Knothole

I have always said that the incentive to deal with impending environmental disaster never comes soon enough. The reason is because there are conservatives loose in the world. As a species, we will never do what must be done to prevent a collision course with climatic events...it would require too much personal sacrifice for too many greedy people.

I liken societies course to throwing a handfull of marbles at a knothole in a fence. The longer we wait, the smaller the knothole becomes and fewer and fewer marbles will get through to the other side. As small as it is now, that knothole is shrinking at an ever increasing rate as the climatic engine revs up in response to human activity.

We are the Stooges...loading a truck with stolen jugs of moonshine whiskey while it sits on the hill above the house containing everything we hold dear. Jug by jug, we load it well beyond the capacity of the parking brakes until the truck starts to roll, un-noticably slow at first then picking up speed, as the stooges whine and moan and scream as they watch in buffoonish horror as the truck crashes into the house, it's destructive force tragically magnified by the burden of cargo the Stooges couldn't live without.

I have a very low opinion of conservatives, as most of you know. They have an incredible capacity to lie, not only to others, but to themselves. Some of them are waking up, connecting a few dots, and crapping in their pants as they realize that "Liberals" have been absolutely right all these years. Why didn't they listen?

This from a conservative voice:

No serious person can deny the overwhelming scientific evidence that the world's climate is changing dramatically for the worse. Conservative skeptics, however, argue that the science isn't clear enough to pinpoint the degree to which human activity is responsible. Even if that were true, given the staggering magnitude of the stakes, it is wildly imprudent to wait for a level of certainty that may never come, or come too late.


Tim Flannery, an Australian scientist and former global-warming skeptic, says there is no way to account for the temperature rise outside of human activity. In his book The Weather Makers, Flannery writes, "Skepticism is an indispensable element in scientific inquiry, but when the intention is to mislead rather than clarify, we have not skepticism but deceit."


There's much self-deceit about global warming among us conservatives. To take this stuff seriously would mean confronting the fact that we cannot continue living as we like. It would mean dealing like grown-ups with the real possibility that we are condemning future generations to excruciating hardship because we refuse our duty to stewardship.

Well, Duh!...here's the rest:

USA today

Sunday Sermon

In the Genesis myth, God kicks Adam and Eve out of Eden for knowing too much. See, this talking lizard seduces Eve into eating a fig or some grapes, and the grapes are magic and they make Eve smart, only they don't really because she gives some to Adam so he gets smart too, and that wasn't real smart if you think about it.

Eve coulda had it all.

She shoulda stopped for a second and made a plan... See what happens when you don't make a plan? Eve got herself and her man kicked out of Paradise and that stupid Lizard became a quadruple amputee and gave a bad name to all his descendants who were forevermore called "Snakes".

It seems like Religion has been at war with knowlege ever since, and has acted as the Scotty McLellan for figs and grapes, blaming the whole incident on "Apples" which are from Tajikistan anyway, and are getting a bad rap from the FundXtians. (Islam blames it on bananas, did ja know?)

I blame it on the lack of a "Plan".

"So you're gonna get all this knowlege and you have no idea what you're gonna do after you get smart?" someone, maybe the lizard, shoulda asked Eve after a grape or two when she was only a little bit smart and before she ate so many that she got too smart for her own good and got Adam involved in the whole thing. The Lizard got burned, too, by this lack of planning, and has been dodging garden hoes ever since. Eve got Adam involved in a sewing operation to make clothes out of leaves after she pointed out to Adam that they were nekkid.

"I'll be Damned!" said Adam, in one of the great understatements in all of history.




I don't remember what the moral was supposed to be when they told me that story in Sunday school, but here's the one I've come up with:

"Knowlege isn't much good without a plan."




I keep hearing that the Democrats don't have a plan. Well, that's not true but wait just a minute...How about telling me what the Republican "Plan" is?

Ha, I thought so.

See, a "Plan" implies that some thought has been given to some imaginable "Future" and this "Plan" thing is the method by which we can achieve it. Here is the Republican "Future":

1."They" get filthy rich, mostly by stealing your tax money.

2. Everybody else works for sub-minimum wage to make "Them" happy.

3. The Constitution? What Constitution?

4. Put the United States so deep into debt that it can never ever recover.


I think that's about it...Everything else seems to flow from Republicans being able to do what they want, and Laws apply to everyone else.

Some DINO's (Democrats In Name Only, such as Joe Leiberman) think this is a fine plan.

Some others think that America used to be a force for Good in the world...They seem to like that idea and want America to be loved, once again, not just by the rest of the world, but by it's own people.

Howard Dean is the Chair of the DNC and has laid out an agenda that can do just that. Other Democrats are offering similar ideas. Dean's six point plan:

1. Raise the minimum wage
2. Create a fair system of government that serves Middle Class America, not just the rich
3. Reduce the power of Lobbyists, create a complete ban on lobbying "gifts"
4. Protect our ports, inspect all cargo coming into the United States
5. Fix Medicare
6. Transition out of Iraq, the greatest Presidential disaster in the history of America

Another Democratic plan :

(1) making college education affordable for every American;
(2) holding a summit to fix the budget;
(3) achieving energy independence in part by switching to a hybrid economy;
(4) creating an institute on science and technology to spur American innovation;
(5) universal health care.

And from John Kerry:

1. Tell the truth.
2. Fire the incompetents.
3. Find Osama bin Laden
4. Secure our ports and our homeland.
5. Bring our troops home from Iraq.
6. Obey the law and protect our civil rights

"Tell the Truth?"...What are they trying to do? Bring our system of government down in ruins? Well no, but they ARE trying to bring the NeoCon Republican system of controlling the United States government for their own purposes to an end.

Peace,

Steve


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Saturday Funnies (Earth Day Edition)

No more lost wetlands, eh? Damned amazing!

The Bush Administration is focused on achieving meaningful results - cleaner air and water, and healthier lands and wildlife habitats.


The nation's air is much cleaner today than it was in 1970 and progress will continue.

The trend of annual loss of wetlands has been reversed.

Restoration and redevelopment of abandoned industrial sites is accelerating.

President Bush is meeting his commitment to reduce the National Park Service maintenance backlog.

From the United States government website we learn these amazing things that they are doing to save the environment...




But wait...there's a little more to this story brought to us by the truth tellers of America...No, not the media, silly...Our comedians.


" The Bush administration says they want to declare all golf course water hazards as protected wetlands. It's part of their plan to save restricted country clubs." --David Letterman

And the air is not cleaner. That's simply a lie. Was has happened is that the EPA doesn't measure air quality nearly as effectively any more. The sampling rate has plummeted.

It's kinda like the "Texas Miracle" in education...never happened. They cooked the test scores then and they're cooking the results now.

The stupidest thing I saw this weekend was a man being interviewed by CNN as he pumped gas into his vehicle. He was complaining about gas prices as he pumped and pumped and pumped.

"The government just isn't doing all it can to find enough oil," he said. That was the quote shown on TV. Well I can double the amount of gas available. Yep, me personally. The man who was complaining was pumping gas into his Chevrolet Suburban, a monster SUV that gets 15 miles to the gallon if you're careful.

What a twit!

Peace,

Steve


Bigger

Frankly, Scarlet...

Danged bird wouldn't get close enough...I need a longer lense.

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Great Moments in Irony...The answers

Did you know who said these?



"I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the president."

Bill Frist



"No man is above the law, and no man is below the law -- that's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country."

Tom DeLay


Isn't Freedom of Speech wonderful?

Peace,

Steve

His lips are moving...Again

Hard core Conservatives are so stupid, sometimes, I can't believe they remember to breathe.

How in the heck can 33% of Americans still have a positive opinion of George W. Bush or any other Republican, for that matter? Check out Mallard Filmore in the comics to see what republican humor looks like and you can see how gullible they are.

I was asked, yesterday, if there were any Republicans I liked and I said, sure...Barry Goldwater and Everitt Dirksen...And I should add that in retrospect, Dwight Eisenhower was a great man, even though he failed to stop the ascension of the corporatists taking over his party.

Republicans have gotten more servile to their corporate masters since those guys were around. War is merely a business opportunity and that's OK because no rich Republican children are going to get shot at, anyway. Halliburton misplaces more money than it would take to deal with the Mexican immigration problem and nobody mentions it.

(It's just bidness, you understand...No hard feelings. Sorry you guys gotta get dumped on. The President is in trouble right now...It'll all blow over after the elections and you guys can get back to work on trimming the shrubberries.}

And has one Republican told Cindy Sheehan they are sorry that they bought into the pack of lies that got her son killed?

