Impeach Bush and Cheney

The i-word is showing up more and more, and I plan to use it in post titles frequently. Given the nature of our digital information world, the more times we use the i-word in conjunction with the names of the Bushco leaders, the more the machines who crawl over Internet content will capture it, record it, and report it.

Didn't we just go through an impeachment? But what other recourse do we have to let the current White House occupants know that we, we the people of this country that we love, will not stand for their out-and-out lies, law-breaking, Bill of Rights-shredding and Constitution-rewriting?

For what egregious acts shall we call for Bush and Cheney's impeachment? Let's start with law-breaking because too many pod-people will shrug off lying as something common in politics.

• Law-breaking
  ...from International Law to the laws of our land: there are laws against invading countries when they've done nothing to you first and then torturing their citizens and incarcerating them indefinitely without charges, not to mention warrantless wiretapping on citizens of the United States. There's more, but nobody has spilled the beans just yet.


• Bill of Rights-shredding
  ...goes on daily when our 'government' secretly tramples on free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures -- all in the name of prosecuting a war that isn't really a war, no matter how you look at it.


• Constitution-rewriting
  ...has been in the works since the founding of the Project for a New American Century. For centuries, pretty much everyone understood that our Constitution provides for three co-equal branches of government, guaranteeing a check against any one branch running amok. But these days we see signing statements attached by the executive that essentially nullify lawful Congressional bills; we see threats against the judiciary and bullying or simply ignoring the legislature; and we hear unbelievable protestations that the executive is so supreme that it does not need to answer to anyone. That is an interpretation of the Constitution that is brand new since 2001. Last I checked, nobody asked if 'we the people' approve of this Constitutional mutilation.

Isn't that enough to impeach with?

There's more, this is just what's become 'common knowledge' so far.

If we don't send this message loudly and clearly now, I don't think we'll see another election in 2008. Why would an omnipotent executive ever let democracy get in the way of ruling?

Hello Almighty?

What I Want to Hear

... from Democrats or Independents or anyone. The label doesn't matter. The not-so-embedded media recognizes that election season is upon us and the question of the month seems to be, "What IS the Democrats' message, anyway?"

Well, here's what I think it should be.

Respect.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

• Respect the laws of the land and the Constitution of the United States. That means no illegal spying, no signing statements negating congressional law, no outing undercover CIA agents as political punishment, no hob-nobbing with corrupt lobbyists.
  
• Respect our allies. That means no making fun of France or Europe in general, even when they try to act as a moderating influence on a runaway (and run amok) administration.
  
• Respect the international treaties that we've been party to, and those we should be party to. That means support an International Criminal Court, get on board with Kyoto, for God's sake follow the Geneva Conventions, don't toss the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty in the garbage for one country (India) and point to it as reason for sanctions against another country (Iran) in the next breath, and treat Israel the same as Iraq when it comes to "breaking" UN resolutions.
  
• Respect international law. That means no preventive wars (Iraq), no manipulating other countries (the list is too damn long to put here).
  
• Respect the peoples of every land, regardless of what ornery dictatorship leads them at the moment. That means no more military engagements founded in falsehoods that end up killing (with bullets, bombs, or white phosphorus) and poisoning (with DU and God knows what else) innocent men, women and children. (Need I say Iraq?)
  
• Respect the citizens of this country. That means no more lying, propagandizing, revising history, tampering with courts and vote-counting, fear-mongering, stonewalling FOIA requests, threatening, bullying, ignoring, or separating government from the people.
  
• Respect human rights and civil rights everywhere, including the right to be treated humanely, decently, honorably. That means stop the damn torture, stop exporting 'suspects' to countries where they will be tortured, stop supporting mega-corporations who thrive only because they enslave peoples to do their labor, stop propping up the dictatorships who do your bidding even if their human rights records are almost as abysmal as our own. That also means respect a woman's right to make decisions about her own pregnancy.
  
• Respect the basic needs of peoples everywhere. That also means fix New Orleans and the whole southern infrastructure, even though lots and lots of poor folks and folks of color live there. That also means, stop messing with the school systems by trying to replace evolution with a religious belief, by giving children subliminal reading material that discourages independent thought. That also means reverse the the flow of money that has been creating a super-wealthy upper class while squeezing the middle class and totally impoverishing anyone below that. Actually this category could go on and on...
  
