The Life of Brodie

Brodie Taking A Snooze

Photo by Rob J. Watson

In Defense of Animals

This deserving organization is holding an eBay auction to raise funds. Please check it out and place some bids.

Howard Zinn - An Inspiration for Progressives

It's tough being a progressive. We're always ahead of the curve, trying to drag stubborn conservatives toward progress. Howard Zinn is an example of what we can accomplish. He was fired from Spelman College in 1963, because of his civil rights activities. This year, he was invited back to give the commencement speech:

Here in the United States, we are brought up to believe that our nation is different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral; that we expand into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy. But if you know some history you know that's not true. If you know some history, you know we massacred Indians on this continent, invaded Mexico, sent armies into Cuba, and the Philippines. We killed huge numbers of people, and we did not bring them democracy or liberty. We did not go into Vietnam to bring democracy; we did not invade Panama to stop the drug trade; we did not invade Afghanistan and Iraq to stop terrorism. Our aims were the aims of all the other empires of world history -- more profit for corporations, more power for politicians.

The poets and artists among us seem to have a clearer understanding of the disease of nationalism. Perhaps the black poets especially are less enthralled with the virtues of American "liberty" and "democracy," their people having enjoyed so little of it. The great African-American poet Langston Hughes addressed his country as follows:

You really haven't been a virgin for so long.
It's ludicrous to keep up the pretext?
You've slept with all the big powers
In military uniforms,
And you've taken the sweet life
Of all the little brown fellows?
Being one of the world's big vampires,
Why don't you come on out and say so
Like Japan, and England, and France,
And all the other nymphomaniacs of power.

Bush Lied - People Died

Daily KOS has some great quotes about how outraged pundits were about Clinton's lie:

"There has to be a functional trust by reporters of the person they're covering. Clinton lies knowing that you know he's lying. It's brutal and it subjugates the person who's being lied to. I resent deeply being constantly lied to." - Hardball's Chris Matthews

He deeply resents being lied to when it's about sex or when a Democrat does it? Which is it?

"The deep and searing violation took place when he not only lied to the country, but co-opted his friends and lied to them." - Reagan/Clinton adviser David Gergen

People died, but Gergen says nothing about the deep and searing grief of lost lives.

"What is troubling is the deceit, the failure to own up to it. Before this is over the truth must be told." - Sen. Joe Lieberman (who hasn't owned up to his own pre-war role pushing Bush administration lies about Iraq

Hey! How about some truth about Iraq! Hey! Hey!

"The judgment is harsher in Washington. We don't like being lied to." - Washington Post columnist David Broder

Except when Bush does it and then we swoon.

"When you lie to the country, you are using your authority to undermine the presidency." - Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin

Yeah, right. Want so say it again about Bush? Didn't think so.

Out of curiousity I went to Google News and entered search terms "Bush lied". Here's a sampling of what I found.

After this "smoking gun" British MEMO surfaced last week, one can only wonder why the alleged "LIBERAL MEDIA" (which apparently dominates America even more so than the International Jewish Conspirarcy!) has hardly made a sound about this explicit evidence against our lying, manipulative weasel of a President -- George Bush. Blogcritics.org

President Bush and Blair secretly agreed to invade Iraq long before weapons inspections had begun -- in fact, long before the United Nations was even approached about revisiting the idea of weapons inspections. This memo proves what many around the world already knew: that the Bush administration lied about the reasons for waging war on this unarmed nation. Disgraceful! Particularly when you consider the more than 1,600 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have died as a result of that lie. But equally disgraceful is that the so-called mainstream media have failed to report on this important story. A search of the Star Tribune's archives brings up one story (published nearly two weeks after the London Times piece) that talks more about liberal outrage that the story hasn't received attention than the actual story. - Kay Hansen StarTribune.com

The smoking gun regarding the fact that President Bush and his administration were lying to us and manipulating intelligence in the runup to their invasion of Iraq surfaced recently in the British press, but the press in the United States is studiously avoiding it. Times Argus, Montpelier, Vermont

BuzzFlash has a quote from the horse's ass himself:

"We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force." - George W. Bush, Radio Address Mar. 8, 2003

Not one story in the mainstream press. Not one.

