On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq. Since then, hostilities and death tolls continue to rise. Tensions between the once dominant Sunni minority and Shia majority also continue to escalate--From the CRS Report For Congress: Iraq Milestones Since The Ouster Of Saddam Hussein, updated June 19, 2007.
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves--Edward R Murrow
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Cost of the war

Cost of the War in Iraq
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ROVE HAS LEFT THE BUILDING
GONZALES HAS LEFT THE BUILDING
BLACKWATER WAS TOLD TO LEAVE THE BUILDING BUT PROBABLY WON'T

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05/30/2008

Obama's new and improved preacher/teacher

Forgive me Barack, the devil made me do it,

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A tale of the times

I take Rose's advice,
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Once upon a time there was a first son born to a first family. He was a wretched boy; petulant, dishonest, he loved to torture small animals. Someday he would have the world in his back pocket and he knew it. 
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A lot of people liked his dad because his dad helped bury inconvenient truths and crimes, keeping the rich and powerful safe at night. His mother was a very mean, sharp tongued woman and because number one son did not dare cross her he projected his weakness and cowardice on his father. Once, he even challenged his father to go mano a mano with him during a drunken rage.
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He wasn't a particularly bright Prince, but he had a knack for cult politics and under the tutelage of a very strange, evil minister named Rove, learned to use intimidation, threats and retribution skillfully. Then, one day, the Supreme Court had him crowned King of the United States.
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Although he had stopped drinking years before, he never conquered his addiction. Alcohol cravings were replaced by, other, more deadly cravings: power, money and military supremacy. Freud would say that thousands have died and millions are suffering as a result of number one's rather small penis.
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The country was lulled into a hypnotic sleep by disembodied voices. The ones that did not fall under its evil trance were demonized by the voices. Men with hairy, thick, tattoo laden forearms rode huge two wheeled machines and took names like Rolling Thunder, the Capitol Police and Blackwater Security in order to become enforcers of the new world order.
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Nowhere was it safe, not at home, work or just attending a casual protest. The King stacked every deck: the courts, the governorships, and the media to name a few. A country that had previously held only minority political prisoners, now locked up white men and women. It was impolite to suggest that a class war was underway. People were afraid and their own fear increased their vulnerability.
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Man-made wars and upheavals competed with earthquakes and typhoons. The once raucous but fabled city of New Orleans was sacrificed to the money Gods. Everywhere people felt abandoned.
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In the darkest hours, the last hours, from amongst the tired, the poor, the huddled masses a black prophet arose, yearning to set them free ... 
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To be continued ... Gene

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05/29/2008

A kinder and gentler snatch of the body

Look! You fools! You’re in danger! Can’t you see? They’re after you! They’re after all of us! Our wives…our children…they’re here already! You’re next! -- Dr. Miles Bennell -- The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

That was 1956, the good old days, when the enemy was a pod hidden in the basement and changing into you. I had nightmares. I was 6 and that movie scared me into my 20's. I thought I defeated those demons a long time ago, but, to quote another famous movie line, "They're Baaaack," this time as the alien replacement for the slightly dumpy, ineffective ex-presidential White House Spokesman, Scott McClellan.

The current White House press secretary Dana Perino encapsulated the Bush administration's quandry when she told reporters, "We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew." And, when the following coterie of White House muckity mucks: Rice, Rove, Fleischer, Bartlett and even the Grand Poobah himself, G.W.B., repeated the unknowable Scott mantra, as Marcellus, and not Hamlet once said, "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark."

I submit what's rotten is the real Scott McCellan, his corpse anyway. Yes, the pods are back only this time it seems that they are replacing the bad people with the good. Wait until G.W. goes from cad to pod to God, shaking loose the fibers and pod detritus, announcing and denouncing his failures, lies and unconstitutional behavior. How will the defenders of all-things-Bush react?

Imagine John Bolten without his smug, macho swagger. Condi back at the piano more in tune with Tori Amos than Vlad the Impaler.

The aliens are invading, replacing the evil doers one by one. Pretty soon we'll all be able to say, "This is not the George W. Bush we knew."

