Breaking news: Bush abandons even the pretense of making sense!

Sooo….. George Bush went on TeeVee this last weekend, being asked some interesting questions by George Stephanopoulos. Here is something that he just sort of let fly and left flopping around the studio floor like a dying carp.

Anchor George Stephanopoulos was asking Bush about comments from James A. Baker III, who has said that the independent commission he co-chairs is pursuing alternatives to "cut and run" or "stay the course" in Iraq.

Said Bush: "Well, listen, we've never been stay the course, George. We have been -- we will complete the mission, we will do our job and help achieve the goal, but we're constantly adjusting the tactics, constantly."

“We’ve never been stay the course.” Hmmm…. Let me roll that around my mouth a bit, sort of like sampling a wine before spitting it back in the cup. “We’ve never been stay the course.” And that wasn’t -- couldn’t have been -- just a slipup. Not after White House counselor Dan Bartlett said almost the same thing the next day. This must be yet one more Bush talking points, where all his minions are sent out to their favorite media outlets and repeat the same thing. Lately, it was “cut and run Democrats”. Earlier on, I remember the phrase “historical revisionist”. Everyone was saying that for about three days, then that catchphrase that never caught fire must have been shuttled off to the dustbin.

This week, it is “We’ve never been stay the course.” This is just so astounding to me. I really and truly cannot figure out which one of the only three things that this can possibly represent.

The first is that Bush truly believes what he says and cannot remember that, for the last several years, “stay the course” has been his one and only answer to any question about Iraq. It’s the opposite side of the coin from “cut and run Democrats”. Sort of like “yin/yang” and “Abbott /Costello”, one cannot exist without the other, at least in the mind of Bush and his neocon followers. That’s all I have heard from Bush and his supporters for the last eight months or so.

The second possibility is that Bush knows exactly what he is saying and what a load of cow flop that it really is, but he is banking on the stupidity and gullibility of at least a majority of the voting American public to take him at his word and continue to vote Republican in two weeks time. After all, this has worked out fine many times in the past (e.g., WMD in Iraq), so why not this time as well? It isn’t as if they have a lot else to offer. Obfuscation as a tactic works very well, so why abandon it now?

The third and final possibility is that Bush doesn’t even care if his answers make sense, and doesn’t really care if anyone believes him or not. I have been noticing this tendency in some people, mostly conservative Republicans for some time now. As long as they can utter anything in response, as long as they can appear that they are in control and have a retort to whatever comes their way, that is all that it takes to make them happy. It doesn’t matter if they believe if themselves, and they don’t even care if it makes sense or convinces the person or persons they are talking to. It isn’t important. Their psyche is satisfied; they have made the effort. It isn’t their fault if no one believes them.

So, I can’t really say which category that Bush really falls into. I have seen a number of people argue for the first. Bush is a non-recovered dry-drunk who is heavily into denial about his own shortcomings and has a lot of emotional investment into his defensive ego protection mechanisms. It is no surprise that such a person could utter something that totally contradicts what he was saying just last week, so long as that protects himself from any possible blame or criticism. I could certainly buy this argument. However, I don’t really like to consider the possibility that the current President of the United States of America is out-and-out delusional. That is what a person would really have to be in order to act the way he is acting just to cover up his own shortcomings. Who knows what a person might do if really pushed on a bad day? Dropping a nuke on Iran just to spite Democrats isn’t that much of a stretch.

The second possibility is also very plausible. It depends greatly on 1) Bush’s ego, 2) his utter contempt for the American people (or anyone else he decides is beneath him), and 3) his love of unfettered power. This is a very, very cynical view of the man and his handlers. However, if it were true, he wouldn’t be that much different that the people who were in power in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. It is extremely possible to find people in today’s supposed Enlightened and Rational Age that are indeed that power hungry, who would do anything at all in order to remain in power and destroy their enemies. Again, that possibility is very disturbing to contemplate. On one hand, it might be a bit of a relief to know that Bush is using logic and understands the most likely outcome of his actions. He wouldn’t be considered to be a “madman” in the clinical sense of the word. However, this would mean that Bush will do almost anything to retain power and subjugate anyone who opposes him. Unfortunately, Bush’s own actions when viewed through this lens, show that this second possibility is very likely.

This last possibility is actually the one that I favor. I don’t know why. I have just had experiences with other, similar thinking people. I don’t mean that I know people who would use a national tragedy like 9/11 to go invade a country they were itching to go after before they even got into office and were just looking for an excuse. No, I mean that I have met people who would say just about anything when you hit them up with a question or point that they can’t answer. They just blurt out the first thing that comes into their heads. It doesn’t have to really address the point that was being made. It doesn’t even have to be rational or consistent. The important thing was that they need to have some pat answer that could, somehow, be justifiably seen as answering their critics. That’s all that is required, in their minds.

I suppose that this last possibility is actually part and parcel of the first possibility that I laid out. No doubt, psychologists have worked that all out long ago.

The main thing that comes from this sort of “thought experiment” is that, no matter which option you pick, it isn’t a very good conclusion for America. This is a man who has been handed the stewardship of the richest and most powerful country that has ever existed. He is treating it like his private plaything. He doesn’t consider the possible results of any of his actions after he leaves office. He takes no responsibility for any of the terrible things that have occurred as a direct result of his decisions. Having absolutely no fear or concern for any future events because you know that they can’t touch you removes all possible constraints for any decision you might want to make, no matter the reason.

I am hoping that a newly elected Democratic majority in the House, the Senate, or better yet, both, can put the brakes on this guy for the final two years of his term. If we get neither, then I really fear for the future of this country. What might happen in the last two years of Bush’s reign might make the first six look insignificant by comparison.

UPDATE: O.K, based on what has been going on about this "flip flop by any other name", it is obvious that the real answer for this particular question is #2. This renaming is now such a transparent political ploy, it is almost incomprehensible. Yes, this shows the absolute distain that Bush and his cronies have for the American public. Watching Tony Snow trying to do the linguistic equivalent of Chinese contortionists has been surreal. His feigned amazement that anyone would actually think that "stay the course" really meant... stay the course has been a wonder to behold.

The letter from Pat Tillman’s brother, Kevin.

This (via Truthdig) is all over the internet, but is not reaching the mainstream media. I did see that the Washington Post had a story on it, but I haven’t seen much on it elsewhere. I wonder why that is?

His letter is a powerful statement. I wish I could write something like this. It is all the more powerful because of who he is, what he has personally experienced, and his moral standing from what he has lost. Please pardon me for posting his letter in its’ entirety. That’s usually a no-no in the blogging world. However, I think that was probably the reason Kevin wrote this, so as many people as he could reach would read it.


It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.
Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,
Kevin Tillman

Is the war in Iraq really a “war”?

I am just musing on the actual meanings of words vs. what the person who utters that word would like everyone else to believe. To me, this whatever it is that we have going in Iraq seems actually very little like a war. Yes, we have a lot of military men and women in action, in harm’s way, and it is an unfortunate fact that many of them have been and will continue to be killed or severely wounded. If that is the definition of a war, then yes, that is what it is.

Maybe I have been too influenced by movies about World War II or documentaries on the History Channel. To me, a war is actually fought between two armies, with competing goals. There is strategy involved, objectives to be reached. Governments are involved, and each side has a recognizable command and supply structure. They wear uniforms. Generals have stars on their shoulders. Even though what the U.S. was involved in on the Korean Peninsula was formally called “a Police Action”, it was a war by any other definition. It fit all the items I described above.

I have absolutely no idea what is going on in Iraq or why we are there. Yes, at the beginning, it was a war between the military of the United States and the military of Iraq. That lasted only several weeks. Now, we have a mish-mash of all sorts of violence. Sunnis and Shias are at each other’s throats, with brutal slaughter of mostly civilians on both sides each and every day. There is a group of people who can legitimately be called terrorists who are intent on inflicting as much damage to the U.S. military as they can. They are not out to “defeat” the U.S. in a traditional sense. They just want to blow up their enemies. We are not there fighting a traditional army that has the backing of a government. We have no overall objectives or strategy. “Victory” is neither an objective nor a strategy. It is a goal. And we have absolutely no defined method to achieve that goal.

This would be a ridiculous situation if it weren’t so grim. Estimates of Iraqi dead range now anywhere from 20,000 to 600,000. Even if one assumes actual totals on the lower end of the estimates, that is still an appalling number. Our military is taking an incredible beating, in manpower, moral and equipment. It will be many years before it recovers. Meanwhile, Iran and North Korea know that the U.S. is in no position to do anything other than bluster and threaten. We might drop a bunch of bombs on someone, but there is no way we are going to commit any sort of ground force to yet another war with a more formidable enemy than the two that we have going right now.

Whatever we are doing in Iraq, it certainly isn’t fighting a traditional war. To me, it seems more like the U.S. military is being used as a target in target practice. Rick Santorum, who I sincerely hope gets his hat handed to him in the upcoming election in Pennsylvania, said as much the other day with his very weird “Lord of the Rings” analogy. He said that our military in Iraq was drawing the focus of the Eye of Sauron so it wouldn’t be focused here in our country. So, to decode what he really said, it seems to me he was saying that our brave men and women in the military are being used as a distraction, an easy target for terrorists, something on which they can focus their hatred and violence, just so we can sit here in our country on our fat duffs, driving our 16 mpg Hummers and watching “Dancing With The Stars” and not be at all worried about getting our trains blown up or buildings knocked down. Unless George Bush and his cronies pop up on their predetermined scheduled to tell everyone how terrified they should be.

