How Many Photos Are "Enough"?

I mean, I'm just curious...

Credit: Doug Mills/New York Times

Yoni School (US) Election Watch Pt. 8

Super Tuesday!

Oh what a treat I had today! On Super Tuesday, of all days, I got to listen to pretty much all of Lush Bumraugh's radio show. I guess maybe it's not news to the Murricans, but it was a bit surprising to me that Lush is frushtrated these days. Things are not going hish way. In fact, I think Lush Bumraugh thinks the Republicans are heading firmly down the flusher.

It's a sign of trouble when the leading so-called "conservative" radio talk-show host in North America spends almost his entire three hours fulminating against the man who is apparently the leading Republican runner, Sen. John McCain. (Ah, we here in Canaduh have it so much nicer, where McCain refers to a brand of French fry from PEI...) Bumraugh never actually said so, but he clearly prefers Mutt Romney to McCain. He accuses McCain of Liberal Democratic leanings. Which is disastrous for Republicans, since the Democrats are supposed to be the ones who have Liberal Democratic leanings. But there you have it. On Super Tuesday, Lush Bumraugh spent three hours attacking (or at least disparaging) a Republican! He barely mentioned the two leading Democratic candidates. (So, maybe the Republicans are sensing defeat, and have already taken to squabbling among themselves?)

Now, to me this spells trouble for the Republicans. Either that, or it's just that Lush is, at the moment, concentrating his efforts on convincing registered Republicans to vote for the Republican candidate he prefers. When that's all done, one way or the other, perhaps he'll turn his attention to the Democrats.

I love listening to Lush Bumraugh. Not because I agree with him. But he's a masterful broadcaster. He's bombastic. He's abrupt. He's loud. He's intimate.

Yes. Intimate. He hunkers down to the golden microphone in the EIB studio and can sometimes modulate that gruff voice into the warmest teddy bear you could ever want. And he talks to his friends. All those tortured conservatives who have nowhere else to turn -- 20 million of them or so -- and need good ole Lush Bumraugh to validate their opinions and make them not feel so lonely. Why, to hear him talk, you'd think that the USofA had not been ruled by a Republican president for the last 7+ years! You'd think the Democrats were in the White House. You'd think the Murrican mainstream media had never once abdicated its duty of responsible journalism, its duty of speaking truth to authority. You'd think Fox didn't exist! And people like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly (two certifiable bigots IMHO...).

Lush Bumraugh is a great improviser. If he went seriously into improv comedy, rather than playing at it the way he does, I'm sure he could get himself a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in no time. He's a marvelous talker and the pearls of wisdom slip easily off his honeyed tongue. I'm sure he goes into the show with a few ideas about what he wants to talk about, but he's not like other talk show hosts I listen to. They organize themselves into time slots and topics. "OK, this topic here, then the break, then that topic there." He takes a few phone calls from all across the country and charms everybody he hasn't already ravaged. He flows from one subject to the next in an uninterrupted stream of conservative consciousness.

Lush Bumraugh is all politics all the time. Why, he even managed to turn an ad for a tankless water heater into a political screed! Marvellous stuff. And he's also all editorial all the time. I don't think I know of anybody else who can spend that much time offering little but his own opinions. Remarkable, I say.

So I like Lush. Bumraugh. I'm not sure I could listen to 3 hours of him every day. But every once in a while it's a real treat to hear him, and to hear how the persecuted minority (conservative Republicans...) is managing to survive in such a hostile world.

Iran & World War Three? Pt.II

I hope the NY Times don't mind. I'm including this image of its front page from Nov. 15, 1969:

As you can see, on this day 38 years ago a quarter of a million people gathered in Washington to protest against the Vietnam war.

Oh, how times have changed!

Now, I ask myself, what's the difference between then and now.

I come up with really only one answer: fear.

The quarter-million Murricans (and many others) of 1969 feared neither the Vietnamese nor the Communists nor their own government. Such is not the case today. Murricans now fear Muslims (and that's a whole lot of the world's population these days) whether they live in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. They fear Mexicans. They fear their own government.

