Holiday Message

So the freaking insanity continues. Add another log to the fire that blazes up from the blackened coals of bias - consuming and polarizing our society. The ludicrous sniping and propaganda which saturates this country with the bile of hostility, and which originates from both political camps concerning just about every damned aspect of modern life, is sickening at best. And a grand distraction of time, effort, and monumental consequences at it's worst.

This ubiquitous bipolar bitterness shames me as an American Citizen. A spoiled bunch of whining narcissists who have had it better than most of the world for generations - who not only don't appreciate that fact, but have seemingly cast aside the common sense to nurture it. Rabid finger pointing and hypercritical obsession over the most trivial of things - instead of problem solving and genuine solutions. Flaring tempers and vehement rhetoric devoid of reason are not the tools you use to build a grand article of furniture, nor are they of any more use in building and managing a grand homeland.

This is a country made up of many religions, races, and backgrounds. It is not owned by any one segment of the population any more than it should be governed by any one faction. It is a fair and equitable place where people should want to live in Harmony and Peace, free to worship whatever religion they chose. As long as you aren't being threatened with a club or watching your rights or chattel vanish over the next hill, it's not your concern how another lives or worships. The diversity and creativity of America's population is a major factor that made it a shining beacon to the world as the land of Freedom.

But the smokescreen of polarization is tearing this country down. Worse than roving bands of thieves in the dark forest, these people are stealing our ability to effect social change, to solve real problems, and even to simply get along with our neighbors. Lemmings who have to paint everything in life either Red or Blue.

But just as it's been throughout the eon, the actual truth lies somewhere between the two captious extremes. Truth - it is the White which separates the Red and Blue.

It's not a monochromatic world out there, it's Technicolor. And not many of us want to march lock-step to any particular brand of segregation, nor want it rammed down our throats. We want to live out our lives, free and unfettered by the mantra of hatred - especially when inspired by the lust for gold or acclaim. But row by row we continue to sow the seeds of resentment and bigotry. And the yield of this crop is social unrest. We inch another step towards resembling, more than anything, the extremists in Iraq with each passing day. Liberal this, and Neo-Con that. Christian this, and Muslim that. Us vs. Them. Like it or not, the Crusades are over. The hate-mongers can't even shut-up long enough to celebrate a holiday season that, for Christians, should represent peace, love, and understanding.

What would Jesus say about this?

Can't you people give it a rest for one day?
After all, isn't that what Christmas is about?

Live Long and Prosper! ;-)

Holiday Reading

It's not too late to snag your very own copy of:

Newt Gingrich's Bedtime Stories for Orphans
by Cathy Crimmins
and Tom Maeder
(Hardcover)


Just hop on over to BuzzFlash and make a small donation.


Just One Newtism and Your Kids Will Never Be Able To Forget!

Energy Blues

There is nothing new here. These words have all been uttered by myself, and by others before me. This country is coming to face one of the most critical changes of its existence. The era of plentiful energy is coming to a close, as are the careless lifestyles to which many have become accustomed. Unless new, clean technologies are developed which reduce our dependance on petroleum products, societal habits in this country will have to alter appreciably if we are to survive as a recognizable nation. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, after all, who really wants to spend 2 hours a day commuting across a gridlocked landscape of wasteful, avaricious development. Nevertheless, the American public is currently so consumption oriented that the change will be painful for some to accept.

I believe this is the ultimate impetus behind the PNAC group - to insure a subservient supply of "black gold" energy stores, and retain control of these supplies in the hands of a few selected entities who will piecemeal them out to the masses - for a price. 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Iraq was a smoke and mirrors distraction from the ultimate goal of having military superiority in the region. Unfortunately, the planners of this charade were utterly inept at predicting the human variable of the equation, and have apparently encountered far more resistance than expected. Instead of endearing the populace we have enraged them - which is looking very bad for preferential treatment in oil sales in the future from those in the region.

As Americans, we must decide whether our national policies shall include military dominance over a region for economic gains which benefit disproportionately few, or whether the vigorously ballyhooed "open and free market" creed will actually be allowed to function in a world marketplace. Whether we choose to resume our growth as a world leader in science and manufacturing, or endorse the crony dealings which pervade our interactions with the remainder of the world and even our own citizens - as the avaricious, wasteful thugs of the "global economy".

What say ye?

All The King's Horses

And all the King's Men, can't put Iraq together again.

OK, I admit it, resorting to a nursery rhyme in reference to a war which has cost nearly 3,000 American and Coalition and somewhere around 50,000 Iraqi civilian lives, and nearly a trillion taxpayer dollars is poor form. And yet the "Pottery Barn" analogy was uttered by Colin Powell as a warning to the Bush Administration that:

'You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,' he told the president. 'You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all.' Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it."

