Today I lost my best friend in Munich to what I hope are the greener shores of Ireland.

He can not be replaced. I will miss you, brother man. Love.

Last week, I came across a semi-circle of construction vehicles surrounding Odeonsplatz. In the center was a stage floating on a sea of orange.

I parked the bike and headed in for a closer look. Over the P.A. a man gave a speech in an Eastern European accent, pausing occassionally for an audience member with a crackling microphone to shout back from the midsts of the crowd. He was no heckler. It was choreographed, like the canned responses of a catholic mass.

Above the crowd in the shadows of buildiings older than my country, banners sprayed with Russian troops go home or Viktor Yushchenko is the heart of the Ukraine swayed in the wind. Orange was the colour du jour. Most people held orange balloons, or atleast an orange itself. A man who I think must be famous in some village stood and gave a rousing rendition of the Ukrainian national anthem.

Then young girls dispersed wax torches throughout the crowd, who now huddled around common flames as we patiently waited for our torches to catch fire. Then we headed down the street shouting Russia go home, before breaking into a slow, moving, almost mournful song. The sun moved behind th earth, only torches now, a sea of orange, our faces aglow, we the people marching the cobbled streets, a moment of history that was not really mine.

Over the protests of a protectective mother, I gave my torch to an empty-handed Ukrainian boy.

This is for the public record:

I have in recent years exhausted much energy into the practice of misery and debauchery. I spent so much of myself wishing I lived not in a place called America, that to finally be free of its confines is simply bliss.

Everything is possible again. Work comes. New challenges come. New friends come. Fresh ideas come. Indeed, power itself comes. The creative forces swirl about. I do not know exactly why, but this is where the universe wants me, or this is where I want my universe to be- either way- i am happy. and that makes me happy. and so on.

Reagan sent me this link: http://www.metagifted.org/topics/metagifted/indigo/.

I have not gone through it yet, but it seems worth looking in to. If for no other reason than to have something interesting to discuss with Reagan if you are lucky enough to bump into her downtown sometime, you know what I'm saying.

As I said a long time ago, I would not discuss politics on these pages. However, I must say one thing: I truly hope you religious, fundamentalits are correct in your estimations of hell, because if you are then I have no doubt you zealots will suffer there, along the other mass-murdering nutcases.

If you honestly think a man was born of a virgin and died on a cross so you could build a temple to use as a soapbox to peddle a conservative politcal agenda, you are a damned fool.

You fundamentalists pulled through once again. This time around the number one issue for voters was "moral values", and for those voters eighty-six percent voted Bush. I welcome a considerstion of moral values, but in these considerations could we please include the cost of war.

How many of you Bible-thumpers even know how many innocent civilians have died in Iraq alone.

15,000 dead Iraqii civilians killed in the first five months of O.I.L.

Of course, you people would be so kind as to remind me of the historical insignifigance of this number in the light of say, Veitnam's 58,000 dead soldiers. You've got to break a few eggs to make an omelette, right?

Then I would remind you that 15,000 dead is the blood of five 9-11's.

I used to blame government. I used to blame media. After this election cycle, I blame the people. Not all people, but I do not need to qualify. You know who you are.

You folks make me sick. I am so ashamed to share my flag with you. As long as it stays it your hands, it burns in my heart.

This bit of energy. This bit of energy. And this bit of energy is the last I waste on these matters.

Where have I been?
Waiting for divine inspiration to fill my fingers with beauty and love.

...I've gotta run. I didn't pay for these muffins.

Just now a person on inline skates zipped past me, making way down the aisle so quickly I couldn't make out their sex, which is most unfortunate since the skater wore very short shorts and I would have appreciated the opportunity to let my mind drift.

Stranger than the asexual skater is that she (or possibly he) garnered no attention from the other train passengers. No one, not this business man, not that mother, nor her two children, even bothered to glance from their respective newspapers and teen magazines. (The business man reads the teen magazines.)


I think in most of America, mass transportation is a bit of a freakish activity in itself,
the sort best reserved for bums whose shopping carts provide insufficient shelter from occasional rain,
and for single, horny mothers, caught in a devil’s cycle of poverty too severe to allow the purchase of adequate numbers of rubbers,
and for overachievers who drink heavily with such regularity and precision, certain governments have, in the name of public good, revoked their license to drive.

Mass transportation is far from the main stream. Even mentioning you happened to use the front bumper of a cross-town bus to prop your foot while you tied your lace is cause for all manner of suspicion,
not the worst of which is that you are some sort of hippie communist type who refuses to keep body hair at moderate lengths.

In my limited experience in America, it is easier to be a man with one testicle than a man without car.

An aside:
I really don't know what it is like to have just one ball, really, but being uni-balled is the sort of erroneous fact (like claiming to be Jewish) that I like to let slip in rooms filled with complete strangers.
I think it helps people regard me in a sympathetic light, which is especially important when you drink from a flask.

But yes, without doubt, it is easier to be a man with one ball than with no car.

Consider the following:

A girl calls her mom and tells her she met this guy named…
“…‘Joey.’ he’s very sweet when he drinks, and he tells good jokes when he’s sober, Mom. I think I really like him.”

“Oh, yes, there is just one thing. He only has one ball. His sister shook him off a ladder when he was seven. He snagged his Sack of Mexican Candy on a rung.
They tried to save the ball. They put it on ice, but before they made it past the nurse station it had shrank so severely that the doctors feared disrupting the atom it was orbiting.
Mom, what should I do? Does, dad have both his balls?”

“Honey, honey. If he’s a nice boy, and he sounds just delightful, who cares how many balls he has. In college I dated Jim Hanson, and he had three balls.
Well, at least, that’s what he told me.
Of course, later I learned it was actually a malformed twin and broke it off immediately, but that was so different, Jenny.
I mean… twins!
In my day girls weren’t raised that way.

or…

“Oh yes, there is just one thing… He doesn’t drive.”

“Honey what kind of bum are you hauling around.
Now you listen here Jenny, we’ve been through this with your sisters and we are not going through this again. You girls bring any more of those darkies round here…”

“But mom, he’s Jewish.

“Let me talk to your father.”

At first it seemed I had just happened to pick the car that all the cool kids liked. But upon a closer inspection that involved little more than eerily, slowly spinning my head 360 degrees, I understood the train was packed, yes, to the gills, with school children behaving in a carefree manner afforded by a lack of adult interference. They laughed at jokes whose punch lines I could not quite make out, talked about this one’s new girlfriend, and what not . Three pretty, modish girls not more than fifteen stood below, right outside my window, smoking suspiciously and watching with silent awe a particularly chunky girl roll down the hill from Old Town, lumbering to catch the train, her scooter wedged in her chubby armpit.

Old women on bicycles. Skateboards in traffic. More to come. when I find a free wireless cafe.

What a grand universe. Here I am in a Texas town so small they don't even have a post office, and I recieved a job offer for a bar in Muenchen. My biggest source of stress (had I allowed) is now nonexistant. I knew was going to work somewhere in Munich. I knew that much. You don't see many headlines reading: Dumb yankee starves to death in Eurpean capital. But still, anyone who thinks you can just roll into town and fill an empty position in some bustling Irish pub has probably applied for the job the same day one of the employees broke both legs after falling off a ladder, which is convinient, but you can't keep bank that kind of fortune.

Now, once again, it seems that the gods have paved my path. It could fall through at some point, but in the mean time I am free to let my mind solve other problems, like how to burn wet leaves.

The rain has stopped, back to work.

I am officially on the road. Bags are packed. I have no home. I have no key chain. I have no pillow. I fly out the thirteenth of September, heading for Muenchen. I have been dreaming of my return to that continent for so long I suspect that upon arrival I shall be suddenly overcome with the feeling of being in a deep sleep.

You see what I did there, huh? See dreaming of Europe... in a deep sleep. That's good stuff folks, and it's that kind of light-hearted writing that you are going to find more of on this blog now. Those days of whining about this dead dog or this lost love or this smashed car or that mole on my lower back that I had removed but still itches- those days are over.

Each draws from life what he thinks into it.

The Thing cannot work for us but through us.

The more power one gives his thought,...the more power it will have.



earnest holmes, the science of mind

Each draws from life what he thinks into it.

The Thing cannot work for us but through us.

The more power one gives his though,...the more power it will have.



earnest holmes, the science of mind

He used to move mountains.
And now he can not even move his head from his hands.
He cries regularly.
Are these the same tears from long ago?
They taste the same.
He wondered...
If he took himself to a country church
and raised his hands above his head,
letting the tears flow freely down his gray puffy cheeks
would firery elders still gather round and marvel,
exclaiming quietly amongst themselves,
"What a sensitive soul this young man has."
"Yes, such a soft heart."
Could he yet package his sadness as
good old-fashioned righteousness?

