Searching For A Better Way

Still searching for a better way...

2005-09-21T11:31:00.000-05:00

but I have a new home to do it from: The Kilted Liberal. It is still new and has bugs and you can expect many changes over the next few weeks as I figure out what the hell I am doing. I welcome any and all feedback, anything from this sucks to you are the Savior incarnate.

Right now nothing is up there but starting tomorrow there will be.

Remember:
The Kilted Liberal.

See you there!

Calling All Weather Witches Out There...

2005-09-21T06:38:00.000-05:00

and anyone else who wants to add energy into this effort.

This coming weekend I was really looking forward to going to Witchstock, a three day Pagan celebration of the Autumn Equinox. Not only is this one of the eight major Sabbats that Wiccan celebrate each year, it would also be a first time camping for my wife and my daughter. I really wanted some time off from the rat race, a chance to connect to Her in nature, that warm sense of community that I got the last year at Witchstock.

That may not be happening though... it looks like the Goddess may have other plans in the form of an itty bitty weather disturbance called Hurricane Rita. Witchstock is held in Central Texas and that is the projected path for Hurricane Rita.

This is where I am supposed to be going.

Taken from the National Hurricane Center's website at 11pm CST 8/20/05 showing the projected path of Hurricane Rita.

Now, let me be very clear about this; my concerns - missing a weekend of camping - are insignificant compared to the concerns for Corpus Christie, Galveston and Houston who will be nailed hard by this storm. I pray that the storm loses organization before it hits shore although the experts say that is about as likely as pigs flying. The refugees from Katrina are being bused from Houston to Arkansas so you really have to feel for them, fleeing hurricane number 2. Our focus, our efforts and our prayers should be for those in the path of the hurricane.

But if after all is said and done, I would selfishly like a weekend of community in nature with my wife and daughter.

Premonitions

2005-09-20T06:29:00.000-05:00

On Thursday, Mabon, the autumn equinox for those of you who are Pagan, I will be launching a new venture. I would be lying to you if I didn't bluntly admit what I feel about this which is truly a sense of fear and depression. Simply put, I am afraid of failing, that nobody will like what I have done. I hate the feeling but for about the past week I have had a deep sense of nausea whenever I think about it, a feeling so deep that I have not been doing work that is essential to the success of my idea. I am wishing that I had never started at this point.

Some of this is my normal stage fright. I have always had that. I suspect a lot is exhaustion; baby has not been resting well this past couple of nights, nor have I. Work is not going well, in fact, work is going so poorly that for the first time in a long time I am literally afraid that I will lose my job. Right now my wife is having some difficulties with breastfeeding and that is new; until now that had been going very, very smoothly. The upshot of that is that I see my wife struggle and I cannot help her so I find myself simply feeling stupid and useless.

Well, that is at least something I am good at; I have years of experience and practice feeling stupid and useless, or worse, smart and useless. My parents always told me that if I was going to do something I should be the best at it that I can be and I excel at tearing myself apart so perhaps it is good to have returned to my roots.

I really wish I had not become a father. I don't think I am fit to be one.

In a ballet of perfectly awful timing my managed healthcare provider has managed to screw up my perscription drugs so I have suddenly been forced off of one of my medications without warning. I will just as abruptly be returning to taking it whenever they fix the perscription. Every time I deal with them I get angry; it does not matter the lead time or the planning, they always seem to get it wrong.

I should shut up and focus on all the things I should be grateful for; all the bounty in my life today. But right now it all seems like ash and dust to me. So I will leave this post the way it is.

Conservatism Is A Disease

2005-09-19T06:35:00.000-05:00

Four days left until the big change; It will amaze and please you.

Well, I hope anyway.

One of the big problems with liberals and progressives is that at the drop of a hat they are usually willing to see the failures of market forces everywhere and tend to see government as a solution to a vast spectrum of problems. This is not always true; in fact often government is perfectly wrong as the solution to specific problems. Look at the question of energy generation for the Western United States for instance; the government solution was to dam up every trickle of water. This has created a series of environmental nighmares and the endagerment of several species that were supposed to be helped by the damming.

The converse is true of conservatives. Government, in their eyes, is always the enemy, stifling individual market freedom and liberty. Which leads to the creation of organization such as the Club for Growth who hold that by reducing taxes and government, automatically there will be market growth. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for tax reform, famously stated:

My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.

The Nation: Grover Norquist: 'Field Marshal' of the Bush Plan by Robert Dreyfuss, April 26, 2001

Well, now, eleven years after the Republicans have taken control of the House and the Senate, and four and half years after they have taken control of the White House, we can guage with some accuracy the result of this policy:

Picture by High Acidity

What we have seen is that among the Republicans there has been a kind of wierd, hybrid dual effect going on with government. Because they do not respect government at all, they have regarding it as being available to be looted; hence the rash of no bid contracts in Iraq and for the rebuilding of New Orleans and the constant stream of criminal behavior on the part of Republicans (for recent examples do a google search on coingate and Kentucky Governor Fletcher). But the second and actually worse part is that since they regard government in all of its forms as a bad thing, they have been willing to fill it, top to bottom with incompetent political hacks. Which is why almost a month after Hurricane Katrina hit, FEMA cannot get ice delivered to towns near New Orleans, fail to approve contracts for essential work on wastewater treatment facilities and leave skilled volunteers cooling their heels whilst people die.

The last effect power has had on Republicans is that they have failed utterly in their mission to shrink government. In their haste to loot and provide corporate welfare to their sponsors they have realized that government is the goose that lays golden eggs. It is hard to stem that addictive flow of federal money and they have proven unequal to the task. Government spending has ballooned under Republican rule in a ridiculous way.

The result is a nation that is rapidly going the way of third world nations. A small, extremely weathy upper classs, a vanishing middle class and burgeoning lower class. Guess who we tied with in infant mortality this year? Malaysia. Yep. Just a little bit above Nambia and well below any of the European countries.

America, the formerly beautiful.

Time to look for a cure for the disease of conservatism.

Four days.

Changes

2005-09-17T10:12:00.000-05:00

To my dear friend JJ, relax. Yes, it is going to be a big change in five days, but it will be a fun change for the better with lots of laughter, optimism, hope and baby pictures.

See? Not so bad...life is a journey and you have very kindly invited me to be a part of your adventure in a small way as a blog reader. I'm returning the favor.

Blogs just blow me away, what they can do. Conservative bloggers handed Dan Rather his own head on a plate; liberal bloggers found out that Jeff Gannon, White House Correspondent for Talon News, was also 8" uncut and $200/hr as a top. On Daily Kos a father asked for help with a runaway girl; she was found - rumor has it that even some conservative blogs helped on that one. Blogs tracked the horrors and the hopes of the aftermath of Katrina.

And blogs are only in their infancy. Kind of scary... Kinda cool. Open source democracy, how does it get better than that?

So bear with me here; changes are a good thing. It's like how Anwen gets all tense when her old diaper is off and blossoms into a huge smile when she realizes she is getting a fresh, clean one.

Five days. A fresh clean one.

Joke courtesy of Lilith Saintcrow:

Q: What does Bush think of Roe vs. Wade?

A: He doesn't care which way people get out of New Orleans!

Okay, sick yes, true, yes.

Bad News, Good News, And Missed Chances

2005-09-16T06:37:00.000-05:00

Just four short things today. First, six more days and things will start to be a little different around here...

He isn't, umm, actually drinking again is he? That might actually explain a lot of things...

Anwen went in for her four month appointment; she is wonderful and healthy at 15.5lbs and 25 inches. Things could not be better.

Finally, how come all you women had to wait till I was married and in my thirties before deciding to give this a try? I mean, come on, you gals could have just briefly - when I was about eighteen to twenty - given it a shot. But no.

Hey, no hard feelings though (no pun intended). I just want all of you to know that I am available anytime as a witness for that sort of thing. Just let me know.

Okay, I'll stop being a pig now.

Half NAAked Thursdays

2005-09-15T06:57:00.000-05:00

Again for those of you who have not seen this before, on Thursdays those of us who are members of a certain 12 step program participate in Half NAAked Thursdays where we post an image of ourselves and some sort of explanation of that image.

A little over four and one half years ago, celebrating my first birthday sober, I got this tattoo... well, the pentacle in the center on my first sober birthday and the surrounding knotwork with the wolf heads on the second anniversary. At the time I really felt that I wanted something large and permanant engraved in my skin to remind me that I had been sober one year. That way, I reasoned, if I ever drank again I would always know that I had been sober and happy once. I chose a pentacle because I had found a Pagan Higher Power: the Celtic Goddess Brigit. My thoughts were that if I ever became a Christian, even then the pentacle would have a great deal of meaning to me. But I have remained a Pagan, growing and exploring within that faith.

This is the pentacle that inspired me. I really like it because while it is clearly a pentacle it is also very stylized and Celtic.

The animals tattooed around the edge on the anniversary of my sobriety. The pentacle looked and felt lonesome on its own. It is based on the animals on the Basse-Yutz Celtic flagon found near Basse-Yutz in France. That flagon dates back to the Hallstatt era of Celtic history, probably about 800 BCE. Check out the link above and get a good look at the flagons. They are really beautiful.

Like everything in my sobriety and journey of faith, the meaning of the tattoo changes gradually over time. Nowadays when I think of my tattoo, I think of the old Native American story (well, most websites attribute it to the Cherokees, but who really knows? I've seen a version where it is the old Scottish story and another where the same story became a Russian folk tale):

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside all people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves."

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. And the two wolves fight each other fiercely for control of the spirit of each person."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

To me that is the perfect essence of Step Ten of the 12 Step program I work: Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Right now I am not too happy because I have chosen to feed the evil wolf and it is starting to eat me up...

We'll see; fights like this don't end overnight. Oh, and T-7 and counting...

Mom's Visit Went Well

2005-09-14T06:33:00.000-05:00

It was pretty much completely uneventful. Both she and Laura were not only civil, but actually quite pleasant to each other. It was a little eerie to observe, especially after a decade and a half of my mother expressing her dislike of Laura quite bluntly. All I can deduce is that both my mother and Laura have come to the conclusion that it serves nobody's interests to have a Anwen raised with out a grandmother (or Nana as my mother prefers).

To me that is a great relief.

So we had a calm, boring visit. The best possible kind of visit. My mother appeared to truly adore Anwen and that was a good feeling as well. Me? I am okay. Simply grateful that it went well.

Two weeks is Witchstock, the Mabon gathering at the Circle Star Ranch in central Texas. Three days camping in nature. I can't wait; I really need some time away from the city.

My apologies for not visiting your blogs in the past few days. You'll see why soon.

Eight days and counting.

Joke Of The Day; Beginning Countdown

2005-09-13T06:36:00.000-05:00

President Bush was visiting a primary school and he visited one of the classes. They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked the President if he would like to lead the discussion on the word "tragedy". So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a "tragedy".

One little boy stood up and offered: "If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a tractor runs over him and kills him, that would be a tragedy."

"No," said Bush, "that would be an accident."

A little girl raised her hand: "If a school bus carrying 50 children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy."

"I'm afraid not," explained the president. "That's what we would call a great loss."

The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Bush searched the room. "Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?"

Finally at the back of the room a small boy (lil Johnny) raised his hand. In a quiet voice he said: "If Air Force One carrying you and Mrs. Bush was struck by a "friendly fire" missile and blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy."

"Fantastic!" exclaimed Bush. "That's right. And can you tell me why that would be tragedy?"

"Well," says Lil Johnny, "It has to be a tragedy, because it sure as hell wouldn't be a great loss and it probably wouldn't be an accident either."

Announcement: In nine days things will be changing around here.

The Myth of the Local First Responders

2005-09-12T06:30:00.000-05:00

The latest lie being pushed by the right, is that when it comes to hurricanes and such, local authorities are first responders, state authorities are second responders and the federal government is a distant third, welcome in only by the invitation of the state and local authorities.

First of all, this is simply bullshit. The practical demonstration of that is the response by the federal government to the hurricanes in Florida over the course of 2004 a presidential election year, which I am sure had nothing to do with it. Federal officials were on the ground immediately after the hurricanes handing out money to ~~swing voters~~, I mean hurricane victims, like cash was candy. In case you doubt my word, please visit and read:

St. Petersburg Times: Unlike Andrew, aid's right on Charley's heels

FEMA Press Release On Charley

FEMA Press Release September 4th, 2004: Massive Federal Response Underway For Hurricane Frances

White House Press Release from September 6th, 2004: Responding to Hurricanes Charley and Frances
If one were not careful, one might get the impression that the only time Bush and his administration gives a shit is when their political ass is in the crack.

The real evidence to disprove this claim by conservatives that the federal government's hands were tied comes from the August 27th letter to President Bush by Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. The meat of the document is the first sentance: Under the provisions of Section 501 (a) of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 5121-5206 (Stafford Act), and implemented by 44 CFR § 206.35, I request that you declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period beginning August 26, 2005, and continuing. With that one sentance, Governor Blanco has invoked the act that gives the Federal Government authority to operate in Louisiana. Bush responded to this request by declaring Louisiana to be in a Federal State of Emergency on August 27th. Look at the text of Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana and remember this was written before the President had decided to blame the Democrats:

The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.

The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of (list of parishes edited out)...

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent Federal funding.

There you go. President Bush himself has ordered DHS and FEMA to get their asses in gear and save lives.

Once the Stafford Act was invoked by Governor Blanco then the authority for recovery and relief efforts reverts to the federal government, specifically the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency. You can read this for yourself in the National Response Plan that was created just for such emergencies. Figure 11 on page 93 really lays it out in graphical form and one thing is clear: once the President declares a state of emergency, the ball is in the feds court.

Don't believe the lies being told by the administration's spinmiesters. Whatever Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco screwed up, this wasn't it. They did everything they were supposed to in order to get federal aid. The failure to get federal aid stems from the fact that President Bush was on vacation, the FEMA and DHS heads were incompetent and the men and women trained to respond in our military were never given orders to act.

That is failure of leadership by our President and nobody else.

Worst. President. Ever.

Sorry to have been absent...

2005-09-11T22:49:00.000-05:00

My mother was in town and came to visit and saw the baby for the first time. I have not seen my mother in two and a half years, this was the first time Laura, my wife, has seen my mother in almost seven years. Lots of emotions and feelings going on...

Will be back.

Porn Is Not Necessarily A Good Thing

2005-09-09T06:33:00.000-05:00

Those who have followed this blog are aware that I have a fondness for naked women; in fact I rather feel the more, the better. I would even go further and say the more sexually explicit the better as well. Put more simply, I like porn.

Kind of.

I like porn because it is sexually arousing to me. I don't like the increased violence and degredation of the participants of porn that I percieve to be accelerating and getting worse. There are a host of issues wrapped up together in this and I'd like to simply lay them out and look at them:

Porn is very sex negative; the marketing is based on the premise that sex is bad, naughty and forbidden.

If the above is true, then women who participate in porn are "bad women."

In my perception violence in porn in increasing in many ways. Themes of rape, rape of drugged/intoxicated women, women blackmailed into sexual acts are more common and are evidently popular and profitable. These things are starting to appear in mainstream pornography in the form of choking and slapping the women.

Porn is very corporate and as with all commercial enterprise there is a race to see how cheaply the product can be made for the largest return. Cheap labor for porn can easily be found in poorer nations; if an American actress won't do it, maybe a Russian one will and for less money.

Interestingly enough, I heard an ad for a porn store ("New Fine Arts" is the name of it) on Air America Radio here in Dallas. That did not bother me, I hear that all the time on rock stations. What was interesting though was that the spin of the ad was that liberals and progressives are allied with the adult industry in support of free speech and what they called "creative sexual expression."

The same day I came across this book review by Eric Alterman (it is towards the bottom of his post). The book is called Pornified and is by Pamela Paul and it attacks the assumption that to be liberal, you must be pro-porn. Here is a excerpt of that review:

Were pornography actually so sexually liberating, there would be little outré or taboo about it all. Hypocrisy and guilt still dominate sexuality in many ways, and pornography isn’t the cure for Puritanism or the sign of its defeat – it’s an emblem of its ongoing power to isolate and stigmatize sexuality. A truly liberated society would be one in which there were no need to “rebel” via commercialized images of sex. Moreover, pornography is hardly revolutionary. Indeed, pornography may be the ultimate capitalist enterprise: low costs, large profit margins; a cheap labor force, readily available abroad if the home supply ever fails to satisfy; a broad-based market with easily identifiable target niches; multiple channels of distribution. Pornography is big business... Pornographers distort pornography into an issue of progressivism and civil liberties precisely because they have millions of dollars of profit on the line...

But there’s more to the pro-porn “rebellion.” The latest wave of pornography crusaders is not only railing against moralizing on the part of the government and organized religion, the argument that dominated the family values-obsessed Eighties. Today, pornography advocates are also and perhaps equally rebelling against what it views as the excesses of liberalism and feminism of the early 1990s...

...it’s hard to find anything more retrograde, repressive, or closed-minded than the sexual clichés peddled by pornographers. Rather than a mark of escape from the past, the dominant morality of pornography reeks of Puritan and Victorian prudery; it creates a world populated by virgins and whores, by women who are used and then shamed for being sexually voracious. Their degradation is deserved, according to the prim sexual vision of the pornographer.

This looks like a book I might need to squeeze onto my reading list. It is a debate worth having because while I am not exactly and advocate for a return to the puritian mold, I think there has to be a better, healthier, more positive way for us as a society to express our sexuality... a way that does not depend on the humiliation or punishment of women.

Just one more thing to think about.

I Am Delighted To Be Wrong.

2005-09-08T19:11:00.000-05:00

Apparently freedom of speech and press does still exist in America!

Yah! I love being wrong about things like this!

America Dying

2005-09-08T06:26:00.000-05:00

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

We are now hearing from a variety of sources that the press is being prevented from entering New Orleans. There are stories of photojournalists being ordered at gunpoint to surrender their cameras and memory cards. FEMA has quite clearly forbidden any photos being taken of recovered bodies. National guardsman are turning away the press at the outskirts of New Orleans. Brian Williams of MSNBC blogs what is going on:

While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads... the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

Brian Williams: Making the Quarter rounds

America has a long history of surpressing press freedoms during times of war and quite frequently the courts have upheld these restrictions. And we are at war. But this was a natural disaster, not a terrorist attack. There are no national security concerns here. A possible argument could be made for health concerns, but that has never before prevented journalists covering a disaster area.

Josh Marshall spells out what is going on in his usual polite and fairly mild manner:

Take a moment to note what's happening here: these are the marks of repressive government, which mixes inefficiency with authoritarianism. The crew that couldn't get key aid on the scene in time last week is coming in force now. And one of the key missions appears to be cutting off public information about what's happening in the city.

This is a domestic, natural disaster. Absent specific cases where members of the press would interfere or get in the way of some particular clean up operation, or perhaps demolition work, there is simply no reason why credentialed members of the press should not be able to cover everything that is happening in that city.

Think about it.

Talking Points Memo, 9/7/05

I have thought about this. I was going to blog on this last night, but rather I slept on it, or rather I tried to. I simply could not sleep well.