• Respect our earth, the environment, Mother Nature. Hell, respect the scientists who know we are changing the earth's climate. Respect pristine wilderness (ANWR), respect our wetlands (think Katrina and the Gulf), our oceans and waterways and forests and mountains. We don't have to leave a barren landscape as a legacy for our children's children...

That's just a start. But it all comes down to respect. The current adminstration has none for anyone but its own "elite backers." Believe me, you 'pioneers' are just a tiny minority in this country.

It's time for someone to stand up and say they stand for respect for the rest of us, the rest of the world.

Here's Why

Remember when Chimpy promised the people that if anyone in his administration had been involved in blowing the cover of Valerie Plame they would no longer work in the (our) White House? Yet now that the evidence is out clearly marking Libby and Rove as the actors-in-chief, Libby's boss is praising him for his service to the country and Rove is still in place.

I postulate a simple reason for this. Both Cheney and Chimpy knew and approved.

Gotta love simplicity. Cuts right through the spin, doesn't it?

Out of Control!

The winds of Katrina did something no one had been much able to do since 9-11, except, to a lesser degree and a shorter time, Cindy Sheehan. See, Bushco CEO Rove understands full well how important it is to control the message. Not only has he made sure that Bushco's name appears in the "news" every single day, he has crafted the content of the accompanying message and insured that it has been dutifully disseminated by every possible medium.

Cindy Sheehan, by promising to camp out in a Texas ditch until she received an answer from Bushco, managed to wrest control of the media -- unwittingly, I'd bet -- for a brief time in the lazy dog days of August. I mean, what she did was so fresh, so preposterous, that the media just had to take notice. After all, many of the usual voices were on vacation.

And then came Katrina in September. The winds of this massive storm not only ripped the roofs and siding off hundreds of thousands of buildings. It ripped the remote control right out of CEO Rove's fingers and sent it flying far out of his reach. For days the message was not carefully crafted. For agonizingly long days the message was raw and truthful and real and in living color, too.

It was beautiful and horrifying at once.

The Era of Making Distinctions

The flavor of the current societal bias is overwhelmingly political. How exactly did this happen? We still point out when someone is black or maybe when someone is Hispanic or possibly when someone is poor. But the labels liberal (as in bad) and conservative (as in good) when describing individuals whose occupations or life work should be apolitical is now pervasive. Entertainers. Scientists. Judges. Journalists. Teachers. Diplomats. Preachers. We know, somehow, that the executive branch of the government wants to know one thing first -- which side are you on.

Bushco ran on a platform that included frequent chants about his being a Uniter, not a Divider. Yet even in the McCarthy era we were together in the same camp except for the Communists. Now, we are either 'with' or 'against' the administration. Everyone is drawing these lines, it is how we define ourselves in 2005. It isn't healthy.

Can't we all just get along?

Now Let Us Celebrate the Idiots

In these trying times the dunce rules. And 'dunceness' is celebrated, elevated, and memorialized in our major media. Witness "Blue Collar TV" or many of the current and recent films. I mean to cast no aspersion on Forrest Gump, for the message there was plainly that simplicity may well cover a beauty and depth of heart and compassion that is plainly lost on those more sophisticated. However, with the advent of the Chimp in Charge, the C- student, the man who failed at every venture he ever got involved with, the redneck with the down-home twang and the folksy mannerisms.... suddenly being dumb and out of touch and unable to string a sentence together with real words is something we all misunderestimated the power of ... apparently.

Blah.

Science and scientists are currently marginalized and their scientific studies are discounted. Medical men, environmentalists, engineers .. their recommendations are spurned. Education has been dumbed down to the ability to answer questions on standardized tests -- no wonder teachers find little reward in their time-honored profession. Evolution is slowly being replaced by schmevolution (thank you Jon Stewart).

Ever since the Emperor got wind that he may not be wearing any clothes, the propaganda has been set into high gear to make idiocy 'cool' and most acceptable.

I don't know about you, and I'm certainly no genius, but one thing I learned as I grew up was, "be around those you want to be like." And I extrapolate that to mean, elevate those who represent the best .. in brains, ethics, sincerity. Down with the intentionally mediocre, the banal, the corrupt.

Down with Bushco and the media blitz designed to make stupid admirable.

