Songbirds?

We are hearing the President and his lackeys vilify people who want to bring our troops home as soon as possible. Cowards, surrender monkeys, traitors, French, you name it, the Pro war faction has used it. Chief among those supporting the current debacle are Joe Lieberman and John McCain. Here is a quote for you:

"...Our continued military presence in (this war) allows another
situation to arise which could then lead to the wounding, killing or capture of
American fighting men and women. We should do all in our power to avoid
that.

I listened carefully to the President's remarks ... I heard nothing in
his discussion of the issue that would persuade me that further U.S. military
involvement in the area is necessary. In fact, his remarks have persuaded me
more profoundly that we should leave and leave soon.

Dates certain, Mr. President, are not the criteria here. What is the criteria and what should be the criteria is our immediate, orderly withdrawal ...And if we do not do that and other Americans die, other Americans are wounded, other Americans are
captured because we stay too long--longer than necessary--then I would say that
the responsibilities for that lie with the Congress of the United States who did
not exercise their authority under the Constitution of the United States and
mandate that they be brought home quickly and safely as possible [...]

John McCain in a speech directed at a Democratic President, October 19, 1993 (Via Kos)


There was no oil to be had in Somalia but it was a moral war. Clinton listened, decided he did not have the support he needed to cure the ills of Somalia by force and we withdrew. Today, John McCain has flipped to the other side. McCain wants more war. He no longer cares about our troops...If he ever did.

Peace,

Steve



A Dixie Chick song?


"Nothing is as scary as Election Day,

But the day after is darker / And darker and darker it goes /

Who knows maybe the plans will change /

Who knows maybe he's not deranged."

No...It's Norah Jones from her new album.


Must read Post...The Tao of the kOOk

Ceasar Must Go

George W. Bush is marching America's Warriors over a cliff. Every day, more American Troops fall to die or be maimed. But "We cannot let the Cliff win!" says our President, who also told us that the Cliff was waiting for the right moment to attack us "Over Here."

"If we withdraw, the Cliff will win...We must Surge!" said the President.

Should we let the Cliff win? Shouldn't we continue to march our children over the edge, new casualties piled upon old. Won't the already dead have died in vain if we stop sending more to their deaths?

It is time to stop.

Ceasar must be Go!

Hey, Children, Whats that sound?

My hearing is not what it used to be but it is still pretty good. Nowadays, I have trouble picking a certain sound out of the noise of everyday goings on in this house, but, here was something extra happening.

I though it was a fan running at first, or a motor, so I wandered around the house and decided it was outside, and it was...only it was inside, too. Stepping out the back door I looked down at the "freeze proof" faucet that we use to water the dogs and saw that they were being well watered unintentionally. A plumber had replaced a bad faucet for me and had apparently not replaced the insulation that protected the pipe from a mere 12 degree night. As I looked at the water spewing out, I had that sinking in the gut feeling one gets when one realizes that things are probably worse than it seems at first glance...Down in the basement a disaster in progress was waiting to make my day.

I opened the door to the utility room and it was like one of those hilarious commercials where the door has the water backed up waiting for the unsuspecting, underinsured victim to bear the full force of the wall of water that pours out upon release from its confines. The sight of me dancing around trying not to get my shoes totally wet as the water chased me around the basement now seems funny but not right then. I made stepping stones in the crystal clear pool out of the iron weights from the workout bench (see, I do use it) and made my way to the cutoff valve which didn't cut anything off, as it turns out. The plumber had saved himself some work by stubbing in the outside faucet from a convenient spot that totally screwed me up.

Ok, stop and think...I had originally put several valves in the house and it was just a matter of figuring out which one...sploshing over to it...and then it was quiet except for some dripping...Ok, a lot of dripping.

Anyway, I shoveled water into buckets and hauled it outside while I tried to remember which neighbor had my wet or dry shop-vac, hoping my old brain could come up with the answer before my kees and back gave out from stooping over and bailing water with a dust pan. From my years as a whitewater canoer I am an excellent bailer and I could see progress after ten or fifteen buckets and went careening off down the mountain side after the shop vac.

This morning some of the carpets are drying out and the house is nice and toasty because of the extra heat applied downstairs. Some of the old cardboard boxes in the basement corners have been investigated, sorted, and tossed out...Things that should have been done long ago, even before the great flood. I've installed a brand new cut off valve in a place that should thwart the evil designs of my ex plumber... (Who turns out not to be a plumber in the first place, but a registered electrician who bought a used truck that had "Plumbing AND Electric" painted on the door so, hey , why not? This is rural Tennessee, after all, plumbing can't be that hard, and a new sign would cost money, right?)