Political speech is supposed to be the most protected form of speech in this country. The only reason to ban media coverage of the New Orleans debacle is to provide political cover for an embattled administration. These orders are prima facia illegal and unconstitutional. But they stand today and I have yet to hear of any journalist challenging them.

For the first time ever I am seriously thinking about moving out of the United States of America. Europe would be the logical choice. How shameful that we used to be the beacon of liberty and individual freedom for them.

Last night I started to think about purchasing a gun, but honestly, what good would that do? Who would I be shooting at? What would it accomplish? There is no organized resistance to join - yet. I won't say I am a pacifist, but I would definitely prefer the route of peace. Besides which any resistance to this tinpot dictator would be so outgunned it would be laughable. I think Cindy Sheehan is lighting the path we must take. But I no longer think we will win. The enemies of individual freedom no longer recognize legal barriers to their activities and each time they succeed, it emboldens them to go further.

We must realize the United States of America is no longer a constitutional republic. Everything that underpins the freedom and liberties hard fought and won by our ancestors is being undone. There is no longer a guarantee of freedom of speech. We are now a fascist state similar to Italy in the hands of Mussolini or Spain under Franco. All those dire warnings about what made the Soviet Union so evil when I was growing up; that it was a one party state where that one party controlled the press and the government and dissent was not tolerated, all of that is coming true right here, right now.

I will grant the Republicans this: we are nothing like Nazi Germany. The Republicans don't have the brains to implement their fascism in such an organized, methodical manner. Karl Rove has, however, taken a page directly from the Nazi propaganda minister: It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion. -Joseph Goebbels

As Josh says, think on it.

This Is Bad...

2005-09-06T22:23:00.000-05:00

I'm just going to be blunt about it; if I post it tonight, it came from one of these three sources:
Talking Points Memo
Atrios' Eschaton
Daily Kos

DMORT (Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team) is saying they have been told to prepare for up to 40,000 dead. Hat tip goes to Talking Points Memo.

FEMA Director Michael Brown waited until five hours AFTER Katrina hit to order FEMA employees to the scene. He also gave them two days to get there. Their job? Convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public. So their primary purpose was PR.

What would you do with 1,000 trained volunteer firefighters in a national disaster? Well, if you're FEMA, you give them sexual harrassment training! But wait! Fifty of the firefighters were rushed to Louisiana! Did they get to help anyone? Why yes they did! They helped President Bush:

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.
Salt Lake Tribune: Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA

See those guys in the background?

Speaking of FEMA, remember the Director of FEMA's primary qualification for the job was that he worked on the Bush campaign. Well, guess how his two deputies got their jobs?

The Chief of Staff is a guy named Patrick Rhode. He planned events for President Bush’s campaign. Rhode has no emergency management experience whatsoever. From Rhode’s official bio:

His first position with the Bush Administration was as special assistant to the President and deputy director of National Advance Operations, a position he assumed in January 2001. Previously, Mr. Rhode served as deputy director of National Advance Operations for the George W. Bush Presidential Campaign, in Austin, Texas.

The Deputy Chief of Staff is Scott Morris. He was a press flak for Bush’s presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the company that produced Bush’s campaign commercials. He also has no emergency management experience. From Morris’s official bio:

Mr. Morris was also the marketing director for the world’s leading provider of e-business applications software in California, and worked for Maverick Media in Austin, Texas as a media strategist for the George W. Bush for President primary campaign and the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign.

Via ThinkProgress.

UnFUCKINGbelievable.

Worst. Administration. Ever.

Good News, Bad News

2005-09-06T06:29:00.000-05:00

I don't know what they are planning, but there is no question that they have mischief on their minds!

We've all had our share of bad news this past week; that is not surprising given current events. Overlooked in all of this is some remarkably good news - for the most part we do still see ourselves as members of a larger community. This weekend culminated in an orgy of donations from Americans who have things to give to those who are needy. Mountians of clothing, food, water and much, much more have been donated. Hundreds, possibly thousands of gallons of blood have been donated, one pint at a time. Some folks have opened up their homes to strangers; others have paid for hotel stays on their credit cards.

All of this hearkens to the America that I know and love. The America that does not worry what color skin the needy have, just worries that they needy get what they need. This is the America that send young men to Europe to die so that others would be free; so that the horrors of fascism would be ended. An America based upon the best in all of us. This America does not need to be told to sacrifice; it knows when it is time to give and does so with an open heart. It is a creedless, colorblind America.

I call it America the Beautiful.

For those of us Pagans out there, the Wildhunt Blog has the second Pagan Carnival up! This is a collection of some of the best Pagan blogging on the web for the past month. I was both surprised and humbled when Jason Pitzl-Waters emailed me a week or two ago to tell me he wanted to include me as a part of the Carnival, so yes, I am up there as well. Lilith Saintcrow is also there. I have to be very honest and tell you that I have not had a chance to read all the contributions but I have found that that the ones I have read are excellent. Clearly, my blogroll is going to be growing.

It's a whole new week out there and I for one am very optimistic that we are going to be seeing more and more of the best parts of America in the coming weeks and less of the negative, hateful side of America. I will still blog the bullshit from this administration, but I am slowing down and taking it easy unless something extreme merits a rant.

So go out and have a great week!

Oh, yeah, he's still: Worst President Ever.

Not Too Many Daily Outrages (And A Little Good News Tucked In There Too)

2005-09-05T21:01:00.000-05:00

In watching this disaster unfold, you must have wondered, as many have, what it would have looked like, had the President of the United States given a shit. We are fortunate to be able to show you exactly what it looked like to have a President who cared; it's too bad that he's not in office. It's good news, so read on:

They saw nature's unmatched fury up close.

Now they would see unbridled human compassion.

About 140 people - mostly elderly and infirm - arrived Saturday at McGhee Tyson Airport on a chartered mercy flight from hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, welcomed to East Tennessee by a bright sun and a host of medical professionals straining at the reins to help their fellow human beings without regard to whether they were on the clock.

The displaced hurricane victims came to Tennessee on a hastily arranged flight, accompanied by doctors and carrying whatever they had in boxes, bags or, in one case, an old suitcase tied up with rope.

Former Vice President Al Gore arranged the flight and was on board, but he declined to take credit for the airlift, fearing it would be "politicized."

...Gore chose not to speak to the assembled media, but he was seen in a black T-shirt and jeans moving rapidly from one side of the plane to the other assisting with the off-loading operation.

Knoxville News Sentinel: Gore accompanies about 140 arrivals from New Orleans but declines to take credit

Hat Tip goes to jj32 at Daily Kos

A man who knows the meaning of the words "hard work." I was proud to have voted for him in 2000, I am even more proud now. Thank you Mr. President.

The Senate Democrats have supposedly released a plan to deal with Katrina, however, it is not on the Senate Democrats website, so I'll hold off on it for now.

A pretty complete list of FEMA's fuckups is right here.

Wonkette catches the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, in yet another lie (Yes, I read Wonkette, please don't laugh at me. My excuse is that she is a hot redhead with a fetish for, um, how to say this, backdoor action so I, like many other men, find her irresistable).

Barbera Bush is still a fetid, nasty old cunt. The good news is, soon she'll be dead; I have my dancing shoes polished, waiting to visit her grave. Sorry, I hated her as First Lady, I detested her even more after realizing what she gave birth to and now with her racism and hatred on display, I see no need to be kind to her.

I am hearing that some of the fish in the Aquarium of the Americas survived and that the Zoo has done remarkably well. I am glad to hear that; now I want to hear more about what I can do to help the humans.

Daily Outrages

2005-09-04T23:03:00.000-05:00

Whew! I finally got smart and decided to do it all in one post late at night.

First, good news, the Superdome is finally empty. People have been removed from that living hell.

It's getting old to me to catalog the horrors of this tragedy; especially with my personal failing to do my utmost to help. Unless things change dramatically, we will not be taking anyone in. We are afraid because of the baby and we are using our fears as a justification for our selfishness. I am ashamed to type this, but it is the bottom line.

Nonetheless I feel compelled to blog the deliberate incompetence and malfeaseance of the administration because I truly believe that those in the administration are dangerous criminals who will destroy this nation unless they are stopped. They now have the ability to appoint two Supreme Court Justices. This will impact the nation for twenty, thirty or even fifty years. This is serious. The will handle the appointments the way they have handled Iraq and Katrina: with self-serving incompetence, disrespect for the nation's minorities and a complete disregard for reality. So let's get started with the horrors.

Revisiting Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff's claim that "there was no way to forsee the two part disaster of the hurricane and the levees failing." We now have on record Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center saying that both Chertoff and FEMA head Brown were briefed by him on the possible effects of the hurricane including the failure of the levees. The money quote:

"Mayfield said the strength of the storm and the potential disaster it could bring were made clear during both the briefings and in formal advisories, which warned of a storm surge capable of overtopping levees in New Orleans and winds strong enough to blow out windows of high-rise buildings,"

Editor and Publisher: Hurricane Center Director Tells Paper He Briefed Brown and Chertoff on Danger of Severe Flooding

So another lie bites the dust.

Do you guys recall the battle Hercules had with the hydra? It was a nine headed monster and each time he chopped off a head with his sword, two more heads took the fallen heads place to bite and menace him. That's what it is like, fighting this administration, the lies just keep on coming.

Next up is the lie that Governor Blanco never signed a state Declaration of Emergency which prevented the Federal Government from coming to the aid of Louisiana. There are a couple of points here. First of all, we have the letter from August 28th, 2005 in which Governor Blanco asks the President of the United States to declare a National State of Emergency which would override a State declaration anyway. We also have another letter posted to the State of Louisiana website from August 26th, 2005 which declares Louisiana to be in a State of Emergency from August 26th to September 25, 2005.

Now this lie above about the state of emergency is truly a remarkable lie. First of all, because the Washington Post and Newsweek report this claim from an anonymous administration source as though it were gospel truth. Now, the post has gone back and edited that story to correct the deliberate lie told to them by that anonymous source; as of this blog entry, Newsweek had not.

What makes this a remarkable lie is this: the source who lied to these reporters was absolutely confident that they would not even bother to research the claim. The source must have known that a simple visit to the State of Louisiana's website would disprove his lie, but felt certain these "journalists" would not bother to do so - and he was right. Neither of them did, and only the Post has retroactively corrected the lie. Secondly, the only defense the administration has is a beauracratic the-State-did-not-fill-out-the-right-paperwork-defense. That is insane and stupid on its face. First, it appears the state did actually do the right paperwork and second the excuse itself is simply disgusting. If Bush was the strong leader he pretends to be, he would have gone and authorized any expense and effort necessary.

All of the above comes from my reactions to posts by Joshua Micah Marshall on his truly amazing blog Talking Points Memo. He deserves full credit for the work he has done on this.

Next outrage in line is what is happening in the small towns outside New Orleans. Today on Meet The Press, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard was interviewed by Tim Russert. Before we go into what was said, let me note: Tim Russert is also carrying water for this administration, trying to shift the blame to the state and local authorities as this poor man is crying and repeating that FEMA has been the problem from day one. Excerpt:

Sir, they were told like me. Every single day. The cavalry is coming. On the federal level. The cavalry is coming. The cavalry is coming. The cavalry is coming. I have just begun to hear the hooves of the cavalry. The cavalry is still not here yet, but I have begun to hear the hooves and were almost a week out.

Three quick examples. We had Wal-mart deliver three trucks of water. Trailer trucks of water. Fema turned them back, said we didn't need them. This was a week go. We had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a coast guard vessel docked in my parish. The coast guard said come get the fuel right way. When we got there with our trucks, they got a word, FEMA says don't give you the fuel. Yesterday, yesterday, fema comes in and cuts all our emergency communications lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in. he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards said no one is getting near these lines.
...

The guy who runs this building I'm in. Emergency management. He's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said. Are you coming. Son? Is somebody coming? And he said yeah. Mama. Somebody's coming to get you.. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday. And she drowned Friday night. And she drowned Friday night. Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The Secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For god's sakes, just shut up and send us somebody.

via Atrios at Eschaton

Now, I have gotten an email reacting to my posts accusing me of making this stuff up. Well, then I guess that in addition to faking the state of Louisiana's website, I also faked the video of this interview. Warning: it is very hard to watch. This poor man is so upset, all he wants his help for the residents of his parish. It is sickening.

On Daily Kos, Georgia 10 (who must be one of the best and brightest minds of the progressive movement today IMO) patiently went through the Congressional Record and found literally years worth of pleas from Louisiana's Representatives and Senators for funding to improve the levees. Literally years. You can read Georgia 10's hard work right here.

There is so much more, but I am at my outrage max for the night. Please, tell your friends and neighbors about this, please.

May The President Burn In Hell And May He Go There Soon

2005-09-03T22:56:00.000-05:00

From the AP wire:

In St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, just south of New Orleans, victims of the hurricane are still waiting for food and water and for buses to escape the floodwaters, (US Representative Charlie) Melancon said. And for the entire time Bush was in the state, the congressman said, a ban on helicopter flights further stalled the delivery of food and supplies.Congressman can't get Bush on the line

From Laura Rozen:

There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.

ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.

The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.

War and Piece: If he could go to Baghdad, why didn't Bush go to the New Orleans Superdome or the Convention Center?

Video is here. It helps if you speak German. Translation from Daily Kos: Bottom line: When the convoy of the President arrived, hectic activity broke out for the first time, bulldozers appeared and cleared areas that didn't need clearing because nobody was still living there, and when the President disappeared, so did the bulldozers and workers.
Christine Adelhardt, the reporter, said, that the fake scenario shocked her as much as the destruction she had seen.

I am just sick to my stomach.

Oh, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist has died. Didn't like the sonofabitch, but may he rest in peace with the God of his understanding.

Late Updates...

2005-09-03T21:40:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry my blog has been hard to read... I have been so angry it is eating into my attitude at work and at home. That's not acceptable and it means that I am not spiritually fit.

Maybe I should call my sponsor... you know, the one I haven't called in over a week because I am so embarrassed that I missed her getting her ten year sober birthday chip... Yeah, you can color me ashamed. I did call her on her birthday and sing happy birthday to her, but considering how poorly I sing, that's probably more of a negative than a positive.

Laura and I have not decided whether or not to take someone in. The fear of something happening to the baby is the issue. There is really no question that if it were the two of us, we'd already have done it. Rational or not, I understand Laura's fear because I share it. At the same time this would be the way to contribute. So I am feeling more shame right there.

Before I go, more news...

At today's press conference, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asserted a two pronged defense of the handling of rescue and relief efforts:

He said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans.

He blamed Governor Kathleen Blanco, stating that she either failed to ask for military, FEMA or National Guard aid or, at the very least, failed to use the proper legal channels to request this assistance.

Nice try on both. Let's demolish contention number one and for once, I don't have to scour the net for proof; I can cite the exact same CNN story that reported on the Chertoff press conference. That's right: CNN IS PRACTICING ACTUAL JOURNALISM. Don't worry, I'm sure they'll recover and go back to being the all missing white women all the time network. But anyway from CNN:

Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.

But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years.

CNN: Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist

The whole story reads like that. A paragraph of Chertoff's lying followed by a paragraph, usually bolstered with quotes, links or other evidence, disproving his assertions.

As for his attempts to blame Governer Blanco, well, first of all she is not clean in this either. I have no doubt, none at all that everyone from the city engineers to the mayor, to the president, will owe an accounting. But Chertoff's claim is an outright lie. We have the letter Governor Blanco wrote the day before the hurricane hit requesting, through FEMA, all kinds of specific aid, citing the federal and state laws involved. I don't see anywhere in the letter that says specifically military or National Guard involvement but I think you would have to be clinically brain dead to not interpret the letter as a request for any and all aid available.

In any case, Chertoff is simply trying to avoid responsibility that is clearly his. Hell, go visit the homesite for the Department of Homeland Security and read:

In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort.

In other words, Chertoff is the where the buck stops. So don't buy into this bullshit about it being the Governor's fault. She may have plenty to answer for on her own, but this was all Chertoff's baby.

One final outrage for the day; apparently President Bush faked repairs to a damaged levee for a photo opportunity. The person accusing him of this lie is United States Senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu. Her evidence? She flew over the same levee a day later and none of the equipment and repairs she saw while she was there with the president remained except for one single piece of equipment. You can read her press release here.

One final question: Where are the Democrats in all of this?

Impeachment Is Too Good For The Bastard

2005-09-03T11:38:00.000-05:00

3rd World America/Let Them Eat Cake

Red Cross Banned From New Orleans

Fiddling While New Orleans Burns

Head of FEMA's Previous Job: Running Arabian Horse Shows. He Was Pushed From Job, Accused Of Incompetence Amid Lawsuits. Got FEMA Job Because He Was A Republican Activist; His College Roommate Was Former Head Of FEMA.

Good to know his dog can get a helicopter flight.

National Guard And Military Prepared To Airlift Food To New Orleans Days Ago; Could Not Do So Because FEMA Never Asked.

The excuses begin.

National Guard From Several States Ready To Go To New Orleans On Sunday 8/28; Paperwork To Do So Did Not Come From Washington Until Thursday 9/1

Enjoy your photo op, Mr. President!

Evacuations From Superdome Halted So That Well Fed, Well Dressed Hyatt Guests Could Be Evacuated First

Look behind Bush. How nice to have helicopters and National Guardsmen standing at attention for a photo op when people are waiting to be rescued.

Slow Response Is Directly Bush's Fault; NORTHCOM Ready To Go When Katrina Hit Florida; NORTHCOM Forced To Wait For Presidential Order They Never Got

Hungry Evacuees At Cajundome Forced To Wait For First Lady Photo Op Before Being Fed

Governor Of Louisiana Asked For Help On 8/28 Proves Bush Lied About Not Getting Request For Federal Aid

Hero Faces Arrest For "Looting"; Saved Lives Of Over 100 People Including Newborn Baby

Emergency Rescue And Firefighting Gear Sits Unused

Worst. President. Ever.

American Family Association Is A Hate Organization & There Is A Better Way

2005-09-02T22:15:00.000-05:00

Agape Press is an arm of the American Family Association and this is what they say are the benefits of Hurricane Katrina:

The pastor explains that for years he has warned people that unless Christians in New Orleans took a strong stand against such things as local abortion clinics, the yearly Mardi Gras celebrations, and the annual event known as "Southern Decadence" -- an annual six-day "gay pride" event scheduled to be hosted by the city this week -- God's judgment would be felt.

“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now," Shanks says. "God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again."

Well, I used to like the drinking that took place in New Orleans, I love the bare breasts on display in New Orleans (actually I am partial to them in any location), the sodomites are my friends and I'm a Witch so he pretty much attacked everything and everybody I like.

How can you believe in a god that vicious and destructive? Why would you want to believe in a god of hate? Isn't this really the devil he worships? These people are evil; celebrating the misery of others. And do they think that all those people at the convention center and superdome are wicked? What about the babies-are they wicked and deserve punishment as well?