"The Aftermath Will Be a Cakewalk"

Remember the rosy predictions about the state of Iraq after our unwarranted, immoral, and by international standards illegal invasion? We were supposed to conjure images of thankful Iraqi children strewing flower petals at the feet of our brave soldiers as they marched their victory march through the streets of Baghdad. We were led to believe the people would pay us obeisance for relieving them from the misery of a brutal dictator who cut off ears and fingers on a whim, for whom mass murder was just another day at the office, someone who reveled in the thought of spraying poison gas on thousands at a time.

I now find it hard to see where the fabrications end. We had to have worked hard ("It's hard wurk!") to paint Saddam Hussein as Satan, Osama, Hitler all rolled into one. Given that the tales we were told by our "We will restore honor and dignity to the White House" administration about WMDs in Iraq and about the post-invasion scenario turned out to be total falsehoods, I have to sprinkle at least a few grains of salt on the stories about how disgusting and awful Saddam and his sons were.

But that's not what was on my mind for the blog today. Ever since it became clear that what we were told about the Iraqi people's welcome was way, way off base, some anonymous administration official lets slip, from time to time, a short-term prediction. That prediction always is, "because of [insert latest move toward 'democracy' here], the [terrorists | insurgents | foreign fighters | Zarqawi | Al Qaeda in Iraq | etc, etc] will try to make things worse so expect more bombings and disruption and terrorist activities."

I am getting very tired of this pathetic singsong excuse, how about you? If every deadline for "democracy" we set causes hundreds or thousands to die, why do we keep doing it? Bushco seeks to validate its slow but unending assimilation of Iraqi Oil and other assets by asserting that "terrorists hate freedom" and you can see that to be true by how much resistance they put up whenever Bushco inches forward with its plans. Such resistance can only be dealt with by applying even more force, and to hell with the damage that results.

What of the "law of opposites" or Karma or the Golden Rule? I do know better and it very much looks, to me, like Bushco wants the conflict in Iraq to continue. It's good for business, which is the only "nashunal intereshtsss" that Bushco recognizes.

"We have to make sure this never happens again,"

...they always say. How many times will we let our government mouth this pathetic platitude? Now, after how much warning about the potential devastation a large hurricane could cause... now after ignoring science and technology and common sense! Now that the worst has happened, we have to figure out what went wrong? So it can be fixed and never happen again? How many iterations of failure will we put up with? Intelligence failures, planning failures, rogue corporals following orders from hired mercenaries in Abu Ghraib failures, political spite blowing secret agent's cover failures, leadership failures -- the litany of abominable failures since January 2001 are several too many.

So how will we make sure any of these will never happen again? So many words out of so many mouths that may as well be assholes instead, talking crap, spewing crap. But there's no real intention there to change. Real change. Transformative change. I don't see it even though you can find out what needs changing and how to go about it. It's there. There just is no real leader to take hold and speak the truth.

I fear we are lost, we the people have lost, short of a real revolution.

Remember September 11, "The Day That Changed Everything..."

but what about August 28 and 29 and 30 and ...

If the slaughter of 3000 or so citizens of this great United States could change everything, then what about this slaughter of 10,000 citizens? Where is the catch phrase that will permit us to focus on the systemic problems that birthed the death of an entire American city?

I remember thinking .. "Huh?" when every official and the parroting media started saying, "This changes everything," or "Nothing will be the same, now." I thought, well, hey, something pretty incredible just happened alright, but why should that change who we hold ourselves to be? Honest, moral, just, forgiving, welcoming, free, symbols of all that can be good in our world... But oh how everything did change.

We turned into obsessive vengeful ghouls, casting aside decency and morality and patience and yes, even basic intelligence. We slavered and growled, we taunted and mocked, we used our treasure to spoil a hundred years of developed world manners and invaded a sovereign nation based on LIES. Lies freely spouted but carefully concocted, rehearsed and propped up, lies painstakingly designed to incite us to slaver even more with the urge for revenge.

The poor dear peoples of Iraq, already burdened by the dictator we had imposed upon them, became 'rag-heads' and scum, the focus of our collective scorn and hatred. Stop! we yelled, but of course we yelled it in English and they were confused so we slaughtered them too.

So what shall be the new battle cry in this immense disaster? Pray to GOD! No one is to blame! Bah. I pray that the incompetence and negligence and willful ignorance that Katrina has exposed will truly change everything. It is long past time that we work toward equalizing the have nots and the haves. It is way past time for this administration's egregious policies to be laid bare for all to see the outcomes. This is what happens when the rich bitches get away with murder. Murder happens.