So, today...It's a clear day, the sun is beaming across the gorge and highlighting the eagles as they fly by on their way to look for dead fish on the lake. The sun is beaming in and highlighting the crows, too, but they don't have as fancy a paint job so think "eagles" with me and let's enjoy the morning before we go down into the bowels of the house and start digging back into the soggy memories stacked up against the back wall. Old treasures and tragedies, slightly soggy, both waiting to be dealt with one more time.

Peace,

Steve

Why Al Gore Should Run

Why Al Gore Should Run

The Cliff

When I discuss, or rather attempt to discuss, political things with some folks, I am often surprised at the level of ignorance that otherwise reasonable people seem to be supporting. There is a belief in the nonexistant that is being purposefully fostered by some of the folks who own the American media. For example, George Bush was pinned down and forced to admit that he did in fact know that Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with 9-11. (The majority of the attackers were Saudis, as is Osama Bin Laden.) And yet a majority of Americans recently said they believed Saddam was involved.( Polls of FOX News watchers prove they are overwhelmingly ignorant of anything except Right Wing talking points. )

This brings me to ask several questions:

1. Is it good for America that a news organization is allowed to mislead us on purpose?

2. Was this what was intended by the Constitution?

3. Why are we allowing this to continue?

4. Is it going to get better?

The answers are 1,no; 2,no; 3,since we are being fed misinformation we cannot make a good decision, and finally; 4, Not anytime soon.

Currently the FCC is controlled by Republicans. This will be the case until Republicans no longer control the Whitehouse. The FCC is about to decide if the Internet has had such a terrible effect on the traditional media that ownership rules, the few that are still in place, should be abolished.

Think about it. Only five corporations control most of the media outlets now. You information is fed to you by a corporation in most cases. Corporations have no morals. The bigger they are the more they are driven by profit... and also by profit. Well profit and the personal motives of those that control them. history has shown that this is not good for the vast majority of citizens. If the Citizens are mislead by a corporation intent on serving its profit margin, they may not ever hear that essentially all of the reasons for going to war in, say Iraq, have no basis in fact until years later, say after the next election cycle.

And the corporation may look at its revenue fron other corporations, like say Exxon/Mobile, and not tell you that your government's spokesman is lying to you about global warming until years later, say after the next epection cycle.

And the owners of the corporate media, who always want to control more and more so that no one can disagree with them when they lie, may look at the last remaining free news outlets and want to control them too, so that is why they bought the satellite system, and that is why the Canadian news Corporation is gone from the satellite, and so is the BBC, and some others.

And that is why we have people, prominent people, who can go before this nation and make the most incredibly stupid and transparently wrong statements without anyone pointing out how incredibly stupid and transparently wrong these statements are.

Here is one of those statements:

"The Iraq War is not about oil."

and another:

"We cannot let the Insurgents win!"

People, we are not fighting a government or a country...We are fighting a people who are fighting themselves. The Iraq war should be thought of as a cliff.

"We cannot let the Cliff win," said the President. "We must send more troops over the edge of the Cliff. The only way the Cliff can win is if we stop sending more troops over the Cliff."

"To stop sending troops over the edge of the cliff now is to surrender."

"If we retreat from sending troops over the edge of the cliff, it will mean defeat. Those troops we have already sent over the edge of the cliff will have died in vain. More troops must therefore be sent over the Edge of the CLIFF."

We are stupid as a Nation and you know why. The current leadership must be removed from power as soon as possible. Every day that the Bush Administration is in power makes our National Cliff higher and more people are thorwn off of it.

Peace Now,

Steve

American Hero

Molly Ivins may be on the home stretch, but she defines the American ideal of Truth, Justice, and the American Way:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070126/ap_on_re_us/ivins_cancer

I'm pulling for Molly in a huge way...America needs its heros!

Steve

Milestone for America

The big sports story in the mainstream media has faded away from David Beckham's $250 million dollar soccer contract and has shifted to the fact that both coaches of the Superbowl teams are black. It is the first time in history that one black person has coached a team in the Superbowl, let alone two.

I notice something else about these coaches that I find even more amazing. Neither Tony Dungee nor Lovie Smith raise their voices at their players. They are positive, instructive, and encouraging in their manner and their teams have defeated all sorts of "In your face" coaches on the way to the big game.

I have been told by coach after coach that "You have to get 'em fired up. You gotta make 'em mad." I had always been told that this is what it takes in football because after all..."Football is the controlled application of violence."

I had always thought that was the definition of WAR, not a game for kids...silly me.

When my wife told me that our oldest son was going to start playing soccer, my reaction was, "Huh?" Today, 16 teams and two wonderful soccer careers later, I am a huge fan of the game... And mostly of the coaches who never seem to yell at their players. When they do raise their voices, it is on the order of an instruction or tactic and never ever the old football standby of, "What's the matter with you?" The one question to which no child ever has an answer, except for, "I am a failure, coach."

I would love to see that question banned from this planet.

Every sport has its culture. It is rewarding for me to see American Football catching up to the rest of the world.