Your President is a War Criminal

Your president is a war criminal but your corporate media won't expose him, as Attaturk points out.

We must read The London Times to hear the truth:

THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.

The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make “regime change” in Iraq legal. . .

The briefing paper prepared for the July meeting — the same document that revealed the prime minister’s agreement during a summit with President George W Bush in April 2002 to back military action to bring about regime change — laid out the American war plans.

They opted on August 5 for a “hybrid plan” in which a continuous air offensive and special forces operations would begin while the main ground force built up in Kuwait ready for a full-scale invasion.

The Ministry of Defence figures, provided in response to a question from Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, show that despite the lack of an Iraqi reaction, the air war began anyway in September with a 100-plane raid.

The systematic targeting of Iraqi air defences appears to contradict Foreign Office legal guidance appended to the leaked briefing paper which said that the allied aircraft were only “entitled to use force in self-defence where such a use of force is a necessary and proportionate response to actual or imminent attack from Iraqi ground systems”.

Although our media don't have the courage to comment, Representative Conyers has a call to action on Daily KOS:

This morning I read the new revelations, again the London Times, that British and U.S. aircraft had substantially stepped up their bombing activity in the summer of 2002 in an effort to "goad Saddam into War." If true, we would seem to have the "smoking bullet" to the "smoking gun" of the Downing Street Memo.

I have prepared a letter to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld detailing these new charges and asking for his response ...

Do you think there's any chance Rumsfeld will respond? Of course not, and do you think the media will ask him or Chimpy about it? Not a chance. The concept of the free press and democracy in the U.S. are no more.

Conyers is asking people to write to President Bush.

Taos early morning walk. In search of fish.

Operation Sqeeze Play

So I turn on MSNBC to keep me company while I make my breakfast smoothie (because I can only get Air America by webcast) and I hear some military expert talking about Operation Sqeeze Play and showing a map of Iraq.

What I want to know is - is this a military operation or date rape?

Evolution Caught in the Act

Whole species of carnivorous dinosaurs gradually gave up meat and evolved into vegetarians. Paleontologists have found evidence of this unusual dietary change in the skeleton of a previously unknown species that was halfway through the transition.

The Falcarius utahensis, a distant relative of the fierce Velociraptor, has the beginnings of features associated with eating plants. Its teeth are not knifelike, serrated teeth of the typical predator, but smaller and adapted for shredding greenery. It also has an expanded gut suitable for digesting fermenting plants; thicker legs than the runners' legs needed for by predators; and a longer neck to reach for leaves in tall trees.

Scientists aren't sure what prompted Falcarius utahensis to go vegetarian, but they note that the change coincided with the arrival of a profusion of flowering plants. The new fossils are an amazing documentation of a major dietary shift.

Falcarius utahensis represents evolution caught in the act.

Pharyngula has more...

Our favorite dinosaur is still our own T-Rex who eats the unevolved fish.

The Devil's Wrong Number

Historians studying a newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament announced that the legendary "mark of the beast" is probably 616, rather than 666.

The tiny fragment of 1,500-year-old papyrus is written in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, and contains a key passage from the Book of Revelation.

A fragment from the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, dating to the Third century, gives the more mundane 616 as the mark of the Antichrist.

Ellen Aitken, a professor of early Christian history at McGill University, said the discovery appears to spell the end of 666 as the devil's prime number.

... scholars now believe the number in question has very little to do the devil. It was actually a complicated numerical riddle in Greek, meant to represent someone's name, she said.

It's a number puzzle -- the majority opinion seems to be that it refers to [the Roman emperor] Nero.