An open mind makes way for imagination.

-Alexander MacDonald

A falling stone also follows a straight and narrow path.

"Could I bum a smoke off ya?"

"Yea, sure," she said. "I don't wanna die alone."

They rode the Holy Roller coaster with the best of them. It's a wild ride. For those of unfamiliar with the Pentecostal arena let me explain. It begins as a crisis moment when you feel utter joy, a feeling so high, of such elation, you would think the creator of the universe is giving your soul a bear hug.

As the intensity of the moment begins to fade in time, you must struggle to maintain the zeal, even while it dwindles into a mild contentment. If you lived in a vacuum, apart from the effects of time, insulated from the tapping hammer of reality, if you could remain beneath the juniper tree, locked inside the cloister, kneeling on the mat, praying to the east, you might be just fine.

Sure at first you approach the world with a zeal and boldness. But eventually, you must return to Monday morning, and there you we are forced to break the gaze, awake from the moment, and the hypnotist returns to his day job as you are left with the residue of bliss, which is not necessary a bad thing, but against the church's weight of personal guilt and eternal fear, it is not quite sufficient.

One reads the bible in the morning; one prays to start the day. Makes a conscious effort to watch one's thoughts, to watch less TV, devote more time and money to the church. But gas for the engine is always burning. Therefore, like a vampire craving virgin blood, the Pentecostal returns to the sacrificial altar to plead the blood of Mary’s son, like a junkie craving the New Wine. A fix to get you by until the next Sunday.

Sometimes these fixes are elusive. These are called ''dry spells". They are cured by what some country preachers refer to as ''gully washers."

My Fly


The first time I saw him, he was sunning his underbelly on one the window panes that line the front of a particular downtown coffee shop. Behind him traffic bustled through green lights and the sidewalk teemed with people working their way down sidewalks, beneath the glare of the city’s scape.

I thought the whole image worth capturing, set my newspaper down, and quickly put a lens onto my camera. I moved in close enough to get a good frame, but just before I clicked the shutter, the little guy took off.

No big loss. I settled back into my comfy chair, took a sip of coffee, and straightened my paper, which was when I saw the fly resting on my shoulder. Without thought, I brushed him off. He flew a foot into the air, then returned to my shoulder. Once again, I swatted, but, once again, he returned.

This exchange went on with increasing vigor until I exhausted all the energy that first cup of coffee had given and came close to giving up on ridding myself of him.

Then the barista walked past. Remembering women had enough difficulties with me,I saw no need to add “he has flies” to that list.

Nonchalantly, I shooed. Predictably, the fly returned, and just stared at me. I stared right back at him. Of course flies don’t blink, but I stared anyways.

He looked like your common fly, except for the tiny iridescent streaks of red and blue and green where light separated as it passed through his translucent wings.

The thing that really caught my eye was this fly’s behavior. He wasn’t all fidgety like most. He sat still as a tie tack, almost serene.

I decided to reason with him.

I want to point out that I didn’t think reason would be effectual really, but swatting hadn’t been either, and I just figured that before resigning myself to the filthy advances of the coffee shop’s only fly, I should at least talk him.

I leaned in real close so as to not arouse the concern of any of the other patrons and whispered, “What’s you’re problem, man?”

Unfazed by my breath on his back, he didn’t move a muscle, except for those that caused his little fly belly to expand and contract rapidly as he took his little fly breaths, something I hadn’t noticed in keeping my usual distances.

“I can’t just have you hanging around here. It’s not cool.”

He just stared at me with his little fly eyes. I leaned in closer and squinted. I thought for a second he was batting lashes at me, but, naturally, he had none.

“You’ve got a whole city here.”

He kept looking at me. And his eyes weren’t little, really, at least not for a fly.

“Alright. Whatever. Hang out.”

I sipped my coffee, read for a while, then went outside for some fresh air and a cigarette. I came back in, sat in my comfy chair, straightened the paper, and noticed the fly still sat still, there on my shoulder.

“You are a cool little fly, aren’t ya?”

Then the barista looked up from a mop: “Are you talking to yourself, Johnny?”

“Not anymore.”

But such is my life. I knew from early on it was a bit more than it was all cracked to be.
My mother always told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up. For a few years my grand ambition was to be a garbage man.
I’d run out to the end of the drive twice a week when I heard them rumbling down the street. I became somewhat friendly with them. They’d say hello to the curious gaping white boy.
I’d wave goodbye vigorously as they drove away, amazed that they were allowed to stand on the back of a moving truck.
My parents seemed supportive of my career, buying me a Tonka garbage truck for my third birthday.
They said I could be anything I wanted, and I believed them for a while.
I had my first inkling that life wasn’t so simple when I went to my mother and told her I wanted to be a puppy dog when I grew up.
You can’t be a puppy, Johnny.
I thought I could be whatever I wanted?
Well, you can’t be a puppy.
And that was just the beginning.

“The perception of beauty is a moral test.” -Thoreau

I settled in front of my trusty external frame backpack and begin to methodically, carefully fill it with rolls of clothes, filling the empty nooks with precious goods: the steak knife, the cork from that bottle of Chianti, a crumpled pack of Galois Bleus, those cheap disposable razors, my tattered Bible, and such.

I extinguished my cigarette, pressing the hot yellow butt into ground, burning a neat hole through the plastic floor of the tent.

I thought of taking the knife and cutting out the tent’s entire floor. I’d like to see the two of them shagging there then, slapping against the wet mud, arousing the interests of the German beetles and army ants that inhabit the underworld of the Thalkirchen Campingplatz.

Being out-numbered, tempered with fear, I resisted disemboweling the tent.

As I crawled from the tent, I could see, in the corner of my eye, a mass huddled around a camp fire, eight Irish blokes still sloshing Spaten even as the sun broke clear of the Eastern tree line. I could feel their moonshine eyes considering the final demise of the village demon, at last exorcised. If Isabel was among them, I could not make her out from the other blurry, flickering silhouettes, at least not without turning my head.

I strapped on my backpack, slung my broken-zipper sleeping bag over my shoulder, and started off, cool as I could, heading for the trail that leads to the river. Then, I walked the path that ran along the bank, through the forest, towards the Wawirtschaft Biergarten.

In the eye of a storm, I walked along with all my life at my back, on my back, hanging on my shoulders.

Slowly, the gray skies won over the clear morning sun,
The horizon stayed orange, but the clouds above gently defied and a soft rain fell, plucking the slow river, marking concentric circles that expanded on the water before disappearing into the current.

I observed the drizzle from beneath the eave of the forest's canopy, the branches stretching towards the sky like twisted roots towards an old river.

I walked along, considering the pain of losing my first love, and the rain against the dawn, and the river through the forest.

Never had I mourned a greater loss, and yet even this blind fool knew that moment was beautiful. Damned. Beautiful. Alive.

Soon, though, I’d forget this take. For, the storm soon blew me from its eye, and I found shelter in the Biergarten, washing dishes for minimum wage, room, and board.