Go Colts!

Peace,

Steve

Other Views

One of the funniest things on TV is watching the various spinners discuss the same event. A couple of republican senators I watched this morning said thingsT "The President gave a good performance," and "the President came across as sincere."

A couple of Republican Senators said, "The President asked for patience...The American people are out of patience with the Iraq War," and "We will support the President if he lays out a plan for winning...So far we have not seen such a plan."

That was the Republican side. The Democratic side was mostly uncontrolled laughter.

Just to let everybody know that this Republican President is still on the side of Mega Corporations, Bush introduced his plan to reduce the cost of Health Care by eliminating Health Care for poor people. I'm serious. he proposes to TAX your health insurance thereby encouraging corporations to stop providing your health care so you'll have to buy your own, but you'll get a tax deduction for a part of it which will save rich people a bunch of money, but basically screw everybody who makes less than $80,000 a year.

And in other news, Dick Cheney was identified as evil personified by two different Attorneys in the Scooter Libbey obstruction of justice trial yeasterday...The two attorneys were the Federal Prosecutor and the Attorney for the Defense. After listening to a list of Federal crimes (like obstruction of justice, lying to investigators, destruction of evidence) committed by Vice President Dick Cheney, I figure Cheney has one defense left open to him...

Die as soon as possible!

Peace,

Steve


And then there's this.

An excerpt from live blogging the speech, Washington insider gossip version:

9:13 — A rare bit of class from Bush’s speechwriters, noting the first
“Madame Speaker.” Cheney doesn’t look quite so pleased. Of course, if Tim
Johnson doesn’t have a “speedy recovery,” Cheney will be very pleased,
indeed.

9:17 — Actually, wages for the vast majority of Americans have been
stagnant for the entire six years Bush has been president.

9:18 — Ohhhh, now he wants to balance the budget.

9:18 — “Without raising taxes” … what about the taxes on health care?

9:19 — Well, five years ago we didn’t even have a federal deficit.

9:20 — Time to refill the three glasses on this editor’s desk.

9:21 — WALNUTS just hopped up like the red-faced comb-over psychotic weirdo
he is … Ted Kennedy is either suffering a helluva headache or is listening to a
really sad Kate Bush song on his iPod.

9:25 — Hey, that’s what Hillary said about health care in 1993!

State of the Union, The blogospere version. (parental discretion)

The Truth, The whole Truth...

The alternate title I came up with was:

His Lips are Moving


State of the Union 2003

From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several
mobile biological weapons labs.

The British government has learned
that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa.

Evidence from intelligence
sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal
that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.

State of the Union January 20, 2004)

Already, the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the
United Nations.

State of the Union Feb. 2, 2005

"Our generational commitment to the advance of freedom,
especially in the Middle East, is now being tested and honored in Iraq. That
country is a vital front in the war on
terror, which is why the terrorists have chosen
to make a stand there. Our men and women in uniform are fighting terrorists in
Iraq, so we do not have to face them here at home. "

State of the Union January 31, 2006:

"We're on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory..."

"...Fellow
citizens, we are in this fight to win, and we are winning."

State of the Union January 23, 2007:

I'll be at a basketball game...I'll learn more than if I watched Bush's speech.

And I'll know for sure whether we're winning or not.

Peace,

Steve

Quotes via:

KOS

SOTU stands for...

Tonight is George W. Bush's State of the Union speech, and I can't wait.

Bush left us hanging last year and Americans have been waitng this entire time and are hoping to be updated on the battle against the most fearsome threat to face this country since.. the last most fearsome threat to face this country, whatever that was.

Here's a ittle bet that Osama Bin Laden will not be mentioned.

But you guys remember, I'm sure, Bush looking all sincere and everything, right into the camera, and warning all of America about this:

"Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: ... creating ... experiments, creating human-animal hybrids..."

Yes, Patriots, President Bush was obviously talking about

... the Skunk Ape! Be afraid! Be very afraid!

Yeah, I know, the Saudi's are dumping billions of dollars of U.S. Treasury notes and the dollar is following the same graph line as Bush's approval rating, but we need to never forget that the Skunk Ape threatens everything vital and dear to Americans...And that's why President Bush placed a man who doesn't believe in Family Planning in charge of America's Family Planning...Do away with birth control, Bush is thinking, and people will have tons of illegitimate babies to adopt and they'll stop cloning and in-vitreo fertilization and those evil scientists won't have stem cells to work with to say they're going to cure all sorts of diseases but we really know they are trying to create more skunk apes and they have to be stopped.

George W. Bush wants the skunk ape to be eliminated from reality and only exist in the mythologies of the conservative american mind and that's why we have to stop stem cell research.

The safety of our children depends on it. Thank you, President Bush!

I'll be at the high school basketball game tonight waiting to hear about your latest idiotic lie for the good of America.

