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

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…)

Since late January I’ve withdrawn to my little cave in the side of the mountain.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…)

–James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 51

Can we appeal to our better angels and, in turn, oblige ourselves to be more responsible? The problem for all of us ordinary stiffs was defined a few centuries back by Plato.

In “The Republic,” Plato describes a cave where people don’t see what’s really happening in their world. What they do see are shadows made by puppets and reflected on the walls. It’s not as if the people in the cave even see the puppets, they see the shadows of the puppets.

Today, we see the shadows of what the puppet masters want us to see. Don’t believe it? Where do you get your news? How do you know what’s going on in your world? More to the point, who owns your news source? (more…)

I’ve never been one for making New Year’s resolutions. I am an inveterate list-maker. Throughout the year I constantly make lists. Since I don’t see myself as being at all disciplined, I am always gobsmacked when I actually complete all the tasks on my latest to-do list. Not that I do always manage that.

This last year was a case in point. I finished most tasks, but farted about with the most important task of all: I didn’t finished revising a book. I meant to, I wanted to, I even made headway with it; but when it came down to it I didn’t finish it. It has assumed the top spot on this year’s first list. It’s like a big blot in my copybook and every time I go back to that page I can see it. (more…)

Now you’ll remember my friend who went to Mexico and met up with Montezuma, and his revenge. Well, I had another bud who actually tried to change history, his own.

My friend, Dick, grew up in a time when there was still a draft. A real military draft, not just registering and forget about it like now. Dick was about to get drafted out of college and so he joined the Air Force. He figured that would keep him out of the trenches. Unfortunately, for him, world events intervened and he was sent to Korea. Not knowing how long the conflict in Korea would go on, Dick decided that he had to find a way home. (more…)

It’s true, I am shameless. Don’t think you can ever make me feel guilty. I spent too many years wracked with guilt. I was genetically pre-disposed to fell guilty: Mum a Jew, Father a Catholic. Gimme a break, I had to end the cycle sometime. You know what I mean?

So, I am now officially without shame. Actually, I didn’t realize it immediately, only after I had programmed the ring tones in my mobile (cell phone). Very early on, I was fascinated by the funny ring tones. I was also repulsed by the unimaginative choices that people made when programming their ring tones. Not only were they unimaginative, they were LOUD! Geez, I do not want to hear the 1812 Overture at 10 decibels above the threshold of pain. In Europe, where mobiles were de rigueur long before they were in the U.S., the 1812 Overture was big. Have you ever been on a looooong train trip through the Italian Alps were someone has that going off every 10 minutes? Thank Gawd for tunnels and earplugs. (more…)