Pod casting from a secret basement location, Gene

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05/26/2008

Thoughts

Hi my name is Gene and I'm a recovering recoverer,
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Yes I've recovered again, not completely, I still want to sleep 14 hours a day and have no clarity of thought. My muscles are weak, my mind and desk are cluttered.
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politits.blogspot.com/ is still a reliable sidetrack. I read her with great relish. Her life is on display, and reading her can be a disturbingly intimate experience. One thing, she says that during her transplantation to New York City, where she hoped to find a better life, fuck the hubby and kids, she said she was molested. That it wasn't the roach infested appartment or the frightening neighborhood that hastened her departure, but an attack. I'm not sure that she just didn't invent that to give her a greater justification for leaving, that she couldn't admit that her dream was just another lie that she tried to convince herself of. I'm sorry Lisa.
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While I was hospitalized the Korean guy in the bed next to me had, and has, liver cancer. He was closer to death's doorstep than me, much closer. Another guy I talked to had liver disease and surely needs a transplant but they won't operate because of blood clots in his heart. It's as if the suffering population has been confined to these buildings that we call hospitals, in many cases not to get well, their medical conditions preclude that possibility, but rather to just be a part of this huge demographic, the waiting to die soon, populace. Maybe one day we'll learn a more humane way to treat them, to house them, to euthanize them if that be the case.
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In the meantime, I have to travail a crooked course, take this but not too much, take this but not too little. Get blood work to check if it's working, a tweak here a tweak there. Remember a hundred different things from a team of different people. You, the normal people, be grateful, be blessed.    Gene

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05/23/2008

I feel my pain

Send me to la, la land for a few days,
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I'm trying to come back, not from the abyss but from an abyss. I've been pretty sick over the past week. I cried with varying degrees of success to my doctors. I ask one doctor, what ever happened to prescribing pain killers, narcotics?
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Could it be that the drug companies value drugs that, in the short term, do nothing, but, instead, work through some kind of mechanism and need to be taken over long periods of time rather than drugs that address the problem directly making the doctors merely go between's in order to make everything look official and on the up and up while the profit motive is the real mechanism?
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In some cases, yes.
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The bone of contention here is the awful, gnawing headaches that I've had, more likely as a result of the ancillary effects of other drugs I'm taking. I say ancillary, rather than "side effect" because the unwanted effects are also a direct result of the drugs I'm taking . It merely serves the medical profession's image to call these undesirable effects something else.
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I was prescribed another drug, and given the number for the "Pain Clinic." It seems that the medical establishment has taken the lemons of narcotic addiction and made lemonade; a separate entity where pain can be dealt with, full well knowing the consequences should a patient be so foolish to expect an opiate based drug.
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During the winter one year I once saw a doctor that had shattered his hand by falling on the ice. The nurse later told me that this doctor refused any pain medication. I assumed that he had to prove to himself that pain can be managed through an act of will because that's how he expects his patients to deal with it.
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It reminds me of how alcoholics used to be treated; as weak willed individuals that didn't take responsibility for their actions. Some people still believe that but some things supersede will, some things supersede responsibility, are we to punish the sick because society needs a morality lesson?
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I don't know the answers but I have had my share of pain and I can say beyond a shadow of doubt, I'd rather be held hostage by pain relievers than be free to feel and go mad through the pain.  Gene
P.S. Damn, the liver clinic just called they want me to come in to the emergency room, somthing about my magnesium levels being too low and the anti-rejection medicine levels being too high.

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05/16/2008

Right wing talk radio host gets his comeuppance

Chris Matthews smacks down a right-wing, big-mouth, know-nothing,

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05/15/2008

Giving bugs their due

Life and death within a patio brick,  

Man, I just saw the weirdest thing. One of those bright, metallic green bugs was parked on my patio in the sun. If you've never seen one they look like they had a $20,000 custom paint job from the Pimp My Bug show. 

I happened to be walking by, and so did an ant. The $20,000, Pimp My Bug bug grabbed the ant and immediately began to fuck it up. It wasn't a piss ant, it was one of those half-way between a piss ant and a carpenter ant, ant, a midsized sedan ant.