Like I said, ridiculous.

Yet one more savage attack on the Constitution.

Yesterday, Bush signed into law a piece of putrid legislation that rips yet another cornerstone from the Constitution that protects our essential freedoms. Gone is the writ of habeas corpus. I don’t care what anyone else says, it is gone. Hardly anyone (except a number of bloggers and a few newspaper articles) has picked up on the fact American citizens are now included. Americans can be arrested, held for an indefinite period of time, never charged with a crime, never allowed access to a lawyer, and never shown the evidence against them so that they might be able to defend themselves. They could just be “accused” of something by someone in the good graces of the powerful. That might be all it takes for you to “disappear” into the system. All it takes is for the President to stick a label on you. “Enemy combatant”. That’s all it takes.

This could be the Salem witch trials all over again. Or the Soviet Union. People could start “exposing” their neighbors. How many people believe that no abuses will occur? We already have evidence that the FBI and CIA have monitored, and no doubt continue to monitor, anti-war groups, most of whom anyone with half a brain could tell in an instant pose absolutely zero threat to this country. Just in the last few weeks, this story broke about a man in Colorado who was arrested for “assaulting” the Vice President because he went up to him and said that Cheney’s position on the war was “reprehensible”. That was all. The man was with his son. No physical contact occurred, although the man admits that he may have brushed the VP’s shoulder while walking past, just as many others in the crowd did. And then the man walked off. Minutes later, a secret service agent came up to the man and arrested him. When the man objected and said that he couldn’t leave his son, the agent replied that someone from social services would take care of the boy.

This completely undermines one of the major concepts that define this country; innocent until proven guilty. This is more than a travesty. This is shocking beyond belief. Never before has this country depended on a person to safeguard the abuse of power, even if he is the president. The very framework protected us. Now, that framework is gone. I am beyond despondent. This country has changed and not for the better. Not by a long shot.

The terrorists have won.

(Here's a little more from Jane at Firedoglake.)

UPDATE: Bob Cesca at HuffPo says it much better than I ever could.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Well, someone is confused. I'm not sure who. Many national news outlets are saying that this removal of the rights assured by habeas corpus only apply to foreigners. However, I have seen several credible people say that this could also be applied to U.S. citizens. All it takes is for the president to label the person, U.S. citizen or not, as an enemy combatant. That's all it takes for that person to be deprived of all his or her legal rights. I have seen this asserted in several places. Helen Thomas said as much this morning. The most damning statement was by Jonathon Turley on Countdown early this week. I tend to believe that version. I just think the newspapers and major television news programs either haven't figured it out or don't really want to report on it. That is what is amazing me. This hughly significant attack on the Constitution is being met with total apathy. I think we, as a country, deserve what we get if we are this unaware of what is going on.

Very good article in Salon regarding Bush’s war.

This article rather tells it like it is. (The article in Salon is free. You just have to watch a short advertisement and then you get a free Day Pass to Salon. It’s pretty harmless.)

For Bush, the day of reckoning is at hand. After years of talking tough, smearing war opponents as appeasers and demanding "total victory," he must confront the fact that his Iraq war has been a catastrophic failure. Terror attacks are up, American casualties are soaring near record levels, and a credible study claims that at least several hundred thousand Iraqis have died as a result of the war, demolishing whatever moral rationale it had. Of more immediate concern to Bush, Americans have turned against the Iraq war so strongly that the issue now threatens to take down Bush's party, not just in the midterms but in 2008 as well.

James Baker has been brought in to pull Junior’s chestnuts out of the fire. It will be very interesting to see what his great revelation turns out to be. From the “leaks” that have already appeared in the press (such as in the article linked above), it would seem that the U.S. must get used to the fact that we are not going to achieve any of our stated goals, other than the fact that Saddam is no longer in charge. We certainly achieved that. However, we have nothing else. Nothing. And it looks like Baker might be attempting to soften up Bush and his cabal of neocons, getting them ready to accept what the rest of us have been painfully aware of for quite some time. This war is a failure. It is not going to achieve any stated goal of stability, democracy, reduced levels of terrorist activity, secure source of oil…. Nothing.

All that is left to be done is to figure out how we can extricate ourselves from the carnage and chaos in the least harmful way possible. Talk about lowered expectations. We are not going to see the reverse domino effect of flowering democracies springing up around the Middle East. We are just trying to figure out the least possible additional damage we can do at this time.

It will be very, very interesting to see how Bush reacts to this advice. Given that his modus operandi, every single time, has been to dig in, not recognize any sort of criticism or any suggestion that another method may yield better results, I would say that it’s a good bet Baker and his committee will be given the big brush off. Thanks but no thanks.

(Here’s another story about Baker’s involvement and probable recommendations.)

So, God and Moses are sitting around, discussing politics.

This sounds like the setup line in a bad joke about religion or politics or both. I wish this were a joke, but it isn’t. Here is the real story. God and Moses are starring together in a political ad on television in Colorado, in which they are discussing the concept of an increase in the minimum wage. I haven’t seen the ad, but from the sound of it, they apparently hate the idea of giving minimum wage earners any more money than what they get now. This is in spite of the fact that the national minimum wage hasn’t been raised in years at a time when corporate profits are going through the roof, along with CEO compensation packages, and in a number of states, a single worker earning the minimum wage for the year qualifies that person as being below the poverty line. I guess God may have changed His mind about tending to the poor and looking out for other people’s needs and all that.

So, talk about putting words in someone’s mouth. You can’t get any more presumptuous than putting words in The Creator’s mouth.

Again, I have to say, how do these people live with themselves?

The Flying Spaghetti Monster.

O.K., this is a good one. References to the Flying Spaghetti Monster have been around for some time. I thought they were funny but was not quite sure where it came from or what exactly was being referred to. So, I finally looked it up.

From Wikipedia: The Flying Spaghetti Monster is the deity of a parody religion founded in 2005 by physics graduate Bobby Henderson to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. In an open letter on his website, Henderson professes belief in a supernatural Creator that resembles spaghetti and meatballs called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and calls for Pastafarianism to be taught in science classrooms, essentially invoking a reductio ad absurdum argument against the teaching of intelligent design.

Followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) call themselves Pastafarians, a portmanteau of pasta and Rastafarian.

I love the quickie artwork of TFSM creating mountains, trees, and a midget and the graph showing the Average Global Temperature (in degrees C.) vs. the Number of Pirates. Make sure you look up the open letter to the Kansas School Board. I am going to have to use this in many upcoming arguments.

Gays in the Republican party and other inconvenient facts.

According to “Accuracy In Media”, via Marty Kaplan at HuffPo, "Republican Gays are Closeted Dems”. So, the Rethug party, after only just now "finding out" that their membership has gay members, fires back with the only weapon they have. Why, of course! Gays cannot be “real Republicans”! And, as everyone knows, “not Republican” equals “Democrat”.

Never mind that it has been rather common knowledge that the Republican Party has a fair number of homosexual members. Names such as the Lavender Bund are well known, and the Log Cabin Republicans have their own web site. Exactly why gays think they should be active members of the Republican party, whose overall philosophy toward gays could be classified as medieval, is a question I have long wondered about and has no convenient answer. But that is not the point here. Nor am I making any statements that gay people should not be politicians or be around children. The Rethug party does that plenty, and for them to try to turn that around on the Democrats making hay with the Mark Foley scandal is ridiculousness to the nth power.

There are two things going on with this disingenuous claim that closeted gays in the Republican party are actually Democrats. (I can’t even type that without shaking my head in disbelief.) The first is that this is the only way that many Rethugs know how to respond. Nothing is ever the fault of the Republican party and it will never, ever admit to any error in its’ methods, actions, or ways of thinking. However, this whole mess with Mark Foley and his terrible fondness for male pages is clearly their mess. The Democrats have nothing to do with this. However, that is their first and sometimes only weapon. Try to pin everything on the Democrats and/or President Clinton. So many Rethugs are giving it a go, in hope that some of it sticks.

The other thing that is going on is that many within the very conservative ranks of the Republican party had no clue that any homosexuals might be members of their party. And this, if it becomes a well known and documented fact (they could just try looking around for a bit), a lot of the base that the Bush and the Republicans count on is going to not be terribly motivated come election day. This scares the crap out of them. So, they must do anything to sling mud at their opponents and distract everyone from finding out the real truth. There are homosexual members of the Republican party and a couple of them have turned out to be sexual predators. This, for a party who has donned the cloak of moral superiority, hits home in several ways.

This, coupled with that nice new book from David Kuo, "Tempting Faith" about how Bush and his minions have taken the right wing conservative Christian branch of the party for a ride, has the makings of really undermining that thirty percent base for the Republican party. The hard-core “faithful” want to be myopic in their political views. New information is hard to process for them, especially information contrary to their “set in cement” views of the world. One can only hope that all this will finally break down their door of denial and expose how hypocritical Bush and the Republican party has been, and continues to be, regarding gays and lesbians.

What Christian schools are teaching in “science” class.