It's possible that this is not simply paranoia, I admit. Sometimes fear is the "rational" response. But if you allow the fear to rule you, then the logical consequences of that response become irrational.

There is some reason to fear the government. The Bush administration has made a concerted effort to feed that fear, to restrict the rights of US citizens (all in the name of security...and is there any as a result?...) I think most westerners (and that includes the Murricans) believe that they live in freedom. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Most, gazing off into the distance of the Middle East or Africa or China, don't recognize the repression in front of their noses.

Of course there is government repression in the US. In western Europe. In Canada. We may admit that it is relatively milder than so-called dictatorships in other regions, but it is repression nevertheless. Just ask those who do attempt to protest or demonstrate their opposition to unwarranted or unrepresentative government actions. Ask the people who protest against the Security and Prosperity Partnership right here in North America. (And some of these people are not even saying "Don't do it!" They're just saying, "Tell us what the hell's going on, tell us what your plans are!" Is this not anti-democratic? Is this not repression?)

The usual response to demonstrations and protests in the West is not so far different from what has outraged us recently in both Burma and Pakistan. The police (let's call them "security forces" as the media like to do for other countries) let it go on for a while (as long as it's not too rowdy) and then at some point determine that things must be shut down...for security. If anyone objects to being shut down, they are pepper-sprayed, tasered, arrested, beaten, charged and convicted. But of course, that's OK, because they're our police. They're not those brutal riot gangs in Rangoon.

A few years ago, former Premier Mike Harass of Ontariario put up barricades outside the Legislature. He didn't like the idea of people protesting there. At the figurative House of the People! He essentially instigated riots by trying to suppress the voice of the citizens of Ontariario. I had a hard time convincing some of my friends that the sight of police on horseback with riot sticks in front of our Legislature was something to be alarmed about...that the state was committing violence against its own citizens.

The people of 1969 may have been hippies and so-called radicals. But there is no doubt they had courage. They pushed back against a regime that did not seem to have their best interests at heart. Of course, many of those people are still around. But I wonder, have some of them become the people who need to be pushed back against?

As for the rest of us, I fear too. I fear that we have become hypnotized by technology, by media, by bland repetition of the Big Lie, by trivial pursuits, the latest iPod, the latest iPhone, the latest XBox, the latest celebrity scandal, the latest Hummer. And I lament. I lament that we have been cowed by fear. By complacency. By surveillance. By corporate power. By government power.

And I dread. That we have become sheeplike in our acceptance of authority.

Iran & World War Three?

OK, I'm a little behind here, but I see by the NY Times of Oct.17/07 that President Bush warned that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to World War III. Of course, Mr. Bush referred to wild and threatening statements made by Iran's Prime Minister Ahmadinejad. As if the Resident of the Excited States of Murrica hasn't ever made wild and threatening statements.

But let me get this straight. Which nation's leader is talking World War III? Which nation actually has nuclear weapons? Which nation's leader has adopted a policy of pre-emptive war? Which nation's leader only took the "nuclear option" in Iran off the strategy table at the insistence of his own military advisors?

Quoting the NY Times: "Mr. Bush sought in the news conference to make clear that his pressure tactics, including economic sanctions, were aimed at persuading the Iranian people to find new leadership."

Does this not sound eerily familiar? Is this not déjà vu all over again?

Ordinary Murricans wouldn't fall for this again, would they?

The Original 9-11 Conspiracy Film

If you're interested in watching this, prepare yourself for the long haul. It's nearly 2 and a half hours long.

Fear & Loathing in Montebello

Do you get the feeling that our so-called leaders are afraid of us?

That's the question that occurred to me as I watched TV coverage of the Montebello meeting of the Three Amigos.

The summit and its coverage were barely a blip on our consciousness. A few minutes on the nightly news. Commentary during the day. It's as if we hardly noticed that ordinary citizens voicing legitimate protest were assaulted by police. Here in the Peaceable Kingdom.

