Bam! Just Like That! : Cosmo Kramer

By now everyone has seen or heard about Michael Richards losing it and spouting the "N word" while on stage at a comedy club in California. Not only did he come out with it, but he repeated it so many times I thought it was part of his routine. God bless the media for blowing it up larger than life itself and letting me know otherwise.
I mean, what would I have done or become if I had never known?
The truth be known, my life probably wouldn't have changed an iota without the education. And now with it, not so much, either.
Sure it was offensive. He intended it to be. But that doesn't make it lethal or truly injurous beyond someone's ego, regardless.
If those of us who can do so, were to call on the memory of the late Lenny Bruce we would see that he was a champion of trying to bring the "N word" and just about every other ethnic label and stereo type to their knees by pointing out that they were all, after all, simply words and in fact meaningless. And more to the point, these words were benign in their own right. It was Bruce's contention that it was our own sensitivity that was the malignancy. That and the nasty habit of human nature that creates these nicknames and euphemisms to further drive wedges between all cultures on a global scale. His repetition of the N word, the K word, the W word, the S word...you name the "word" he used them all over and over again in an attempt to desensitize us to them.
If the same words "Kramer" used had come from say, Eddie Murphy or Redd Foxx and was equally inclusive of the wrath that Richards felt he was somehow justified in publicly delivering, it would have never made YouTube, let alone the national news for 72 hours.
Certainly not when there's a whole lot more going on at this minute that hangs like the sword of Damocles over billions of people suffering the uncertainties and injustices of the human condition on this planet.
Forget the label folks and our differences will fade away, as well they should have by now.
The real offense of this whole "racist" incident...(I personally consider it a linguistics incident myself and little more) was the comment made by fellow comedian Paul Rodriguez who opined that "Even freedom of speech has its limitations..."
This is the only genuinely offensive and, yes, frightening thing I heard uttered with regard to the incident in the last three days!
Because when we start to believe that "freedom" of speech has any limitations what so ever, we're not only buying in to a whole 'nuther package than the one laid out by our constitution and the dreams of our founding fathers, but we're pretty much making a conscious choice between limitations AND freedom.
To accept the two concepts spoken in tandem and forget that they are mutually exclusive, is to accept an oxymoron of the highest order.
You either live with freedom or you live with limitations.
And so...while a few patrons of the Laugh Factory may have felt offended by what was said from the stage, I think the real problem, the real erosion of the fabric of our society and culture was ultimately dealt by the interviews afterwards.
By the way...have you ever heard Paul Rodriguez' routine especially in his younger days? I thought his depictions of street Latinos and blacks were often irreverent and could have been regarded by many as offensive. But I simply found him to be a funny guy, just like Michael Richards, actually. Rant or no rant. The words are the same, whether the passion was or not.
But Oh, I stand (somehow) corrected. He was, after all speaking of "his own". So that was perfectly acceptable.
Until that is, you realize that the worst ethnic slur and divisive remark that has been spoken for decades in this country and others is this whole attitude that, "I can talk about my own and call them anything I like but you can't talk the same way about my own! Because they happen to be MY own"...It's just an elitist wedge that keeps us from recognizing and accepting the fact that we're all really all from the same damned family after all.
And there really is no "(insert letter here)-word that can change any of that...unless you choose to buy in to it because you find it satisfying to have some illusionary badge of honor that sets you apart from that which you can never subtract yourself from in the first place. Well, that's the way it would seem until you're offended by mere words spoken to you from the stage of a small comedy club somewhere.
It's just a word, an outdated and tired label.
Stop using it to distance yourself and perhaps others will use it less.
Doing anything less to put an end to constantly being offended when other people (not of "your own") use it and then claiming you've been offended is pure bullshit!
Oops. Now I've offended the bovines!

Bam! Just Like That! Peace in Iraq: Toppling the scales of Justice

The one guy successful for keeping a lid on Sunni/Shia civil war and daily car bombings and law and order, keeping the hospitals/schools open, the roads repaired and the electricity and plumbing running for 2 decades at least at a 200% better rate than the last 3+ years has been convicted and sentenced for his policies being responsible for crimes against humanity in the 1982 killings of 148 people. A trial and verdict for another 100,000 people is pending.

(Double that if you like and it still stands diminished by at least 50% compared to even the the lowest marginal estimate which has been reported as the number of direct resultant deaths caused by the US invasion of Iraq, even if you were to cut the figures of that report by 200,000 fatal casualties. Applying the same margin of error to the other side of those figures however, the US gets the credit for 800,000 deaths rather than 400,000. The reported average is 600,000 souls. Any way you slice it...we're talking close to a half million souls on one end of the possibility spectrum or close to a million on the other! Hands down in either case a much bigger act of inhumanity than what Sadamm is to be hanged for.)

Meanwhile, in the space of 3+ years, US policy has been directly accountable for the deaths of a reported 600,000 civilians in Iraq (see above) and nearly 3000 Americans, has destroyed a large % of that country's infrastructure, caused the escalation of not only religious infighting but political as well, through out the region, and has been proven just as capable, culpable and deft as Saddam has been for the implementation of "imprisonment and torture" of the Iraqi people.

Given that during Iraq's US supported war against Iran in the 80's Saddam was the President of Iraq and acted against Iranian backed insurgencies and uprisings in his soveriegn nation with no more or less compassion than any world leader in the past historically has offered (see American Civil war)... the US invasion/occupation was a matter of choice on proved questionable cause against a soveriegn nation.
Who would appear to be the more successful peace keeper and the less inhumane of these two defendants?
For far less death and destruction, in his favor, Saddam was at least competent and efficient in securing Iraq and creating order out of chaos for the Iraqis.
We on the other hand, took that order and the involuntary and tragic sacrifices made leading up to it and returned Iraq to a chaos greater than existed prior to the strong handed policies of their last President.
So, tell me. Who's keeping the peace now?
Skip the hype and the character assasination that was generated to justify our invasion, packaged and sold on falsehoods.
Just do the math and more, view the aftermath.
According to findings of the kangaroo court put in place to aid my country in it's mercenary causes and the conquest of a regime, it would certainly seem that in the eyes of justice, having found a way to establish and maintain at least a moderate level of peace in Iraq is a far more henious crime to humanity than destroying it completely on a whim.
As I said, skip the spin. Do the math.
If afterwards you still think we're any less guilty than Saddam for what's been happening in Iraq...you will probably never "get it".

Fun Facts From Zach's Almanac: Please don't feed the animals!

I'm suffering from "electile" dysfunction and there's not a blue pill in the world that can possibly make me excited over running to the polls to throw my support behind what my 30 plus years of voting have proved to me to be every American's right to wallow in futility and the further entropy of our system of government.
To quote Robert Anton Wilson:
"If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.
If not voting could change the system it would be illegal."

Yet the time to vote has come upon us once more. Strike up the band. Bring out your babies to be kissed. Hang the bunting. Bend over. Grab your ankles. And wake me when it's over so I can once more wonder why it hurts when I sit down ever since my nap.
Across this great land of ours the race is on for many to vie for that dream job that but a couple hundred people can ever nab, out of a population of (now) 300 million.
A bucket o' perks including lobbyist favors and contributions, a great salary, a lifetime pension, medical coverage that the vast majority of people in this country literally die for each and every day and a status quo that has been milked by the same two interchangeable parties for so long that you can almost hear the mooing on Capitol Hill from New Jersey to San Francisco. But for the American people, the ones who actually feed this Matrix, hardly anything changes regardless of who gets an office in the Dome or a reserved seat on the floor.
Worse than stagnation, as a result of the last few elections, this country has somehow managed to back slide by 20 years, legislatively which by my observations will take at least 40 years of the rusty wheels of government screechingly turning to even deliver us to what forward momentum we had politically 10 years ago.
"Fuhgedabout" moving forward and/or addressing the real issues that face this country and it's policy that have been back burnered to pork barrel bill add-ons and party affiliations since even I was a lad.
While the hot button issues debated and moved upon remain to be centered around and never beyond moral directives, government interference into people's personal choices and social engineering in general, the same issues that matter to the people but not the politicians, evidently, keep getting the bums rush and an end run around any hope of definitive legislation. Social Security, medical care for the elderly and the truly infirmed at a fair price, a genuine move towards alternative energies and loosening the resource gluttony that has the world itself hacking up phlegm every morning, improving/providing some honest to God education to the young of this country instead of putting them in educational warehouses for 12 to 16 years simply for the purpose of controlling the flow of employable people into an already over loaded employment based economy. These are the same sorts of problems that have haunted the American people for decades and continue to remain un-addressed by the promise pimps with any real sincerity.
So me? I'll be a little more difficult to become aroused this election around. And 2008 looks like less of an attraction.
I'm going to do my part and I hope you will too.
Please, don't feed the animals.
You know, either the elephant or the jackass… becauseit's costing us really way too much to even think that we can afford pets like this anymore.
For all the good they seem to do, they just trash up the house...and the Senate too!