Researcher Dr. Aitken said says this beastly number is found in the Bible's book of Revelation:

Revelation was actually a thinly disguised political tract, with the names of those being criticized changed to numbers to protect the authors and early Christians from reprisals. "It's a very political document," Dr. Aitken said. "It's a critique of the politics and society of the Roman empire, but it's written in coded language and riddles."

Porn Star to Meet Big Boob

Dada found this shocking story:

Porn star and former gubernatorial candidate Mary Carey will be joining her boss, Kick Ass Pictures president Mark Kulkis, in attending a dinner with President Bush in Washington, D.C. on June 14.

“I’m honored to be invited to this event,” Kulkis said. “Republicans bill themselves as the pro-business party. Well, you won’t find a group of people more pro-business than pornographers. We contributed over $10 billion to the national economy last year.”

Kulkis serves as an Honorary Chairman on the NRCC’s Business Advisory Council, a group of business people who advocate a progressive, pro-business agenda. His company produces hardcore adult videos with a guarantee of “No Fake Boobs & No Condoms.” Carey ran for Governor in the 2003 California Recall Election, while Kulkis served as her campaign manager.

Mary Carey's born-again boobs, get to meet the born-again boob now residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Economics 101 (One - Oh - What?)


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Soaring food and energy costs pushed U.S. consumer prices up a hefty 0.5 percent in April, but prices were surprisingly tame outside those volatile areas.

Translation: If you remove soaring spikes in food and energy costs of the past couple of months, prices are holding steady! This is great news for all consumers who don't drive, heat and cool their homes or eat.

Ahnie's Trojan Hummer

Santa Cruz, California's Assembymember, John Laird says:

I did research on where taxes come from and where services go in California. The 20 counties that have the highest per capita tax contribution happen to be coastal [blue counties] and the 20 that have the highest usage of some of the service programs happen to be inland [red counties].

And it's ironic politically, because the people on the coast would probably be willing to pay more taxes to get services but the people that are getting more services are saying "taxes are too high, we don't want to pay any more." There'a a real strange juxtaposition in that dynamic...

Notations in brackets are mine.

Research has shown that blue states pay more to the federal government and more of that money is disbursed to red states, so California counties are a microcosm of the federal model. It's the red states (Repugs) who complain the most about taxes, while we blue staters are funding their programs.

Regarding education funding in California, Laird also said:

The Governor’s proposal is a Trojan Hummer. Inside the Governor’s Trojan Hummer is a full-scale attack on future investment in our schools. It takes $15,000 from every classroom and creates even more uncertainty for local school districts. And ironically, given what the Governor has been saying, the proposal actually makes auto-pilot spending worse and makes schools more vulnerable in economic crises.

Breaking News: True Lies II

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER is currently in the midst of plans to take on his first movie role since becoming California Governor - in the sequel to TRUE LIES.

JAMES CAMERON had originally expressed interest in returning to the project only as producer, but is now planning to direct TRUE LIES 2 once Austrian-born Schwarzenegger finishes his current term as Governor.

Woo hoo! Save California - send him back to Hollywood.

Required Reading

For those of us short on American foreign policy history, there's one item that should be required reading for all potential American men and women before obligating to a tour as a G.I. in any branch of the United States armed forces. It's nothing that requires any great commitment of time to read. Oh hell, I'll even give it to you right here, right now.

"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." - Henry Kissinger, quoted in Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW's in Vietnam

Norm Coleman's Ears Pinned Back

Galloway's blistering rant was wonderful to behold. He blasted the Bushites for lying about Iraq, WMD, etc. If you missed it, Crooks and Liars has the video.

Torture Caught on Video Tape

Held captive and tortured daily, you'd probably react by screaming, freezing in terror every time the door opened, heart racing, you might wish to be invisible to your tormenters. The anxiety alone would be almost unbearable. You might go insane. It sounds like something that only happens at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib, doesn't it?

It's taking place right here in the U.S.