More than anything, this is what disturbs me. Leave aside for a moment the merits or flaws of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). It's that the people who ostensibly represent us hide behind a wall of police in riot gear, going so far as to invade (I'm tempted to use the term “desecrate”) a nearby cemetery; spray tear gas everywhere; mock the people involved; and pretend that it's just a casual, bureaucratic-type get-together – and we're not outraged by it. It's little more than an item on the national news.

Now, this may be mundane fare in war zones, or riot-prone countries. Not so unusual even in the US, I suppose, which has a history of sending in the National Guard. But here in the Peaceable Kingdom, I'd think such an event would rank fairly high on the outrage scale.

And it leads me to a question we have all had directed at us whenever one of our governments wants to do something that invades our privacy or our civil liberties: Amigos, if you have nothing to hide, what are you so worried about? Really! Why not let everybody see what boring stuff you're doing? Or is it that you spent two days playing on X-Box and don't want anybody to know?

I heard PM Harpie make fun of the protesters and citizens who have been expressing concern for months over this summit by citing the example of one industrialist attendee, a manufacturer of jelly beans. It seems the standards for jelly beans don't quite sync up between Canada and the US. How, he wonders, can discussion of jelly beans possibly be construed as a North American Unity conspiracy? My response to this is: What? You need a battalion of armed guards to discuss jelly beans?

OK, so I've drifted into the pros and cons of the SPP now. In fact, I reserve judgment on this issue. For the moment. I've been reading and hearing about it for months, and in fact intended to write a post about it quite a while ago but never got around to it. It seems obvious to me that the three countries that are party to NAFTA would want to harmonize some aspects of their trade and economic relations. Common standards for jelly beans, that would be a good thing. It's natural that we should agree on certain standards. In my view, though, the agreed-upon standards should be the highest standards, not the lowest. And if any one country cannot meet those standards, well they should not be included. Simple as that.

For example, it's been publicized that the US considers Canada's regulations about pesticide use on fruits and vegetables to be a restraint of trade, because they are more stringent than those in the US. Too bad, I say. The US should be forced to live up to the higher standard. The same goes for any regulation.

These are bureaucratic considerations. When it comes to things about true national interests, like water, oil, security, then I begin to think we are not necessarily obliged to be in lock-step. The SPP raises issues like harmonizing a terrorist no-fly list. We've all heard horror stories about innocent people ending up on such lists. I'm not in favour of bowing to the US on points like this, because I believe the US is still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and is not really thinking clearly about its security issues. And what they've managed to do so far is make us all a little crazy.

One thing that gives me pause in all this furor about the SPP is the strange bedfellows it has created. Here in Canada, the main opposition has come from the Council of Canadians which, by most standards, would be considered left-wing/progressive. Maude Barlow has been pushing the Canadian nationalist/beware the US message for a long time. Often she's right. But sometimes they're a little shrill and paranoid, I think. More so lately. But on the US side, who do we have? Most definitely right-wing Jerome R. Corsi, author of The Late Great USA, prime architect of the Swift Boat movement to defeat John Kerry in the last presidential election...a man who believes his government is leading the Murricans into a North American Union similar to the EU. This is a man who fits comfortably into the spectrum of opinion ranging towards the Michigan Militia and the anti-United Nations fanatics who think they are about to have their freedoms removed by One World Government.

I suppose you could say these widely-divergent world-views are united by a common element: the feeling that the sovereignty of their respective nations will be fatally undermined.

Or maybe two elements: that our governments are not telling us what they're really doing.

And I think that is dangerous.

Meanwhile, we were treated last week to the spectacle of Sureté du Québec officers dressed up in Halloween costumes and deliberately trying to start trouble where there wasn't any. Cops inciting a riot. All for the sake of discrediting protesters with legitimate concerns.

And the patronizing tone of all the leaders, insulting our intelligence and assaulting our fellow citizens. Mark my words...it's crap like that which foments unrest. And then maybe our leaders really will have something to be afraid of. Democracy.