Bam! Just like that! Lebanon...

...or
Uh, this ain't your father's terrorism, Baby!

ter·ror·ism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tr-rzm)n.

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

War is terrorism too...just with a bigger budget.

Fun Facts from Zach's Almanac: Ah, summer.

The summer months are probably the hardest for sitting down to espouse in writing, moments of personal illumination.
Equally inhibiting is the knowing that many of ones min-epiphanies are often glaringly self evident to pretty much anyone that might happen by the site here and read them.
It's hard out here for a pseudo-philosopher!
But I've been back to this site now several times over the course of summer and to be honest with all of you…yeah, the picture of the dead guy is a downer and has got to go!
With this in mind and still coming up short on having any great observations or revelations to cover these walls with, I thought I'd share a small koan here with you.
If you're not familiar with the term, a "koan" is generally a short question or riddle, illustrating a ponderence in the shape of a "catch 22" that one can use to "step out of the box" every now and again whenever your immediate situation calls for you to change your perspective.
And then, guess what. You find it sticking to the inside of your head, repeating itself when you least expect it, like a tacky little pop song from the days of AM radio.
Probably the most well known koan is "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"
This one in particular slays me.

The quotes above are a bit different and not quite as brief. But a favorite koan of mine and not an all too terrible piece of advice on how we go about processing our observations on the world around ourselves.
I fell upon the first half of it in an early chapter of a book by a madman I've been re-reading this summer. I'm re-reading it specifically because I suspected there was more to it than just the story line and more than I was capable of understanding ten or 12 years ago. I was right.
The second half of this koan comes from a conversation in a chapter much further on in the book. But it occurred to me that bringing them together was a possibility and perhaps just what was intended all along by the author.
I'll be back later. Hope you make it back here sometime too.
(And should you be one of those people who actually miss the picture of the dead guy, you can still find him below.)

Bam! Just like that! The last waltz for al-Zarqawi (or Dancing in the U.S.A.)

Ok. So ya do what you gotta do and sometimes it's not pretty.
All in all, much like the sport of fishing, which pits the two most diverse extremes of the evolutionary food chain against each other, this world's modern super power, using the most advanced technology throughout all recorded history has managed to (after years of effort)track down and annihilate one of it's most recent annoying ideological, desert dwelling, fugitive enemies.
Like I said, sometimes you simply do what you've got to do.
I guess the problem I have with it, if any, is the once again global publication of the photograph of the corpse of the vanquished.
Such too, was the case with the sons of Saddam. And I thought we had perhaps learned better by now.
In the past in Somalia and in Bahgdad, when photos of our own murdered native sons and daughters we're put into global publication by the perpetrators, the general reaction from American leadership and it's public was outrage over such a callous display of barbarism and inhumanity. This went well beyond spiking the football after a touchdown. This was mean spirited and irreverent, a ridicule unbefitting the dead.
We on the other hand; who rally so often about the breech to moral and legal compacts and conventions when the "heathens" and "savages" do it, seem to have no compunction to respond in kind when it is we who manage to declare victory through the act of extinguishing the life force from any major (or minor) adversary in our chosen arena of battle. And then in our own manner, albeit elctronically, we prance the head of our victim on the tip of a spike so all the world can see our grand accomplishments.
A double standard?
You bet.
One in a list of many.
But if we ever think we can justifiably demand a higher set of moral standards from the world around us, be they friend or foe, we had better start honoring the same standards we demand of others. Or this whole civility of war and rules of engagement myth that everyone keeps demanding for themselves but shun for all others, will keep getting nastier and nastier as time and battles wear on.
Of course there's the option of refraining from killing for revenge, power, strategic positioning, resources and territory...but obviously, we have a huge way to go before we reach that level in the moral evolutionary progress.
While it is true that Zarqawi wasn't literally dragged through the streets and "nobody had a foot on his head", it is equally true (or perhaps simply self-evident) that we are being treated to the electronic equivalent of having his head paraded through the whole global village. It may as well be a bloody head on a stake for all apparent implications.
I would sooner have someone discredit the evidence and call "scam" because full blown, larger than life photos in color and b/w were not made available for max saturation, public appreciation as has been done for the last 24 hours.
It seems the lesser of two evils considering that the call going out during the publicity tour of this dead guy's head for the next few days is going to be yet another genius American marketing campaign for Jihadist recruitment in over 60 different countries world wide.
As if invading Iraq for pretenses less than founded in truth wasn't enough of a Madison Avenue gimme for a thousand "Osama Wants You!" posters.
Ah,we just give and give, don't we?
There just seems no end to our generosity, that way.

Bam! Just Like That: More on the "War".

With the recent "crack down" on several potential terrorist cells in Canada, Atlanta and elsewhere, I thought I'd riff a bit about this global "war on terror" that has wrapped us up as a nation and a culture as if in some grand, materialized Orwellian novel about totalitarianism, empiric manifestation and the current stiving for the creation of a global nationalism and the resistance that naturally follows such efforts.
The "war on terror", is little more than a nebulous, blanket of authoritianism and an open ended warrant to be used arbitrarily for the pursuit of any threat to the expansion of a universal culture that the various other cultures of the world are, and have been for some time made subject to yeilding to.
Born as a desperate reaction against an enemy with no physical state, no geographical coordinates, no definitive leadership, no uniforms and no long range, direct, conclusive objectives it may as well be fought by either faction involved under the banner of "Crush all those who would oppose us.", rather than feigning any implication that there is a genuine strategic defense that can hope to be effectively staged against such a phantasmic sort of adversary.
It's a war on anarchy and chaos but basically a war against the symptoms of two off kiltered, out of balance cultures that have both leaned too far to the right of what can be assimulated into a reality supported by our basic natural laws, whether they be animal, social or human.
History has shown that any attempt by any empire to create a universal, global culture has repeatedly and consistantly met with resistance, opposition and ultimately failure. I see no other possible outcome for us as the dominant empire or any Jihad as it's adversary.
It's the square peg of power and the will of man being jammed into the round hole of natural law and the world's natural balance which we as a species have been busily trying to tilt off axis through war and agression for approximately 5 to 10 thousands years. There will always be some one or many to oppose it.
Any solution will not come from force by any origin or by "pushing on a door that only opens by pulling on it".
It's time for the sake of cooling these 4,000 year embers and healing the planet and our species to find another option besides our inate stubborness and willingness to apply violence as our only conceivable tool.
This tool, for centuries has proven ineffective.
And this latest war, the "war on terror" appears to be just more of the same.
More to the crux of the matter a "universal, global culture" is an affront to the natural order for any life sustaining organism, man included.
Change that mind set among the world's leadership, charismatics, power hungry and power strong and perhaps, just perhaps, the solutions for the survival of any culture will become a little more feasible for securing any possible peaceful future for our species.

Bam! Just Like That!: The 1st cut is the deepest?

Yippee, Skippy!
Another tax cut is practically on its way!
This one's geared toward people who can afford to invest in more than a mortgage, utilities, food and gas each month.
("I ain't sayin'. I'm just sayin'. Know what I'm sayin'?")
For the person or household that makes $50 thou a year, this could mean $46 bucks a year. That's a whopping 88.4 cents a week…cold cash!
Of course the banner hung over our dugout still reads "Loser Circle" because these little cuts every now and again that amount to nickel and dime cash in hand for the majority of everyone… are creating a cash deficit for the systems, both federal and local that we as tax payers have to make good on in the form of real folding money.
While we continue to still choke up the taxes for often, even basic government services such as record keeping, issuing licenses, educating the children, putting out a house fire and police response, now we get to pay even higher prices for filing fees, use permits, public area usage fees and higher state/local/property and general taxes demanded for over the counter sales and for the privilege of working and having any income at all.
I figure just the announcement of this latest "cut" is going to have them salivating in the state capitals and city halls across America.
That $46 bucks a year is going to look a lot like more increased fees for local government services on the very real street level. And with an even greater cost than local gov't could have ever asked or hoped for originally from the "pollies" on Capital Hill. You see "We the people" have no recourse but to accept and pay a tax notice, while bills for funding before congress can be vetoed and defeated by our illustrious, always looking out for us, "representatives".
The food chain looks something like this:
The feds hide behind these tax cuts and give less to the states. The states then have less to give to the counties. As a result the counties then have no choice but to give less for basic operational funding to the cities… The money has got to come from somewhere, folks. And it "trickles down" on us.
Thus, a lousy $46 bucks, that appears to be a win for the little guy (that can invest)turns into at least that much being asked for basic services, individually, from all three of the above mentioned sources, turning that $46 windfall into a $150 to $200 deficit in most mid to low income homes.
People making $20,000…$30,000 or $40,000 per year aren't even in the running for this "tax cut". Yet they will surely have to foot the bill asked by state and local authorities for the dwindling funding.
People who are millionaires will retain approximately what any two of these households will live on, (before taxes) for a year.
If no one has noticed the rises in state/local government taxes and fees for services since the first "tax cut" went into effect some 3 or 4 years ago that yielded on average a dollar per day to the median household in America, then maybe my house is the exception to the rule and I'm making a point about nothing at all here but a very isolated and individual problem. The law of averages is against that being the case however; and you must know that.
And so, in this instance the deepest cut is hardly limited to the first, as the song and old adage would suggest. Each and every "cut" that meets legislative approval is akin to the death of 1000 cuts for the average home in this country and a benefit to the affluent.
But the myth will continue that we all have taxation with representation.
Some of us may gain some small amount of pocket change…less per week than what could get you on public transportation for a day, …in return everyone will be shelling out 3 to 4 times that amount once again for the exaggerated figures needed to make up for the diminishing federal funding for our local government services.
Yippee, Skippy!
Another tax cut is practically on its way!