Consider this angry god and contrast this concept with the God that Rabbi Harold Kushner believes in:

All the responses to tragedy which we have considered have at least one thing in common. They all assume that God is the cause of our suffering, and they try to understand why God would want us to suffer. Is it for our own good, or is it a punishment we deserve, or could it be that God does not care what happens to us? Many of the answers were sensitive and imaginative, but none was totally satisfying. Some led us to blame ourselves in order to spare God’s reputation. Others asked us to deny reality or to repress our true feelings. We were left either hating ourselves for deserving such a fate, or hating God for sending it to us when we did not deserve it.

There may be another approach. Maybe God does not cause our suffering. Maybe it happens for some reason other than the will of God. The psalmist writes, “I lift mine eyes to the hills; from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, maker of Heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:1–2) He does not say, “My pain comes from the Lord,” or “my tragedy comes from the Lord.” He says “my help comes from the Lord.”

Could it be that God does not cause the bad things that happen to us? Could it be that He doesn’t decide which families shall give birth to a handicapped child, that He did not single out Ron to be crippled by a bullet or Helen by a degenerative disease, but rather that He stands ready to help them and us cope with our tragedies if we could only get beyond the feelings of guilt and anger that separate us from Him? Could it be that “How could God do this to me?” is really the wrong question for us to ask?

From When Bad Things Happen To Good People

Rabbi Kushner then takes the reader through an analysis of the Book of Job that is both insighful and useful. He ends by challenging us, all of us with this: In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

Let the haters hate. There are people who need our help. Give what you can and take time to let your family know you love them. Have a good weekend.

Sign Of The Times (A Quick and Important Question for Readers at the End of the post!)

2005-09-02T06:36:00.000-05:00

Of all of the unbelievable things our federal government did or, more accurately, failed to do yesterday, nothing was as symbolic of the problem as the following exchange on National Public Radio's All Things Considered between commentator Robert Siegel and the Secretary of Homeland Security Micheal Chertoff:

Robert Siegel: We are hearing from our reporter, he’s on another line right now, thousands of people at the convention center in New Orleans with no food, zero.

Chertoff: As I said, I’m telling you we are getting food and water to areas where people are staging. The one about an episode like this is if you talk to someone or you get a rumor or an anecdotal version of something I think it’s dangerous to extrapolate it all over the place.[Snip]

Robert Siegel: But Mr. Secretary when you say we shouldn’t listen to rumors. These are things coming from reporters who have not only covered many many other hurricanes, they’ve covered wars and refugee camps. These aren’t rumors, they are saying there are thousands of people there.

Chertoff: I would be…I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don’t have food and water.

The above exchange comes to us from Think Progress and you can hear the original interview here

Now, anybody with access to a radio, television or the internet yesterday knew about the people at the convention center. We heard about people at the convention center being raped and beaten. A CNN reporter saw a baby die right in front of him yesterday.

Yet here we have and ideological hack appointed to head the huge Department of Homeland Security; the guy whose job it was to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency, telling Robert Siegel that he knows nothing about fifteen thousand people at the New Orleans Convention Center. Actually, he goes further than that, he dismisses it as a rumor.

So, not only is he, the man in charge of relief efforts completely unaware of 15,000 desparate refugees; when told about them he simply dismisses it out of hand. This is the Bush administration in a nutshell. We know better than you, so just shut up while we do what we want.

And make no mistake about it; they want FEMA dead. This is what they will do to all of our government if allowed. There is a famous quote from Republican activist Grover Norquist that the GOP wants a government small enough to drown in a bathtub. Well, guess what? If government is that small, it will just a surely drown in New Orleans.

There is nothing wrong with private enterprise. Private enterprise, competition capitalism are all tools that have served us well and excel at doing certain things. However, much like having a hammer when all you have are a fistful of screws, there are situations where tools like private enterprise, competition and capitalism are simply inappropriate. Mass rescue and recovery operations are an example of this. There is no money for private enterprise to make and the downtimes between crisis' would be fatal to any company dedicated to this purpose. On the other hand, the government is the ideal tool to solve this type of problem; it is one of the reasons to even have a government: to keep civil order, protect its citizens and aid in disaster.

Katrina perfectly illustrated why the current incarnation of the GOP is toxic to America.

Yesterday, when Bush spoke with his father and Bill Clinton (our last two legitimately elected presidents) standing behind him, I was suddenly yearning for either of those two former presidents to be returned to office. That's right, either. I did not agree with the first George Bush on almost anything. But he was a thoughtful, competent man who would handle this emergency much better than his son. Despite what some on my side say, I believe that man loves his country and really tried to do his best for America. I don't believe that of his son.

Worst. President. Ever.

Donate to the right please.

Now, a quick question: Laura and I are discussing taking in a family, up to three people for 30 days or more. But both of us are worried about having strangers in the house with the baby. What do you think? Should we do it? I keep thinking (oddly enough for a Pagan) what would Jesus do? I believe he would open his home. So I kind of feel that we should. But I do not want to expose my child to any danger and that is why I hesitate.

Have a great holiday weekend and lets all pray and kick in to help our fellow Americans!

Blame The Victim Part Two

2005-09-01T21:23:00.000-05:00

From John at Americablog we get the new Bush administration talking point:

FEMA director Michael Brown just added this little line to his interview on CNN right now, refering to who FEMA is trying to hel in New Orleans:
"...to help those who are stranded, who chose not to evacuate, who chose not to leave the city..."
How is it relevant to talk about the fact that the people who are stranded "chose" not to evacuate? Not to mention, there are lots of folks who couldn't evacuate because they were too poor, too infirm, or simply had no transportation. But even if they chose to remain with their homes, why is the head of FEMA pointing this out? Sounds to me like we're hearing a new Bush admin talking point. It's subtle, but it's clear - the people dying in New Orleans are to blame for their own predicament.

UPDATE: Sorry, I forgot, it has been a long day.

Worst. President. Ever.

Please donate, I have a link up to the liberal blogosphere Red Cross donation page on the right sidebar.

FEMA Links To Pat Robertson On Donation Page

2005-09-01T16:14:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not fucking kidding. Look for yourself. Right below the Red Cross is Operation Blessing. You can read all the scary details right here.

Worst. President. Ever.

Donate to the Red Cross via Liberal Blogs for Hurricane Relief. Together we will raise $1,000,000 from liberals to help the victims of Katrina.

It Gets Worse

2005-09-01T13:35:00.000-05:00

So what are Bush administration officials doing with this crisis going on? We know Bush had time to play guitar, give speeches, eat cake (yes he really did, I’ll get you a photo later). Apparently Condoleeza Rice has time to take in a Broadway comedy and go shoe shopping.

CNN literally reports watching a baby die as they watched.

No Army. No National Guard. No FEMA. No Water. No Food. It has been four days.

Some more history on what is happening: There was a guy by the name of Mike Parker, former Republican Congressman from Mississippi who briefly served as head of the Army Corps of Engineers from late 2001 to early 2002. He is quoted in today’s Chicago Tribune as saying:

I'm not saying it wouldn't still be flooded, but I do feel that if it had been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have."

What is he talking about? He is talking about the fact that the Bush administration fired him from the Army Corps of Engineers. Read on:

The assistant secretary of the Army, Mississippi's former U.S. Rep. Mike Parker, was forced out Wednesday after he criticized the Bush administration's proposed spending cuts on Army Corps of Engineers' water projects, members of Congress said.
"Apparently he was asked to resign," said U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., a member of the House Appropriations Committee's energy and water development subcommittee that oversees the corps' budget… Parker earned the ire of administration officials when he questioned Bush's planned budget cuts for the corps, including two controversial Mississippi projects.

"I think he was fired for being too honest and not loyal enough to the president," said lobbyist Colin Bell, who represents communities with corps-funded projects.
The Mississippi Clarion-Ledger, March 7th 2002

H/t to Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo.

So what does our administration have to say about this? Courtesy of Think Progress we get a snippet of today’s White House press briefing:

REPORTER: There’s a lot of discussion going on about the funding of projects prior to this, whether projects in New Orleans in particular were underfunded because of the Iraq war or for other reasons. Do you find any of this criticism legitimate? Do you think there is any second guessing to be done now about priorities given that [a disaster in] New Orleans was sort of obvious to a lot of the experts?

MCCLELLAN: As I have indicated, this is not a time for politics. This is a time for the nation to come together for those in the Gulf Coast region and that’s where our focus is. This is not a time for finger-pointing or politics. And I think the last thing that the people who have been displaced or the people who have been affected need is people seeking partisan gain in Washington.

Hey, Scotty: Fuck You.

Worst. President. Ever.

Donate to the Red Cross via Liberal Blogs for Hurricane Relief. Together we will raise $1,000,000 from liberals to help the victims of Katrina.

More Lies As People In New Orleans Die

2005-09-01T11:38:00.000-05:00

Today, on Good Morning America our President was interviewed by Diane Sawyer and he asserted that there was no way the breach in the levees could have been anticipated. Homeland security director Michael Chertoff has repeated the same statement.

This is an absolute lie.

On December 1st, 2001 the Houston Chronicle documented the fact that FEMA considered one of the top three most likely disaster scenarios to hit the United States was a hurricane hitting New Orleans and flooding the city. The article said: In the face of an approaching storm, scientists say, the city's less-than-adequate evacuation routes would strand 250,000 people or more, and probably kill one of 10 left behind as the city drowned under 20 feet of water. Thousands of refugees could land in Houston.

The New Orleans Times Picayune documented the Bush administration cutting funds to repair the levees in a series of nine articles that ran from 2003 to 2005. They predicted the failure of the levee system explicitly. In fact, they document that one of the projects ongoing was to fix the exact section of the levee that failed.

On top of that, the Bush administration has crippled the federal agency that would coordinate rescue and relief efforts.

You might think that in the face of this catastrophe, the employees of the Department of Health and Human Services would be gearing up to help the folks in LA, MS and AL. You would be dead wrong. From Americablog, they are preparing to go to a country music concert sponsored by the Department of Defense (which you think would be busy with Iraq) to memorialize 9/11:

From: Announcements to all U.S. DHHS Employees
[mailto:HHS-STAFF@LIST.NIH.GOV] On Behalf Of News, HHS (HHS/OS)
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 4:57 PM
To: HHS-STAFF@LIST.NIH.GOV
Subject: Commemoration of Patriot Day

In twelve days, we will commemorate Patriot Day, a day to remember the tragic events of September 11, 2001, a day to honor members of the Armed Forces currently serving at home and abroad, and a day to reiterate our commitment to the freedoms we enjoy. I will honor Patriot Day by participating in the Freedom Walk, a memorial event sponsored by the Department of Defense. I invite you as employees of the Department of Health and Human Services to join me.

The Freedom Walk begins at 10 a.m. in the Pentagon's south parking lot, winds two miles through Arlington National Cemetery and over the Potomac River, and ends at the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall where country music star Clint Black will perform. The walk is free, but people must register by visiting www.AmercaSupportsYou.mil

September 11 marked a change in the way we view our world, our nation and ourselves. The betterment of ourselves and our country is our response. In whatever way you choose to commemorate the horrendous acts of early September four years ago, let us once again renew our gratitude for the freedoms we enjoy and reaffirm our commitment to tolerance, peace and liberty throughout the world.

Worst. President. Ever.

Donate to the Red Cross via Liberal Blogs for Hurricane Relief. Together we will raise $1,000,000 from liberals to help the victims of Katrina.

Racism, Sex, Oil, Power, Incompetence and HOPE.

2005-08-31T22:04:00.000-05:00

It's hard to even know where to begin. So, in series of briefs here is what I have noticed going on:

We'll start with the blatant racism of the press. Steve Gilliard at the News Blog sums up the captions to the pictures below quite succinctly: Niggers Steal, Whites Find.

Read the captions. The black man has looted a grocery store. The white people are "finding bread and soda from a local grocery store."

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon picks up on this and elaborates on how the right wing sound machine is already starting to blame the victims of Katrina for their situation. I think she's right. I already think that the media play has been to kind of disparage those who stayed behind. But you know what? Right now, I could not afford to flee with Laura and Anwen for four or five days without hitting the credit card. If we didn't have credit...we would not be able to afford to leave. Think about poor people without cars and without mass transit to evacuate on. Think of the elderly, mentally disabled, hearing impaired, handicapped, shut ins who could not flee. I used to volunteer for Meals on Wheels. I bet every single person on my route would have been unable to flee.

Skip the $3.00 per gallon gas. Get ready for $4.00-$5.00 per gallon and possibly higher. Your electric and natural gas bills are going up dramatically. Why? Because Katrina has destroyed gulf oil output for the forseeable future. The Coast Guard has confirmed the accuracy of this story: at least 20 oil rig platforms have vanished from the Gulf of Mexico. Just gone. Wiped off the map. And it isn't a matter of just towing a new one in place. The infrastructure is simply destroyed. Each one of those rigs had between 4 and 100 oil wells on it.

The damage numbers you have gotten from the government and analysts are, in my opinion, much too low. We are looking at YEARS to return to the production levels we had prior to the storm. The eastern Gulf of Mexico is primarily oil production...

Loss of the MARS platform alone cost us 95,000 barrels a day for a year or maybe more.

YEARS, people. I know what this means - hope everyone else gets it too...
The Oil Drum: Newest (and very informative and very scary) report from an anonymous insider

The MARS platform.

How bad is this? Well, the Gulf of Mexico supplies 35% of the oil we use in the United States and an astonishing 83% of our natural gas. The Saudis cannot bail us out this time - they simply cannot make up the shortfall; they are producing at capacity. Iraq won't help us anytime soon...if they ever help us after what we have done to them. Even if we could import enough oil to make up the shortfall there is no place to refine the oil because Katrina shut down eight major oil refineries.

I recommend buying a diesel for your next car; it can be easily converted to biodiesel and that way $4.00 to $5.00 a gallon for gasoline won't hurt you and you won't be sending money to the Middle East. Laura and I are very grateful for our Prius; 48mpg average is wonderful.

Federal response to the Katrina disaster has been pitiful: too little, too late and no coordination between state and local officials. Obviously we know where the National Guard is: Iraq. What about FEMA? Well, seems Bushco had a great idea:

Indeed, the advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA. The newly appointed leadership of the agency showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed Witt. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Soon FEMA was being absorbed into the "homeland security borg."

This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission. Washington Post: Destroying FEMA

Now, when you add that into the fact that the Bush administration systematically turned down funding to repair the levees that were breached and I pretty much figure that you can lay the blame for all of the dead in New Orleans and Iraq at the feet of George W. Bush. The man is our Louis the XIV. He'd like to be our Stalin, but he's just not competent enough to pull it off.

But the Bush administration has been busy. Busy prosecuting porn. Aha! You say - it must be kiddie porn they are prosecuting. And in a sane world it would be. But no. They are prosecuting porn featuring consenting adults. No, I am not shitting you. Apparently our Attorney General, Mr. Torture himself, considers this a priority.

It's enough to make you want to vomit.

But don't sit there feeling powerless and overwhelmed. Take a second to take a deep breath. Good. Now, if you haven't done so already or if you can afford to do so again please donate to the Red Cross.

After you have done that you are invited to join the revolution. Together we will sweep these incompetent crooks out of office and start to rebuild a nation that is a community that cares for each other and plans for a safe, sane, stable future for all Americans.

Bush Has Some Responsibility For This Disaster

2005-08-30T22:50:00.000-05:00

Bush, today, 8/30/05, doing what he does best: "hard" work.

As Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi struggle to survive, our "leader" found time to continue his vacation, play some golf, play some music and speak to prescreened audiences in support of the Iraq war and the dismemberment of medicaid. He reluctantly ended his vacation two days earlier than planned; don't worry, he still has the record for the most vacation taken by a sitting president ever: 346 days over eight years.

But wait - how can he be blamed for the results of the hurricane if he is on vacation?

Because he stole the money that would have gone to rebuild the subsiding levees for his little adventure in Iraq. Specifically money to fix one of the levees that gave out last night. I am going to quote large parts of an incredible post from Attytood here because it is so important:

It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.
-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.
***
In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:

The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.

"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling).
***
The 2004 hurricane season, as you probably recall, was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane- and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs. According to New Orleans CityBusiness this June 5:

The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7 million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay salaries but little else.
***
There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount.

But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said.

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late. One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer was a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach.

Unbelievable.

Donate to the Red Cross. Help your fellow Americans. Then, write a letter to your local newspaper and tell them that you resent what this stupid, vicious, angry little monkey in the White House has done to your country.

Here are some great sources for facts about how his irresponsibility is contributing to the suffering in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi:
Attytood: When the Levee Breaks
Daily Kos: Accountability for Lake New Orleans
AMERICAblog: Bush took New Orleans disaster funds and used them for the Iraq war and for his tax cuts
Editor and Publisher: Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues

Service Work

2005-08-30T07:50:00.000-05:00

I'm answering the phones for the Dallas Alcoholics Anonymous Intergroup Office; it's called Nightwatch and what happens is a volunteer will man the phones from 5:30pm to 8:30am when the office reopens. It's been a while since I have done it and doing service that helps another alcoholic feels good. Been a busy night, probably twenty or so calls.

The one I just got broke my heart though. The guy is from New Orleans and he's seen television footage of his neighborhood; his is one of the ones where even the roofs are partially submerged. Everything he has left is in a LaQuinta hotel room in Plano, TX. Wanna hear the kicker?

He's grateful to be alive, sober and safe with his wife. He's shocked, you can hear it in his voice, and the magnitude of his loss has not hit him yet, but he is starting there: grateful to be alive, sober and safe with his wife.

He knows what matters in life.

Goddess bless and keep him and all of those hit by Katerina.

Gratitude List:
sober
healthy
wife
daughter
dogs and cat
sponsor in AA
relationship with the Goddess
friends (here and all over the world because of the magic of blogs)
job
home
reasonably secure and prosperous (as can be expected in this transient world)
AA

Best things I have ever seen:
Golden eagles flying over the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado
Bison on top of Elk Mountain in the Wichata Wildlife Refuge of Oklahoma
Turkey Vulture flying through my friend Jim's ashes when we spread them from the mountaintop
Hanging Lake near Glenwood Springs Colorado
Big Bend National Park
My daughter being born

Prayers

2005-08-29T06:29:00.000-05:00

Really, right now nothing really matters at all any more except for Katrina and prayers and thoughts for those in her path. Americans do a great job of pulling together after disasters and helping each other out. We'll do it again after this bitch blows through. But that happens later. Right now, we pray.

New Baby Tricks

2005-08-28T10:49:00.000-05:00

Check it out.

Play the movie (450k).

In Praise Of The Slut

2005-08-27T10:50:00.000-05:00

This will not happen in my lifetime; or more importantly in my daughters, but we need to rehabilitate the slut. There is nothing wrong with sexual women; in fact there is something terribly wrong with asexual women (Condolezza Rice, Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon anyone?). Women should be able to have sex with who they want, when they want, in the manner they want without fear of cultural disapproval. Women ought to be allowed to be the sexual initiator without condemnation. And the flip side of this is true as well; women must also have the ability to decline participation in sexual activity when they are not so inclined; again without consequences directed at them.