Peace,

Steve


SOTU: Skunk ape Obliterates The Usa

So in addition to not having enough armor for the troops who are being "surged" into Iraq, Bush is laying off the workers who help them once they get blown up and the pieces get shipped back home:


"Defense Department officials have laid off most of their case workers who help severely injured service members, sources said."

Einstein said it:

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”


Hey here's a question...Can anybody here tell me exactly what they plan to do with the extra troops? What's different this time? All I hear is "Surge" and no plan. Kinda like the same insanity that got us in this situation in the first place.

Now ask yourself if the situation would be handled differently if the Bush twins were in uniform and stationed in Iraq?


Via Atrios:

Imus: "Well, anyway, what happens when it doesn't work?"

Sen. Joe Lieberman:

"Yeah, well, you know, we will then look at the situation and decide what we can
do, and the alternatives are limited here. The other alternatives–the main
alternative that the opponents of what the President has done are offering is to
simply begin to withdraw. And the theory there is that somehow if you with– I
mean some people want to withdraw because they just want to get out. They think
the thing–They want to give up. They think the thing is not winnable. I'm afraid
they don't agree with me that the consequences of pulling out would be a
disaster for everybody, including most important, us. But some say if you begin
to withdraw, then Maliki and the other Iraqis will say 'Oh, my God, they're
leaving. We got to get our act together. I don't think so. I think what is more
likely is that the Iraqi politicians will begin to hedge their bets, and the
militias and the Al Qaeda terrorists will just hold back until the day we're
gone, and then chaos will break out, and unfortunately as McCain says, we'll
probably be back there in a larger war, you know, two, three, four, five years
from now. I think this is our chance, so I'd guess I'd say to you in war–There's
a famous old saying that war is a series of catastrophes that ends up in victory
for one side, and right now I'd say this plan is the best next step we've got.
Let's hope it works, pray it works, and if it doesn't, then we'll figure out
what we're gonna do then."

BAGHDAD, Iraq - At least 20 American service personnel were killed in military operations Saturday in one of the deadliest days for U.S. forces since theIraq war began, and authorities also announced two U.S. combat deaths from the previous day.



Hey here's a question...Can anybody here tell me exactly what they plan to do with the extra troops? What's different this time? All I hear is "Surge" and no plan. Kinda like the same insanity that got us in this situation in the first place.

Now ask yourself if the situation would be handled differently if the Bush twins were in uniform and stationed in Iraq?

Now ask yourself this question...They don't have a plan for the troops when they get there and they don't have a plan for the next step is the surge doesn't work. .. What the Hell are they doing?

Peace,

Steve

From Bill Moyers

"...The independent press is under sustained attack, with a few corporations
conspiring with political leaders to create an Orwellian world in which language
conceals reality, and the pursuit of personal gain and partisan power are
wrapped in rhetoric that turns truth to lies and lies to truth."

That's from Saint Bill at the Memphis, Tennessee conference on Media Reform. Yes, I did say "Memphis, Tenneessee. here's another quote from Mr. Moyers:

“This is the moment freedom begins, the moment you realize someone else has been
writing your story, and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started
writing it yourself.”

We have been writing it ourselves, Mr. Bill. And we'll write louder in the future.

Peace,

Steve


It's a Brave New Media:

More

Here's More on the Bush DA firings

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/16/215554/886

The Story I'm Following

"What's the difference between Hitler and George W. Bush?

Hitler was elected."

That joke is emanating from Texas as this story is playing out in our country.

I suggest you read the comments. There is much wisdom there, and also some buffoonery.

It is time (no, Past time) for the Patriot act to be repealed. Calling it the "Patriot Act" is a lie, anyway...it should be called "The Fascist Act"...

Peace,

Steve

Tomorrow

Sometimes words can tell a particular story but it would be tough to do it elegantly. That's when I turn to one of my favorite political cartoonists.

The Village Voice dropped Tom Tomorrow...Are they crazy? We can see his work a mere one day late at Working for Change. They publish TT on Tuesdays. Today we get to see one of the best.

What else could I possibly add?

Peace,

Steve

Surge me baby, All night long

George Gonna Surge, Baby!

Let's see...He's sending either 15,000 or 20,000 troops to "Secure Bagdad".

There's about 135,000 there now so that would SURGE it up to say, 155,000 if we use the big number. That would be, oh, only 10,000 fewer than we had about 18 months ago when the plan was...

"Secure Bagdad!"

Now, normally, when you come out with a new plan, you tell everybody what you're gonna do, and then, after a little planning, you announce how you're gonna do it. A month ago, the President let the world know he was gonna SURGE!

And it only took a month to figure out what plan this surging thing was supposed to accomplish. Bush went on TV and announced that since the USA had totally screwed up those Iraqi's country from top to bottom, it was going to be their fault is they didn't get it fixed ASAP, or we were going to bring our troops home and keep their oil, on top of it.

