included only what was necessary to obtain them. If I'm not mistaken, DeLay will not have a right to discovery until a judge has been chosen, and a trial date set. This leaves plenty of time, in a dangerous climate for DeLay and the Republicans, for lifelong civil servants and disgruntled former staffers to make the tough decision to tell the truth about "The Hummer." His tactics may well backfire, and I hope to GAWD they will!

Say what you will. Even though this Drugstore Cowboy has made the biggest mess, both at home and abroad, of any president I can recall, and in a mere five years, even with a minority Party just now starting to grow a pair, our constitution doesn't like to have the fundamental separation of powers distorted for very long. And distorted, diminished, and spat upon they have been. The congressional powers of oversight are not to be treated like a "quaint" clause from the Geneva Conventions. They exist to root out and throw out people like Libby, Rove, DeLay, Frist, Cheney, and yes...The Boy. This is what D.C. lives for. They've seen them all come and go. And the old-timers know how to create, feed, and finish off a good bloodbath.

Here we go!

Tales From the Archives

2005-10-22T04:33:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, you might find me dusting off an old entry or two so that you don't have to go rummaging through the months and months of topical entries. Or, if you'd like, you can always scroll down to the the Technorati box on the left (under the moon), click "this blog" and type in a word from an old entry you remember. Technorati is so nice, they'll take you to a page that should have the entry's name among others, and a single click will bring you back here to the home of the mean old Heathen Monk. Here's a couple of my faves you might have missed:

There's No Escape From Tolerance
A Private Housewarming

What could be simpler, more convenient, and extree sheshull than that? I ask you! No, really...I'm asking you...

DEVILISH DETAILS:Are Online Bankers Lawyered Up or Liquored Up?

2005-10-19T19:39:00.000-07:00

Gosh, oh me oh my, but how things seem to be changing! As the new 400 page "Bankruptcy Reform Act" takes hold, the once user-friendly free online banking service I've grown accustomed to has decided to ask me to agree or disagree to a new set of terms, the likes of which I never thought I'd see. Just take a look see at this excerpt:

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Arbitration and Waiver of Jury Trial.

a. Arbitration Provisions.

By opening or maintaining the account, you agree that if a dispute of any kind arises under this Agreement or your use of ***** BankPC or relates to any of your accounts or any transactions involving your accounts, either you or we can choose to have that dispute resolved by binding arbitration. This arbitration provision limits your ability to litigate claims in court and your right to a jury trial. You should review this section carefully. You will not have the right to participate as a class representative or member of any class of claimants for any claim subject to arbitration. Arbitration is usually an informal proceeding in which disputes are decided by one or more neutral arbitrators who receive the evidence at a hearing and then issue a binding ruling in the form of an award. You and we understand that discovery and other procedures in arbitration may be more limited than discovery in court proceedings and that the ability to modify, vacate, or appeal an award by an arbitrator(s) is limited."

-----

Why, they were so nice, or so drunk, they even thought to say this above the scrollable terms of acceptance:

-----

PRIVACY STATEMENT

Access to ***** Bank PC requires your acceptance of the AGREEMENT AND DISCLOSURE STATEMENT FOR ***** Bank PC and the PRIVACY DISCLOSURE, both contained in the box below. These include a provision requiring arbitration of disputes and a waiver of your right to a jury trial, as well as disclosure of a way to opt out of information sharing between our affiliate companies."

-----

Let's take a peek at Amendment VII of The Bill of Rights, shall we?

-----

"Amendment VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."
(and let's not forget Amendment VI either, okayzee wayzee?)

-----

Are these people insane?! Do they actually claim they have the right to ask me, as an American citizen, not simply a consumer, on his way to becoming a peasant like millions of others, to give up a fundamental constitutional right to a trial by jury simply to access my own bank account? YOU BETCHA THEY ARE! Well ~ we'll have none of that, yew ol' bloodsuckers yew...

I actually took the time to call, ask them to flag my recorded conversation, and told the bank exactly how I feel about their attempt to illegally turn the Bill of Rights into their personal toilet paper. I let the bank know that any thoughtful online user might choose to return to automated phone transactions, using a landline of course, for MY privacy rights as opposed to using a cellphone, go back to monthly paper statements ONLY, and increase my FACE TIME with the bank's tellers, thus costing them more money when they have to deal with me, and others of my ilk, you know: THE GREAT UNWASHED!

I further gave the bank a head's up on what's happening at The New York Times online site now that they've decided to charge for access to their OpEd columnists, rather than give registered visitors a week's access to their pages. The number of visits to the NYTimes has dropped dramatically, and that is normally followed by a drop in any company's online advertising revenue. Did my bank want to see an increase in their costs, just to take away a federal protection in order to cover their unconstitutional asses? Time will tell, kidz, time will tell.

I encourage all of you to resist this new and brazen erosion of your rights under our constitution, and when dealing with these assholes, always use (and demand that they use) US mail in order to make sure YOU have certain rights under federal law. And use a landline when talking to these drunken sellers. Do anything and everything the old-timey way, go all low tech on their ass, and see how things develop. These "people" should be ashamed of themselves. Is banking deregulation not enough for them? With insurance arms, and mutual fund arms, and lucrative partnerships with the credit card industry? I guess not. I guess it's back to "under the mattress" and the continued growth of a national gray market of bartering for more and more citizens ~ NOT consumers.

That's my rant and I'm stickin' to it!

Anonymous Comments Feature Turned Off

2005-10-18T23:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry about this, but from now on, I won't accept any anonymous comments. Having had my baptism by fire during the Alternet Forums daze, I can smell the spoofers comin' my way. Now, even though Blogger probably wants you to start your own blog, I believe you can become a registered user, choosing any username you like, and a valid email address. Click the red "B" icon to get started.

If things become a bit difficult again, I'll simply add the emails of known readers to the members' list of this blog. At that point, folks will need to let me know they're for real before they'll be allowed to comment at all.

Thanks,

HMonk

I've Got A Hiatus Hernia

2005-10-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

Hiya kidz,

Sorry I haven't been babbling on lately, but it seems that our species' trashing of the planet these last 200 years or so, as we've grown more and more engorged in our industrial/technological/informational revolutions, has reduced me to more of a recluse than usual these last couple of months. Believe me, it's not that I don't have anything to talk about, it's just that this global human disintegration wears on me a lil' bit, ya know? I promise to do my best to do my duty to GAWD! and my readers, regulars or new "read by" visitors, that I'll be back ~ not in an Arnold kinda way ~ but in my own way, slightly skewed, hopefully informative if not a touch provocative, and readable in the Heathen Monk's manner you've grown accustomed to. Until then, in the words of the late Red Sovine, "Have another cup of coffee and forget about the dime, keep it as a souvenir of Big Joe and the Phantom 309!"

HMonk

Read Dean Velvel's Post or I'll Come Get Ya!

2005-09-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

I love the way Mass. School of Law at Andover's Dean Velvel thinks. He never minces words, and the depth of his blog's posts is evident in each and every entry. The link below will magically move you to one of my Velvel faves from Wednesday, September 07, 2005:

Re: Baghdad And New Orleans; Dishonesty And Honesty; Incompetence And Competence: It’s All Interlinked

Read it once, read it twice. It's so very, very nice. I give it ten gallons of Resistol UP!

I've Got it, Holy Rollovers! An Amendment Banning Divorce!

2005-08-16T01:20:00.000-07:00

They're here, they spread fear, get used to it. After all, Another Justice Sunday wrapped up for the second time around. And so, now knowing full well that marriage is what's holding the very fiber of this nation together, I've come up with an idea to save our threadbare throngs of evildoers from moral turpitude ~ A Constitutional Amendment to ban ALL divorces! Can't you see the host of problems this proposed amendment would solve? Just take a look-see:

~ IN OUR NEW DIVORCELESS DREAMWORLD ~

We Would Bolster the Economic "Recovery!"

Yes, just think of all the revenue we could generate through banning divorce as we rebuild our nation's moral fiber! States could require pastoral counseling whenever there's a hint of trouble in a marriage. Separations would be expensive, and limited to renewable ninety day periods. Any spouse who leaves the bonds of holy matrimony would be charged with criminal abandonment. That would pour more money into our already partially privatized prison system! New county clerks would have to be hired. More lawyers and accountants would be brought into the picture. Oh, it would be a kind of heaven here on earth!

We Could Invite "The Gays" While Remaining True to The Lord!

You won't need to mess around with state amendments on gay marriage. No! Just let them all have the same opportunity to acquire the legal contract of marriage. That way they'll be subject to the same fines and penalties as the rest of the Holy Rollovers, and say, have ya seen their economic demographics? We're talkin' serious money here! Now, if these "abominable ones" can find a "church" that will "sanctify" their contract, who really cares? They're all goin' to Hell anyway, right? No fuss, no muss, just more BigBux ~

We'd Create a Whole New Level of Media Gossip!

Newspapers and local stations, even cable TV need more advertising revenue, doncha think? With a brand new section listing whose wages are being garnished for adultery, and whose marriage is in trouble, or how many ninety day renewals this or that marriage has gone through, we'd have a money maker for sure, and boy howdy, we'd sure be into everybody's business each and every day!

Building a Bridge to the Thirteenth Century!

By staying true to two of the Ten Commandments (don't go a killin' anyone, and don't ya run around on that drunken idiot yer a married to), the murder/suicide rate should go up a bit, but hey, there's always a price to pay for good fiber, moral or oral. We'll be able to stand tall, and begin meetings with our fundamentalist Muslim brothers and sisters, finding that YES! We've got something in common. By God (and Allah, whoever THAT is), as we reweave the Great Moral America it stands to reason that someday, somehow, we'll be able to sit across the table, Baptist and Shiite, shake hands and chuckle together ~ Wahabi?! ~ Whoah Howdy!

So, I hope all of you had fun at Justice Sunday II, and I sure do hope you've been good enough to get YOUR ticket to Heaven. Remember, there's only 144,000 to go around, so be good, be extree good, not for Christ's sake, but for your own, as we return to a better time, the Happy Daze of Holy Rolloverness.

Save The Sperms!

2005-07-31T03:35:00.000-07:00

I've been searching and searching for some way to fit into this faith-based, anti-abortion, "they hate us for our freedom" world BoyGeorge & The Dick have created and promoted for the rest of us. And then it hit me! I thought back to Justice Sunday and the conservative Catholic leader who gave such a stirring speech, especially for a blowhard like him - and realized that the real answer to when life begins is in the very seed of life itself! Praise Gawd!

So, how do we solve this dilemma? Friends, it's so very easy. Write a Constitutional Amendment that BANS VASECTOMIES in all cases (except of course in the event it endangers the man's life), and urge all state legislatures to enact laws making it illegal not only for the male to masturbate, but to engage in nocturnal emissions as well. Yep, you heard me. ARREST WET DREAMERS! After all, spilling the seed of life is a crime, isn't it? Preventing the gift of the seed of life is a crime, isn't it? That's what some people's versions of the Good Book say. Gosh, they must be "right." So join me, won't you, and let's help spread the seed the way the Good Lord intended us to! By marital sex in the missionary position, with only the intention to produce a child. The prostate be damned! The discovery of male puberty be damned! Dirty dreams be damned! Let's all get together and cleanse our perverted society!

It makes perfect sense, doesn't it? I mean, if we can legislate control over a woman's reproductive life, what's to stop us from legislating male fertility? Who says the Engorgement Brigade can't bust into someone's bathroom and arrest a man engaged in flagrant jackoffedness? Or check the sheets of a 13 year old to see if he's broken Gawd's law during the night? We MUST protect the seed!

So please join me in picketing all of those nasty vasectomy clinics, won't you? And parents, send those soiled sheets to the police. Wives and mothers, check those trash bins and look under the bed for soiled socks. Turn your man in. Let's not let another precious drop of life-giving fluid go unmurdered! Just think of the children ~

Join me at seedoflife.nut and help us Save the Sperms. In today's climate of fear and intimidation, it's the right thing to do for real Kristians everywhere!

The Meanest Generation, Part Two

2005-07-10T01:23:00.000-07:00

Bullies Who Whine In Advance of Being Found Out

Let's see here. The ReThugs run the Executive, Legislative, and soon the Judiciary at the federal level. They also have the upper hand at most state levels. Gosh, the bullies are in charge. They've been in charge for the most part since 1994. And in complete charge since 2000. And yet they continue to whine, as if the DemoNerds are persecuting them. Bullshit.

Normally, a bully will back down once he's been dressed down in front of his gang for all to see. This time around, the bullies are whining before they've been properly dressed down. Like a kind of Bully's Preemptive Pulpit. As for the press, we have a lazy, frightened, corporate mainstream media who not only lack the backbone to demand answers to tough questions, they've failed to catch BoyGeorge one-on-one in any unscripted moments. Moments which would reveal the true idiocy of his lack of knowledge concerning both domestic and foreign affairs.

So, what to do, what to do? For all of the activist groups involved in exposing the truth I say Hats Off to all of you. To all of the protest groups I say the same. But you're factionalized. You've diluted your message to the point of being unheard above the hollering hacks. Which brings me back to my own personal opinion.

Let the Bums Dig Their Own Grave.

Promote and exploit the moderate fissure in the ReThuglican Party.

Spread the truth in concise, easy to understand terms prior to 2006.

Demand that the Democrats grow a pair between now and 2006.

Promote the growth of local and state rebellion against absurd federal laws (as in Utah and "No Child Left Behind").

In my opinion, the only nonviolent way to kick these assholes out of office is to achieve these measures, and to break the back of incumbency, whether by matching their war chests, or temporarily imposing term limits until such a time as the electorate re-engages to the point of voting once again on a regular basis, from the local to the state to the federal levels.

Finally, listing every absurd claim by this government coupled with a real solution, item by item is necessary to stop the "Party of No" claims by The Boy & The Dick. Remind us all that the Party in power introduced the first tax cut during wartime in the history of civilization. Knock down the old saw that says "Better to fight them over there than to have to fight them over here." Guess what? We've already been attacked over here. Remember? And please, please don't let these fools continue to try and tie September 11th to Iraq. Use Frontline's "The War Behind Closed Doors" with old interviews featuring Perle and others back when they were so sure of themselves. Pull no punches. If necessary, shut down the Senate until the people demand action on their behalf. Then introduce practical bills designed to promote mulitlateral cooperation between intelligence, law enforcement, interpreters, and special forces to identify and neutralize all of the various small home-grown and Al Qaeda-aligned cells across the globe.

Our diplomats and foreign service personnel must be beefed up in order to accomplish these goals. Appointing hard-nosed anti-diplomats flies directly in the face of what is practically necessary to make real, long-term progress. It should be obvious to all but The Boy's team that what he and his buddies are doing is the exact opposite of what needs to be done. So spread the word, tamp down the tricky, cart before the horse whining, and expose the bullies while presenting real, practical solutions following each lie's exposure. Do it on the floors of the House and Senate. Lord knows the media won't do it for you. And remember, 2006 is right around the corner. Moderates? Stand up to the bullies. Truth tellers? Couple solutions with the exposure of all the betrayals of the American people. Voters? Demand paper ballots...and VOTE!

The Meanest Generation, Part One

2005-06-08T18:31:00.000-07:00

How We Got to This Point

Beginning with the Moral Majority and other groups during the Reagan years, Evangelical and Charismatic Christian groups became important voting blocks and advocacy groups for pet issues from anti-abortion, anti-gay, "family issues," and a return to a fundamental Christian interpretation of the Bible. They found a powerful home in the Republican Party, and created a strong grassroots campaign to take over school boards, local politics, state legislatures, and to find, promote, and pressure conservative members of Congress in an effort to increase their view of America's identity. They suffered a setback during the Clinton first term, but found new friends and energy following Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America."

Now that the conservative wing of the Republican Party controls the executive branch, and both houses of Congress, not to mention inroads into the makeup of our federal judiciary, the pet issues of these folks are being pushed into the public eye in spite of many more demanding issues, from domestic economic problems, personal freedoms, and foreign policy decisions. They believe this is their time to call in all of their favors.

Compound this powerful force with the decade and a half struggle of the NeoCon and PNAC's agenda for preemptive war and a Grand Gamble to impose democracy, American style, across the world, and we find a hornet's nest of divisive domestic battles and reckless foreign policy run more by the Defense Department than the State Department. In effect, we have squandered all of the good will of the world following September 11th in favor of pre-conceived notions born long before that tragedy. As the world watched on in horror, this fusion of Charismatics and NeoCons rammed their beliefs down the public's throat, calling anyone who disagreed unpatriotic, even anti-American, and succeeded in branding anyone who disagreed with them as liberal, almost communist traitors to their own country. While this branding took hold via cable snewz channels and conservative newspapers, the mainstream media seemed to lay down, repeating the propaganda they'd been spoonfed by these folks, lazily regurgitating the unfounded claims of radical right attitudes to our country and the world in general.