"May I take your (natural) order? Or What Really Seperates Man from Animals...(maybe)

Slowly but surely time heals all wounds . . . and wounds all heels. As such, as the President's approval rating would imply, he and his posse are edging ever closer to getting their comeuppance.
Now that the message seems to be out there, I'm finding the means to back away from my angry obsession with the state of the union and it's leadership, just enough to get back to allowing the gray matter to meander into more philosophical pastures.
Of late I've been pondering just what sets mankind apart from our animal brethren.
There was a time I'd have told you that it was our ability to laugh. But I have a Lab-mix at home that actually smiles at us in our family. Kind of a sly, Elvis curling of the upper lip that was spooky until we confirmed that he only did this when he was glad to see one of us rather than when he wanted us to leave him be. And ok, it's a smile and not a laugh, but I figure if he can go that far, he probably has his moments where he secretly gets a chuckle or two outta stuff.
I've seen film footage too of dolphins and chimpanzees who, in their own fashion seemed to be sharing a guffaw or two. So maybe laughing isn't the thing that sets us apart.
Later I'd have contended that perhaps the difference between the species was that mankind could laugh at itself. But I've seen so little of that, that I've become either too jaded or cynical to put much weight behind that theory anymore.
Then it occurred to me that maybe what set us apart from them was our ability to actually comprehend that there are other species and such.
In all fairness however; I could never be so self aggrandizing as to think for a moment that I had any idea what goes on in, say an iguana's head, let alone share any real insight into what he or she can or could not comprehend.
Then recently a genuinely viable possibility was presented to me in a book I was reading. The author, by way of telling his tale proposed that mankind, at least modern mankind…say within the last 10,000 years of our approximately 3 million year (widely accepted) earthly existence was different from all the other animals on the planet because we are the only species who willingly (yet inexplicably) make it a practice to lock our food away from each other and all other of God's creatures and force our selves to find a means to win it back from storage through labor.
While this difference is cultural as opposed to organic, genetic or biological it does stand, along with other probable reasons as at least a part of the answer to my ponderence.
Figure. For the better part of 3 million years, man existed in a forage/hunt and gather mode and much like any species on the planet, food was basically anyone's for the taking. Plant a few seeds here, pull up a root there, hunt some game over there, catch a fish over here. Thankfully with better living through tool use, man as well as all other species were presented with a planet that yielded free food to everything and everyone.
Fast forward to the last 10,000 years and as a result of the agrarian revolution, you can't get a meal without a paycheck or a meal check of some sort anymore…anywhere. The millennia of the "free lunch" is over.
How did we get here? How did we come to believe that this was the better way to live rather than the means proven effective since our time began?
Because we're the more intelligent species? "The smartest monkeys"?
Well, while the rest of creation simply goes their way and eats off the fruit of the land without a care or a cost, we on the other hand spend 8, 10, 12 or more hours each day in voluntary bondage to other people in order that we might buy back a product that the earth has been producing and supplying all life forms with, since the day it cooled down from a fiery furnace for free. We've decided to depend and become reliant on others to provide our very nourishment, then we simply shake our heads and excuse it with a resigned "that's just the way it is!".
That's not the way it is, folks. That's what we accepted and choose to do, contrary to the natural laws that existed before the last 10,000 years. That's what we, unlike every and any other species on the planet have made of our existence on planet earth.
And for me, it goes a long way towards pointing out just what makes mankind different from the rest of the residents here on "God's little half acre".
We got to a point where we felt bold enough to mess with the natural order of things. And now we have little option but to work all week for "the man" in order to buy back the very food that the earth once gave us all for free as a birthright.
Why? As stated, For some reason or many, the culture of modern man agreed to let someone lock it all up!
Enjoy the weekend.
Monday and returning to the treadmill are just around the corner.

Fun Facts From Zach's Almanac

Under a bill approved by lawmakers today, the Mexican government has decided to decriminalize small amounts of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, even ecstasy for personal use.

I'm repeatedly amazed at how often the newer democracies of even third world countries manage to practice more progressive legislation that provides greater personal liberites than our own in spite of our being considered the world standard for liberty and freedom.

Meanhile, back in the good old U.S., even pictures of Marijuana are controlled substances.
Let freedom ring!

Some of the headlines in today's news:

"Bush aids told, if you want to go, go now."
Oh my God! Can I be excused too!

"Bus carrying pilgrims plunges off cliff"
Where did they find pilgrims in this day and age? I thought they were all gone centuries ago.

"Study calculates impact of 1906 earthquake."
This isn't "NEWS" anymore!

"Gas rises again at the pumps"
I believe I had predicted somewhere in one of these blogs that the $3 bucks a gallon we paid in September would look like a discount price by Memorial Day. Just another 10 billion dollar quarterly profit for the oil boys!

"What will sex be like in the future?"
Hell, I can't even remember what it was like in the past!

"Retiring Exxon honcho's $400 Million golden parachute"
See above re: gas prices.

"Suicide Bomber Kills 9 at Tel Aviv Eatery"
OK, repeat after me."H-o-m-i-c-i-d-e bomber". Ya meatheads! What don't you get about this after all these years?




And finally, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld defended his leadership today insisting that the reason he should remain Secretary is that both he and President Bush share common interests, goals, and size of genitalia. "And of course there will be detractors" he added, "But regardless of all the negative press you're reading, this IS in fact six inches! No. Really. It is!"

"Gypsy's Biz" or The new business of creating businesses to create business

The wife is the chief administrator for her office. Has been forever or at least since the day when someone first decided how to spell the words "business office". In the course of that time she has had to plan and organize relocations for the office and staff with the frequency only experienced by most army brats and their families, far more often than most families would consider uprooting themselves and taking up residence in another burrow, at any rate. A living testament to the illusion of the stability of business. Generally, she (the wife) shops around for the best price in office movers. You know those people who make their lively-hood moving desks and chairs and all the warmth and comforts of cubicles from one floor of a building to another or from one building to another. Office movers are not to be mistaken for office "movers and shakers" per se, because well, the former are as a rule a lot more industrious and productive than the latter. Perhaps it has something to do with not resting on the perks of a college degree which teaches little more than the theory of working for a living…but some (especially people with a degree) would disagree with this assessment, to be sure.
At any rate, recently, having decided to contract the services of a group of movers who had done an exemplary job for her in the past and at a fair price, the wife was informed that as corporate need would have it, she would have to solicit an agency bound by national corporate contract to secure and arrange the logistics of getting all the stuff from point A to point B.
As it turns out, said agency charged a much prettier penny than the originally found local moving company, but the best part was this…the agency proposed a price and informed the wife and her management that the company who would contact them for planning was, none other than the very company she had negotiated and come to terms with in the first place! Of course, being brokered by the agency, there were greater estimations of how many hours it would take, less flexibility in scheduling and the promise of a week worth of down time for the office in question…but hey for a few grand above and beyond the originally proposed deal negotiated between the Wife and the moving company, you can't expect everything, can you?
And here's the point of all this blather on my part…it would appear that all to often in the 21st century the gross national product has become the creation, not of product, not of service and not anything as lofty as even intellectual property. The business of American business is primarily the creation of more business! This agency for example is in the business of tacking on a large sum of money to the cost of a service performed by someone else like some Hollywood agent who reaps the benefits of profit for simply making a phone call, outsourcing a project from A to Z without so much as a detail of involvement and then have someone contact the Wife so that negotiations could then finally begin between the parties involved at that point in time. A middle man industry.
Case #2. Our family dentist was a good guy. We saw him for years, without so much as the need for treatment beyond the typical cleaning and entrenching every six months. I say "was" because unfortunately, on the way to the office one morning one of the big laws, the law of inertia over-rulled our dentist's plans for that day and he was stopped by an immovable object in the shape of another automobile which put a kink in the rest of his day, as well as for any and all so much as remotely involved and created quite a bit more inconvenience and heart ache to boot for his survivors. Yes, Virginia, it’s true. It seems "only the good (do) die young".
Fast forward about a year and now his practice is under new professional management and staff. In a half dozen visits since it's opening and close to a dozen visits since that time by me and the fam', we've compiled a large sum in payments for services, never really mentioned by our dearly departed dentist. The implications would be that the whole Fox family should be toothless hags based on the past prognosis' of our previous dental professional and drinking our meals through a straw. Suddenly, we are in need of root scalings, floride treatments and even fillings for potential, yet to develop cavities and all with insurance coverage estimates that have the accuracy of a long range weather forcast!
("Uh, did you want that in silver or the much more expensive matching white porcelin which is so-o much more attractive?"
"Who cares? This thing is so far back in my head, it would take a thousand years and an anthropologist studying ancient dentistry to dig up my remains to ever see the damned thing! Pack a piece of tin foil in there for all I give a hoot!")
Coincidence? I don't think so.
And don't get me wrong. These new guys are good folks too. With their hearts in the right place, I'm sure. But even in this instance…it's pretty obvious that we're dealing with a business whose primary concern is the business of creating more business. And maybe with a keenly sharp focus on keeping the electric billed paid for the office.
Case #3. I've been a geek and actively employed in the Information services since 1985. The drill used to go like this …You see an ad for a job, apply for it, perhaps get the interview, nail it and get the job. Or not, of course, but the onus and the job was a result of a direct feed between a technical person and a business or a company that needed to hire one and have them on staff for specific technical reasons. Now however, in the 21st century, 85% of all hiring for network administration and help desk support (if not outsourced overseas) is done through the use of technical service agencies. You never get to make personal contact with the employer on your own merit or identity. Instead you simply "represent" an agency, who will send you out on interviews, set your salary before hand, collect almost as much per hour for your actual labor should you get the position and will even negotiate with the potential employer the length of your employment before you even have the opportunity to accept it. Sometimes, two to six months later, the contract between the employer and the agency (having met it's expiration date) puts you back into the interviewing mode with a new potential employer for whom you can again represent not yourself, but the agency and get this,…if the previous employer wanted to, they can not, without either paying off the agency some kind of signing fee or facing breech of contract hire the said, God-actual technical person as a company employee, if they thought that person could walk on water.
Again, the business of creating business over rides any actual production or provision of services in the name of, what? Perhaps adding some unnecessary administration? What do these agencies do, actually? Nothing but act as a middle-person, make sometimes more or as much as the schlub who actually checks in and performs a task for the employer on a daily basis and no one seems to question the validity of this spirit-like and costly connection between the employer, laborer and the superficial yet etheral entity known as "the agency".