This even includes women who don't want to have sex with me in particular. Most guys I know are quite willing to extend these liberties to any woman who chooses to fuck them, but withdraw these liberties as soon as they involve other men. I'm not kidding either; I talk to my male friends and wonder if they even have a clue about the irrational double standard they set up for women in their minds: be sexually free and loose with me and frigid to every other male. I guess I have the right to expect that from my wife, not out of any ownership of her. I expect that simply because that is part of the terms of our partnership with each other - she asks that of me and I ask the same in return.

You know, I have no right to ask my daughter, when she reaches that age, to not be a sexual being. The best my wife and I can do is educate her, let her know of the consequences and the rewards of sexuality. Try to advise her so that she makes good choices. Teach her that while as an adolescent it is hard to imagine bypassing any pleasurable experience, that missing one is not the end; life is rich and long and the opportunity will arise again. Listen to what she has to to say about her fears and hopes and respond accordingly. Hopefully she will grow up a healthy and complete woman. And at her wedding or handfasting I hope to get the honor of escorting her to the man - or woman - she loves.

Right now we in the United States are slipping back into a kind of dark ages with regard to women and I fear for the world my daughter will grow up in. It is subtle the way the rights of women are being eroded, but it is also systemic. Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon picks up on a sly attempt to punish sexually active women:

Let's be frank--if your real purpose is reducing the number of abortions, you would be pro-Plan B, because it has a great track record for stopping abortions. If your purpose is punishing women for having sex, you would be anti-Plan B, because it has a great track record for helping women "escape" from the punishment due us for fucking. If your main aim is reducing abortion, you'd support Plan B. If your main aim was making women pay with physical pain for sex, you'd be against it. That the "pro-life" movement opposes a drug that would actually reduce abortion speaks volumes about their priorities--women who fuck deserve to be punished. Everything else is window dressing.
Facts Meet Fantasy and Facts Lose

Another, perhaps more sinister example is the ease with which we have abandoned the rights of Iraqi women. Of course, the rights of women are simply not a priority to this administration. View the way we have embraced a proposed Iraqi constitution which strips women of almost all basic rights. Even the women who once viewed Bush as their "liberator" are now fleeing Iraq.

I'm not sure that this battle for the rights of women can be won politically before it is won culturally and even more importantly, spiritually. Every right won by women politically is under constant attack from to cultural and religious (not spiritual) grounds. Maybe instead of focusing on Roe and right to privacy we should focus on making sure that the girl who is curious about her body and how it interacts with his body is not labeled as a bad person. Nor is what she is doing wrong. Girls need to know this; they also need to know the dangers of sex, but not in a way that makes sex bad or negative.

Teen girls really face a hell of a dilemma. If you are sexual, you are a slut, trash, easy and so on - a bad girl, without value. Or you can be a prude and face disapproval for that choice. It is a lose-lose proposition, the competing and opposite cultural messages broadcast are schizoid in nature.

I don't think we will see real equality for women until we reach a point where the slut and the prude are viewed through the same lens. The lens that shows them as individual people, making individual choices - some good, some bad - both children of a Loving God. From my experience working in psychiatric hospitals, women's shelters, juvenile corrections and being a boyfriend, husband and friend to many women over the years I will share with you what I have seen from many women:

often so called prudes are girls or women who fear the consequences of sexuality and are afraid that people will think less of them if they sleep around. They worry about fitting in and how they are regarded and want, like every other human, to be wanted and liked.

a few so called prudes truly believe they are better than those who are not and that they are morally superior.

so called sluts are girls or women who who fear that if they say no, they won't be liked, particularly by men but also by peer women. They worry about fitting in and how they are regarded and want, like every other human, to be wanted and liked.

a very few so called sluts really enjoy sex and are very annoyed by those who judge them because they like sex. They have fears and insecurities like everyone else, but are able to set them aside when they make their sexual choices.

a sadly large number of women are victims of sexual, physical or emotional abuse and whether prude, slut or in between, are unable to make healthy choices about sex at all. They can heal but it takes a tremendous amount of work and suffering over years to do so.

So keep in mind that the next time you hear a woman being run down in conversation for her sexuality, whether that woman is a friend, coworker or classmate, Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton, a runaway bride, missing woman or even a porn star, that woman is simply a human being doing the best she can with what she has. Don't subscribe to the cultural and religious message of disapproval; consciously reject it. Because quite often, sluts are wonderful people too.

In this post I'm really only dealing with sexuality, but so much more about the cultural and religious messages girls and women get needs to change. Overweight women are neither ugly nor lazy; those stereotypes need to go. The superthin bordering on anorexic "beauty myth" woman needs to go as well. Most annoying to me, the myth that men don't like smart women needs to be annihilated. Another post could easily be devoted to men's sexual confusions and cultural roles. But not today.

Not A Saint

2005-08-26T06:28:00.000-05:00

Don't think I have posted this one yet.

What I did not mention in yesterday's post, talking about my job at the Women's Shelter was that I lost that job because of my alcoholism. I quit before I was told to quit. With the benefit of sober hindsight I can see what happened though. I simply was not reliable.

I only missed one court date and it turned out okay - I mean it was not okay that I missed when I should have been available to people seeking help - just nobody happened to show up that day. I was late to work. I smelled like alcohol, I'm sure.

Of course there is the ultimate hypocrisy: here I am, helping get abused women restraining orders to protect them from their abusers. That's Andy the saint. But Andy at home is an alcoholic. What do alcoholics do to the ones they love? We abuse them emotionally in a terrible way. Goddess was with me in those years because I never physically threatened my wife until my last night of drinking before I entered the 12 step program I am in.

But the rank hypocrisy of me standing with these women in front of a judge, trying to get a restraining order because they are abused...

Nope, no saint Andy thank you. I will settle for just being Andy. I like sober Andy; for the most part I am quieter, more thoughtful man. You know, my wife and I don't yell at each other any more. I don't mean never, very rarely we'll raise our voices, but it is rare. We listen to each other.

As soon as you claim you are humble, you can be sure you are not, but I was humbled by my sobriety. That's a good thing.

I do wish I had that job in the Women's Shelter today. It did not pay shit, but it was the most rewarding job I have ever had. I think now I could bring a maturity and emotional stability to the job that I simply did not possess then.

Now, maybe someday I will tell you the story of running through Denver with the latina woman who spoke no English (I had no Spanish) from her abusive husband who showed up to contest the restraining order and how we hid in law libraries from him. It's an interesting story. Or about the time I took a mom in my car so we could kidnap her kids back from her spouse. That was nuts.

Oh, wait, one last story before I go... I probably helped 300 women get restraining orders. A couple of guys in there too. Women abusing men is much rarer, but it does happen. I saw a lot of injured women. Almost always the abusers were big, muscular men. But I learned not to make assumptions about who was dangerous and who wasn't. The most violent case I was involved in involved a lesbian couple. The woman I was helping seemed (please forgive me if I use inappropriate terminology - my intent is to describe, not stereotype and if I fail the fault is mine) a little dykish to me. Close cropped hair, muscular, tall, broad shouldered. She had cracked ribs, a fractured leg, and had suffered all kinds of soft tissue damage. Her abuser had used a baseball bat and a hammer.

Naturally I assumed her abuser had to be this super-dyke butch lesbian who would look like Schwartzeneggar. I have never been more wrong in my life. Her abuser turned out to be a petite, maybe 5' 4" tall thin little wisp of a woman with the cutest blonde hair and blue eyes and such a sweet smile. In court she was a polite and gracious as could be. But in the hallway she turned into a rabid weasel.

"Needed a man to help you, huh?" she hissed at my client. "You filthy little cunt, I should have killed you."

I have never been so taken aback in my entire life. I could not believe what I had just heard and how this cute little blonde morphed into a demonic hate monster in front of my eyes. Again, my client was much bigger than her abuser but she fell back against the hall wall at this onslaught. I did not blame her. It was like a horror movie how quickly the woman became this evil thing.

The good news is this: the restraining order was granted and the judge wrote it very carefully to protect my client. I knew the judge in question pretty well by then and I knew full well that he disapproved of the idea of two women together. But I have to hand it to him. He saw right through the bullshit of the abuser and acted to protect my client and further warned the abuser that he was just waiting for an excuse to lock her up.

So, I learned never to assume. That little blonde woman scared me more than any of the big hulking guys who showed up angry and vengeful. Never would have guessed it to look at her.

Ya'll have a good day.

Search Engine Submissions

2005-08-25T06:43:00.000-05:00

Anyone ever used one of those services where you pay and they submit your name to search engines? Are they worth it? Are they garbage? The interest is in saving time over money although Goddess knows I should be interested in both...

Men's Role In Women's Shelters

2005-08-24T22:15:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the low postage recently. Yesterday I was diagnosed with a sinus infection and pinkeye! Joy of joys, the spreading of the daycare illnesses has begun! Anyway, I feel like crap so I was going to do minimal blogging.

Then I ran across this post: The Women's Room? on the blog What She Said!. Essentially she links to a story about a women's shelter in New England who hired a man to run the shelter and she said:

This is just wrong. When you're dealing with women and children who have been terrorized by the man in their lives, sending them into a place run by a man defeats the idea of a safe house.

Before I post my comment to her, which will be my blog post for the day, I do want to recommend her blog to you. She looks an interesting woman and Wiccan. Also, she describes herself as every Republican's worst nightmare so I know I'm going to like her!

Anyway, my response to her:

Morgaine,
Back in '94-'96 I worked at a women's shelter in Colorado called Women In Crisis. At the time I was in law school and my primary job was to assist women in getting restraining orders against their abuser.

After working at the shelter for over a year I was asked if I wanted to be a part-time counselor. I was pretty stunned but said yes. I was never "in charge" of the shelter, but I was on staff. That means that there were sometimes as many as twelve women in there with me as the only staff member present. I took crisis calls, I did intakes, discharges, I helped with job applications, immigration appeals, watched kids, called cops when batterers showed up in the parking lot... everything except cook and that is because I once did cook and was forbidden from doing that again. I worked night shifts, yep, all night with me as the only staff member present. I had keys to every lock and door in the shelter.

One important note; I almost never enter the top floor where the women's rooms were. But I was not forbidden from going there; I just never had a reason to other than helping move furniture once or twice.

When Women In Crisis hired me, and I was the only man on staff at that time, they said that their thoughts were that roughly half of the human race is male; the women at the shelter were going to have to deal with males sooner or later. Most of the judges who would hear the requests for restraining orders or handle the divorce were male. Almost all of the Jefferson County Sheriff's department was male. I was also told that the other staff members at the shelter felt it was important that the boys in the shelter see a positive male role model.

That was the most important and fulfilling job I have ever had in my life. I miss it tremendously now. I felt like every day I had a chance to make a positive difference in the lives of other people. I loved what I did.

I don't think my being there was a problem for any women in the shelter. The only one who ever objected to me was the one that I caught drinking in the shelter - no alcohol allowed. I hope I made a positive difference for some of those families.

They made a huge difference in my life. I learned a great deal about patience, tolerance, love and sorrow working there. I'm grateful for the trust of my coworkers back then.

I'm not even sure this is really a response to your comment. You just made me remember vividly a time in my life when it really was a privilege to be able to get up and go to work. I sure don't get that in corporate America.

The Rise Of The Religious Left Part II

2005-08-23T07:55:00.000-05:00

This is a continuation of the letter I started to write yesterday.

I was envisioning a site using Scoop like Daily Kos. To my knowledge, Scoop is the only software out there that allows literally anyone who registers to not only become a member, but in fact a blogger with the same possibility of holding the top blogger spot as anyone else. I am also a huge fan of the nested comments which really allow you to follow who said what to whom and in relation to what in a thread.

If we could get prominent members of the religious left to contribute to this hypothetical site, ordinary members would have the chance to interact and have conversations with them. You can see this at work on Talking Points Memo Cafe where former Vice-Presidential Candidate John Edwards spent a week talking with visitors to the site.

Again, the thing that would distinguish this site from others would be that it would be explicitly political in nature. When our enemy screams special rights for homosexuals we immediately formulate a response of equal rights for all people under law! When they say internment is okay in times of national crisis we say we stand with our Muslim brothers and sisters and insist they be treated like all other faiths!

In between crisis such as the ones mentioned above, we can work together to create a long term agenda for the Religious Left. Social justice, equality, poverty, education... all these issues the right has a coodinated plan of attack for. Now it is our turn.

As I see it, it is crucial that progressive Christians be central to this enterprise; after all, the majority of the nation is Christian. I think that issues of unity could be resolved around a committment to three principles:
All members honor the Creator as they understand that Creator.
All members seek to treat others as they themselves would wish to be treated. This is actually a more complex challenge than it initially appears to be. The obvious aspect of that is to treat others well. The not so obvious and more difficult aspect is that it becomes a duty to confront those who are a threat to the community at large; much as it is necessary to confront a drunk and take away the car keys before something terrible happens.
All members honor the fact that others perceive the Creator differently from themselves.

And this is where I stop for the day because I am very sick and returning to bed.

Rise Of The Religious Left

2005-08-22T06:30:00.000-05:00

Still the only recorded instance of Anwen smiling!

I am looking for feedback, comments, suggestions about the letter below. It will be incomplete because I have to go to work, but I will gratefully accept suggestions on this first half and look forward to more input on the second half later!

Dear Lilith,

I'm writing in response to your request for a formal proposal describing what I had in mind when I spoke with you about a blog for the progressive, Religious Left (RL for short). At this stage it is nothing more than an idea; but I feel it is an idea long overdue.

What made me aware of this need was the Religious Right's (or lunatics, for short) recent so-called "Justice Sundays" which they used as a political platform to declare war on our nation's Constitutional separation of powers and to issue threats to federal judges who did not adhere to their ideas. As I watched this carefully orchestrated religion draped farce progress I waited for the response from the RL or even Religious moderates. There wasn't one that I was aware of. I became curious and did some searching and really, there are only two places I found that have a progressive political agenda and a religious bent on the the web: Sojourners, a wonderful evangelical Christian magazine and a forum for progressive Christians called the Religious Left. Both of these sites lack the input of other faiths and neither site really seems to have the ability to help generate a coherent, unified voice for the religious left.

Our adversaries, and indeed with the way they use eliminationist rhetoric in describing progressives they are truly satanic in the etymological meaning of the word, are organized, coherent, well-funded and vocal. The manner in which they have managed to have Intelligent Design snuck into the classrooms and their efficient use of anti-gay ballot measures to turn out the vote illustrates how potent they are. It goes without saying that people like you and I are in grave danger should they truly ascend to supremacy over our nation.

My proposal was to create an interfaith political disscussion site with a central focus on developing the political message of the religious left as a coherent whole. This would differ greatly from other interfaith organizations currently out there in that the focus is not primarily on learning about similarities in each other's faiths, but rather on developing a consistent, coherent, religious message for the public about where religious progressives stand on the issues.

That's it for now... any and all suggestions appreciated. Yes, even from you, Beth!

Failed Evil

2005-08-22T00:08:00.000-05:00

Good column by Frank Rich in yesterday's New York Times. Called The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan, it analyzes the attempts being made by those on the right to discredit her and why those attempts are failing. It is a good article and gives me hope that our nation may yet awaken from its moral slumber.

I hate it

2005-08-21T13:06:00.000-05:00

when I ask someone for help, but I don't communicate what I want clearly. So they spend a lot of time helping me and yet all that work by both of us comes to nothing. All because I did not communicate well.

Oh well, my fault.

Have A Good Saturday Kids!

2005-08-20T11:10:00.000-05:00

I get to spend the day with the two women I love the most.

Evil In Action

2005-08-19T06:27:00.000-05:00

To recap from previous posts, the characteristics that define evil people are:
1. The absence or destruction of good; evil being inherently against life and creativity
2. The inability to face the consequences of their actions (the necessity for lying)
3. This behavior is systemic, it is the common thread that runs through the person's entire life

Following this are some other traits common to those who are evil although these are less universal than the three above:
4. Evil seeks respectability and social acceptance.
5. Evil evangelizes to gain new converts.
6. Evil is ideologically neutral and will adapt and adopt in order to fit an existing ideology, faith or economic belief.

It is a mistake to believe that evil people do things out of any belief in a system whether it be capitalism, communism, fascism, whatever. Remember, these people are ideologically neutral at the core. Everything they do, no matter how they disguse it, is selfish and self-serving. Self satisfaction is the end goal, achieved through deceptions and rationalizations. One of the ways to separate evil people from true ideologues and fanatics is to see how they behave in relation to their own stated principles. Ideologues and fanatics will follow the principle to the end. Evil people will follow their selfish desires instead. Evil people make shitty suicide bombers; they won't do it. But evil people probably recruit, train and arm suicide bombers. They play upon the honest emotions of others to make them tools of their evil.

When it comes down to it, evil people will abandon ideology and principles to defend themselves. Because in the end that is all that it is about is their selfishness. Think about these things and think about the people below.

Robert Novak who wrote the column that destroyed both CIA agent Valerie Plame's cover and the CIA front company she was ostensibly employed by.

Karl Rove who leaked Valerie Plame's name to the press. Please note how he has disguised his criminal acts and intentions under various noble motivations. Notice how the noble acts and motivations shift, evolve and change as needed to suit his desires. He is an evil man.

Judith Miller who helped promote a war under false pretenses for her own glory. She may be in jail not to protect a confidential source, but rather to hide her own criminal activity. If she gets bored, maybe she should try counting from one to 1,862 and see how long it takes. She could imagine each number represents a dead American soldier. Then maybe she would start to comprehend what she has helped to achieve.

Nah, the truly evil never accept the consequences of their actions. Judy Miller going to jail actually serves as an example of the lengths evil people will go to shield themselves from accepting the truth about their actions. She would rather serve time in jail than admit her role in the Plame affair, probably because admitting what she had done is an admisison of who and what she truly is and she cannot face that.

Prayers for Cindy Sheehan, whose mother has had a stroke. Goddess go with you Cindy.

A Letter To The Crawford Memorial Vandal

2005-08-18T09:26:00.000-05:00

This can be found on Operation Truth's website. Read the whole thing then go donate to the Crawford Peace House or contribute to Operation Truth.

Mr. Northern:

I am a Veteran of the Iraq war, having served with the 4th Infantry Division on the initial invasion with Force Package One.

While I was in Iraq,a very good friend of mine, Christopher Cutchall,was killed in an unarmoredHMMWV outside of Baghdad. He was a cavalry scout serving with the 3d ID.Once he had declined the award of a medal because Soldiers assigned to him did not receive similar awards that he had recommended. He left two sons and awonderful wife. On Monday night, August 16, you ran down the memorial cross erected for him by Arlington West.

One of my Soldiers in Iraq was Roger Turner. We gave him a hard time because he always wore all of his protective equipment, including three pairs of glasses or goggles. He did this because he wanted to make sure that he returned home to his family. He rode a bicycle to work every day to make sure that he was able to save enough money on his Army salary to send his son to college. At Camp Anaconda, where the squadron briefly stayed, a rocket landed inside a tent, sending a piece of debris or fragment into him and killed him. On Monday night, August 16, you ran down the memorial cross erected for him by Arlington West.