George Bush lied to America and got us into war. Lied to me and lied to You...The bald faced lies are still up on the Whitehouse website and there's a reason. The Conservative base is so stupid and intractable...incapable of personal reason...that by continuing to tell the same old lie, conservatives think it is true.

Here is the White house web site in question...See how many lies you can pick out, boys and girls. See how you feel about the Bush Administration's justification for war now?

Whitehouse web site

Let's do this the easy way...Item one is partly true and item number 8 is completely true. the rest of the statements are essentially false.

But things went so well in Iraq that Bush is careening headlong onto a war with Iran, and it seems like nothing is going to stop him.

the Iranians don't want a war, by the way. They keep trying to talk about things with Bush, but a diplomatic solution doesn't serve their purposes...Which at this point boil down to preventing a Democratic takeover of Congress...the only thing that will prevent George bush from being impeached and thrown out of office.

Hey...Just so you'll know...The Cheney administration has an arms dealer friend on the ground in Iran to make sure that there are no secret communications between the United States Ambassador to Iraq and the Iranian government. Cheney and Bush seem to be doing everything possible to produce a war in Iran.

(Our Ambassador to Iraq turns out to be a really wonderful and wise man...How the hell did Bush appoint him? They're slipping...happened to Capone, happened to Gotti, happened to Hitler...They all mess up in the end.)

Drum

Courage,

Steve

Great Moments in Irony

Great moments in Irony..

Here are some really fun quotes...Guess who?


"I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the president."

"No man is above the law, and no man is below the law -- that's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country."




The most indicted and convicted Presidential Administration in history was Ronald Reagan's. This usually comes as a surprise to people who naturally think Nixon holds that record. Reagan, in spite of the deep levels of corruption and serious jail time for his buddies, is about to be surpassed by George Bush, in spite of the tremendous advantage the republican party has in controlling the presidency, congress, and the Supreme Court. At the present time, every single investigation into Bushista misconduct is being blocked or derailed by Bush operatives.

The greatest fear of the Bush cabal is not another 9-11. They would consider that a godsend, actually. No, it is a Democratic takeover of one or both houses of Congress in the coming elections. Karl Rove is changing job titles in order to get him further from public scrutiny as he starts the final campaign in what will probably be known as the dirtiest election campaign in American history.

It has to be dirty...it's all Karl's got to work with. That's why Illegal Immigration is such a big deal all of a sudden. Karl needed a new enemy to be afraid of. "Mexican Terrorists" ...
One that doesn't have WMD's this time... the last enemy Karl picked seems to be fighting back. A manufactured "enemy" is necessary for Karl to have any chance of staying out of jail after November, because he simply cannot run on the Bush record. Even two years ago it was horrible but the Dems were unable to come together enough to make ther case. This time they may not even have to.


In 2004 historians were polled as to the "worst" presidency in history...84% called Bush a failure by historical standards, with only 10% calling his Administration a success.

Now they are calling Bush, "The Worst President in history!"

Very High praise, indeed!

Courage,

Steve



Rolling Stone magazine has the best reporting on this.

The Worst!

Practice?

Some of the best stuff out there comes from the comments.

Here's Gordon:

As for abstinence, it may be a bit backwards, but as near as I can tell the best way to practice it is to get married. Have some kids, live a normal, over-busy life, and any sexual relations beyond a quick hug and tickle are to be treasured and recorded.

Well, maybe not recorded.

And why do we need to practice it? Sex should be practiced, but not doing it is pretty easy to get right.

And your take on Judas was fine. I wonder when the other "lost" gospels will be discovered. Talk about not toeing the party line! Not that any of this will make any difference whatsoever. Its not about history, facts, or even alternate views. Its much more about being spoon-fed, and a nice set of comfortable beliefs.

Sam said:

I have been waiting to see exactly when we would start seeing the type of propagana that wins elections. I knew it would come.... so it has started, 1) around Easter weekend, and, 2) 6 1/2 months before the elections. I wonder why this timing.

I have been in the home of a Southern Baptist who was told that they need to learn about other religions and so they read a book they were given by their pastor that says Unitarianism is a cult.

So... these people (and there are so many of them) are not the target of a campaign of reason. We can't say to them... OK folks, the Republicans have now started their Nov. campaign, and they are going to make you temporarily forget about the war and supply-side economics, they are going to remind you about gay marriage for 6.5 months.

Jim said:

Honestly, I can't remember when it was this bad, I'm not sure Nixon was this bad , maybe he was and I just don't remember...

Steve said:

Oh Wow, Man...Nixon was like the Sixties, I think...Don't you remember?


Peace,

Steve also said

Chastity Now!

Chastity Now!

That is what our dear leader and his administration wants taught to the school children of America. Aside from the fact that there is no study that shows abstinence instruction does a damned thing to reduce STD's or preteen pregnancy or any of the other problems associated with "non-abstinence", there is the sheer hipocrisy of the situation. Al Franken made fun of the Abstinence crowd in one of his books where he asked Republican leaders to give examples of their own experiences with "abstinence"...Doesn't appear that there were any.

Now, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced guidelines for organizations applying for grants for abstinence-only education programs.

this is your government in action, folks...Morons!

Abstinence curricula must have a clear definition of sexual abstinence which must be consistent with the following: “Abstinence means voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage. Sexual activity refers to any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse.”

...Throughout the entire curriculum, the term “marriage” must be defined as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as a husband and wife, and the word ’spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.” (Consistent with Federal law)

thinkprogress.org

If we are going to get Teenagers to practice abstinence, they must have adult role models....We need role models for abstinence. Hmm...Just who exactly is the General talking about as our models for "Chastity"?


"Convincing single adults to remain abstinent won't be an easy job. There aren't many positive role models for them to emulate. What we need is a chastity posterboy, and I think you're the man for the job. You're successful, a bachelor, and a tireless advocate for abstinence-only education. You're perfect. You'll be a fabulous posterboy.

We'll start out with a national tour, hitting local news shows and editorial boards, service clubs, chambers of commerce, senior centers, and college campuses. At each stop, you'll discuss how much you value your virginity and how rewarding your chastity has been to you."

Closeted

Peace,

Steve

It's Starting...

The Republican campaign to keep Bush and Cheney from being impeached has started. By that, I mean that if the Republicans lose their majority in the House of Representatives, Bush and Cheney are in trouble...Even more so than they are now.

The GOP is already harping on Gay marriage, flag burning, and abortion as the big issues in the campaign. They will try to make so much noise on these issues that no one will be able to ask questions like:

"Is gay marriage a bigger problem to America than a President who lies to us in order to start a war which he will be incompetent to run?"

I haven't heard this yet but I think that if polls show them really far behind before the elections this fall, Cheney will resign.

Right now, polls show the President with a 63% negative rating which is phenominal. That is in Tricky Dick Nixon range. Just to remind you, Slick Willie Clinton not only never had those kinds of negatives, but he had beter than a 60% approval rating at the time he was being impeached... And if Bill Clinton could have run again...He would have won easily.

The worst thing Al Gore ever did was to put Joe Leiberman on the ticket instread of embracing Clinton.

The second worst thing Al did was turning into a pussy during the Florida recount scandal. Gore won Florida by every objective study, the only difference in the outcome is in the size of the victory...a few hundred, a couple of thousand, or 29,000...And none of these studies accounts for the tens of thousands of likely Democratic voters that were purged from the records and not allowed to vote. So I'm thinking...

How would things be different if Gore had been recognized as the President? I would like for you folks to add your own in the comments but Here's a few ideas for starters:



No tax cuts for the rich..the National debt is at least $2,000,000,000,000.00 less and President Gore has not borrowed more money from foreign governments than all the Presidents in history before him..

Iraq is a boring news item from time to time, much like Lybia... Iran has a nuclear program?

9,000 American fighters don't have brain injuries.

15,000 American fighters are not missing arms and legs.

2,500 American fighters aren't dead, and Cindy Sheehan is that kooky but nice lady who lives down the street somewhere in America. You and I don't know who she is.

The very idea of selling off American Park Service land to developers in unheard of, except in the very sick minds of certain unscrupulous developers.

Some kind of domestic partner arrangement for gays and lesbians has become common and is no big deal except in the screaming rants of fundamentalist ministers...only heard as background noise in a far less hateful American mainstream.