I’ll forgo my usual tirade about Bush and the Rethug party for a post here on another subject that has really gotten my goat for the last few days. I won’t go into the personal details behind this, as I really want to keep that kind of discussion out of this blog. I’ll just leave it at this. My wife’s 11-year-old niece from Taiwan is here in the U.S. living with us and going to school here. To take advantage of smaller classroom sizes and to let her English really get solidified, we thought a local private Christian school might be better for her in the beginning than throwing her in the vast, impersonal public school system.

I originally thought that this would mean an hour a day of Bible studies along with her normal classes, which I was perfectly fine with. However, this is what I learned last night when I was helping her with her “science” homework.

- All science can be divided into two different camps, evolutionists and creationists.
- Unless you are very careful when looking at the fossil record, you will come to conclusions that are not supported by the Bible, such as the Earth being more than 6000 years old.
- Dinosaurs lived at the same time as man. The Bible clearly shows this, as it mentions creatures such as “behemoth” and “leviathan”. Also, Chinese literature talks about “dragons”, so this proves that mankind observed dinosaurs first hand.
- Originally, all dinosaurs were herbivores. The large curved ripping teeth of dinosaurs like T. Rex were for stripping the bark off of trees. Some dinosaurs only became meat eaters after Adam and Eve sinned.
- Noah carried two of each land-based dinosaurs on the ark, and therefore survived the Great Flood. Some dinosaurs that flew or swam also survived.
- Scientists and paleontologists that have concluded that modern day birds are either descended from dinosaurs or are somehow related to dinosaurs are mistaken. The resemblance just means that God “reuses” the same design for all living creatures. Fossils showing feathers really aren’t feathers at all, and there is no connection with birds at all.
- Scientists cannot prove any theory about why dinosaurs became extinct. Therefore, they became extinct because of the Great Flood, because that is what the Bible says about all creatures that didn’t get taken on the Ark. (How this exactly ties in with the earlier statement about the dinosaurs aboard the Ark is not explained.)
- Some dinosaurs are probably alive today. We just don't know where to look for them.

I am just so upset with this at so many levels. I could spend many pages discussing the logical holes in these arguments. Exactly how was it that Noah managed to coax the largest animals that have ever lived onto a boat? What did they eat for those 40 days and 40 nights? They must have needed to eat several tons of plant matter every day to keep alive. And since the story of Noah came after the Original Sin, how did Noah keep T. Rex, the allosaurs, and the velociraptors from eating everyone else on board? Why did dinosaurs go extinct after they were saved from the flood? What about all the geologic evidence they are ignoring in this fabricated fairy tale? And I had another, more interesting question. If all dinosaurs were originally plant eaters but somehow “changed” after Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden, doesn’t that mean that they somehow “evolved”? They did not remain constant; they changed their functionality. That is the definition of evolution, which fundamentalists assure us is not true.

But I am much more distressed about how this could all be taught under the guise of “science”. The fundamentalists have decided to totally change the true meaning of the word science and entirely dispense with the scientific principle of formulating hypotheses based on observable evidence, having your theories peer reviewed, and altering your original theories based on new evidence. Their brand of “science” calls for twisting facts and convoluting logic just to make them fit in with their beliefs. That is a travesty. I don’t understand why they don’t just go all the way and declare the Sun revolves around the Earth. That is essentially what they are doing.

As I have stated before, you can get people to believe anything if you start early enough on them and repeat it every single minute of every single day. What they don’t seem to understand is that they are undermining the scientific integrity and knowledge base of the entire country. If everyone looked upon science as something that can be manipulated to support their religious (and political) beliefs, how long is this country going to remain a leader in technology and knowledge? Already, a very large percentage of the doctoral students in this country are not U.S. citizens. In fact, in some schools, foreign students are the majority of postgraduate studies.

My niece is going to the public school system next year.

So, North Korea now has The Bomb.

News about the North Korean nuclear bomb test is all over the news and blogs today. Taylor Marsh’s prediction this morning is that this will all somehow be the fault of Bill Clinton. Just as everything is the fault of Bill Clinton. That’s a rant for another day, I suppose.

Several points are being made this morning that I wholly agree with. First and foremost, this happened on George W. Bush’s watch, and he has had six years to deal with this emerging threat. It is especially telling that, since he labeled NK as one of the “axis of evil”, he might actually consider doing something about it. However, all he did is bluster and threaten, just like he always does. But since NK wasn’t going to be the pushover that Iraq was (at least in the initial stages) and that they could immediately throw about a million men against our ally, South Korea, there was no way Bush was going to take military action. And NK knew it.

This is so much worse, in my opinion, if Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapon. First, I think the Iranians are a little bit saner than Kim Jong Il. They have self-preservation as one of their primary goals, and I doubt they will go around threatening to use a nuclear weapon on whomever they feel like it. They won’t go “shopping” it around to other groups. Not to say that I think that Iran having a bomb would be a good thing. No, this world has way too many nuclear weapons as it is, and the more people who have their fingers on the trigger, the more likely one of them will pull it. But I think the North Koreans might do almost anything, especially if their country really starts to collapse. They are close to that point right now, but mass starvation is right around the corner. It hasn’t taken them long. I saw something on the news last night where NK demanded that SK pay large sums of money to the North as their “share” in protecting the Korean peninsula. Sounds like a nuclear version of the Sicilian protection racket. If they really start getting desperate, I could imagine them demanding vast sums of money and whatever else they want or else they will drop a bomb on Japan or Korea. Blackmail on a global scale. It might work, if it gets to that stage.

It appears that the Chinese have had enough, however. Perhaps they can put the brakes on this situation. They have apparently started withholding their advice and technical expertise. (As an aside, about damn time.) Because it is obvious that the United States not only has no power to change this particular situation, we are acting as an agitator. Since all we know how to do is threaten and bully, when the NK’s know that we aren’t going to do anything about it, that just makes that much more likely that they are going to do exactly what we don’t want them to do.

This is what happens when we won’t negotiate with anyone we don’t like and who doesn’t already agree with. That would be seen as “rewarding” bad behavior. I want to repeat that. The Bush administration believes, wholeheartedly, that we cannot negotiate with anyone who doesn’t already agree with us. In which case, there really isn’t much to negotiate. All the administration says about anyone, like Syria, Iran and North Korea, is “they know what they have to do”. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Bush approach to diplomacy.

Personally, I have a feeling that this situation will resolve itself peacefully. First, I take it that there is some doubt that NK can “weaponize” their bomb making material. It is one thing to set off a pile buried underground somewhere. It is entirely another to make a bomb that can be placed in a rocket and detonated at a particular target. However, that won’t take them that much longer to achieve, if they are giving the time and no incentive to stop. But I think the big powers in the region, such as China and Japan, will step in and something will happen. It is obviously not in their interests to have a nutcase with a nuclear weapon on their doorsteps.

But, whatever happens, I doubt the U.S. will play a big role. We have painted ourselves into a corner that we really can’t get out of. And that is no one’s fault but George W. Bush.

I gotta stop putting mescaline in my coffee.

This is the only explanation I can come up with that involves any semblance of logic at all. How else can I explain the full-out bizarre spectacle of a couple of Republican congressmen (from Florida and North Carolina, I believe, but am not absolutely certain) on Hardball with Chris Matthews, who were absolutely demanding that Nancy Pelosi (a Democrat, mind you) “come clean” about what she knew about the still unfolding Foley scandal? They were there, berating Pumpkinhead about his “naivety”. It is their firm belief, apparently, that just because Pelosi won’t submit to questioning under oath proves she has something to hide.

There was no word on all the steadfast Republican refusals to answer questions under oath about the run up to the Iraq invasion. Nor was their any word about the fact that it doesn’t even matter if the Democrats knew about Foley prior to ABC breaking the story. Many, many Republicans knew about it, and they didn’t even bother to tell the only Democrat on the committee that oversees the page program. Nor is there any mention about the absolutely disgusting behavior of an elected official toward minors. Nor was there any mention (except by Chris himself) that Republicans have been in the majority for 10 years now, that they hold the chair on every single committee in the house, and that many in the Republican House leadership knew something of Foley’s conduct long before the last two weeks. No, somehow, according to them, this is all the Democrats fault and we should all be outraged at all Democrats.

These apologists, enablers, and “always blame the opposition” types have just gotten pathetic. Again, I ask, how can these people live with themselves? How can they call themselves Americans, or wrap themselves with the twin mantels of “patriotism” and “family values”, when they not only allow, but actively participate, in this kind of disgusting behavior?

I don’t believe in the Christian concept of God, Heaven, and Hell, but if I did, I think I might get some satisfaction regarding the ultimate judgment that awaits these fellows.

One of the Founding Fathers speaks out on today's society.

Poputonian has a great post at Hullaballo

I don’t know how to get the link to the individual post at Hullaballo. They don’t seem to have an archive that I can access to get the individual links. Sorry. However, this quote that poputonian came up with is too good not to repeat.