So much of what we were told before the Iraq War has been found to be untrue, outright lies, deception, and the abuse of our armed services for purposes of fulfilling untested concepts by the same people (Cheney, Powell, and others) who had all the experience of the first Gulf War, that the depth of betrayal by these folks in power is both unprecedented and reckless to the point of abuse we haven't seen since Richard Nixon.

And the saddest thing about it all?

WE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER
-----

What lessons were unlearned?

Vietnam

Watergate

CIA Abuses revealed in the 1970's

Garnering the union vote, then squashing PATCO

The Savings & Loan collapse

The massive foreclosure of family farms

Outdated, impossible, bloated defense programs

Undoing the surplus of the Clinton years

Corporate and Investment Bank abuse unseen since the early 20th century

Cutting taxes on the rich during wartime, a first in the history of civilization

Going to war with Iraq in the face of its weakness, division into three parts, with no-fly zones and sanctions.
A country with no air force. A country obviously not in a position to invade neighboring countries. A secular dictatorship, yet a sovereign nation. Why not North Korea? Oops - they've got nukes and a huge army. Why not Iran? Gosh, they'd been demonstrating that young people were desperate for reform, but their mullahs and battle-tested army posed a problem.

The list goes on and on, but the bottom line is that today's leaders lived through all of these lessons, and yet decided not to take them into consideration, opting instead to ram their agenda through, squashing any debate, calling the UN irrelevant, calling France and Germany "Old Europe," and alienating tens of millions around the world who had uniquely demonstrated against the war BEFORE the war ever got off the ground. They should've known better, but it seems they couldn't care less.

-----

What can be done to stop these folks from doing any more damage? To slow their imperial desires and begin to rebuild our diplomatic corps, working through the next generation to repair America's reputation across the world? That's the subject of part two of "The Meanest Generation." Please watch for an email alert when part two has been completed. Until then, keep your fingers crossed and your eyes open. Perhaps it's not too late to begin unraveling this insane steamroller we're all blamed for creating (as far as the world is concerned), and work towards building our next generation of leaders inspired to bring America back into the community of nations as an honest broker, involved in improving the lot of lesser nations, believing in the interdependence of all countries, and sensitive to the needs of others. I believe it's our only hope for any positive, mutual existence with this diverse yet polarized world we've created in three short years of arrogant, short-sighted, cold war cloning thanks to BoyGeorge, The Dick, and all their buddies seemingly unconcerned with the thoughtful opinions of anyone who dares disagree with their view of the "New American Century."

Turning Newsweek into Snewzweek

2005-05-18T03:25:00.000-07:00

Poking around for an analysis of the Newsweek Periscope piece on Gitmo interrogators allegedly flushing copies of the Koran down the toilet in order to demoralize prisoners, and the subsequent fueling of fundamental fires by Al Jazeera, Pakistan's government and others that exploded into the riots in Afghanistan, I found SusanHu's entry at DailyKos. Here, laid out for all to see, is the confused, after-the-fact attempt to knock down the story by the same folks who brought you the abuse at Abu Ghraib, the secret "renditions" in third countries of prisoners, and the smearing of fake menstrual blood by female soldiers in order to both entice and dehumanize prisoners.

Hu's piece links to General Myers' statement directly contradicting Newsweek's effect on the Afghan situation:

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Afghan Riots Not Tied to Report on Quran Handling, General Says

Army investigating allegations of mishandling at Guantanamo Bay facility

By Jacquelyn S. Porth
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington – The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says a report from Afghanistan suggests that rioting in Jalalabad on May 11 was not necessarily connected to press reports that the Quran might have been desecrated in the presence of Muslim prisoners held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Air Force General Richard Myers told reporters at the Pentagon May 12 that he has been told that the Jalalabad, Afghanistan, rioting was related more to the ongoing political reconciliation process in Afghanistan than anything else.

[from USINFO.STATE.GOV]

---

So how is it that days and days went by before anyone challenged Newsweek's story? Isn't it a little bit strange that the trusted source backed down only after pressure had been applied by both government and media competitors? And how nakedly Putin-like do you have to be in order to stand before the press, as Mr. Scotty did, and basically tell Newsweek what they need to write in order to make BoyGeorge happy? It not only smells fishy, the stink is coming from folks who have no credibility when it comes to playing by the rules with prisoners around the world - our government.

What bothers me most is the fact that Newsweek buckled under the pressure. It's not even a new story. Hu quotes from the Washington Post, giving us a little bit of the back story on Holy Flushing:

---

Earlier this year, lawyers representing Kuwaitis held at Guantanamo said their clients told them that military police threw at least one Koran into a toilet. A released Afghan named Ehsannullah told The Washington Post in 2003 that U.S. soldiers taunted him by doing the same thing. Three Britons released last year also said Korans were put into toilets by U.S. guards.

[WPost story by John Mintz, May 14th]

---

Maybe The Boy, The Dick, and Dr. Bill would be satisfied if Newsweek put Michael Savage on its cover, with the caption "Mr. Misunderstood" in order to rehabilitate his "reputation" like Time tried to do with Ann Coulter. Newsweek should show some backbone, their source should come forward and tell the truth, and the government should be told to shut up when it comes to "recommending" what ANY news source prints. As for Newsweek's competitors and the cable snewz channels, they've milked their half-baked take on the story until it no longer matters who said what, how the riots came about, and how arrogant and destructive it is for a sitting president's spokesman to tell a news magazine what they should write.

If the past is any teacher, I suspect the Newsweek story and more is probably true. And the only way to draw a line in the sand in this case is to force their source's hand, re-investigate the charges mentioned in the Post and elsewhere, challenge Gen. Myers on his statement pointing away from Newsweek as the cause of the riots, and stand up to this theocratic monolith of a government before what little bit of real news we now get becomes nothing more than a collection of Beltway press releases. Who knows? Maybe we can find some privates and reservists to court martial in an effort to show our "respect" for human dignity - just like we did with Lt. Calley in Vietnam.

-----

Update, May 27, 2005

From the BBC: Seems the FBI is leaking drop by drop info corroborating Newsweek's story. Who woulda thunk it, huh?

---

The White House rounded on the magazine [Newsweek], saying its report had done "lasting damage" to the US image in the Muslim world.

But the FBI documents made public on Wednesday, after a request from the human rights group American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), show that such allegations had been made at Guantanamo Bay.

[from BBC News]

---

Update, June 5, 2005

USA Today, reporting on both the Pentagon's and the FBI's investigations into Koran abuse at Gitmo provided this unconfirmed report:

---

In one of the unconfirmed cases, a detainee in April 2003 complained to FBI and other interrogators that guards "constantly defile the Koran." The detainee alleged that in one instance a female military guard threw a Koran into a bag of wet towels to anger another detainee, and he also alleged that another guard said the Koran belonged in the toilet and that guards were ordered to do these things.

[from USA Today]

---

Quotes from BBC, The Washington Post Co., USA Today, and USAInfo.Gov are assumed to be the property of their appropriate copyright owners, and are used here for contextual purposes only.

Again, Let the Radical Republicans Dig Their Own Hole

2005-05-11T16:33:00.000-07:00

Frist and the nuclear option. Cornholyn and the Real ID Act. DeLay, the Ethics Committee, and Ronnie Earle's investigation in Travis County. The nationalization of the "No Child, Except Those Who Hurt Our Graduation 'Figures' Left Behind Act."
And many more pet issues of the radical right ReThugs' long-held agenda intended to punish the poor, squeeze and make impotent the middle class, dismantle Social Security, and through Frist's nuclear option, open the door to up or down votes on the re-nominated federal judges, thus preparing for an easy procedure to pack the Supreme Court as the Supremes begin retiring.

As hideous as all these scenarios look, I see a possible rebellion of the States, for example Utah, who seems willing to turn its back on "No Child" in order to stop the teaching of tests and forged graduation rates while giving up federal funding in the face of no evidence that preparation for college has improved under the new approach. In fact, the underlying strategy behind "No Child" may indeed be an attempt to break the teachers' unions, promote vouchers and private tutoring companies with no regulatory oversight. What does this mean for the future?

STATES REBELLION AGAINST A RUNAWAY EXECUTIVE, HOUSE, AND NOW SENATE STEAMROLLER OVER ISSUES HISTORICALLY LEFT TO THE STATES.

The rebellion of the States is a most promising development in the ongoing struggle for common sense on the ground with communities grappling to salvage what has always been their right to govern, along with county and city governments, their own school districts, drivers license regulations, school curriculums, and even control over voting procedures. The computerized privatization of voting is a direct threat to States' rights to control voting procedures in their own precincts. All of this, in my judgment, is fertile ground for a growing rebellion of State governments, standing up to the overreaching power grab of the one Party control of the executive and congressional branches of federal government, now trying to politicize the judiciary, destroy the Senate's historical role as a reflective body holding the House back from a fevered cave-in to mob mentality majority manhandling of the country's legislative decision making.

So let the suckers overreach. Let them pass this long-awaited list of UnAmerican grab-ass for the radical right's conservative, Charismatic Christians' vision of "values" and the "culture of life." As we head for 2006, if the Democrats will do their job of fighting these Bills and educating the public, and if honest advocates for the rights of citizens make enough noise, the mid-term elections should backfire on these short-sighted bellowing blowhards who believe in unbelievable deficits, tax cuts for the rich, unprecedented expenses for a war without end in Iraq, and the further destabilization of foreign relationships, from Russia's help for Syria, the Palestinians, and Iran, not to mention China's clever play to undercut our manufacturing base, along with the outsourcing and offshore corporate tax dodges.

As the chickens come home to roost, and foreign governments take action to protect themselves from American domination, our weakened position in the world coupled with bizarre and unnecessary legislation at home focused on the right's pet issues may indeed bring about a States' Rebellion against the federal government on many issues. Without a strong public reaction, outside of the
Schiavo case and Social Security, only the States can cause real trouble for the Bush agenda. So let the games begin. Take this lame duck and stop him in his tracks. Pay attention to home constituents, and break ranks in order to get re-elected. Show us the power of moderation in the face of these overconfident "lawmakers" and let the States tell the feds to go to Hell. I see no other alternative to stopping these zealots. But stop them we must, State by State, issue by issue, working poor and middle class against the absurd expenses of war coupled with wealthy tax cuts, ungodly deficits, and dangerous foreign policy. Otherwise, we stand the chance of simply giving up power to a monolithic one-Party government that rules the diversity of America with the myopic "vision" of 1950's attitudes and Charismatic Christian oppression. Let 'em continue to show their ass, and stand up to them, State by State. That, along with the upcoming elections, seem to be the only hope to put the fear of "God" into these morons' minds. And fear for their own survival is the best tool to force compromise in the face of tyranny.

"Justice Sunday" - Let the Blowhards Blow Themselves Down

2005-04-18T22:29:00.000-07:00

You might have seen or heard about the Jimmy Swaggart-style mega-church gathering planned for April 24th called Justice Sunday. Besides the nice blown-up pic thanks to DailyKos, you might enjoy reading what the New York Times Editorial Board has to say about Billy Bob Frist's Religious War. Yes, the "medical doctor" who looked at a few minutes of old videotape and declared that Terri Schiavo wasn't brain-dead, the Sawbones Senator who couldn't admit that HIV can't be transmitted through tears or sweat, will be one of the speakers (by video), along with that moral man of WaterGate, Chuck Colson, at this beloved Convention of The Believers! Again I say, let 'em holler! Go, Bill, Go! Show your ignorant ass to the entire American electorate!

Our country was taken away from us when the Supremes short-circuited the 2000 election. They cemented their power with the mid-term elections of 2002. And with the help of privatized voting and the "mysterious" voting results from Ohio in 2004, completed the capture of government by the Corporations, for the Corporations, and of the major Institutional Corporate Shareholders. But with the newly-found swagger of The Boy following his election in 2004, we've seen a pre-planned overreaching that warms my heart.

Social Security DeForm: People don't get it, don't like it, don't believe The Boy's bullshit.

Terri Schiavo: People didn't fall for the grandstanding play made by those who would hold the King James Bible up with one hand while wiping their bottoms with the Constitution.

Activist Judges: Anyone who checks will find that over 90 per cent of BoyGeorge's nominated judges have been approved, unlike the stonewalling during the Clinton years, and that the somewhere between 7 and 10 judges he's already nominated are now up for re-nomination in order to stop the commie-pinko judges ruining this Christian country!

Personally, I hope everyone who digs for the truth will continue to work towards exposing these idiots for what they are. But the facts since 2000 show that many Americans have fallen for the branding and the lying rhetoric of these blowhards. However, when issues begin to hit home, like the Schiavo case and Social Security, people sit up and take notice. Hey, this might affect MY life! You betcha! So keep on with your agenda, Bill and Tom and all you holier-than-thou hypocrites. It ain't workin' - and to me, that's a good sign. A very good sign. How many Americans in the "red states" have watched while Wal-Mart destroyed their town squares, building outside the city limits to avoid paying taxes? How many have watched Big AgriBusiness put them out of business? How many have heard the empty words of "prosperity" while they and their spouses work 2 and 3 jobs, lose their pensions and their health insurance? Might I suggest many more "red staters" than your polls might demonstrate?

So, as progressives keep up the good fight, and a few folks like Barbara Boxer actually stand up against the thugs now in charge of YOUR government, I say let the BlowHards Blow Themselves Up! In my textaplay "The Day Karl Slimed Krist" I included a scene with a battle stations alert coupled with a big red sign above the stage that read "DEMOCRATS ARE THE AGENTS OF THE DEVIL!." By golly, that was set in 2006. But here's Doctor Bill calling Democrats "against people of faith" in 2005. Why must we "choose between public service and faith in Christ?" We mustn't, Bill. We don't have to, Bill. This country is not yet the theocracy you obviously dream of. And face it, soon there will be no white majority in this country. The melting pot will indeed be made up of many ethnic, religious, and diverse individuals and families. Your cry is that of a dangerous, wounded animal. And that fact is one to be treated with respect. Respect for one's own self preservation. So go right ahead and holler to the rooftops! Christ is on your side! The Christ you've defined and claim to speak on behalf of. In my opinion, Christ would be ashamed to know that fools like you are taken seriously by anyone looking for an honest answer in their own quest for faith. So enjoy "Just Us Sunday," Bill. And keep those radical right hot buttons coming! They serve only to expose your own empty shell of a public servant who's sold out so completely he's become the laughing stock of BOTH the medical community AND members of Congress who still know how to hold two conflicting thoughts in their minds at the same time.

Going Radical to Make the Right Seem Reasonable

2005-04-10T13:21:00.000-07:00

I've been offline for more than a week. With the AlterNet Forums closing down, and the potential splintering of what I consider to be an extremely valuable source for research, debate, and links to other sources for testing the voracity of arguments made by our regular and new users, I threw up my hands at yet another Web community's possible demise in the face of budgetary decisions made by the Independent Media Institute based, in my opinion, on ignoring the value of this community's contributions to the examination of ongoing issues, as well as its vibrant social community, sent packing in its search for holding the community together as they tried to find a new home for the Forums.

Well, the kidz DID FIND A NEW HOME FOR THE OLD ALTERNET FORUMS, and you'll find it here: NEVER GIVE UP. But enough about that. Before I begin my own search for the holier-than-thou hypocrites' latest claims to the late Pope's embrace of the "culture of life," allow me to posit what may be the strategy behind the recent talking points travesty by Pete Domenici, Scott McClellan, and others, in their attempt to capitalize on the 24/7 weeklong coverage of the Pope's funeral on the heels of the Terri Schiavo case.

Claiming "Freedom" and "The Culture of Life" as the late Pope's legacy in the face of his opposition to the death penalty and unequivocal rejection of the War in Iraq.

Tom DeCay's claims of "murder...being committed against a defenseless American citizen" (Mrs. Schiavo), his threat to "activist judges" in light of his growing ethics charges, and John Cornholyn's amazing claim that a criminal rape/murder trial in Atlanta that ended with murder was proof that activist judges build up an urge to commit violence against judges, present the Radical perspective, in my opinion, as a way to energize their agenda for the "right to lifers" tossing them some red meat to further demonize the liberals in Congress. Perhaps it works this way: In light of the Schiavo Case and the convoluted perversion of the Pope's life's work, they portray an out of control judiciary as we move toward re-nominating the unqualifed, extreme conservative judges BoyGeorge plans to re-nominate this year. And by doing so the radical right has positioned itself to negotiate with the "compassionate, moderate" conservatives who pretend to bring a reasonable selection process to the judicial confirmation hearings. Thus making the "culture of life" nominees seem more reasonable to the electorate, while installing already defeated nominees in a more thoughtful light. This ploy to go radical, followed by a seemingly sensible compromise in order to push these ideologues into our judicial system is an effective media play just waiting for Delay, Frist, and others' pontification on the "rigid" agenda of the "liberal elites" and their attempt to stop "honest judges" from taking the bench.