Once again the car was loaded with the possessions that hadn’t gone in the garage sale. Two book boxes, a clothes-stuffed external frame backpack, my Canon, a portfolio, and Gigi- the dancing schnauzer.
The lights of Austin shriveled into the dense morning fog as I headed down the high way towards the grand city of Houston.
I was heading to my grandmother’s to deposit most my things into her attic. I decided against leaving Gigi in the attic. I’d leave her with my friend June. Abandon might be a better word. I wasn’t planning on returning for her. It didn’t seem fair to the girl or the dog after as much time as I knew would pass.
I was going back on the road. Heading to Chicago for a bit of bar work and photography. Then to New York to pay my respects to the Brave New World? Dublin to see the Wawi gang? Then sell kilims in Istanbul? Then Jerusalem for some Islamic studies? What do I know? I would love to have taken Gigi with me but I didn’t need the extra 17 pounds of weight in my backpack and she wouldn’t fit into my camera bag.
My journey was supposed to start this morning. I had said my goodbyes, had my going away parties. Yesterday, I had called June to arrange a drop off time for Gigi. She wasn’t home, so I left a message and lay down to take a nap, sharing the pillow with my Gigi.
I awoke when June called back some moments later. Her name flashed on the caller i.d. if my telephone. I watched it ring, until it finally stopped. In those moments, while it rained against the empty apartment's window, I decided to take Gigi with me to Houston. I’d be there for a week anyway. There was not any reason I just could not take her with me, and then bring her to June just before I flew out. My parents were never particularly thrilled with having the dog around. They had no reason to be. They already had seven grandchildren that don't bark at strangers. But, hey, I could impose; it’s only a few days, right? I lay back down with Gigi. Mine for another week.
Now it was just me and the road, the dog and the dawn. The big horizon pressed my foot into the gas and I was in perfect peace. I had concerns in Austin and cares in Houston, but I was no where in between, and that is a very peaceful place in deed. It was not until the bright lights of a small town traffic cop filled my rearview mirror that I returned to this three-dimensioned time-space configuration.
To some people getting pulled over by the police is simply a matter of inconvenience, simply a waste of 75 dollars, fifteen minutes, and higher insurance rates. But more some people, a face to face encounter with the law can be a bit more serious. They might have a few warrants in Comal County, and few in Travis County. They might not have been wearing their seat belt in protest of government’s interference in the private lives of men. They might have a registration sticker from a particular 1970 fast back that was totaled a couple a years back performing a messy U-turn. They might have opted to pay their light bill instead of their insurance. That’s not to mention the 800 dollars in unpaid parking tickets, which would surely get your car a boot if it were impounded with your arrest. Gigi would fall into the hands of the state until I raised my bail which could be God know when. I wouldn’t even be able to sit quietly in jail until time served paid off my social debts because Mammaw was expecting and would worry sick until she found me. Maybe all this helps explain why I don’t like cops very much.
As I pulled onto the shoulder, I tore off the registration sticker and pretended to unbuckle the safety belt I wasn’t actually wearing. While I dug through my trunk pretending to look for my insurance and registration the officer played with Gigi who was leaning out the passenger side window, wagging her tail, waiting anxiously to see what would happen next.
When the officer finally went to his car to run my numbers and I continued to rifle through the bags that stuffed my trunk I began to pray. God, please help me. I am almost out. Please let this pass. God please. I don’t want to go to jail again. Not now. This is the worst possible time. If you want to deal with me then deal with me I am waiting but please do not let me go to jail. I just want to leave town…”
The officer gave me a couple of warnings, rubbed Gigi’s head and sent me on my way.
I drove away raising my voice over the radio, to God in the heavens for his boundless mercy and infinite grace. As hockey as that might sound, I firmly believe if you’re going to beseech the creator of the universe to act on your behalf, the least you can do is offer thanks when it seems to occur. It’s only polite.
As I neared Houston the highway suddenly became clogged with brake lights. I was running smack into the worst hour of Houston traffic. I wasn’t in the middle of rush hour, but rather in the middle of the morning and the evening rush when the two overlap.
I decided to turn around and head back to the toll road. I made a U-turn going about 2 miles per hour, following closely behind an old blue hair who was closer to parking than driving. As soon as the turn around began to straightened out I gave the car some gas and began passing the old Buick one the right. Suddenly the lady cut over into my lane. I slammed the brakes on and turned my car sharp to the right, hearing my horn she did the same. As car slid towards the Buick I cut back to the left and my passenger door flew open. Keeping my eyes on the road as I navigated around the bumper, I leaned over and grabbed the door, shouting profanities at the offensive driving I was forced to endure.
I reached over to comfort Gigi, but she was not there beside me. I glanced over expecting to see her safely in the floor board but this was not the case. I turned and looked in the back seat wondering how she could have squeezed back there with the bags.
She was not there. I slammed on the brakes, looking in my rearview mirror, hoping I did not see Gigi being hit by a car, hoping I’d see her sitting on the side of the road looking bewildered and slightly mussed. I saw nothing. I put the hazards on and ran to the intersection.
I didn’t see Gigi anywhere. The moment of chaos was only for me to endure. There were no bystanders. No business women honking their horns, giving me help through charades as they waited for their light to turn green. It was as though nobody had seen anything.
Under the adjacent overpass, a tow truck driver waited. I ran to his window, and he looked from his map, startled, oblivious and of no help. Some city maintenance workers, hunched over their weed eaters, didn’t know anything ‘bout no dog. I scurried about the weeds again and again, jogged through a nearby neighborhood calling out to Gigi. The rain had become a little heavier. And the idea of my little dog flung from a moving car only to endure the cold polluted Houston rain. Then I noticed some giant yellow construction vehicles near the intersection that I hadn’t seen before.
I ran over to them, knelt down and looked under the massive machines. Nothing.
I went and looked closely behind the massive tires, peering into the tall weeds that pressed against them. No Gigi. The rain against my face masked the tears from the traffic passing ignorantly along. I ran to nearby businesses. No one had seen Gigi.
It was like some sort of doggie rapture. I went back and stood in the grassy median, calling and calling, to earth, to heaven until there was nothing left to do but return to my car, to the road, alone.

I am waiting for the bus to leave the station. It’s on to the Drag that perimeters the university. It is a fun, smelly plate, teeming with taut-faced students slightly confused as to what they should do immediately post high school, and speckled with some coasts’ runaways and what not and so and on.

With every failure we lower the standard? I certainly hope not. For years I have wrestled with the things of this world, wrestled their unchecked effects. For the better part of year I imbibed at a reasonable pace, fewer hairy scotches. Not for self-will, mind you, but circumstance and economics.

Will the cleaner burning me keep his legs. I wallow in a thin pool of pleasure, holding my head beneath the surface then recovering it alternatively.

I remember a sign from the men’s dorm of a fundamentalist college:

You can lead a horse to water, and if he doesn’t drink, then submerge his head beneath the surface until it stops squirming.

So now I must decide which way to go, or rather I must decide to believe in strength to go, to not fall once again into the endless rut
that eternally grooves
at the weathered end of a gospel record.

No more crashing. No more burning. No more poisoned flights.

Besides, if I fall again there will be no rail of sentiment
with which to pull myself up.

I just had my first shot of wheatgrass chased
by the juice of an orange wedge.
I went for a pint of coffee at a hip all day and night coffee shop
here on the Drag. The baristas knew I was not one of the Kool Kids.
I asked for a regular coffee.
I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course want caffeine, that’d be like going to a bar and asking for an alcoholic beer.

Or going to a gas station and requesting “leaded”. Or maybe the exact opposite or whatever.

Jamie Schmidt turned to me, holding the yellow crayon in her hand, “Here, shove it up your butt.” Never in my life had such a proposition been presented me, not even had such an idea ever occurred to me. Stick the crayon into my butt? It was not until the end of the day while I waited in line with the other bus riders that the seriousness of it all sunk in.
Indignant, I dropped my backpack, marking my place in the single-file line.
“Ms. Criswell”, I said, my head craned back to meet her shoe leather P.E. teacher face, “Jamie told me to stick a crayon into my b-u-t-t.”
“Excuse me?”
“Jamie told me to stick a crayon into my b-u-t-t.”
“She did? Jamie’s not even here, Johnny”
Indeed, she had left with the other Kool kid bike riders/ walkers.
“She told me in music class.”
“That was four hours ago.”
The girl I love told me to stick a thick, from-the-eight-pack crayon in my butt and all I get is a lecture on timely tattling?
Ms. Criswell promised to talk to her about it, but I never really believed she would or did. I suspected Ms. Criswell party to the deep conspiracy against my well-being ever since she made my permanent square dance partner Michelle Kraft, who furiously picked her nose when she thought nobody was looking.
As I resumed my place in line for the long bus ride home, I resolved to not get bothered by all of this. I could turn the other cheek. After all, I was an anointed man of God, and had been for nearly a month.

Texas: Sail: "Call David at 325 388 4521 or email davidluc@earthlink.net to reserve your sailing adventure."

Texas: Sail: "Call David at 325 388 4521 or email davidluc@earthlink.net to reserve your sailing adventure."

The New York Times > International > Middle East >The New York Times begins the long process of explaining their atrocious march-to-war coverage. There were so many discrepcancies between the official Iraq line and numerous solid sources, a casual reader of foreign newspapers could have told you that the NYT should exchange their black ink for some brown, as 99 percernt of their front page coverage was but d.c.p.r.b.s.

"But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged- or failed to emerge"

Note to Times: Yes, you must corraborate government sources. I know it makes your job a little more difficult, and your operation a little more expensive, but, hey, that's the price of writing history.

Alvin, Texas
The Lewis Residence
Thursday, February 3, 1983

Having just gone to bed around 9:30 p.m., the Sharon and I were beginning to read when John came running into our room saying he had seen a vision of Jesus. We, his two older sisters included, were all stirred about this. We spent some time asking questions about the vision. After a period of time we all returned to our beds. A short time later we began to hear him crying again. We waited in the hallway for him to come out of his room, and when he did he said he had seen another vision of Jesus. This time Jesus was not a normal size, but rather so large only his face could fill the room.
I recalled the scriptures of I Samuel 3, where the lord was calling Samuel and each time he heard the voice of the Lord he would run to Eli and ask what was needed. Finally Eli realized it must the Lord calling to Samuel. Eli told Samuel that if he heard the voice again to ask the Lord what he wanted of him.
After the excitement died down and the girls quit their chatter, we once again returned to our beds. Things looked like they might return to normal.
Then John starts wailing and beating his bed. It’s a good thing we live I the country atmosphere without neighbors being very close because I know they would think we were beating our children.
John stops crying and comes running out of his room, throwing his arms around my waist. Jesus had appeared again. When John asked what he wanted of him, the Lord said he wanted him in the ministry and he also wanted him to heal people.
We put him bed with us this time, I went to sleep and John was still awake as was his mother. His mother asked him why he was staring at his hands. In a calm voice he replied, “Mom, the Lord told me he was putting healing in my hands.” He held up his hands, showing his mother the one red palm and the other having red splotches. He said his palms tingled but the splotches tingled more.
Once again John stayed home from school because it was late when all of this was over.

the gods of the mesquite trees:


the mesquite trees, huddled and crouched in the frosted scum
that surrounds the pond,
wishing to escape winter,
trapped behind barb wire fences,
throwing prayers at the telephone poles free to run along
the back country roads.