Illegal Deportation

We know about how Japanese-Americans were forced into concentration camps during WW II and how African-Americans were first enslaved and later some were treated like lab animals in medical experiments without their knowledge or consent, but only now are we learning about the injustice done to Mexican-Americans. 2 million Hispanics, including 400,000 Californians were rounded up and transported to Mexico between 1929 and 1944 - even if their ancestors had been here before California existed.

The program was started by the Hoover administration, supposedly as a way to get rid of illegal immigrants and open up jobs during the Depression. But the overwhelming majority of the people shipped to Mexico were American citizens or legal immigrants.

Some were able to return because they were drafted to fight for the United States in World War II.

A number of states, including California, continued the deportations even after the Roosevelt administration cut off funding for them. Los Angeles County was particularly active, with county supervisors overriding legality concerns raised by the county counsel.

Anybody that had a Mexican sounding name was literally taken from their beds and shipped to Mexico.

California Senator Joe Dunn, Democrat of Garden Grove has written two bills in an effort to acknowlege the wrong and make amends:

This year Dunn has introduced a bill that would create the redress commission, a window for lawsuits and a fund to pay reparations to surviving deportees who file claims.

He has also introduced a second bill that would express a state apology for the episode and require placement of a plaque commemorating the deportees.

Senator Dunn said:

"At the very least the state ought to, before the last survivor passes away, formally apologize for its role in the deportation of U.S. citizens for one reason -- they were of Mexican descent," he said.

More information:

NapaNews.com, an article.

Decade of Betrayal a book on the subject.

A web site

A rebuttal from the wingnut gallery at Free Republic:

My respect for Herbert Hoover has just increased 20 fold.

Makes you almost yearn for the "good old days", doesn't it?

Liberalism is truly a MENTAL DISORDER...

No way, NO apologies. Victims indeed!!! Life is tough, suck it in and get over it.

Cully-forn-eeuh's gropenfuhrer, wants to line the border with vigilantes to keep Mexicans out of his state. I think we should send him back to Austria or wherever Nazi sympathizers live these days.

Cheetah Report

If you love cats in general and cheetahs in particular, read my report of our close encounters with these magnificent cats. We also got some video clips of our African guide singing and cheetahs getting out of control. Note that unless you have broadband, the page will probably load slowly and the clip of cheetahs gone wild is about 4 minutes long and will take a while to load.

We're going back October 5th and hope some of you can join us.

Who's in charge here?

I'm reluctant to bring up the following. Many people will dismiss it as Bush bashing. But I would argue, "far from it!" The reason I choose to talk about our president's pathology is out of concern for him as an individual, but more specifically, we as a nation (and everyone else as a world).

We are being led by an individual who is deeply disturbed. Yes, that's my opinion, but it's also the opinion of some professionals in the mental health field.

President Bush is described as affable, charismatic, a strong leader in times of trouble. A few use different descriptions like insecure, pompous, an irrational rationalizer, megalomaniac. These are all characteristics of an ill person, a sociopath in need of help.

During the red alert on Wednesday, May 11th, VP Cheney was whisked to safety in an undisclosed location and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was literally lifted out of her shoes by secret service agents who spirited her away as others were evacuating the capitol.

Meanwhile, President Bush was riding his bicycle at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.

Secret Service agents chose not to inform the President of what was going on around him until after the alert was over! Perhaps it is just more of the "kid gloves" with which everyone handles Bush. Or, as suggested in Justin A. Frank's book, "Bush on the Couch," the President's compulsive need to exercise is part of his pathology. What follows are outtakes re Bush's need to sweat from Dana Milbank's Washington Post article the day after Bush bike rode through a red alert unaware:

"It was not the first time a crisis has focused uninvited attention on the Bush fitness routine. On a weekday morning in February 2001, when a gun-wielding man was shot outside the White House, it quickly emerged that Vice President Cheney was working in his office, while Bush was exercising in his residence.