RADICALIZE - SOFTEN THE POISON - BRING IN THE REASONABLE RIGHT - WING "MODERATES," AND GIVE THE APPEARANCE OF COMPROMISE, WHILE ATTACKING THE DEMOCRATS AS OBSTRUCTIONISTS FOR THE GREATER GOOD.

It's an old trick. It stinks. The threats by DeCay and Cornholyn border on treason, and the American people need to see through this cynical game by a small minority of pro-lifers and the fundamental Evangelical/Charismatic base the Republicans are playing to like the whores they are. My advice? Click the "Sites Worth a Visit" icon, stream C-Span, check out Bill Frist and Tom DeLay, The Lord's Lifesavers, keep an ear to the proceedings, and start an email swarm as well as pressure on your Senators as we move through this second-time-around nomination of judges who've already proved through their records that they hold a firm belief in the "culture of life." If not, women's rights, abortion rights, and the very ability to dissent against this bizarre movement to the far right may become a lost cause.

AlterNet Closes Down the Forums

2005-04-02T03:48:00.000-08:00

In a surprising move, AlterNet has decided to shut down the AlterNet Forums and go instead with a story-by-story comments-based system for visitor interaction. After years of building a unique community with the Forums, one that continues to be cited by others across the Web, this move will effectively short-circuit an undervalued part of AlterNet that's gone unnoticed by many. As one of the hosts of the Forums, I've been privileged to see them in action, sometimes in real time, and in those rare moments, the Forums have had a real and immediate effect on people's lives. It's been an honor for me to have been a small part of the equation there. Valossa, my original sponsor, remains a good friend and confidante. Don Freidkin, our community manager, is a flat-out genius as far as I'm concerned. Tom Elliot, Trina, Mik, Cristina, Dori, Scoop, ZoeZoe, Luaz, and everyone I've "met" at the Forums have touched my life during these last couple of years there.

We're hoping to find some server space for a kind of "Best Of the Forums" in the coming days, as well as a way to archive the existing Forums so that they won't eventually turn into dead links for all of you who've linked to various posts as references in your own research. In the event you have any trouble finding what remains of our community, please feel free to bookmark this page and return here for any updated links and directions as soon as I have a clear idea of the community's future.

Finally, thanks to AlterNet, in spite of my position against closing the Forums. You made them happen in the first place. Your new feature, Peek - the Blog of Blogs, and the coming Echo Chamber, will certainly enhance your presence on the Web. And you continue to be the premier clearinghouse for alternative news, as well as thoughtful editorials from the progressive Wing of the Web. The very best of luck to you.

Tranny (aka HMonk)
_______________

The AlterNet Forums Have Moved
The new home for our community is now located at CafeUtne.org. The Forum's title is "Never Give Up forum - Working to fix the world." You'll find it here: ALTERNET FORUMS NEW HOME. You may have to re-register (free) in order to post comments as before at AlterNet. Hopefully you've bookmarked this page in order to find our community again. Please email any community members who may have had trouble finding our new home. Thanks.

Fun With History! The Day Karl Slimed Krist

2005-03-24T08:07:00.000-08:00

(for background on my take on the Schiavo case, scroll down to the previous entry, or simply click here)

As we approach Easter, let me preface the following textaplay with a clear example of what I mean when I refer to "authentic, private Christians." I have in mind the generosity of spirit, the humble yet humorous honesty, and the keenly observant but never overbearing nature of someone like my friend Mel Holt. His name shouldn't ring a bell with you. He's never tried to promote himself as a pundit for the Prince of Peace. Mel is a songwriter, the former accountant for a non profit foundation, and co-founder of the independent record label, Step One Records (SOR). The label has since changed hands several times, eventually falling into bankruptcy. But when Mel made things happen, recording artists like Ray Price, Buddy Emmons, Floyd Cramer, Clinton Gregory, and others released records on SOR, many with a "Mel song" or two thrown in as an album cut.

When Mel's health began to fail awhile back, the people he had touched were hard to find, outside of his wife, family, and a few close friends. Many people who had profited from Mel's generosity never paid him a visit in the hospital or nursing home, never bothered to repay a penny of their longstanding debts to him, never threw him a bone after having exploited his good nature and his pocketbook during the days when Mel worked at SOR, even as his wife struggled to keep things afloat during his prolonged illness. Happily, the last I heard, Mel and his wife had moved to the home of another family member, and he's doing the best he can to gather his exceptional human spirit and find a little peace during his final days. His life's example is that of a true Christian. One who understands and follows what perhaps is Christ's most valuable contribution - the bone-deep softening of the hardball monotheism of his time through forgiveness, redemption, and the availability of his god's teachings to everyone, no matter how meager their station in life. Mel is a Christian. An "authentic, private" Christian.

A good resource for any thoughtful Christian curious to search beyond the dogma is The Joseph Campbell Foundation. (recommended starter reading: The Power of Myth, and Reflections on the Art of living: A Joseph Campbell Companion)

Now, on with the show!

The Day Karl Slimed Krist (a textaplay by the Heathen Monk)

[From the Playbill]

The Players:

Karl Rover (corn-fed, self-satisfied, comfortable behind the throne)

Karen Howard-Hughes (no-nonsense, tough as they come, humorless outside her private circle of friends)

Grover Norquit (famous for his work trying to kill bipartisanship at both federal and state levels)

Charles Jarbiz (head of USA Nixed, a hardball propaganda wing of the ReThuglican Party)
~~

It's December, 2006. The mid-term elections haven't gone well for the Republicans in either chamber of Congress. While holding onto a slim majority in the Senate, seats were lost, and in the House all of the targeted Democrats won re-election, and their Party picked up some unexpected new seats as well. White House strategists are in crisis mode. There's a legacy to protect. There's a base to lose. There's a lot of dirty work that needs to be done. And that's where Karl shines. After all, he's cut from the same cloth as pre-cancerous Lee Atwater. And Karen? The UnWarm and Fuzzless? She's all bidnez, and she knows Texas politics like the back of her hand. They meet in one of many "safe rooms" in the bowels of The Old Executive Office Building
------------------------------------
KARL: You ready to do this?
KAREN: Ready as I'll ever be.
KARL: Okay, lemme see that list of archaeologists - ya know, the one we talked about?
KAREN: Gotcha. Here 'tis. All grant-hungry, registered Democrats, and a few of 'em from those hippie schools in California.
KARL: Great, friggin' great!

(Karl looks over the list and the attached synopses of each person's grant application, while Karen pulls out her personal day planner and makes some notes. Karl then checks the names of several people on the list)

KARL: Let's try to go with one of these boys from California. We need to couple "California liberal" with "registered Democrat" if we're gonna make things stick. And of course, we've gotta go with an ongoing dig. Don't have time to start some new search for antiquities. It'd smell fishy anyway...
KAREN: I agree. I've got the grad student lined up for us. You know, the one who'll help the professor with his new "discovery." He'll plant the "scroll" at one of the sites on our list, discover it, hand it over to the professor, and then give us a media-friendly testimonial after the "forgery's" been made public - I believe we've got that scheduled for news cycle 3.
KARL: Does he have an honest face?
KAREN: Pure as the driven snow.
KARL: Okay. Let's see here. Our friends have already begun "renditioning" the Iraqi Christian scholar who lost his brother when their shop was burned down in Baghdad. He'll be our talking points translator and scroll scribe.
KAREN: Check.
KARL: And Grover and Chuck are chompin' at the bit to roll this sucker out. Now, after a lot of this and that, we've decided to go with the "Mormon Model" for "authenticity." That Hoffman kid had some balls, didn't he?
KAREN: Bigger'n Billy Sol Estes!
KARL: (chuckles) Allright. Let's go over the talking points of the Scroll one last time...

THE DEAD DEMS SCROLL

(dead silence as both read the talking points, flipping pages in unison)

The Birth of Krist

The Scroll suggests that Mary was pregnant by another man other than Joseph. Word of her affair had already spread through the grapevine. That was the real reason Mary and Joseph were turned away at the inn. But to his credit, Joseph had stayed true to Mary, forgiven her adultery, and found a kindly soul with a small barn where they could stay until the baby was born.

Krist's Early Life

The family was poor. No one from either side had ever become a rabbi or a merchant. Krist was left to follow in his father's footsteps as a carpenter. Translation: blue collar, red-stater, with no real ambition at the time. Mostly self-taught in religion, he pulled himself up by his bootstraps and became a religious scholar.

The Missing Years & Krist's Transfiguration

Where did Krist go and what did he do during the missing years? The Scroll suggests he had decided to make a better life for himself and his family by attempting to carve out a living along the major trade routes of the time. However, he may have fallen in with the "wrong crowd," a small group of mystics who turned Krist on to the organic hallucinogens available at the time. From these experiences came Krist's epiphany, which was far too real, too deep, to keep to himself. He returned to his homeland, and began preaching in Galilee. Word of the new Messiah spread throughout the land. And soon it was time to confront the church elders in Jerusalem.

The Crime and The Crucifixion

Arriving back in Jerusalem, both the rabbis and the Romans were alarmed by the "mob of the unwashed" or "uppity peasants" who followed Krist wherever he went. He stirred up terrible acts of civil disobedience among the faithful. The Scroll suggests Krist became drunk on wine, and while full of himself, went to the synagogue and trashed the moneychangers' tables. This was clearly a felony. A trial or two was in order.

At Krist's trials he refused legal representation, reminding us of the old saying, "A man who represents himself has a fool for a client." It soon became apparent that he could not or would not save himself. He was crucified. The Scroll suggests that many people felt Krist got what he deserved for his crimes and his blasphemies. But his new, liberal teachings were too strong to ignore. He became a martyr, and the Cult of Krist was born.

Sources

The Life of Jesus Christ, by James M. Stalker
Parallels Between Jesus and Horus, an Egyptian God
Various other "liberal" references from ReligiousTolerance.Org

----------

(Karl breaks the silence)
KARL: Looks pretty damned good to me.
KAREN: I don't see any problems we can't explain away.
(Karl picks up one of two phones on the table, dials, and reaches Grover, whose voice is altered to prevent identification)
KARL: Grover, is that you?
GROVER: Yes it is.
KARL: What's the password, buddy?
GROVER: Peter Cottontail.
KARL: Allrighty then. We've settled on the plan. Are you and your people ready to light the fuse in the state legislatures?
GROVER: Primed and ready to fire on your go-ahead.
KARL: Great! I'll get back to you in the next few days. Oh, and Grover, you know we couldn't have done this without you. Your network is the central nervous system of our efforts here.
GROVER: Thanks, Karl. Coming from you that means a lot.
(Karl hangs up, muttering "asshole" to himself, Karen chuckles. Karl picks up the second phone and dials)
KARL: Chuck, is that you?
CHARLES: Hi Karl, yeah it's me!
KARL: Are you on a secure line?
CHARLES: You betcha.
KARL: We're almost done here. Are your people ready for pre-production?
CHARLES: Ready and waiting!
KARL: Great! We'll be in touch, pal. Seeya -
(Karl hangs up the second phone, rubs his hands together and says to Karen)
KARL: That does it! Are you ready to eat?
KAREN: Does a horned toad spit blood?
KARL: I've got just the place. They make a chicken-fry almost as good as the Broken Spoke back home.
KAREN: Mighty fine, let's hit it...

(Both rise to leave, heading for the door)
KARL: Democrats are soooo easy!
KAREN: (chuckles) Yeah. This is one Easter egg hunt the fuckers will never forget!

(Fade to black as the door closes behind them. Curtain falls as Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" begins playing. At the appropriate, dramatic pause in the last chorus, a large American flag is unfurled above and in front of the curtain.) [End of Scene One]

(A brief description of Scene Two)

3 families are shown, gathered around the TV. Each family is watching a different phase of the news cycles as the Story of the Scroll unfolds.

Family 1, Cycle 1: They're watching the exciting news of the Scroll's "discovery," accompanied by music and the graphics, "Discovery! The True Story of Krist?"

Family 2, Cycle 2: They're witnessing the brief custody battle over access to the Scroll. The whole family leans forward towards the TV when they hear of the executive order by BoyGeorge to allow access to all qualified theologians, "for the sake of mankind." Preliminary translations start to bring skeptics into the picture.

Family 3, Cycle 3: They're glued to the new theme and graphics, " Forgery Exposed! Scholar Smears the Savior!" As the FoxHounds are set loose on the story, a "battle stations" alert begins to sound, and in bright red letters above the stage, in sync with the alert, read the words:

DEMOCRATS ARE THE AGENTS OF THE DEVIL!

END OF SCENE: The alert and message fade as the lights come up to reveal a riser behind the families with a mock-up that includes the small steps leading up into a Gulfstream jet. A uniformed MP stands guard. To his left is our Iraqi scholar, now in handcuffs. Standing next to him is a "mystery man" in plainclothes and sunglasses. To their left is the wife of the scholar. He's allowed to embrace her as he says goodbye. The mystery man places a large roll of bills in the wife's hand, places his other hand over hers, now clutching the money, and gives her an "everything's gonna be okay" nod. He and the scholar turn to step up into the Gulfstream for "de-briefing" as the MP slowly escorts the weeping wife away from the plane.

(Fade to black, curtain slowly falls as The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" begins to play) [End of Scene Two]

[End of textaplay]

In my judgment, if Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, BoyGeorge, Brother Jeb, and others can cynically exploit the Terri Schiavo case for political gain, including a naked threat to Democrats (and moderate Republicans) from DeLay which said, in essence, "don't screw with us on this one or we'll nail your ass in the mid-terms," and if The Boy could lie through his teeth like he did during his 2005 State of the Union Address, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, and the gang exploiting Christ himself in 2008 in order to protect the Bush legacy should things backfire on them in 2006.

This Easter, I'll be thinking of the life and times of Christ. I'll also be thinking of some others who were killed for their beliefs and their work. "They" killed Martin Luther King, Jr. "They" killed Medgar Evers. "They" killed Malcom X after he'd converted from the Nation of Islam to true Islam. "They" killed John and Bobby Kennedy. And John Lennon was killed by yet another "loner" right here in America. If you think of these individuals as nothing more than adulterers, "agitators," and drug-addled hippies, if you're a hard-nosed "right to lifer" or a firm believer in the "culture of life," then I've got one thing left to say to you - "This Blog's NOT For You!"
__________
Disturbed by the theme or use of language in this entry? Visit the overview at The Human Trust for a comprehensive explanation.
____________________
Copyright 2005, The Heathen Monk. All rights reserved. Including all Grand Rights afforded the author.

Bill Frist & Tom DeLay, The Lord's Lifesavers

2005-03-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

Terri Schiavo is dying. Again. But this time around Jeb Bush isn't the only politician trying to stop Ms. Schiavo's death. Congress, that august body of blowhards, entered the fray this week, taking time out from their urgent need to examine steroid use in major league baseball to issue subpoenas, yes congressional subpoenas, as a grandstanding play for the folks who "hate the sin, but love the sinner." Some of the same people who secretly applauded the bombing of abortion clinics and the murder of physicians who performed abortions. Good Christians all! (no offense to authentic, private Christians)

Don't get me wrong. This fifteen year tragedy is heartbreaking for all sides. Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, may have moved on with his life, but common sense tells you that he would have given up on her right to die years ago if he didn't care about her. And it's painfully obvious that her parents want to believe that Terri is coherent enough to live as long as possible. But according to Mr. Schiavo and his attorney, noted neurologists have all concluded that Terri will never emerge from a state of vegetation, despite the brief video clips that appear to show her reacting to stimuli. And in spite of Jeb Bush's pandering and the hastily-enacted "Terri's Law," the Florida courts have once again ordered her feeding tube removed.

Enter Bill Frist & Tom DeLay

Here you have a Senator and medical doctor who couldn't admit to George Stephanopoulos that the AIDS virus can't be transmitted through tears or sweat. No, Frist had to dodge the question by sneaking "virus" into his responses used in its general sense. What a pro! And The Hummer? He needs to take some of the heat off of his uncanny ability to break Texas campaign laws - oops! - his alleged ability...

And now the mighty protectors of life have worked feverishly to use Congressional subpoena power to "protect" Ms. Schiavo by calling her to testify before Congress. The Supreme Court declined to entertain the notion. For a more detailed look, the March 19th online version of The Los Angeles Times has a fine article with related stories in the sidebar on this ugly mess of a story.

So, will Congress start things up again next week? Will any Democrats dare to speak up? Will they pass a federal law akin to Jeb's Florida fiasco? If they do, BoyGeorge is sure to sign it into law immediately [done, early Mar 21]. And you know what that means. [Find the Right-Friendly federal judge]. Re-insert Terri's feeding tube. And then? Sit back and watch as thousands of nursing home and hospice patients struggle for their right to die as the new "law" makes its tortured journey through the federal court system.