One of my Soldiers was Henry Bacon. He was one of the finest men I ever met. He was in perfect shape for a man over forty, working hard at night. He told me that he did that because he didn't have much money to buy nice things for his wife, who he loved so much, so he had to be in good shape for her. He was like a father to many young men in his section of maintenance mechanics. They fixed our vehicles with almost no support and fabricated parts and made repairs that kept our squadron rolling on the longest, fastest armor advance ever made under fire. He was so very proud of his son-in-law that married the beautiful daughter so well raised by Henry. His son-in-law was a helicopter pilot with the 1st Cavalry Division, who died last year. Henry stopped to rescue a vehicle belonging to another unit on what was to be his last day in Iraq. He could have kept rolling - he was headed to Kuwait after a year's tour. But he stopped. He could have sent others to do the work, but he was on the ground, leading by example, when he was killed. On Monday night, August 16, you took it upon yourself to go out in the country, where a peaceful group was exercising their constitutional rights, and harming no one, and you ran down the memorial cross erected for Henry and for his son-in-law by Arlington West.

Mr. Northern - I know little about Cindy Sheehan except that she is a grieving mother, a gentle soul, and wants to bring harm to no one. I know little about you except that you found your way to Crawford on Monday night in August with chains and a pipe attached to your truck for the sole purpose of dishonoring a memorial erected for my friends and lost Soldiers and hundreds of others that served this nation when they were called. I find it disheartening that good men like these have died so that people like you can threaten a mother who lost a child with your actions. I hope that you are ashamed of yourself.

Perry Jefferies, First Sergeant, USA (retired)

My source for this was Kos from Daily Kos. Remember, Kos is a veteran too.

Evolution and Gravity and Half NAAked Thursday

2005-08-18T06:24:00.000-05:00

I am always shocked when people I think of as being intelligent turn out to reject evolution in favor of intelligent design(ID). I have to remember though that for an amateur I have a background steeped in evolutionary knowledge and very few other people who are not biologists have spent as much time as I have considering the subject. Another factor may be that I have not been as exposed to the anti-evolution propaganda as some other folks. It should be noted though that I am not evolution's best or most eloquent defender and even though I have read a great deal about it, I am not an expert.

My personal feelings, and these have nothing to do with science, about evolution and my religious faith are simple. Evolution is one of the primary reasons I believe in a Creator. A brief survey of the theory of evolution reveals something extraordinary. Where our universe is dominated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics which simply states that entropy increases; that is to say everything is decaying, falling apart. Evolution is absolutely counter to that; instead of complex systems breaking down into simpler processes we see the reverse going on (an irony of this post is that supporters of ID also cite the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics).

I simply don't see a conflict between the Biblical accounts of creation and evolution except the time frame. The plants and animals appear in more or less the same order that evolution produced them. The description of the creation of the cosmos has to be one of the most badass descriptions ever written:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
BibleGateway.com: King James Bible, Genesis 1:1-3

I don't even sweat the timeframe. You're talking God's time here. Who is to say what a day is to God? Not me.

And who is to say that the Creator, however one envisions that Creator, did not form a single cell of archean bacteria and set it loose upon the world and from that simple beginning has flowed everything else? Evolution is nothing if not beautiful and poetic in the way it has unfolded. Like a shy seductress (or a cruel tease) She has unveiled herself to us (chicks feel free to manipulate the genders in any way that makes this metaphor work for you) a tiny piece at a time; and rather like a bikini, what has been revealed is not nearly as important as what remains concealed.

I know I still have to finish my series on evil, but it looks like this will be a series of its own. I simply don't have time to address the science here. Let me finish up with a photo for Half NAAked Thursday and a link to a funny story about Biblical literalists challenging the theory of gravity. By the way, that is a parody.

My wife and I.

Disgusted With Texans

2005-08-17T06:53:00.000-05:00

and working very hard on my new project. So I will give you baby pictures rather than blog. To my readers: sorry I have not been visiting your blogs. I am just swamped right now.

When Anwen was sick on Monday she would not sleep in the crib. After many attempts, I gave up. So she napped with dad.

Dogs are not ponies, although they will reluctantly pose as ponies for just a second or two.

Yea! We're Going Camping! & Baby Update

2005-08-16T06:25:00.000-05:00

Sleepy from the doc.

My wife and baby will be coming to Witchstock with me!

Now, already Laura is working herself up into a state of anxiety over the whole thing; she feels that having a baby half an hour away from the nearest hospital is not a smart choice. She is also worried the baby will cry all night. This would not only be Anwen's first time camping, it will also be Laura's. We are planning this out though and we will have a handle on it by the time late September rolls around.

Anwen is doing alright. Her pediatrician was not in yesterday so we saw a different pediatrician in this office. I don't like him and I am not confident in his medical skills. Let me explain why.

Link warning: the links in the following sections refer directly to the home pages of the hate organizations who are responsible for their content.

All through the office there are magazines Brio for young girls and Breakaway for young guys. These publications are produced by the extremist right wing hate organization Focus On The Family. All of these magazines are delivered in the name of this one pediatrician. Anwen is too young to ingest this poison or even be aware of it. But I am and it disturbs me immensely.

First of all, I show up in a kilt; does my daughter get the same level of care as every other child who enters that office? The doctor in question did not bother to hide his immediate disapproval of the kilt. That being the case, what is my assurance that his disapproval does not impact his care?

Focus on the Family is one of those truly scary hate groups because of the success they have had spreading their poisonous hatred through society. Like the White Citizen Councils of the 1950's and 1960's they wear a thin veneer of acceptability to hide their truly extremist nature. They cannot be honest about who they are and what they want; it is too extreme. So they wear a mask to hide their true intentions. That indicates an awareness of their evil and an intent to conceal it from the outside.

Second, if he is a member of the hate group Focus on the Family, odds are he does not believe in evolution. A physician or biologist who does not accept evolution cannot be a competent physician/biologist. Evolution is theory in biology in much the same way gravity is a theory in physics. That is to say, it cannot be proven that no other theory can account for observed phenomena and evidence of the theory, but the odds of that happening are nil. All available data that passes the muster of peer review supports evolution.

So what difference does this make to a physician? Simple. If he does not believe in evolution, he has no method available to explain how the flu alters and changes every year. There is no explainable mechanism to for the fact that bacteria genetically modify to adapt to and survive exposure to antibiotics. Without evolution there is no reason to believe that can happen. Can physicians who do not believe in evolution endanger their patients? Absolutely. The most famous case is about twenty years old; when a doctor transplanted the heart of a baboon into a baby. She died. In an interview the following information came to light:

Bailey's use of baboons was somewhat surprising, given their relatively distant evolutionary relationship to humans compared to other primates. The reason came to light when the Times of London published an interview between Bailey and an Australian radio crew. The reporters had been forbidden to ask direct questions about the operation, so they queried Bailey on the issue of why he had chosen a baboon in view of the baboon's evolutionary distance from humans. Bailey replied, "Er, I find that difficult to answer. You see, I don't believe in evolution." It is shocking that Bailey ignored basic biological concepts in formulating a life-threatening human experiment.

Baby Fae: The Unlearned Lesson Perspectives On Medical Research: Volume 2, 1990, Kenneth P. Stoller, MD.

With this said, I like our pediatrician although she has become somewhat suspect in my mind because of her association with him. I'm almost scared to ask her views on some to these issues. But I really believe you cannot get the best possible care unless the physician understands the science behind what they do.

I'm going to have to think about this.

Sick Baby Blog

2005-08-15T09:12:00.000-05:00

Yep, my little princess is sick, running a small fever and hacking like a veteran smoker. Today was probably better for me to stay home than my wife, so here I am. I have her in swing now and she seems okay, but we will see what we will see. This is really my first day at home with her and I and nobody else. Unfortunately, since she is sick, I am not expecting a fun, relaxing day.

For instance, she just burtst into tears. So now we will try Daddy's lap for a minute.

Woa, this just turned into a two hour post! Time to run to the pediatrician.

Ya'll have a good day.

Meme Time

2005-08-14T00:02:00.000-05:00

10 Years Ago Today:
I was floundering in law school because my alcoholism was really starting to interfere with my ability to attend class, study or work.

Five Years Ago:
That was the very end of my alcoholism... I had about five months of drinking left before the end. It was all crashing down around me. My marriage was a shambles and my wife was planning on leaving although I did not know it. I had lost the ability to enter public places alone; doing so caused me extreme anxiety. Suicide was starting to look really good. After rigidly adhering to my rule of no driving after drinking (the net effect of which was that I essentially gave up driving) for seven years I had started to drink and drive again.

1 Year Ago:
I was very excited to be going camping at Witchstock. About a month from now, right as I was leaving form Witchstock, my wife was telling me her that her cycle was about a week late; our first notice that our wonderful daughter was on her way!

Yesterday:
We were cleaining frantically because company was coming.

Tomorrow:
Hey, one day at a time!

5 Snacks I Enjoy:

1. chocolate chip ice cream
2. saltines and sharp cheddar cheese slices
3. baked Ruffles
4. grapes
5. ~~brains!~~

5 Bands That I Know the Lyrics to Most of Their Songs:

1. Misfits
2. Enya (since she often sings in Gaelic and Latin I don't know the meaning, but I know the sound)
3. Bad Religion
4. REM (who have a sucky website, so no linky love for them!)
5. Loreena McKinnett

5 Things I Would Do with $100,000,000:

1. Hire a financially conservative financial advisor.
2. Pay off all our debts.
3. Make all financial amends that I still have left to do.
4. Establish college/future fund for Anwen (I don't know that she'll go to college, she might be a ballerina, an actress, etc.)
5. Start my own business online so I could grow my hair really long and wear the clothes I want anytime I want.

5 Locations I Would Like to Run Away to:

1. Colorado - Glenwood Springs area
2. Canada
3. Europe (Scotland and Ireland in particular)
4. Alaska
5. Anywhere with my wife and daughter.

5 Bad Habits I Have:

1. Spending money impulsively to make myself feel better
2. Browsing liberal blogs at work
3. Caffiene addiction (I'm actually serious about this)
4. Porn (porn itself isn't bad. It's that when I get depressed I like to immerse myself in it.)
5. Isolationist

5 Things I Like Doing:

1. Reading
2. Reading to my wife (I have read her all of the Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter)
3. Writing
4. Carrying my daughter on my chest in the sling.
5. Anything in the outdoors.

5 Things I Would Never Wear:

1. Anything decorated with a swastika
2. Anything decorated with a GOP elephant unless it is sarcastic and negative
3. Wife-beater undershirt (the name alone bothers me. I worked in a women's shelter in Colorado and have no sense of humor about domestic violence)
4. Anything with a cross (except Bad Religion's shirts which have the cross X'ed out)
5. A thong

5 TV Shows I Like(d):
I watch virtually no television so this is awfully out of date...

1. X-files
2. The Daily Show (usually on web clips, we don't have cable. Yep, we live with a total of 6 channels!)
3.
4.
5.

5 Movies I Like:

1. Lord of the Rings
2. Gladiator
3. Thelma and Louise
4. Night of the Living Dead
5. Schindler's List

5 Famous People I Would Like to Meet:
(After much thought I have decided to limit myself to people who are alive. That is my choice; anyone I pass this meme to is free to choose dead, living, undead, you name it)

1. Enya
2. Dr. Howard Dean
3. Starhawk
4. Jane Goodall
5. Tie between Cindy Sheehan and Dr. M. Scott Peck. Coin toss says Peck.

5 Biggest Joys at the Moment:

1. Baby Anwen's smile!!
2. I am sober today!
3. My wife's touch.
4. My relationship with my Higher Power
5. My sponsor

5 Favorite Toys:

1. iMac
2. My surprise for all you that is coming in the near future that I can't tell you about.
3. Digitial camera (Canon A70 - I'm sold, I will always by Canon from here on out)
4. My medical school reject model skeleton
5. The crab rattle that baby Anwen always smiles at

5 People to Tag:

1. Ender
2. Faith
3. Scott W.
4. NYPaganChick
5. JJ

Happy Birthday!!

2005-08-13T15:43:00.000-05:00

My sponsor, who is so anonymous she will not let me post her name, is 10 years sober today!!! 3,650 days without a drink!

My sponsor rocks!!

The Question

2005-08-13T11:23:00.000-05:00

Digby over at Hullaballo nails it - why Cindy Sheehan scares the living shit out of the Right Wing. Because she has, in a simple soundbite, summed up the big question of the whole damn war. I really want to quote the last couple of lines of Digby's masterful analysis, but that is giving it away. Reward yourself by going and reading it in its brief entirety here. His archives give you a week worth of goodies, so scroll on down to the one entitled The Question.

dryblog

2005-08-12T19:24:00.000-05:00

Cool recovery site. Glad he found me! Give him a visit.

Nice layout too; a lot of blogs, mine included, look crowded with everything crammed in there. He did very well fitting everything in. Well, I'm assuming "he", could be a "she" and very unlikely but remotely possible that the person is a shemale. But that would be silly.

I Have A New Hero...

2005-08-12T06:28:00.000-05:00

All this time I have been waiting for a journalist, a congressperson, an international leader... hell, anybody, to stand up to President Bush and call him on his bullshit. And it has not happened. I had not counted on how journalists would put access above their duty to report. I didn't realize that Democrats in Congress, to a disgusting extent, would put up with the status quo to preserve their pork barrel projects. Internationally, Bush does not meet with decent people, he talks with his kind of thugs like the Saudi royal family.

I am smarter than that; I should have guessed it would take someone from outside the circus of media and politics to stand up to our Coward-In-Chief. My only sorrow is that her son had to die in Iraq before this could happen. She's my new hero:

Cindy Sheehan

You almost get a sense of palpable fear from the Right when she opens her mouth. They don't know what to say or do in response-they are simply lost. So, rather than deal with the substance of her message they fall back on what they do best: smearing her.

The first smear attempt was just laughable; Michelle Malkin, a truly evil person if there ever was one said that Sheehan's son, Casey, would be ashamed of what his mother was doing. Cindy's response: I didn’t know Casey knew Michelle Malkin…I’m Casey’s mother and I knew him better than anybody else in the world…I can’t bring Casey back, but I wonder how often Michelle Malkin sobbed on his grave. Did she go to his funeral? Did she sit up with him when he was sick when he was a baby?

Then they planned an Anti-Sheehan rally. The trouble with that plan was that those of us who read Daily Kos got wind of it and started bombarding the station with phone calls objecting and organizing to go join Cindy Sheehan. The cowards tucked tail between their legs and changed the location and it is no longer an Anti-Sheehan rally but just a support the troops rally.

The next step is to produce an anonymous email claiming to be from Cindy Sheehan's relatives claiming they don't support her and bring out the in-laws to denounce her. What the fuck are they thinking? Like we couldn't find members of Bush's family who are ashamed of him? Like families don't disagree? Is that all they've got? But you will notice that Cindy Sheehans real family, Casey's father and her other three children are with her. You know, the ones with blood in common with Casey Sheehan.

Now the Right Wing Media Machine is saying that Cindy Sheehan is a tool of the far left. This is based on the fact that many, many, left wing sites have quoted her or feature pictures of her, like this one now does. Fuck 'em. They have nothing else left, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one.

And still Cindy keeps going, despite colds, despite losing her voice, regardless of the cruelty of outsiders, she just keeps doing what she believes in. The more they attack her, the more they vilify her, the more they highlight the fact that our President is terrified of a war widow. Cindy Sheehan's attackers are helping make her case for her.

Godspeed Cindy!

For Half-NAAked Thursdays-A Special Kilt For The Ladies

2005-08-11T20:25:00.000-05:00

and those others so inclined...

For those of you not in on the joke, some of us bloggers who work a 12 step program for folks with liquid addictions celebrate Half-NAAked thursdays where you post a body part (none actually obsecene that I have seen, somewhat to my disappointment. These people must have good sponsors). I have not participated because, well, I'm shy.

Anyway, I thought the AA ladies would rather see this guy than me, so...

If you want one, the website is Naughty Bits and Bobs and they are in England. Sheesh, the things you find when you google "kilt sex."

Now for the guys - and this is also AA related in a way:

That gown was designed by my sponsor. No, I'm not kidding. Isn't that a badass gown?

I will not direct you to where you can buy it as the company selling it has pirated the design and pays Asian slave labor to manufacture it and that is all I will say about that topic.

Why I Drive A Small Car And Wear Kilts

2005-08-10T06:26:00.000-05:00

Some of you may have already seen this Cornell study on how men respond when their masculinity is threatened. I know the liberal blogs have been having fun with it. Essentially the results were:

"I found that if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq War more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle," said Robb Willer, a sociology doctoral candidate at Cornell.

I know that we all want to think that we are individuals with free will and we make up our minds based solely on our experience, opinion and intellect, but I suspect that it is far more complex than that. Billions of years of evolution have left a deep inprint in us and the way we respond to stimuli such as these is probably more influenced by our biochemical makeup than by our free will.

At the same time, it is a mistake to neglect our free will and intellect. Those also exist and are factors in our behavior. Otherwise we would not have the ability to turn down the offer of sexual partnership with a willing partner of the opposite sex because we were committed to someone else. We'd be unable to act against our own self-interest to benefit society as a whole. And our intellect can override an impulses to purchase something we don't need but want - like an SUV in the study.

One of the things that I would love to see addressed in future studies is how different cultures react. I mean, in Europe, where a big SUV may be totally impractical, do they want to buy the supercompact sports car instead? Do other cultures react as homophobically or is that an American deal? If there was not a war already going on, would a warlike response occur? All of these are great avenues for such research to follow.

Robb Willer has already come up with a worthy follow up to the study; he wants to use the same techniques of threatening the masculinity to determine if this changes men's attitude towards violence against women. My feeling is that if more women would be safe if men like this owned big-ass trucks, let's get these guys some King Cab Biodiesel Monster Trucks.

Just for the record, the largest vehicle I have ever owned is probably the Toyota Prius or our Saturn Station Wagon. Never wanted a pickup or an SUV really. As far back as I can remember, I have had both gay and straight friends and not had issues with their sexuality. I've opposed every armed U.S. intervention since Grenada. But I have also been an abusive, hateful alcoholic for many of those years, so I am not the ideal man either. I look at my friend, El Capitan who drives big trucks (when he can) and owns a whole passel of firearms and yet has multiple gay friends and is probably one of the more sensitive and considerate men I have ever known. I guess it just goes to show that we are more complex than any one simple study can show.

Not A Good Morning To Blog...

2005-08-09T06:30:00.000-05:00

The cat and the baby are throwing up simultaneously. I am so delighted that my two daughters have so much to offer in this regard! I won't tell my wife about the cat; hopefully the dogs will eat it before I need to clean it up.

Regarding my hint, nobody was close... I'll drop a few more hints in the coming months.

Anwen in her AC/DC t-shirt. She also has a Green Day shirt. Both were gifts... very appreciated gifts from special people, or as my mother would say, special needs people.

Nice New Poster Out For Us Progressives...