Cheney Says No to Invading Iraq

This video comes courtesy of grandtheftcountry. In this, our lovely Internet age, we wonders, yes we does, whether people/politicians/public figures are suffering from some sort of deficiency (as a learned friend of mine is wont to say.) Surely they must know that their words and actions are recorded and observed and then splashed all over electronic cyberspace. (Surely I know that my words and actions here achieve some sort of immortality, ethereal as it is...)



What changed Cheney's mind between 94 and 02? Did he, perhaps, have a lobotomy we don't know about? All I know is, the word "quagmire" was on every thinking person's lips long before George W sang "Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to war we go!" with Mr. Charm Cheney prodding and poor foolish politically inept Colin Powell enabling.

Mr. Cheney, take your gingko pills faithfully. It might keep you out of the quagmire some day.

Update on Gettysburg

I was listening to a documentary on Mothercorp the other day about the assassination of Lincoln and it reminded me of my post about Gettysburg earlier this month.

I learned something I didn't know. Here it is: Washington DC is surrounded on three sides by Maryland, which is south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and on the fourth side by Virginia which joined the Confederacy. If Maryland had joined the Confederacy too, it would have meant that the capital of the United States was entirely surrounded by the enemy. And Maryland was by no means undivided in its support of the Union. So what did Lincoln do? He declared martial law in Maryland. To prevent the possibility of secession. There is still controversy over this, I think.

As a matter of fact, Lincoln carried out several radical actions within months of his inauguration. Indeed, the beginning of his term coincided with the dissolution of the Union and the start of the Civil War.

Here's a partial timeline:

November 6, 1860: · Lincoln elected 16th President of the United States

December 20, 1860: · South Carolina becomes first state to secede from the Union

February 9, 1861: · Confederate States of America formed in Montgomery, Alabama

March 4, 1861: · Lincoln inaugurated in Washington, delivers First Inaugural Address

March 29, 1861: · Orders reinforcements sent to Fort Sumter

April 12, 1861: · Confederate forces open fire on Fort Sumter, beginning Civil War
April 17, 1861: · Virginia secedes from the Union
April 18, 1861: · Lincoln invites Robert E. Lee to head Union armies; Lee declines and resigns post (Now here's an indication of how volatile things were. Lincoln asks Lee to head the Union forces...Lee who is about to become the most famous Confederate General!)

April 27, 1861: · Suspends writ of habeas corpus (!!! Oh, those Republicans, eh?)

May 10, 1861: · Declares martial law in Maryland

There was a great deal of outrage in Maryland over this action which many considered unconstitutional. Don't forget that a primary cause of the Civil War was the dispute over states' rights. And John Wilkes Booth came from a well-established (although not solidly pro-Confederate) Maryland family.

Suspending habeas corpus? Declaring martial law? Suddenly it's less of a mystery why Booth shouted the motto of the state of Virginia after he shot Lincoln: Sic semper tyrannis. Thus always to tyrants!

New Heart Device Installed in Cheney

The New York Times is reporting on Dick Cheney's new device. Here are my quick thoughts on this development:

Cheney's heart is not that smart,
They've had to install another part.
For him, compash is out of fash.
God forbid he could be so rash.
We have a notion the part the president's kissing
is not the part that Cheney's missing.

(With apologies to the Cowardly Lion...)

Say It With Pictures

IM BUSH

DON'T EN HIM

(Tag As: Gratuitous Political Statement by Know-Nothing Canajun/Alien Observer)

Really, I don't know whether Bush should be impeached. The evidence is not really all in, is it? But lies to Congress would qualify as grounds, wouldn't they?

I do believe neither we outsiders/ostensible allies/friends nor the Murrican people should continue enappling his behaviour, though. Nobody likes to be called an enappler.

CBC 5th Estate: The Lies That Led to War

OK, be prepared. This video is about 45 minutes long...

Yoni School (US) Election Watch Pt. 7

According to Salon.com and an ABC interview, even Jimmy Carter is urging Al Gore to run. Now, I don't know if a Jimmy Carter endorsement is something you want or not. Waddoo Ino? I'm only a Canajun from Lunchbucket. But at least it's a former president. (Seeing as how he ain't likely to get the endorsement of his former boss...)