But let's look to our moral leader, Tom DeLay, in order to truly understand what's being done to Terri Schiavo:
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"Right now, murder is being committed against a defenseless American citizen in Florida," Mr. DeLay said. "Terri Schiavo's feeding tube should be immediately replaced, and Congress will continue working to explore ways to save her." [from NYTimes online]
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Yes indeed, the Party in search of The Big Tent has found the circus and it is them. This kind of exploitation of a long suffering brain-damaged woman in the name of "protecting life" is nothing short of satanic. Bill Frist - A Doctor Without Orders (you know, he could take a leave of absence and volunteer as a physician at a field hospital in Iraq). Tom DeLay - A Gerrymandering Gunslinger who'll stop at nothing to stay in office. This is your government. This is my government. This is absolute barbarism.
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Wanna see some hate in action? Take a quick peek here
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Update (3/19), post-DeLay press conference, today: Armando, from DailyKos sez Dems should allow the ReThugs' "compromise" in order to expose them for the fools they are, attempting to pass a law that's clearly unconstitutional.

Update 2 from Armando (3/19) : based on the "words of wisdom" from Harry Reid.

Interesting sidenote: Many print and online television snewz sources reprinted AP writer Mitch Stacy's Schiavo story. While most of them omitted the story's link to "terrisfight.org," an activist site devoted to overturning the Florida court's ruling (and reported to have had quite an effect on federal grandstanders), at least one US paper included the link in its version of Stacy's piece, headlined "House GOPs Want Feeding Tube Reinserted." The Guardian, known for its progressive posture, published Stacy's piece complete with the single, obviously biased link, described as "On the Net: Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation: http:www.terrisfight.org." I'd say Stacy went beyond the call of duty when it comes to reporting, but hell, I'm a heathen. What do I know?

Final update, Mar 21. Pertinent edits above in bold brackets [...]:

March 21, 2005: "A Date Which Will Live in Infamy." BoyGeorge Takes A Dump on The Constitution and The Sovereignty of State's Judicial Systems.

Physicians React: From latimes.com, Mar 22, "State Physicians Group Condemns Involvement by Congress," the story of the California Medical Association's reaction to the Schiavo Law -
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"Many of us are appalled at what's going on in Washington, D.C.," said George P. Susens, an internist who wrote the resolution on behalf of the San Francisco Medical Society. Legislators, he said, are neither doctors nor experts.

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DeLay quote from The New York Times article is their copyrighted property, and used here for contextual purposes only. Excerpt from The Los Angeles Times is their copyrighted property, and used here for contextual purposes only.

Enabling the Dry Drunk's Grand Gamble

2005-03-16T11:34:00.000-08:00

I recently revisited my original anti-war protest page from March 17th, 2003, to see how well my own words have held up. In my estimation they hold up just fine. I stand by them. Perhaps the most relevant words you'll find there are these:

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Consider, if you will:

American citizens don't need an "intervention" from the Bush Administration.

The world doesn't need, and isn't asking for, lesson after lesson from America in a kind of "global tough love."

One culture, "SuperSized for Everyone," is an insult to any thoughtful human being, and ignores history altogether.

When the Consent of the Governed has been beaten down into a kind of "world-weary/duck and cover" Exhaustion of the Governed, when the breadth and depth of corruption runs so deep that it creates the worst "domestic fissure/meltdown of checks and balances" since prior to our own Civil War, and when Consent has been reversed to allow ANY Administration to then grant Limited Consent back to the Governed, it should surprise no one that a heartbroken Citizen might comment..."George W. Bush has created a New Imperial Presidency with the face of Ronald Reagan and the dark heart of Richard Nixon."

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Based on my years playing music for crowds full of drunks, people in various stages of recovery, and well-balanced folks both young and old, I've seen signs of what is commonly referred to as a "dry drunk" in BoyGeorge's behavior during many unguarded moments. And with today's pitiful misuse of psychotherapeutic terms (see "psycho babble"), and the public disclosure of once-private themes from Alcoholics Anonymous, it seems that The Boy has surrounded himself with "enablers" who have no intention of recommending that he "make amends."

Let's take my statements for your consideration one at a time:

American citizens don't need an "intervention" from the Bush Administration.

We didn't need a deepening of the hardball partisanship we've witnessed since 2000. We didn't need to ignore the real crisis in Medicare in favor of an artificially created "crisis" in Social Security. We don't need to prevent Medicare's ability to negotiate with the drug companies for lower prescription drug prices. We don't need to cut funding in other social programs in favor of "faith-based" initiatives that help blur the line between church and state. And we certainly don't need the new bankruptcy bill that rewards wealthy players who know how to work the system while punishing middle income citizens overburdened with medical costs and other unexpected debts. But that's what BoyGeorge's "intervention" has brought America.

The world doesn't need, and isn't asking for, lesson after lesson from America in a kind of "global tough love."

While there are good arguments to be made for invading Afghanistan after September 11th, the reasons for going to war with Iraq have evaporated at every turn. Weapons of mass destruction? Nope. An "ally of Al Qaeda?" Nope. Saddam gassing his own people? Yes, but back in the 1980's when he was still our buddy. Mass graves? Yes, but again, mostly as the result of DaddyBush's decision to allow Saddam to keep his helicopters and other weapons after the Gulf War so that he could slaughter the Shiites in the south and force the Kurds in the north up into the mountains, in the early 1990's.

And what do we find today in this new dynamic of democracy? A nervous Turkey looking on as the Kurds make a play for the northern oil fields and continue their quest for autonomy. Syrian Baathists sympathetic to Iraq's Baathists and Sunni minority. Iran's attempt to infiltrate the as yet unfriendly Iraqi Shiite majority. A large majority of Palestinians living in Jordan where we train Iraqi police and soldiers, instead of training them in their own country. Repressive regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, relatively unchanged as a result of our "liberation" of Iraq. The PR exploitation of the death of Arafat in Palestine, and the assassination of the former prime minister in Lebanon. Let's not forget that Syria has been "withdrawing" from Lebanon for 14 years or more. Or how about calling France and Germany "old Europe," and the UN "irrelelevant." Or nominating John Bolton as ambassador to the UN, an avowed enemy of the institution who once said that the UN could lose the top ten floors of the building and it wouldn't make a difference. Perhaps the nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank will send a message to our allies, ala Robert McNamara. Just a few examples of the kind of "tough love" shown by BoyGeorge's policies.

One culture, "SuperSized for Everyone," is an insult to any thoughtful human being, and ignores history altogether.

The Bush Doctrine of preemption, along with the ideals professed by the Project For the New American Century (PNAC),which includes signatories Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel, and Paul Wolfowitz, seem to have forgotten or disregarded several key elements of human behavior. Aside from the outright betrayal of America's historical relationships with other countries, these advisors have made one stupendous mistake. They believe in the insane notion that you can IMPOSE DEMOCRACY on another country, by force if necessary, and with complete disregard to that country's culture and history. It should be obvious to any high school civics student that democracy and the imposition of democracy by force are completely antithetical to one another. How these longtime D.C. insiders missed such a fundamental fact is beyond me. And today, The United States is as despised around the world as the Soviet Union was at the peak of its power.

When the Consent of the Governed has been beaten down into a kind of "world-weary/duck and cover" Exhaustion of the Governed, when the breadth and depth of corruption runs so deep that it creates the worst "domestic fissure/meltdown of checks and balances" since prior to our own Civil War, and when Consent has been reversed to allow ANY Administration to then grant Limited Consent back to the Governed, it should surprise no one that a heartbroken Citizen might comment..."George W. Bush has created a New Imperial Presidency with the face of Ronald Reagan and the dark heart of Richard Nixon."

The Patriot Act, including "sneak n' peek" searches, and John AssCraft's wishlist known as the "Patriot Act II" which was broken down into riders inserted into various Bills, have succeeded in deeply eroding our civil liberties. The Department of Homeland Security, with its color-coded alerts and window dressing protections of our country has succeeded in sucking the money from the States' budgets for first responders, while ignoring the necessary security upgrades to our ports and railroads.

And we now allow American citizens to be labeled "detainees," locked away without access to legal counsel or simple visitations for years. How was this approved by the "consent of the governed?" It wasn't.

I repeat, as I said during a viewer call-in to C-Span's Washington Journal in early 2002, "George W. Bush has created a New Imperial Presidency with the face of Ronald Reagan and the dark heart of Richard Nixon." 2006 is right around the corner. And 2008 isn't far behind. Turn off your television, throw out the newspaper, and start digging for the truth yourself. The links provided at my protest page and here should provide you with a good starting point for your own personal research and evaluation. Enough with GannonGate, Armstrong Williams, Karen Huges, Karl Rove, and Senators like Joe Lieberman who cave in at the worst times imaginable. Who gave these assholes their "consent" anyway? Not me, and certainly not millions of other Americans. Oh how I wish one of The Boy's enablers would offer him a drink. C'mon, fall off the wagon, BoyGeorge, won't ya? We'll take you home to Crawford and tuck you into bed. Failing that, perhaps a "check-up from the neck up" with Stuart Smalley might prevent you from engaging in "stinkin' thinkin'" leading to a "shame spiral" that could reveal the fact that "denial isn't just a river in Egypt."
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Text and selected links of original protest page also appear here.

Show Me The Funny!

2005-03-12T19:43:00.000-08:00

You're all alone in front of your screen. It's the start of a new weekend, and you're about to logoff for the day. You've finally caught your breath after Thursday's bizarre Michael Jackson PajamaGate coverage, and Friday's sad story of murder in the courtroom from Atlanta. You need to unlatch from the absurdity and the agony, if only for an hour. But it's Friday night - there isn't a new episode of The Daily Show on until Monday! What's a progressive to do?

I know. Imagine a gay congressman (Barney Frank), an author/professor, and provocateur (Camille Paglia), both appearing via satellite, with a studio panel that includes a comedian/actor (Richard Belzer), a feminist author/activist (Irshad Manji), and a last minute stand-in for Joe Scarborough, Drudge buddy/writer (Andrew Breitbart), all on one live television show - RealTime w/Bill Maher. What's that? You think Maher's an asshole? Who doesn't! (actually I don't...some of the times). But for now, put aside any preconceived notions you might have of these people and watch for a replay of Friday's show, or force a friend to tape it for you, at WaterGunPoint if necessary.

Like Paul Krugman's appearance earlier in the week on Jon Stewart's kinder, gentler show, this episode of RealTime actually dips its toes into the pool of serious issues without hollering, without talking points, and without pandering. And you're allowed to have fun. My god, could this be some new form of dissent? "No, it couldn't!" sez Michael Moore. "Screw You!" sez everyone at Air America Radio. And somewhere in the vapor, both Abbie Hoffman and Hunter Thompson are looking on, nodding silently.

But back to Friday night. Lucky for us, Scarborough couldn't make it. Seems MSNBC needed Joe's help to handle some of the rubbernecking going on all across the dial as the Atlanta story began to wind down a little. But it was Belzer's name on RealTime's guest list that caught my eye. Not Belzer the TV actor, but Belzer the comic. I'll get back to him in a moment. But first, let's take a quick stroll down memory lane, and talk about progressives' "health concerns" when it comes to the future, shall we?

The Newt Virus, The PNAC Pandemic, and The Yippies

For purposes of this piece, let's say that once upon a time a backbench congressman brought down the Speaker of the House in order to make his bones in Congress. Let's further assume that he helped pull the wool over people's eyes with a bold initiative - "The Contract With America." And from these accomplishments, along with the buildup leading to the Clinton Impeachment, a new and deadly virus was born in this country - The Common Newt.

What's happened since America caught this bug? The "election" of 2000. September 11th. Afghanistan, and Iraq. We were all subject to "BoyGeorge & The Dick, Part One!" And now the sequel is playing - "Freedom For Everyone, Bush Style, Whether You Like it or Not!"

The Newt has mutated and grown into a powerful pandemic of new robber barons and the same old faces, divide and conquer domestic policies, gunboat diplomacy, and busboy journalism. And unless you're curious enough to utilize the Web, alternative news sources, and your own passion for the truth, you've been infected, and there's no cure available right now. The old over-the-counter remedies of civil discourse and thoughtful engagement with the powers that be no longer work. Even newer, counter-Roveian strategies seem to be losing steam.

In order to find "funding" for any new ideas, it seems to me that progressives are gonna need to go just a little bit Yippie on the right's ass if they want to claim their share of the megaphone that liberals once took for granted. Which brings me back to Richard Belzer. Not Belzer in particular, but rather as a kind of comedic composite sketch for what I have in mind: Something as progressive in nature as Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" but with a budget, editorial license, perhaps a studio audience, and a comedy writer or two. A program with a style that's sorely lacking in the progressive community today (hell, in any community for that matter). A style that requires these key elements in order to rise above the noise ringing in my ears:

Humor with an edge AND a heart.

Deadly accurate timing, from the guests to the program's subject matter.

The power that comes from a good command of the facts.

It's not often that you find all three rolled up into one user-friendly package. And even if you do, it's the timing where things get a little bit tricky...

Timing is Everything When You're Looking for SoundBites

And now, back to The Belz. In future on-air political exchanges, especially when it's live and on television, new progressive voices are going to need to consider, and perhaps study the comic timing of people like Richard Belzer. If you can find tapes of his earlier standup days, you'll see what I mean. Much like the late Bill Hicks, Belzer was a dangerous comic when it came to dealing with hecklers. And he knew how to sniff out the drunks, and separate them from the serious hecklers. If you were serious, he'd wait you out, draw you in, then cut you off at the knees, and hand your shoes back to you before you even had time to fall on your face.

That kind of thinking on your feet is missing from the toolkit of most progressive pundits, in my opinion. But the ability to create that kind of train wreck in a semi-serious setting, live and uncut, is what I'm hungry for. And with reality TV approaching its saturation point (dear lord, I pray), it's high time for the niche networks to tinker with a format like RealTime. Bravo, Trio (if it's still around), the Sundance Channel and IFC, PBS, and yes, even LinkTV should continue tapping into the progressive market. The right show with the right chemistry could spell soundbites and ratings, in my estimation. And the weekend is the perfect time to test this kind of programming, and maybe create a little bit of controversy. That way you can improve your chances of grabbing a bit of cable snewz airplay on an off news day, and throw some red meat to the Sunday morning talk shows, where the serious hecklers have held sway for too long. Sunday morning is where the Bush League likes to play. And with a new major league baseball team headed for D.C. this year, progressives can use all the batting practice they can get. So get cracking. Exhibition baseball is here. The umpires have already hollered "Play Ball!" Can you say "Beat the Pricks in 2006?" To borrow from Billy Crystal - "I knew that you could."

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Try clicking here later this month for a transcript of RealTime's March 11th, show.
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Selected clickables from Wikipdedia. Breitbark link from Media Matters. Goodman link from DemocracyNow.org. RealTime link from HBO. Maher transcript link from Bill Maher: The Official Site.

Could 'Rendition' Become the Next 'Ethnic Cleansing?'

2005-03-09T03:20:00.001-08:00

I've lived through all of this before. The dilution of once-powerful terms. "Closure" and "do your own thing" in the spirit of the late Fritz Perls, to mention a couple. Happily, Fox Snewz' humping of "homicide bombers" never quite caught on. Gosh, I wonder if it might have anything to do with the fact that coupling "homicide" and "bombers" (as used) was kind of like changing "private accounts" into "personal accounts."

How do you become more user-friendly as you begin diluting and deluding? Let's go to the videotape! ~ Social Security ~ Your mission? Fronting for The Boy as he begins dismantling the program. Public posture? You get all warm and fuzzy as you slip 'em by, like Mr. Scotty did here as he "answered" a reporter's question:

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Q And secondly, Scott, on the Social Security privatization -- the President has said he would be very concerned in making sure that funds in the private accounts were not at risk for the people who wanted to place them there, but -- and he took the example of placing them in U.S. Treasury bonds. Now, the Social Security funds are already being placed in Treasury bonds. Why should the private accounts make a difference, unless people are allowed to put them in the stock market, which, of course, is a very risky undertaking?

MR. McCLELLAN: There was a bipartisan commission that looked at the problems facing Social Security. That commission outlined some options to consider, as we work to solve this problem. It was led by the late Senator Moynihan. And they recognized the importance of establishing personal retirement accounts where people -- younger workers could voluntarily set aside some of their own savings, if they so chose, in personal retirement accounts. And the President is strongly committed to that, as part of a comprehensive effort to strengthen Social Security.
(from Jan 12, 2005 press briefing)

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But that's not why I've called you here today. (note to self: increase dosage, SSRI) I wanted to rant about the spillover of CIA doublespeak into our everyday language.