I do pray for you, New Orleans, and for all the people who have been displaced, drowned, corralled, transplanted, separated, and suffocated with empty promises. Lord have mercy.

The President Who Lost a Whole American City

...may well be Bush's epitaph and the legacy that albatrosses his neck in the picture painted for posterity by the history books.

Purposeful degradation of the federal government's ability to respond has resulted in the deaths of untold thousands of our own citizens but also the shameful loss of untold billions of dollars in commerce. The latter is why even Bush's normal flunkies are spitting mad at the string of decisions that led to the loss of an entire American city.

Katrina was one thing. People can rebuild their homes and businesses, it would have been hard. But the drowning of New Orleans and its environs is a different story. The city has been declared dead. Residents have been replaced by gun-toting militia of all stripes.

"No, former residents, you must leave to make way for Halliburton who will take care of the rebuilding. Sorry about your jobs and lives, go settle down elsewhere. New Orleans will be better than before, mostly because you won't be a part of it."

Can We Survive '05?

Today a few members of our Congress (far too few) made a courageous gesture by raising an objection to the state of Ohio's certified tally of votes for President. Where was Robert Byrd? Teddy Kennedy? I saw Hillary's and Barak's name in some alternative news item, but they were not mentioned by the PBS news.

They will be marginalized, of course, and their objections brushed under the rug that now bulges obscenely with the ashes from the other burning issues that the administration (and to be fair, many fellow 'Mericans) simply don't want to look at:

• The Missing WMDs (or Failure to Make the Case for Creaming Iraq)


• The Burgeoning Fiscal Problem (or Screw the Elderly, the Poor, and Dismantle the Middle Class)


• The "There Is No Global Warming" Blindspot


• The Case for Torture (or Let's Make Torture Be in the Eye of the Beholder, Not the Victim)

There are more, of course.

Gosh, how unproud of America I am today. Worse than Ukraine when it comes to elections. Worse than most of the rest of the world now in so many things. Ethics in government is a meaningless concept.

And actually, what I wanted to write about today was a very brief encounter I had when I was making my way to work this morning. I stopped at the local Sheetz to pick up some coffee and a bagel. I drive a 10-yr old Acura that sports a couple of bumper stickers, to wit: Kerry/Edwards 2004 (pasted on top of my Gore 2000 one) and WVPEACE.ORG. I make the assumption that the encounter has to do with these obvious signs of my objections to the current administration policies.

After I finished in the store and was getting back in my car a Toyota 4x pickup with toolboxes and bedcover pulled up in the slot alongside me. It was occupied by two young men with Marine-like buzzcuts. Before I closed the car door I heard the driver fairly shout toward me, "The hell with ragheads, burn them all!"

As I pulled out, his words rung in my head while I figured out what he'd said and probably why.

I see too much hostility in some faces. What happened to religion? Wasn't Jesus called the Prince of Peace? Didn't he come to show us the way to humility and generosity and forgiveness? But it is the Old Testament God that has reared His head these days, the God of Vengeance. Except people forget .. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord. We are all vengeful mini-gods now I guess, with our guns and our attitudes.

Damn GW Bush. Damn him to hell for setting the example that you can do what you want without repercussion as long as you are on his side.

I pray there is a hell.

I Wish I Were a Humorist

When your worst fears turn out to be true, there are only two things to do. One is to say goodbye to the cruel world, and the other is to laugh.

I really want to be able to laugh. I want to be able to hope. I want to be able to reach the crest of the hill just once in my life, where I can stand and look back at the long climb, feeling the sheer exhaustion of it all, but knowing that I have, at worst, level ground for a while.

The egregious disparity between the exit polls (legitimate technology for ascertaining whether or not an election in a 3rd world country can be regarded as valid) and the published 'actual' results leave very little doubt that the fix was in. Why else would the Bushes, so posed in their residence around 8PM Tuesday evening, appear so smirkingly jovial on national TV?

Maybe it is my upbringing. Mom was largely responsible for endowing me with a severe negative reaction to being 'taken.' I'm trying very hard to see the silver lining in this immense black cloud that hovers over the home of the brave and the land of the free today.