In this and many other instances which are expanding daily, folks, we have created a national product based on the creation of nothing more than making more business.
Some friends of mine from way back, were (and still are) some very fine musicians and song writers. They once penned and performed a tune called "Gypsy's Biz". The "biz" part was a reference to shit, or more specifically perhaps, the bullshit or scams put about by this roving demographic in the course of their trying to get by and get over.
This whole business of creating business that serves no purpose but to create more business reminds me of this song every damned time I see yet another example of it.
Some will say it's simply good and good for business. I see it as nothing more than "biz"!

Bam! Just like that!: Justice For All??

Jack Abramoff was sentenced Wednesday to shy of six years in some form of prison for committing fraud in the purchase of a fleet of gambling boats. The whole enchilada revolves around Jack and his cohort making a deal and copping a plea arrangement for "concocting a fake $23 million wire transfer to make it appear they were contributing their own money toward the purchase of the $147.5 million SunCruz Casinos gambling fleet. Based on that fraudulent transfer, lenders provided the pair with $60 million in financing". Nice work if you can get it. Or get away with it. And given that it's unlikely that this was Jack's first foray into this sort of affair, at least in this instance, he didn't. Well at least he scraped past the punishment fitting the crime possibilities, completely.
A car thief averages a five year term, just one year less for stealing a Crown Vic or a BMW than this white collar guy got for pilfering tens of millions, but when you got the connections Jack has these days, he can count on the kind of breaks even an honest to God Tony Soprano can only fantasize on.
You see, Jack has also been a busy boy in purchasing various congress-people from both sides of the aisle for some time now. A much more insidious activity and an easily interpreted act of subversion and perhaps treasonous behavior which in effect holds conspiratorial overtones involving manipulating and impeding the very functioning of our government…but as yet, little has come in the way of jurist prudence, even in this post 9/11 world of homeland security and tribunals for others for far, far lesser transgressions.
Back to the trial that was the diversion from those facts that it was. Jack will remain free while helping prosecutors with a vast bribery investigation involving members of Congress. This is truly more irony at it's best considering this is definitely a matter of the fox snitching out the chickens in the very coop in which the fox was performing his B&E. Smell like entrapment? After all, what's Jack possibly going to contribute to the investigations but the names of the very people he himself led down the garden path with plump and greedy promises. For this some of those he tempted with the apple will be publicly humiliated and if the voters even care months from now they may be cast from the Eden known as Washington.
For his cooperation, Jack will get an even further reduced sentence than his pending minimum plea-bargained one.
Lady Justice surely is blind. And more than likely tone deaf to boot!
In a country which hinges it's pride on equitable justice for all, there are people doing seven years for tampering with their electricity meters and under the laws of fifteen states you can get a life sentence for a nonviolent marijuana offense. To put as fine a point on this as necessary, there has been many more than one case documented in America of people getting life without parole for a joint or less.
In Montana you can get a life sentence for a first offense for simply growing one (that's o-n-e!) marijuana plant.
But relax, if you're charged under federal law, you might get off with a ten-year sentence.
Not Jack, however.
Sixty million plus in swindle, with who knows how much was then filtered into whose re-election campaigns and Voila…less than six years and diminishing based on whatever satisfaction pending Prosecutors may attest to at some undisclosed moment in the future.
Listen. The point I'm making is not a call to arms to legalize a natural substance which has been proven scientifically harmless, especially when compared to others that are truly destructive yet widely and legally available to the public.
My point is that there is a gross imbalance in our laws and justice system when Blue Collar Johnnies can face a decade of incarceration for a benign personal practice which harms no one and Jack Abramoff and the likes of Ken Lay and his posse can swindle, cheat and lie to the detriment of hundreds of thousands on a national level and have it pretty much swept under a rug because those high ranking people entertaining associations with these felons don't wish to be further implicated or exposed for putting their own interests ahead of those of the people, our government and our constitution.
These are the laws which we are told we must all live by. These are the laws that are manipulated through misdirection and contrivence by the very people we depend on to uphold them in perpetuity to the end of equal distribution for all.
Today's news about Abramoff just confirms what we've all seen repeatedly before.
And I don't know. I don't get it.
Justice like this doesn't mean Jack to most Americans, I figure.

Bam! Just like that! "Something wicked this way comes..."

If you listen carefully you may hear the faint sound of the drums of war being beaten to the cadence of our imminent and pending invasion of Iran. It's not quite as catchy as say, Ginger Baker, although there are some strains from "Toad" to it. Ok, maybe toadies would be more accurate. But it has all the repetitiveness that was offered up in the Gulf War I and II to remind one of Wipe Out, fer sure.
The chain of events are quite similar to what preceded our most recent invasion of Iraq. The leadership and the roles they play are pretty much the same. The initial rumblings and the creation of headlines based on "whisper campaigns" are being mirrored as well. Only the impetus and causes have shifted to any real noticeable degree. Yet you and I will hardly notice it for all the misinformation being treated as factual information. Actually the differences can hardly be detected at all if one considers that it all really boils down to sheer media manipulation and yet another crusade based on the creation of a nationalistic social environment built upon willfull suggestion and what will also most likely again later be revealed as yet another unfounded atmosphere of fear staged for just another less than genuine cause.
Given that more than a few impartial historians and military analysts have publicly expressed their conclusions that Iraq is now actively in the throes of a civil war and has been for approximately six months now, despite the claims of the Pentagon and our White House (that the car bombings and explosions have been driven and directed by "foreign insurgents" and al Queda whose only interests are anti-American activity,) there's evidently this and a whole lot of information about the current Iraq situation that remains beyond the grasp of those same millions of American taxpayers who, when polled to this day still believe against all evidence that Iraq has WMD's and poses a genuine threat to America. Many of them probably also believe that Elvis can still be spotted at the local roadside diner if they just remain ever vigilant for his arrival.
The truth however, I believe goes a little something like this.
In the event of an official civil war in Iraq between, (as the factions involved actually are,) the Shiites and the Sunni's, the US will no longer have a viable part in it other than having created the very power vacuum that allowed this civil war to be born, nurtured and grown into what it is today…A mess. As such, not only would the US lose it's valued foothold in ol' Mesopotamia, but our leaders will have even less than the vapor-ware they already maintain as a reason for our military efforts to date or to remain in that area of the globe since we as an occupation force can hardly favor one side of this civil war over the other without admittedly imposing our design on the very country that we so righteously claim to have liberated for the purpose of establishing Iraq's self determination. Can't have that now can we? At least not right up front.
So, what are the options? Well, if we just had another small country somewhere in the neighborhood where we could bivouac our troops, say in the name of American and world security in much the same way Iraq came in handy. Or due to the threat of nuclear weapons and WMDs in much the same way Iraq came in handy. Hey. Forget about the fact that Iran's President was elected democratically. It wasn't what our leadership considers a real democracy, anyway. Besides, technically, Saddam was elected by the people too. But again, not by the standards of our leadership. Maybe a few hanging chads and people turned away at the polls would have been more acceptable. Or perhaps eliminate the popular voice of the people completely and have a Supreme Court pick the winner…There…now we're talking a true democracy! At any rate, let's suppose we could get a few admonishments and imposed sanctions from the U.N. just to get the ball rolling. Again, in much the same design as was used with Iraq. Then, after generating just the right climate politically we can totally disregard the call from the U.N. to use diplomacy and once again "go it alone" with our coalition of the well heeled 3rd world nations and enter Iran…Well, hell. They were warned! But here's the beauty part. Ready? Once we have boots in Iran, we can just sit out the civil war across the street in Iraq, deliver training and weapons to which ever side we think would best uphold our ideals for a week or two at a time and then waltz back in whenever and as often as we can see an opening or the opportunity for a covert operation. Brilliant!
Stay in the middle east…annex two countries for the price of one and no one back here at home will be the wiser because, hey! Ain't you glad we're fighting the terrorists over there instead of in small town America??? You bet!
If you've been reading/watching the news lately the same scenario is beginning to play out as it did leading up to Iraq. Just yesterday, having not gained enough comfortable traction with the nuclear threat some would have us believe Iran poses (just like Saddam did)for us, the politico-military PR men have now started to accuse Iran of supplying new, special and much more dangerous explosives to the insurgents to use against our troops in Iraq. This is based on the same maybe's and might be's that were used to build a case for invading Iraq in the first place, if you recall. And still fails to hold any basis in fact.
Our political and military complex (if I may be so redundant) has perfected making statements to the press and international boards and bodies to the full extent of generating their own desired results for a select agenda in direct opposition to the better welfare of our nation and have repeatedly pimped a manipulated world response. Unfortunately, behind all too many of these sort of reality moldings, from Iran-Contra during the Reagan regime through now two gulf wars these proven falsehoods, although an effective means to a variety of agressive and futile ends have been found to be lacking in both honorable intent or factual accounting with an impecable consistency.
The signs are all around us, people. And here we likely go again. History has left us with little else to reasonably expect from these folks who currently lead us.