America is leading the world in environmental salvation. We aren't doing quite as much as we need to but steps are definitely being taken to reduce human caused climate change.

The idea of the President violating any provision of our Constitution is an outrage.

The right to privacy is sacred. Your phone conversations are none of the government's business and the left breast of Lady Justice is artfully pleasing and not porn.

Abortion would be safe, available, and rarer than it is now.

Reinstating the "Fairness Doctrine" in American journalism is being discussed.

Your local FM radio station is not owned by a corporate conglomerate in another state. You have not heard a song by Air Supply in months and certainly not three times today already.

The whole world isn't wondering, "What happened to America?"

They still like us.

And Lastly...

President Gore would have actually read the Presidential Daily Briefing entitled...

"Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States."



Peace,

Steve

Eye'm Watching You

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It ain't necessarily so...

Ok, most of you know how much I like to poke fun at people who throw their religion around like a bludgeon. Most of them have no real understanding of their own religions, preferring instead to march to the beat of some master drummer who manipulates them to his own purposes... Hilarious and tragic at the same time.

Bubbling to the surface at this moment is the "Newly discovered" Book of Judas. Nothing new about it, nor its discovery. it has been around for, well, every bit as long as all the other biblical books but since it is so "inconvenient" for the organized christian sects it has been swept into the vault until recently, due to its highly uncomfortable picture of Judas and Jesus scheming together to confront the authorities in the events that led to Jesus's execution.

The book of Judas is just as valid as any other gospel, but while it tidies up a lot of questions about the events leading to the cross, The book of Judas ruins the cherished plot line. Organized religion loves nothing more than a villian, and to take away their most prized human villian would ruin the simpleness of their tragedy and screw up passion plays all over Christendom.

If Judas did not betray Jesus, Milton's grand purgatorial scene of Judas's eternal damnation is highlighted as the transparent lie that it really is for anyone who actually thinks about it anyway.

I like what Judas says about Jesus, who becomes much more intelligent when seen through the eyes of the Judas gospel...much more the protagonist as opposed to the hapless victim...The revolutionary in full plot as the righteous underdog.

For me, a more believable figure, tragic in a scheme gone wildly wrong. Judas's suicide, a reaction to the seeming failure of their life's mission and the devastating loss of his best friend.

Of course this will be rejected out of hand by church leaders, who will celebrate the resurrection of jesus tomorrow, instead of today as their bibles actually indicate...Late this afternoon actually.

But this is a really fun celebration no matter how incorrect or distorted. I get high on life and chocolate bunnies and laugh at people who will alter their schedule to see a sunrise once a year, thinking it is more special than the others.

I see every single one of them as a miracle.

Peace,

Steve


Further reading

...the word Easter is derived from an ancient Teutonic goddess of fertility named Estere whose feasts were celebrated in the spring by her pagan adherents. Typically, the Estere celebration occurred in April at which time the pagan goddess demanded sacrifices from her followers.
Going back even further into antiquity, Easter can also be traced to the ancient goddess Ishtar, and is associated with the deification of women goddesses...


Easter history

Friday

The Ospreys in Roane County are on the nest now. This one has a nest on the lights at the Footbal/soccer field at Roane County High School.


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His Lips are Moving...

Ya know...I think the President could do a lot to reverse his job approval ratings. I mean , when roughly 63% of the American public not only doesn't like you but also thinks maybe you should be impeached or censored or something, you got a p.r. problem you maybe oughta deal with.

This is a common and fairly straight forward problem politicians and businesses deal with all the time.

Take the Ford Company for instance. When their cars and trucks started falling appart, they did the only thing an American Corp should do...Ran a massive ad campaign letting everyone know that "Quality is job 1" at Ford and they do job number 1 just as well as they build cars and trucks. The American car buying public immediately responded by making a foreign car the number one seller in the United States.

See how it works?

So Bush gets called a "LIAR" just for a little thing like, you know, telling a whopper...Just so's he could wipe out a sovereign Nation that wouldn't let his buddies operate their oil pipeline.

“We gave him (Saddam Hussein) a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power.”

“If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,”...

“By the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order,” Bush said. “Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”...

When a newspaper actually put down in black and white what everyone with an IQ above a turnip already knows... and so do the turnips... the President's flack called for an apology:

“The lead in the Washington Post left the impression for the reader that the President was saying something he knew at the time not to be true,” McClellan said on April 12, 2006. “That is absolutely false and it is irresponsible, and I don’t know how the Washington Post can defend something so irresponsible.”

Yeah, but it is absolutely true!

True Dat

Come on, guys...Let's get that Ad program revved up, how 'bout it.


"Honesty is Job 1!"


Peace,

Steve

*****


In the interest of informing the American people, WhitesCreek Journal brings you this highly informative and relevant bit of information...See...That's what someone in my position does, you see...Informs. When something pops up on my radar screen that has the potential to be, well, really informative, and possibly a bit pruriently interesting, I feel it's my duty, what with the job I selflessly do for Truth, Justice, and American Gossip..I fell like it's my duty to report it.

Anne Coulter, right wing Republican wingnut, bitch.. Is...was...possibly might have been, or still is...

A Man!

She/He/Whatever got in trouble for voting in the wrong Congressional Distrct in Florida. The manner in which she did such a thing turns out to be a felony. Well, when they checked her voter's registration card, guess what? Rather than check the box that says she's a female...

Which would be perjury if she is not actually a female, you know...She left that part of the form blank.

Ann Coulter's a man?

Well, All I have to say to that is, "Tee Hee!...snicker...Har! Har! Har!"



Da Juice

Take Me Out...

Dick Cheney threw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals baseball game yesterday to a wildly cheering crowd.

Well, actually they didn't cheer all that "wildly"...And actually they didn't cheer at all...And actually, what they did was boo. The Vice President of the United States was enthusiastically booed by a crowd of baseball fans. Loudly enough that the Fox Television producers tried to mute the sound of the crowd.

Think about it...there he was... alone on a hill, the man with the foolish grin was keeping perfectly still...As people showed him how much they love him...

Not!


...But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he's just a fool.
And he never gives an answer .....

But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down.
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning around.

Well on his way, his head in a cloud,
The man of a thousand voices, talking perfectly loud.
But nobody ever hears him,
Or the sound he appears to make.
And he never seems to notice .....

But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down.
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning around.

And nobody seems to like him,
They can tell what he wants to do.
And he never shows his feelings,

But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down.
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning around.

And then there's this verse:

...He never listens to them

He knows that they're the fools

They don't like him

The fool on the hill


Weird, huh? And then he threw the little white ball into the dirt and walked away. This was one of the few things the man on the hill has done in which nobody got hurt. No lawyers were hit in the face.

Peace,

Steve


Watch him and listen

Why?

"Hey Dad...What's the big deal with George Bush leaking?"

"Well... son, everyone seems to be missing the point, arguing about whether it was or wasn't illegal. The bottom line is that it was a scumbag thing to do."

"Why?"

"Well... President Bush was trying to talk Americans into letting him start a war in Iraq and he gave us all kind of reasons for it. Now we know that none of them were true. Saddam never had anything to do with 9-11, he didn't have Weapons of Mass Destruction, he didn't have any "Mobile Biological Weapons trailers, and he wasn't on his way to having nuclear weapons."

" Remember President Bush's scary litlte "Mushroom Cloud" speech?

"Yeah?"

"Well... at the time George Bush was telling his boogieman stories, his flunkies were making a big deal about some documents that they said proved that Saddam was trying to buy uranium yellow cake from the country if Niger, and had these aluminum tubes that were going to be used to process it into a bomb...but it wasn't true. None of it was. And not only that, but lot's of people knew none of it was true and said so, and by pointing out that the President of the United States was a lying S.O.B. who was gonna screw things up royally and get a bunch of good American sons and daughters killed, these people who should have been called patriots were given another name by the President's people...Enemies!"

"Who were they?"

"Well...A bunch of British scientists pointed out that Bush's mobile weapons labs were actually gas generators for weather balloons (they had sold the danged things to him in the first place). An American named Scott Ritter pointed out that he had led the United Nations team of inspectors who had decided that there was no way Saddam could hide any WMD's from them, and they were actually inside Iraq when Bush said he was going to start bombing Iraq because Saddam had thrown the inspectors out of the country. Several American metallurgists said the aluminum tubes could never be used to make weapons grade uranium, and a loyal Republican named Joseph Wilson said he had been over to the Middle East and that the documents that Bush claimed proved Saddam was trying to buy uranium were, in fact, forgeries."