Yes, there had to be massive voter fraud. But it could not have been accomplished without willing accomplices -- among them, the actual 50 million or so Americans who actually did vote for Dubya. What is wrong with you people!!

I read somewhere today amid my bleary-eyed browsing that at least we (those who never voted for the chimp that is) no longer own any result from this government. The deaths of 100,000 plus people is on your hands, not ours. The destruction of our environment will be inscribed on your epitaph, not ours. The collapse of our financial structure will be attributed to you, not us. The heartlessness that is killing our social system and our educational system will be tallied up on your bill, not ours.

I really wanted my next entry to be about the awesome experience I had going on the road to work for change. Maybe next time. Til then, I'm going to just try to understand the depths of greed and ideology that would let a fellow American fuck with my vote. How can you sleep at night? Don't the flames of Hell lick at your very soul? You are indeed damned.

Today's Excuse

Numbers are strange things, they can be used in a lot of ways. But the bottom line is numbers by themselves don't lie, and numbers do add up.

According to recent reports, attacks against US 'Coalition' forces are up 25% in Iraq. Violence of every kind is up, from roadside IEDs to kidnappings to rockets launched even into the 'Green Zone.'

Since April 9, 2003, the day Saddam's metal statue was toppled in Firdis Square, any attempt at a real plan to bring and maintain peace, repair infrastructure, restore electricity, serve up clean water, and lend a hand to the Iraqis' restoration of order to their torn country seems to have been overridden by some in our administration.

Let me repeat that. The kinds of things that would have truly helped a post-invasion Iraq were scuttled and replaced by things that have created an ever-growing disaster.

I can only hope it has not gone past the point of no return.

But back to the numbers and the excuses... I remember we were told that the Iraqi insurgents (well, they called them terrorists) hated freedom so they were going to up their attacks. And sure enough, the attacks increased. Then we were told they would fight the return of 'sovereignty' (what a laugh) and things would get worse before they would get better. And so they did. And now we are told that the enemy (notice, Iraq is now our enemy) will do anything to prevent 'democratic' elections (again, what a joke), and will increase their attacks. And so they are. And again, we are being told things will get worse before it will get better.

Two and a half years of things getting worse is a long time, for our soldiers and for the peoples of Iraq. After the phony election in January, I imagine there will be another reason to explain the ever-widening insurgency.

Does it never occur to our neo-con neanderthals that there is a legitimate reason for the attacks? (Aside from the ones they themselves are perpetrating, of course... but that is another blog for another day.) We came, we saw, we overthrew. Now, why don't we get the hell out? Why don't we offer real help? Why don't we tell Iraq we will not stay, they have to take care of themselves? We did what they couldn't do: we removed a corrupt man from office, one we had installed ourselves. Now it is up to them. We broke it, but we can't begin to fix it while we are feasting off the carcass that lays rotting in the desert.

There are other reasons we can no longer fix it.

We lost our moral authority when we broke the basic rules of civilization and attacked a country that had not attacked us, and in fact didn't even have the means to attack us, to arrest one man. We lost our aura of righteousness when we ordered the dogs unmuzzled and the lightsticks anally inserted and the fake electrical wires attached to extremities. And we lost the support of the rest of the civilized world when we told them to shut up if they didn't go along with what we were doing.

So today's excuse is just like yesterday's, and we keep on doing things that make it worse, like bombing Fallujah and Samarra and the area around Tikrit and north and south and east and west of there. Since when does bombing a people make them friends? We say we want to win hearts and minds. What we are doing is akin to performing brain surgery with a sledgehammer. There, that'll fix it.

I can't believe Bush and Company are so stupid that they don't see this. Therefore, there is only one conclusion: they do see, and this is exactly what they want. More war, more resistance, more reason to ethnically cleanse those troublesome Sunnis and Shias. More excuses to keep our troops there under false pretenses, while we build massive embassies and bases and pipelines and gorge ourselves on the profits of war. Did you know that we have written into their law that their farmers cannot keep their own grain to use as seed for the next planting? Know why? So giant agri-business has yet another ready-made market for their genetically-altered products. Makes me want to scream.

When I joined the Air Force, I never imagined we would be sent across the world to make an enemy so we had to stay there and fight and die for Monsanto, Halliburton, and the Carlyle Group.

Where to Begin?