Fun Facts From Zach's Almanac: Anna's story...Support our Olympians...and DOH! Why the system is breaking down.

Having resurfaced from my previous dark, political postings and after cleansing my outlook/palate by catching up on some reading…(Vonnegut's Galapagos, actually, and just now digging into some Robert Anton Wilson, neither of which are likely to improve my jaundiced view of our species or our shared human condition…) I opened the news to find that our nation's highest court, having obviously vanquished and resolved the backlogged myriad of questions on justice for all which lay like a wasteland before it, posed to impact our nation of 270 million souls has turned it's focus on property law and whether or not one, lone person in the celebrity of Anna Nicole Smith is entitled to her 1.6 billion dollar inheritance. You go girl! So how many people really do you figure will be effected by this decision by the Supreme Court, anyway? Well there's Anna and her council…and the opposition and their council…and that's pretty much it if you don't count the staff at Elaine's or where ever Ms. Smith goes to celebrate her victory and inclusion into our history books as a precedent, afterwards…Well, there's me too. Because Anna and I go way back…Oh yeah…A little known bit of history that must have fell below the radar of the popparazzi…but that's a long story…and I'd really have to dream it …er, remember it first. As I recall "it was a dark and stormy night…"

The Winter Games are over…Well certainly not all of them as the press can attest to each day, but the ones that involve skiing and skating and curling. What the hell is curling about anyway? I can't remember the last time a bunch of kids waited anxiously for a car to pass so they could get back to continuing their game of curling on any side street of America. While no one could possibly doubt that our Olympians gave all these contests their best effort, we didn't fare as well as the media would have liked. Well, not everybody ever does. The disgust was obvious by the raspberries that immediately followed the games because our entrants didn't snarf up all the gold that was available. And let's face it. The same entities that generate profits from this volunteer sporting event stood to gain even more if we had swept the events. Bode, who was turned into the poster boy for down hill (and whose stock went like-wise after coming up short) was particularly dismissed after he failed to do what the hype had led everyone to expect from him. And Gawd forbid, our best figure skaters walked the thin ice of public admonishment after missing the opportunity for an international shut out. It would have been nice, if in the course of slamming these athletes representing the best in us after the fact, someone, anyone had taken a little front page ink to simply say "Thank you for your efforts." instead of dismissing them en mass and portraying them as a bunch of failures. If being able to compete with the world's very best and giving them a run for their money is failure…how many million of us, journalists included, fail to meet even that level of failure by miles? A fickle bunch we can appear to be when someone doesn't manage to bring home the gold in America. Or win a series or a Superbowl. Hell, from the press I've seen, even silver and bronze are worthless recyclable scrap unless they are awarded to some other country. Then just because we escaped it, it's value increases. It doesn't matter that the people who earned them are like up there with the very best in the world at what they do…And so much for teaching the kids that giving one's best is best and remains noble and appreciated. Careful folks our culture is once again showing. And in our culture, if you ain't first, you may as well be last because that's how you're going to be painted…and then of course, quickly forgotten.
Makes you wonder why our Olympians bother to try at all sometimes, doesn't it?

And finally…"DOH!"

CHICAGO Mar 1, 2006 (AP)—
The McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just one in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms. Americans apparently know more about "The Simpsons" than they do about the First Amendment.
Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half can name at least two members of the cartoon family, according to a survey.

Quick! Get me in touch with the Saint in charge of the Eternal Silver Lining!

Dear American Voters Fund and Midwestheroes.com

So you would have us believe all of these people are now in Iraq effectively pinned down and contained by our occupation?? And because of this America is to any degree safer beause of it?
What ever logic could this argument be based upon?
In May of 2004 the BBC reported that the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies announced it's findings that

"the group (al Qeada) has 18,000 potential operatives and
is present in more than 60 countries.".
Here's that original article.

BAM! Just like that!: Progress for America Voter Fund commercials

There's an awful lot of talk going on about those commercials that have been airing which appear to star mainstream Americans zealously espousing their support of the Bush administration's view on the progress and righteousness of our invasion of Iraq. (Personally I refuse to call it a "war", simply because "war" was never officially declared by Congress as it need be, which makes it all somewhat of an illegal "war" at best.)
The ads, are produced and paid for by a group called the Progress for America Voter Fund, another of the many 527 soft money organizations who, much like the philosophically opposed organization Moveon.org, have a tendency to spin things out with enough slant as to make the sinking Titanic seem like a level playing field.
The big difference this group can lay claim to, (although they wouldn't think of publicly doing so) is it's status as a tax-exempt organization with direct links to the current administration and promoting President Bush's "Agenda For America". Aside from raising $38 million for the President's 2004 bid, some of the causes also championed by this group are as far reaching as the privatization of Social Security, Judiciary appointments, and the now infamous Swift Boat Veterans group and campaign which was used to defame the only combat veteran in the last election.
If anyone is interested in knowing more about this org, click here for more info:
Here
A word of caution. Anyone (like me fer' instance!) can write and publish on the web, and as was seen recently on Wikipedia.com many of these web sources can be edited by anyone with a computer and an axe to grind to any extent of factuality or fiction. The same limitations certainly apply to the above link to SourceWatch.org which I have used as a reference. But it provides a wide range of references that will allow the curious to cross check media and other sources as a means to validate what you've read on this subject or others you find there.

Fun Facts From Zach's Almanac: Operation Quail-Safe...a trying perspective...and Le Pew to you.

Ok. So being Cheney isn't all it's cracked up to be. Of course, being one of his hunting buddies on his annual "shooting quail in a barrel" excursion is worse.
Hey, Dick! You can put somebody's eye out with one of those things! And sure accidents happen. But you should know Sir, that generally, we little people have to report these things, you know, mishaps where guns are involved…to the authorities a damned sight sooner than 24 hours after the fact.
Well, thank heaven the guy survived it. 'cause who knows? If he hadn't, by the time it hit the press, we might have been looking at a suicide.
Oh! Did I say that out loud?

Saddam showed up in court today. Resplendent in what would best be described in our culture as a house coat.
The guy is pissed.
Well, I would think I would be too if the world's largest super power was trying to bring me up on charges of being Hitler incarnate and all they could come up with to support that argument was an incident that happened 14 years ago and involved about 200 people, on anecdotal evidence alone…none of which has yet to place me either at the scene or directly responsible for whatever went on. You don't even need a Johnny Cockran to beat this rap O.J. Christ!
Go on. Ask Bush…Shit happens beyond the grasp of leadership. Look at F.E.M.A./Katrina fer cryin' out loud!
And all of this righteous pursuit of justice for 200 people over 14 years ago, from a source that took out about 10,000 Iraqi civilians in the very first days of "shock and awe" when it was decided to invade a country a half globe away, based on nothing but hubris. Yeah. I'd be meekly hangin' my head in shame. And behind it all, any person with an ounce of intelligence would be wondering why, (if any of these claims were meant to be taken seriously,)… why would anyone need to reach back to an incident 14 years in the past to prosecute? Why not bring up charges on some thing that happened like, 15 days or 15 minutes before the US invasion?
You'd think that if they had a better case to hang this crap on they'd be using it, don't cha? Well, sometimes the simplest answer is the correct one. And maybe they just don't have a good case. Not really. It's as possible as it is not. Well, there wasn't one for the war itself when you come to think about it. Was there?
Hey…I'm not sayin'… I'm just sayin'. Know what I'm sayin'? Just something to think about.