So I suppose that means the American Public alongside the Coalition of Cooked Intelligence are the proud owners of a country ripped apart by sectarian strife and bungled military intervention. What a helluva deal!

And after a year of listening to talking heads arguing over the semantics of whether this disaster is tantamount to "Civil War" or not, we still have no Skilled Craftsman in the Bush Aristocracy capable of repairing our broken, yet expensive new trinket.

Granted, I'm just a guy no one ever listens to until it's too late, but since no one else is stepping up to the plate with a realistic, workable solution, what follows is my plan to repair your broken mess.

As for Iraq, we can't leave, and we can't stay - we've reached an impasse that requires a totally new mindset which, quite frankly, is totally foreign to the hubristic clowns who engineered this mess. The only recourse at this late date is to negotiate with neighboring countries, especially Iran and Syria (and not the Administration's long standing farce comprised of self-interested manipulation), take what remaining troops haven't been killed or maimed, attempt to bring the European Leaders you so arrogantly pissed off back to the table for additional support to fill in where our own meager troops cannot, and monitor the borders of Iraq to eliminate external influences while letting these people hash it out on their own. Explain to the remaining (admittedly extremist) population what your intentions are, and mean what you say. Since most of the moderate, middle class Iraqis have fled due to the constant strife, this is going to be much harder to resolve than it had to be at the outset. And since the infrastructure of the country has been obliterated, and your crony contractors and business partners in crime have absconded with most of the funds allotted for the job, I suppose indictments and restoration of these funds would most definitely be in order. Allow these people to rebuild their own damned country, get the hell out, and leave them alone. And still, the pain and anger of this experience is going to linger in their minds for generations, but the first steps towards salvation is coming clean and making legitimate steps toward rectifying your own stupid mistakes.

Of course, another option is to commit mass genocide by nuking the entire region into non-existence. Why do I have the sinking feeling that you idiots have already have made up your minds...

Love Letters From Iran - Revisited

Back in May of 2006, while administration chickenhawks and their media shills were zealously promoting the preemptive bombing of Iran, I penned a column in response to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to President Bush.


(I believe Mahmood Ahmadi-Nejad is the proper Iranian form.)

Well, it's now November 30, and little has changed save for a slight reduction in the xenophobic rhetoric emanating from the White House and an ever increasing degree of hostilities in Iraq. And now we have this - Ahmadinejad has sent another letter addressing the American Public.

While Ahmadinejad's letter is again amply laced with theological rhetoric, it is also apparent that an open exchange is sought - and considering the current state of affairs in Iraq as well as the entirety of the Middle East, I believe the US has nothing to lose by establishing some common ground, which is clearly what Ahmadinejad desires. As well, it is impossible to justify the destruction of yet another sovereign country at the hands of a crop of deranged xenophobes who have so clearly been proven incompetent by their actions in Iraq.

While I am not so callow as to believe that enduring hugs and peace in the Middle East will result from serious talks with Iran, I do believe that a party free of vested interests has nothing to lose by negotiation, while those who would hold ulterior motives are want to plot, plan, and deceive to protect their hidden agenda from public exposure. The "wisdom" expounded by NeoCon enablers is that of babbling, profiteering fools.

Similar to the US, Ahmadinejad is a centralized voice representing many layers of archaic belief systems, economic interests, and power structures. While he may be, in fact, powerless to directly and immediately effect these many conflicting forces, social change generally occurs by many small steps, not overnight revolutions. Additionally, he appears to be an intelligent man, much more so than the idiots currently residing in the White House. Whether he can be trusted is a question that can only be answered through sincere interaction. There is plenty of sabre rattling and noxious verbal spew emanating from both camps, and towards both country's populace.

Besides, it's hard to hate someone you might actually respect - and that is the trepidation of the MIC enablers.

The Destruction of Free Speech

It was 1999 in Northern Florida, and I had created a personal web site devoted to hobbies and punditry. For me, it was the beginning of the Blogosphere. But it was also the beginning of a frightening chain of events that would forever change the way I looked at politics, big money, and the dark, seamy side of human nature. It also marked the onset of NeoCon attempts to quell the rising independent voice of the common man - the Blog.

One of the items on my Opinions page was a little story about a lawyer and his arsonist son I had sued while living in Georgia, and the outrageous behaviors about which I planned to write a book. Not even cognizant of his partisanship, I had naively assumed that the occurrences which followed while living in Georgia - including arsons, collusion and threats - were the work of a local gang of Dixie good old boys. This, in fact, is why I had moved to Florida - to escape the constant conjecture and whispers of the curious.