John Adams speaking of the Clergy in 1765:

... they even persuaded mankind to believe, faithfully and undoubtingly, that God Almighty had entrusted them with the keys of heaven, whose gates they might open and close at pleasure; with a power of dispensation over all the rules and obligations of morality; with authority to license all sorts of sins and crimes; with a power of deposing princes and absolving subjects from allegiance; with a power of procuring or withholding the rain of heaven and the beams of the sun; with the management of earthquakes, pestilence, and famine; nay, with the mysterious, awful, incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and wine the flesh and blood of God himself. All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet among the people by reducing their minds to a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity, and by infusing into them a religious horror of letters and knowledge. Thus was human nature chained fast for ages in a cruel, shameful, and deplorable servitude to him, and his subordinate tyrants, who, it was foretold, would exalt himself above all that was called God, and that was worshipped.

I cannot belief how low the right wing echo chamber will go to defend “their own”.

Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge are leading the charge to blame the victims of this whole sordid mess. Drudge first calls all pages “beasts” and blames them for “egging the congressman on”. Now he claims that it is all some prank gone awry. Limbaugh starts the rumor it is somehow the Democrats fault; that they were intentionally holding on to this information until right before the elections, without offering any sort of proof whatsoever. They are just slinging mud against the wall in the weak hope that some of it will stick. After all, THEIR guys are the good guys and everyone knows all Democrats are evil. Which must have been the reason that Fox News got “mixed up” and identified Mr. Pedophile himself as D-FL.

The latest attempt at sliming the victims of all of this is outing the pages that were the target of Foley’s unwanted attention, publishing the names of these kids. Yes, how nice. Very professional.

What disgusting, unethical, hypocritical slimeballs these people are turning out to be. Most of us knew that already, but they are showing it to the world in spades. What is really ironic, all of this is turning the stomachs of many of their erstwhile hardcore supporters. I don’t agree with most of what the evangelical Right says, does, or thinks, but many of them are very sincere. And preying on kids in an overt sexual manner and then everyone lying about it, blaming everyone else in sight, is really upsetting the conservative Christians.

These people really turn my stomach. I’m not sure who I am most upset with right now: Foley himself, all the “leadership” in the Rethug party who covered it all up and who let politics take the lead when they should have been worried about the kids, or all the right wing “defenders of the realm” who will do and say absolutely anything in order to further their cause and slime their opponents.

How can these people live with themselves?

And for a little more on some of the perversity of the Rethugs, take a look at this link.

My shortcomings as a "up to the second" blogger

O.K., I admit that my stuff isn't really all that leading edge. I maybe get within a time window of two or three days if I am lucky, but this would certainly not be the place for someone to go find out what is going on just this minute. On more than several occasions, I have had posts that I wrote during lunch at work and have forgotten to post them when I get home for several days. By the time I remember them, they have been overrun by fast moving events. If you want up to the minute breaking news, go try Huffington Post instead.

Between being in all day meetings all this week and reading a book at lunch that I need to write a review of before the end of October, I didn't get a lot of personal writing done this week during the day. At at home, there is the grass to mow, Countdown with Keith Olberman to watch, dinner to eat, homework to be helped with. I don't know how bloggers with jobs actually do it. Or bloggers without jobs, for that matter.

The Stupidest Thing I Have Heard This Week

Bill Frist wants to allow the Taliban back into government in Afghanistan.

These are the same people who shielded Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, the people who were REALLY responsible for 9/11. The Taliban are the people who make their women become invisible to society. Who allow honor killings.

How can people say such stupid stuff? Have all their neuron endings in their brain come unloose and are just in their skulls, flapping around like broken clotheslines in the wind?

Can we all just say “Cut And Run” now, Mr. Frist?

Rice was warned about Bin Laden prior to 9/11, and then lied about it.

She has categorically denied that anyone briefed her that Bin Laden was getting ready to attack the United States. However, Bob Woodward has backed up the information in his book with documents and corroborating testimony that were at the briefing. I don’t have a link for this, as this information just came out today in a Bob Woodward interview by Andrea Mitchell. Both the NBC Evening News and Countdown on MSNBC hit this pretty hard. Pumpkinhead Tim Russert agreed that the documents show that Woodward is correct. I am paraphrasing, but apparently the people that briefed Rice felt that they were just blown off.

These people just lie and lie and hope that no one catches them in their lies, and then have no idea how to respond when they are caught.

I am so disgusted with Bush and his cronies and pretty much 95% of the Republican party in general, I can’t even think straight about it. How dare they portray themselves as the party of values and of being good Christians. They have raised the definition of hypocrisy several levels of magnitude.

Oh, yeah. Another crazy with guns kills innocent kids.

I'm really pissed off tonight.

Is the Republican Party finally imploding?

Things are just going downhill so fast for the batch of thugs that currently run the Republican party, it is enough to make your head spin. I can’t even begin to keep up with all the developments.

There’s George “Macaca” Allen, of course, who went ballistic when it was revealed that his mother has Jewish roots. First came the obligatory denial, then the acceptance when confronted with the fact, although that acceptance came with several caveats. He was unaware of her origins until just last year, and that she still makes great pork chops. I don’t suppose he ever asked any questions about why his grandfather was in a German concentration camp during WWII? He still wears his cowboy boots and hat to engender his supposed bonds with the right wing voters of Virginia. But things aren’t really going too well for him, since he can’t get anyone to talk about anything else these days. Actually, probably the best thing he has going for him now is Jim Webb comes with a bit of a tarnished reputation as well for his statements about women in military academies. At least he had the good sense to say his views on the subject seventeen years ago were juvenile. It remains to be seen if he is really repentant or not.

But the bigger distraction for everyone these days is the revelations about Mark Foley. Another little sordid barnacle on the underbelly of the Rethug party is revealed. Of course, this all does serve as a distraction from the Big Debacle that is Iraq and from our foreign policy in general that is in tatters. But it is a sorry state of affairs when the only positive thing that can be said is that when a sordid affair distracts everyone’s attention from the Big Debacle.

Where will it all end and how much of a blind eye can be turned by the Republican’s core supporters? Foley and Allen are just the latest in the long line of black eyes for the right. Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, Bob Ney, “Dutch” Cunningham, the New Hampshire phone jamming scheme, Haliburton and all the rest of those “private contractors” who are getting rich without delivering the goods, the continuing reprehensible lack of response to Katrina, not to mention the recent refutation of Habeas Corpus and the acceptance of torturing anyone designated as an enemy of the state without trail, all of these show how absolutely morally bankrupt our current leadership actually is.

I have great hopes but am also very fearful about the upcoming mid-term elections. I would like to believe all the reports that seem to be pointing toward a Democratic landslide. However, given what has happened in the past, I am very concerned that the elections will do nothing but maintain the status quo. The Democrats will pick up some seats in both the House and the Senate, but will lose some that they were expecting to win. There will be renewed suspicions regarding the accuracy of Diebold voting machines. There will be very incidents that look very much like efforts by the Right to suppress the votes from groups that tend to vote Democratic. People will cry “foul”, and will be sneered at as sore losers and labeled as conspiracy theorists. This will, of course, be taken by the Right as validation that they style of governance is what the country wants.

I personally cannot believe that the current leadership of this country will go unpunished for the complete mess they have gotten this country into. However, I also believe that they will find someway to escape any punishment for their misdeeds. I am very worried indeed.

More gun violence at a high school in Colorado.

Déjà vu all over again. Another incident involving guns just occurred at a school in Colorado not far from Columbine High School, and not too far from where I grew up.

I haven’t noticed anyone even mention this country’s policy of absurdly easy access to guns in the aftermath of another horrendously chilling event. However, given the circumstances of this one, I doubt anything would have deterred this guy short of removing every single privately held firearm in the country. And that is not going to happen, I freely acknowledge that. I’m not even advocating an extreme position like that. I think this last week’s episode is probably more about a psychopath and sexual deviant on the rampage than it is about guns.

However, I will rail a bit here about how utterly indifferent this country has become to violence done to innocent people, including 16 year old girls, with guns. Yes, we will all feel terribly about what happened, and feel for the parents of a young girl who went to school one day and won’t ever be coming home. We will make noises about needing to do something about the security in schools. Shall we put in more metal detectors, or more visible police? Or maybe both? But we will not have a discussion about the access to deadly weapons by people who should not be trusted with a letter opener, much less loaded weapons. No, our civil liberties are “much too precious” to ever think about restricting access to guns. However, we seem to have no problem whatsoever with the loss of all the rest of our liberties, such as habeas corpus, freedom to dissent, separation of church and state and freedom of the press. Just so long as the person responsible for taking away those liberties is a Christian and is “protecting our country”, then people seem to have no problem with that.

I’m sorry, but I cannot reconcile all these contradictory positions that the right wing has these days. I know that I feel terribly for the 16 year old girl who lost her life the other day, as well as for her family and friends and all the other kids in that school who were terrorized by that evil person. Would things have turned out any differently if there had been stricter gun control laws? Most likely not. But maybe there is something that could be done to prevent the next lunatic with a grievance and a semi-automatic. I just seriously doubt that this country is willing to have that discussion. We are much too involved in the important stuff, like making sure that no gay persons can marry each other.

UPDATE: A student in Wisconsin just killed his principle because the principle disciplined him for having tabacco. The kid got the guns by breaking open his family's locked gun storage.

More from Andrew Sullivan on Christianism.

He has a very scary post regarding a recent meeting of something called the “Family Research Council/ Focus on the Family/ American Family Association” summit in Atlanta. The following is from one of his readers.

I went to the Family Research Council/Focus on the Family/American Family Association "Values Voters" summit this weekend at the Omni.