And finally, with today being the jour d' lamour…(as if my English spelling wasn't bad enough!) let me leave you with this…


…and really, who says it better than Pepe?

Fun Facts From Zach's Almanac: Hitting spammers where they live...I declare there's been no declaration...Budget "Newspeak"... and a mea culpa

I learned from CNNMoney today that plans might be in the works for AOL and Yahoo to begin charging for business emails.
The headline does imply a blanket type of charging structure. But further reading points out that the charge, if ever put into place would be on a $2 or $3 dollar per 1000 message scale and would exclude many of the billing and banking services in use by we little guys.
Naturally, there's a big stink about it from marketers. %$&^# em' if they can't take a joke!
Anything that can shut down my daily flow of emails on a wide range of subjects that I'm not interested in, embarrassed by, intimidated by, inundated with or simply tired of rifling through just to get to the one or two genuine messages I might receive from familiy or friends each day, and I'm a happy camper!
People have been looking for a way to unclutter the spam flow that grows larger every month…I think they may have finally found it.
Do us all a favor? Make it $100 per 1000 messages, just to make spamming a little less attractive to these guys.

I spent a little time today listening to the live coverage of the Senate Intelligence Committee (talk about oxymoronic!) hearings on eavesdropping. It was particularly interesting to hear how often the committee and the Attorney General mentioned how we are in a state of declared war, somehow justifying any and all extremes put in place, met or exceeded to gather intelligence. More interesting was the oft mentioned need to keep these operations in effect as long as there was an Al Qaida or less specifically "terrorism" in general.
This would imply that it's going to be a long, long, long time before any of these alleged indignities to our constitution are pulled back.
It's sure nice to know that "the American way of life" hasn't been changed and we're not going to let the fear of "terrorism" alter the way we run our government.
But quickly, can anyone remember what they were doing on the day Congress voted in the affirmative to declare war on either Afghanistan or Iraq? Or maybe when Congress voted to officially declare war on Al Qaida in particular or terrorism in general?
Simple. You can't. War, as historically defined in our country has never officially been declared on the two above mentioned countries. More so, it would be virtually impossible to have anyone sign a declaration of war on Al Queada, because it's not a state. And harder still to do so on terrorism, because you can't declare war on a noun!
The spin continues however. And if you listen to our legislators and leadership they will have you believing we are in a state of declared war. Actually, the President was given the right to use "whatever force he felt necessary to fight terrorism", which is not a declaration of war. But hey…maybe I'm just a nit picker. What the hell did the founding fathers know, anyway?

The budget figures came out today heralding a whooping $2.77 trillion dollars worth of spending and pushes the deficit to an all time high of $423 billion. Of the 141 government programs facing reductions or(many of which will wield an impact on social programs such as Medicare, reducing inflation adjustments for hospitals, nursing homes, home health care providers and hospices and slice interest allowances for educational loans...all of which, what this administration euphemistically calls) "reformed", the Iraq war effort and the military will experience marked increases in spending. So too is a provision for $4 billion earmarked for the drilling of oil in A.N.W.A.R., which has yet to meet congressional approval…or so we are led to believe.
In yet another brilliant piece of this admin's Orwellian newspeak, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Joshua B. Bolten told the press, "These are not cuts," Bolten said of the Medicare plans. "These are modest reductions in the rate of growth."
Well ya gotta give the Bush administration this much…they are creating smaller government. Unfortunately they're just going to turn the whole damned shooting match into something called a military junta!

Ok. So even if I am the founding Pope of The Church of the Eternal Silver Lining, it hasn't slipped my notice, that I may come off as a gloomy Gus in this and most of my blogs. My sincere apologies to all who visit here. There are some positively super things going on too. The Steelers managed to pull a Super Bowl win! There's a great two-fer sale going on at the local supermarket. And a super spring is already peeking around the corner.
Oh yeah, sure, I'd like to spend a little more time writing about light, happy music and such. Really. And as soon as I hear some, I'll be sure to pass it along.
Unfortunately, there's precious little of it to be found in current events these days.

BAM! Just like that!: Iran or "We won't be fooled again." (Will we?)

Anyone interested in seeing if history actually does repeat itself... or for that matter if anyone is foolish enough to allow it to happen, keep your eye on the latest spin coming out about Iran and it's nuclear program.
If you remember, it all begins with myth and the call for UN intervention, then a heavier stream of myth and propaganda is disseminated. Then the all important "coalition" building begins, followed by a total disregard for the UN and the world courts entirely and a staged invasion based on fear and the unsubstantiated claims of self defense against a country, all of which is found later to have no basis in truth or reality. But by then, "hey, we're there! We can't leave now, can we?? Gotta stay and rebuild what we've destroyed for a decade or two, don't we?"
The nation of Iran (and it's democratically elected leadership) insists that it's quest for nuclear research is for the purpose of energy and to rid itself of its own dependency on oil.
The west with similar interests, for some reason can't see this as a possibility for Iran and insists otherwise. Either way we have another instance of one nation completely disregarding the sovereignty of another in ways that would never be found acceptable if the empire were on the other foot.
The same subterfuge that was promoted for our attacking Iraq for unfounded claims of nukes and weapons of mass destruction has been put in motion and is already feeding a frenzy surrounding Iran, without so much as a speck of proof or evidence in support of the fearful claims just speculation,... but here we go again, folks.
And while our leadership is denying any but international US sympathizers the right to produce and bear unlimited nuclear energies and/or weaponry with good blessing, we are once again enforcing the very double standards and limited vision which has become the cause for pitting the east against the west and the Christian world against the Muslim whose natural repercussion is the same in reverse and the growth of "terrorism".
The message is the medium. Case in point? Just two days ago, while the whole Iran nuclear issue was picking up a full head of steam and creating friction and headlines around the world, our very own headlines were taunting how one of our nuclear research facilities, state side was not only still actively pursuing their own advances, research and studies in nuclear energy and weaponry, but the news was, how now this and other sites are being equipped and fortified with six barrel, 50 round per second gattling guns.

How we can insist upon whether or not any other particular foreign nation can or cannot pursue their own interests in the science of nuclear physics and whether or not their intentions might be peaceful, while nations such as India, Pakistan, France, Israel, England, China, Russia, Korea and ourselves hold immense stock piles of weapons of this nature, enough to obliterate life as we know it, is a Rubik's cube in itself.
Sure, Iran may prove to join the ranks of the many countries who have developed weapons based on the same destructive means as our sciences and technologies have sired and unfortunately deployed against others. In the scheme of things however, they (Iran) could never pose a threat as great as the one that already exists among the nations mentioned above. Nowhere near the threat!
On the other hand, perhaps all Iran cares to do is rise up from being a third world country and produce a cleaner, more efficient means of producing energy for them selves. Damn them for wanting to achieve progress!
Either way, it should not be the place of any world power or empire, our own or someone else's to condemn another country's efforts to do so as a threat, before a genuine threat has been identified and substantiated beyond mere speculation.
Surely, given a reversal in status, we would never accept sanctions, UN inspections or even the threat of military intervention as an alternative to pursuing our own interests… nuclear or otherwise.
Why would anyone think for a moment that Iran or any other country would respond any differently than we would to the unreasonable requests to do so??
Obviously, nothing has yet been learned by our leadership from their foray into Iraq or their rush to war now twice, in place of finding the means to coexist diplomatically and in good faith.
This is now shaping up to be yet another such invasion and occupation from the same folks who brought us Iraq I and II but now it looks like we're gearing up for Iran. Someone should consider being careful. The whole thing does little really except escalate the very terrorism we claim to be trying to diminish, doesn't it? And where's the surprise in that?? Why the whole scenario is beginning to stink of a "crusade" in every real sense of the word no matter what the official policy might claim.
We can't keep targeting the Arab countries in the middle east with our paternalism and dictates and come away with the people who live there thinking anything otherwise.
Have we the people learned anything? IF so will we even attempt to teach it to our leadership or simply be fooled again??
Unfortunately I fear we'll see which, in a very short while.