Even after a semi-truck attempt to run me down on I-95N at 3:00AM, I didn't make the connection. The semi incident was downplayed by others as the work of a "drug crazed fruit hauler", but this had the haunting earmarks of a man on a mission. He came from behind on a deserted road, and ended up less than 5 feet from my vehicle before I was able to accelerate away. He persisted in the chase, and through a bit of fancy maneuvering (I used to road race) got behind the tractor-trailer and quickly wrote down the tag number. The driver stood on the brakes of the huge truck, and the entire vehicle ended up sideways across the interstate, smoke billowing from the tires, and I though it a remarkable bit of driving that avoided it flipping. He attempted to block the road with the truck as he almost came to a complete stop. I waited until his speed was such that my vehicle was in its power band, and nailed it to accelerate around the deranged obstacle. The chase persisted for 20 miles, and at speeds over 120 mph. When I arrived at a dark exit, with no sign of the truck's headlights behind, I exited to find a pay phone. I called 911 and a man with a slovenly, redneck southern voice responded, "Duval County 911" and to whom I reported the incident, including the tag number which had no state designation, only dark blue lettering on a beige background. They did nothing, replying, "What do you want us to do about it?" Uhhh... Your job, perhaps?

This only a couple months after a concrete truck on J. Turner Butler Blvd in Jacksonville dumped a load of concrete square center on my windshield at 65 mph. The fact that the entire windshield didn't utterly collapse was a remarkable thing, as the sound was utterly deafening. And when I tried to catch the perpetrator, the local residents blocked my access to the truck and refused to let me pull it over. All I ever saw was a stringy, dark haired guy looking quite paranoid before I was again cut off, again, by a local motorist. And the truck had no tag at all.

Coincidence? Perhaps - but considering the trail of connections and events which transpired afterward, not likely. I reported the incidents, and the story of the lawyer in Georgia, to the local Jacksonville FBI office, but the only response I got was that they brought a few tape recorders in for repair.

Not only did the Bush Family invest in the Jacksonville Jaguars, local insurance magnet Tom Petway was instrumental in both the Jaguars and brother Jebs foray into Florida politics - just before brother George was installed as chimp-in-chief. I had been through every city in Florida looking for a place to live that wasn't "South Georgia", including Longboat Key, Clearwater, Tampa, Miami, Naples, Ft. Meyers, and Tallahassee (a place that truly made my skin crawl). But due to observances of voter fraud and vote tampering, and having looked over the GEMS tabulator software (then Global Election Systems) leaked to me by an associate, I planned to never return to Florida as something stank to high heaven - particularly the rabid influx of the GOP.

After placing the story on my web site, the threats in Florida started up again, and I ended up in Indianapolis, home of Benjamin Harrison and Eli Lilly (of which for some years Daddy Bush was a Director) where more threats occurred, and I ended up fleeing to NJ in the company of a lawyer. After a while, I decided to return to Georgia and figure out what the hell was going on. It's a long story, but suffice it to say that repeated collisions with GOP kingpins such as IBM, Lilly, and Emory University made for an exasperating 14 years, especially for a simple self-educated tech guy who had no inkling of the havoc the foul GOP machine would wreak upon the future of this country.

Digging into the backgrounds of school board and county commission members, IBM employees, energy companies, and people I though were friends, it turns out the people associated with this lawyer, directly and indirectly, were all NeoCon Republicans with names like Gingrich, Harrison, Still, Pounds, Boehner, Crews, Zell Miller - along with a few crony Judges who were later appointed to the state Supreme Court. It also turns out that several of these players came to Georgia from Houston Texas during the period of time that Republicans were trying to wrest control of local governments from Democratic hands. Most of the local players attended Atlanta's Emory between 1963 and 1965, a school now mired in controversy and cronyism alongside Atlanta's Grady Hospital.

Apparently, I was a flea which stood in the way of their engineering of the NeoCon GOP Empire. And the tools of the common man which they feared and desired to quash were free speech, and unfettered access to the Internet. So, with this story in mind, have a look at this Countdown with Keith Olbermann Video concerning sycophant Newt Gingrich and his assault on the free exchange of information and ideas.

And finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment about free speech, failed speakers, and the delusion of grandeur.

"This is a serious long term war," the man at the podium cried, "and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country."

Some, in the audience, must have thought they were hearing an arsonist give the keynote address at a convention of firefighters.

This was the annual Loeb First Amendment Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire - a public cherishing of Freedom of Speech - in the state with the two-fisted motto "Live Free Or Die."

And the arsonist at the microphone, the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, was insisting that we must attach an "on-off button" to Free Speech.

Interesting simile, don't you think? It will be a truly dark day in American History when the total sum of these traitor's behavior is unveiled, yet it will be an even darker day when it is concealed, for how will the public learn not to trust in another fear mongering, warped agenda as promoted by these treasonous fiends tomorrow, if it is not exposed to the harsh light of reality today.