Cable TV Propaganda

I saw a local Republican Congressman, not identified as a Republican, being interviewed in a Time/Warner room on CNN--a local public service message.

The Congressman said that the terrorists would just "hold out" for an end date (this "argument" just makes no sense since this is a civil war in Iraq, and I don't think anyone thinks that the "terrorists" aren't going full tilt there now).

The Congressman said that we should continue fighting because the people who have already died would be dishonored if we left without "winning."

How does he look in the face of a soldier now, he probably doesn't, and say, "Um, you have to continue fighting and risk your life to honor those who have died before you--nevermind that this is a war created and continued with lies."

Even if our soidiers WANT to die to honor those that died before them, should we allow that?

The Age of Consequences--It's here.

Fire.
Tornado.
Heat Wave.

I look at my town and see dry leaves as a danger, one spark away from fire. The animals at the zoo were nearly evacuated yesterday.

I look at Kansas, so near the towns where I grew up, and think about the tornadoes I saw then. And I imagine the brutal, enormous, awesome and raging tornadoes that must have passed through those towns the other day. I never saw anything like that as a kid.

I think of last summer in England in July and how my son slept in a diaper overnight, every night--unimaginable in my youth when I would visit every summer only to be surprised by the cold and damp.

Citibank is now investing billions of dollars into responses to climate change.

All we have to do is follow the money...it's here.

The Bully Guy

Looking at video feed on CNN I saw a picture of a guy taking a chain saw away from a worker in Kansas just so he could start it and stop it. Then I saw a video of the same guy doing a bad mimic of an African dance at the White House, and he pushed his way onto a drum that was physically attached to a drummer, just so he could beat it for a few beats (not well).

Why does our President have such a need to push and pull? I guess he DOES have a lot to prove.

Peace.

Bullies and the Culture of Life

It's striking to me that the party of Republicans, that thrives on bullying tactics and ill-defined machismo, barks about a "culture of life." It only counts, they say, when you're talking about unborn human beings. According to most conservatives, once we're out of our mother's wombs, we're on our own in this test called earth--don't ask them for humane respect again until you reach your heavenly father.

So in this great wash of LIFE that actually counts for the rest of us, and them, actually, we encounter a lot of tests that, in my opinion, show whether we are REALLY PRO-LIFE:

Clean air
Clean water
A healthy work and living environment that includes foods without poison and furninishings without chemicals.
Finding God in ourselves and others with traits like dignity, respect, and humane treatment of the insane or criminal.

So I'm appauled that we are using our soldiers to hold up a government that operates like this, until I remember that people in our country also LOVE the death penalty--so it's not like we can expect Republicans to see how brutal and inhuman this whole affair is.

Society Boozer hits the front page

I was just thinking how celebrities in NY are given so much respect by Hollywood actors because they live in NY. One thing that sets New Yorker's apart is that even if they are raging alcoholics, like so many of our Hollywood actors, they probably aren't going to hurt anybody because they can take taxi's and public transport, or heh, just walk home. That our boozers insist on jumping behind the wheel for an In and Out Burger has a lot to do with how we live out here. What's a neighborhood? If I got a DUI and couldn't use my car for three months I'd be okay for some things, but I'd sorely miss healthy, organic food.

And in that moneyed world where the law doesn't seem to matter because someone can easily pay for their law breaking activities (you know, that motivation that keeps most of us law abiding--we don't want to pay that fine or that ticket), whoops! Don't forget there is JAIL. Paris proves that their lawyer can't save them from a ticked off judge. So Hollywood Boozers and your lawyers, take heed.

And on a cultural note, when my friend got a DUI in her early 20s, she was appauled and so was her family; everyone treated it like a huge mistake. Thus, her situation never got to the point where her mom was complaining that tax payer money was being wasted on her daughter going to jail. Perhaps her mom was saying that the money would be better spent on rehab, but I somehow doubt that.

Good to know that serious mistakes can't always be washed away with money for the wealthy and powerful; for their sake and ours.