BAM! Just like that!: Bilbo Bush and "his Precious"

President Bush last night in his State of the Union pointed out that the US is addicted to oil and needs to overcome it. This, from a man who has spent the greater part of his life, being a street dealer for this particular "jones" of we american people…pandering to and pimping our addiciton to the benefit of the likes of himself, Dick Cheyney, Kenneth Lay and the whole cartel of energy drug dealers. "P-s-s-s-t! Wanna buy a barrel of oil? Good shit, Man. And only like, $60 bucks a barrel. It's that OPEC Black, Man…You;ll really get off on it, Dude! And here, here's a guzzler of a bong that will get you a whopping 9 miles per gallon to go with it."
Well, this epiphany finally came to him after a 5 years glut of SUVs have been allowed every tax break not available to any other fuel efficient vehicle all through the course of this administration's watch. The new revelation seems to have only now appeared to this President after his years of failure in the oil industry throughout his private sector ventures which have been reportedly funded on more than one occasion, with Arab money and wealthy OPEC associated friends,…and always at a personal profit to George Bush the Oil Man, above and beyond those experienced by those companies he had managed and that have historically tanked at least in part due to his particular level of managerial and business skills or lack thereof.
Bush and the Bush family's long term ties to the Saudis in general and the Bin Laden family in particular (allegedly reported to be to the tune of billions of dollars between he and his father's business interests) is wide and public knowledge.
Yet much like the long line of parading and aging rock and motion picture stars that fill the public service announcement time slots on late night television…(a majority of whom used and abused mass quantities of a variety of recreational drugs for years, unscathed by the law and made careers on that image)…now advise all to simply , "just say no!"... and our very own "oil man" of a President is calling for the same abstinence when it comes to the very resource that propelled him to where he is today.
Could this all be just the next inspired misdirection to reverse the A.N.W.A.R. oil drilling project that recently failed to pass muster in the legislature?
Perhaps as CNN polls are showing, most Americans would be willing to cough up another $1 per gallon to help us buy our independence from mid-eastern oil? Then again, wouldn't this sort of hike just add to the $10 billion per quarter profit margins reported by some of the major American oil companies just a few months ago when we as consumers were forced to pay upwards to $3 dollars per gallon based on fuzzy supply and demand misinformation? In this scenario, we could actually participate and create an imbalance in supply and demand. And also pay a dollar more per gallon to bring it upon ourselves. More expense for us the consumer and a justified reason for the oil companies to jam their prices and profits right through the roof! Oh! Where do I sign up for that self inflicted pain??

The facts of the matter remain, that if George Bush was truly a President concerned with America's dependence on foreign oil, he's had 5 years to implement some sort of initiative towards that end besides using our military to ensure the building of an oil pipeline through Afghanistan, Turkey and Iraq, and all the way to the Persian Gulf to aid that region distribute this natural resource for the advantage of the American oil companies. A plan with a commonly known blue print that is over 12 years in the making and by the same advisors and staff that serve him now and served his father in the White House prior to Clinton's two terms.

"Bilbo Bush". He knows the ring has its own dark nature. He's used it for years and it has brought him great fortune and power. And he now tells the rest of us in the shire under the hill that it is a truly evil thing. But would he honestly part with it and have done with all he has amassed from it or is this just yet another public feint made in an effort to distract us from possibly threatening to abscond "his precious" while he has every intention of using it again and still, to his and his entourage's own self serving and face saving purposes immediately and for years to come?

Fun Facts From Zach's Almanac: Well this sucks!

Yet another (Un)dead-beat politician!
On Friday, January 13, 2006, once pro wrestler Jonathan Sharkey (AKA The Impaler ) officially launched his bid to enter Minnesota's gubernatorial race under the banner of the "Vampyres, Witches and Pagans Party." He described himself as a "sanguinary vampire"... replete with the practice of biting people and drinking their blood. Also publicly disclosed and proudly, was his penchant for Satan worship. But claimed it to be more along the lines of "compassionate Satanism". His campaign pledges included the public impalement of terrorists, rapists, drug dealers, child abusers, repeat drunken drivers and anybody who preys on the elderly on the steps of the state capitol.
Sure. He's got a shot!
(In Minnesotan, that would translate to: "Ya. Sure. You betcha!")
Unfortunately for Mr. Sharkey…or would that be Count Sharkey(?)…by the time today's business was concluded he had been found to have two previously unanswered felony warrants from Indiana following him around on the campaign trail. He is currently escaping sunlight, silver bullets and sharpened wooden objects in a Princeton, MN jail cell and is awaiting extradition arrangements to be made in his behalf. Obviously, this is going to take a bite out of his bid to be Governor in Minnesota or anywhere else for that matter (sorry, couldn't resist. The devil made me do it!)…and just when there was finally a candidate for the people who showed such promise and possibility! But not to fret…he has already registered as a 2008 presidential candidate with the Federal Election Commission!
Watch out Hillary!

BAM! Just like that!: Listen up! The people are speaking!

Through three years, over 200 billion U.S. dollars and two U.S. occupied, war ravaged countries, (Afghanistan and Iraq) we too have been bombarded in America with the constant rhetoric that the right to vote and choose ones own government is the cornerstone of the very democracy that we must deliver to the world, through example and when need be, and of late through brutal, military force.
Yet in the wake of several elections held world wide by fledgling democracies, (both voluntarily or otherwise) the results and returns of said elections are more and more frequently devalued, degraded and dismissed by the same American elected leadership who until the ballots were counted and proved to be less than mirror philosophies of our own choosing, heralded as our victory in restoring to the world its new order.
Now the rhetoric is being spun out selectively and with shiny new qualifying conditionals, which insist that the right to vote is not so much democracy as is freedom and liberty (of some unknown definition) for the people of any given country or region.
Freedom and liberty, by just whose standards?
The degree of freedom and liberty in other countries is a matter to be addressed, implemented and enforced by the laws created by those governments and leaders fairly elected by the people of those countries in open and honest elections, not dictated or made to pass or fail on the standards or expectations of any other sovereignty or nation, no matter what the capital contributions or military influence might be from them. Nothing could be more basic, be it here or around the globe. In order for these laws and constitutional particulars to take place, the needed initial catalyst of freely held elections truly is the cornerstone. And as such the very germ of democracy, no matter what political shape it takes after conception.
A quick look around the globe at some of today's election results and the disdain with which they are being met by the one world super power who claims to be the standard bearer of democracy will tell you that obviously, there's more expected from these new democracies than what the precluding rhetoric would imply
In spite of the obvious popularity and support of their people to elect them by a far larger margin at times than either a Democrat or a Republican can hope for here, in America, the heart of democracy…
Venezuela's new President is dismissed by our leaders as a "wacko". Bolivia's newly elected populist leader is branded "leftist" and "foe of the U.S.". Iran's newly elected leadership is labeled and dismissed (in the least flattering manner) as a "fundamentalist, theocrat". And now, ignoring the will of the Palestinian people, their newly elected party of Hamas is being shunned and denied even the slightest recognition by the west because (it has been said repeatedly) "the US cannot support a government that advocates the destruction of another country".

[ZNOTE: Please see line one in sentence one of this blog for the glaring contradiction and hypocrisy behind this posture. Sure some governments couch their destructive tendencies behind terms like "regime change" or "delivering democracy" or "self defense" albeit against unfounded weapons threats…while others are just up front about their bad intentions…it's all regime change that these governments are ultimately after regardless of whether they use verbal flowers or spears …the end result is equally and ultimately destructive to another people in any event, however. Let's not split hairs on this. All acts of national aggression are done with one purpose… "regime change"!]

The big picture is once again being ignored at the expense of international cooperation and building cohesion in our global village. More likely, many heads of state, primarily Western and European are proving how rigidly obstinate they can be in first compelling the third world to become democratic, then insisting further that only one particular flavor of democracy will ever be acceptable in a partnership rather than on what should be an all inclusive world membership.
Many of us have had club houses as children. Many of us looked down on and excluded any other kid in the neighborhood who didn't agree with us on which super hero was the best, what TV show star ruled the air waves, or which was the best comic book. Based on this sort of criteria, all other kids or club houses with opposing views were excluded or warred upon as a result and based on this sort of commonality, each little cluster of neighborhood children would base the world standards on their own finite culture, needs and visions.
It's high time, the world leadership grew up and replaced this clubhouse mentality in if for nothing more, an appreciation for the fact that at this time in mankind's history, there is more genuinely democratic voting taking place than at any other time since. And in spite of the diversity in the types and politics of these newly choosen leaders of the people, it's been a great century for democracy itself.
Sure democracies are not always ideal. Sometimes the saints don't come marching in on the day following an election and there remains a vast difference between these democracies due to culture alone that can often be attributed to the 180 degree planetary location and philosophical bend.
Sometimes, in even the more experienced democracies, a near 50% of the people who accepted chosen leadership through elections remain diametrically opposed to who holds the reigns of power until their next opportunity to vote and speak to the issue of good leadership. But we hold the elections anyway and uphold the ultimate choice of the people.
That's the way democracy works. It's like having a call from an umpire in baseball. There's no choice but to accept it. "There's no crying in baseball!"
We cannot simply take our ball and go home because we don't like the call or in these cases, the person(s) elected.
There's no "home" to take our ball and go to.
Welcome to planet Earth… (Synonym: Home)
And we all have no choice but to play together regardless of the politics, whether it's here or Bolivia or Israel or Iran or Venezuela.
Look, on the bright side, democracy itself is working more now than ever before whether you can see eye to eye with those other kids in those other club houses or not. Work with it! Or chalk it up as yet another failed social experiment.
And, you know, we in America are not in possession of a perfect democracy either, although you would never suspect that during a state of the Union or during campaign season and certainly not by the speeches and music behind the fireworks displays on the 4th of July.
I mean, if you wish to see the imperfections of our system, look at the administration that we've put in power for the last 6 years!!!
What the hell were we thinking??