Often on these pages I have praised Patrick Buchanan for his critique of Neocons and of Globalization. So, I am compelled to castigate the WASP on his latest piece. Rather than celebrating the birth of the codification of "seperate is not equal", Buchanan seizes the anniversary of Brown V. The Board of Education as occassion to grieve the death of traditional America by a "liberal, secularist" Supreme Court.

He maintains that B. v. E. established the precedent of an activist judicial branch usurping the laws set down by elected representatives Buchanan says the Supreme Court rulings following desegration- abolition of organized prayer, Bible readings, the Ten Commandments, Easter pageants, and so on- are evidence of the Court's on going mission to de-Christianize public schools.

It seems pretty damn sad that a man as wise as Buchanan can come from a place so spiritually inept that he thinks a classroom whose door is locked to negros, yet filled with cleanly pressed white boys and white girls reciting morning prayers beneath a shiny cross is in anyway Christian. I pitythese old white men who cling to their symbols of Christianity when they have long lost its substance.

Note to Patrick Buchanan: A burning cross is not a symbol of Christianity.

Balkinization
This will be my last politcal post. When I started this blog, I needed an outlet in our march to war. There is nothing I can say that is not being articulated by better writers with more informed blogs. Some are linked to the right. Even the nightly news has finally moved beyond their euphoria of grief and seem to be covering the chasm between reality and the White House p.r.b.s. Of course, Koppel and Co. are 15 months and 15,000 dead Iraqiis too late.
So, in short, I will not stay the course.

The Infinite Cat Project
Kitty, kitty

God Bless America

For Dave

the road to surfdom

George Bu$#!+ and the 9-11 commission: The Pocket Edition

by Karen Hagen Liste, 1994
: "the price of liberation is very high, as it requires the dissolution of all beliefs, images and constructs about ourselves, and their conscious resolution in the absolute silence which precedes creation. "

Medical evacuations in Iraq war hit 18,000 - (United Press International): "Mosley said that after returning from Iraq last summer, he has had to drive 195 miles each way at his own expense to see a specialist. He said the Army put him out of service without compensating him for a neck injury or vertigo apparently triggered from mortar explosions. He can no longer work his civilian job."

This is too wierd.These are two excerpts given by Washington Times Editor Rev. Moon.
"A new era has arrived today. The number of people around the world who have received my teaching and are standing resolutely for the sake of building the Kingdom of Peace is growing by leaps and bounds. Heaven and earth are shaking with the cries of bright young people who are determined to build true families even if they must offer their lives in order to protect their purity. Already, we find hundreds of millions of blessed families around the world. These families are shoring up a world in which ethics and morality are rapidly deteriorating.

"The five great saints and many other leaders in the spirit world, including even Communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin, who committed all manner of barbarity and murders on earth, and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, have found strength in my teachings, mended their ways and been reborn as new persons. Emperors, kings and presidents who enjoyed opulence and power on earth, and even journalists who had worldwide fame, have now placed themselves at the forefront of the column of the true love revolution. Together they have sent to earth a resolution expressing their determination in the light of my teaching of the true family ideal. They have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent. This resolution has been announced on every corner of the globe."

Buchannan: WorldNetDaily: Israel's isolation ... and ours: "'Israel has a right to defend itself,' said President Bush. And against whom was Israel defending itself at dawn on Monday?
A half-blind and deaf paraplegic being wheeled out of a mosque after prayers, Sheik Ahmed Yassin was struck by missiles that blew him to pieces. In carrying out the assassination of the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Ariel Sharon used a U.S. Apache helicopter gunship. Thus, in Islamic eyes, we are passive accomplices in the killing.
Instantly, protests erupted in Mosul and Basra. Ayatollah al-Sistani, the Shiite leader on whom we depend for a peaceful transfer of power in Iraq, was enraged: '[T]his morning, the occupying Zionist entity committed an ugly crime against the Palestinian people by killing one of their heroes, scholar-martyr Ahmed Yassin.'
Sharon's defenders say the sheik had sanctioned terror attacks on innocent Israelis. But why did Israel not then seize him, expose his complicity in murder, and put him in prison, as Israel had before? Why convert this crippled old sheik into a martyr-saint? Why enhance the prestige of Hamas?
Has the killing made Israel more secure? If so, why were Israeli buses deserted all week? Has it made us more secure? Why then were the travel advisories issued to Americans in the Middle East? Why are U.S. embassies shutting down? How does inflaming the Islamic world against us advance the president's goal of persuading the world that Islam is not America's enemy?
President Bush must begin to realize that his blind solidarity with Sharon, who has shown himself contemptuous of America's interests in the larger region, is among the greatest crosses we have to bear in the war on terror.
A year after the fall of Baghdad, Bush's men are boasting of his triumphs � the overthrow o"

Buchannan: WorldNetDaily: Israel's isolation ... and ours: "'Israel has a right to defend itself,' said President Bush. And against whom was Israel defending itself at dawn on Monday?
A half-blind and deaf paraplegic being wheeled out of a mosque after prayers, Sheik Ahmed Yassin was struck by missiles that blew him to pieces. In carrying out the assassination of the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Ariel Sharon used a U.S. Apache helicopter gunship. Thus, in Islamic eyes, we are passive accomplices in the killing.
Instantly, protests erupted in Mosul and Basra. Ayatollah al-Sistani, the Shiite leader on whom we depend for a peaceful transfer of power in Iraq, was enraged: '[T]his morning, the occupying Zionist entity committed an ugly crime against the Palestinian people by killing one of their heroes, scholar-martyr Ahmed Yassin.'
Sharon's defenders say the sheik had sanctioned terror attacks on innocent Israelis. But why did Israel not then seize him, expose his complicity in murder, and put him in prison, as Israel had before? Why convert this crippled old sheik into a martyr-saint? Why enhance the prestige of Hamas?
Has the killing made Israel more secure? If so, why were Israeli buses deserted all week? Has it made us more secure? Why then were the travel advisories issued to Americans in the Middle East? Why are U.S. embassies shutting down? How does inflaming the Islamic world against us advance the president's goal of persuading the world that Islam is not America's enemy?
President Bush must begin to realize that his blind solidarity with Sharon, who has shown himself contemptuous of America's interests in the larger region, is among the greatest crosses we have to bear in the war on terror.
A year after the fall of Baghdad, Bush's men are boasting of his triumphs � the overthrow o"

Buchannan: WorldNetDaily: Israel's isolation ... and ours: "'Israel has a right to defend itself,' said President Bush. And against whom was Israel defending itself at dawn on Monday?
A half-blind and deaf paraplegic being wheeled out of a mosque after prayers, Sheik Ahmed Yassin was struck by missiles that blew him to pieces. In carrying out the assassination of the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Ariel Sharon used a U.S. Apache helicopter gunship. Thus, in Islamic eyes, we are passive accomplices in the killing.
Instantly, protests erupted in Mosul and Basra. Ayatollah al-Sistani, the Shiite leader on whom we depend for a peaceful transfer of power in Iraq, was enraged: '[T]his morning, the occupying Zionist entity committed an ugly crime against the Palestinian people by killing one of their heroes, scholar-martyr Ahmed Yassin.'
Sharon's defenders say the sheik had sanctioned terror attacks on innocent Israelis. But why did Israel not then seize him, expose his complicity in murder, and put him in prison, as Israel had before? Why convert this crippled old sheik into a martyr-saint? Why enhance the prestige of Hamas?
Has the killing made Israel more secure? If so, why were Israeli buses deserted all week? Has it made us more secure? Why then were the travel advisories issued to Americans in the Middle East? Why are U.S. embassies shutting down? How does inflaming the Islamic world against us advance the president's goal of persuading the world that Islam is not America's enemy?
President Bush must begin to realize that his blind solidarity with Sharon, who has shown himself contemptuous of America's interests in the larger region, is among the greatest crosses we have to bear in the war on terror.
A year after the fall of Baghdad, Bush's men are boasting of his triumphs � the overthrow o"

Question Mark #34: What's So Funny?