Yoni School (US) Election Watch Pt. 6

Is Al Gore in Favour of the Draft?

I can't remember whether I wrote about this before. Maybe I did. But there's a strong movement going on among US Democrats to draft Al Gore. He's riding pretty high since the release of An Inconvenient Truth. That movie is nominated for an Oscar. And Gore himself has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize! (I'm not quite sure how an environmental campaign qualifies as contributing to world peace, at least not in the specific sense, but there you go.)

The Democrats For Gore have an online petition, presumably to convince Gore that there's lots of support out there, just waiting for him to commit. I think you have to be Murrican to sign it, though.

It's not just the Yanks who are now slobbering over Gore. (In fact, the Yanks may not be slobbering over him at all...that remains to be seen...) It just so happens that Gore is doing his Inconvenient Truth slide show at the University of Hawgtown tonight. I heard that tickets (at $20 per) sold out within minutes and as of earlier today, scalpers were asking $400! Oh, if only those were campaign contributions!

I'm tellin' ya, somethin's gonna happen yet! Clinton and Obama watch out! Gore may just sneak up the middle.

Meanwhile, in a matter only tangentially related, today is the anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965. (And, ironically enough, of the publication of The Communist Manifesto in 1848.) The Mothercorp radio program The Current today interviewed Austin Clarke, the Barbados-born Canadian novelist and winner of the Giller Prize in 2002. Clarke actually interviewed Malcolm X in 1963 for the Mothercorp, and then spent a day with him just a few months before he was killed. He had some interesting things to say about that period of Murrican history, about Harlem in those days, and about Malcolm's career as a civil rights leader.

Eventually, though, the interview with Clarke moved around to developments in the US election race...Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It was here that he made a most astonishing statement: that he would not be surprised if Obama were assassinated!

He said this quite straightforwardly, without much preamble. It was stunning...and it went by so quickly it could easily have been missed.

But what a thing to say! Here the US is poised, potentially, at a supremely historic moment: the possibility of electing either a woman as president for the first time, or a black man for the first time. That the possibility even arises is a profound statement about the evolution of Murrican society. But Clarke is suggesting that the US is not quite ready for such radical choices, that atavistic tendencies will resurface, and that by default one of these choices will have to be eliminated (with extreme prejudice, as they say.) What a statement to make on the anniversary of an historic assassination, one of a series in an era of disastrous political killings.

Yoni School (US) Election Watch Pt. 5

Oh m'Gawd, the Murricans have created another Franken Stein. The BBC is reporting that Al Franken, formerly of Saturday Night Live, author of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and currently (until today) hosting his own left-leaning radio show, has announced that he will run for the US Senate in Minnesota.

My first question is this: Why am I reading this on BBC? You'd think that would be at the top of some Murrican press feed...AP? Reuters? Fox? Ok, not Fox.

My second question is this: What next? Or in current blog shorthand, WTF? A comedian in the Senate?

Well, why not? Don't forget the actor who was Governor of California. What was his name again? Schwarzenegger? Oh, you mean Reagan! Right, see what I mean? The actor who would be President of These Yer Yoonited States. Reagan. Schwarzenegger. (Except Arnold can't be, but would be if he could.)

Then there's the lying liar and his lying lies currently ovalling the office. Or, as Michael Moore puts it, "Hey! Where's my country, dude?"

The US has had a peanut farmer. A slave-owner. A vacuum cleaner salesman. What's so strange about a comedian in the Senate? Especially since he's a bit off-centre. I mean left-of-centre. (All us godless liberals ((read: closet commies)) gotta cheer for the lefty comedian, even tho in the photo above he's right of centre.

And Minnesota...well! Let us not forget that it was Minnesota that elected Jesse Ventura governor! And then gave him the highest approval rating of any Minnesota governor in history. (All I can say about Ventura, since I don't know any better and can't keep my mouth shut, is: As a governor he made one helluva wrestler.) My favourite story about Jesse Ventura is that when he had a private meeting with the Dalai Lama, he made sure he asked him what his favourite movie was.