"I've heard of Joe Wilson"

"How about Valerie Plame?"

"The CIA lady?"

"Exactly."

"So?"

"Well...This is the part that shows what true scumbags the Bush and Cheney really are. George Bush and Dick Cheney already knew that they were making their case for war with information that was bogus. Bush was trying to talk Americans into send their children off to war, and some of them were going to die, and he was telling lies to do it. See, if you say something you believe is true and it turns out later not to be true, you are mistaken, If you say something to get your way, and it turns out later that it isn't true, and it also turns out later that you knew it wasn't true at the time...You are a liar!"

"Well...Joseph Wilson committed a brave act. He said to America, 'President Bush has said something that is not true and he knows it, and if you believe him, Americans will die for the wrong reason.'"

"Well...So President George Bush was caught in a lie, but that wasn't the most scumbag thing that he did. Caught in a lie, President Bush got back at Joe Wilson by ruining the career, not of Joe Wilson...Bush is much too cowardly to try that...he ruined the career of Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. And then he made it look like Dick Cheney did it...And Dick Cheney made it look like Scooter Libby did it...And Scooter Libby got arrested for lying to a Federal prosecuter trying to make it look like he DIDN'T do it...But they all did it."

"President Bush lied. Vice President Cheney lied. Scooter Libby lied. Joe Wilson told the truth."

A couple of hundred thousand people died...Some of them were the children of people like Cindy Sheehan, who still asks the same question that we should have been asking before we ever went to war...

"Why?"

Why did we go to war?

Why didn't we stop it?

Courage,

Steve

We have seen the Enemy...

So what do you do, as a Fundamentalist Christian with an Apocolyptic vision of the future of the world, when you wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and realize that in the puppet show at the end of time, the part of Satan, is played by...You?

Did Adolph Hitler ever question himself? Does George W. Bush? Does Bush think that he is destined to be the one to end the world?

After ten years and tens of millions of dollars spent on developing the B61-11, the Bush administration is now trying to persuade Congress that the solution to the unsatisfactory mission capability of the B61-11 is to build yet another modified bomb

So the good news in all this is that the damned nuclear weapon doesn't actually work?

The B61-11 "cannot survive penetration into many types of terrain in which hardened underground facilities are located. Given these limitations, the targeting of a number of hardened, underground facilities is limited to an attack against surface features, which does not does not provide a high probability of defeat of these important targets."

http://www.nukestrat.com/us/afn/B61-11.htm

Lost?

I can't find it...Looked all over but it just isn't there and I am really worried.

Where is America's Outrage?

President Bush is obviously lying...again.

"We are seeking a diplomatic solution...The only military preparations currently underway are normal defense activities."

We've heard this before.

The Bush Administration is considering a bombing campaign against Iran. They are also considering using the great abomination of our time, nuclear weapons.

Fellow Americans, there aren't any Iranians at the gates of America, and we can do plenty of uncalled for damage with plain old ordinary weapons of mass destruction that we already have loaded in the bomb bays of our tactical and strategic planes of war.


There can only be one reason Bush would consider starting another war in the most abominable manner possible...America has woken up to the Bush Administration as the great evil of our time.

But we aren't expressing it as we should. It is time!

It is time to be Outraged!

The investigations into the CIA leaks have narrowed to Bush himself. His leadership is not just inept but devastatingly destructive of everything that makes America America. Our economy is about to run up against the credit card limit, Bush has borrowed more money from foreign goevernments than all other presidents in history. Our schools are troubled. The environment is cascading into world crisis. The only thing rising faster than the cost of healthcare is the cost of secondary education, and Healthcare is a disaster.

The rest of the World now hates America, not because of what we are, so much, but because of what we are not, even though it is well within our power to be...The moral leader of the world.

We no longer stand for truth and justice and fairness. But we can...and we should.

It is time to be outraged, people. Now is the time for courage! Let your outrage be known. Let it be known that you think starting another senseless war would be moral suicide in the World's eyes.

And ours, too.

Courage,

Steve

The Price of War

....the airline placed Private Eisenhauer's coffin in a cargo warehouse with crates and boxes stacked high around it. There was no ceremony, no flag over the coffin.

..."To glance over and see your child's casket on a forklift is not really the kind of thing you want to see,"...



The rest of this story

Poster

bigger

Vampire II

When I was a little kid, my Dad and Mom took me to the Drive in. Knowing what I know now, I suspect that they had been to the drive in on previous occaissions without me, but there I was in the back seat.

Up there on the big screen was an old house, all shadowy in black and white, and a Butler who kills someone who showed up at the door after having car trouble, and then the Butler cuts off the head of the guy he just killed and pours the blood into a coffin and this scary looking man in a tuxedo and a black cape morphs into being alive inside the coffin and the Butler helps the scary man to stand up and then you know the vampire has returned because nobody drove the right kind of wooden stake in its heart the first time around and now some people are gonna get their blood sucked until somebody shows up and does it right this time, and it's probably gonna be some guy in a grey suit who works hard in his government job and does it proudly because he is just that kinda guy and he'll save us all from the vampire in the end but it'll be rough and scary for a while, and I'm hiding in the floor of the car in the back seat by now and I don't ever know how the movie comes out but I think the good guys won, but I'm not sure and maybe one day the vampire will come back and there may not be enough garlic in the whole world to save us but we think things are ok and try to sleep for now but I'm not sure we can...

Allegorically speaking, the vampire is really the evil that resides in the human race. It lives in the big house and seems to have a lot of money and expensive things but it never seems to be happy unless it is sucking the life blood out of some poor soul who just needed some help with a flat tire...And it is because the Vampire never thinks it has enough money or silver candlesticks because, even though the Vampire has more than it can ever ever use, there are still silver things left in the world that aren't his and he wants them.

And the Vampire will always want things that don't belong to it. And the Vampire will always want more.

And the man in the grey suit will have to kill it again...and again...and again...in order to save his Country.

And now you know why the little kid in the back seat didn't sleep well last night, because there's always some stupid butler around who is willing to serve the Vampire, and the only way to keep the Vapire from coming back is to kill the Butlers, too.

And that is why I am only partly happy about Tom Delay going down in flames. The Democratic party will dance around and be happy while the butlers of the world go about their business of serving evil and calling it good.

Vampires can't survive in the light of day. If you let the Butler keep you in the dark, you'll never kill the Vampire. Remember that as you watch the news. Ask yourself:

Who does this Butler serve...the Vampire? Or the light of the Sun?

So enjoy your celebration, progressives, but get back to sharpening those wooden stakes as soon as you can.

Courage,

Steve

Sympathy for the Devil

With Tom DeLay going down in self pitying flames blaming everyone but his own deeply corrupt self, one must wonder at the folks who have been marching lockstep with the most openly hypocritical regime in living memory. I chatted with a fiercely republican friend yesterday, having joke after joke at his expense. Usually he comes back with some memorized talking point laughing at his own cleverness and the fact that His party won...But not now. As unassailable evidence builds and builds making the case that his Party is nothing more than a pompously cufflinked organized crime syndicate, I wonder what he will do?

How does he feel as he faces the fact that god is NOT on his side? That his precious W is actually not even a very good liar?

My friend spent a very profitable lifetime selling insurance. His smile is photographically beaming but false and his eyes give him away. He is worried. He is beginning to feel a guilt that his Sunday piety will not erase.

At some level I feel a kind of pity for my friend and hundreds more like him, but I do not forgive him. I am angry at him and can bestow my own forgiveness when he rises off his knees and helps us fix this mess we are in due to his intellectual laziness and self delusional righteousness.

These people have harmed my country and my countymen. Only their own penance can save them.

Do they have the courage?

Steve

******

Here is a very good piece in similar vein from Darksyde at Kos.

An excerpt:

.

..Of all the people that unwittingly facilitated the Republican Culture of Corruption of which DeLay has come to represent, and the string of astonishing GOP failures stemming from the White House, perhaps the grass-roots religious-right deserve the most sympathy. I'm talking about the ordinary guys and gals. Most of those hard working folks were expertly handled by religious opportunists and misled into supporting some of the most immoral politicians ever to disgrace the halls of power. Their eyes and hearts were drawn skyward by the smooth political operators while their collective pockets were then picked by neoconservative policy...