A quick look at Rice’s NYT op-ed:

“The seriousness of the threat was well understood by the president…”
Not true: Bush said, "I knew he was a menace and I knew he was a problem," Bush said of Osama bin Laden in a Dec. 20 interview with The Washington Post. "I was prepared to look at a plan that would be a thoughtful plan that would bring him to justice, and would have given the order to do that. I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn't feel that sense of urgency."

“We committed more funding to counterterrorism [before 9-11]…”

Not true: Internal FBI budget records clearly slashed the funding for counterterrorism. As late as 10-12-01 Ashcroft refused to allot money for the 75% of the FBI’s budgetary requests. When Ashcroft inherited the Justice Departments, the agency, per Reno’s order, held counterterrorism as the highest priority. In all of Ashcroft’s directives pre-911, counterterrorism wasn’t to be considered one the “top seven priorities.”


“We pushed hard to arm the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle so we could target terrorists with greater precision.”

Not true: At the end of Clinton’s term, Bin Laden had been located three times in Afghanistan, plans were held until the presidency could be passed to Bush. Bush ordered the cruise ship that waited with cruise missiles to “stand down.” Instead, an armed Drone would take him out. This effort to take him out was thwarted by interagency quibbling over mission leadership. Bin Laden played in the gun sights, while the administration tried to decide who gets to pull trigger. The White House denies these accounts, claiming the technology to outfit a Drone wasn’t fully operable. However, armed Drones were deployed on 9-12-01 to patrol the U.S. borders.

WSJ.com - Government Accounts of 9/11 Reveal Gaps, Inconsistencies

How is it that Bush had the FAA on its highest state of alert inresponse to fears of a terrorist hijacking, yet didn't think a jet crashing into the WTC had any connection, and so continued reading books to children?

Nor Rice, or Cheney, or Rumsfield? The official story is that wasn't until the second plane that they knew we under attack

9/11: Internal Government Documents - - Center for American Progress
Perhaps the Donkey Machine isn't as worthless as it has appeared throughout Bush's presidency. Six weeks ago, ols unvetted facts regarding wide descrepcancies in Bush's military record and the strings he pulled to keep his soft skin out of Vietnam finally reached TOP 40 news charts. Now, it seems the widely documented failures of pre-911 Bush are finally getting some print.
No matter how low the hum of Clinton's counterterrorism efforts, the facts leave no question these efforts were further deemphasized by the Bush administration.

Inspite of the fact that every relevant federal agency was on its highest state of alert "in decades" in the weeks leading up to 9-11, Bush never convened agency heads inspight of CIA Director's Tenet's urging. In fact, Bush took a vacation, and then extended it while those in the know were bracing for a massive attack on American soil.

While, Janet Reno held counterterrorism as the Justice Department's top concern, Ashcroft cut funding and lowered counterterrorism to a non priority.

The ships of the coast of Pakistan waiting to bomb Bin Laden through the sites of Drone surveillance were orderd to stand down. Plans to have him killed by an armed Drone languished for months while the CIA and Pentagon wrangled over who gets to pull the trigger.
Republicans wish to castigate Clinton for laxadazical handling of terrorism. Okay. However, it can not be denied that Bush did signifigantly less.

9/11: Internal Government Documents - - Center for American Progress
Perhaps the Donkey Machine isn't as worthless as it has appeared throughout Bush's presidency. Six weeks ago, ols unvetted facts regarding wide descrepcancies in Bush's military record and the strings he pulled to keep his soft skin out of Vietnam finally reached TOP 40 news charts. Now, it seems the widely documented failures of pre-911 Bush are finally getting some print.
No matter how low the hum of Clinton's counterterrorism efforts, the facts leave no question these efforts were further deemphasized by the Bush administration.

Inspite of the fact that every relevant federal agency was on its highest state of alert "in decades" in the weeks leading up to 9-11, Bush never convened agency heads inspight of CIA Director's Tenet's urging. In fact, Bush took a vacation, and then extended it while those in the know were bracing for a massive attack on American soil.

While, Janet Reno held counterterrorism as the Justice Department's top concern, Ashcroft cut funding and lowered counterterrorism to a non priority.

The ships of the coast of Pakistan waiting to bomb Bin Laden through the sites of Drone surveillance were orderd to stand down. Plans to have him killed by an armed Drone languished for months while the CIA and Pentagon wrangled over who gets to pull the trigger.
If Republicans wish to castigate Clinton for laxadazical handling of terrorism. Okay. However, it can not be denied that Bush did signifigantly less.

Buchanan On Terrorists and Freedom Fighters: "Saddam's Iraq did not threaten us, did not attack us, did not want war with us, did not have weapons of mass destruction. Yet, we attacked, invaded and occupied Iraq. And when Iraqis attack our troops, we call it terror and we call them terrorists"

An Open Letter to Mel Gibson:

Are you too steeped in your own old school Catholic theology to recognize you own prejudices?

Whenever the first accusations of anti-Semitism arose, you had in me a sympathetic supporter. That harsh charge is leveled far too easily these days in the name of tolerance.

Having been raised in a fundamentalist Zionist church I am very familiar such accusations. Many accuse the church of anti-Semitism simply for acting on Christ’s command to go unto all the world and spread the good news. Many feel a faith that Jews receive salvation through conversion akin to Jew bashing. For these reasons my hunch was to consider the charges against you unwarranted. We can’t sacrifice authentic religious expression on apolitically correct altar.

But something happened on the way to the theatre, Mr. Gibson.

Given Christianity’s bloody history of persecuting Jews, including its complicit approval of the treatment of Jews in the first half of last century, I do understand why some might harbor concern for a dramatization of the verses forming the underpinnings Christinity’s historic anti-Semitism. Therefore, at least an ounce of empathy for the reasonable worries of the Jewish community were in order.

Instead, what you delivered were flippant denials of anti-Semitism intended to deflect questions not resolve issues.

Meanwhile, your Dad used the smoldering controversy as a platform to spew backwoods diatribes, flatly denying, for instance, the holocaust ever existed: Where did are those Jews go if they didn’t end up in a gas chamber? They’re all in New York, you fool. [paraphrase]

When you finally sat down for a formal interview with Reader’s Digest you were given a softball question, an opportunity to address the accusations swirling around your movie: “Do you believe in the holocaust?” Your response is beyond belief.

You tepidly distanced yourself from your father’s stance: “A lot of people died in World War II, some of them were Jews in concentration camps.”

Easy Mel, keep your hood on. I’m only kidding, but my ears did prick up. I found it curious that you defended yourself with a position with which even your father couldn’t argue with rather than taking the opportunity to alleviate some valid concerns of the community.

One concession you did make was to remove the words: “Your people are cursed for all time.” However, you didn’t cut it out of the movie really, just erased the subtitles, leaving the words to be heard in Aramaic. You recognized the inflammatory nature of those words, yet allowed them to be fester in the tender box that is the region that understands Aramaic.

When you were asked about the deleted subtitle you flimsily replied: “All Jews aren’t cursed for all time.” [your emphasis]

I went to the theatre to see a movie acclaimed for eloquently documenting humanity’s tendency to fall prey to our worst tendencies, a movie that asks the question: Can we be saved?

Having some time waiting for the “Fog of War” to begin, I popped in to have a gander at your movie. I entered a scene familiar to all such movies: Pilate, the reluctant executioner, bless his heart, listening to the mass of Jews call for Jesus’ death.

What are the odds, I thought to myself, of catching the most controversial scene. Twice as good as the chances should have been. For in your non-Biblical version, Pilate initially spares Jesus’ life; instead Jesus suffers fifteen movie minutes of being beaten to a nearly skinless pulp. Jesus is then paraded before another angry, hungry crowd. Once again the horde of blood thirsty Jews chant for his crucifixion.

I hadn’t read the Bible since that redhead in Florida, and even I recognized you were using artistic license to stake a very strange editorial position.

I had your back when you didn’t want to trade Biblical accuracy for politically correct accommodations. From the same heart, I detest that accuracy being traded for unwarranted amplification of those one or two versus that our religion has historically used to fuel flames of hate.

Disturbed, I left the theatre, sitting down in an empty matinee, waiting for the lights to dim in the “Fog of War”.

One more than thing, Mr. Gibson. Before writing this letter I went back and read Matthew to make sure I hadn’t forgotten a second scene of Jews clamoring for the death of Christ, and I noticed something else.

About your little comment about a curse not being on all Jews for all time…

I don’t know what your daddy taught you in Sunday school, but the Bible doesn’t condemn any Jews for any time. The Bible reads that Pilate said “His blood be on us, and on our children”.
See? Those aren’t God’s words, they’re the executioner’s. However let’s pretend for a moment the divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit possessed Pilate, making his word the Word:
He said “we.” He said “we.”
He words hold true for both the gentile and the Jew.
We are all cursed. We are all sinners.
We are all awash in his blood.
That blood is not a curse of justice but a promise of grace.