Truth to tell, politics could use more comedians. Imagine Franken, Jon Stewart, George Carlin, Chris Rock and Bill Maher all in the Senate. Imagine Dick Gregory and Lenny Bruce in the Senate! Now that would make C-Span worth watching!

State of the Onion

Are we all going to watch Dubya on the tube giving us the state of his onion tonight?

So many layers. Such pungency. Ah cain't hardly stand it.

Addendum to the Doomsday Clock

New York Times Editorial

Busywork for Nuclear Scientists
Published: January 15, 2007

The Bush administration is eager to start work on a new nuclear warhead with all sorts of admirable qualities: sturdy, reliable and secure from terrorists. To sweeten the deal, officials say that if they can replace the current arsenal with Reliable Replacement Warheads (what could sound more comforting?), they probably won’t have to keep so many extra warheads to hedge against technical failure. If you’re still not sold, the warhead comes with something of a guarantee — that scientists can build the new bombs without ever testing them.

Let the buyer beware. While the program has gotten very little attention here, it is a public-relations disaster in the making overseas. Suspicions that the United States is actually trying to build up its nuclear capabilities are undercutting Washington’s arguments for restraining the nuclear appetites of Iran and North Korea.

Then there’s the tens of billions it is likely to cost. And the most important question: Nearly two decades after the country stopped building nuclear weapons, does it really need a new one? The answer, emphatically, is no. This is a make-work program championed by the weapons laboratories and belatedly by the Pentagon, which hasn’t been able to get Congress to pay for its other nuclear fantasies.

The Rumsfeld team’s first choice was for a nuclear “bunker buster” to go after deeply buried targets. The Pentagon got concerned about “aging” warheads only after it was clear that even the Republican-led Congress, or at least one intrepid House subcommittee chairman, considered the bunker buster too Strangelovian to finance.

One crucial argument for the new program took a major hit in November when the Jason — a prestigious panel of scientists that advises the government on weapons — reported that most of the plutonium triggers in the current arsenal can be expected to last for 100 years. Since the oldest weapons are less than 50 years old, supporters of the new warhead have fallen back on warnings that other bomb components are also aging, and that the nuclear labs need the work to attract and train the best scientists. But the labs are already spending billions on studying and preserving the current arsenal.

Then there’s that guarantee that there will be no need for testing — one of the few arms-control taboos President Bush hasn’t broken yet. While experts debate whether the labs can really build a weapon without testing it, the more important question is whether any president would stake America’s security on an untested arsenal.

America would be much safer if the president focused on reducing the number of old nuclear weapons still deployed by the United States and the other nuclear powers. The new Congress should stop this program before any more dollars are wasted, or more damage is done to America’s credibility.

Paul Tillich's Take On It

Forgive the long quote, but this passage from Paul Tillich's series of sermons entitled The Eternal Now published in 1963 just seems so apropos. (Or a propos if yer a stickler...) This is from the sermon called Salvation.

In the ancient world, great political leaders were called saviours. They liberated nations and groups within them from misery, enslavement, and war. This is another kind of healing, reminiscent of the words of the last book of the Bible, which says in poetic language that "the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations." How can nations be healed? One may say: They can be liberated from external conquerors or internal oppressors. But can they be healed? Can they be saved? The prophets give the answer: Nations are saved if there is a small minority, a group of people, who represent what the nation is called to be. They may be defeated, but their spirit will be a power of resistance against the evil spirits who are detrimental to the nation. The question of saving power in the nation is the question of whether there is a minority, even a small one, which is willing to resist the anxiety produced by propaganda, the conformity enforced by threat, the hatred stimulated by ignorance. The future of this country and its spiritual values is not dependent as much on atomic defense as on the influence such groups will have on the spirit in which the nation will think and act.