A message from my nearly 2 year old:

12 m0.h 230.0
230. bn 23.b in8b vvf ;

Parade of the Figure Head

I wondered this morning if Barbara and other women, e.g. Dr. Rice, have always tried to salvage Bush's reputation. Why in the world did the White House want it to be seen as his wife's idea to invite the Queen? Would it look too political if Bush did it himself? Does the Queen wonder why he wishes to parse the invitation in this way? It's BIZARRE! I can't imagine my husband saying to anyone, let alone royalty, "It was my wife's idea to invite you all over today, I did not think of it!" What's the message in that?! Everything is so spun out of that White House it was probably Dr. Rice, or Karl Rove who actually came up with this royal parade.

I guess the image they would like to create is of Bush fretting about how to win the already lost "war" and Barbara tapping on his shoulder saying, "Oh honey, let's invite the Queen!!!" I can't decide if that's better or worse than when I found Barbara babbling about restoring grasses and wildflowers on her ranch in Texas earlier in this Iraq debacle.

They are out of touch.

There was so much talk of our alliance. That was the only substance behind the dinner...here we are, formal allies and we have formal ties (sorry).

Well, I frankly think that a lot of Brits are probably going to flinch when they, like me, see a picture of their Queen next to our "King." In my mind, this dinner does nothing to unify the people of England with us, although many U.S. anglofiles will certainly be pleased by it. Republicans eat that stuff up--those f-ing Tories. So this was all about Bush's popularity at home. No historian is going to go, "Barbara invited the Queen and that changed the whole tone of Bush's failing Presidency!"

They want to be liked (or, maybe I mean, admired).

I hope that the Queen thought it was an opportunity to teach Bush something about war; from an academic but probably more accurate point of view.

Perhaps she said, "George, you're no Winston..." (-:

Peace.

Motivation and Interpretation

Last night my husband and I watched our Moxi recording of the Republican "debate." It was relentless in it's "I'm the meanest dog," appeal, and "Reagan is a god," or my new nickname for Reagan, the big woof woof (considering the pack mentality of these guys). You know, all the attitudes that have made us one of the world's most hated nations and a country full of bullies.

What bothered me the most about the rhetoric was the amount of blame they placed on immigrants, pregnant women and Democrats for America's problems. Here are a bunch of men, who are in the majority, blaming minorities for our country's "problems" within their majority's rule; both in society and within government. When Preppy Sam Brownback was asked how he responds to the laundry list of Republican corruptions and prosecutions, he made one corrupt Democrat sound like ten, and then he blamed society--reaching all the way into the homes of unmarried pregnant women. My God, don't have a baby out of wedlock and don't have an abortion or a Republican will bribe an Indian tribe! The way these guys casually stand over the gyneclogist's table is astounding--that's exactly where the Supreme Court has positioned every anti-choicer in our nation and these guys are eager to turn over Roe. No one asked how they can morally live with abortions in New York but not Louisiana.

Over and over the message from these guys was OBEY US WOMEN! FEAR US WORLD! The former message woud go over a lot better with me if they could just lead by example and say, TO MEN, "I don't go around f***ing women I'm not married to, or who would be put in the position of considering an abortion." Perhaps that's difficult to say? They certainly aren't promising any other incentives for bringing healthy pregnancies to term like universal prenatal care and postnatal support.

My point is, these guys take responsibility for stuff they shouldn't (building walls between here and Mexico, unwanted pregnancies), and don't take responsibility for the stuff they should (corruption in politics, government reform, bringing our troops home)!

Chris Matthews asked these men a dozen times, "How do we win the war [in Iraq]?"

What planet is he living on?

And the thing that really got me blogging about this was EVOLUTION.

Brownback, Trancredi, and Huckabee admitted they all think evolution doesn't exist in a yes or no question. These people scare me. There was no follow-up question on that!! That a few people just decide to reject mountains of evidence that scientists overwhelmingly agree on, and then gain political power, is scary. I did a little opposition research and think that the crucial part of this debate has to do with Darwin saying that evolution is "purposeless," or basically, without divine intention. So what? What does Darwin's INTERPRETATION or the data matter? So we don't like what Darwin SAID so we throw out the whole theory, that has HUGE evidence, and logic? Isn't GOD bigger than Darwin's WILL? Doesn't evolution look like a pretty AWESOME, perhaps DIVINE plan to you? I'll just never get creationists--why do they think Darwin's opinion is such a big woof woof?

I couldn't shake the idea that some people were watching the debate to find the biggest bully. That bullies somehow make them feel safe. Even now.