I watched, via the net, Al Gore's address to Georgetown University that he gave on October 18, 2004. CSPAN has it, if you want to watch. All the memories from 4 years ago flooded over me. At the time I was strongly in support of Gore and engaged in spirited debate with others on the forums that CNN hosted at the time. You had to be careful what you said or the moderator would suddenly kill your login. That happened to me a couple of times... but what I remember most is the final retort from the right, when we beat them back with how pathetic a choice Bush would be for President. They said, "Look, for you worst case scenario is he is in office for four years. How much harm could he do in four years?"

I think many of us know the answer to that now.

The US, once revered and respected and regarded as a symbol of freedom and tolerance and liberty around the world, is now reviled and mistrusted and regarded with fear and loathing.

Who would have thought it only took 4 years to do that?

The economy was booming, and projections were for trillions of dollars of surplus. The looming baby boomer Social Security disaster had been averted. Kids could go to college, it was a job-seeker's market, the onerous federal debt was being paid down.

Who would have thought this bounty could be undone from top to bottom in only 4 years?

Then there's the environment, education, health care, the state of our military, the trust or lack thereof in our government, international treaties, loss of liberty, the media control...

Bottom line is, four years has been more than enough to screw with America as we knew it. Four years has been more than enough to set us back at least 20 years. I am appalled at what Bushco has managed in 4 short years. There are some things that cannot be taken back. Preventive war, once struck, is not something you can erase with a presidential directive. The albatross all of us have been hung with can never be unhung.

That being said, this election year I won't just be sitting at my computer sharing my views in a community of others. I will be heading for a "swing state" to put my old boots on the ground to GOTV for Kerry. My knees aren't good anymore, and I haven't done any training to get ready for exertion. But I will do what I can, in word and in deed, to overturn the Selected resident of the White House.

I know how bad the last four years were. I simply cannot imagine four more.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

I read a brief article in my Web browsings titled, "Everything Didn't Change on 9/11." The author was at least hopeful that our Constitution still exists, the flag still flies, and the hearts of Americans are still by and large magnanimous, caring, and freedom-seeking.

Sadly there are some not-so-hopeful things that remain unchanged -- corporate greed (how delicious that by law, corporations are faceless and monolithic), income disparity, and endangered species among them.

You'd have to be Iraqi to see another rerun from pre-911. US-appointed Iyad Allawi, according to today's Sunday morning talking heads, wants to "take out Fallujah" before our election. Our military is supposedly more than ready to help him. I am reminded of the post-Desert Storm months when GHW Bush encouraged the Iraqis to overthrow Saddam, and Saddam grew in evilness by putting down that rebellion, creating mass graves we now seek.

It seems to me the Iraqi people haven't changed. They see Allawi, for plenty of reasons, as just another ruthless dictator appointed and supported by the US. Instead of the Republican Guard, he has the American military at his disposal to slaughter these dissidents.

The words in the Who's song apply equally well to the people of Iraq and the people of the United States. It may take a revolution here before the powers-that-be recognize that 9/11 didn't change everything.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again."—George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

Getting Revenge on the Dead

I've seen this quote a few times now, included in reports about the recent penetration of the Oz-like "Green Zone" and the twin suicide bombings:

The National Security Adviser, Qassem Dawoud, said: "This cowardly act will not go unpunished. We shall strike them ... we shall smash them."

First, dying for what you believe in is hardly a cowardly act, is it? I mean, we give our highest honors for bravery and courage to our troops who put themselves in harm's way, and more oft than not Medals of Honor are distributed posthumously.

Second, how in the hell do you punish someone who is already dead? Yeah, yeah, I know Qassem means they want to go after the support system for those who try and take others with them as they commit this act.

But who has stopped to think how against human nature it is to kill oneself? What does it take? People who are so desperate, so void of hope, or so mentally depressed that they see their own death as a positive measure -- or maybe even a final pain-killing measure -- would strap explosives onto themselves and then detonate them. The human being, marvel of creation, could not have survived this long if suicide was easy.

I remember the story about Thich Quang Duc, in Saigon in 1963, dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself alight. And I remember thinking, "There is no greater sacrifice than this..." There was much to be said about whether or not Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation was right. But you have to admit, at least back then, it meant something.

And So Here We Are, At a Nexus

I participated in a survey online a week ago, and one of the questions was, "How would you feel if __________ is elected?"