Before Peter Jennings referred to the CIA's outsourcing of torture as "extraordinary rendition" (a practice going back to DaddyBush and the Gulf War), and last Sunday's 60 Minutes "rendition" segment, I'd begun to wonder if "rendition" wasn't about to become the next big thing! Most of us are familiar with artist's renditions, but torture and renditions? Somehow I don't think this one's gonna be an easy sell unless you happen to work for some" liberal elite propaganda machine" like CNN, known to some as the "Clinton News Network."

Days before I'd had enough of this latest foray into word fucking, I happened to catch a segment on BBC Radio that focused on solutions for the many problems facing Africa today. And here came a pleasant correspondent speaking with a crisp British accent. He was reporting on the difficulty of finding perpetrators where genocide and forced evacuations had occurred (not to say they aren't happening right this minute). The stalwart reporter spoke of "ethnic cleansing," and how difficult it was to find "those responsible for areas having been cleansed" because "those responsible for the cleansing" were no longer around. They were hard to find, darn the luck!

Again, many of us grew up familiar with "cleansing the soul" but not this. What an absolutely hideous term for horror.

In that spirit I might as well describe my anticipation of stopping by the drive-thru as "efforting closure on my Happy Meal."

It was touch and go for awhile with "homicide bombers." Perhaps, if we're conditioned enough through the overuse of "rendition," we can all fly the friendly skies of United, who might someday offer SuperSaver fares for AmeriKlans.
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[added March 9] Hungry for more provocative word-mongering? Who isn't! Lock & Load with Daniel Okrent's piece from NYTimes' The Public Editor ~ The War of the Words: A Dispatch From the Front Lines (from March 6, 2005)
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Separating the Wheat From the Chaff

2005-03-06T13:49:00.000-08:00

Blogs. There's millions of 'em. Some are for personal pleasure, or family news, or topics of interest specific to that blogger. When it comes to identifying and promoting authentic progressive Web activists it may get crowded in the coming months. One new tool available to developers and content providers is a Web-public clearinghouse. Unlike blog directories, or selected entries from various "Best of the Blogs" sites, a Wpc can be utilized in a variety of strategic ways to both identify and promote blogs that resonate with progressive issues, both short-term and longstanding. In order to get a feel for the flexibility, actual value, and humorous elements of this tool, a useful sub-Blog of A Heathen's Perspective has been created.

For now you'll find it here: red Umbrella (rU). Trading only on the floor of The BlogShares Exchange, red Umbrella will assist you in tracking shares of a variety of progressive blogs once you've opened a free BlogShares account. Additional features at BlogShares are available to premium members. Please read their terms of service and player policies, and begin tracking your favorite, as well as undervalued progressive blogs today by either clicking the link above or the "BlogShares" icon at the bottom of this or any other page on A Heathen's Perspective.

This is a nonprofit tool not intended to be exploited for commercial purposes. But in these deadly times, a blogger's got to have a little fun. Needs to take things a little less seriously at times. Oughta have a good time pursuing accurate information and resources available on and off the Web. (rU) is now available for trading at BlogShares.

The Supremes - A Brief Moment of Sanity

2005-03-02T04:37:00.000-08:00

As the sad story unfolds in Chicago of federal judge Joan Lefkow's loss - the murders of her husband and mother that may eventually be traced back to an obsessed follower of Matthew Hale, the Supreme Court gave opponents of the death penalty a glimmer of hope with a squeaker of a decision (5 to 4) effectively banning the execution of death row inmates who committed their crimes when they were under the age of 18 [Mar. 10: Lefkow murders linked to Bart Ross]. For a nanosecond of history, this country sent a modest, humanitarian message to itself and the world. And for that, judges Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer are to be complimented. But as far as I'm concerned judge Scalia can to hell, go directly to hell, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and best of luck in the "Lake of Fire."*

My home state of Texas, Oklahoma, and Virginia, remain the only states to wave the flag of lethal injustice when it comes to killing once-juvenile killers during the last ten years. Even countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China have abandoned the practice of executing young offenders. We made the "difficult decision" to join the ranks of these "enlightened" governments, but it wasn't easy. Judge O'Connor, the swing vote savior in many cases, dissented separately from judges Rehnquist, Thomas, and Scalia, but dissented nonetheless. While agreeing with Kennedy on "evolving standards of decency" she claimed there was no "national consensus" regarding the execution of young offenders.

But Scalia, The Dick's hunting buddy, couldn't hold back from hollering "PULL!" as he aimed his over-and-under at the Court's slim majority:

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"The court proclaims itself the sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards — and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures," Scalia said. "I do not believe that the meaning of our [Constitution] should be determined by the subjective views of five members of this court and like-minded foreigners."

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A brief glance at the majority's decision should provide any fence-sitters with food for thought on both the horror of Christopher Simmons' crimes and the horrific nature of the barbaric laws around the nation that are now considered "cruel and unusual punishment."

I remember when once-moderate governor Mark White began running campaign ads where he slowly walked past huge posters of some of the inmates who'd been executed under his watch here in Texas. The tide was turning right, and White was trying to preempt the "wimp" factor by strutting his Huntsville hustle for the voters. He lost the election. And now hundreds have been executed in Texas while questions abound concerning Harris county's forensic accuracy. If White had stayed true to himself and found a way to reach voters with a conscience, had Ann Richards taken BoyGeorge more seriously during her bid for re-election, our sad tale might have had a less bitter ending than judge Lefkow's heartbreaking tragedy. We've needled two women and a mentally retarded man among the many others in recent years. At least now, Texas can help "balance the budget" by saving money on trial and appeals costs. We forced juries into a corner by not giving them a life without parole option. Now, overzealous prosecutors have one less option when it comes to killing killers. Boy howdy ~

*see Marlon Brando in the film, "Free Money."

(link behind "Mar. 10" above takes you to The Chicago Tribune's story on the alleged killer of Judge Lefkow's family, Bart Ross. CTrib's site now requires free registration to view that story. Any new major developments will be dated and linked to from the same "Mar. 10" location in this post.)
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Scalia quote above taken from an article in today's Los Angeles Times, and is assumed to be the newspaper's copyrighted material, used here for contextual purposes only.

Newsflash: The Senate May Go Nuclear on Itself!

2005-02-28T03:10:00.000-08:00

May the walls come tumblin' down, and the Days of the Sharp Elbows come to a grinding halt. It's not enough to use Rove's minions to attack AARP's stand against the Bush Social Security smokescreen with USA Next and the SwiftBooters screaming "Look Out! Here come the gay grannies spittin' on the troops as they come back home!" It's not enough to go off on a "window dressing" package tour of Brussels, Berlin, and Slovakia, eat a plate of french fries IN France, cancel the staged "town hall" meeting with "normal Germans" in favor of a round table "dish-cuss-shun" with HappyTalkers, then have Pootie basically say "Who the hell are you to talk to me about democracy?" Naw, we need to attack the filibuster, or cloture rule in the Senate, so a simple majority of Senators can stop debate on the judicial nominees Bush wants to ram through confirmation, many for the second time.

You go, Boy! Get after it! Get 'er done! YeeHaw and HowdyDoo!

Take a look at Jeffrey Toobin's piece, " Blowing Up the Senate," in The New Yorker. Read on as Arlen Specter waxes poetic, remembering the moderate Republicans who once roamed the earth:

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“We had a lot of senators,” he said. “We could go on and on and on,” and he named, as examples of this group, Bob Packwood, Mark Hatfield, Lowell Weicker, Charles Mathias, and John Heinz. “And we don’t have them now. So it’s not good for the Party, and it’s not good for the country. It’s not good for the Party because you need balance. You need to be a national Party.”

Read on some more as Specter reverse-ruminates over taking the teeth out of the filibuster:

“If the Republican caucus decides to consider it, I’ll give it some serious thought.” (on the very next day) Specter said he would use his “best efforts to stop any future filibusters... If a rule change is necessary to avoid filibusters, there are relevant recent precedents to secure rule changes with fifty-one votes.”

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I've got it! Let's not call it the "nuclear option." Let's call it the "constitutional option!" Yeah, that's the ticket - who needs to compromise with the Democratic minority, and "cool the coffee in the saucer" anyway? We've run roughshod over the country and the world for more than three years now. We're firmly entrenched at the state and local levels. We own patriotism. We own Jesus. We own the Ten Commandments. "We are the world, we'll kill your children." Ah, the beauty of "compassionate conservatism." Makes ya feel all cold and hairless, don't it?

I say do it! Try it on for size, see how it fits. Give every Republican Senator, Congressperson, Governor, Mayor, and County Commissioner a reason to run for the hills as the hollow hellhole you've made of our government collapses in on itself, insulated in puffed up punditry and hypocritic hogwash. Go on with your bad self like a half-assed Jaycee speaking at the Lions Club luncheon in AnyTown, USA. I dare you.

We just had more than one hundred Iraqis killed today south of Baghdad, lining up to get medical certificates in order to apply for work. We can't find Osama. People are beginning to forget what September 11th was all about. Who's gonna notice a little ol' thing like a "minor tweak" to the "cloture rule?" I'll tell ya who - millions of us, Mr. Specter, so grow a pair and regain the self confidence Jeffrey Toobin refers to in his article. Or get out of the way ~
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Excerpt from The New Yorker is © Copyright 2005, CondéNet. All rights reserved, and used here for contextual purposes only.

The State of the Black Union

2005-02-26T15:34:00.000-08:00

(a quickie entry in case you happen to stop by this evening, first posted at dailykos)

In case you missed it, C-Span's coverage of The State of the Black Union just concluded. Tavis Smiley said that there should be a replay of the entire day's events beginning at about 8 p.m. Eastern tonight on one of C-Span's 3 networks (see schedule link above). I don't care who you are, or whether you're a Christian, a Muslim, an atheist, or a heathen like me, there were moments today that could not be denied. Just like Mahalia Jackson's voice, G.E. Patterson's sermons (sometimes), The Mighty Clouds of Joy,The Dixie Hummingbirds, and the Blind Boys of Alabama can't be denied.

Unlike The Boy's State of DysUnion speech where he continued to piss down our backs and tell us it was raining, this day, this program, was rich with real issues, real emotion, and real demands. Set your vcr/tivo's or stream the audio tonight with your dialup while online. Either way, I dare you to sit on your hands while listening or watching. Hell, I'm on my way to my dusty old cassette library to find some Rev. James Cleveland right now!

There's No Escape From Tolerance

2005-02-24T12:52:00.000-08:00

For some of us it's damned hard to tolerate these intolerant times. Intolerance works. It works like a charm, but only when its believers hold power. And those intolerant souls who wield that power do great damage to the collective psyche of their country, their religions, their schools, and their children. Intolerance disregards the history, culture, and institutions of any country that stands in its way. Sometimes with a gun, sometimes with a dollar. Sometimes with both.

But intolerance takes a lot of energy. Sustaining hatred is hard work. Constantly shouting down anyone who asks an honest question is exhausting. Turning the tables on your opponents by accusing them of the very misdeeds you've committed gets tricky once your command of betrayal begins to sag. Arrogance becomes intolerance's undoing. And today, the arrogance of intolerance is in full bloom following BoyGeorge's election to four more years. But it's beginning to wear thin. When ads appear online claiming that if you support AARP's position on social security you basically hate our troops and "love the gays," psychosis can't be far behind. Once-fervent believers begin to recognize the madness and the method of the message of intolerance. And many start to shy away from the blowhards.

In recent history we've experienced many short-lived periods of intolerance. But under pressure from citizen activists, a few brave souls in government and the press (and once upon a time on television), intolerance always seemed to lose out in the end. Women won the right to vote, can you believe it? Senators became the "victims" of election by popular vote. Prohibition was revoked. Collective bargaining became a reality. The anti-communist witch hunt died with the exposure of Joe McCarthy's small town bully bullshit. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act brought hope to millions. So today, while tolerance may be behind on the judges' scorecards, in my opinion we're just now heading into the championship rounds.

Tolerance is downright vital for any group of individuals to survive. And we know it. Deep down, we all know it. Even those who've co-opted what they believe to be tolerance for their own purposes, whether from the hyper-politically correct left or the "hate the sin, love the sinner" right, learn the meaning of authentic tolerance if they bloody themselves enough from banging their heads against the wall time and time again. That is, unless they lose consciousness.

So take a moment and consider the possibility that intolerance burns itself out under the weight of common sense. Understand that this country still passes on the almost genetic belief in the fundamental rights of the individual. Know that tolerance is not idealism, it's a practical reality constantly in search of a new model for peaceful coexistence. Unless my ears deceive me, the code words of intolerance are beginning to ring hollow. The intolerance in power has overreached, deluded itself through its own insulation, dismissed anyone inside its camp who dared to be thoughtful, and become the laughing stock of the rest of the world. The intolerant are fast running out of friends and making new "enemies" every day. Sure they've created a global mess and left countless tragedies in their wake. But tolerance always grows back from the muck of intolerance. And Spring is right around the corner.
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Screen capture, American Spectator home page, before the anti-AARP "ad" was pulled, courtesy of comments posted at There Is No Crisis.

The Drugstore Cowboy Goes a Mendin' Fences

2005-02-22T03:56:00.000-08:00

Howdy! How ya'll doin' out here in ol' Europe? Good to seeya. France put on a fine spread in Brussels. Sure was good eatin' too! Did you folks hear me when I said how important a strong Europe is to America and all? Allrighty then. Well, I hate to eat and run, but I need to head on over to Slovakia and "look into the soul" of my buddy Putin. Now, I know he's put an end to the free press and all, but hell, so have we, so what's the big deal? We're gonna talk about how freedom is good, and how everyone who doesn't agree with me and the PNACers hate us for our freedom. I'll probably have to do a little dressin' down with Pootie in public, but he'll understand. After all, I'm a statesman now - ain't that somethin' ~

Let's take a look at the fences that need mending, shall we?

Under BoyGeorge's watch we've:

Walked away from the Kyoto Accords and various treaties that were just plain inconvenient for our "new" Doctrine of Preemption. Now our own leaders have to watch where they travel so they won't be arrested for war crimes.

We labeled France and Germany "Old Europe," endearing us to them like an angry, drunk stepfather.

We told the UN to basically go to hell. Now THAT'S what I call bold diplomacy!

We lied, and lied, and lied again to our own citizens and the world about Iraq, "an ally of Al Qaeda," then later said with a straight face that we "never said there was a connection between Iraq and September eleventh." Then we went to war without an exit strategy.

We called for an independent Palestinian State, while winking at Sharon as he built his security wall and targeted Palestinians for assassination, including an old leader in a wheelchair.

We told North Korea to wash their hands and come to the dinner table with our buddies or face the consequences.

Now we're saber rattling our way into the next skirmish with Iran, who's linking up with Syria for self defense.

We may have cooked the books in the Iraqi election to prevent a Shiite majority, but of course, if we did that, we did it in the name of democracy.

We began the privatization of our own voting process while Ukraine threw out the fraudulent leaders who tried to hold onto power.

We concentrated on gay marriage, "intelligent design," dismantling social security, making tax cuts for the wealthiest among us permanent, and taking class action lawsuits away from the states in order to better protect corporations. We did all of this under the banner of "values."

The list goes on and on, and my fingers are starting to blister, so forgive me if I left out a few issues heralded as part of The Boy's "vision" for America. But I will say this - When it comes to mending fences, you're pretty much shit out of luck once you've demonstrated that you have absolutely no respect for your neighbors' property lines, not to mention their mineral rights.

p.s. Feb. 23rd: As part of his "fence mendin' ways" The Boy made this startling statement in Brussels -

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous," Bush said after meeting with leaders of the European Union. "And having said that," he added, "all options are on the table."

We love you, we love you not...KABOOM!

p.p.s. Feb. 23rd: Aw, golly gee, BoyGeorge cancelled the "town hall" meeting in Germany when it was learned that some questioners might go "off script." What's a fence mender to do?
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Quote from IndyStar comes from a story by David Jackson, The Dallas Morning News, and is assumed to be the copyrighted material of its rightful owner, used here for contextual purposes only.

It's "Giuliani Time" in Afghanistan

2005-02-20T03:26:00.000-08:00

In an article from the February 18th issue of The Guardian, former Bagram "detainee" Hussain Adbulkadr Youssouf Mustafa told an all too familiar story to his attorney:

---

He claims to have been blindfolded, tightly handcuffed, gagged and had his ears plugged, forced to bend down over a table by two (US) soldiers, with a third soldier pressing his face down on the table, and to have had his trousers pulled down.

"They forcibly rammed a stick up my rectum," he reports. "It was excruciatingly painful ... Only when the pain became overwhelming did I think I would ever scream. But I could not stop screaming when this happened."

---

With all of the Valentine's Day and President's Day goings on, I'm not sure how much coverage this story will get in American newspapers and cable snewz channels, but I couldn't help but be reminded of another, more domestic case of Phelpsian interrogation tactics - The Abner Louima case in New York. You might remember this from the New York Daily News' Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary:

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From his bed in Coney Island Island Hospital last week, Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, and his wife, Micheline, told me about the Aug. 9 horror of being beaten with radios and having a toilet plunger shoved up his rectum through his intestines into his bladder.