It is much, much worse than we know.

The first woman I spoke to (from Erie, PA) railed on about how Chuck Hagel is a flaming liberal and John McCain should be tried for treason. I thought that maybe I'd run into an isolated crazy. Oh no - it only got worse from there. The level of contempt for anyone who diverges from the Holy Word of W is beyond description. I was sort of 'undercover' so I could just let people talk to me, not leading the conversation, not baiting, and it horrified me to hear how many were perfectly comfortable with any form of torture in the name of patriotism if the Commander In Chief gave it the ok.

...snip...

There is no room for disagreement, because it is tantamount to evil. Dissent is the same as blasphemy, and everything is approached in orthodox terms. I've always been a conservative because I believe that there is such a think as good and evil and that moral relativism is a crazy road on which logic can rarely stick. I believe in limited government and individual liberty. I know I can do things better than any bureaucracy ever will. But what conservatism has become with these people is horrifying. They'd trade liberty for a handshake from W., compassion for power. And they've got one amazing plan in place to make sure that future generations have a tighter, more limited, and clearly more hostile worldview. I went there hoping to prove myself wrong about what I thought was happening, but I just couldn't do it.


This is some very, very scary stuff. This is what I was talking about in one of my recent posts. These people know the have the full backing of God, whatever they decide to do and no matter how grotesque and contradictory their opinions become. God will always be on their side.

If these people were to gain control of this country, I think we would have something much worse in this country than has ever been envisioned by any of us this side of a fictional novel or science fiction movie. We would have ghettoes or concentration camps for gays and lesbians. We would have mandatory membership in a fundamentalist Christian church and no absences allowed on any of the scheduled services. Dissent would not be tolerated, and it wouldn’t be long before the “undesirable elements” in society would join homosexuals in those concentrations camps.

I don’t know what the rest of the world might think of a fundamentalist Christian country that abhors anyone that does not fit their ideal of a “true believer”, and one that is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons on top of loads and loads of your garden-variety military weaponry. Where might Bush’s notion of preemptive military strikes take us when the definition of what is threatening to us changes to “anybody who is not us”? I could see many countries lining up and waging a preemptive war with us because they feel threatened, which is otherwise known as “What’s good for the goose….”

In other words, if we, as a country, are actually contemplating dropping a nuclear bomb on Iran because they might, someday, somehow drop a nuke on us, well, maybe they might be thinking that they should maybe get the jump on us first.

Depressing reality.

There is very little I feel like writing about these days. I could make another supposedly “pointed and snarky” post about some current television ads that I find particularly insulting. However, given the political situation facing this country right now, I just don’t have the passion to put anything into a post that is not about politics and how the current Republican party is bankrupting this country; monetarily, physically, ethically, morally bankrupting it.

This is just not the country I was taught about in school. I was taught that we held ourselves up to high standards, and that our system of government, while not pretty or easy, ensured equal treatment for all, not just the current majority, and also ensured that no one person could run amok without the checks and balances coming into play in very short order.

Of course, much of what we were taught at that level turned out to not be totally true. I was never taught, at that level, the injustices that blacks, other minorities, and even women faced on a daily basis. Certainly, we learned about some of the scandals, such as Teapot Dome and the corruption of Tammany Hall. I think I heard something about Joe McCarthy back then, but didn’t know much about that whole episode until after I was out of high school. But all those “unpleasant” episodes were in the past, some relic of some long-ago age that really had nothing to do with the shining ideals to which our country always strived for.

I lived through Watergate and Nixon’s resignation. I was absolutely fascinated by the Watergate hearings. I watched them incessantly. I was impressed by the fact that the panel was made up of both Republicans and Democrats, all seeking the truth. Howard Baker’s “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” still rings with me. Baker was a true Republican, as were several other members of the committee, but I always felt that all of them had one goal, to get to the facts of what happened that a corrupt administration was trying desperately to hide. The entire response to the excesses of a President out of control seemed to show the best of this country. We may hit bumps in the road now and then, and some pretty severe bumps at that. However, the system that we have will protect us from really straying too far from the course.

All of this is an attempt to describe how utterly frustrated, disappointed, and frightened I am by the current situation. This is not a country I recognize.

Here is my assessment of our current situation. There is a very large element of the current Republican party whose goal is not to govern. Their goal is to implement their utopian, their “perfect society”. It doesn’t matter how many people they hurt or alienate to attain that goal. They will do anything they can. They will destroy any and all perceived enemies that stand in their way, or even those who slightly disagree with them. They will righteously hold up the Constitution when it suits their needs, but ignore it or actively try to undercut the very foundation that our country has depended on since its’ inception with ease when it becomes convenient to do so. They will lie, cheat and steal when they see that such activity might further their goals. They will manipulate and steal outright elections upon which our system of government depends. They will corrupt the infrastructure of our society, such as a free press and a free education for all who desire it. They will not hesitate to impose their set of neo-Christian beliefs on the rest of us. They will scream “foul!” whenever anyone tries to fight back against their tactics.

This is the road that I see this country on. This is nothing more than the willful destruction of the system of government, checks and balances, and free press that we have depended upon to maintain our freedom and our high moral status among the nations of the world.

A retired general on the war

Nice piece from Andrew Sullivan, who doesn’t really have the best of reputations among the liberal bloggers. But some of his recent posts that I have read really haven’t pulled any punches. Actually, this post doesn’t say too much from Sully himself. He lets recently retired General Batiste do the talking for him.

“My name is John Batiste. I left the military on principle on November 1, 2005, after more than 31 years of service. I walked away from promotion and a promising future serving our country. I hung up my uniform because I came to the gut-wrenching realization that I could do more good for my soldiers and their families out of uniform. I am a West Point graduate, the son and son-in-law of veteran career soldiers, a two-time combat veteran with extensive service in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq, and a life-long Republican.

“Bottom line, our nation is in peril, our Department of Defense’s leadership is extraordinarily bad, and our Congress is only today, more than five years into this war, beginning to exercise its oversight responsibilities. This is all about accountability and setting our nation on the path to victory. There is no substitute for victory and I believe we must complete what we started in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Donald Rumsfeld is not a competent wartime leader. He knows everything, except "how to win." He surrounds himself with like-minded and compliant subordinates who do not grasp the importance of the principles of war, the complexities of Iraq, or the human dimension of warfare. Secretary Rumsfeld ignored 12 years of U.S. Central Command deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build “his plan,” which did not address the hard work to crush the insurgency, secure a post-Saddam Iraq, build the peace, and set Iraq up for self-reliance. He refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency, which was an absolute certainty. Bottom line, his plan allowed the insurgency to take root and metastasize to where it is today. Our great military lost a critical window of opportunity to secure Iraq because of inadequate troop levels and capability required to impose security, crush a budding insurgency, and set the conditions for the rule of law in Iraq.

“We were undermanned from the beginning, lost an early opportunity to secure the country, and have yet to regain the initiative. To compensate for the shortage of troops, commanders are routinely forced to manage shortages and shift coalition and Iraqi security forces from one contentious area to another in places like Baghdad, An Najaf, Tal Afar, Samarra, Ramadi, Fallujah, and many others. This shifting of forces is generally successful in the short term, but the minute a mission is complete and troops are redeployed back to the region where they came from, insurgents reoccupy the vacuum and the cycle repeats itself. Troops returning to familiar territory find themselves fighting to reoccupy ground which was once secure. We are all witnessing this in Baghdad and the Al Anbar Province today. I am reminded of the myth of Sisyphus. This is no way to fight a counter-insurgency. Secretary Rumsfeld’s plan did not set our military up for success.”

Can anyone with more authority and knowledge in this area say it any more succinctly than does General Batiste?

The Decline and Fall of Reason

The President of the United States wants to torture people. How mind-numbing is that? The leader of the most powerful nation in the world, one that has long been a beacon of hope and enlightenment during the dark times of the 20th Century, is actively pushing our country in a direction that would make us resemble the worst of South America’s or Asia’s tin-pot dictators. We have secret prisons into which people “disappear”. We can grab citizens of another country, such as Canada, and send them to places like Syria, where they essentially cease to exist. They are tortured and brutalized into providing their interrogators false information, which is then used to cause panicked reactions in government institutions and terrify the general populace. And then, they are just “let go” when (and if) it was decided that they were picked up by mistake. And this isn't even going into the fact that most people who know about such things say that the information gained by torturing people is highly suspect.

But what is even more mind-numbing is that a very large percentage of the populace of this country agrees with him. Their rationale seems to be something like this. The people in question are Arabs, they are obviously guilty. If they were innocent, we wouldn’t have picked them up in the first place. It’s their fault. Besides, Bush is a God fearing person who would never do anything wrong, and those beyond-disgusting bleeding-hearted liberals and pro-terrorist Democrats really want to destroy Bush and America.

Reason has, without question, taken a leave of absence here in this country. Most people now do not know how to conduct civil discourse any more than they can comprehend particle physics. Facts and fact-based analysis have been shoved aside in favor of impassioned opinion. It doesn’t matter if the impassioned opinion comes from religious beliefs, a neo-con view of the world, extreme tribalism or just an egocentric view that “I am always right and since you disagree with me, you are always wrong.” It just doesn’t matter where it comes from. As a nation, we have lost any sort of ability to do any sort of critical self-analysis. If anyone does take that road, they are immediately labeled as part of the Blame America FirstTM crowd. It seems that most of the people who support the current Republican party suffer from a congenital lack of imagination. Would they support such a system of presidential power, free from any sort of oversight or checks-and-balances as promised in your third grade civics class, if someone like Hillary Clinton were president? Or can they not see that, by gutting the system that has been so carefully nurtured for so long, we risk letting in the world’s next Hitler?