...But it takes tremendous courage to question one's very identity. And it is likely humiliating to confront the possibility that trusted comrades in faith have so cleverly played them like a harp, played them with their deepest, personal spiritual beliefs...

kos

I see the Light

If you've been to WhitesCreek Journal Global Headquarters, you know that I love a good storm. The storm viewing room, which doubles as the bedroom, has a glass front facing Southeast over the gorge. The ridge behind the house is a little over 500 feet above us, but we are still roughly 250 feet above the class two rapid below which signals the end of the whitewater canoe and kayak run for the four creeks that come together a mile and a half upstream. When we have a good electrical storm it can be as one house sitter called it, "A religious experience."

It is a glorious thing to see a soaring bald eagle from above. It is interesting to look down on an Army Air helicopter violating FAA regulations as it hovers up the creek with incredible noise reverberating back and forth from wall to wall in the gorge. But friends I'm here to tell you, when Zeus hurls that ionized javelin past your bedroom window in the middle of the night, you can see it with your eyes closed and go from a soundly sleeping repose to standing at attention straight up in a waterbed in point oh, oh, two seconds...faster if you weren't sleeping all that soundly.

Everybody in the valley got woken up by the storm early Monday morning. And everyone I talked to remembers the one big strike. You know...the one where the blinding light and the horrendous boom occur at the same time. I remember one more blinding flash. It happened after I reset the breaker to our well pump and tried to throw the pressure switch to get the water back on. Just to be sure, I did it again with the same result. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust back to the predawn dark.

We have water in reserve for coffee but nobody got a shower that morning. Two hundred and thirty feet down a little hole in the ground is a glob of blackened copper windings that used to be individual wires inside the well pump. The little wires have now been joined in molten matrimony and have sworn to never pump water for me again.

This would be exactly the time that my mother in law had arrived to spend a month with us.

One well service company says they can get here as early as Thursday.

Courage!

Steve

Changing Time

Time doesn't change much, actually. Clocks do. This morning most of my clocks have changed themselves. The one on my wrist needs a little work but the one down in the corner of my computer screen thinks it's Spring forward time now.

I don't like it.

Way back in the old days, I could get up at my usual time, a little before daylight, and have an hour or two by myself, just me and the world, before the demands of family life and society would take over. There was time to enjoy the morning light, soft in Spring and pastel colored...Maple red and Tulip Poplar green between fading Sarvis berry blossoms and the yellow Dogwood buds announcing an impending pop into white bloom.

And, geez, at the bird noise.

Before they screwed up the clocks, I had plenty of time for those morning walks which sometimes turned into hikes...And do you realize that if you walk into the woods and be still for a few minutes, the animals will forget about you and go about their business? They have things to do and you get to watch. Only you don't because your government has banned Free time in the morning.

They call it "Daylight savings time" which illustrates as much as anything how stupid Americans are. Let me let you in on a little secret your government is hiding...Today is going to be the same length no matter what the clock says.

We aren't saving a damned thing.

You can't save Daylight, people! You gotta use it as it flies by.

Now go outside and breathe the morning air. (I've already had a hike today, just so you'll feel jealous)

Peace,

Steve

*****

I can't put my finger on exactly why I like this picture. In a couple of months, this momma is going to beat the crap out of her baby and make it leave home forever, but for now, all is good.

Close to Momma



Redwing

I never knew that those little red thingies on a blackbird's wings could flap all by themselves. They flare out and vibrate during a territorial display, as this shot demonstrates. Cool, huh?

Picture of "----You"

My! Don't we live in an interesting world?

A charming little story arose out of the visit to a Boston Catholic church by that paragon of eclesiastic virtue, Antonin Scalia, known to his close associates as "Yo, Tony!"

So Tony Scalia is a Supreme Court justice, right? and his vote counts more than yours so you better suck up or pay big, right? Well Tony goes to this church for mass and mabe some confession, just like the mobsters do after they whack someone.

You know the drill...Do something bad, go to church, confess all, make a big donation, receive absolution, and reload, right?

Tony loves guns, is afraid of being recorded, and thinks orgies are a fine way to let off some steam. He got his picture taken making a little Italian finger sign for...well, the same thing the finger sign usually means. Just to be sure the photographer knew what the sign meant, Tony said, "F--- You" at the same time, to make sure there was no missing his meaning. So we got a good christian man saying "F--- You" in church and this good christian man happens to be a Supreme Court Justice, so the reporter thinks this might be a news item.

"Aw, shucks," said the right wing mouth pieces. "Tony didn't actually mean 'F-u'," and it doesn't matter if he did because he's a god fearing Republican and he gave W the Presidency back in 2000. See? It's OK if a Republican does it.

So now comes the burning question of the moment: Who's the bad guy in this picture?

...The guy who say's "F-U" in church or the guy who takes a picture of the guy who says "F-U" in church who was working for the church but now he isn't because they fired him for printing the picture of the guy who said "F-U" in church while he was making an Italian sign for "F-U" in church?

Why, the messenger, of course.

Peace,

Steve

War? What war?

OK, there's a war going on. Remember the war? It's in a far away country, and it's because that country has our oil...or has weapons of mass destruction...or did...or...Hell, I don't know why there's a war.

I have decided that the reason for this war is like religion. When my kids pin me down on it, I tell 'em I'm a Damfino... Member in good standing, as a matter of fact.

I think the Damfino's have all the answers. Or maybe Damfinos ARE the answers...Yeah, that sounds like the ticket...Damfino IS the answer...

Why are we fighting a war in Iraq?

"Damfino."...See? Works just fine.

We could try asking the President again but I think he's in Cancun with the President of Mexico looking at ruins. Couldn't they do that in Iraq?

But here's a game we can play. Why don't all try to answer Cindy Sheehan's question? No repeating so I already have Damfino, OK?


Put your answer in the comments.



Peace,

Jail Birds

Roane County

Friday Bird(s)

More of the pics from Darrell and Betty's yard. They are big supporters of the International Crane Foundation and have hosted any number of bird photographers...Real ones, not hacks like me.

Some of these birds are stars of a number of beautiful coffee table books and National Geographic articles.

With all the crap that goes on in the world, there is peace to be stolen from experiences like this one.

Steve


Sandhill chick
They're so danged cute!
Gallinule
The locals call this a moorhen, or sometimes "eagle bait".
assorted on the roost
Hand held from a moving pontoon boat, but I like it.

Yard Birds

Sandhill Cranes

Betty and Darrell's house...Lake Mary, Florida...Tuesday evening.

Molly Ivins delivers the Sunday Sermon for me this week. In a piece ranting about what Corporate news is doing to its own industry, she nails the problem with Corporate bean counting that is killing more American businesses than any other cause: The quest for short term profit at the expense of quality.

What cutting costs does, of course, is increase the profits, thus making Wall Street happy. It also kills newspapers.

Molly

Ah, Roane County

I moved my family to Roane county in 1988. Yep, folks, I'm a "come-here".

This puts me at a disadvantage when I try to get along with folks because I don't have the Tribal knowlege of who done what to who back in the eigth grade, and who's daddy went to jail for what, and all the other small town historical events that create communities. People hold grudges for a very long time, and the sillier the affront, the deeper and longer clutched the grudge.

My family and I have attempted something completely new to this area. You see, there are five little towns and a part of another in Roane county and we pride ourselves on having connections with every single one of them. This means, in small town Tennessee, that we are outsiders whereever we go. I call myself "multicultural"..."They" call me "Not fromaround here".

When folks ask where we live, I tell them I live in a suburb of Glen-Alice, Tennessee, which is one of those perfect places inthe world. Glen-Alice, is on every Tennessee road map there is. Check for yourself. This is perfect because Glen-Alice, Tennessee isn't here...it doesn't exist. Washed away in the big flood in 1929...Got a monument with 28 names on it, but we ain't got no town. Like I said...

Perfect!

Since we don't have a town, we aren't burdened with the problem of electing a mayor or any of the other official positions. we have to make do with the County wide "positions"

(now that i look at the word "position", isn't that sort of a funny way to describe elected office? works though doesn't it?)

Two big "positions" are up for grabs this time around.

The sheriff is an incumbant but has been wounded by a reasonable amount of bungling and a tell all book that mentions his name a fair number of times. He seems to be honest as any of the other candidates and has the skills of a fair middle manager who has become the victim of the Peter Principle. he completely misread the county jail issue which will hang albatrossian around his neck. he could retain his job as much by electoral calculation than anything else. Most all of the other citizens of our fair county are running for his job and he may win by the simple fact of getting two votes to everyone else's one.