2005-08-08T23:25:00.000-05:00

I like it.

Speaking of Evil...

2005-08-08T18:26:00.000-05:00

I have to admit this blew me away. Telling a woman that if she wants to keep her job she must have an abortion. I hope the publicity from this just fucks Piedmont Management Associates bottom line all to hell. You can tell the lady who asked her employee to have an abortion as a condition of keeping her job what you think of her right at the link above. She's the president, Celia Ebert, and she lists her direct extension under PMA Staff; she is listed under partners. Or you could email poor Sam, who wanted nothing to do with this, I'm sure, at: sam@piedmontmanagement.com

One interesting thing about this one: people on both sides of the abortion issues should agree that this is wrong.

Evil Has No boundaries

2005-08-08T06:55:00.000-05:00

We have discussed the characteristics of evil people previously. A quick peek back to that post shows that there are three characteristics that must be present in order for a person to meet the criteria for evil as defined by psychiatrist Dr. M. Scott Peck in his book People of the Lie:

the absence or destruction of good; evil being inherently against life and creativity

the inability to face the consequences of their actions

this behavior is systemic, it is the common thread that runs through the person's entire life

I am going to leave behind Peck here and talk a little bit about my knowledge of evil; a characteristic of it that I have observed that I believe to be an essential component in the behavior of evil people.

Evil is evangelistic; evil people are active recruiters, always looking for potential new converts. Even the evil people who live and act on the fringe of society look for companions to help them. Charles Manson was more successful than most.

This is not surprising based on their desire to have a mask of respectability for their actions. After all, numbers add legitimacy. The best example I can think of this is the amazing and exponential growth of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920's followed by the creation of the Citizens council's of the 1950's. Today we think of the Klan as a fringe group of white trash loons missing teeth and barely able to speak English. That was not true of the Klan of the 1920's. Started in 1915 it grew to four million members by 1923; among them former President Harry Truman, former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Hugo Black and current United States Senator Robert Byrd; all of who repudiated both the Klan and its methods before attaining their current positions.

The evil of the Klan included racism, anti-immigrant activity, anti-Catholicism and promotion of one self-identified group's self interests at the expense of others who did not fit into their mold of what was acceptable. They made no bones about who they were and what they did and it was clear that the wearing of the hoods was designed to cause fear. Nobody doubted that the Klan was behind some of the lynchings of African-Americans that were all too common in those day; during that period of American history an average of 50 to 100 lynchings took place per year. Many times the lynchings would take place in the atmosphere of a public circus; sometimes the press would be notified and the lynchings arranged early in the day so that it could be in the next day's papers. Often law enforcement would attend as spectators or participants. People took photos and made postcards to remember the days "happy" events.

Evil craves respectability and legitimacy. Often it will work inside respected institutions in order to achieve the invisibility that comes with social acceptance. Churches are frequently perverted in this manner. Currently the rise of extremist Islamic thought is a good example of evil making use of socially and culturally accepted institutions to further its aims. But it need not be churches; I would argue that the behavior in the corporate cultures of Enron, Worldcom and Tyco are excellent examples of how evil can infiltrate and use corporate values and culture.

This leads to another point about the nature of evil: it is ideologically neutral. Often people make the mistake of saying that a political, economic or religious belief is itself inherently evil. They are simply wrong. Some systems and ideologies are more prone to evil, fascism and communism for example, than others. But evil will adopt and adapt to any system to further its aims. That is why charities can raise money for terrorism, churches conceal pedophiles and governments persecute minorities.

Today we have added some new characteristics of evil. These are not essential to defining evil, unlike the traits discussed last week. But they are common to evil; you can find them associated with evil in almost every case. They are:

Evil seeks respectability and social acceptance.

Evil evangelizes to gain new converts.

Evil is ideologically neutral and will adapt and adopt in order to fit an existing ideology, faith or economic belief.

It looks like this will be a series so expect more in coming days as we discuss how good people can become servants of evil, the spiritual nature of evil and finally how to fight evil in our lives.

Have a good week.

Nothing Today, Something Big On The Way...

2005-08-07T23:29:00.000-05:00

Been working on a big project that may happen sometime in a month or so. The picture is a hint.

Precepts of My Religious Faith

2005-08-06T13:52:00.000-05:00

Queen Anwen the Mighty in her throne.

First of all, don't miss my post about evil. I am blatantly looking for comments, input, thoughts and criticisms of it.

I have been trying to determine what the "ten commandments" or "twelve steps" of my religious faith might be and I have really come up with is three simple tenets:

Acknowledge and honor the Loving Creator (Creatress? Creatrix? I will stick with Creator)

Treat all others as I wish to be treated

Do the best I can to live the life I was given to the fullest.

I don't think this excludes Atheists and Agnostics either, because I do believe that by simply being awed by nature or science, one is acknowledging and honoring the Creator, whether one knows it or not. The second one is more complex than it seems because I have concluded that as an adult if I behave like an asshole, I should want to be treated as such. Only by knowing how I am behaving (and I learn how I behave from others) can I change and improve. So, I don't think this is a call to coddle terrorists or treat idiotic statements with respect; it is a call to treat others as you think you would need to be treated in order to grow. That is a lot harder than simply: treat everybody nice. Because you are responsible for treating them with respect and in a manner that helps them to grow spiritually. The last is pretty self explanatory.

Have a great day everybody.

The Nature Of Evil

2005-08-05T07:20:00.000-05:00

My friend Omni blogged about evil recently. In her post she notes two characteristics of evil behavior that she has observed:

I've posted many times that evil is at its base stupid, and that's why it usually fails... There's an even more astonishing aspect to the evil person's thought process, though; the way they seem to truly believe that their endless bad behavior is beyond reproach, but that any slightest ill done to them, even by their victims in self-defense, is indicative of hideous wrongdoing and deserving of an abusive or even violent response.

You see extreme versions of this in the movies all the time (as you might have guessed, I saw one such movie tonight); the bad guy is in the process of knocking a woman around preparatory to raping her, killing her or both, and, when she finally manages to get a blow in, he howls, "You f**king bitch!!" and goes into an attack frenzy, as if by making even one tiny effort to thwart his evil intentions she's become the monster and he's become the mistreated victim.
What Goes Through An Evil Person's Head?

Right there she nails two of the key characteristics of an evil person. Years ago (1983) Dr. M. Scott Peck, practicing psychiatrist and author, wrote a book called People of the Lie in which he examined the nature of evil. He began by giving a definition of evil as the absence or destruction of good; he views evil as being inherently against life and creativity. A further characteristic of evil is a refusal by the evil person to acknowledge the wrongdoing the person has done. Evil is the inability to face the consequences of one's actions. This is what Omni has picked up on in her example of the attacker being hit by his victim and then raging at his victim for defending herself. The evil person lacks the ability to acknowledge that they are in the wrong; rather they shift the blame anywhere else other than themselves.

As a mental health tech in a psychiatric hospital I was witness to an incident in which two boys cornered a girl in the laundry room and forced their hands into her shorts while covering her mouth so she could not cry out. We (staff) broke it up and confronted the two boys with what we had seen. Their reactions were very educational for me. One boy owned up to what he did, showed remorse for it and was willing to accept the consequences for his actions. He was not happy about it, but he was willing.

The other denied anything of the sort had happened. When I told him to his face that I had seen what he did, the story shifted; he claimed the girl had told them they could do that. I confronted him with the fact that she was obviously terrified and that he had covered her mouth. The boy insisted she had wanted them to do it the way they did it. Now the boy was confronted by another staff member who pointed out that his accomplice had admitted the girl did not want to be touched. At that point the boy shifted tactics: now his accomplice was to blame, had started the whole thing, had egged him on, had almost forced the boy into what he had done.

I did not understand what I was witnessing at the time, but as the years have passed I have come to realize that that second boy was simply behaving in an evil manner. He could not admit he had done wrong and face the consequences. It did not matter that witnesses including the staff, his accomplice and his victim said otherwise; he was incapable of accepting that he was a wrongdoer. As Peck puts it, evil is the inability to tolerate the pain and the guilt of having sinned (I am not a fan of the word sin, and normally avoid its use; this is Peck's chosen term to describe it though).

Peck identified another characteristic of evil people: for them, this behavior is systemic. Everyone has committed minor evil in their lives, some act of malice directed at a sibling, or selfishly motivated minor theft; but these are isolated incidents, they are not a pattern of behavior. In order to meet Peck's criteria for being evil, this inability to accept fault and take responsibility for their actions must pervade their entire lives. These people would rather shift their entire identity to something else than accept consequences.

The two young monsters who murdered Matthew Shepard are in fact perfect examples of this. They took an unarmed young man to a field, tied him to a post and tortured him to death. But in their eyes, they have done no wrong. Before trial, they attempted to have their girlfriends give them alibis. At their trials they used the "gay panic" defense; that Matthew Shepard was gay caused them temporary insanity. Niether of these defenses worked. To its everlasting shame, ABC News' 20/20 chose to give these savages a national forum for thier new excuse for murdering this man: it was the drugs. They suddenly claimed, years after the crime, that they are being unfairly persecuted for discrimination against gays. It was really a drug crime.

All of this bullshit has a single common theme running through it: it is not their fault that they murdered Matthew Shepard. First they did not do it. Then, when presented with incontrovertable evidence, it becomes Matthew's fault for being gay. Oh, that didn't work? It was Matthew's fault for their being on drugs.

So here we have the three characteristics of evil people:

the absence or destruction of good; evil being inherently against life and creativity

the inability to face the consequences of thier actions

this behavior is systemic, it is the common thread that runs through the person's entire life

Peck goes on in his book to note that while many of these people are criminals they are, nonetheless, well represented in mainstream society. In his experience, and mine as well, he observed that these people can be highly functional, successful individuals. Absolutely crucial to them is the appearance of respectability and adherence to social mores.

Think about Tyco's former CEO Dennis Kozlowski, and the former financial chief, Mark H. Swartz, who stole hundreds of millions of dollars from Tyco. Think of Enron's Andrew Fastow, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker. All of these people wore the appearance of propriety. All of them were criminals and con artists. They clothed themselves in the moral armor of executives and churches. Again, they are not to blame. They hide behind these institutions to excuse their wrongdoing. And when it all falls down, they blame anybody else but themselves.

Evil is not stupid; evil is selfish. That selfishness is so absolute it leads to stupidity. But evil people are not necessarily stupid.

I will resume this discussion soon. In the meantime, look around you and try to be objective. Don't make excuses for people. You'll be surprised. I bet almost every one of us has at least one truly evil person in their lives. Knowing they are evil is the first step towards protecting yourself from their evil.

Escaping Debt

2005-08-04T17:42:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite websites, Talking Points Memo Cafe has a great specialty discussion area called the Warren Reports which deals solely with financial issues facing the middle class. Today they had a post that linked to a website called Hello, Dollar!. This site is all about getting out of debt, increasing savings and essentially learning about personal finances, the good things to do, the bad things to avoid. Most of the things on the website that I have read are ridiculously simple; yet these are things I did not know or did not consciously think about until a few years ago.

For those of you who do not know, in my alcoholism I managed to saddle my family with $17,000 in credit card debt and $60,000 in student loans (and I essentially failed out of law school, meaning I get to pay the loans without having the degree). About a month ago, my wife and I were only $1,900 in credit debt. We had paid all that off through a lot of hard work.

I'm not proud of what happened a month ago, but I did not know what to do; there were no good options that I saw at the time, but right after my spinal sugery our air conditioner died. I wound up putting $5,113 on a credit card; yes I could have spent less. However, I had known for some time that the furnace had problems as well and with a baby in the house the potential fire hazard there was more than I could stomach.

So it is with gut wrenching (but stomachable) nausea that I have to report that we are roughly $7,500 back into credit debt. That does not count the expenses for surgery which will come out of pocket: $3,000.

But I know what I have to do. Essentially I am going to throw every disposable cent I have at the credit card. But even the best case scenario means I have over a year before we get that to zero. I hate it, but don't see a choice.

Anyway, I really don't want anyone to go through what Laura and I have gone through (largely through my irresponsibility). Learn from my mistakes; please feel free to profit from my errors.

I think that Hello, Dollar! will help you do just that. It has a savings calculator and a credit card payment calculator. Nothing too sophisticated, but enough to be very helpful. Now go and learn how to kill your debt!!

Work Gripes

2005-08-03T07:25:00.000-05:00

Dozing.

My office has been in a state of rebellion for about a year now, but the rebellion has been squashed and man that pisses me off. We have a business casual dress code: dockers/khaki pants, shirts with collar and of course, no kilts. Well, in my building we have been ignoring that and simply wearing jeans. Part is because we go into and out of the warehouse and get dirty (especially since the office fire coated everything with a fine layer of smoke) and part of it is due to comfort. It all started when my boss hired this "gifted" kid to run one of our new divisions and he simply refused to wear dress slacks. Even at trade shows he would be in jeans. I copied his lead and others followed.

Well, boy wonder quit, essentially fucking my boss over in the process. Suddenly we are told that we will dress in business casual or be sent home to change.

So here's the deal: we lose a privilege we were never granted, right? So I have no basis for complaint, do I? So this should be no big deal, right? Nope. I almost walked out of the job yesterday over it. I had to spend fifteen minutes at my desk doing deep breathing and praying in order to calm down. If I did not have a child, I probably would have walked.

What the hell is the big deal? Well, I am an alcoholic and there are several psychological characteristics common to alcoholics. One is that we can behave like juveniles when we don't get our way; for an example look at the recent actions of President Bush over John Bolton. That is the classic behavior of an unrecovered alcoholic. Another is that we tend to believe everything revolves around us; I am feeling persecuted, first no kilt and now no jeans? Outrageous!

Time for me to grow up, this is not about me, nor is it about how I dress. It is about the fact that the owner gets to set the rules he wants. So I need to get over it.

I think this is an indication that I am not in fit spiritual condition. Good news is, today I see the surgeon again for a final follow-up. After this, I should be free to attend noon twelve step meetings assuming I am healthy and all is going well. So hopefully I can start taking actions towards becoming more spiritually fit.

'Cause Goddess knows I'd be horribly ashamed to be anything like our current president.

Understanding The Start Of The War On Terror

2005-08-02T23:20:00.000-05:00

Just go read this entry by Juan Cole: Fisking the "War on Terror". He takes you back to 1979 and shows you how the Republican party helped create, fund, arm and train Al-Queda. It is a good concise explanation; upsetting because it is true. Take five minutes and learn how the Republicans helped kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11/2001 and another 1,770 in Iraq, not to mention all the Iraqis who have died.

As a Pagan, I do not believe in Hell. But I do believe we make our own fate and we must face the consequences of our actions. These thugs have a massive karmic debt to pay.

Back In Touch With The Goddess

2005-08-02T06:18:00.000-05:00

From the darkness into the light.

Time for me to thank my readers for all of the comments and advice. I read everything I get, whether in email or comments. I have an extraordinarily wonderful audience of readers and I do appreciate that.

I did get to celebrate Lughnassadh yesterday; my wife and my baby joined me for a brief, informal and impromptu ritual. This was very touching to me because my wife does nto share my faith. That means she was there out of love for me. That means a lot to me.

There is a big project that I have been working on with the help of several other people and it is slowly coming together. Intially we were trying for a June 1st launch, then a July 4th launch, then an August 1 launch, but little things like babies and surgery have prevented things from going as they otherwise would. So, if all goes well, I will unviel in September, around Mabon and the equinox.

Oddly enough, in researching this post, I came across the first Wikipedia entry that I may challenge: the entry for Mabon. Whilst certainly accurate in details, the tone is resoundingly negative. In my nonexistent spare time I will edit this to be more neutral in tone and see if I cannot learn more about how the name Mabon was applied to the Autumn Equinox.

Now, today Marine Corps Major Paul Hackett is in a special election in Ohio's district 2 for a seat in the House of Representatives. He is a Democrat, although, as befits a Democrat in a district that went for Bush by over 70% in 2004, he is fairly conservative. He volunteered to fight in Operation Iraqi Freedom and would be the first veteran of this war in Congress. So I am saying a prayer for him. The odds of victory are slim, but polling shows he is within five points of the Republican, Jan Schmidt. Schmidt's supporters have chosen the usual Rethuglican tactic: lie. They are questioning Major Hackett's service to his country (remember the Swift Boat Liars?). Prayers for Major Hackett.

War Without Sacrifice

2005-08-01T08:45:00.000-05:00

Uwe E. Reinhardt explores the idea that we can have a war without sacrifice and what it means for our nation in terms of ethical and moral cost. Good read. Via Atrios.

Journeys Of Faith: Thoughts on Lughnassadh

2005-08-01T06:26:00.000-05:00

The green of spring is fading. In the suburbs it is artificially maintained by sprinklers, fertilizers and diligent gardening. However, any significant amount of driving takes me past formerly green fields which I have seen start to yellow. For some folks this is a sad thing to see, the period of growth is over and they sense the dry heat ahead, that endless blazing sun that currently sits over us in the northern hemisphere.

Although it is still subtle and almost unnoticeable the daylight has begun to shrink and nightime is coming earlier and earlier. Down here in Texas you hardly notice it; rather it is the omnipresent heat that you are aware of. But as we walk the dogs and the baby we notice we are seeing more and more of the beautiful multicolored sunsets. Sadly, some of the beauty and color comes from the fact that light is being broadcast through pollutants that enhance the color.

In the extended metaphor of my life, I am probably in my August now; leaving my prime and heading towards the fall of my life. That is no bad thing; for I have a secret. Although I loved my spring and had many good times there were also bad and difficult times. The secret is to learn from those things so that the road ahead is easier.

Now is the time of my life when I begin to see the harvest; the results of the seeds I planted in my youth and over the course of my entry into adulthood. As an alcoholic, I have not done the best job of being consistent with my sowing. I am fortunate for I have a wife who was and I have friends in sobriety who have helped me get a good start on what is needed for me to catch up to where I should be.

My secret, as I head into this fall and the autumn of my life itself is this: I love the autumn. Where others embrace the spring, the greenery and the blossoms and turn away from the shorter days and cooler temperatures I do the opposite. I never thought about it much in depth, but I now suspect that being a child with pretty severe allergies may play a role in this. Also, for me the heat has never been enjoyable it is always oppressive. But autumn meant blessed relief from all the the above. So August meant another month and a half of cooking and then months of release from the oven. I relish the autumn like a treat.

There is another thing; autumn holds my favorite holiday and holy day: Halloween, which I celebrate as Samhain. Halloween is the only holiday where your imagination is given free reign; where you are encouraged to be creative and come up with a costume. Even the decorations allow for greater leeway than other holidays; you can be as cutesy as you like or you may be absolutely grim. It is your choice. The colors of autumn are a further reward. In Colorado you can drive in the mountains and see amongst the dark green evergreen pines splashes of golden color as the aspen leaves change. In some places the mountians appear covered in sparkling gold.