I ran in the house to get a jar. Instinctively I knew that this behavior needed to be studied further and in a controlled environment. You seldom see anything praying on ants except on National Geographic and that cool Anteater cartoon that used to run between episodes of the Pink Panther cartoon. He (the Anteater) kind-of talked like Jackie Mason, blurting out the beginning of whatever he said in a rapid, staccato and then putting a huge emphasis at the end of every sentence. You-know-what-I-MEAN? Very Jewish and very funny, he once said, "If-Jesus-comes-back, we'll-kill-him-again!"

Approaching the mean, green bug for the second time, with jar in hand, he must have caught wind of me and flew off. I wondered if maybe I imagined him grabbing the ant and fucking it up. I looked real close and sure enough, there it was, a freshly mangled ant carcass. I was overjoyed. I had witnessed something rare, something sublime and I had a new appreciation for the Pimp My Bug bug. I've seen them before but never imagined they were anything other than an expression of nature's beauty and not blood thirsty predators waiting to lurch at whatever crossed their path and would fit between their nasty, hairy mandibles.

I once fed a fly to a praying Mantis and seeding spider webs with various small bugs was an integral part of my childhood. Who can forget the white-headed fly screaming, "Help me, help me," in that shrill, miniaturized, human/fly voice? Bugs have always been there for us, I think it's time we gave them a big, gracious thank you.  Thank you, Mr. Metallic Green Bug wherever you are.    Gene

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Directly from my heart to you

After the last, totally depressing blog entry, I've decided to lighten up and put on a happy face.
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I hope you understand; I get blue, I get real blue, I get dark blue, a murky, opaque, deep, dark blue, not that happy, electric, highly charged blue that you see in a Las Vegas neon light display encouraging you to throw caution and your hard earned money to the wind. It's more like the bottom of the ocean blue, where unknown, undiscovered things lie and the only life that can exist there is the life that has evolved there, wicked, solitary life, strangely beautiful and menacing.
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I want you to understand, really understand, that what I'm saying, comes Directly From My Heart To You  via R.W. Penniman (Little Richard), via Frank Zappa, via *Sugarcane Harris.  Gene
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* Thanks, Bill.

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05/13/2008

Note to self...

 Reflections on parenting,
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Aren't we confronted by it at every turn, the reticence to speak our mind, knowing that feelings and relationships hang in the balance? And once the dark science of navigating a path of expression is applied, the last stop sign abruptly appears: Keep your mouth shut, you are just as guilty.
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So, we tolerate less than favorable behavior, whether from our spouses, our adult children, or our peers, knowing that they exacerbate bad situations while we stand mute. Of course most people have a tipping point at which time they, we, may also exacerbate a bad situation by broaching the taboo of prescribing behavior.
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As humans, as our contact amongst others increases into ever widening circles, our control within those circles decreases, and so it should. There are those that do not respect these limits and we avoid them as surely as an acid bath. They are a curious breed and contain within their meddling certainty the capacity for much good and much evil. To find someone honest and wise and not driven by self interest is so rare, we barely give it a thought.
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But, egos being what they are, only allow the negatives to seep through while the intentions, no matter how true or instructive, are regarded as insolent intrusion.
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History and personal history both show that people will unknowingly, accept the consequences of a bad choice rather than heed a better one because consequences, albeit, perceived ones, are the very things that were first sought to be avoided, i.e.; I didn't want to raise an argumentative, difficult child but I did because I was argumentative and difficult in the raising of him.
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All this beating around the bush misses the point, I am upset with my daughter's child rearing skills. I was not a model father but I can't remember endlessly harping and carping over every minor infraction or act of defiance.
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The long view is not something that comes easily or naturally and is best acquired through example. Perhaps I didn't provide it, perhaps that is another part of the parent's burden; to see the truth, but too late, after our best opportunities have wilted and the fruit of our wisdom lies rotted on the vine.   Gene

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05/12/2008

O'Reilly pops his cork

Vintage O'Reilly,

Although this clip was posted on the basest of all media, AOL, it's still worth a look-see. He blows up good!

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