Perhaps it is time for a primary and runoff system to be installed in Roane County. The Sheriff oughta have gotten at least half the votes cast in the election, otherwise most all of the citizens have to be watched and arrested upon the commission of any perceived infraction instead of merely 49%.

The incumbant County Mayor is not running for reelection and this has everyone in an uproar. So far we have three people who have turned in petitions to run and all three have spoken to me for support.

Damn!

Support usually means money when it comes to elections, but i am trying to be as slippery as I can. All three candidates are good friends of mine. I know them well. Which ever one gets elected, well, I'll do my dangdest to help make them the best County executive possible. but until the election, how do you tell a good friend that you just can't support him? Now do that twice and you see how small town politics gets all messy and screws up some good drinking relationships.

Oh well, I was looking for someplace to live when I found Roane County, so I guess I can move if I wind up on the wrong side of everything. But dambit! I like it here. Roane County is absolutely beautiful. And the people here are a hoot! Three times a week the paper comes out and we get to see who shot whom and we know whether they needed shooting or not. (Not that there's anything right with that...) When the authorities arrest somebody impotent, we wave and they nod back as they are handcuffed and taken away. In three or four years, they'll be back, spend a few Sundays crying in church for all they're worth, and a new scandal will rise up and be annointed, as our elected officials vie for the top spot in the "stupidest ever" contest.

But it's Spring in an election year...

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!



Peace,

Steve

(This post also appears at my other blog site at KnowViews. I'm being lazy today.)

Post Chicklet Muse

Remember the Dixie Chicks outroar? Rush Limbaugh blabbers on about how they were crushed by the outrage of America for speaking ill of George Bush. It was a lie then and is a lie now. Truth be that the Chicks record sales jumped quite nicely while Limbaugh and O'Reilly called them traitors, but some right wingers even sent death threats to the Chicks.

What tortured reasoning does it take to threaten to kill someone for their political opinions in the one nation on this planet that was founded on the concept of free speech in the context of political opposition?

What cowardice is bubbling up when a man threatens to kill a woman for talking? Natalie Maines supposed capital offense was to say...

"He's not our President...We didn't vote for him."

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

Well the Chicks are doing alright. They all took some time off to make babies (Chicklets?) but they haven't lost their edge.

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

That is from the Dixie Chicks new CD.

You can check it out and download the song at:

Chicks

Chicks Music seems to go best with pretzels, by the way.

Peace,

Steve

The Illustrated Daily Scribble

Opposing the cabal that has seized control of your government is not a very lucrative occupation. It takes a toll in energy not spent on other things, but somehow there is a gratification to the soul that truth is being defended, even if in a small way.

In my mind, the greatest praise that can be bestowed upon someone is that they made the world better than it would have been otherwise. To ease mental suffering with wit, is as much heroic as wielding the righteous sword. Truth is a difficult meal for those who have chosen the drug of ignorance as the haze they live their lives inside. But ignorance is the devil and since truth is the only wooden stake that can pierce its heart, our own labor of Hercules is to bring truth to our compatriots who have succumbed to the siren song. Our greatest failure as humans may be that we have built a civilization, if it can be called that, in which there is money in lying and only satisfaction in honesty.

As I watched President Bush answer Helen Thomas with crap usually reserved for the weaseling of snot faced children caught stealing, I thought of the Truth Tellers that get me by. A great source of artful wit that has given me chuckle in the face of fascism is Charlie Fincher. When I posted his Scribble from the first full day of spring in 2006, I had no way of knowing it was a "Last Of".

All batteries must be recharged, for sure..But I'll miss the Scribble.

Still, we have the archives to replay old outrages and I laugh every single time I notice Charlie's signed drawing of Bill Frist that I have hanging near the mounted deer in my living room, trophies each of a sort. I have eaten of them both for sustenence.

Thanks, Bro!

Enjoy your Spring.

Peace,

Steve


The Scribble


And now, for your daily dose of outrage:

This is not my America. It is an America perverted by Republican stewardship. A nation that under GOP rule has abandoned its founding ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all.


Shame

What I'm reading?

The Big O

My son came in and sat down, well flopped, in the leather chair aimed at the tv. I was watching Olbermann. After a minute or two he said, "What channel is this? that guy is pretty down on George Bush."

MSNBC had the Keith Olbermann show going and he wasn't really hammering Bush so much as he was simply telling the day's story. The "Hammerin" takes care of itself in a case of straight reporting. If Olbermann has a problem, it is that he speaks in sentences that are complex, yet abrupt. he works for a "Commercial" network and yet said this:

“We made a mistake in the ’20s. We let broadcasting in this country develop with commercial broadcasting taking the lead and all other kinds of information on radio or television secondary or tertiary.

“But the protection of money at the center of everything, including news to the degree that it is now, is that as long as you make the money, they don’t care what it is you put on the air..."

We should watch his show more often. here's his blog:

Keith


Peace,

Steve

Feed 'em On Peaches

This morning it's raining a cold Spring rain. Mom Nature is toying with us, retribution, no doubt, for the evil things we've done to her planet. No worries on my part because I love the rain...even cold rain. Spring colors are far superior to Fall in that the pastel palette seem sfar more promising and pleasing to my eye. The Sarvice Berry on the far side of the gorge is at its flowery peak and the maples are just starting to show off their red tipped twigs.

One maple just a few yards from my window has outdone itself with spring bloom and is hanging with abundant scarlet. I checked the Redbuds last evening.The buds are beginning to show. I have often thought Tennessee should have a Redbud Festival where everybody drives along I 40 and oohs at the majesty of infinite purple.

As a nice exclamation point to my morning, a Bald Eagle is showing off for his girlfriend, flaring his tail irridescent in the soft light.

Ah, Spring...Just don't come too fast. I'm loving the last of Winter right now.

Peace,

Steve

My peach tree seems happy:











I woke up in the wee hours after having fallen asleep on the couch. Whatever it was that the boys had been watching was over and one of those insomniac come on shows was preaching at me.

The guy was wearing a fairly wild looking combination of rabinical garb and african print accessories. I waited to find out why I was going to hell this time and how much I needed to send in order to save my soul. What I saw was about the worst tv evangelist I've ever encountered. A bad public speaker and an inchoherant message...Possibly a Democrat running for something?

Nope...Try this one for laughs:

Huh?


The General is all happy that when we Google Jesus, he pops up as number 8 on the list:

patriotboy

Well that's nice but guess what pops up as the second most popular result when you google Jesus? I'll not comment other than to point out that this is Just in time for Easter:

jesusdressup

Read

I'm reading two things at the present.

The first is the wealth of information found at Xenu.net about Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, better know as L. Ron, who appears to have been way ahead of his time with his rapper name before rapper names were cool. L-Ron seems to have been a bigamist and a plain old bigot. He is best know for being either a messiah or a con man depending on who you believe. According to the Church of S, L-Ron didn't die. He purposefully...

"...abandoned his body in order to do research on a higher plane."

O...K!

Here's the latest in the battle between Justice, Truth, and the American way...And L-Ron's church of Scientology. It doesn't get much funnier or wierder.

Tom Cruise, that great moral and intellectual leader, has declared war on South Park:

From an article I found at Google News:

On Friday, the episode, titled "Trapped in the Closet," was back in the news, when the New York Post and Variety reported that Cruise was behind Comedy Central's decision to yank Wednesday's rerun of the show. The papers reported that Cruise threatened to skip all promotional activities on behalf of his big summer movie, "Mission: Impossible 3" if the episode aired. The connection? Paramount is releasing "Mission: Impossible." Paramount is owned by Viacom. So is Comedy Channel.

(The creators of South Park responded with this rebuttal, worthy of McArthur leaving the Phillipines, or Nixon leaving Viet Nam, or W leaving Iraq...)

"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!"

Intrigued, I found this site referenced:

xenu

Well there's no doubt that a lot of baloney is being flung about and here, for your assistance, is Carl Sagan's famous Baloney Detection Kit, just in time to aid your search for that ever elusive dotted line between Meat and Not-meat.

Republiconians beware!

baloney

And since you were wondering, Ill tell you about the other thing I'm reading at another time after I've finished it.

Now go outside,


Steve

"Toons

South Park is a secret pleasure of mine.

We don't watch it as a family but I know the boys catch it when the mamma isn't around and so do I. Yes, I think it could be less rude and still make fun of danged near every sacred cow tromping around in the garden. I filter 90% of the profanity out and giggle away.

In everyday life, Profanity is usually extraneous and over used...But, I consider it an absolute necessity at the same time. When I explained why "we shall not curse unnecessarily" to my boys they cracked up laughing at me.