This Lughnassadh I celebrate my friends and family; especially my baby daughter Anwen and my wife Laura. I give thanks for the harvest of abundances and grace that gave me the resources to afford surgery when I needed it and to replace the air conditioner that died. The Goddess has been very, very generous to me; I am sober today and that is more than I could do on my own resources. I am a lucky, blessed man. Soon I will walk in the woods as the leaves fall to the ground and the breeze dances through the trees. I cannot wait!

You are invited to join me in a dance to the Wheel of the Year; may it always turn. May your harvests this year be abundant. May you and your family be blessed.

All images courtesy of FreeFoto.com

Message for NYpagan Chick: If you are ever willing, I would love to hear about your journey of faith.

Changes

2005-07-31T23:42:00.000-05:00

I could not afford to be a stay at home father so tomorrow my daughter starts day care. This is making me very sad. I will try to turn it over to the Goddess, because it is out of my hands; at this stage there is nothing to do.

Tomorrow I am going to see if my wife will join me for a brief Lughnassadh ritual; just in our home.

All day I have had a pounding headache. It is because the air is high in ozone, high enough to mandate an alert. Is this really how we want to live; with air made toxic by our own pollution? I guess so. Sad really.

Our New Babysitter: Jim

2005-07-30T23:49:00.000-05:00

Well, it took some doing, but we finally dug up a cheap babysitter; we laid down the rules and he made no bones about it which allowed us a nice evening out. Anwen, however, was a little unsure about him as you can see.

Spirituality Writ Large

2005-07-29T07:17:00.000-05:00

I find Lilith Saintcrow awfully annoying. She often says things that I want to say, only she does a better job than I do. In her post, Face to Face with the Gods she says a lot about a personal relationship with the Divine that captures much of what I feel. This is worth taking a minute or two to read.

Hat tip to Pagan Sojourner for steering me to this post!

Anwen's Smile

2005-07-29T06:33:00.000-05:00

Anwen has been smiling for over a week and a half. But catching that on film has proven difficult. Oh, sure, I have some really blurry photos that could be a baby smiling. Or a rose blooming. Or some rare skin disorder. It is hard to tell. But last night, I got lucky!

Nothing yet.

Still nothing.

Mom tickles her with the toes and bingo: smile!

A Magnificent Miscelleny

2005-07-28T06:21:00.000-05:00

Our other children were feeling neglected.

My wife and I are discussing going to Witchstock and she is willing to go but her concern is the baby. Anwen will be five months old by the time of Witchstock. Can anyone think of any reason she should not camp with us for two nights and three days in late September in Texas? Are there any special baby supplies we should take with us? Obviously there are concerns with snakes, fire ants and other humans, but are those reasons not to go or simply reasons to be careful? My secret concern is the possibility of the baby crying and keeping other campers awake. There's not much you can do to muffle sounds in a tent; last year at Witchstock I got a fairly graphic example of that from Tonyahh ahh ahh ahh harder ahh ahh ahh if you get my drift (If that goes on again this year I will have a video camera. If they are going to make thier lovemaking that public, I feel I should be able to turn a profit off my lack of sleep).

Last year, WitchStock proved to be a very important point for me spiritually; I am hoping that proves to be the case again this year. I am dragging spiritually. Going to more AA meetings would help but I am feeling very boxed in here. I'm still seeing various physicians at least once per week. Pressure is on me at work to make up hours so there are no lunchtime meetings. In the evenings, I generally collapse and nap; I'm still worn down from surgery. I'm not sure what to do; some weekend meetings are one obvious answer. We shall see; I am meeting with my sponsor tonight.

This past weekend El Capitan was in town and I did not see him because I decided to stay home and rest. I am still feeling guilty about that. My wife says I should not because I was resting and I needed the rest but over the years El Capitan has put a lot more effort into this friendship and I want to reciprocate. He once said to me that once his friends become parents, they disappear for lack of time and I did not want to be one of those. But here I am, falling right into that mold.

Posts like this kill this blog; the political readers get turned off because this isn't politics. The pagans read about Witchstock but then get bored. The folks in recovery read the bit about meetings and shake their heads sadly and move on. Consistency builds readership, but I am not consistent with the subject of my content. Hell, I can't even classify my blog anymore. My readership, insofar as I can tell, is mostly female (that's cool) so I try not to blog too much about hot chicks... well, okay, my wife reads this too so... So I am at an impasse as to how to build readership.

Blogs do make a difference: two days ago I blogged about Latoyia Figueroa who has been missing for almost ten days now. She has a seven year old daughter and was pregnant at the time she disappeared. I picked up this story from The All Spin Zone where he was commenting that there was no media coverage of the case and indeed, there were only three Google News hits for Latoyia Figueroa when I blogged.

Since then the case has appeared on CNN, Fox and MSNBC. The reward fund has grown to 15% of the goal of $10,000. The guy who started this, Richard Cranium got this email from Latoyia's cousin:

Dear Richard,

I would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. I am Toy's cousin Abraham and we are deeply saddened that we have not been able to get the national support that we need in order to publicize this tragedy. Once again we thank you for your efforts and support in this matter.

I pray she is found alive; I know that is unlikely at this stage, but I'm going to pray anyway. Even if the outcome of this case is not good, maybe the media will get the message that we, Americans, care about each other, all of us. We do care that a black woman is missing and want her found; just the same that we care that a white girl in Aruba is missing. Maybe all of these stories should be covered. Maybe the media could learn to care about the poor and minorities as well.

Unlikely, but again, well worth a prayer.

As Richard points out it is not too late to contribute to finding Latoyia Figueroa, both with money and with blog coverage.

Nature Deficit Disorder

2005-07-27T07:58:00.000-05:00

The Chisos Mountain Range in Big Bend National Park

Yesterday, while making my rounds of the blogs, I came across Pagan Sojourner's account of making the 2,170 or so mile journey on the Appalachian Trail. This account hit me like a blow. The last time I spent any extended time in nature was camping in the Wichita Wildlife Sanctuary in Oklahoma, but we were there to scatter our covenmate Jim's ashes. Part two of that entry is here. Although I did take a little time to try and be with nature it wasn't the best trip for it. In fact, that was where I hurt myself.

I'm badly in need of some sort of spiritual retreat, a time and place for me to reconnect to that which is sacred in this world. A place to sense the presence of the Divine. Unfortunately, with all the time off I have taken from work, I just can't do it. Not now anyway. In any case, Texas outdoors in late July through mid September is miserably hot and this year is no different. The closest I get to outdoors is looking out from the airconditioned inside. I have never taken the heat well and as I age, I take it less well.

Witchstock is coming up. I don't know if, since I am no longer a part of a coven, I will be allowed to go. If I am, I want to take my wife and child. Witchstock sounds like a great time for a Wiccaning!

Or it would... when I went into surgery my wife sent an email to all my former covenmates about my surgery, but we never heard back from any of them. No hey how are you or anything, which is not like them. So I'm wondering if I have offended them or anything. I was going to ask one of them to do the Wiccaning but...

But if I can go to Witchstock, that will be a great time to reconnect.

Anyway, I urge you to go read Sojourner's great post about her (I think she is a she, if she is a he, my vast apologies) experience during the five month hike. How on earth anyone in this modern world can afford to take that long of a time for a hike I don't know but that may be one of the biggest problems facing us today. We don't know how important it is to be able to do things like this and we are missing out on something critical.

Before you go, read my post below. We're trying to prevent this missing woman from slipping into invisibility. So help us out if you can! Thanks.

Missing White Woman!!!

2005-07-26T23:25:00.000-05:00

Okay, I lied to get your attention. It is actually a missing African-American woman and as a result, there will not be any media coverage or CNN specials about her. So, the blogosphere has decided to change that and look at this post by Richard Cranium and see how you can make a difference. C'mon ya'll contribute to the reward fund, blog on this and help get her case some media coverage!

Eight days after she is missing there are no leads, no media coverage and no reward. The blogosphere is changing this. Still, it is sad. If she was white, pregnant and missing we'd have heard all about it. So let's all blog on this, make some noise, raise some money and see if she can't be found.

All credit goes to The All Spin Zone's Richard Cranium for this story. This should be a no brainer. Cough up $5.00 or $10.00 and help fund a reward for a missing woman and get some media coverage for her.

Lammas/Lughnasadh

2005-07-26T06:21:00.000-05:00

Halloween rehearsals.

The first of the harvest holidays, one of the four major Pagan holy days, is nearly upon us. August the first is when pagans such as myself celebrate and venerate the abundance of our annual harvest.

In the ancient Celtic pantheon of Goddesses and Gods, it was clear that one God stood out from the rest. We know this because whilst most pagan dieties were fairly local and isolated to one or two tribes, evidence for the worship of this one God has been found from one end of the former Celtic empire (really a bad term, more of a confederation of tribes) to the other. That is the God Lugh. The Wikipedia entry I have linked to is a good one, there is a lot of great information there. As always, most of the information we have comes from the Irish and Welsh Celtic traditions, where they survived Romanization, Germanization and Christianity. The important thing for our purposes is simply that Lugh was the many-skilled God and in many ways appears to have been a form of Celtic sun god. Who better for a celebration of the harvest?

I have to admit I don't really get the neopagan mythology about the sacrifice of the Corn God... but I suspect that is largely because my life is so detached from agriculture and hunting/gathering. This is where I see a lot of Christianity in paganism; or should I say it is the other way round? In any case, the sacrifice of the Corn God that we may have an abundant harvest and sustanance as we head into the part of the year with shorter days and less light leading to the resurrection of the God at the Winter Solstice when the days and light begin to grow again and we enter into the part of the year where we sow our efforts for the future.

Talk about feeling disconnected; my harvest comes from the grocery store. Seasons hardly matter to the unnatural cycle of harvest that surrounds us in this suburban/urban world.

I badly need a vacation. Not time off for surgery and recovery but time to go into nature and plug in; connect to the world and feel her beautiful rythmns again. I'd like to take my daughter with me; but this won't happen anytime soon.

I miss my coven. I have no idea how I will celebrate this holy day on my own.

The Violent Spatula

2005-07-25T07:01:00.000-05:00

I consider myself a political liberal. So, when I found out that one of the co-hosts of the Texas Blogfest 2005 was Lord Spatula (aka: Spats), I was pretty turned off. I felt, based on visiting his blog and reading what he wrote, that this was the guy my grandfather was talking about when he said that there were more horse's asses than horses.

Yet I went to the blogfest and am still glad I did. I got to see my old friend El Capitan, I met Zippo, Beth, Denita Two Dragons and, yes, even Delftsman3. I also met Spats but pretty much blew him off. I know assholes when I see ‘em and I just don't give them the power over my life to ruin the good times any more.

I missed the gathering at Spats place the next day. Frankly, I figured I would spend the whole day arguing with him and a couple of the other wingnuts. My life is too short for that crap. That is where the infamous photo was taken:

Photo taken from Mykeru.com

Now I see that Spats has managed to get into it with a Reverend Mykeru resulting in a various threats of violence (refereed and unrefereed) between the two. I probably would have missed the who stupid affair, but for the fact that it has caught the attention of Jesus' General and Journalist and expert on right-wing hate, David Neiwert at Orincus.

There are a lot of good blogs out there; in my opinion Orincus is one of the best of all of them. It's certainly in my top three. I was very disturbed to see that he considers Spats: a right-wing intimidation artist who calls himself "Lord Spatula," who has a habit of spewing all kinds of vile eliminationist rhetoric in the direction of a number of liberals who post on the Internet, including various threats of physical harm.

Revisiting Spats' blog it is pretty clear Neiwert's charcterization of Spats hits the nail right on the head. Maybe I ignored what I did not want to see back then, but right now he is proudly declaring his racist hatred. He's got a little FAQ which sounds more like the guy I met and still was not impressed by, but I'd be ashamed to have written the stuff he writes. Truthfully, my big reaction to what I read is surprise that people I know and like would want to hang with this guy. I just don't get it. I don't see anything appealing or interesting about the him, at least, not from his blog.

The sadder thing is, from my perspective, that the person on my side of the political spectrum in this story, Rev. Mykeru, seems to me, little different from Spats. Let me illustrate what I mean. Read these quotes.

From Rev. Mykeru:

(Taken from email addressed to Spats) I don't need a weapon, it's just that actually beating you to death is complicated by all the padding you are carrying around. In fact, even with a knife it would present a technical challenge to eviscerate someone with a 3" push dagger when they are carrying around 4" of stored Cheetos.

From Rev. Mykeru:

However, it (this particular conflict with Spats) did serve a purpose.

First, it can be used to continue to humiliate a particularly malignant net bully whose threats could have a chilling effect on discourse if the people threatened are unaware that he's just a big pussy.

Second, it could generally dissuade people from the notion that liberals are doormats that will not take a stand and fight.

From Spats:

(Taken from email addressed to Mykeru) Oh, _now_ I know why you're too afraid to come down here, needle-dick. You couldn't live it down when a 42-year-old kicks every last ounce of shit out of you. BWAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...!!!

Yeah, I know - while you'd be insisting on a slap-fight like the little pussified wimp-ass you are, I'd be shoving my steel-toed boot up your skanky little rump-ranger ass. Your butchie-boy of a butt-buddy might not like seeing your colon up around your adam's apple too much. Gotta keep your pimp happy, y'know.

From Spats:

These are cowardly little bullies we're dealing with here. Now maybe they're bullies for the first time in their pathetic little lives, but they're still bullies. And my father taught me - well, he tried to teach me, anyway - that there's only one way you deal with a bully: You stand up to him and nail him in the nose.

That's what I do. And, if nothing else, it drives home the point to these cretins that they're pretty insignificant in the big scheme of things. That in itself is worth the effort.

Both of these guys have cast themselves in the role of the hero, standing up to the bully. Both of these men see themselves the exact same way. That should set off alarm bells in both their heads. They are behaving exactly in the same manner that they both profess to despise and detest: like a bully.

It is unfair to characterize Mykeru and Spats as being completely the same however. First of all, from perusing Mykeru's blog, this is not typical daily fare for him. I cannot say the same for Spats; as far as I can discern this type of hate is the predominant content of his blog. Secondly, after reading both blogs intently, I am going to say: for all of his bluster, Spats does appear to lack the courage of his convictions.

Now, back to the central point: the violence. There is fighting back and then there is fighting back. And no, I am not a pacifist. There are times when there is no alternative but violence. This is not one of them. I believe that Rev. Mykeru's small battle with Spats did two things: it confirmed in Spat's mind that he is correct about liberals. And it confirmed in Mykeru's mind that he is right about conservatives. Again, like so many things in the past twenty or thirty years, it leaves us, as Americans, divided, hating and mistrusting each other. I want to join in with Mykeru; I like that feeling of being right, being pumped. But I can't.

I believe in a Higher Power and I believe that that Higher Power, whom I call Goddess (you may call that same Power Allah, Jesus, God, Krishna, etc.) calls upon me to treat other people the same way that I wish to be treated. And man, that is the fucking hardest thing in the world to do. But I have to look at the results. Look at my friendships. They extend across faiths, across political bounderies. That is my job. My job is to represent my Faith, my Politics, myself in a way that is attractive to others. To bear witness through deeds. I often fail at this job; but that is what I am here to do. And this job is important; very important and I will tell you why.

My friends Beth, Denita Two Dragons and Delftsman3 are all conservatives. Yet I believe they know and like me. Whenever they hear characterizations of liberals as traitors they have to square that with what they know of me. The only way to change people's minds is to get to know them; to influence them personally. I'm not looking to turn them into liberals. I just want them to see past the false image of liberals projected by the Right Wing Corporate Media. In order to ask them to do that, it is incumbent upon me to look past the stereotype of conservatives and get to know the people behind the label. And you know, they are just people, like me, like you.

That does not mean that bullies should not be stood up to; they must be stood up to. Bullies help shape these divisions and splits in our culture. They get their kicks from driving people apart. Some of them earn their living that way. In that sense, what Mykeru did was absolutely right. I just don't like the method. But he stood up where I didn't and proved that at least one of the people willing to tear America apart was nothing more than a blowhard. One person has managed to find a positive in this; Mykeru has the details but the upshot is that money will be going to families of injured veterans out of it.

An eye for an eye will leave us a world full of people blindly stabbing and shooting at each other. We have travelled too far down that road again; do we really want another civil war? How do we get from where we are to where we can hear one another? I don't know, but I do know this: both Spats and Mykeru took the wrong direction.

Work.

2005-07-24T22:07:00.000-05:00

Damn I hate work. I am so sick of work I would cut my throat to get out of work!

Oh, yeah, already tried that one...

*Sigh.* Back to the drawing board.

You Can Call Me The Kilted Cueball

2005-07-24T15:53:00.000-05:00

yuch.

She is much cuter than I.

AAAARRGH!

2005-07-23T14:21:00.000-05:00

I am so frustrated!!

First, my friend, El Capitan is in town and I am not up to driving an hour to see him. So I am missing that.

Second, my sponsor, N., is having a Masquerade party tonight. I am not up to snuff so I can't go for long but I am at least coming by the party. Now, since it is a Masquerade party, I have to come up with a costume. By coincidence, between having the baby and having surgery, I have not had time for a haircut, so my hair is-was-almost four inches long on top.

Perfect! I thought I will get my hair shaved to 1/2" everywhere except the middle, right? Then have that spiked for the masquerade party; have a four inch mohawk for 12 hours. Tomorrow I will go and get the spiked mohawk shaved down to 1/2" inch to match the rest of my head and come Monday, I will be all conservative and appropriate for work. Plus I will get some really cool pictures for the blog.

So I go into a hair salon and the lady either did not believe me when I said I wanted a mohawk or did not even know what a mohawk was but within ten seconds of hearing what I had to say, she had shaved the back of my head down to nothing. Well, at least I can do liberty spikes up top, right? She did not understand or whatever again. I think that in conservative Richardson TX she had no clue what I was talking about. Not at all.

My head is now 1/2" everywhere except for a round spot on top of my head which is 1" long. It isn't a mohawk, it isn't even remotely styleable.

I wanted to scream at her and call her a stupid bitch and walk out without paying.

But she obviously thought that she had done something very nice for me. She was all enthused and excited about how I could spike it, and it would look so "different." Honestly, deep down, she thought she had done what I wanted. Should I yell at her and make her feel like shit? I swallowed my anger and gave her a good tip and a smile and she said she hoped I had a great evening. She was all excited for me.

Great. 2:30pm. I need a nap desparately. I have to get a second haircut. l have no costume. And I am missing the good Capitan.

Man, I feel like shit. I just want to crawl in bed and sleep until I have to go to work on Monday.

AAAARRRGH! This sucks!

If 9/11 Part II Happens

2005-07-22T13:53:00.000-05:00

Should we nuke Iran?

What Do CIA Operatives Think About Karl Rove?

2005-07-22T11:16:00.000-05:00

In many ways the opinion of the talking heads, despite their amplification through repetition, matters least when it comes to national security. What will matter in the end is the opinion of a United States District Court Judge; a judge who will no doubt be smeared and threatened when the case lands in his lap. In the meantime it is interesting to have an opportunity to peek into the minds of those who have served our nation undercover, in a capacity similar to Valerie Plame.