Jews For Jesus Executive Director Susan Perlman Fixes Everything "She added that blaming Jews, or anyone else, for killing Jesus is a non-issue because 'He didn't stay dead.' Perlman asked, 'How can you be blamed for killing someone who is alive?' "

Calpundit: "In one revealing case, Bush & Co. intervened at the precise moment that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention was set to consider once again lowering acceptable blood-lead levels in response to new scientific evidence. The Administration rejected nominee Bruce Lanphear and dumped panel member Michael Weitzman, both of whom previously advocated lowering the legal limit. Instead, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson appointed William Banner--who had testified on behalf of lead companies in poison-related litigation--and Joyce Tsuji, who had worked for a consulting firm whose clients include a lead smelter. (She later withdrew.) Banner and another appointee, Sergio Piomelli, were first contacted about serving on the committee not by a member of the Administration but by lead-industry representatives who appeared to be recruiting favorable committee members with the blessing of HHS officials."

The tip of America
The democratically elected Aristide was pushing away from his IMF/WTO pimp daddy, and loses office by force. That's the American way.
Just ask Chavez, the sole South American leader who hasn't completely bent over for a Globalotomy and is under constant threat of an American-supported coup.
If your too busy to follow the money trail, just reference the tacit approval Bush gave to the Chavez coup after its supposed success. (Supposed because Chavez had stashed an army beneath the palace he was holed up in, defeating in the end those who surrounded him, defeated those who had taken control of democratic Venezuela, shredded its constitution and disbanded its parliament.) I know this is an unfocused entry, but I get so tired of God's Blessed America propping up dictators and undermining democracies because it benefits the factory owners.
[Star].

The other half of the island
"The result was the fastest growth rate in Latin America last year, 8.3 percent, fueled by a huge influx of foreign investment, which benefited only the small minority of Dominicans in the upper crust of society. According to one press account: “The rich have grown richer, while corruption remains endemic and prostitution, drug trafficking and illegal boat journeys to the United States are on the rise.” Especially unpopular was the outgoing government's decision to privatize the state-run sugar and electrical power industries. The Dominican Republic has been plagued by power blackouts, with many families enduring outages of 12 hours a day, while electricity bills have soared."

Want to understand Haiti?
I do. I don't yet. But here is the start. The Haitian situation so resembles many third-world, post globalization economic situations, I figured the IMF was involved somehow. Lo and behold.

""The IMF forced Haiti to open its market to imported, highly subsidized U.S. rice at the same time it prohibited Haiti from subsidizing its own farmers," declares the Web site of Global Exchange, one of the Third World advocacy groups organizing the Washington protests. 'Haitian farmers have been forced off their land to seek work in sweatshops, and people are poorer than ever.'- April 2000

Par for the course.

I know you support the troops. I saw your bumper sticker.

But how many know the number of dead, the number wounded. The Pentagon puts wounded at under three thousand. Of course, that doesn't count the mentally wounded, the suicides, the friendly-fire fatalities, those who died in smashed vehicles, et al. Which probably helps to explains why the Army's numbers are much higher. But you have to wonder... Andrews Airforce has received over 11,000 wounded in the past months. From where do they come? Sadly, it's no mystery.

The official policy of our blessed America is misinformation. It's for our own good. Otherwise, we might second guess our "God-given" right of war...
Old news, yeah. Of course, its easy to be glum when you have all your limbs. It's easy to be glum, when the evening news doesn't show thousands one-legged soldiers hobbling around a crowded hospital.

Dedicated to my cousin, if he doesn't mind.

Bush Floats Yet Another Genius Idea: Bush Economic Report asks whether the fast food industry should be moved to the "manufactoring sector. Afterall, what is the difference between assembling lettuce, ketchup, and "beef" and say slapping together a bunch of parts and tires onto a steel frame.
While the question is asked no amswer is given.

As the Report points out, such a transfer would bolster the numbers of the "declining manufactoring sector."

See? Everything is going to be all right.

Sometimes I like Pat Buchanan

Sometimes. I usually don't always agree with him, but in my opinion he is the most succinct, logical, articulate critic of the Republican Party and G.W. Bush. He serves as eloquent evidence that the two-part paradigm falls short in understanding the American politic, even if he is a die-hard Republican.

This is his 2-16-4 column from World Net Daily:

George W. Bush "betrayed us," howled Al Gore.

"He played on our fear. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure, dangerous to our troops, an adventure that was preordained and planned before 9-11 ever happened."

Hearing it, Gore's rant seemed slanderous and demagogic. For though U.S. policy since Clinton had called for regime change in Iraq, there is no evidence, none, that Bush planned to invade prior to 9-11.

Yet, the president has a grave problem, and it is this: Burrowed inside his foreign-policy team are men guilty of exactly what Gore accuses Bush of, men who did exploit our fears to stampede us into a war they had plotted for years. Consider:



In 1996, in a strategy paper crafted for Israel's Bibi Netanyahu, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser urged him to "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power" as an "Israeli strategic objective." Perle, Feith, Wurmser were all on Bush's foreign policy team on 9-11.

In 1998, eight members of Bush's future team, including Perle, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, wrote Clinton urging upon him a strategy that "should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein."

On Jan. 1, 2001, nine months before 9-11, Wurmser called for U.S.-Israeli attacks "to broaden the [Middle East] conflict to strike fatally ... the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Teheran and Gaza ... to establish the recognition that fighting with either the United States or Israel is suicidal."

"Crises can be opportunities," added Wurmser.

On Sept. 11, opportunity struck.

On Sept. 15, according to author Bob Woodward, Paul Wolfowitz spoke up in the War Cabinet to urge that Afghanistan be put on a back burner and an attack be mounted at once on Iraq, though Iraq had had nothing to do with 9-11. Why Iraq? Said Wolfowitz, because it is "doable."

On Sept. 20, 40 neoconservatives in an open letter demanded that Bush remove Saddam from power, "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [9-11] attack." Failure to do so, they warned the president, "would constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism."

While Bush had taken office as a traditional conservative skeptical of "nation-building" and calling for a more "humble" foreign policy, after 9-11, he was captured by the neocons and converted to an agenda they had worked up years before. Suddenly, he sounded just like them, threatening wars on "axis-of-evil" nations that had nothing to do with 9-11.

And here is where Bush's present crisis was created.

Though he had internalized the neoconservative agenda for war, he had no rationale, no justification, no casus belli. Iraq had not threatened or attacked us.

Enter the WMD. Neoconservatives pressed on Bush the idea that Iraq must still have weapons of mass destruction and must be working on nuclear weapons. And as Saddam was a figure of such irrationality – i.e., a madman – he would readily give an atom bomb to al-Qaida. An American city could be incinerated.

Therefore, Saddam had to be destroyed. Bush bought it.

The problem, however, was this: While there is much evidence Saddam is evil, there is no evidence he was insane. He had not used his WMD in 1991, when he had them. For he was not a fool. He knew that would mean his end. Why would he then build a horror weapon now, give it to a terrorist and risk the annihilation of his regime, family, legacy and himself, a fate he had narrowly escaped in 1991?

Made no sense – and there was no hard evidence on the WMD.

Thus, when the CIA was unable to come up with hard evidence that Saddam still had WMD, or was building nuclear weapons, neocon insiders sifted the intelligence, cherry-picked it, presented tidbits to the media as unvarnished truth, and persuaded Powell and the president to rely on it to make the case to Congress, the country and the world. Powell and the president did.

Now the WMD case has fallen apart. Powell has egg on his face. And the president must persuade Tim Russert and the nation that Iraq was a "war of necessity" because we "had no choice when we looked at the intelligence I looked at."

But, sir, the intelligence you "looked at" was flawed. Who gave it to you?

To its neocon architects, Iraq was always about empire, hegemony, Pax Americana, global democracy – about getting hold of America's power to make the Middle East safe for Sharon and themselves glorious and famous.

But now they have led a president who came to office with good intentions and a good heart to the precipice of ruin. One wonders if Bush knows how badly he has been had. And if he does, why he has not summarily dealt with those who misled him?

"Spead the Good News"
-James Robison, televagelist, as the camera zooms in to his sincere, furled brow, hawking Triveta herbal supplements on late-night infomercials.

I finally understand exactly what happened to Clark.

When I heard Clark speak before he had entered the presidential race he seemed so sharp and articulate, rhapsodizing on our liberal democracy and our founding father’s love for rationale thought in spite of their religious underpinnings and overtones, and so on.

Yet, from the moment he first opened his mouth in that first debate he sounded like one more fool spewing d.c.p.r.b.s. The process of entering politics just seemed to somehow alter his genetic makeup.