But I am digressing from my original point. That point is that this country is becoming what we, for most of our history, actively fought against. And a large percentage of the people of this country are not only allowing this to happen, they are actively participating.

I find it very frightening that I can read a book like Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” or watch a film like “V for Vendetta” and not dismiss it as total fantasy. In fact, I get the distinct impression that, if a few things went just right, ending up like those two incredibly scary examples is not that big of a stretch (except for there would be no one running around in a cape and a Guy Fawkes mask to deliver us). We could end up with a full-fledged dictatorship, but one that has the outward trappings of a democracy. However, it would be a democracy in name only. It would look a lot like Mussolini’s fascist Italy, except for several important differences. It would not have a centralized control of the economy; it would be just the reverse. Capitalism unfettered by any sort of government restraint would be the rule, as would the total suppression of dissent. It would be a very hard and unforgiving system for the workers, but generous in the extreme to the corporate executives and the lobbyists that help feed the system. And on top of this incredibly brutal system would be the religious underpinnings that give the powerful their basis for that power. Anything that is said or done to attempt to change the system would be accused of being “against Christianity”.

That is the future I am predicting could easily happen to this country.

What is it about this particular time that has seemed to have fundamentally changed the ways in which Americans thought about themselves? Is it just that we have collectively “crapped in our pant” because we were so frightened by those horrendous events of September 11, 2001? Is it somehow related to how much more control huge financial interests run our media and therefore can shape the way the country thinks?

I just don’t know. I know that the country didn’t distinguish itself by interring Japanese American citizens after Pearl Harbor. But it seems to me that we are reacting in ways that we, as a country, never have before.

UPDATE: Well, as everyone who is paying attention knows by now, the President and the three “maverick” Republican senators reached a “compromise” on Bush’s desire to use torture. Of course, no Democrats were included in this compromise, as they are totally outside any deal-making structure these days. This so-called compromise, as far as I can discern, gives Bush pretty much everything he wants. I guess the compromise is to just keep the Geneva Convention out of the discussion.

Great. What a great moral compass this country has these days.

Five Duquesne basketball players shot on campus

Apparently, a couple of players tried to de-escalate a situation with a person who had been disruptive earlier at a student union dance. After the players were walking away, they were gunned down. Several others came to their aid, and were also shot. At the time of this writing, one remains in critical condition, one in serious condition. The others appear to have non-life threatening injuries.

I haven’t mentioned this on this web site before, but I just cannot express how much I hate the gun culture of this country. I find it disgusting. And when one of these tragedies occur, like they seemly do on a yearly basis, and I bring up how asinine the pro-gun people are about this issue, the response I get is something along the lines of, “There you go, you anti-gun nuts, trying to bring politics into this tragedy.”

What a stupid response. Absolutely insane. How is being upset about innocent people being shot out in public in the richest, most powerful country on earth being “political”? People are dying and being seriously injured every single day by handguns, and being concerned about it is somehow a political issue? No, stupid, it’s concern about fellow human beings being gunned down. Please explain to me how that is being political.

One of the issues that is invariably brought up is the valid uses of guns by lawful gun owners in this country. I can understand that. Well, I don’t “understand” it but I will concede the point that many people do legitimately feel that way. There are many people who enjoy getting into the outdoors with their pals, sons, or daughters, for a bit of bonding. I, personally, do not see the thrill in sneaking up on and killing animals. Back in the days where the vast majority of human beings were in the “hunter/gatherer” classification, that made sense. You had to provide for your family. But that time has long passed. I really refuse to see the sporting aspect of spilling the blood of a deer or pheasant. But, yes. That is a lawful and mostly harmless use of rifles, shotguns, and the like. Except, of course, for the unfortunate hunting accident that does happen when people are around loaded guns. Ask Dick Cheney about this.

However, I will make this point very clear, right up front. Those kinds of guns and those kinds are uses are not what I am talking about. I am talking about handguns, those weapons whose only purpose is to be cheap to procure, easily concealed, and do other people bodily harm. Let us not muddy the waters with this attempt of obfuscation.

The retort that I next hear in response to this argument is that handguns provide a homeowner with an effective deterrent against unlawful entry and protection against bodily harm. Yes, in some cases, this last is a true statement. However, statistics show (and not the statistics compiled by the NRA) that many more people are killed and injured by loaded guns in their own houses than are actually used against assailants and the gun is used as a last recourse. Casualties includes many young children who end up playing with a loaded gun they got from their dad’s bedside table drawer or out of the closet. They end up shooting themselves, their friends who their were trying to impress, or the person living in the upstairs apartment.

The statistics of crimes involving guns are absolutely horrendous. I do not see how any rational person can look at what is going on in this country and conclude that everything is fine the way it is, except for maybe “tightening up” on the laws that we currently have. However, any time anyone attempts to do just that, the NRA howls up a blue streak and their impressive voter lists scare the crap out of any politician looking to retain his or her elective office. Even with the Right’s most illustrious President is shot with a handgun and could have easily been killed, that still presents no compelling reason to propose anything that might affect the ability of any person in the United States who wants a gun to have one, without any limitations, registration, or even training.

How, in God’s name, can we seriously require all the training, licensing, and taxes associated with getting a driver’s license and driving a car, which are not meant to do other people bodily harm, but we have absolutely no such requirements for owning a gun, which is intended for just that purpose? Would someone please explain that one to me, in a straightforward, logical manner? Emotional rants will not be accepted.

Another argument I have gotten is about why we should require such restraints for guns when knives can also be used to hurt and kill other people. I had this discussion with a pretty far-out-there during a long drive where I had no choice in the matter. This guy proudly proclaimed that he gets all his news from talk radio. However, when I directed him to other resources like the web, he claimed he was much too busy. I won’t go into that particular self-deception right now, as that is the topic of another post. But he seriously thought he was making a very important point by bringing up the fact that knives can be used to hurt people. When I pointed out that guns can be used at a distance, without having to actually confront your intended victim, and knives require a certain amount of proximity which can therefore involve a certain amount of risk to the knife-bearer, he claimed that he had never thought about this point before. How something so completely obvious can be overlooked by a very intelligent person is beyond me. Willful ignorance is the only thing that I can come up with. Plus, there is the fact that guns are designed with a single purpose in mind; that is to shoot someone. Knives are generally made for another purpose like carving turkeys, unless you have something like a Bowie knife.

Another point that is invariably brought up is the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Here it is, in its’ entirety.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

This is the piece of a document that the pro-gun people use to justify their addiction to firearms. “The freedom to own handguns in contained in the Bill of Rights!”, they conclude with sense of finality. There are two things that make this argument, in my mind, really rather lame. The first is that most of the people who put some much stock in this Amendment are also the ones who would throw out the rest without any hesitation if it were to further their own political cause. Freedom of the press, the separation of church and state, and the rights of people accused of crimes are all under assault these days by the Bush regime. Gun-supporters almost always identify themselves as Republicans, and look upon efforts to do whatever is necessary to promote whatever illegal activity that Bush and his crowd of neo-cons want to further their agenda. So, I look at this argument as entirely self-serving. You cannot pick and choose from the Constitution. You either are in for the entire game, or else we have no basis for government. There is no middle ground.

The other specious argument about the Second Amendment is, of course, the United States currently has no standing well regulated militias that I can point to. The Montana Militiamen and the Posse Comitatus do not qualify. Those are rogue organizations that have absolutely nothing to do with the protection of the country. This Amendment was probably entirely necessary and reasonably back when the Bill of Rights was being formulated. A standing military of huge proportions was probably not envisioned by the Founding Fathers. This Amendment says nothing, absolutely not one word, about owning a gun for “personal protection”. The Supreme Court, over the years, has come down with several decisions that has done little to really answer the question. However, this is what the Findlaw web site concluded about this issue.

“In spite of extensive recent discussion and much legislative action with respect to regulation of the purchase, possession, and transportation of firearms, as well as proposals to substantially curtail ownership of firearms, there is no definitive resolution by the courts of just what right the Second Amendment protects. The opposing theories, perhaps oversimplified, are an ''individual rights'' thesis whereby individuals are protected in ownership, possession, and transportation, and a ''states' rights'' thesis whereby it is said the purpose of the clause is to protect the States in their authority to maintain formal, organized militia units. Whatever the Amendment may mean, it is a bar only to federal action, not extending to state or private restraints. The Supreme Court has given effect to the dependent clause of the Amendment in the only case in which it has tested a congressional enactment against the constitutional prohibition, seeming to affirm individual protection but only in the context of the maintenance of a militia or other such public force.” (Emphasis mine)

However, when looking at this piece of the Bill of Rights without any legalistic eyeglasses on (which, I agree, you really need to do), it is my claim that what the authors of this Amendment intended is not how it is being interpreted today. There is no such thing as a “public force” when the argument is for private ownership of guns. But I will admit right now, I am not a lawyer or anyone who is versed in legalistic language. But I know what that sentence in the Second Amendment says to me about its’ intent.