"The cops who came here that Saturday morning told a nurse they found me bleeding on the ground," Louima said. "They told her, 'He was half naked and bleeding when we found him. Something happened in the club.' They said it was a homosexual thing. The coverup started there."

---

When asked whether he was one of the officers who told Louima "This isn't Dinkins time, it's Giuliani time," accused officer Justin Volpe denied ever having said that. But it was too late. "It's Guiliani time" had already entered the legend of American FolkGore. And now it seems to have worked its way around the world as a sodomistic symbol of torture in the name of "getting answers" and "saving soldiers lives."

Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-cop or anti-soldier. I'm anti-abuse and anti-torture. Where I live the Travis County Sheriff's Department is considered one of the finest departments anywhere. For the most part, their professionalism, courtesy, and one-on-one approach to every citizen they encounter is remarkable. And my late grandfather was a deputy sheriff in West Texas during the height of the oil wildcatter's days. A small, soft-spoken man, he commanded respect because his reputation for fairness preceded him wherever he went.

But today, with Alberto Gonzales now heading up the Justice Department and BoyGeorge heading off to Brussels, Germany, and Slovakia, I can't help but wonder if some passengers somewhere aboard Air Force One aren't saying to themselves - "This isn't Clinton time, it's Bush time!"

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Excerpts from The Guardian and the New York Daily News are the copyrighted property of their rightful owners, and are used here for contextual purposes only.

Forget Politics, Where's an Inter-Faith Summit?

2005-02-17T06:24:00.000-08:00

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the midst of hardening fundamentalism from both Muslims and Christians around the world, I have yet to hear about any serious international summit of religious leaders designed to find common ground and a counterbalance to the bloody stalemate we find ourselves in today. Quoting from the overview comparing Christianity and Islam at ReligiousTolerance.org:

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Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are three closely related religions. Because they all revere Abraham and certain other patriarchs mentioned in the Bible as their spiritual ancestors, they are called Abramic religions.

---

And again (if I have my facts straight), aside from their differences and the various sects that have grown out of their original faiths, all three religions mentioned above seem to believe in the same God - the God of Abraham. While Christians worship Christ as the Messiah, and many trust in the softening of the Old Testament's "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" teachings, Jews reject Christ as the Messiah and continue to wait for His coming, while Muslims believe Abraham, Moses, and Christ to be authentic prophets - and yet consider it blasphemy to think of Christ as the Son of God - the same God all three religions believe in.

It also seems to be a part of human nature to belong to a group, whether based in faith, culture, family, or politics. And for the most part, groups have learned how to coexist with one another through moderation and tolerance. So where are the moderate religious leaders? And why aren't they holding international summits in order to address fundamentalism and search for solutions to our present dilemma?

While acknowledging the cultures and various sects within each of their faiths, why is it that we don't hear from these leaders as they:

1. Lay claim to the moderate views expressed by the vast majority of their followers?

2. Denounce fundamentalism, the violence of suicidal martyrdom, and occupation?

3. Present real, concrete solutions to these critical problems?

4. Remind us all of the thousands of false claims made by "End Timers" over the last 2,000 years?

5. Petition their country's governments to educate and promote religious tolerance to their citizenry?

In my judgment these potential summits should be high-profile and ongoing. It is not possible for governments to solve deeply-held religious conflicts. It is up to the religious leaders whose faith allows for other faiths to exist. And the silence these leaders exhibit is deafening. Perhaps they should consult their dictionaries and re-examine the definition of the word "leader."
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Excerpt from ReligiousTolerance.org is copyright © 1995-2005, Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. All rights reserved. Used here for contextual purposes only.

A Valentine Wish For Mary Mornin

2005-02-14T18:05:00.000-08:00

You may have seen or heard BoyGeorge's back and forth with a single mom working three jobs, who has one mentally-challenged adult son, and two adult daughters. She and all of the attendees at this staged Social Security "Town Hall" seminar had been screened and invited to attend. I've seen and heard the exchange between BoyGeorge and Mary Mornin, and DubyaSpeak.com has an accurate transcript of the the comments as shown below:

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DUBYA: Mary is with us. Mary Mornin. How are you, Mary?
MS. MORNIN: I'm fine.
DUBYA: Good. Okay, Mary, tell us about yourself.
MS. MORNIN: Okay, I'm a divorced, single mother with three grown, adult children. I have one child, Robbie, who is mentally challenged, and I have two daughters.
. . .
DUBYA: There's a certain comfort to know that the promises made will be kept by the government.
MS. MORNIN: Yes.
DUBYA: And so thank you for asking that. You don't have to worry.
MS. MORNIN: That's good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.
DUBYA: You work three jobs?
MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.
DUBYA: Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. Get any sleep?
-- Dubya takes pride in the fact that in America, this woman has to work three jobs to stay afloat, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005.

---

Bush ended his exchange with Ms. Mornin this way: THE PRESIDENT: "Well, hopefully, this will help you get your sleep to know that when we talk about Social Security, nothing changes."- Oh really, nothing changes, Mr. Bush? (read the entire transcript here)

Perhaps the most blatant lie in that exchange came when The Boy said to Ms. Mornin: DUBYA: "And so thank you for asking that. You don't have to worry."- YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY - a callous misrepresentation if ever there was one.

---

Forget the bizarre "compliment" that it's "uniquely American" to be working three jobs, and how it's "fantastic that you're doing that." Worry, and worry each and every day this administration remains in power.

And now, tonight, I saw the first barrage of slick, "presidential" messages hawking all of the talking points promoting the privitization of Social Security.

Let me make myself clear. A brief, understandable challenge to the Bush administration's first major salvo designed to begin the dismantling of Social Security is avaiable at my entry at "Hustle, Desire, and Want-To". Links from that piece take you to sites where you can do your own homework on Social Security "reform." But, as always, it's up to each and every one of us to dig for the truth as classic Republican code words like tort "reform" and devious doings like the latest bankruptcy Bill make another pass in the Senate as chronicled in a recent diary at DailyKos.

Make no mistake. The Chamber of Commerce made history with their record $53.38 million dollar contributions to both the Executive and Legislative branches during 2004. Attempts are being made to end class actions suits, transferring legal redress from the State to the Federal level, where stricter rules will effectively bring an end to your right to hold corporations accountable for their mischief that's already ruined millions of lives. The people who claim to represent you and me are fast becoming no more than the whores of corporate interests and BoyGeorge's "vision" for America's future.

And so, I offer these alternative challenges to the glossy, spoonfed media fluff pieces that permeate our airwaves, in hopes that Mary Mornin and others will take the time to question our government's real motivations, rather than simply take the word of media-savvy propagandists bent on consolidating power much in the same way multi-national corporations continue to consolidate power in the hands of the few.

To me, Valentine's Day means making a commitment to the ones we love and care about. I care about the possibility that Ms. Mornin has been fooled by the scripted HappyTalk in Omaha. And offer this gift to look beyond the rhetoric in an effort to uncover the truth, the motivations, and the cynical attempts to erode citizens' abilities to hold our government accountable for its attempts to shut down debate, label dissenters as "liberal elites" and continue the brazen plans to steamroll their anti-New Deal, anti-Great Society, even the anti-Nixonian EPA legislation. Ms. Mornin, don't be fooled, don't give up or give in. Seach out and test the voracity of the many intelligent, well-researched challenges to this nightmare of fear, intimidation, and Orwellian DoubleSpeak.

Puddles Gets A Press Pass!

2005-02-12T06:19:00.000-08:00

Whee! Hiya boys and girls! It's me - Puddles! (oops) - the Incontinent Clown! And today we're gonna put on our press passes and take a field trip to the Circus! But first, Puddles needs to take his medicine, so close your eyes, kids, while Puddles pops the pills Dr. FeelGood gave him, and then we'll be on our way!

(later that day, near the Capitol)

Oh goodness me oh my - look at The Big Top, boys and girls! (oops) That's the place where all the smart, good people work to make sure you grow up strong and free! Everyone here looks and sounds real important, and they know how to talk through both sides of their mouths - but let's move on, Puddles isn't feeling so well...

(later still, across from the White House)

And here's where the Leader of the Free World lives, boys and girls! (oops) He's almost always up early, just like every good boy and girl, and sometimes he even spends the night here! Why, there's even a room where you can ask him questions, boys and girls - Let's go!

(WH briefing room, Puddles' medicine is wearing off)

Oh boy! Look at all the TV lights, and the cameras, and the fancy podium, boys and girls! This is where the tough, curious, and unrelenting reporters ask all the hard questions to Mr. Scotty and Our Leader! (oops) And they do it so mommy and daddy can make informed decisions, boys and girls! But they're always polite, just like you should be, and they never, ever make Scotty budge from that day's Talking Points! Oh boy, Puddles is startin' to feel a little dizzy, boys and girls - maybe he should sit down for a minute...

(the kids wander off, Puddles takes off his wig, his shoulders sag)

Yeah...whee (oops). This is where reporters sat with straight faces while The Ringer, Mr. Jeff, asked all the loaded questions, and if it weren't for the blogosphere he'd still be here today! Whee...here's where reporters are supposed to ask the tough questions on behalf of mommy, daddy, and all the boys and girls - and who am I kidding? Who are they kidding? Puddles feels sick, boys and girls. Puddles needs to take a nap, just like the rest of America...where'd ya go, kids?

(later that night, in Puddles' rented room)

Think I'll crack the seal on this bottle of Night Train and watch the news! Oh boy - the Grammy Awards are on this weekend! Half the press corps is camped out at the Michael Jackson trial! The baseball steroid scandal is everywhere! And everyone pretends they know who Arthur Miller was! (glug, glug) Well, I'm half drunk and world-weary, boys and girls. Puddles has been through one big upheaval already, back in the 60's and early 70's, boys and girls. But this time it's even worse - one part of one Party runs the circus, and everybody seems to work for the Big Five: GE, News Corp, Time-Warner, Disney, and Viacom. And they don't wanna bite the hand that feeds 'em, boys and girls - their sponsors! So excuse Puddles while he stretches out on the Murphy bed and goes to sleep - the fitful, wine-soaked sleep of a semi-retired clown who used to enjoy getting all made-up for the Three Ring Circus, back when his buddies worked there too. You remember them, doncha boys and girls? (oops) Checks and Balances? They were always Puddles' favorite clowns.

Jeff Gannon - Man of Illusion!

2005-02-09T15:10:00.000-08:00

He's here, he's gone, he never existed. Jeff Gannon, White House reporter for Talon News! Apparently the Roveian Regurgitators forgot that Google and the Internet Archive and lots and lots of other RSS FeedSnatchers have reached out and captured all the Web pages someone is trying to delete. There's a crack in the Grand Delusion, and WebRiders everywhere are digging for gold as the story unfolds. Need to do a little catch-up? Simply looking for a QuickStop where you can drop the latest tidbit? Need to take a break from this incredible bullshit? (okay, okay, that was a shameless plug for a few entries in this BabyBlog, please for-friggin-give me!) SlowServers make for FrayedNervers, so feel free to click from this SlapUp entry as you travel on the Train of Thought - desination: Darkness. Just a mile down the road from Breaking Point ~

In case the DailyKos servers get a little bit overloaded, be sure to stop by the forum at AlterNet and leave your links and thinks for other cub reporters ~
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DailyKos has a fine place to start doing your research:

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Overview

White House-credentialed fake news reporter "Jeff Gannon" from fake news agency "Talon News" was cited by the Washington Post as having the only access to an internal CIA memo that named Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert CIA agent. Gannon, in a question posed to Wilson in an October 2003 interview, referred to the memo (to which no other news outlet had access, according to the Post). Gannon subsequently has been subpoenaed by the federal grand jury looking into the Plame outing.

These facts have led the Kos community to research the following questions:

Who/what is Talon News?

Who/what is Jeff Gannon and how did he get credentialed for the White House?

How is this "reporter" and "news agency" being used to disseminate information?

What exactly is the relationship between all the various outlets/GOP groups/individuals?

What does all this information have to do with the Plame leak?
---

February 17, 2005: Update & Press Release from DailyKos here.

February 10, 2005: Press release & primer for the press from DailyKos here.

February 9th resource from Kos on the tortured journey of "Gannon, Talon News," Valerie Plame, and the White House here. Keep up with the story at Daily Kos. And let's not forget World O Crap, and Media Matters

Excerpt from dailykos.com is Copyright 2005, Daily Kos. Enjoy their copyright notice: "Steal what you want." Don't abuse the privilege.

Hustle, Desire, and Want-To

2005-02-08T03:59:00.000-08:00

They've got a good ball club. Plenty of intestinal fortitude, speed AND quickness. But The Boy's front office may have forgotten a key element of any team's philosophy - "We're gonna take it one game at a time." From the look of things, the Drugstore Cowboyz might have decided to try that one gadget play a little too early in the second half of the Big Game - Social Security.

Paul Krugman lays out the potential for future Hall of Shame Games in his column today, "Spearing the Beast," and he does it in layman's terms:

---

Here's how it would work. First, workers with private accounts would be subject to a "clawback": in effect, they would have to mortgage their future benefits in order to put money into their accounts.

Second, since private accounts would do nothing to improve Social Security's finances - something the administration has finally admitted - there would be large benefit cuts in addition to the clawback.

---

He goes on to cite Jason Furman from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who game plans a not-so-rosy picture of retirement for Social Security's rookies, a picture not unlike the one that's all too familiar for retired Players who left the Game before free agency and a strong player's union came into being. Many ended up broke, with chronic pain from their playing days, and in some cases were simply left to fend for themselves on the streets, drinkin' and druggin' with the best of them.

Smirking Chimp pulls a lot of the Team's scouting reports together as well. Both Krugman and The Chimp listened in on a recent Team meeting when Stephen Moore from the BallClub For "Growth" stepped up to the chalkboard:

"Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state. If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."

I can just hear the QuarterBush as he breaks the huddle - "Far right, Far right, code Welfare State - Fuck 'em on two! Hup one (rule the world) Hup two (screw the Citizenry). Ready? (new budget proposal), Set (smear with fear). Hike!" (naked bootleg to the right of center).*

Yes, BoyGeorge & The Dicks have a great bawl club. But they may have forgotten the fact that The League now has free agency. And if some of the player's agents decide to put their Clients out on the free market rather than re-sign with the Home Team, we might just see a Coach's Challenge on this replay from Rethuglican Hell.

*(my apologies to real quarterbacks for calling the signals out of sequence)

Excerpt from Paul Krugman's column above is Copyright 2005, The New York Times Co. All rights reserved. Used here for contextual purposes only.

Through the Eyes of A Ten-Year-Old, 1960

2005-02-06T05:01:00.000-08:00

I know it's been written about, researched to death, and editorialized both honestly and through the eyes of every known columnist's printed persona - but watching the 1960 Democratic National Convention with Grandma (secretly sharing sherbet from the Pick 'N Pay for supper), picking up on her kind school teacher's lessons on the political process, on LBJ from a Texan's standpoint at the time, and later, back home at Mom's, thrilling at JFK's Inaugural Address in late January, 1961, this ten-year-old boy saw nothing but promise and inspiration for all the days to come. The Colts were still in Baltimore. John Unitas was a god. The Cowboys were just getting started in the NFL. "The Alamo," filmed in Todd-AO was the talk of the neighborhood. And Doo Wop reigned supreme on radios up and down the east coast.

Things were different back then.

The possibilities seemed endless to me. Commercial bombardiers had yet to seriously invade the lives of everyone, near and far. The Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum. And the Cuban Missle Crisis was an unforeseeable speck on the horizon.

But things hadn't been all that rosy as I grew to learn the lay of the land in the 1950's. I was a child born during a war, The Korean War. McCarthyism raged, the Cold War was on, everyone had to line up for the polio vaccine, "duck and cover" drills really meant duck and cover, Sputnik was circling the globe, and we had yet to see the new Boeing 707 at Friendship Airport.

So, as I get ready to watch the Super Bowl this evening, I'll be making a piano player's deft use of the remote control to minimize the bombardment. I'll be rooting for The New England Patriots, because no true Baltimore Colts or Dallas Cowboys fan could ever cheer on Philadelphia (unless it helped our chances).

I won't be:

Thinking of the "Patriots" in today's terms.

Avoiding the game because I'm "above it all."

Looking back at the 2004 election and shaking my head.

Wondering how many generations will suffer before the Tsunami fades into memory (I'll continue to obsess over that nightmare later).

Forgetting that February is Black History Month.

Fuming at all of the "experts" who continue to portray either JFK or LBJ in some one-dimensional, revisionist, Roveian way.

I'll just enjoy the game. After all, there's still a ten-year-old boy inside me who hasn't been tended to in a long time.