Options of course were Kerry or Bush. The radio-buttoned list included terms like "hopeful" and "depressed" and "angry" and "joyful."

To be perfectly frank, I will be severely depressed if Bush manages to score the big one on November 2.

At the same time, I will be trying my best to be optimistic if Kerry wins. Recent statements made by him and by Edwards give me great pause, especially in regards to their attitude towards Israel. How can any thinking, feeling human being witness the massacre of the Palestinians (children! for God's sake, children!) without feeling something seriously wrong is going on there? And then the dynamic Democratic duo's hostile statements towards Iran?

On another note, I have recently been reading about Peak Oil. That term means the time in the life of an oil field (or even, more generally, in the life of the world's -finite- oil supply) when the ability to get oil out of the ground has reached its peak. In short, good times have stopped rolling. And nobody is talking about what this really means for the US, or the world's, economy. Nothing happens without oil. No transportation, electricity, manufacturing, no nothing. What happens when a commodity grows rare? Prices escalate. Mother earth only has so much black milk in her breast, and we've milked her for too long. We are about to be batted away from the everflowing crude, sent out on our own.

Dunno 'bout you, but I'm really glad I learned in my 20's and 30's about how to garden, raise beef cattle and chicken, grind wheat and run a greenhouse. I feel very sorry for everyone living in a city about now.

Oh, one more thing. The "Green Zone" in Baghdad has apparently been hit twice today by suicide bombers. Somehow they smuggled explosives in and two backpack-toting men blew themselves up in nearby public shopping areas, killing a few and wounding some more. Some idiot official in Iraq's capital city made an asinine statement to the effect, "These cowards! We will make them pay!" Duh. It is cowardice to carry a bomb and blow away one's own life for something they believe in? Duh. How will you hunt them down when they are already dead, man?

Abu Ghraib

The recent images, the ones that someone knew were wrong, of humiliation and torture and gloating, are burned in my mind, much like the utterly fantastic fireworks of shock and awe. I've been cringing for almost two years. I am truly ashamed to be American today. I've had a sick twisting stomach feel since it became clear, to me at least, that the dickhead in the Whitehouse was dead set on sending our military might on a desert exercise. That was around October 2002, it became clear they were going to do it, no matter what we said, no matter what the inspectors said.

So now, we have caused mass graves in Fallujah's stadiums. We have slaughtered in a variety of ways a ten thousand count of innocent Iraqis. We scooped up and still hold over 6 thousand in the prisons of the former dictator. They are subhuman to us, dogs to kick, flies to pull wings off of, two-dimensional beings we may number but never name. Who cares anymore about things like the Geneva Convention? Don't like the way we do things? Tough shit. What are you going to do about it?

Bring 'em on. We can take it. The troops, they are my guys and girls, my sons and daughters and brothers and sisters. They wanted an education, to go to college and make something of themselves, so they sold themselves to the military machine. And they are getting an education but not one that enlightens or enriches, not one that rewards with understanding, compassion, self-knowledge and transformation. No. They are coming home broken, corrupted and fouled, angry and lost. They'll hide, a lot of them, out of shame and fear and dreams that won't leave them alone. Others will find the taste of blood and danger the most intoxicating, most real addiction and they'll sign up for more. Some will break down completely and end their lives. May as well, the big sleep is the only peace. Their babies will be DU-deformed anyway.

And nobody stands up to say, "I take responsibility."

The buck keeps floating around like a balloon. Bush bats it to Cheney who bumps it over to Rumsfeld who scowls at it and tosses it toward the Pentagon. The Generals are getting really pissed about that by now.

Who will stand up and take responsibility? Maybe I should. Enough hand-wringing. Enough expressions of disgust. I did that to you, Iraqi man. I made you naked and covered your head and snickered as I made you spank your monkey. I piled you in that pile and pissed on you, kicked you in the ribs til you thought they were broken, made you think you'd be electrocuted. I kept you on your knees for so long that the skin broke and you lost track of the pain. I tossed you out in the yard, handcuffed and headbagged, naked in the rain like so much garbage.

I did it to you and so it was also done to me.

I'm so sorry.

Thought for the Day

Trying to win the "war on terrorism" with overwhelming military force is like trying to get rid of houseflies by burning down houses.

Net result? Plenty of garbage for houseflies to breed in, and no safe place to live for the former inhabitants of the houses.

How long will it be before we address the real reasons for terrorism?