"If you f---ng say F--- every other f----ng word, then what the F--- are you gonna say when you f---ng need to f---ng really f---ng say "F***"?!"

Profanity should be shocking. If it doesn't shock us any more, we should quit using it for a while. Folks will get used to not hearing F--- every other word and maybe it will be tanned, rested, and ready to go when we need a good curse word, like say when some cartoon ridicules our personal religion.

Isaac Hayes used to be a musician but he morphed into a cartoon character on South Park. he went from Shaft to Chef, as it were. When he was about to say "Mean Mother F----r" in the his song, Shaft, the backup singers overdubbed him with a "Shut yo mouth". That was good because we got shocked by profanity we didn't get to hear.

Isaac has been a character on South Park since its inception, but now he wants out of his contract because:

"There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins," Hayes wrote in the statement.

What Hayes actually means is that its fine to ridicule everybody else's religion but not mine.

Matt Stone said. "In 10 years and over 150 episodes of 'South Park,' Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of Christians, Muslims, Mormons and Jews. He got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion featured on the show."

What is it with cartoons all of a sudden? They are suddenly perceived as the greatest global threat to religion and worthy of rioting, burning emmbassies, and killing people, not because they ridicule religion, but because they ridicule "MY" religion.

Isaac Hayes is a classic example, being totally complicit in helping make fun of all the other goofy religions in the world until they got around to HIS goofy religion, which seems to have been made up by writer L. Ron Hubbard, who wrote a science fiction book about a guy who got rich by making up his own religion and getting everybody else to convert and give him money...and..uh????....Hmmmm....And then he decided to do just that by founding Scientology.

L. Ron was a Science "fiction" writer before he glommed on to the fact that the head of a religion can live way better than a two bit paperback writer. And you can get women too, I mean check out that Smith guy and his 200 wives...The Pope got his own thing going (not that there's anything wrong with that) but you gotta think 200 wives is one man's definition of heaven on earth...and another man's definition of Hell.

Anyway, I digress from the point of all this which is that religion just can't take a joke.

I say if it can't take a joke and a little ridicule, then it ain't much of a religion in the first place. There's at least 3000 different religions and maybe more if you consider the 50 something different Baptist denominations right here in Roane County, Tennessee separate religions.

All of them seemingly looking down on everybody else while getting their funeral parlor fans all frazzled when they catch someone looking down on them...Back.

And you know what? Danged near every single one of those 3000 religions and 50 Baptist denominations is making fantastical promises about what's gonna happen when we're dead and no way to check them out to see who's lying, and Brothers and Sisters, someone's gotta be lying. They can't all be right.

But All religions seem to get mad when they are challenged, And I think it is because they are scared. One thing they almost all do, is tell you that you won't get your reward after you're dead if you don't "BELIEVE" what they say. So they're scared to ask questions about fairly obvious stuff that questions ought to be asked about. They are all afraid of what will happen when they're dead, and most of them have differing ideas about it.

I wish I could help.

I figure life and death are like Texas Hold 'em...Nobody knows what cards we are playing with in the hole. Nobody gets to look. (and anybody says they already know is bluffing)

If we were to work together on the deal, what's underneath doesn't matter. It's only if we work against each other that the hole cards (that would be the unknown) becomes our enemy.

Just relax, play the hand you see, and anything on the flop is a bonus. And... Have a sense of humor about it, will ya?

For god's sake?

Peace,

Steve

Imagine

Can you imagine this happening?

1st Lieutenant Smith stands in the Whitehouse hallway surrounded by other uniformed men. The officer in charge hurries up with a concerned look and is handed a piece of paper. After reading it he looks at Lt. Smith, and reads the paper again.

Lt. Smith has a loaded service revolver on his hip, neatly holstered.

The Whitehouse Duty Officer, once more, reads the piece of paper he was handed and looks around at his men.

"Stand back" he says to them.

The Officer and Lt. Smith salute and as everyone watches and, as the officer hands the piece of paper back to him, Lt. Smith turns and walks purposefully away, down the hall of the Whitehouse toward the West wing.

Here is what was on that peice of paper:

I, John Patriot Smith), having been appointed a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army under the conditions indicated in this document, do accept such appointment and do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter, so help me God.

Every officer in the Military of the United States of America takes this oath.

Think it is impossible?

Remember that the fall of the Dictator Marcos in the Phillipines was due to the refusal of the military to follow his illegal orders...And, regardless of what Reaganites claim, that the fall of the Soviet government was because the Russian Military refused to shoot Boris Yeltsin, among other things.

I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic

Military men are already refusing to support illegal activity by the United States Administration...

Loyalty

Imagine,

Steve

Voyeuristic Tendencies

Our bedroom has a door that opens out onto a deck that hangs over the edge of our hillside. The night was so warm and the air smelled so nice after the evening showers that I had to leave it open. Before first light, I was questioning that decision. A couple of dozen turkeys apparently found roost in the woods and started chatting each other up.

Living in the treetops is nice until you want to sleep a bit late but all the birds decide it's time to stake out their territories in predawn song...particularly if the birds weigh 15 to twenty pounds each. Turkey gobblers don't actually gobble, in my opinion. Their call sounds more like a melodious warbling high volume belch.

Giving up on sleep, I wandered out onto the deck with a cup of killer coffee and my 20 power binoculars to survey the world. When I checked out Lake Steve to see what was causing all the ripples, I peered into a cluster of dozen or so toads playing twister in the mud. I can now say that I know things I never even suspected about toad love.

I often joke about my drugs of choice being coffee and aspirin, and I was looking through the binocs and drinking coffee when, being the curious type, I wondered where the stuff came from, originally. Who was it, exactly, that gave this gift/curse to humanity? Following up on the impulse led me to this article sorta related to the evil bean.

Where coffee came from...maybe

Peace,

Steve

Justice

The Bush administration holds to power by virtue of its grassroots support, but when you ask a grassrooter why, the answer is typically rooted in misinformation of the "We have to fight them over there (Duh...wrong country) so we don't have to fight them over here (BS in the first place).

By allowing themselves to be so mislead, local Republicans seem unable to purge their party of the gravest threat to our country since the succession of the Confederate States. As a result, I am on a campaign against Republicans at every level of American government, down to animal control officer.

But there are cracks in the wall, as the facade that has covered the sheer incompetence and corruption of the Republican party corrodes in the fresh air of factual evidence. How incompetent can a President be? Answer that for yourself after you think about the fact that President Bush found out about the Untied Arab Emirates taking over our seaports from TV.

In so far as its actual execution, Conservative philosophy has proved to be an abject failure, in that it requires suppression of information to exist, even, it turns out, from its own President.

I will not vote for anyone who even remotely supports Republicans until the Republican party casts out its demons and returns to being the party of American Industrialists instead of open servitude to the oil producing governments of the MIddle East

Another reason I will not vote for a Republican for anything whatsoever is illustrated by retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. In a speech this week, she used actions by a Republican Senator and a Republican Congressman to illustrate her fear that America, under George W. Bush, is slipping into dictatorship.
.

Here's some of what Justice O'Connor said:

Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and formerly Communist countries, where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O’Connor said...

"We must be ever vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."


Sandra's Speech

Courage,

Steve

Clinton's Lily

People have complained about Clinton's Lily almost from the start...

It's a wildflower named after a politicain...But not the one you think. Henry David Thoreau didn't like who the plant was named for, DeWitt Clinton, Governor of New York, who was also a naturalist.

This is not to be confused with a denizen of the Cumberland Plateau, the Naturist. These are clothing optional types and there are several resorts catering to bare adventurers in East Tennessee.

Imagine that...Or don't. Word is that the people you will see at the resorts don't much resemble the pictures you see in the web ads. (Google it yourself, I'm not helping with this one)

Anyway...ahem...There are lots of things that pop out this time of year and only this time of year. Spring wildflowers. They tend to be small, beautiful, and fragile. I found a round lobed hepatica nearly in downtown Kingston, only to find that it got buried by earth moving equipment before I could relocate it. While tragic in and of itself, this event shows us that we can find interesting native plants that can be taken from the wild in good conscience and relocated to our own yards if we are thoughtful.



Hepatica









Here is a photo gallery I found. It is from an East Tennessee garden of transplanted wildflowers. I am soooo far behind these folks.

At any rate, now is the time to get off our hineys and wander about the Tennessee coves. Be alert, observant, and watch where you step. Humans have big feet.

