Some days there’s nothing more to say.
Could it get any worse? Oh, yes.
Will it get any worse? Probably.
Will we survive the Bush administration? Hope so.
Is this the end of life as we know it? Who knows?

But, we do need to take our collective heads out of the sand and face up to what is going on.

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) and support Kiva.

And, of course

Well, go figure the French. They stand in defiance of everything ‘Bush,’ and then turn around elect a man who states frankly that he plans on licking Bush’s boots. If only Ségolène Royal had been willing to say what the French electorate wanted to hear on policy issues . . . But, she wasn’t willing to do that. Yes, she moved to the middle, but she wanted a kinder, gentler France. The French wanted a more modern and productive France.

Nicolas Sarkozy, on the other hand, presented himself as the very essence of a very a very modern American of the western variety. He even posed for photos riding his white horse on a ranch in southern France. He promised to forge closer relations with Washington. Ah Madame France, où est vous?

Meanwhile, across the Channel, Tony “the poodle” Blair is on his way out. The closer Blair got to Bush, the more he was reviled by the British. Now, what will Blair do for the rest of his days? What can he possibly do to change history? The short of it is he can’t and he’s too intelligent to deny that history will write his epitaph.

And yet, intelligence seems to fall by the wayside when hubris corrupts the soul. Hubris has the power to turn intelligent human beings into idiots who have lost the ability to be self-critical. It’s the only thing that can explain how normally reasoning people get caught up in the most egregious kinds of scandals we’ve seen during the Bush administration.

So, now we can only wait to see if M. Sarkozy loses his way. Will he fall prey to the beast called hubris? He appears to have already taken on the role of the new French poodle. However, not even Nicolas Sarkozy will follow the “loyal Bushies” to the chasm, I suspect. Only time will tell. In the meantime, we can hope that he will refrain from calling the French of foreign descent, “scum.”

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) and support Kiva.

And, of course

*Mais c’est dur à supporter,
Un salaud préfabriqué
Qu’on habille de votre peau
Et qui porte vos chapeaux.

But it is hard to support,
a prefabricated bastard
Whom one equips with your skin
And which wears your hats.

Let’s take this nice and slow. Say we’re both in charge of something, like a nation. We hold co-equal status according to our Constitution. I’m the President and you’re the Congress. Now, say I want to do something that you don’t want me to do. For argument’s sake, let’s say I want to continue a war that you don’t want me to continue.

It might seem easy, if I also hold the title ‘Commander-in-Chief.’ Aha! Well, when it comes to war, I would seem to have the trump card. But, also for the sake of argument, let’s say that I am just about the only person who wants to continue this war. Even my supporters aren’t all that thrilled about my war these days. Counter-balancing my power, you have control of the public purse. hmmmm . . . This is starting to get interesting.

Let’s go even farther: let’s say that all the reasons I gave you for going to war in the first place were wrong. We’re not going to get into whether I lied to you or was given bad intelligence. We’ll just leave it at all the reasons I gave have evaporated into the fog of war. There supposed to be weapons of mass destruction (read: atomic). There were none. There were supposed to be biological weapons. There were none. There supposed to be Al Qaeda training camps run by Saddam Hussein. There were none. There was supposed to be contact between the Iraqis and Mohammed Atta. There was none. There was supposed to be an Al Qaeda presence in Saddam’s Iraq. There was none then, there is one now. The only place where foreign insurgents were known to be before the war was in the north of Iraq, an area controlled by our good friends, the Kurds. (more…)

Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel . . . . If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so . . . but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?*
-Joseph Welch 9 June 1954
Army-McCarthy Hearings
Washington D.C.

There is something to be said for consistency, especially when it comes to the law. You’ll remember that Lady Justice is blindfolded: symbolising everyone’s equality under the law. Yes, she has those scales to complete the image of equality; but in her other hand she has that awesome sword. Lest we forget that not only is justice is blind, she’s also swift with that sword for miscreants who tread on her hem.

So, Americans live under the ‘rule of law.’ This was considered superior to the ‘rule of man’ by the framers of the Constitution. They were looking not so much at the chaos of a Hobbesian universe, as they were looking at the monarchical option. They wanted a way away from a mercurial monarch and toward the regularity and constancy of the Law.

All right, enough ancient history, let’s examine the recent past. When Bill Clinton was impeached (read: indicted). The conservatives said that it was for his perjury in front of a grand jury. They assured anyone who inquired that it was not, repeat not, for that salacious affair he had with the young woman with the thong. Of course, they did dwell on all of the gory details from the dress to the taped phone calls. Ah, those were the days. (more…)

Since late January I’ve withdrawn to my little cave in the side of the mountain. I can’t explain it. Maybe I was just recharging. Maybe I couldn’t look beyond the rim of the chasm anymore without wanting to jump. As is so often said, “It’s nothing personal,” I just had the feeling that everything on this 3rd rate little planet, circling a 5th rate star, was swirling down a huge black hole.