Just so you'll know, those troops who are being surged over to Iraq won't have the proper body armor either. Or the helmet liners, or a freakin plan, either, but by golly they're gonna SURGE all over the place.

Probably with big old bull's eyes painted on their Humvees.

The reaction all over America has been a resounding...

"Huh? Bush is gonna what? Geez, what a moron."

Peace,

Steve


Molly Ivins:

"Anyone who wants to talk knowledgably about our Iraq misadventure should
pick up Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's
Green Zone." It’s like reading a horror novel. You just want to put your face
down and moan: How could we have let this happen? How could we have been so
stupid?

As The Washington Post's review notes, Chandrasekaran's book
"methodically documents the baffling ineptitude that dominated U.S.
attempts..."

*****

There was much speculation that the reason Saddam was executed so quickly was so he could not be asked about the genocide of the Jurds with poison gas. The gas precursors were sold to him by American companies with whom Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld were associated.

Originally, the court said that the investigations would proceed without Saddam, however....


“Well, today, an Iraqi judge officially dropped all remaining charges against Saddam Hussein. That’s nice. You don’t want to leave a guy hanging.” - Jay Leno

Prey on the American People

How do these people keep their tax exempt status?


Exerpts from their prayer:


...The new year brings with it the Democrat Party takeover of the reins of leadership in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. President Bush’s constitutional role of commander in chief in a time of war will be challenged by a Congress eager to make its mark as a lead-up to the next presidential election cycle. ..


...There will be the lure of expounding the most clever, hard-hitting sound bite so as to assure an appearance on the nightly news...

...Ask our Heavenly Father to walk alongside President Bush as he lays out the stark, scary realities of the enemy we face -- an enemy in no uniform, with no respect for innocent life...


Are these people for real? Better question: Are they completely freaking NUTS?

Respect for innocent life?

With legitimate reports of over a half a million civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of the Bush/Republican war, where do these creeps get off praying that god will make the Democrats support George Bush's War?

And when, Gary Bauer, did hipocrisy become an Ameircan Value?

Speeches

Here are two excerpts from two wartime speeches:

A time of testing--yes. And a time of transition. The transition is sometimes
slow; sometimes unpopular; almost always very painful; and often quite
dangerous. But we have lived with danger for a long time before, and we shall
live with it for a long time yet to come. We know that "man is born unto
trouble." We also know that this Nation was not forged and did not survive and
grow and prosper without a great deal of sacrifice from a great many men.

And this:

A democratic Iraq will not be perfect. But it will be a country that fights
terrorists instead of harboring them – and it will help bring a future of peace
and security for our children and grandchildren.

I gues it is pretty obvious that that last one is from last night's speech, and of course there is the obligatory justification for Bush's war in the first place, and of course, the only terrorists in Iraq when we attacked it were in the U.S. protected 'no fly zone" where Saddam couldn't get at them, and of course, Bush didn't really take the blame for the disaster although he uttered words that seemed like it to those who don't pay attention.

The first speech was from January 10, 1967 by President Johnson. At the time there were over 6000 American casualties. Using that speech to justify more troops, eventually 60,000 would die. Many times that would carry wounds for the rest of their lives...wounds of all sorts.

In Bush's war, over 3000 American troops are dead so far and tens of thousands are wounded. Thinking about the wounded, Republicans have cut funds to the Veteran's Administration, by the way. Nice guys.

Here's what one of them said after last night's speech:

“All of us want to see a stable Iraq. All of us want to see our men and woman in
uniform come home as soon as possible. We all know that something different
needs to occur. It is important that the Iraqi government is making a stronger
commitment: with military and security forces, a commitment to spend $10 billion
in a rebuilding and jobs creation program, to move more quickly to an oil
revenue sharing agreement for Iraqi citizens, and by creating political reforms.
....”

That would be Bob Corker... "Sponge Bob"? Tennessee's new Republican Senator... Always with his eye on the "revenue". It is very nice of us to "share" the revenue from the Iraqi oil with the Iraqis, particularly after we negotiated a contract that gives American oil companies 70% of the oil. We have this contract with the existing puppet government we set up over there. If that government fails, the oil contracts are worthless, and we cannot have those 3000 troops dying in vain when the oil money must be protected.

Here's another excerpt from a Bush speech from about 90 days ago...

"Of course we're winning!"

Peace,

Steve

Mind Wander on a Blustery Day

Every culture names the pieces of its world. The words that are the names of things may mean different things to people, such as "soil". Soil is a problem if you are about to wash close but it is a crucial element if you are about to plant corn.