"...the president, while scaling back the golf outings, has made little effort to conceal his more cardiovascular activities -- inviting reporters on occasion to go running with him and, after his knees worsened, to go mountain biking.

"Bush told Runner's World magazine in 2002 that his running times 'have become faster right after the war began.' He added: 'For me, the psychological benefit is enormous. You tend to forget everything that's going on in your mind and just concentrate on the time, distance or the sweat.'" (emphasis mine)

Did the Secret Service opt to handle the alert situation with tact and caution, so as not to disturb the President's obsessive need to perspire?

Or perhaps they felt no need to bother him, knowing the real president had been spirited to safety.

Quote of the day

I strongly suspect that a world "external to," or at least independent of, my senses exists in some sense.

~ NOT said by George W. Bush

The New America "or else"

The New America in which we now live is an either/or kind of place. The classic example of this being the President's post 9/11 edict that "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."

This "us versus them" mentality is part of the "Grandiose Sense of Self," one of the 15 characteristics of the sociopathic personality that now leads the nation. (For the entire list, see http://www.home.datawest.net/esn-recovery/artcls/socio.htm)

Examples of this black & white mentality now abound under the present administration. If a reporter and you ask a tough question, you can lose your press pass. If you don't support your President, you don't sit in his audience. If you demonstrate outside a designated "free speech" zone, you break the law.

Another incredible example of this was posted by Nona earlier this month. That of a North Carolina minister who chided his congregation to either support the President or resign from the church. Nine members did just that and left. (Encouraging in this example, however, is news the minister initiating this policy has, himself, since resigned!)

Well, I was reminded of all of this by yet another instance of the New America "or else" yesterday. Later this month, the Army will suspend for one day, May 20th, it's recruiting efforts to re-educate its recruiters. Apparently recruiters are falling short of manpower goals necessary for empire building. As a result there are numerous incidents coming to light where recruitment methods have fallen to new lows. Consider the following from Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!" on Thurs., May 12.

"....some recruiters have resorted to threatening recruits. In late April in Houston recruiter, Sgt. Thomas Kelt, threatened to have a prospect arrested if he resisted recruiting efforts. Kelt left a voice mail message on the cell phone of 20 year old Christopher Monarch ordering him to show up for an appointment -- under the false pretense that Monarch would be violating the law if he didn't. This is a recording of that voicemail obtained by Houston TV station KHOU:

"Hey Chris, this is Sgt. Kelt with the Army man. I think we got disconnected. Okay, I know you were on your cell probably and just had a bad connection or something like that. I know you didn't hang up on me. Anyway, by federal law you got an appointment with me at 2 o'clock this afternoon at Greenspoint Mall, okay? That's the Greenspoint Mall Army Recruiting Station at 2 o'clock. You fail to appear and we'll have a warrant. Okay? So give me a call back."

"That was army recruiter Sgt. Thomas Kelt leaving a voicemail on a prospective recruit's voicemail. Kelt reportedly said that threatening to issue an arrest warrant was a 'marketing technique.' "

There's little room for a middle ground of other possibilities in the New America we now inhabit. Intolerance thrives while tolerance shrivels. And while "either/or" makes things simpler, it can also makes things a lot more dangerous. It's these very kinds of simplistic delineations that can impugn your reputation, social standing, cost you your job, your freedom--or worse!

From Sgt. Kelt's warning left on his answering machine, young recruit, Christopher Monarch, better show up for his appointment of The New America..........."or else!"

Flying the Friendly Skies
(Or why U.S. corporatism has a "job" to do, while you're losing yours.)

I used to fly for United Airlines
Then I got fired for reading 'High Times'
My license expired in almost no time
Now I'm retired and I think that's fine

~ Mexican Wine by Fountains of Wayne on their 'Welcome Interstate Managers' CD

Big headlines in the news concerns United Airlines drift toward Chapter 11 bankruptcy emergence--if only the "little people" (United Airline employees) will cooperate.