Well, now I am watching the Charlie Rose show, who tonight is hosting Clark. Clark was tip-toeing around a certain question, until finally Rose asked Clark why a military man was being so coy.

Clark went on to explain that he has learned to “dance the dance”; he had some ‘good teachers” who taught him how to speak as a politician. “There was no quicker way to get into trouble than to say what you mean”, he said.

As he went on it dawned on me: It hadn’t been my imagination. He was not the same man I had heard challenging the establishment back when his “campaign” was nothing more than an internet draft movement. By the time he made it to a lecturn, he had already become just another tepid soul peddling his wares to the media and public.

I look forward to co-operating with any appropriate inquiry."
-Clinton on the Rich-pardon investigation

"I look forward to a most vigorous hearing, and the continuation and expansion of a most vigorous investigation."
-Arthur Anderson personnel before congress

"I look forward to that debate."
-Bush on investigation on the intelligence "failures" leading uo to Operation Iraqii Liberation

"There’s a perception that the two are not entirely disconnected"
- NYTimes columnist, David Brooks, on free trade and loss of manufactoring jobs.

You think?

If we accept the premise that marriage promotes family, and that family's most vital for steering and stabilizing humanbeings as they work their way through a crazy thing called childhood, then how can we deprive children the comfort of eternally commited parents just because their parents are of the same sex.

I know most people who oppose gay marriage, also oppose gay couples adapting children, so there is not a disconnect in this sense. However, there is naturally a disconnect in that our opinions do not reality make. We live in a world in which we have decided that gay couples adapting children is preferable to children spiraling through a system in which there are too few adults willing to adapt them, willing to love them. Our moral opinions do not change the reality that there're children with families in which they are deprived the promise and stability marriage provides, because we think its our culture "slouching towards Gommorra."

We are not depriving gay couples of familyhood, we are depriving families of marriage.

More evidence that the Right is more concerned with cultural warfare than "murdered babies

If political foes of choice really wanted to stop abortions, they'd push for making the morning-after pill available for over-the-counter puchase. Unlike the "abortion pill", the morning-after pill actually prevents unwanted pregnancy, rendering the egg impenetrable by sperm. This would give women in all sorts of situations a choice besides abortion and unwanted babies.

If the Right truly believes life, holy life, begins when the sperm and egg dance that first two-celled tango, preventing this merger would seem to be the most common sense method of lowering the number of abortions in this country. Instead what we have are the idealogues preaching self-responsibility while holding up the FDA's approval of OTC staus of the drug. These are the same people who didn't want it to be legal to purchase this drug in America period.

Even if all thier hand-wringing were true, is the abdication of responsibilty a greater wrong than "killing babies." No doubt, the pill would be abused by some, but what is that compared to stopping the "murder of innocents." Why is the Right is more concerned with fighting its cultural wars than "saving babies?"

It might have something to do with the fact preventing abortions is just boring TV. Long ago, this abortion debate morphed from a debate on the sanctity of life to a means to energize the "base", just something to get the fundamentalist lapdogs something to snarl and slobber about.

As Karl Rove said in the Book of St. John, "You are my sheep." No wait that was Christ, right?

Enough with the media's righteous indignation

Is anyone else weary of the media's puritainical outrage concerning the infamous "wardrobe malfunction?" Perhaps some of you good-hearted people know nothing of America's Pop Culture, and I can excuse your righteous indignation, but as for the well-learned men and women gasping at that sad display of blah, blah, blah...

This wasn't the first time a pasty-clad tata has aired during prime time folks.

While MTV has distanced itself from the breast-baring extravaganza, it is par for its course.

Does nobody recall the awards show in which Lil Kim wore an outfit that cut up over one shoulder leaving one breast fully exposed save a green pasty that tastefully matched her half-a-bodysuit. Cut from the same cloth. And this wasn't just a flash of crass. She bounced onto stage to present an award with Diana Ross who playfully groped Lil Kim's breast. This incident did not furl the media's brow in the least. Indeed, snapshots of the episode ran on the covers of grocery store magazines, and is still featured in full frame in MTV's "Top 100 Craziest Moments In T.V.", or whatever they're doing this week. Then it breaks to commercial to hawk zit cream.

Every second of every day there must be a "Girls Gone Wild" commercial airing somewhere in which young women are baring there breasts with nothing more than a small virtual pasty that reads the words "censored."

There used to be a time when cartoons greeted children coming home from school. Now we have a buffet of debauchery. From men french kissing donkeys, throwing up on old women for sexual gratification, and women baring it all for a string of "Jerry Beads".

This trash isn't limited to talk shows. Even shows that are explicity marketed to children have refernces to penis-size and pornography, and that was just one episode I happened to watch. And just yesterday, the daytime "family sitcom", The Hughley's, centered on father getting into trouble for buying his wife a dildo. The dildo remained a prop throughout the half hour episode, being borrwed by the neighbors, et al.

No doubt, some Americans hadn't realized where we were as a culture. But this cannot be said for the media types gracing our air waves, expessing the how-could-she outrage. Sex sells. And so does righteous indignation. That is probably the heart of America's culture.

The Straight Shooter

White Press secretary refuses to deny that Bush took time out of Guard Duty for crime related community service.

Oops, did we say that aloud

Ah yes, remember those plans Bush said they had found in Afgannistan. Plans of Nuclear plants and water facilities, ect.

"The madness of the destruction they design, " Bush warned us in the drumbeat to war.

Now the White House says there no plans found. Who'd figure.

I never thought I'd say this, but I miss Clinton's lies.

Bush digitally removes speech impediments

Bush posted digitally-enhanced clips of his Russert interview. Finally removes them after incurring the wrath of NBC, even though "no laws were broken".

My god, this should be required reading for every American

It speaks of the hamstringing of the 9-11 commission, the various agencies' failings.

According to evidence presented at the commission's hearing's:
American Airlines knew the names, addresses, credit card numbers, and seat numbers of 5 hijackers20 minutes before the first plane struck the WTC. The president was told of the crash 14 minutes after it occured, at which point he commented "That's some bad pilot", still unware of the terrorist threat.

This is evidence as presented last week to the 9.11 commission. The evidence had been withheld by the commission's Chief of Staff, Philip Zelikow. Zelikow decides what evidence the commission sees and doesn't see.

Zelikow served as an advisor to Bush pre-9-11.

There are atleast five more wonderful tidbits, but instead of ripping off the leg-work of a real journalist, I'll just hope you go and read the article yourself. We have to keep our eyes on the ball.

Kudos to Gail Sheehy of the New York Observer.

Eschaton: "In Secretary of State Colin Powell's autobiography, My American Journey, he says, 'I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in the Army Reserve and National Guard units... Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.'"

"Former Texas Lt. Gov. Testifies under oath that he pulled strings to get Bush out of Vietnam

This is from Former Guardian Journalist Grag Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, winner of California State University's Project Censored Award)... "

Texas Best Mortgage

Boston.com / News / Politics / Presidential candidates / George W. Bush / 1-year gap in Bush's guard duty: "'Report for this period not available for administrative reasons.'"

earthmann daily

earthmann daily

MSNBC - Transcript for Feb. 8th

Texas Mortgage and Realty - Frequently Asked Questions

HUD RESPA about Lender Payments to Mortgage Brokers

Man Released To His Rabbi After Trying To Sell Pakistan 200 Nuclear Detonators

Where's John Ashcroft on this one?

Roadside Attack Kills 3 G.I.'s West of Baghdad
This blast injured a young soldier named Brian, who happens to be my cousin's husband. He flew to Germany for surgery. God Bless.

Cheney Is Adamant on Iraq 'Evidence'

Bush Helps Protect The Endangered Strip Miners

DRUDGE REPORT 2004�

Courtesy of Atrios

"'There will be a purge on God's orders, and evil will be eliminated like shadows,' the Unification Church leader Rev. Sun Myong Moon, the owner and primary funder of the money-losing, right-wing Washington Times, said last week. (The comments were posted online by Rev. Moon's webmaster and picked up by blogger John Gorenfeld.)

'Gays will be eliminated, the 3 Israels will unite. If not then they will be burned. We do not know what kind of world God will bring but this is what happens. It will be greater than the communist purge but at God's orders.'"

And they accuse the left of hate speech?

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > James O. Goldsborough -- More evidence of mass deception:
"Richard Haass, Powell's head of policy planning, resigned when it became clear that Bush demands for Iraqi disarmament were only a pretext for war.
Haass, now head of the Council on Foreign Relations, calls Iraq a war of 'choice,' not 'necessity.' He recounts a meeting with NSC director Condoleezza Rice in July 2002, two months before Iraq hit the headlines and three months before Bush went to the U.N. Security Council putatively to seek a resolution on Iraqi disarmament."