Soil, dirt, earth, dust, clay, mud, whatever. In my local world we have lots of dirt that has different names. I'm a big fan of dirt and consider it my friend. The folks who have to put up with me on a day to day basis know that I wear a fair amount of dirt as part of my wardrobe. I can put on fresh clean clothes right out of the dryer and in a few minutes, with no trouble at all, I will have decorated them with dirt. Me and dirt go way back.

Some time ago, I picked up a handfull of garden dirt and showed it to my very young son. I told him things as we looked at the dirt. There are millions of tiny living things in there...And minerals, chemicals, tiny rocks, pieces of dead plants, and all sorts of things we may not even know about. There are plants and animals and the things that plants and animals are made of that are too small to see. Nematodes and protazoa, fungi and bacteria, and other things that are almost plants and animals that I forget the name of. Those things are made up of more, smaller things that are too small to see. And those smaller things in turn are made up of even smaller things that are too small to see. At some point as we think about even smaller things, we get to the things that are so small that not only can we not see them but we can not even know about them.

Later I put some dirt in a jar with a little water and the next day we looked at the little beasties cruising around in it through a microscope. It didn't kick off his career as a great scientist but he quit eating dirt.

There are a lot of things in dirt. It is full of wonder. And it is full of information. There is far more information in a handfull of dirt than in all the books of mankind. And I think it would be far better for mankind if the information in dirt were paid more attention.

We have all those names for the kinds of dirt because our world is mostly dirt, just like Eskimos have names for the kinds of snow because their world is made up of so much snow, or used to be before we started screwing the atmosphere up for fun and profit. Wintertine in the South is rarely about snow but about the interface or mixture of dirt and snow. It's been snowing the last day or so and that's what got me going on the names of things. We Southerners have a few snow names of our own. Dry snow, we've heard of that, slush, which is what we mostly get, sleet, ice, powder, only in the ads for ski resorts, and then there's "hominy."

Hominy is what grits are made of. Everybody knows that, right? You soak corn in lye, it swells up, you dry it out and grind it and that's a grit. Hominy is kinda big looking corn, all puffed up and roundish. I have no idea why humans decided to make it and less about why they decided to eat it. If you have to use that much butter and salt why not just skip all those steps and eat dirt?

Anyway, in hill country there's such a thing as the locals call "hominy snow" and it's been falling around here lately. It's like someone took all the snowflakes and rolled them up in little balls. There's never much of it and I never saw it until I moved to the mountains, so I think it occurs when the temperatures waffle around freezing and the air is very turbulent. Hominy snow usually occurs when we have flurries, which are all just a big tease.

The one Indian tale I read about hominy snow didn't make much sense to me. It was supposed to be about Winter trying to delay Spring but Spring came anyway. I think the talker had been testing mushrooms from the weird stuff in the story.

Anyway, I'm glad there are different kinds of snow and that they fall on me.

Peace,

Steve

Conversation

Yesterday, a friend of mine told me that he was listening to Neil Boortz on the radio. Boortz was going off on the Democratic takeover because they would put an end to the 700 mile long fence on the Mexican border.

"It's gonna be bad with those people in charge," he said.

In my normal kind concerned and amazingly diplomatic manner, I laughed at him and said, "Let's put aside the question of which one is the bigger dumbass, Boortz for saying that or you for listening to him. How exactly is a 10 foot high fence gonna stop anybody? Would it stop you?"

"No, way."

"The border is a few thousand miles longer than the fence, does that make sense?"

"Uh..."

"The farmers whose land it would be built on don't want it. You think we should force them to let us build this monstrosity on their private land?"

"Why, no."

"Do you think you should listen to somebody else sometimes besides a man who is getting paid to confuse you and make you stupid?"

"I'm not stupid."

...

Peace,

Steve

*****

Now from the folks at Buzzflash, an interesting point by point examination of fascism and the Bushistas:

"...Hitler committed suicide. Mussolini was executed and hung on a meat
hook in a town square. Suharto avoided prosecution and has kept the billions
he's accused of embezzling from Indonesia.

What will be the fate of Bush & Co.?

In 2003, Laurence Britt crystallized 14 points of fascism from regimes
including those of Hitler, Mussolini and Suharto, then suggested similarities
under Bush."

This three-part series, entitled "Bush and the F-Word," has applied Britt's fascism framework to the Bush administration's record in 2006. Today's Part III finishes up Britt's final two points, makes predictions for 2007 and discusses how to fight back.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/693

Hey, Babe! Wanna Boogie?

Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh
Hey babe ya wanna boogie?
Boogie woogie woogie with me
Hey babe ya wanna boogie?
Boogie woogie woogie with me
We can boogie over here
We can boogie over there
Come on baby we can boogie everywhere
Hey babe ya wanna boogie?
Boogie woogie woogie with me

....John Hartford

It's better on the record.

President Bush is entering the final stage of his Presidency...The Bunker stage.