Peace,

Steve

Tennessee Garden

Fascists

AS the Republican leadership decides there is no reason to investigate the Bush Administration's violation of the Constitution in the NSA warrentless wiretap scandal, I have made a decision.

In the past, I have been rather proud of my independent voting record. I have voted for at least one Republican during each election cycle, though I admit to heavily favoring Democrats, in view of there not actually being a "Progressive" Party. This is officially over. Until Republicans grow something resembling a conscience...I will not vote for anyone associated with that party for any elected position higher than dogcatcher, and then only if the job will go unfilled.

I am tired of hearing Republican Senators speak pompously on TV about their Constitutional concerns with the actions of the President and then quietly blessing the most aggregious crimes against Democracy in America. Rather than hold some kind of hearing to determine if the Constitution is being violated the Republicans in the House and Senate pass more laws that clear violate the Constitution. It's like the only way to make up for stealing...Is to steal more.

Well I'm over it. I plan to actively campaign for anybody who is not a Republican, starting at the County level. You may be my friend, but that doesn't matter.

If you remain a part of the Republican party, You support Fascists and that's that!

John P. via Prairie Weather:

prairieweather

Courage,

Steve

Dil-Don't in Tennessee

Now it's gonna be against the law in Tennessee for you to show me yours:

"...Senate Bill 3794 (House Bill 3798), legislation that would make it illegal to sell, advertise, publish or exhibit to another person “any three-dimensional device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs….”

Tenn. Guerilla Women

The General thinks this is a fine idea but that it doesn't go far enough:

The General

Actually, you and I are the morons for letting these jerks be elected. Tennessee is 49th in education and these bleeps are worried about you showing me your three dimensional device?

Actually, I think letting this one pass might be the most fun we've had in a long time. I propose that we have the Sherrif search the house and vehicle of any legislator who votes for these bills. After all, it seems to be Republican women who need them.

Yap, Yap......yurgle

Thursday, 5 a.m.

The BEW Line is sounding the alarm like we're being attacked by ground based flying monkeys armed with sausages.

I figure it had to be sausages or else the dogs would never have woken up at that time of morning. They usually go off and wake the dead around 2 a.m. and have been back asleep well before 5. As it is, the Beastie Early Warning system wants everybody in the gorge to know that they, intrepid watch dogs that they are, have something cornered and will gladly bark at it until some one else gets there to deal with it.

I crawled up the sleep well to semi-consciousness and stepped out onto the loft bedroom deck and tried to make sense of the racket. I could hear the dogs clearly had something interesting in the water of Lake Steve...Lake Steve being maybe 20 feet across and three feet deep. As I listened, the rasping growl of a rather irritated racoon answered the dogs.

I tried to call them but they were having way too much fun to pay any attention to me, and after a groggy minute or two, I gave up and stumbled my shivering self back into the house and dove under the comforters before anything froze and fell off. The dogs kept the serenade at full volume.

Suddenly things changed. The barking rose an octave or two as did the decibel level and then there was a lot of splashing and yapping and then it stopped.

I sat up, listening...then heard a dog squeal and then nothing. I wonder if I had better get down there to see if the coon is drowning my dogs, but just as I'm about to leap, I hear them splash around and then take off through the woods, but I only hear one of them, so I lie there and worry a few seconds until I hear the other one, the little one, yap once and quit.

Then it's all quiet.

I can hear the dogs come slowly throught the woods back up the hill to the house and so I drift off to sleep.

In the morning, when I step outside for the first time, no dog bounces up to greet me. I call and call again. Then finally, the little white dog slowly walks up to me. He's covered with wet mud and bleeding from his head and ears. I don't think he feels like the victor. The other dog finally shows up and is about as ragged looking. They look at me, decide I don't have any treats and flop down right where they stood, a couple of whipped dogs who don't seem to have figured out how a raccoon that usually runs away in terror on dry land, managed to deliver a near death experience to them in 30 inches of water.

Lake Steve was green yesterday, as the first toads and salamanders entertained their girlfriends and carried on in the amphibian's equivalent of a singles bar. Today, it's a well whipped muddy mess.

But all was quiet the last few nights and the overconsumption of cat food seems to have ceased...For a little while, at least. On my hike this afternoon, I notice that the coyotes have marked their territory just a few yards away from the driveway. My firece protectors seem to be taking a break from guarding the estate.

Ah, Spring.

Peace,

Steve

Crooked little man in a Crooked little House

"I have ripped my life to shreds" was the quote from Randy Cunningham, as he receives the longest sentence in history for a crooked Congressman.

I would consider executing him. He's bummed because he won't be able to fool around on the 150 foot yacht he bought with bribe money, while War contractors pocket billions of your tax dollars.

First of all, a politician who violates the public trust has committed the most foul of crimes against our society, by accepting money for his vote. Congressman Cunningham took money for his vote. He took money and voted for war. he took money from CIA contractors to make sure they were awarded lucrative contracts.

Yeah, the Bush CIA is crooked. How 'bout that? Who'd a thunk?

"The CIA Inspector General has opened an investigation into the spy agency's executive director, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, and his connections to two defense contractors accused of bribing a member of Congress and Pentagon officials."

Via Kos

All that is bad, of course, but it shows us one thing above all else. Republicans do not believe in the most basic of American concepts..."The Public Good."

Cunningham is worried about having "ripped my life to shreds" but we hear nothing, not one word, about the devastating effects his actions had on others.

Ok, here's the deal: Lots of our Congressmen are crooked. They take money for their vote. I say that act should receive the most agregious punishment America can impose on the perpetrator. Eight years in prison is not enough.

But the real problem is that Congressman Cunningham cast votes that were illegal. Are they allowed to stand?

Tom DeLay illegally had Texas redistricted so that 5 new congressmen would be Republicans not Democrats. I consider that to mean that there have been those five illegal votes cast in Congress for every Bush administration program that has come to the floor of the House of Representatives.

Are these illegal votes going to be allowed to stand?

Can anybody tell me why, in the name of all that is good, the crooks get to win?

I haven't heard anything about the crooked lobbyists and what will happen to them.

Hmm.."Crooked Lobbyist"...Is that an Oxymoron?

Peace,

Steve

Palms at Sunrise

Yeah, I know, but I liked it there...Going back when I can.





Capers Island

Words

Overland High School teacher Jay Bennish, whose lecture in a world geography class last month also included words about capitalism, U.S. foreign policy and the invasion of Iraq, has been sanctioned for not providing students with a School Board rule requiring teachers to present the "other side".

In his lecture he stated:

"...in Bush's State of the Union speech, the president was, in effect, "threatening the whole planet."
"Sounds a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler used to say — we're the only ones who are right, everyone else is backwards," Bennish said.

He told students he was "not saying that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same."

"But," he said, "there's some eerie similarities to the tones that they use."

He talked extensively about U.S. foreign policy and capitalism. At one point, he questioned Bush's stated belief that democracy is the solution to bloodshed in the Middle East.

"Who is probably the single most violent nation on planet Earth?" Bennish asked. "The United States of America, and we're a democracy — quote, unquote."

On capitalism, he questioned whether it did anything to provide "everybody in the world with the basic needs that they need."

"Do you see how this economic system is at odds with humanity, at odds with caring and compassion?" he asked.

At the end of his talk, Bennish told students he was "not in any way implying that you should agree with me. I don't even know if I'm necessarily taking a position. But what I'm trying to do is get you to think about these issues more in-depth."

The School board has suspended him.


Teacher



*****

And now for somthing completely different...But totally related...

May I present to you, Ladies and Gentlemen, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America!

A big hand, if you will:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

There you go Folks, The First Amendment! Give it up. Thanks for coming, First, we don't see you much anymore. It's great to see that you are still kicking, even if it's not all that high.


*****


OK, Because enquiring minds want to know:

Pamela P. Willeford , the third shooter in Vice President Cheney 's recent hunting excursion, apparently has yet to publicly remark on the incident or why she was in Texas at all that day, since she is posted as our ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

...embassy public affairs officer Daniel Wendell said in an e-mail. "In the 2 1/2 years she has been ambassador," he said,... "Ambassador Willeford has been away from post for family and personal travel for a total of 21 weeks."

So every three weeks, Pamela earns a week of vacation. Good gig, that!

Word on the street is that Lynn Cheney doesn't like Pamela.

Personally, I get an "ewwwwww" feeling just thinking about this.

Enjoy your weekend,

Steve