United's Chief Executive Glen Tilton, whose $366,000 bonus last year made him one of the airline industry's highest paid execs, is upset that employees have voted to strike if contracts UA negotiated with its union members are voided.

It just throws such a monkey wrench in United's well greased plans (ah, I should probably thank UA machinists for the inspiration of that one.)

Okay, let's review the events of the past couple days:

1.) Your retirement's been jeopardized. As one flight attendent with 20 years at the airline noted, her $1700/mo. pension has been reduced to $800.mo. as a result of this week's court decision allowing United Airlines to wash its hands of pension plan obligations. This effects 120,000 retired and active United employees.

2.) United has now petitioned the court to void its union contracts in hopes of lowering its labor costs.

To counter these actions, union members have voted to strike if their contracts are voided. (After all, what's left to lose?)

So, imagine UA has just cut your retirement. And now they want to void your union contract (read "wages") negotiated in good faith. And to ice the cake, they have the tenacity to call the worker's vote to strike "illegal."

Ah, the "Friendly Skies" of United, flying on the backs of employee concessions (and a shrinking middle class).

NOTE: Delta and the other airlines are watching (and drooling) over United's cost "slashings".

Away on Safari

We're off to Safari West for a few days, but stay tuned, a new blogger has joined us. You might recall reading comments by Dada in the past (check the archives). He's my favorite commentator and his entertaining humorous snarkiness is similar to that of my favorite blogger, Attaturk who is guest posting on Atrios' Eschaton but who has his own blog at Rising Hegemon. I read Attaturk daily and have pleaded with him to accept advertising, but he's too pure. When he started guesting at Eschaton, I immediately placed an ad for Ring of Fire's Darwin fish, etc. on Atrios' blog.

We plan to hang out with some Cheetahs while we're gone and we hope to have stories to tell and pictures to show when we return.

Only Republicans Can Be Baptists

Holy Crap! The minister of East Waynesville Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina has given an ultimatum to Democrats in the church. Unless they repent their vote for Kerry and start supporting George Bush, they will be excommunicated.

Now, I admit I've been known to exaggerate a story now and then to add some sick humor or maybe to get attention but I swear I didn't make it up and I'm not joking around.

A TV news video can be viewed here and a Daily KOS diary is here..

Like Lily Tomlin said,“No matter how cynical I get, I just can’t keep up."

Blip-Verts

In an episode of "Futurama" Frye wakes up in the future to discover that he wants to purchase some tighty-whities and that his dreams had been sponsored by a commercial advertisement. Heh, heh.

Sony has patented a new product developed for the blind for beaming images directly into a person's brain. It's only a matter of time before advertisers get their hands on this technology.

For now, we'll try subliminal <Darwin fish> suggestions <buy now>.

From Soup to Matter

The universe may have started out as a liquid. Physicists have believed that in the microseconds following the Big Band, before matter had clumped togehter into atoms, the universe was a hot, gaseous cloud of the tiny particles known as quarks and gluons. Physicists at Long Island, New York's Brookhave National Laboratory say they've succeeded in reproducing this "quark-glucon plasma" by smashing atoms of gold together at velocities approaching the speed of light. To their surprise, this primordial glob was a liquid rather than a gas, despite a temperature of 2 trillion degrees Celsius -- which is 150,000 times hotter than the sun. "Every substance known to mankind before would evaporate and become a gas at 2 million, 3 million degrees," Dr. Dmitri Kharzeev told The New York Times. What kept hte substance in liquid form, he says, was a surprisingly strong interaction between the quarks and the gluons. The universe didn't stay liquid for very long, though. After about 20 seconds, the primordial soup began to turn into ordinary matter.

Born-Again Cadets

Born-again Christian wingnuts have become so aggressive in proselytizing at the U.S. Air Force Academy that 55 cadets have files formal harassment complaints. In response, the academy has begun a course called "Respecting the Spritual Values of All People," though some evangelical nutjobs are questioning the need to be tolerant since they are in the majority - bullies on the military playground.