George W. Bush's lawyer, Whitehouse Counsel Harriet Myers, has cut and run. Bush is looking for a new lawyer to stall, delay, confuse, and obstruct every investigation into his impeachable actions until he can sing his own verse of the Cut and Run Boogie. He'll be gone in less than two years and bets are on as to whether he'll make it to the end of his term.

I figure it's even money until the investigations get going. After that? Who knows. Harriet, one of W's biggest suck ups, won't be there.



In related news, the White House visitor records have disappeared. You know the ones that show when Jeff Gannon spent the night? Male prostitute Jeff Gannon? Fake news reporter? With whitehouse credentials? Whose real name isn't even Jeff Gannon?

Well those particular records are copied but the Bush Whitehouse has made the visitor records disappear, saying they don't belong to the Secret Service anymore.

Democrats are trying to un-disappear them.

This should be fun. Except that America will be totally distracted by Iraq and may not even notice it when Bush gets impeached, tried, convicted, and turned over to an inner city streetgang for processing late one Friday afternoon.

We can watch it all later on the cell phone video.

Peace,

Steve



Molly Ivins:

The president of the United States does not have the sense God gave a duck
-- so it's up to us. You and me, Bubba.

I don't know why Bush is just standing there like a frozen rabbit, but
it's time we found out. The fact is WE have to do something about it. This
country is being torn apart by an evil and unnecessary war, and it has to be
stopped NOW.

The Village Voice has dropped on of the great political cartoonists of today. As a public service I present it here:

Tom Tomorrow archives.

A Broken Heart

"You can fool some of the people, all of the time...And those are the ones you should concentrate on."

...George W. Bush

Who are these people?

11% of Americans support sending more troops to Iraq.


From her historic speech before Congress as she assumed the Speakership...

"The election of 2006 was a call to change, not merely to change the control of
Congress but for a new direction for our country. Nowhere were the American
people more clear about the need for a new direction than in the war in
Iraq.
The American people rejected an open-ended obligation to a war without
end..."

...Nancy Pelosi


A very good friend, one of my "arguing" buddies, came over to me last night and said he was working the counter of a local convenience store when a teenaged girl came in, went to the newspaper rack, and walked up to the counter with ten Knoxville News Sentinels in her hands. She placed them on the counter and looked at my friend.

"That's my brother," she said pointing to the official photograph of the Marine in full dress uniform on the front page.

"She just lost it," he said..."She just broke down bawling."

"For the next hour after she left, it was all I could do to keep from crying"... Me too, last night, as he told me the story. We looked away from each other for a second or two and changed the subject.

I think our whole country is on its way to a broken heart...The folks that don't already have one, that is.

Peace,

Steve

Same Jail, Second Verse

So...Is it legal to call for the assassination of members of congress?

"ANY MEMBER OF CONGRESS WHO INTRODUCES, CO-SPONSORS OR VOTES IN FAVOR OF ANY SUCH AMNESTY WILL BE DECLARED A DOMESTIC ENEMY AND WILL BE CONSIDERED A LEGITIMATE TARGET FOR ASSASSINATION,"

That's the American way, right? This is a kind of person that supports Republicans:

That piece of excrement is posted on the website of Right Wing talk show host, Hal Turner. These are the same people that think that God fixed the election for George W. Bush. I guess God thought it was too hard to give Bush the intelligence, fortitude, and character so he would deserve the election...it was much easier to fix the machines.

And by the way, the first person to advocate, introduce, and sign amnesty laws for illegal aliens was the patron saint of the right wing himself....

President Ronald Reagan

These people are disgusting.

****
Well, today's the day we will see the first female Speaker of the House in American history. The Dems hav a lot of work to do but they have solid public support for their agenda of the first 100 hours. Oddly, the only things the public questions is for the plan to reduce tax subsidies for the Oil industry and most of all the proposal to limit spending to things we can pay for.

Here's a ten point plan the Dems should consider.

*****

Now, back here at home, our Roane County fathers (our only Mother retired last term) have decided to waddle on down the path of spending three or four times as much money as they should on a new jail. Before the election we heard a different tune than the one playing now in commission chambers, or more appropriately, back rooms.

Does anybody, besides me, wonder why have to have a new jail because the maintenance Department can't fix the bathroom drain in the current jail?

Does anybody, besides me, wonder why we have to build a bigger jail when we don't follow the state law about who should be incarcerated because they can't raise their bond?

Does anybody, besides me, wonder why our schools are more overcrowded than our jails and need tens of millions of dollars in maintenance but we're charging headlong into building a new jail first?

Actually, I think they do. Watch out, Roane County commissioners...Your constituents are getting angry...Again!

Peace,

Steve

All My Fault

If anyone is wondering why there is no snow at any of the ski resorts, it is not because of global warming. It's because of us.

We gave young son a snowboard for xmas and booked a ski trip.