The State of DysUnion

2005-02-03T02:02:00.000-08:00

In last night's State of the Union Address, BoyGeorge said this:

"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else."

I'm, well...I'm dumbfounded. Either that or just so damn dumb I'll never understand the truth as SuperFrat sees it. And I was ever so glad to know this:

"Taking on gang life will be one part of a broader outreach to at-risk youth, which involves parents and pastors, coaches and community leaders, in programs ranging from literacy to sports. And I am proud that the leader of this nationwide effort will be our First Lady, Laura Bush."

Laura Bush, GangBuster! Now, I've always been proud of the fact that Mrs. Bush came from West Texas. And I never really let anything she said get under my skin. That is, until she hit the road in support of The Boy's approach (or lack thereof) to stem cell research. You remember how she told one audience something like "it's not like a cure for OldTimer's Disease is right around the corner." So, it makes perfect sense to me that Mrs. Bush should hang with the boyz and girlz in The Hood, telling them to "Just Say 'Step Off' to Gangs!" I'm sure it will help.

But of course the centerpiece of the Drugstore Cowboy's speech was Social Security, and how we all need to roll up our sleeves and work together, with everything on the table, and get to fixin' that mess before 2042. Thank goodness there's nothing much else going on in the country and the world to worry about! Why, he even made this promise:

"We'll make sure the money can only go into a conservative mix of bonds and stock funds. We'll make sure that your earnings are not eaten up by hidden Wall Street fees."

And that's when it hit me. I'm insane! I'm completely insane! I thought that the pittance people received from Social Security was supposed to be a kind of insurance policy of last resort, not an investment instrument of first choice. Oh what a Tangled Web we be, when at last we think we know D.C.

Gangs, "personal" accounts, and this:

"Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be re-defined by activist judges. For the good of families, children, and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage."

These are today's vital issues. This is what the country is aching to deal with. And let's not forget to speak in code when it comes to the Supremes and all those re-nominated judges getting "ready to rumble" for round two:

"Because courts must always deliver impartial justice, judges have a duty to faithfully interpret the law, not legislate from the bench."

Oh, those pesky liberal judges! How DARE they speak from the bench. We've got mandatory sentencing guidelines, overzealous prosecutions, The Patriot Act, and the legacy of BabyDoc Powell to serve as guidelines for the Judiciary, along with the King James version of The Bible.

Wellsir, there you have it. Back from the future so we can solve the Social Security crisis. Laura getting down with gangs. Keeping those judges in line, not to mention the gay, lesbian, and transgendered community. Iraq? Iraq Shmiraq!

The Cost of War in Iraq?

To see the details, click here.

Quotations taken directly from the White House Web site

A Private Housewarming

2005-01-31T08:59:00.000-08:00

Searching for a place in the shade to take a break from a bad or busy day? Then perhaps you've come to the right entry, if you're inclined to peek in on another human being's snapshot of a day in the life of his sister. It doesn't matter whose sister, or whose brother I'm talking about. Simply picture a younger brother who was so impressed with his sister's hard work placing her personal stamp on her new home, that he did what he always does for loved ones, friends and family alike. He wrote a personal piece tailored expressly for her and her alone. Call it a poem if you like. I call anything I write in verse that's not intended to be, or doesn't grow up to become a set of lyrics, a "discussion." A good example, if you're curious, is "The Show." But today's entry is a personal certificate of love and respect for an older sister, captured shortly after my first visit to her warm and inviting home. The personal details of our relationship are best considered unimportant to the reader. And there's nothing profound here. It's simply an invitation to draw from your own field of memories as you read on, in hopes that an interesting or heartfelt emotion comes your way before you head back to "meat space" (as the kidz say)...

__________

A Private Housewarming

I am a child
A child with gifts,
Gifts scorned and unrecognized
By both sides of the Coin
From which I was made.

Gifts
Spat upon
With vicious, eager accuracy,
Gifts
Ignored by a civil servant with tunnel vision.

These gifts have survived
And so have I.

Now,
As I wipe the spittle from my heart
And bellow inappropriately
So as not to be ignored by the Ignorant,

I remember

I rediscover

The living witness
Whose gifts too, went unnoticed.

And I rejoice
When she defends me.

And I remember singing ourselves to sleep.

I was not alone
My sister was there.
_____

She is here now.
She has a home in me,
And you are now in her home.
So please wipe your soles
Before entering my sister's home,
And check your hats and coats
With a civil tongue
And a hint of hilarity.

Brag and Gush
As she conducts The Grand Tour ~
(do this until she is ever so slightly embarrassed)

And as the wine loosens the spirit
Give her the gift
Of giving you
An evening to remember, fondly.

For she too was spat upon
And ignored.
And like me, her brother,
She and her gifts have also survived.

Remember

You were invited to this home
Not to invade her world,
But to celebrate her freedom
From the Curse of the Coin.
_______________
Copyright 1994, Jackie (the brat). All rights reserved. Copyright assigned to The Human Trust, 2005.

Mr. Bush, Step Down!

2005-01-28T23:36:00.000-08:00

(3rd draft - 2nd draft posted at AlterNet's Human Rights forum {HumanRights.169.21-}, Dec. 10, 2003, revised here, in part to reflect Ashcroft's resignation)

__________

CITIZEN'S PETITION: MR. BUSH, STEP DOWN, NOW. GIVE ME BACK MY COUNTRY!

Dear George W. Bush,

I am a citizen of the United States of America. However, it seems that America has been taken away from me. I feel that this Administration, this Congress, this Department of Justice, and this Supreme Court have betrayed America, and are now in the process of selling America off piece by piece.

As an American citizen, I hereby petition your administration to step down immediately. I demand that a caretaker administration be put in place by Congress, and that an impartial, impeccable Board of Civilian Review be created to examine your entire record, including the pathflow of your administration's correspondence, meetings and attendees, along with executive orders and directives created by the your administration, leaving no federal agencies exempt from scrutiny.

I call for the Senate to vote "No" on the confirmation vote for Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. Should Mr. Gonzales be confirmed, I demand that he tender his resignation immediately. I call for the full repeal of The Patriot Act, as well as any riders to any passed or pending Bills containing any provisions included in Mr. Ashcroft's "wishlist" known as "The Patriot Act II."

I call for the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the armed forces to order our military forces to stand down, world-wide.

I ask that the Supreme Court be precluded from handing down any new rulings if and until it can be shown that their decision concerning the election of 2000 was not a gross, impeachable offense on the Court's part.

I call for a moratorium on Capital Punishment. I call for an end to mandatory minimums for sentencing. I call for an end to overzealous prosecutions. I call for the return of federal judges' discretion.

I call for foolproof legislation to prevent any former elected federal official, as well as all family members of elected federal officials now holding office, from working on behalf of any registered lobbyist or other special interest group concerned with any issues on which said elected officials have cast a vote, whether in committee, by voice vote, or by roll call on the Floor of either branch of Congress.

I call for every federal ballot to include "none of the above" as a valid choice for every election of every pertinent federal official. I demand an end to any method of voting, electronic or otherwise, that does not include a verifiable paper trail open to full public scrutiny through straightforward recounting procedures for any questionable or contested federal races.

I demand that Congress call for new elections of the entire House and Senate at their earliest opportunity, and without delay, following the transition of power from the Bush administration to a caretaker administration.

Until these matters have been fully addressed, I hold the federal government, as it now composed, to be in violation of the Constitution.

-----

I refuse to either leave my country or give up my citizenship. Should your administration not step down, now that you have been elected to a second term of 4 years as my president, I pledge NOT to contribute any more monies to the coffers of what I now consider to be an illegal, thus unconstitutional "government." In the event any federal income tax policies and/or other salary restrictions preclude or prevent me from withholding my financial resources from your stupefyingly Un-American administration, I pledge to join other citizens in every effort to buy, barter, lobby at the grassroots level, demonstrate, and engage in other non-violent acts designed to undermine, and hopefully end or slow down the murderous meanderings of your Doctrine of pre-emptive war which masquerades as the "war on terror."

-----

Finally, I urge every American without children, without a life-threatening disease, without other critical life circumstances that could jeopardize their safety, to join me in this petition.

-----

Mr. Bush, you have taken my country away from me. I will give my very life, if necessary, in order to help bring about a return to the Spirit of the Principles this country was founded upon, and thoughtful re-engagement, through diplomacy, with the rest of the entire world. My actions, unlike yours, will remain entirely non-violent, but I will exercise every fundamental right I may have as an American citizen until my country's government has been returned to its own Citizenry.

Very truly yours,

__________________________ signed, ______________, 200_

I have signed and sent copies of the above Petition to:

______________________________, my Representative

______________________________, my senior Senator

______________________________, my junior Senator

______________________________, Attorney General

______________________________, Chief Justice Rehnquist

______________________________, my local newspaper

______________________________, my local TV stations

______________________________, my mayor

______________________________, my county's officials

______________________________, my state's governor

______________________________, other

______________________________, other

This Petition, while composed by The Heathen Monk is intended for the free use of any interested party. No standard copyright restrictions apply to its use, unless edited and published without written permission..

Let's Take The Big Top on the Road!

2005-01-26T16:30:00.000-08:00

D.C. Inside the Beltway. Our nation's Capitol. We've all heard how insulated the culture is in Washington. How out of touch our own government is with the citizenry it claims to represent. How polarized our country is and how pitiful the liberal media, not to mention those pesky liberals, have become. How entrenched the whole system is, not to mention the power wielded by the boyz and girlz on K Street. What to do, what to do? By George Washington, I've got it!

Let's take our government on the road. Every four years. All three branches. Sound impossible? Too expensive? Hold on there, pardner, lemme explain. Here's how The Big Road Show could work:

While leaving all of the federal agencies safely ensconced in Washington, not to mention the lobbyists on K Street, why not create a rotating, four year temporary home for the president's administration, for both houses of Congress, and for the Supremes, along with any available federal judges who sit in each temporary home's district? Communication with their staff and home state offices has never been more flexible. Security has never been more sophisticated. And don't you think it's high time the Supreme Court justices held a few town hall meetings just to get a feel for how the living document they interpret is affecting all of the little people? Think of all the chambers of commerce salivating at the very thought of all the new "tourist" revenue their communities could count on. Think how much money could be made by turning the Big Top (excuse me, I meant The Capitol dome), the White House, and other symbols of our freedom into a kind of theme park, charging admission to visitors just like we do now at National Parks. Why, we could pay for the traveling road show without introducing a single Bill in Congress!

As for K Street, I'm afraid they'd have to stay home in D. C., and their contact with lawmakers would have to be restricted and made public to boot. And I'm so sorry, but we'd have to forbid any elected federal official and all of their family members from ever "serving" as paid lobbyists. It's just a little bit too cozy for my liking when I hear about mild-mannered men like Tom Daschle serving in the Senate while his family members are being paid handsomely by the folks on Special K St. Tom DeLay, "The Hummer," might not blink an eye, but Tom Daschle? Puhleeze!

So give it some thought. The actual interaction between our government and the citizenry it claims to represent. Mingling with the peasantry in a different region every four years. And all of it paid for by tourist dollars and theme park admission fees. It's hard to live on talking points and sound bites when you have living, breathing human beings in front of you whose lives are touched daily by the decisions you make. And guess what? Healthy debate (real debate), and venting (doctors sometimes call it externalizing) are good for a strong, vibrant democracy, especially when the InfoWhores in the media have decided to spit back the bullshit they've been spoonfed by our fearless leaders. Gosh, even dissent is claimed as a tool of freedom! And so, my fellow Americans, I ask you to consider making our government a "moveable feast" we can all taste and digest. It just might remind us all that the folks who live and work inside the Beltway serve under "the consent of the governed."

A "Quaint" Nightmare to Follow AssCraft's Soaring Eagle?

2005-01-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

STOP

TERROR

STOP

TORTURE

STOP

GONZALES

Alberto Gonzales. A man who found a way to tip-toe around the Geneva Conventions' torture provisions in today's world of a volunteer army that outsources "independent contractors." A man who had opportunity after opportunity to simply say, "Yes, I'm against torture. Torture is bad...it's BAAAAD!" When he finally agreed that torture and other quaint provisions like the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" were wrong it was like pulling teeth - Dustin Hoffman's teeth in "Marathon Man." In light of last year's report on torture in Guantanamo by the International Red Cross, Molly Ivins had a few things to say in her piece, "Torture, American Style" from The Texas Observer:

---

Yes, it’s true, we did sort of know this (the torture at Gitmo) already. It was clear when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in Iraq that the infection had come from Guantanamo. The infamous memos by Alberto Gonzales, our next attorney general, and by John Ashcroft’s “Justice” Department pretty well laid it out.

---

Ms. Ivins went on to refer to one finding in the report that never got the media play it deserved:

---

The creepiest aspect of the Red Cross report is the involvement of doctors and psychiatrists in something called “Biscuit” teams. Get used to that acronym: It stands for Behavioral Science Consultation Team and will end up in the same category of national shame as Wounded Knee. According to The New York Times, Biscuit teams are “composed of psychologists and psychological workers who advise the interrogators.” Shades of Dr. Mengele.

_____

But let's look at Alberto's record while he served then Governor Bush in Texas. His creative thinking. His way of dealing with pending death penalty cases. His relationship with Enron. And so many other "quaint" tales from those tossed salad days. The list is so long, allow me to provide you with the headlines on Gonzales you'll find at The Center For American Progress:

---

As Texas Chief Legal Counsel

DEATH PENALTY MEMOS: GONZALES'S NEGLIGENT COUNSEL: [Atlantic Monthly, July/August, 2003] Relax, it's just a little ineffective counsel, or a minor conflict of interest, some flimsy mitigating evidence, and maybe a tiny bit of overlooked evidence of innocence. (paraphrasing the quote from Atlantic Monthly) See this review from The New York Review of Books too.

MEMORANDUM ON TERRY WASHINGTON*: A CASE STUDY IN INCOMPETENCE: [Atlantic Monthly, July/August, 2003]

*the 33 year-old retarded death row inmate Gonzales briefed BoyGeorge on prior to Washington's execution

GONZALES TOLD GOV. BUSH HE COULD IGNORE INTERNATIONAL LAW: [Slate, 6/15/04] Back in 1997, it was - sound familiar?

GONZALES GETS BUSH OUT OF JURY DUTY TO KEEP DUI SECRET: [USA Today, 3/18/02] Thank goodness for good friends in high places!

As Texas Supreme Court Justice

GONZALES DOES ENRON'S BIDDING: [New York Daily News, 2/2/02] (search Daily News archives for story) Yes, I can use your contributions, and I promise to help keep The Dick's Energy Task Force Meetings a secret.

ACCEPTING DONATIONS FROM LITIGANTS: [Texas for Public Justice] What's a little cash between friends when I'm passing judgement on them?

(note: links to the publications' stories listed above may be a little hit or miss, but the excerpts provided at The Center For American Progress will give you a good idea of each article's approach to their story, should you have any trouble accessing the original article online)

_______________

The DailyKos has a story today, "No on Gonzales," by Armando, that invites any bloggers who've written their own comments against Gonzales' nomination to add their names to the list of those opposed to his confirmation. I may be an obscure, BabyBlogger, but I'd be proud to have my name added to that list. (late night Tuesday: I see that my blog signature has been added at Kos - thumbs are now tucked under my suspenders)

Excerpts from The Texas Observer and The Center for American Progress are the copyrighted property of their respective owners, and are used here purely for contextual purposes.

Ah, Diplomacy! Rice Lies, Cheney Threatens

2005-01-21T23:40:00.000-08:00

During her Senate confirmation hearings for Secretary of State, BoyGeorge's favorite confidante, Condi Rice, famous for her months of television appearances in which she linked September 11th to Saddam like a bad hypnotist, was caught in an outright contradiction of her own statements as to why the U.S. went to war with Iraq, again:

---

When Senator Boxer said: ..."I'm interested in the facts. So when I ask you these questions, I'm going to show you your words, not my words.

...You sent them (our soldiers) in there because of weapons of mass destruction. Later, the mission changed when there were none. I have your quotes on it. I have the president's quotes on it. And everybody admits it but you that that was the reason for the war."...

Ms. Rice came back with a "total picture" answer: ..."Saddam Hussein was a threat, yes, because he was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And, yes, we thought that he had stockpiles which he did not have. We had problems with the intelligence. We are all, as a collective polity of the United States, trying to deal with ways to get better intelligence."

Unimpressed, Boxer reminded Rice: "Well, you should read what we voted on when we voted to support the war, which I did not, but most of my colleagues did. It was WMD, period."

Staying on point, Boxer added: ..."But, again, I just feel you quote President Bush when it suits you but you contradicted him when he said, 'Yes, Saddam could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.' You go on television nine months later and said, 'Nobody ever said it was'" --

Obviously ruffled, Rice jumped in with: ..."Senator, that was just a question of pointing out to people that there was an uncertainty. No one was saying that he would have to have a weapon within a year for it to be worth it to go to war."