And this is true of mankind as a whole. Its future will be dependent on a saving group, embodied in one nation or crossing through all nations. There is saving power in mankind, but there is also the hidden will to self-destruction. It depends on every one of us which side will prevail. There is no divine promise that humanity will survive this or the next year. But it may depend on the saving power effective in you or me, whether it will survive. (It may depend on the amount of healing and liberating grace which works through any of us with respect to social justice, racial equality, and political wisdom.) Unless many of say to ourselves: Through the saving power working in me, mankind may be saved or lost -- it will be lost.

Larry Breaks His Rule About On-Line Petitions

I know I said I don't participate in online petitions. MoveOn.org is a group that I've known and known about for several years. I trust them, as far as that is possible in an entirely electronic/internet relationship. This is not to say that I have any special faith in the effectiveness of this type of action. But maybe...

Dear friends,

Just when we thought the war in Iraq couldn't get any worse—it has. Last night, President Bush rejected reality, spurned the American people's verdict, and announced his new policy: military escalation in Iraq.

The newly elected United States Congress has the power to stop this madness, but it's critical to show immediate, unified opposition from the international community.

So MoveOn is helping launch Avaaz, a new international partnership to mobilize progressive global voices. We're starting with an emergency worldwide petition to the U.S. Congress and a powerful full-page ad in "Roll Call"—the Washington DC newspaper read by every member of Congress and their staff.

Click below to see the ad and sign the petition:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/iraq_campaign_jan_2007/

After years of failed occupation, it's clear to everyone but George Bush that the US cannot solve this civil conflict through force. As Bush's own top military advisors and commanders in the field have said, sending tens of thousands more American troops will only fan the flames of this war.

World opinion matters: The American people understand the US can't police the globe by itself. That's why, before the original invasion, Bush worked so hard to promote the involvement of Tony Blair and a few other select world leaders to win over reluctant members of Congress.

Today, Bush stands completely alone—but it's our job to bring this point home in Washington. The ad in Roll Call highlights Tony Blair's decision to withdraw troops in direct opposition to Bush's proposed escalation. And the petition will help show where the global public stands.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/iraq_campaign_jan_2007/

The Bush administration is already twisting arms and doing everything it can to push this escalation through. Congress may yet find the courage to resist—if we help them—but there's no time to lose.

Add your name to the petition. Spread the word to your friends. The Iraq crisis is a global problem. Together we have the power, and the responsibility, to help change course.

Sincerely,

–Eli Pariser
MoveOn.org Political Action
January 11, 2006


PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

It Takes All Kinds to (Un)make a World

Not to give this site too much prominence, but while noodling around the Blogger Group Help page I found the blog Only In America. A rather angry guy, it seems. Calls himself Himself. Which seems only right.

I looked at his profile. He probably wouldn't like me. I'm too Buddhist. He prefers free thinkers. So, maybe he might like me. Cuz I don't charge for my thinking. Leastways, not on this Mental Blog.

Anyway, he had a link to the website (which I've embedded in the title) called Right Wing Stuff.

Here's an example of the stuff they sell:

And that's mild compared to some of the others. (Click on the post title if you're really interested...)

This is an example of the weirdness on the net. I mean, you think Larry's weird. You don't know the half of it. Hatefulness too. Side by electronic side with lunacy love & lechery. But I wonder if the people who market this believe as fervently as their website indicates, or whether they're just doing that Yankee thing...if it moves, sell it.

Scroll farther down on Himself's blog and you'll find a picture of what is presumably an advertisement for "Armor of God Pyjamas". It's LOL funny.

Goering Tells the Truth For Once

I simply couldn't resist this. I picked it from a website called Wisdom Quotes:

Hermann Goering:

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

quote verified at snopes.com

The more things change, eh? What have we been bombarded with since 9-11? On the airlines now, you have to take out your tube of Preparation H and put it in a plastic bag for all to see. Why? Because we are under attack!

All right. The US was attacked. Rather than dealing with that particular problem, however, the Bushwhackers decided to mount a general counterattack -- wide and sweeping -- and now we see the results -- gels and liquids are no longer allowed on your red-eye to wherever. Does this say something about the law of unintended consequences? Or was it intended all along?