Fun Facts From Zach's Almanac: Some evolution theories can be goofy

Much thanks to "Anonymous" who left a comment on a previous post ("...and going to the dogs") which questioned whether or not there need be any missing link between Goofy and Pluto while advancing the hypothesis that due to Goofy's repeated propensities over time for displaying sophisticated human like behaviors and psychologies that...yes, perhaps the appearance of his species is possibly just another link in the evolutionary chain associated with we Homo sapiens.
Perhaps along with the early Java Man, and Cro-Magnon Man, the rightful place for our friend from Disney in the evolutionary chain might very well be that of "Goofy Man"?
Well, why the heck not, I say!!
I submit the following graphic exhibit to better demonstrate this theory as an aid to believers and nonbelievers alike.

[Z-note: Whether "Goofy Man's" placement on the evolutionary scale falls prior to, or after Homo Sapien has yet to be scientifically established. At this printing it's still difficult to say. Let's keep our eye on current events and see how the new year progresses!]

And thanks "Anonymous", ...whomever you are!

BAM! Just like that!: Gored

"...Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the full Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of nuclear missiles ready to be launched on a moment’s notice to completely annihilate the country? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when the last generation had to fight and win two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they did. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it’s up to us to do the very same thing!

We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens' right not only to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive branch and the President's apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law..."

Part of a speech given by Al Gore on Martin Luther King Day, 1/16/06 - Washington DC

Fun Facts From Zach's Almanac: Malice in Wonderland...the space program...and going to the dogs...

Alice couldn't have dreamed up a better piece of convoluted logic from any character she met in Wonderland.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006; Posted: 9:48 a.m. EST (14:48 GMT)
SAN QUENTIN, California (AP) -- In the end, California's oldest condemned inmate did not seem quite as feeble as his attorneys made him out to be in their efforts to save his life.
With the help of four big prison guards, Clarence Ray Allen shuffled from his wheelchair to a gurney inside San Quentin's death chamber early Tuesday, a day after his 76th birthday.
Having suffered a heart attack back in September, Allen had asked prison authorities to let him die if he went into cardiac arrest before his execution, a request prison officials said they would not honor.
"At no point are we not going to value the sanctity of life," said prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon. "We would resuscitate him, then execute him."
This warped perception has got to be right up there with George Carlin's observations on the incredibly odd yet insisted upon practice of sterilizing the needles used for lethal injection during capital punishment executions.
When is the guy being executed, going to possibly find the time to get an infection from someone failing to sterilize that equipment?? Tomorrow?


NASA had to once again scrub its launch of its ten-year mission to send a space craft to Pluto.
It's too bad really. What, now that hunger, poverty and disease have been eliminated here on earth and everybody can afford doctors and medicine, we really have nothing better to do with billions of dollars over the next decade but wait for up close and personal Polaroids of yet another heavenly piece of rock, void of life or even the atmosphere to sustain it. Hell, it isn't even in our approximate neighborhood!
Listen, I don't have a problem per se with the space program in general. Oh, I might squirm a bit if we went forward with developing some real estate already conquered beyond our immediate planet, but it would make sense to me in a fashion. Bio-spheres on the moon, colonization, mining or a geo-synchronistic, manned space station/complex that could be used for a way station or to perform scientific experimentation in zero gravity…I'm all for it, as a way of creating industry and massive employment right here on Terra Firma. But ten years of waiting and all that capital dedicated to Pluto just so a handful of techno-geeks can celebrate yet another nonevent on the front page of the national newspaper…? No pun intended, but that's a stretch, isn't it? Especially right on the heels of reaping all those benefits from doing the same with the rings of Saturn and crashing a washing machine into the the head of a comet? And don't forget those cute and lovable rovers we have on Mars! The returns on all these projects are doing us all a mountain of good down here, aren't they?

All this reminds me, since we're on about Pluto and such, of a quandary that has nagged at many of us (well, one or two of us, I suppose) since the fifties and long precedes the space program…
How come Pluto has to be a dog, but Goofy gets to be kind of a people-dog hybrid??
Sure, Goofy gets to wear clothes, communicate in a complex language, drive automobiles, has opposing thumbs and gets to go fishing and stuff with Mickey, but Pluto has to live like a dog? Lives in a dog house, tags along, chases sticks, chews bones… Doesn't anyone think we'd pick up on that?
Both of these guys are simply dogs, aren't they?
What's with the gap in their evolution and where's the missing link for these guys??
Now an answer to this would be valuable scientific research!
Well, for one or two of us, I suppose.
And that's just a few short of the slide rule guys who we see exuberant, each time some machine crashes down on the planet with yet another cup of space dust and debris.

Fun Facts From Zach's Almanac: "Fughedaboudit!"...Paint up - Fix up...much ado about nothing

Joey "The Clown" Lombardo was arrested in Chicago today for his involvement in several "hits" over the years. Specifically mentioned was the murder of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, for which Frank "the German" Schweihs was also implicated.
Federal agents grabbed Joey the Clown (a spry and dangerous 76 year old threat to society, fer sure!!) after they caught him meeting with someone they had under surveillance, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Friday night on its Web site, citing FBI officials.
Fuhgeddaboudit!
What language are we talkin' on dis planet here? Do all adults have club names like the crew from Spanky and Our Gang, or what? And why have I been missing out on it?

Yours truly just concluded 3 weekends of painting around the house. You know. Painting is when you go out and collect all your materials at the store for the project then after a day or so of sanding, washing and patching and sanding and washing in artificial lighting till dawn, you decide to open the can of paint but realize you don't have a screw driver so you go down to the basement to get one…but all you can find is a Phillips so you go out to the garage to get a slot type but can't find one of those. So maybe you'll get lucky if you take an hour or so to clean up your tools from projects past. When you get back upstairs you get the can open and begin to pour it into the pan but when you upright the can, you overcompensate and it goes out the back and all over the can, so you reach for the paint brush to catch it from the side of the can before it can drip all over the floor,… but then (and only then) you become aware that you didn't bring a brush up yet so you have to set the dripping can on the floor anyway while you go downstairs to get a brush. You take the loss. When you come back up you see the mess on the floor and reach for a wet rag…which you didn't prepare for because, really! What the hell, how hard can pouring a little paint into a pan be? A monkey could do it! Right? So you go back to the basement and grab a bucket but you can't find a rag so you look for an old Tee shirt in your bureau upstairs in the bedroom, but you've got it trashed as usual and you can't find old from new. So ok, maybe it's time to spend 30 or 45 minutes sorting out your underwear. Finally with a rag in tow that you needed a hack saw to rip into strips...(had to find the hacksaw in the garage!) and a bucket of water you proceded to the room you're painting (to use a term lightly) and you notice the foot prints leading to and from the room you were in, so now it's a matter of cleaning the spots from the rug and on the floor on your way to wiping down the sides of the can that you spilled from. The problem is, your sneekers should have been the 1st thing you cleaned up and because you didn't, the floor looks like an Authur Miller, step by step dance instruction for the Wat-u-see before the light comes on for ya and you take them off and throw them out the back door! Another damned hour shot to hell!
This finished you encroach upon the pan with the paint in it and you foresee wonderful and colorful things for the room you wanted to paint. So you begin by cutting the edges until you realize that you have to dismantle half of the appliances, electrical outlets, switches and plumbing in the room you want to work in. And for that you need the %@#@ Phillips screwdriver, but you can't remember where you put it now that you've cleaned up your tools in the garage in order to find the slot type screw driver because the last time you saw it was 3 hours ago!!! (Gr-r-r-r)
This horror story plays out in multiple chapters named after the different things you might need to finish the project,...like the roller, the masking tape, another cup of coffee, tunes, answering the phone, checking your email, writing a blog, earning a masters degree...for what seems to be an infinity of its own. Add a few repairs to the ceiling and floor and it compounds the mental torture exponentially!
Then eventually you get the damned paint on the walls and everything back in place while rendering a perfectly good shirt, jeans and sneekers totally useless for public use…and once it drys, you find out you need yet a second coat and a gazillion touch ups!
If any of this scenario sounds familiar to you, then you've certainly done your share of painting and you have my sincere sympathies.

"Bradjolina" are/is preggers and they arrived in Haiti…You know, Jennifer was never told about it and boy, is she ever…Oh, big hairy deal already!!! Enough!