But the point that riles me the most is the fact that the vast majority of the pro-gun establishment is also part of the virulent anti-abortion/pro-life crowd. I just cannot reconcile these two positions. The “pro-life” people say that life is sacrosanct, that people should always err on the side of life whenever there is the slightest doubt. This position is used to validate the right wing’s position on the Terry Schavio case and stem cell research. How very nice. However, how can any rational person reconcile this extreme position and still not care anything about the injuries and deaths caused by handguns each year? If a bunch of cells that are just starting to come together that will ultimately end up as an unborn fetus can be worthy of such attention, why is not a real-life human being worthy of the same concern and attention? Some of these victims of accidental or purposeful gun violence are among the youngest and most innocent of our society. How can anyone argue that an unborn fetus is worthy of absolute protection, even if the mother-to-be were raped or impregnated by a family member, but a five year old’s assumption of well being can be safely ignored? Does emergence from the womb somehow remove any consideration of protection? Now who’s being political?

When I argued this point to the same person I described above, he just brushed it aside by saying that he didn’t see any conflict. He never explained why he felt that way, of course. But he was obviously comfortable with the surety of his convictions.

As an engineer and scientist by education and training, I cannot abide by illogical people who won’t even admit that their position is illogical. That takes away any chance of addressing any sort of conflict in a meaningful manner.

I will admit here that I do have a very personal interest in this issue. Some things just crystallize in your mind when, as a young adult, my younger brother and I were confronted with our drunk, raging step-father with a loaded gun, who waved it in our faces while bellowing out that he wanted us “to love him”. If that doesn’t really make some things plain to you, nothing will. My brother and I just waited until the he drank himself into a stupor and passed out on the kitchen floor, at which time we took the gun and hid it.

As a personal aside on an already personal story, this incident must have traumatized my younger brother to a very great extent. When I brought this up in a discussion many years later, he looked at me and it was obvious that he was wondering what the hell I was talking about. He obviously didn’t remember it. For me, there’s no way I would ever forget something like that. I am not sure if this failing of his memory was really due to the fact he just forgot the incident. He’s not that old, so I cannot ascribe this forgetting to normal memory loss associated with getting old. I don’t know if it was one of the mind’s mysterious “protection schemes”, which make you bury very unpleasant episodes of your life. I just don’t know. Several weeks or months after this discussion, I can’t remember how long now, he did call me and say, yeah, I guess I do sort of remember that.

One of the points that I have often thought about but have seen no one ever speak aloud is this. The people who most want guns are the people who I trust the least with them. I believe that guns speak to the person’s “inner-machismo”. If they don’t have a loaded gun, they would somehow feel emasculated and without any power, symbolic or otherwise. I find this trait in humans reprehensible. If you don’t have a sense of self-worth without a gun, then owning one isn’t going to give you anything but a false sense of being “a real man”. The value of a person should not be thought of in the context in the ability to threaten to blow someone away. I believe that, if the most vehement pro-gun people were to be really honest with themselves, they would admit that the self-protection aspect is really only a very small part of their actual position. However, they can’t admit to the other 90%, so they are stuck trying to make a case on the Second Amendment rights and personal protection.

Baghdad to be surrounded by a moat.

Well, plus checkpoints, walls, barbed wire, old tires, apples crates, anything that we can get our hands on.

Yeah, this certainly sounds like strategy for “winning”. Not. Actually, it doesn’t even sound much like a strategy for “staying the course”. To me, it sounds like getting behind the walls of the Alamo with Santa Anna approaching the last garrison.

The “Long War” and the Imperial Presidency.

John Yoo, the Preznit’s so-called legal council, has offered an opinion that in the time of war, the power provided by the Constitution shifts to the Executive Branch. Here is an excerpt from a story in Nation .

"At the Justice Department between 2001 and 2003, Berkeley law professor John Yoo crafted a series of now notorious legal opinions. In them, he spelled out the fundamentals of a secret emergency Constitution under which the President's inherent powers in the "war on terror" are essentially unlimited. In the wake of 9/11, Yoo argued, the United States was at war in a constitutional sense, and consequently Congress and the courts could no longer purport to second-guess or interfere with or even learn about the President's national-security decisions, however momentous."

Completely outrageous, of course. This guy is a constitutional lawyer? Where in the world did he come up with this? Couple this with this administration’s concept that this country is going to be at war with (insert scary name/catchphrase of the day here) pretty much forever, they are essentially saying that the President can do anything he wants to, irregardless of whether it has anything to do with this “war” or not, for as long as he decrees.

To recap: Unfettered presidential power for as long as we are at war + a war for as long a period of time as the president decrees = a cyclic argument + a self-declared king.

I would not be at all surprised (outraged, but not surprised) if Bush were to declare that, due to the “ongoing crisis”, the 2008 elections were postponed or cancelled. I am beginning to believe that he is that crazy, and most of his enablers would probably not only allow him to get away with it, they would probably be supportive. This is how much I think this guy has a God complex. He thinks he can do anything he wants and is not answerable to anyone.

I wish someone would slap Bush upside the head and remind him that he is only a temporary steward of this country, not the owner.

The Super Colossal Titanic Never-Ending Clash Between Good and Evil - Just put it on my credit card, please

I have been seeing a lot of people point this out lately. President Bush keeps insisting that our war with…. whoever, is “the battle of our time” or “the ideological battle of the 21st Century.” That’s all fine and well, but if this is a true statement, why do we keep insisting it on fighting that battle without acting like it? Why no draft? Why no huge mobilizations? Why are we cutting taxes at the same time as we are running a four billion dollar a week tab just in Iraq along? Why are we not converting industry over to a wartime footing? Oops, scratch that last one. It has been for several decades now. But what is with this approach to an ideological battle-to-end-all-battles that will last several generations?

Dan Froomkin in the WaPo has this about how Bush views “sacrifices”.


More from Barnes: "Bush dismissed as cynical the charge that he hasn't asked the American people to accept sacrifices as American soldiers fight against terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere. 'You know what the definition of sacrifice is for a lot of people' who question him about the lack of sacrifice? 'How come you didn't raise taxes? That's what that means as far as I'm concerned . . . If we had raised taxes to create a sense of sacrifice, it would have caused even greater sacrifice because I believe raising taxes in a recession would cause the economy to get even worse.'"
But it was Bush himself who, unprompted, made the surprising association between sacrifice and taxes just last month in an interview with NBC's Brian Williams.

"WILLIAMS: The folks who say you should have asked for some sort of sacrifice from all of us after 9/11, do they have a case looking back on it?

"BUSH: Americans are sacrificing. I mean, we are. You know, we pay a lot of taxes. America sacrificed when they, you know, when the economy went into the tank. Americans sacrificed when, you know, air travel was disrupted. American taxpayers have paid a lot to help this nation recover. I think Americans have sacrificed."
And then there's the fact that by failing to raise taxes, he has just shifted the "sacrifice" of paying for the war to the next generation."

So, that’s it then. For Bush, sacrifices = taxes. And taxes are bad. No shades of gray discussion here. Nuance need not apply. Taxes are bad, in the same way as the Black Plague could be considered as bad. And you cannot obviously fight one bad thing with a different bad thing. Therefore, no new taxes or even slowing down the cuts of existing ones.

But it is nice to know that we have indeed made a sacrifice, made a genuine contribution to Operation “Support Our Troops” ™ by standing in line at the airport for several hours with our shoes in our hands and our water bottles in the refuse bin. Where’s my yellow magnetic ribbon?

Seriously, this guy is just amazingly narrow-minded and totally without any imagination whatsoever. Nothing is going to break his laser-like focus, I’ll have to give him that. But his aim of that laser is just so... bizarre. I am thinking that he has now probably already decided to drop a nuke or two in Iran, just because he is getting so many people telling him that he would be nuts to do this.

Nobody tells Georgie “No”!

Whatever happened to being ashamed when you are caught lying?

I cannot believe how much public figures lie to the public with a straight face. I suppose it was always like this, but to me, it seems much more blatant than it used to. Maybe it’s just the fact that the internet makes fact checking very fast and very simple. It’s just not a problem anymore to catch someone with their pants around their ankles. I just guess that they haven’t really caught up to the fact that there is a massive amount of data out there at the fingertips of anyone who has a computer and net access. They haven’t adjusted to the technology of the times, I guess.

Take, for instance, the strange and bizarre case of Robert Novak, aka Novakula. He was reporter whose column publicly named, for the first time, Valerie Wilson/Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. Emptywheel at The Next Hurrah shows that Novak has now changed his story four times, for a total of five different stories he has told about what he got from Richard Armitage.

Here’s a snippet of Marcy’s post.

“Novak wrote this column, clearly, to insist that Armitage told him that Plame worked in Counter-Proliferation, probably because if Armitage didn't say that, then either someone else did, or Novak was high when he used the word "operative." Novak makes this claim twice:

“First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he "thought" might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson.

[snip]

“He had told me unequivocally that Mrs. Wilson worked in the CIA's Counter-Proliferation Division and that she had suggested her husband's mission.

“But Novak has been utterly inconsistent in his story about what Armitage said. Here's what he said in his original column:

“Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.