It’s not as if anything has changed, but I’ve upped my Prozac and I’m looking at things a little different now. Now, different should not be read as rosy. Different is different, not better. It appears that approximately 24,000 more soldiers will be sent to Iraq in the next few months. Democrats are so afraid of being labeled as defeatists (or “cut and runners”) that they’ve packed their balls away for the time being. Frankly, I thing that they should take their Conservative critics up on their challenge to do more than pass non-binding resolutions. Finger-wagging doesn’t stop an administration bent on accruing more power for themselves than Croesus had gold. (more…)

This graphic was with an article in the New York Times on 17 January (click on the link for a better view). I hardly know what to say after studying it. We were warned almost ½ a century ago by President Eisenhower about the pitfalls and folly of letting the military-industrial complex grow larger. We now work to feed the beast. What is criminal is what we could do to improve life in our country (and the world) if we didn’t feed this beast.

True, this graph is about the cost of the war in Iraq, but Iraq is merely a manifestation of the iron grip that the military-industrial has on our economy, our lives, and our very souls. It isn’t that we could have funded universal health care, or universal preschool, or ensure our security by enacting all of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, or conquering cancer, or immunize all of the children of the world against childhood diseases: we could have done it all and have a chunk of change left over. (more…)

Some say that the eyes are windows on the soul. I know better. They’re windows all right, but we don’t see with them. We see with our brains: the eyes are just windows. How do I know this? Well, my little ‘windows’ aren’t wired properly to my brain. I am amblyopic. I have a dominant eye and an amblyopic one. The amblyopic one looks lovingly across the bridge of my nose at the dominant one.

In the great scheme of things, this isn’t all that important. Most of my life I could see just fine with my one good eye. True, people at a distance of more then 5 feet away thought that I was looking at something over their right shoulder rather than at them. But, I could live with that. I did insist that photos be taken on my right side as it lessened the effect. Also, I never allowed it to be said that I had a “lazy” eye. ‘Lazy’ eye inferred that if my eye could just get its act together, all would be well. If only.

As a small child, I was taken to the famous Dr. Hans Barkan in San Francisco where we lived. He operated on my eyes when I was 3 years old. That procedure was only cosmetic, it didn’t fix the eyes. That solution would only be somewhere in my brain, my twisted little brain.

After we moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles I was sent back one June when I about 8 years old, on my own, to see Dr. Barkan. Well, I wasn’t entirely alone. I was put on a plane by my Mum and sent to Oakland because my Aunt Fritzie was there. Aunt Fritzie was newly married to Uncle Paul. Uncle Paul was a paraplegic and they were struggling financially to get along. It was made clear to me immediately by my auntie that I was an imposition, a burden. (more…)

All right! I’ve had it. CNN has finally totally blown it! Aaron Brown was the last best newsman they had. He is bright. He has a sense of humour. He has a sense of outrage when it’s appropriate. He is just the best.

CNN started out being called the ‘Chicken Noodle Network.’ No one took them seriously until a certain tinhorn dictator named Sadaam, who had more than enough oil, invaded the next country and tried to take their oil too.

We all watched the fits and starts of CNN. Remember the bureau chief in Tel Aviv? He was the one who, when the scud missile landed near the bureau said, “Yeah, it’s here at the corner of Golda Meir Boulevard and Moshe Dayan Way.” You could just hear the Iraqis:” Hey, Mahmood, crank that thing over about 5 degrees, we barely missed. (more…)

When I was young I loved the ocean. I loved to swim in the ocean until I almost did drown in Hawaii. But there were two things about the ocean that scared the bejeebers out of me: drowning in a car and tidal waves.

I was petrified of accidentally driving into the water and not being able to get out of the car. Do you remember that movie, “The Stuntman”? There’s a sequence in that film where the hero is stuck in the car underwater. It freaked me out. I had to leave the theatre. I hated it.

I don’t remember ever having been in a car underwater, but to this day I still have this irrational fear of that happening. You could never get me to drive on that highway that goes to the Florida Keys (well, you could never get me to go to Florida; but that’s another story), you know, the one that’s right on the water. No way, no sirree, not Anon. Nope. (more…)

One late autmn afternoon, when I was a child, a letter arrived from one of my great aunts in Chicago. She said that Cousin Harry, whom we never knew, was coming for a visit. He was the son of a long dead aunt and he couldn’t take the Chicago winters.

At the time, my Mum, my Uncle, one of my Aunts, and I shared a flat. My Mum and I had one bedroom. My Aunt had another bedroom. My Uncle slept on the sofa bed in the lounge. It was crowded.

Cousin Harry whom-we-never-knew showed up with a beat up suitcase. He was a small tired-looking man. His hair was thin on top. He had a haunted look. His eyes were sunken deep in their sockets. His cheeks were hollow. It was hard to tell how tall he was because his shoulders sagged so. He rarely laughed and reminded me of a character in the comic pages of the time, the Sad Sack. He was older than I had imagined. But then, my Gran had 7 sisters and he was the son of the oldest.

Harry had evidently never made a habit of work. As a matter of fact, Cousin Harry whom-we-never-knew assiduously avoided anything that reeked of labour. He shared the sofa bed in the lounge with my uncle. Uncle had to get up very early every day, and he liked to have the sofa bed made up. Cousin Harry whom-we-never-knew liked to sleep in late. My mother and auntie worked and I had school. We all had to tip toe around Cousin Harry-whom-we-never-knew. (more…)