To which Boxer replied: "Well, if you can't admit to this mistake, I hope that you'll" --

Again, Rice interrupted Boxer with this: "Senator, we can have this discussion in any way that you would like. But I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity."

Boxer came right to the point: "I'm not. I'm just quoting what you said. You contradicted the president and you contradicted yourself."

(full transcript here)

---

So Saddam could have had a nuclear weapon (hey, where are the missiles?) in a year, but even though BoyGeorge made the claim himself, nobody ever said Saddam could have a nuclear weapon within a year. I guess that makes BoyGeorge a nobody, and Condi Rice a wounded soldier who dared to stand up for her hero. And THIS is the person we're bound to have as our next Secretary of State? Diplomacy Shiplomacy!

__________

And on a dare, Don Imus invited both The Dick and Mrs. Cheney on his program during Inauguration Day. Guess what? They accepted! Emerging from the ever expanding bunker his neighbors have been complaining about for more than a year, The Dick chose the Imus forum to send a message to Iran:

"At some point, if the Iranians don't live up to their commitments, the next step will be to take it to the U.N. Security Council, and seek the imposition of
international sanctions to force them to live up to the commitments and
obligations they've signed up to under the non-proliferation treaty, and
it's-but it is a-you know, you look around the world at potential trouble spots, Iran is right at the top of the list."

Cheney also posed this rosy scenario:

''Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards,''

With more than 100,000 American troops near their border, and rumors of secret incursions to assess their weapons status, I'm sure the Iranians felt all warm and fuzzy when word of Cheney's "friendly" suggestion reached their already paranoid ears. Perhaps it's time for us to impose democracy on yet another country full of NonBelievers.

Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Israel, North Korea, Indonesia, The Philippines, Venezuela, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and others. These are the countries most likely to "benefit" from Ms. Rice and Mr. Cheney's forms of diplomacy. Do ya feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

(links to more pre-war info available here)
__________
Excerpt from the Boxer/Rice transcript is assumed to be the copyrighted material of Federal News Service, from a Web page that is copyright 2005, San Francisco Chronicle, and used here for contextual purposes only. Excerpt from the Imus in The Morning Show is the copyrighted property of its rightful owner, and is used here purely for contextual purposes.

BabyDoc Powell to Step Down at FCC

2005-01-21T13:26:00.000-08:00

(first appeared at dailykos.com)

Once he stood as an example of the Reagan approach to regulatory agency directors. Appoint someone friendly to the very corporations they are charged to regulate (remember Reagan's "drag your feet" approach to the EPA Superfund?). Powell even passed an increase in overall media ownership, only to have it blocked by federal appeals courts, and repealed by Congress. Besides increasing fines to unprecedented levels and protecting us from Janet Jackson's breast, BabyDoc's legacy won't soon be forgotten...

Like so many other Bush appointees* Powell demonstrated time and time again that he was willing to come down on the "coarseness" of today's broadcast programming while spreading his cheeks for NewsCorp, Clear Channel, and even Viacom, among others. His departure will certainly be welcome, and one of the leading contenders for his replacement, Kevin Martin, seems, at face value, to have a mind of his own, sort of:

Today's NYTimes says:

---

One is Kevin J. Martin, a Republican commissioner and former White House official who several times foiled Mr. Powell's attempts to deregulate broadcasters and telephone companies. The other is Becky A. Klein, a former Texas regulator appointed in the 1990's by the state's then-governor, George W. Bush. She lost a congressional bid two months ago after her campaign received a huge amount of financial support from executives at telecommunications companies who expected she would be a top contender for the F.C.C. job.

But perhaps the best description of BabyDoc's legacy can be found in the last paragraph of the same NYTimes article:

---

"During his tenure, cable rates have risen almost three times faster than inflation, satellite prices are beginning to similarly rise, broadband prices have increased and there has been enormous consolidation in the wire line and wireless services," said Gene Kimmelman, a senior director of public policy at Consumers Union. "Powell was more concerned about preserving competition for wealthy people, people who already have broadband, people who have video service. The people who used to rely on the long-distance companies, who want more choices for their cell phone carrier, they were left out in the cold."

---

Mr. Powell, you brought in revenues from fines that used to add up to less than $50,000 a year, to more than a million dollars today. Congratulations! I feel so much more protected from sleaze because of you. And I never was a believer in changing the channel. It's just too much trouble for a lazy couch potato like me.

*actually, BabyDoc was appointed by Clinton in 1997. He became chairman under Bush. Who'd a thunk it?

Excerpt from the NYTimes article above is Copyright 2005, The New York Times Co., and is used here purely for contextual purposes.

In a World Where...

2005-01-19T03:23:00.000-08:00

(first posted at dailykos.com)

In a world where one small group from one political party holds power following a second suspect election, this one filled with paperless ballots now cleared from their machines, we need the honest blogger.

In a world full of spineless Democrats who roll over time and time again, protecting inbcumbency at all costs, further empowering the ReThuglican wing of the Repuglican Party, we need the honest blogger.

In a world where the mainstream press, broadcast, and cable snews networks suckle on the rancid teat of the conglomerate that owns them, steering clear of the tough questions in favor of ratings and happy sponsors, we need the honest blogger.

A one-dimensional Party in power.

A rotten, impotent opposition Party.

A failed, corrupt, "Fourth Estate" acting in collusion with the Party in power.

The honest blogger has become one of the few tools left to challenge them all. Anyone who rides the Web long enough can find and test the opinions, sources, and news provided by bloggers. A few minutes of googling is all it takes to determine a blogger's reputation. A few visits to a blogger's site will reveal its bias, its passion for the truth (or lack thereof) concerning any issue, and its ability and/or willingness to check the pulse of today's MonsterPolitic, today's RobberBarons, and today's CluelessNews. Once you've found the bloggers you trust, it's up to you to decide whether or not you'll:

Take their word for it.

Check the facts for yourself.

Debate the issue with others.

Examine your own biases, your own knowledge base, your own need to know.

The Web is the least regulated avenue of information right now. Here's hoping it stays that way. The honest blogger doesn't claim to be a news service. Let's hope it stays that way. The PowersThatBe may be in charge, but in a world where the Web acts as a kind of global grapevine, it is literally impossible for them to "manage the truth." Let's hope it stays that way.

Just as Lenny Bruce claimed that "You need the deviant," we need the honest blogger. And if Bill Hicks were alive today, I'll bet he'd be reading and quoting from Kos and other honest bloggers as he strafed O'Reilly and Scarborough from a comedy club in AnyTown, USA.

In a world where ethics drown in a sea of sound bites, the honest bloggers are easy to spot. You found them, didn't you?

Dear Diary, January 12, 2005

2005-01-19T03:18:00.000-08:00

(first posted at dailykos.com)

Dear Diary,

Well, it's 2005 already! My fondest memory so far this year? Of course it's the way all of the networks, both broadcast and cable/satellite, as well as the major newspapers, covered the first formal challenge to certification of the Electoral College ballot count in 130 years! The "Boxer rebellion" they called it, but the jazzy catch phrase just never seemed to quite catch on.

Why, even the trusty old NYTimes spent a lot of ink on their first story, January 7th, covering the historic challenge, when they printed the words of wisdom from these two gentlemen:

---

"This is a travesty," said Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a member of the Republican leadership, who forced a formal roll call vote in the Senate to spotlight lawmakers' positions. Of Democrats, he said, "They're still not over the 2000 election, let alone the 2004 election."

Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, drew applause on the House floor when he denounced the Democrats' move as a "quadrennial crying wolf," while other House Republicans ridiculed stories of voter fraud in Ohio as "Hollywood inspired."

---

I remember how well the snewz channels covered all the domestic and international protests going into the war in Iraq - right, the second recent war in Iraq - the one that prevented us from being blown up by a urine cake mushroom cloud. I can't tell you, dear diary, how much I'm looking forward to the intense coverage the networks will provide for all the protests and demonstrations on Inaugural Day, come January 20th! I'd sure hate to think that I might have to go all retro and tune my little Grundig to KUT, or a shortwave broadcast from overseas in order to listen to NPR, BBC, or some other puny news service just to find out how people in my own country express their dissent and disgust with BoyGeorge & The Dick. Not to mention all those heathen bloggers and alternative news sources on the Web! Ugh, and those email activists? Not Brent Blowswell, but the tens of thousands of individuals actually concerned about our future. Who needs 'em! We've got a free press! I mean, just look at the way Ari used that cute lil' cutthroat smile of his when Helen Thomas, having earned her way to the front row, dared to ask him a couple of tough questions. He banished her to the back seat of the bus at press conferences. You don't think that sent a message to all of the other reporters do ya? You don't think they all got that familiar glazed look on their lazy, cocksucking faces, and when coming up for air asked Ari, "Wellsir, what other questions wouldya like me to ask ya, sir? I'd love to be a shill for ya like that fat little fucker from the Washington Times!" Yes, it's all clear sailing from here, diary. God is in BoyGeorge's Heaven, all's right with His world. The Unbelievers? They're all goin' to Hell, can't you see?! You're either with us (born again Rethugs) or you're a heathen. How could anything be more clear? The NFidels might as well shut up, diary, cuz they're all doomed anyway. Now, where did I put my ticket? I remember my number...143,999. Hmmm...

Excerpt from NYTimes article above is assumed to be Copyright 2005, The New York Times Co. All rights reserved. Used here for contextual purposes only.

Gay Marriage: Equal Rights or Special Interest Lobbying?

2005-01-05T05:45:00.000-08:00

(first appeared in a forum discussion at AlterNet)

I've dropped out of this debate due to my own exasperation. But if you don't mind, allow me to posit a broad outlook concerning the potential acceptance of gay, lesbian, and transgendered human beings.

I sense that, unlike many historical attitudes towards homosexuality, civilization today (especially here in America) is in a state of collective adolescence, and it may be possible that the image of gay marriage is a perceived threat that springs from a kind of growing pain that will likely work its way through most western cultures in spite of the broad firewall attempting to stem this tide.

To me, this is not a linear world we live in. This is not an either/or world we live in. The spectrum of individual human development is not constrained by any grid or system of fairness that one might wish to cling to or superimpose onto others in order to make sense of things. Certainly we are all trying to find order with every action we take, whether known or unknown to our own rational minds. And the search for acceptance beyond oneself is a well-traveled path to a kind of life management that allows one to expend more energy on and attention to productive work best suited to their own inner passions, talents, and abiding curiosities.

America's grand experiment is based on the trust in the possibility, the ability of the individual to create a new and unique perspective within a dynamic, diverse society is it not? And throughout our history have we not demonstrated to ourselves and to the world that by reducing or eliminating constraints on individuals that once were accepted, and naturally so, by any given period's cultural code of acceptable behavior, we became more enlightened, more powerful through inclusion?

So it seems to me that both the yearning for and the resistance to gay marriage are part of this adolescent culture's growing pains. That conflict requires friction until certain watershed moments shake us, both individually and collectively, out of what may be our fading, rigid, and yet dangerously cornered assumptions of what "true" order is. Fear of change, along with both poorly-formed and well-reasoned arguments against change have always been a part of the cycles of life haven't they? The intensity of these arguments generally points, like a signpost, to an impending rotation into the next cycle, if my understanding of the work of Erich Fromm comes close to being accurate ~

Bold self examination and exploration are what may be called for in order to grow beyond this particular impasse, and move closer to inclusion concerning equal protection for gay, lesbian, and transgendered human beings. Polarized factions will certainly define the debate, but the wilting, the implosion of current concepts that may be ready for the dustbin should allow the friction to eventually subside and new growth to begin taking root.

I invite anyone visiting here to evaluate the validity or flawed nature of my thinking. I remain confident that by utilizing authentic reflection on the matter at hand, we can see our way to a new and manageable model of co-existence.

Blast From the Past!

2005-01-04T01:45:00.000-08:00

Long before today's climate of fear and intimidation Ken Starr proved himself to be worthy of the infamous "Joe McCarthy" award, in my opinion, during his investigations prior to Clinton's impeachment hearings. Back then I uploaded an issue of my satirical rag "The SPM Harold" that featured an imaginary interview with someone who "claimed" to have had a special relationship with Judge Starr. In case you missed it, here it is again:

Image files from The SPM Harold above are Copyright 1998, The SPM Harold Gazzette. All rights reserved.

Original Anti-War Page, March 17, 2003

2003-03-17T17:30:00.000-08:00

(posted at The Human Trust)

(editorial comment, owner, Jaded Bum Music. first uploaded at smpotato.com, March 17, 2003, final changes, March 27th)

For those of you visiting this Web site, in the tradition of previous Web protests, this site dimmed its content (from March 17th to the 23rd) in protest of the Bush Administration's decision to use military force in Iraq. I hope that many of you will realize that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle (Perle resigned today), William Kristol, and the rest of the "Zealots" (in my opinion), do NOT represent what the United States of America was founded upon, and, in fact, fly directly in the face of our original principles.

Hopefully, the people of the World will not judge the entire American people by (what I judge to be) the arrogant, ignorant, aggressive, jingoistic, and stupefying behavior of the very people who claim to represent us.

In 2002, the Democratic Party had an opportunity to present a real and vibrant opposing view to George W. Bush. They failed miserably. Millions of Independent Americans now have no immediate place to turn in which to present their views, and their deep opposition to this "war." The United States has been dealing with dictators and regional thugs since the dawn of the 20th century. We've even trained many of them, provided them with funds, arms, chemical compounds, intelligence, and every assistance our leaders felt was possible, above and below the radar screen. Among these beneficiaries has been Iraq itself.

Iraq is a country that has been divided into three parts for the last 12 years. It has invaded no one since Kuwait. I make no excuses for, nor do I seek to use this space to discuss Iraq's past aggressions, recent and ongoing atrocities. But, in my opinion, every drop of good will given the United States as the result of the tragedy of September 11th, 2001, has been squandered by an Administration of ideological zealots who are small-minded, mean-spirited, and unconcerned with the cultures, relationships, and real dangers within and between countries around the world. I, personally, AM ashamed to call myself an American. I AM ashamed of the person who calls himself my president. I AM ashamed of the spineless Democrats of 2002. I AM ashamed of the media, once called the 4th Estate, who now, for the most part, are acting in collusion with, or being managed by the "embedders," allowing themselves to be spoonfed whatever Ari Fleischer and the rest of the Bush administration trot out as "reality," while ignoring the vast power of communication on the Web, as well as the many thoughtful human beings who make up a large part of that "Community of the Web," many of whom have been calling for an honest debate since the 1990's (and a few souls since the 1980's).

Consider, if you will:

American citizens don't need an "intervention" from the Bush Administration.

The world doesn't need, and isn't asking for, lesson after lesson from America in a kind of "global tough love."

One culture, "SuperSized for Everyone," is an insult to any thoughtful human being, and ignores history altogether.

When the Consent of the Governed has been beaten down into a kind of "world-weary/duck and cover" Exhaustion of the Governed, when the breadth and depth of corruption runs so deep that it creates the worst "domestic fissure/meltdown of checks and balances" since prior to our own Civil War, and when Consent has been reversed to allow ANY Administration to then grant Limited Consent back to the Governed, it should surprise no one that a heartbroken Citizen might comment..."George W. Bush has created a New Imperial Presidency with the face of Ronald Reagan and the dark heart of Richard Nixon."*

May anyone's God have mercy on our souls...John C. Woodle, Austin, TX

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(links below supplied at The Human Trust

Text of Robin Cook's resignation speech, British House of Commons, March 17, 2003, from BBC

Editorial, Congressman Lloyd Doggett, February, 2003

Congressman Henry Waxman's scathing letter to the president, March 17, 2003, text version

Link to Frontline's "The War Behind Closed Doors"..an alternative examination of how we got where we are

(owner's note : includes relevant links not posted here)

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freedom: refer to its definition on page 491, Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, or simply use your favorite search engine to find definitions and the evolution of the word, along with the word liberty, page 688.

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(This page was originally uploaded on March 17th, 2003. Links and additions, corrections, and modifications to the body of the text above have been added since then, and the latest updates will be dated as shown above. Please consider these updates as a kind of "living/breathing" editing process, and check the Internet Archive for any related materials they may have captured as they document the history of the Web...JW) *underlined text first spoken on Washington Journal in early February, 2002 (my best guess), as part of my call in, and repeated here as best as I can remember...JW

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note: If you're short on time, here's the direct link to Frontline's "The War Behind Closed Doors." It's an excellent starting point for anyone curious as to how and why the United States decided to invade Iraq. The program includes footage of interviews with some of the main players going back to the first Gulf War. The Chronology page serves as a quick refresher of events from early 1991 to late 2002.

Copyright information for this entry available at www.thehumantrust.org/protest.html.

Tribute Page, September 11th

2001-09-16T04:46:00.000-07:00

Posted at The Human Trust.