Another Empty Bottle:

Wander the strange streets
beneath the orange glow
of neuveaux lampposts,
wander the streets
unknown to the night
with so little purpose as to make lost
an impossibility, shfting shadows on cobbled streets, humming songs on wobbly feet. And the damp grey air is an old woman’s hair put down for the night.

If it wasn't for TV preachers I wouldn't believe in hell, but if you think about it, where else is God going to stick them?

When Pat Robertson isn't busy milking money from grandmas, or diverting funds from "Operation Blessing" to support his diamond mining interests, he's busies himself spewing Bolshevik.

Robertson asserts in a recent Jerusalem speech that the world is in the throngs of a "holy war." He suggests the people of Jehovah (Christians and Jews) are defending themselves against the followers of an evil moon god (Muslims): "[T]he struggle is whether Hubal, the Moon god of Mecca, known as Allah, is supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah, God of the Bible, is Supreme."

It'd be nice to think there isn't a target audience for such insidious comments, but, sadly, this isn't the case. So if you're one of those good-hearted people who've been duped into thinking Robertson is more a man of God rather than a right-wing tool, please read along before you fund this lovable loon's "holy war."

Muslims, Jews, and Christians believe in the same God, and I don't mean in some squishy, hippie, new age way. These three religions all believe in the GOD OF ABRAHAM.

A brief narrative that is contained in the Torah; a holy text for Islam, Muslim, and Christianity: God said Abraham, I'm going to give you a son, and the descendants of this first-born shall be known as "MY CHOSEN PEOPLE". And then I imagine God elbowed himself and said hey, want to see something funny, watch this. Then he said "Okay." God often talks to himself, and you would too if you'd spent an eternity living alone in an empty universe with nothing but three personalities.

Abraham, who believed in God's omnipotence, went and told his wife, Sarah, what God had said. Sarah laughed and laughed, knowing that her womb as used up as an old piece of chewing gum. She must have thought he just wanted a piece, but nonetheless, she allowed Abraham to plow her shares. Finally, Sarah, told her husband that if God was going to give him a son, he'd better go ahead and knock up the servant.

Lo and behold, the servant became pregnant and Abraham began raising, Ishmael to be "THE FATHER OF GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE."

Well, here's the funny part, shortly thereafter Sarah finally became pregnant. She had a baby and named it Jacob.

Sarah had always been jealous of the young handmaiden's ability to easily give to Abraham what she could not. As soon as she had a son (Abraham only needed one) she wanted rid of Ishmael.

God told Abraham to take Ishmael and his mother to the desert, and leave them there to die. Abraham obeyed. Here's another funny part, instead of allowing the two to die beneath the desert sun, God made a spring arise from the desert floor, from which the two thrived. Ishmael had lots of babies who formed a people nation known as Islam.

Jacob grew up, and changed his name to Israel and birthed a nation of his own (his twelve sons formed the twelve tribes of Israel).

Jews and Muslims are half-brothers


Here's the rub, which baby is the first-born? Tradition dictates that only the first-born son receives the father's birthright, in the case the Promised Land. Remember Esau? He ripped off his older, hairy brother by covering his arms with goat hair so that he could trick his blind, dying father to pass the family inheritance to the wrong son. This was serious business, these birthrights.

So who is the first born? I'll answer that in a minute, but before I make people mad I want to get back to the original point, Robertson.

He is right about one thing: There is a holy war going on, and it has been for some time. However, the real war isn't between Islam and Judeo-Christianity.

The real "holy war" is against the fundamentalists and progressives. Both Muslim Fundamentalists and Christian Fundamentalists are a shameful public face to a couple of beautiful religions. While these religions have sacred histories that create beautiful narratives in sincere attempts to define humanity in light of divinity, they have allowed their voices to be overrun with the loud, ignorant noise that typifies extremes. Those sincere people whose beliefs are tempered by their tolerances allow their faith to remain mute, as the fundamentalists clamor before the cameras.

That is the "holy war": free-thinking, open-minded, loving Jews, Muslims, and Christians against our fundamentalist "brethren" who believe upheaval fulfills their particular, narrow interests.

So please, if you want to be a on the good side of a holy war, start with recognizing Christian TV for the oxymoron that it is and turn off that money-making, propaganda machine. We are the sons of Abraham, for Christ's sake, show some respect.

In conclusion, my two bit theology: there is no first born.

The point of God's little exercise wasn't to see how we answered the question but how we resolved the issue. I read this essay by a Christian Palestinian who put it something like this: It doesn't matter whose land it is. If God gave the land to Muslims, he would want them to live peacefully with the Jews. Likewise, if God gave the land to Jews he'd want them to live peacefully with Muslims.

What did Jesus say before the cross? If you forget everything else I ever said to you remember this: Love God with all your being, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. (EIV)

Reuters News Article

Pat Buchanan: Bush's betrayal of working America
or...
Main Street Vs. Wall Street
"On Christmas Eve, a story and column in the Washington Post caught the eye. For they tell much about the two Americas we are becoming under George Bush and a Democratic Party that has cut its roots to working America.

The front-page story by Mike Allen describes a Bush initiative on "immigration reform." Seems that U.S. employers would post jobs and the wages that go with them on a Department of Labor website. If no Americans came forward to take the jobs, the employer would be allowed to bring Mexican temporary workers in legally, give them the jobs, and put them on a fast track to permanent residency and citizenship.

What would this mean? U.S. companies would offer pay at or near the minimum wage for jobs they had open in, say, construction.

As few Americans can support a family and kids in school on $5 an hour, many of these jobs would go begging. The employer would then be allowed to go to Mexico, where the minimum wage is about 60 cents an hour, or countries where it is even less, and hire all the hard-working labor he needed at the U.S. minimum wage.

As there are billions of people on earth who do not earn anything near $5 an hour, what the Bush plan means is throwing open America's borders to millions of workers who will come in and suppress the wages of America's workers.

Why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce might love this is easy to understand. But what is Bush doing to the working Americans who put him in office? Yet, as one reads further in the story, it appears it is not Bush who is doing this, it is boy-wonder Karl Rove. Bush's guru seized on the idea as part of the campaign's "compassion agenda."

In addition to bringing in millions of workers who would take jobs at a fraction of a living wage for American families, Bush will propose that 10 million aliens, who are in this country illegally, be made legal.

According to the Post, Rove & Co. "concluded that they needed a response to the large population of undocumented workers for the plan to be credible and for Bush to get credit from Hispanic voters.

In that last clause lies the motive behind the sellout.

Rove is pandering to Hispanics, giving militants in the Latino lobbies what they demand – some form of stealth amnesty, where those who broke into this country are made legal residents of the United States and put on the path to citizenship. He is buying votes by selling out the white working class, which, presumably, has nowhere else to go.

As a sop to those who believe aliens who break our laws should be sent back home, the Bushites promise better border controls. In brief, if you want Bush to enforce America's immigration laws, you must permit him to pardon those who broke these laws. And if you agree, Bush will promise to be more conscientious in doing his presidential duty to defend the borders of the United States.

How are the Bushites shafting American workers? Let me count the ways. Under Bush's free-trade zealotry, the United States has lost manufacturing jobs for 40 straight months, the longest stretch since the Great Depression. Under Bush, hundreds of thousands of high-tech workers have been brought into the United States to take jobs at wages one-half or a third of those commanded by the U.S. workers they replace.

Under Bush, the "outsourcing" and "off-shoring" of U.S. jobs has accelerated, with tens of thousands of jobs once held by high-paid white collar and information-technology workers going to Asia.

Under Bush, millions of legal and illegal immigrants have poured into the country, putting downward pressure on wages.

Under Bush, the merchandise trade deficit has risen to $550 billion, which represents a massive annual transfer of factories, jobs and technology. China, Japan and East Asia are the lead looters of America's once-awesome manufacturing base. Americans today buy nearly 15 percent of the entire GDP of China. The Chinese buy two-tenths of 1 percent of ours. It's what the Bushites call "free and fair trade."

What are the consequences for American workers? In a Post column, "Un-American Recovery," Harold Meyerson says it all.

U.S. corporate profits have been rising for 7 months. In the third quarter of 2003, the economy grew at 8.2 percent, productivity at over 9 percent. Have our workers shared equally in the good times?

Writes Meyerson: "Since July, the average hourly wage increase for the 85 million Americans who work in non-supervisory jobs in offices and factories is a flat 3 cents. Wages are up just 2.1 percent since November 2002, the slowest wage growth we've experienced in 40 years."

That's right. According to Meyerson, the wages of Americans have gone up three cents since the economy took off on a tear in July.

Let it be said: Working America has no powerful voice in politics. Both Democrats and Republicans are open-borders, free-trade zealots, who troll for cash from corporate America and burn their incense at the altars of the global economy.

America needs a new party."

via buchanan at world net daily