Read more here.

Tweety's Bad Manners

Dada and I have been discussing Chris Matthews' bad manners on his show "Petrified Balls". We don't regularly watch "Oddball" but when we do, we've noticed that he sometimes talks over his guests rather than letting them finish their sentences. Without actually watching enough of the show to make us ill, we've concluded that his rude behavior is more evident when the following criteria are present:

a) the guest is a woman
b) he disagrees with the guest's opinion

Dada offered the following observation:

By the time we tuned to that channel, Chris Matthews was on. He was talking to Gen. Schwarzkopf and other Vietnam vets. But I had to do a program check to see if this was "Hardball" because he was letting all his guests (which, coincidentally, happened to be males) finish their sentences, finish their thoughts! Unlike his dominant overriding style with Amy Goodman we'd seen a night or two before. We don't watch that wank, but is that a trait of his? Lets the men (with whom he agrees) complete what they're saying and walk all over those with whom he disagrees? Is that how Matthew's Hardballs got it's name?

Or was it because it was a tribute to the 30th anniversary of our "noble" efforts in Vietnam that they reined him in and let his guests rue the fact we didn't win the war, largely in part because of the growing anti-war sentiments in this country. After all, we all know what would've happened if the North Vietnamese had won the war. All of Southeast Asia would be overrun with communism, Hawaii would probably be under a red flag. Oh wait, North Vietnam did win the war. Never mind.

Dada Remembers

April 30th the following message arrived from Dada:

...we volunteered to fold paper bags for a peace demonstration on Memorial Day weekend. The idea is to use these bags as luminarias. They will be lit the evening of the 28th at the Chamizal National Memorial. There will be one bag or lumaria for each soldier killed in Iraq. Well, it's a slow process, but we've done this while watching Amy Goodman. Last night there was a sense of accomplishment--we'd completed our task--all bags were folded. Or so we thought. We soon learned three more GI's had died in Irag yesterday. So we had more to fold. It then occurred to us, we'll not be done folding bags until the 28th of May; until just before they light the luminarias; until we get a last second update on that day's deaths in Iraq.

Whoa! Gotta go!! Just read today's headlines. Four more bags to fold!!!

Still Proud to be Uhmurican?

We almost never drive down into town to go to the movies any more (we made an exception for Fahrenheit 9/11). We submit a list of movie requests to Netflix and see movies much later than theater goers do and that's why we only recently viewed "Control Room" about Al Jazeera's coverage of the invasion of Iraq.

Before the actual invasion Hassan Ibrahim, a Sudanese journalist with Al Jazeera, and just one of the film's players who clearly admires the character of the United States and its people - if not the current administration and policies thereof - is quoted in the film as saying he had "absolute confidence in the United States Constitution and absolute confidence in the American people to stop this."

Well, we showed him that his admiration of our constitution and of our integrity as a people was misplaced.

Ibrahim later says, "Democracy or I'll shoot you!" won't work.

When the President Talks to God

Watch the video here or here and read the lyrics below. Conor Oberst rocks my world!

When the president talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our women's' rights
And send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute all down the line?
Is every issue black or white?
Does what God say ever change his mind
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Does he fake that drawl or merely nod?
Agree which convicts should be killed?
Where prisons should be built and filled?
Which voter fraud must be concealed
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
I wonder which one plays the better cop
We should find some jobs. the ghetto's broke
No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't
Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke
That's what God recommends

When the president talks to God
Do they drink near beer and go play golf
While they pick which countries to invade
Which Muslim souls still can be saved?
I guess god just calls a spade a spade
When the president talks to God

When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the president talks to God?

I doubt it

I doubt it

This was on The Tonight Show! Did Leno suddenly have an epiphany? Has he finally got over Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky and is he repenting for helping the Gropenfuhrer take over California?

Found at Daily KOS.