The resort, of course, charged us to go see their snow and then when they didn't have any, they charged us anyway. The resort board of directors must be made up of defense contractors. You know...the ones who made the big bucks as we roared off to stop terrorism and destroy weapons of mass destruction in a country that didn't have any of either.

But we still got the bill...It'll push a trillion dollars before we're done. We're already halfway there.

*****

Saw where George W. Bush is calling for bipartisanship in the new congress. Amazing. He's also using his "Uniter, not a divider" skills to unite Iraq. It's actually working...Both sides are shooting at Americans.

I call upon Democrats to be every bit as bipartisan as Republicans have been.

*****

Anyone who believes anything conservatives ever say should have ther voter registration card taken away until they take and pass a course on applied critical thinking.

Rude wisdom is often the most plainly stated.

*****

And from Justin A. Frank, M.D. we have the book, "Bush on the Couch" in which Dr. Frank makes the case that we have a sociopath for a president. Dr. Frank does a fine job of telling us that W has destroyed this country as a by product of getting back at his father.

Well, that's great, Dr. Frank. I can hear the readers of this humble blog all sighing a collective, "Well, Duh!"

Here's an interview with the good Doc that's an interesting read.

*****

Also...Small business owners create more jobs and are the source of more innovation than any other segment in our society. Unfortunately, they tend to vote Republican, which is obviously not in the best interest of SMALL business....mega Corporations, sure, but the actual driving force behind American job creation should be voting Democratic and here's why.

Peace,

Steve

Sacrifice

President Bush will go on TV soon and read, with deep conviction, a speech from his teleprompter. He will call for sacrifice by everyone in America except himself, jenna, and that other one, who are busy getting kicked out of South American bars. (I mean, dang, couldn't he at least send them on a USO tour or something? Jenna could do her butt dance and make out with whoever it is she's making out with at the moment, and that other twin could..uh...collect pennies for Unicef in a trick or treat can like she did in Paraguay?)

Bush announced that he was gonna "Surge" in Iraq. "Surge" is another word for "Escalate" which means "We're already over the 3000 dead Americans mark so what' s a few more gonna hurt?"

He made his announcement in order to make some noise and try and drown out the report from the almost bi-partisan Iraq Study Group, which pretty much said Bush was a moron, uh, fine and dedicated person who had brought to the Iraq war the same piercing focus and successful vision he had shared with his former business partner, Salem Bin Laden, while looking for oil in the Texas desert.

So...Bush made this announcement about his plan, which he hadn't come up with yet, to "win" the Iraq war. It involves sending more targets to Iraq. Yep! clever, that bush kid. That's what he's gonna do, send more American troops to Iraq...It's just that he doesn't know why, yet. he was gonna tell us in a day or two, only it has taken a lot longer than that to figure out some way to defend what may be the stupidest move yet by an American president. Bush announced that he was sending more troops to Iraq, in spite of the fact that there weren't any more troops to send and there wasn't anything for them to do once they got there except get shot at.

"I may be a moron," says our President, "But I'm willing to sacrifice other people's children for my war anyway. It's like that plastic turkey I always hold up at Christmas, like I'm giving the troops something special. You see...it's like this...You can fool some of the people all of the time...And those are the ones you want to concentrate on."

(That's an actual Bush Quote, folks.)

Peace,

Steve


More on the lynching of Saddam debacle:

It's a sorry picture. US Army officers trying to force some adherence to the rule of law in the execution of the former head of state. The current head of government -- Maliki -- demanding an immediate execution, then finding a series of 'workarounds' to sidestep to apparently clear laws blocking an immediate execution. And then getting final go-ahead from a group of clerics. Is that what 3,000 Americans died for?

Josh Marshall

*****

Even Roger Ailes thinks Glen Reynolds is a moron:

John Edwards hasn't yet hired me as a consultant or even added me to his One America Blogroll. It's never too late to make the best decision of your political life, John.
At least lose Instapundit: He's a Republican, his wife's nuttier than he is and he isn't even a real lawyer.

My New Year

During my first cup of coffee this morning an immature red tail hawk flew by the breakfast nook with a crow in hot pursuit. The big bird appeared to simply ignore the crow and glide away across the gorge. Crows were once fairly uncommon birds but with the coming of the Europeans, highways and roadkill, they are present in numbers well beyond what the native ecosystems were interested in.

We took advantage of the rains and kayaked Whites Creek during what was supposed to be the warm part of the day but we never saw the sun. When we got home and crawled in the hot tub, our fingers and feet stung and itched from being so cold. 'Twas painful and exquisite relief.

During our paddle we disturbed a pair of red tail adults who whistled at us from the rare air at the rim of the gorge. I almost want to learn to hang glide when I watch the soaring predators hanging around in the lifting currents.

Almost...

So far, I have gone whitewater kayaking every day this year.

Peace,

Steve