“Note, the only attribution he gives to the CPD identification is to the CIA. He changed his story the first time when he switched his attribution that Fall, when he blamed Armitage:

“During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife.

“He didn't make any claims as to how Armitage described Plame when he first started speaking this summer.

“But then he changed that story when Bret Hume interviewed him, now describing what Armitage said as something which would be either WINPAC or CPD. His wife worked in the office of nuclear nonproliferation in the CIA, and she suggested he go.

“In short, Novak's version of what Armitage said to him has taken 5 different forms since he first published this leak in July 2003.
· CIA labels Plame as Counter-Proliferation (CPD)
· Armitage labels Plame as CPD
· Armitage doesn't say anything about CPD
· Armitage labels Plame as Nuclear Non-Proliferation (not CPD)
· Armitage labels Plame as CPD”


O.K., you would think that, as a journalist and television personality, Novak would have some inkling that his past statements were on the record and still publicly available. He should have some idea that people who are very disinclined to believe anything he says about the subject are going to compare his latest statements with all his previous statements. He should also realize that, if they do, they are going to find out that he has been totally inconsistent about what he has been saying. But no. He goes along and utters them with the complete and utter conviction of the compulsive liar that he is, and he is offended if anyone dare question any of his current “trying to get my butt out of a sling here” blathering. And, when he is really up against it, he can always just stalk out of a television studio in the middle of a live broadcast. But shame or embarrassment? No, sorry. Not on the menu today.

This phenomenon seems to be an epidemic these days. George Bush and Dick Cheney with their “Saddam didn’t have anything to do with 9/11 but was intimately tied to Al Qaeda” line. Tom DeLay and pretty much everyone associated with the Abramoff scandal has caught it. George Allen and his three different versions of his Macaca comment seems pretty suspect. And it’s not just politicians. Rich Lowery of the National Review has it as well. He is now in favor of adding many additional troops to Iraq and takes on the stance that his is the perfectly logical position to take. Except he totally ignores that this is exactly 180 degrees opposite of what he was saying just one month ago. That’s not a lie, really, but it certainly seems dishonest unless you fess up to your sudden change of heart at the same time you are introducing your new position, and explain why you changed your mind. That is being truthful. To just come out and state it in a manner which suggests that has been your position all along is a lie of omission if not of commission.

There is one aspect of all these perpetually changing stories that remains constant. No one seems to ever be ashamed that they were caught in a lie or when they change their stories. They just bluster and are full of self-righteous anger that anyone would dare impugn their integrity. Even when the public record shows, unequivocally, that they are full of crap, they remain adamant that they have been consistent throughout and if anyone is at fault, it is the media’s fault for misrepresenting their statements or misunderstanding what was said. Or else, they just ignore the inconvenient fact that they have contradicted themselves in public. Yet, they have no problem with tarring someone like John Kerry as a “flip-flopper”.

There really isn’t any shame left anymore in this country. It has gone into the trash bin, along with other quaint concepts like personal responsibility for one’s actions and fiscal sanity.

UPDATE: I was watching Craig Crawford on Countdown with Keith Olberman last night. They were discussing the new developments in the Plame case. The last thing that Craig said (paraphrasing here) was that, if anyone has learned anything in this whole entangled mess of Plamegate, it is that Robert Novak is a very odd person.

The Homeland is where the hearth is. Sorta.

The WaPo has a good commentary today by Eugene Robinson. It focuses on the use of language by Bush and his gang of thugs as a way to control discussions and even thought patterns. How Orwellian of them. (As an aside, I am somewhat amused by the fact that my Word spellchecker knows how to spell “Orwellian”, even though the Thesaurus feature has no idea what it means.)

One of the words that has bugged me from the first time I heard it was “homeland”, as in “protecting out homeland”. I had never heard that word applied to the United States before 9/11, and I don’t really like it now. It has some emotional harmonics that hearken back to Lenin’s Russia or the Third Reich. Homeland sort of sounds like Motherland, doesn’t it? The term is very territorial in nature, and rather implies without saying so directly that things inside our borders are good and worth defending (which they are) and everything outside our borders is suspect and dangerous (which is ridiculous). It seems to reflect, to me anyway, the worst traits among us; tribalism, isolationism, and xenophobia.

I am very, very suspicious of buzzwords, especially when they are so pre-loaded with emotional content. I REALLY don’t like it when the buzzword chosen has links back to the really horrendously evil ideologies we were opposing in World War II and in the Cold War. Indeed, I think this is a conscious effort by someone in the Bush Administration to control how we think about something. Frame the entire concept in a way that “speaks” at an emotional level to a large percentage of the populace, and it takes away a large chunk of what can even be debated. Because if you start debating the meaning of something, you automatically put yourself on the “other side” of something that has been defined as good and trustworthy.

Why else would BushCo try to work in the word “Fascist” when discussing the radical Muslims who are bent on doing us harm. They want to control the concept. I suspect that they might have a bit of a problem when they recently introduced the word “Caliphate” to describe what they perceive as Bin Ladin’s ultimate objective. I would hazard a guess that not too many Americans even know what that word means. However, it sounds like an Arab word, so it is something that will immediately engender suspicion.

Which is exactly what they wanted in the first place.

Automation in the Men’s Room

In the office building where I work, our men’s rooms (and ladies’ rooms, I assume as well) have been upgraded to include all sorts of labor saving, good-hygiene promoting automations. You can now go into “the facilities” and never touch anything but your Little General (h/t to Jesus’ General). The urinals flush themselves after you step away, leaving you to grapple with that all-important issue of the making sure your fly is zipped. Same for the commodes. Self-flushing when you remove your bum. You then wave your hands under the soap dispenser, get some hand soap squirted in your hand, wave your hands under the faucet and get some water to wash your hands. After you have been properly sanitized and ready to take your place in the company of your fellow co-workers, you then wave your hands underneath the paper towel dispenser to get towels to dry your hands. And you can even hit a button on the wall (presumably with your clothed elbow so you won’t sully your nice clean, germ-free hands) to automatically open the door. All very sanitary and automated. No germs here.

The problem with all this automation is the same as with a lot of automation; it doesn’t really work very well. In fact, it has some very distinct drawbacks. The soap dispenser squirts out a load of soap that looks like something best left unsaid here every time something comes with about two feet of the sensor. All the sinks always have a liberal coating of liquid soap on one side. The temperature of the water that comes from the faucets cannot be adjusted. Sometimes, it is the same temperature as cold tap water. At other times, it is so hot you can scald your hands if you leave them underneath the running water for more than a second. The towel dispensers are apparently programmed with frugality in mind (as opposed to the soap dispensers), as they tend to dispense a total of about three to four inches of paper towel. If you want more, you are usually left feeling vaguely foolish as you wave your hands back and forth underneath the dispenser like some amateur Houdini, invoking the unknown spirits to come forth and present you additional inches of towel. Alas, it usually is not to be. The towel dispenser does not appreciate your offer to reconsider its’ allotment of drying material to you. You are normally fated to leave the men’s room frantically waving your wet hands in the air like some “jazz-hands” refugee from a Bob Fosse musical.

All I can say is, if they change the toilet paper dispensers from the current manual version to an automated version, I’m quitting.

Flat Daddies and Mommies

I just cannot believe how utterly weird this concept is. It’s also very, vary sad.

Thanks to a Maine National Guard support group, families that are without their mommies or daddies because their unit got shipped off to Iraq or Afghanistan can actually get a life size cardboard cutout of their missing family member as a replacement! The flat family member can be put in the car so he or she can ride around with the kids (see picture in the linked Boston Globe story). The flat daddy/mommy can be placed in front of the living room window so that potential burglars will be frightened off. Flat daddies/mommies will never experience crushing depression after learning they face a fourth deployment in Iraq when they really thought they were joining the Guard to assist the community during a local flood and perhaps earn some extra money. And, of course, they will never drink excessively or become violent toward their spouse after returning from a horrendous situation that they refuse to talk about.

I wonder if any of the kids involved in actually having a flat daddy or mommy around the house will look back at it later in life and ask themselves, “WTF?!” I can understand how an absent family member who face a very real possibility of bodily harm really has the potential for tearing a family apart at the seams. But a cardboard cutout doesn’t seem to fit any definition of a rational action to take. Maybe it’s just me, but having a bunch of photos hanging on the wall seems normal. Those are reminders of an absent family member that you can place in prominent positions around the house. Having a life sized cardboard figure that you can take in the car with you seems really, really creepy. That isn’t meant as a reminder, it’s meant to be a substitute for something that can never have an adequate substitute; the missing family member back at home in good mental and physical health.

The flat daddy/mommy concept is not to be confused with Tom Friedman’s Flat World or any theater lobby prop of Luke Skywalker or Princess Leah.

Happy Labor Day!

Go picket someone today.

(And, as a bonus book review, here's one for anyone that might need a refresher about labor unions and the gains that have been made since the 1900's. Go find a copy of "Big Trouble" by J. Anthony Lucas. It is about the assasination of a popular political in Idaho in the early years of the 20th century. It reads like a novel at times, but is in fact a straight history lesson of the era of the Robber Barons. You get to experience what working conditions for the not-very-well-off were like back then, and why labor unions became as militant as they did. It also might give you pause about where this country is heading nearly 100 years later.)