Former CIA operative Larry Johnson, is submitting his testimony to Congress today about his CIA coworker Valerie Plame. It is a good read and an important one. It reminds us that Karl Rove is a traitor to his nation.

Larry Johnson dissects the Republican talking points one by one. None of them stand up in the light of the facts. The Republicans have put party before country and in making this choice are allying themselves with the modern Benedict Arnold. The castrati in the media will not report this; in fact I expect that until convictions are handed down they will downplay this. But people will figure it out.

A Belated Link

2005-07-22T10:20:00.000-05:00

A Pagan Sojourn is a blog I discovered by visiting my commentors. I have meant to add a link for well over a month, but kept putting it off because I did not feel well, etc. So it is with apologies for the delay that I now announce the link in my blogroll.

This person is not a pagan; rather it is an individual observing and exploring paganism. So I find it to be an interesting and diffirent take on things.

This Is Not A War On Terror

2005-07-21T13:52:00.000-05:00

Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, the three-star general in charge of the Marine Corps forces in the Pacific Region, gave an address on June 15th at the Naval War College's Current Strategy Forum in which he said that we fundamentally do not understand who our enemy is. He stated:

“This war has a popular label and a political label, but it’s not accurate,” said Gregson. “Terrorism is a means of power projection, it’s a weapon, it’s a tool of war. Think of it as our enemy’s stealth bomber. This is no more a war on terrorism than World War II was a war on submarines. It’s not just semantics . . . Words have meaning. And these words our leading us down to the wrong concept.”

Gregson added, “What we’re fighting is an insurgency defined as a popular movement that seeks to change the status quo through violence, subversion, propaganda, terrorism or other military action. But it’s different from other national insurgencies that we’ve known in the past. This one is networked thanks to the wonders of technology. It’s primarily ideologically driven, fundamentalist and extremist.”

A new class of regional and global actors have linked these movements in a global network of ideology, financiers, document forgers, transportation experts and propagandists, he said. This includes al Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah and other affiliated theater movements, he said.

“It’s a collection or a confederation of movements empowered by regional and global fundamentalist extremist insurgents,” Gregson said. “You can borrow an old phrase and say they think globally and act locally.”

Winning the war will require more than just victory on the battlefield, he said.

“The center of gravity, the decisive terrain in this war is the vast majority of people who are not directly involved but whose support, willing or coerced, is necessary to insurgent operations around the world,” he said. “Hearts and minds are more important than capturing and killing people.”
Inside Defense.com NewsStand Special: GENERAL: ‘WAR ON TERROR’ IS ‘INACCURATE’ LABEL FOR WAR ON INSURGENCY

I highly recommend everyone, conservative and liberal, stop for a second and read this. It is one of the most thoughtful pieces I have read about the war since day one. I find it extremely encouraging that this comes from a so high in the United States military structure, for lack of a better term.

I would love to hear what you guys think of it.

London Hit Again

2005-07-21T08:47:00.000-05:00

Not as badly this time. Thank the Goddess. BBC NEWS | UK | Tube cleared after minor blasts

Just Finished Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince

2005-07-21T08:03:00.000-05:00

Pretty good. Liked it much more than the previous one.

Rowling doesn't like Bush, does she?

Note: I don't mean to imply that the book is nothing more than a veiled attack on Bush or that this is the only interpretation. It may in fact be more of a comment on Blair. In any case, years ago Rowling said that she detested cowards and racists; that took care of a good 3/4 of the Bush administration. In this particular book she makes a pretty strong statement against illegal detentions on the part of governments. That pretty much indicted the remaining 1/4 of the Bush administration to me. That plot device definitely felt like an add on to me.

We Have a Winnah!

2005-07-21T00:31:00.000-05:00

So Daddy put his hmmmm in Mommy's hoo-hoo and that's how I got here???? Gross!!!
Ender at Red Monkey

Ender is the lucky recipient of one $10 gift certificate to Barnes and Noble, which is where all good progressives should buy their books because they have a 100% rating from Buy Blue.

Everybody had good entries, but Ender was the one who made my wife giggle. This was kinda fun, so I think I'll do it again sometime, keep your eyes open.

Migration

2005-07-20T10:54:00.000-05:00

My friend JJ has migrated to blogspot for her new blog! Check it out; there is some good recovery there. Also our friend Doughgirl has reappeared! Happy, happy, joy, joy!

Financial Holes and Bones

2005-07-20T09:29:00.000-05:00

I'll admit it. I have a ghoulish fetish for bones. Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by horror and the supernatural. Long before Samhain had any religious significance to me, it was my favorite holiday, Halloween. I still struggle with trying to balance my interest in the popular holiday and observing the pagan Holy Day.

Since we have plunged headlong back into the hell of credit debt, I find myself tempted by some skeletal toys which have long lingered in the back of my mind as possible future purchases. The temptation has grown...
Check out the offerings at Bucky's Boneyard, the Halloween Division of the Anatomical Supply Company. Full scale skeltons! Bags of miscelleneous bones! All anatomically correct! Oh, I am so tempted.

Then there are the delightfully grim and ghoulish offerings of the small businesses listed in Chateau Bizarre. For example, under toybox, then Halloween, there is The Haunted Manor which offers handcrafted corpses! I must see about getting El Capitan the Rotting Monkey!! Anubico is the offerings of four funeral home directors; very promising. And of course for baby Anwen we have Rotten Ragdolls for her to play with!
Bwaahaahahahahahaha!

Okay, I'm over it. I know I just want to buy playtoys because I am depressed and hoping that by spending money I'll be able to make myself feel better (Credit card companies love me!).

I also know that I am now one of those Wiccans who gives Wiccans a bad name. Now we'll have Beth stop by and be My Church was right! Those Wiccans are creepy devil worshipping fiends! I don't want anything to do with them! Of course I'll reply: Nonsense, Beth, calm down. And can I borrow your twins over Halloween?*

Wicca is not dark; Wicca is about the wheel of life, from birth through death; recognizing this cycle in ourselves and our friends and recognizing that this is what the Goddess intended. Our mission, as Wiccans, is to celebrate life in all of its diversity, teach a reverence for it and learn to live in relation to it. And like every other faith out there; ours is rooted in the Golden Rule: Do to others as you would have them do unto you.

My own creepy hobbies are separate from my faith and are not a reflection on my faith.

* I want to make it clear I am not implying I would harm her children. With her permission, I'd let them watch me celebrate Samhain. Without her permisson to do that (I don't know that she would be comfortable) I'd probably take them to Screams in Waxahachie which features like six haunted houses for a pretty reasonable price. My wife and I had a good time there.

Bush's Nominee: John G. Roberts Jr.

2005-07-19T20:41:00.000-05:00

Here's a quick peek at what he is all about. John G. Roberts Jr. - dKosopedia and Independent Judiciary.com .pdf file. The short of it? He'll screw women, minorities and the environment. Likely he will be confirmed because it does not appear there is anything radioactive in his past.

Caption Contest

2005-07-19T16:40:00.000-05:00

I'm in pain, so I am resting today. Rather than leave you contentless and going elsewhere for your blogfix here you go:

We need a caption for this photo! Winner gets something cute and clever.

Once An Addict, Always An Addict

2005-07-18T22:41:00.000-05:00

After surgery I got morphine twice. That's the first time I have ever had morphine. The first time I was not there to object or consent, I was still coming out of the influence of whatever they used to knock me out. Later I could not sleep, not because of pain, but because I was afraid that if I went to sleep I would forget to breathe and die. It made sense at the time. The little philipino nurse told me she could give me more vicodin or more morphine. I asked which would calm me down and she said the morphine will, so I agreed to that.

I'm a little bit sore now, not bad, still taking vicodin, but it still hurts.

My body just said: Morphine would be good. Real good.

I was startled. I did not know I remembered what the morphine felt like. But my body does and it is hungry for more. It is actually quite scary how large that hungry feeling around the idea of morphine is.

Goddess, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Our Extraordinary, Ordinary Soldiers.

2005-07-18T20:00:00.000-05:00

Some of you have noticed, and some have disapproved, that I am now blogging on soldiers who have lost their lives in Operation Iraqi Freedom. This is not any organized thing I am doing, it is simply kind of a reminder to me that these are real human beings. Each one had dreams, hopes, desires; they had family members whom they loved and who annoyed them heartily. And they volunteered to serve their country. Some to pay for college, some because after 9/11 they felt a sense of duty, so because it seemed like a good way out of poverty.

The people I have picked have been at random. I go to Faces of the Fallen and choose a name, look them up on Google and report what I find. What I have learned is that the war is not worthy of the warriors we have sent. Out of four random people I have found four extraordinary human beings:
Lance Corporal Ramona Valdez: The woman who would have been a scholar; who graduated from high school two years early.
Master Sergeant James Curtis Coons: Winner of the bronze star. I believe he died because of undiagnosed mental illness.
Private Devon D. Jones: Came from the worst parts of America and wanted to teach English. Told his girlfriend that he wanted to live because he had not had a chance to do so yet.
Sergeant Troy David Jenkins: Threw himself on an unexploded cluster bomb to protect an Iraqi girl and his unit.

This administration has discarded these people as though they did not matter, in a war started on a premise of lies. This administration is fundamentally evil in their devotion to serving themselves at the expense of the nation.

Today I remember Spc. Derrick J. Lutters who was 24 years old when he was killed. He was inspecting a bridge to make sure it was safe before his convoy went over it. He was from Burlington, Colorado which is very much a part of the great plains. His father said that: "He thought he could help the world by going over there."

Just another one of the ordinary, extraordinary soldiers we have lost.

Back Again!

2005-07-18T10:49:00.000-05:00

I'm back and blogging again. My wife is a again a blog widow. Actually, don't expect any really long posts from me for a while, just short and sweet for the moment. I am really, really grateful to all of my guest bloggers who came through wonderfully whilst I was gone. I still look like the walking dead which I think is incredibly cool.

Oh, just to let you know, this was the most expensive weekend of my life ever. Seriously. In addition to the $3,000 that I spent on myself medically, our air conditioner died. For those of you who don't live in Texas, air conditioning is not a luxury, it is a necessity. It's a long story, but for a long time I knew that the furnace/air handler was a jury rigged mess, that the guy who owned the house before us had screwed it up. Well, this A/C guy showed me how, due to improper installation, condensation was dripping onto live electrical connections. Seeing as how I never want to be burnt alive and feel the same about my wife, my baby, my dogs, cat and fish, I replaced it.

New airconditioner: $2450.00
New Furnace/Airhandler: $2390.00

Nope, this was not a cheap weekend at all...

But I'm grateful to be alive, to be sober, to be pain free in my left arm, to have a family as wonderful as I do, to have friends, like Beth, NYCPaganChick, Ender and El Capitan and all of the others who stopped by to wish me well or emailed me obscene photos that horrified my wife. Thank you all!

Prayers and thoughts for Doughgirl who has not posted since before my surgery. She has health issues too and she is a neat lady, seriously, take time to pray for her.

So Help Me Gods

2005-07-17T14:23:00.000-05:00

If this post offends anyone, then I've done my job :) Much love from NYPaganChick.

On Saturday I decided to head into the city. Run some errands and probably catch a film. I went and purchased the ticket and decided to go to a diner right across the street from the theatre. Remind me not to go there ever again.

I went and sat down, placed my order and drank my coffee. There I was, minding my own business. Little did I know that in the booth behind sat the spawn of Satan and his mother, Ms. Useless. First, let me state that I love kids. I come from a big family and I have 16-20 nephews and nieces. I don't know how many exactly because I don't know them all but that's neither here nor there. I'll save that for another guest post.

This boy decided that he needed the attention of the entire diner so he started yelling and throwing a tantrum. Screaming "Ahhhhh Momma, I'm choking! I'm choking! Momma Ahhhhhhh" This boy was not choking at all but that didn't seem to matter. He started jumping around like he was having a seizure and throwing soda and water at his mother. This heffa just sat there like a lump and let her crazy son do this.

I didn't want to get involved so I just tried to focus on my coffee but I went from normal to migraine headache like in 30 seconds. She felt she was doing good parenting by just saying "Sweetie, just don't drink too fast. Ok, honey?" Was she blind? Her son wasn't choking to begin with! What he needed a good talking to. Some 'effing discipline.

I don't get that. I don't get parents that let their kids run around like wild animals and don't seem phased by any of it. They don't care about the disturbance it causes other people. No, of course it doesn't matter because that's your kid and he's just the best thing since sliced bread, right?

I wasn't raised like that. My mother, that crazy psycho, (love ya momma) raised my sisters and me military-style. There was no yelling, no screaming, and no acting up and sometimes there was no talking in public. We were to be on our best behavior OR ELSE. Let's just say that the OR ELSE did not consist of a time out or grounding. It consisted of not being able to sit for a few days while your butt healed. Now, I don't believe in spanking kids but I do believe in strong and effective discipline. Sitting back and turning a blind eye to your kid's shenanigans may seem cute to you, but is incredibly obnoxious to everyone else.

The way you deal with your kids now will affect what kind of adults they will turn out to be. Raise them to be wild and they will grow up to be undisciplined and uncivilized adults. Real cute, right? Yeah, just precious.

So what's the point to my post? Who cares? Just don't sit next to me in a diner with your crazy ass kids... Hear me? Ok, good.

Competition v. COMPETITION

2005-07-16T10:46:00.000-05:00

um... hello? Is this thing on? Like Endra, I feel a little weird guest blogging. It's one thing to comment- it's another thing to do a post. Especially since, like Andy said, he and I don't exactly see eye to eye on a lot of stuff. Maybe a bit more than he stated in his introduction of his guest bloggers, but not much.

One thing I think we can probably agree on is children. I mean, we were all kids at one time, right? And Andy and I both have kids... and we all probably get just a little upset when adults do mean things to kids.

If you dig through the archives at my blog, you'll find out that last fall I was the "team mom" for my children's football team. One of my boys played, and one was the equipment manager. And... we had some problems last season with some of the parents and coaches. So... while I'm not an expert on organized sports and kids, I did play one on Saturday mornings last fall.

I loved being the team mom- honest. I love football, and love being in the middle of everything. And I know how fortunate my boys were that they had (with one or two exceptions) decent, good men as coaches. Men who wanted to win, but who cared more for the players (on both teams). They were tough, they were strict, but their players gave everything they had because they knew their coaches (with one or two exceptions) believed in them. (How did they get on such an awesome team? No special treatment, really. I wanted to talk to a coach before signing them up, because I wasn't sure if I should put them in flag or tackle. The only beginning tackle coach I could find on the league web site was Coach Joe, and I asked my questions. He told me that the best thing for me would be to put his name on it, and he'd make sure my boys were as safe as he could possibly make them. The rest is history.)

And then there are coaches like this, coaches who care more about winning than about what they're teaching the kids they coach.

A T-ball coach seeking to keep a player with a mental disability off the field allegedly asked another player to hurt the boy, state police said Friday.

...During pre-game warmups, Mark Reed Downs Jr. offered one of his players $25 to hit the 8-year-old boy in the head with a baseball, according to a police news release.

After speaking with Downs, the second player hit the victim near his left ear and in the groin area, leaving him unable to play in that night's game, state police said.

...Downs, 27, of Dunbar, was charged Friday with criminal solicitation to commit aggravated assault, corruption of minors and reckless endangerment. He is free on bond and faces a preliminary hearing on July 28.

This story makes me sick on so many levels. My first concern is how he ended up coaching in the first place. I doubt this is the first time his ego was on display for all to see. Parents had to notice his "win win win" attitude.

This moron, with one act (well, probably more than that, but only one that made the news) he taught his players so many worth-while things. Important things like "it's all about winning" and "it's okay to hurt others to get ahead" and "hurting people is ok if an adult tells you to (and you get paid for it)" and "people with handicaps are lesser people who deserve our ridicule and scorn". Did I miss anything? Those kids will remember this. Will they take away from this that Coach Downs was wrong and mean? Or will they think that Coach Downs was a great guy who was just trying to help the team.

I'll admit it. I'm not a very competitive person, really (unless I'm playing Trivial Pursuit). I love sports, and I gave my all when I played whatever sport I was playing at the time. But I always remembered one important thing... IT IS JUST A GAME. Nothing more. Nothing less. I was happy when we won, sad when we lost. But, in the end, it's just a game.

I'm in favor of kids playing organized sports, don't get me wrong. It teaches team work, discipline, the importance of physical fitness, the value of practice, and, yes, that there are winners and losers. That's just a part of life, something that they'll be confronted with their entire lives. Kids need to learn these things, preferably from caring people in a safe environment. Not from narcissistic jerks who are more worried about their reputation as a coach than about the children they're coaching.

Andy Always Wanted To Play A Zombie In One Of Those B-Horror Movies

2005-07-15T17:22:00.000-05:00

Never get in a knife fight with a surgeon!

Well he is back home and okay. As you can see, swallowing is a little difficult. Pain meds, rest and patience are what Andy needs now. The thing that is actually causing the most problems for us is the fact that our air conditioning is dead! So the house is well into the 80's and climbing while we wait for a repair person.

Andy says thanks for all the prayers and he is very worried about living up to the standards of his guest bloggers!

Harry's Coming - and He's Growing Up

2005-07-15T08:45:00.000-05:00

So being the guest blogger one someone else's blog must be kind of like being asked to be the guest minister while the "real" minister is out of town. Even though you know the context of the community, you're not really quite a part of that community, either.

So today, on the eve of the release of the next-to-last Harry Potter tome, I'm going to write about the Harry Potter world and the critics who think that Harry Potter is dead.

If there's one thing that I've noticed in my years of reading, writing and being in academe, it's that any popular piece of creativity comes under heavy fire. So I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised at Erica Wagner's assertion that, for her, the magic has gone out of Harry Potter. She cites a number of problems, one being that Harry's energy is not so exuberant and full of that child-energy as the first books. The writer of one blog feels that if there's any loss of innocence - or energy - in Harry's demeanor, it's not due to publicity or marketing. Instead, what so many critics seems to forget is that for the best writers, they're not writing to the market. They're recording a history that only they know about. I've seen it time and time again, as a writer continues a story, the critics inevitibly start in: it would have been so much better if . . . . In this case, the complaint is that book five was just too long.

Now, let me see. To begin with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Sorceror's Stone for the U.S.) had kids reading. The next book was longer and the third was even longer. And parents and teachers rejoiced to see their kids reading these huge books! Everybody was ecstatic that kids weren't just reading little chapter books, but read "adult-sized" tomes. We were ecstatic at the world-building that Rowling was crafting so well. Adults were fascinated by the similarities to our world, but the very clever ways that Rowling addressed why us Muggles didn't know that the world of magic still existed. You know what, that takes some time and a few hundred pages to keep it going.

I can remember being part of a workshop group where someone presented a short story. Everyone was fascinated with the story, just loved it. But, it was too short. The writer agreed. He wanted to do more with the world and people he was creating. So, he used the short story as a base and spun a longer short story. Still too short. A novel. Now the critics kicked in: it was too long now. Why would people want to read that much about this world? I would hear the same thing about published pieces as well: one short story was the perfect encapsulation of a world. Another was too short. A novel was perfect. The second was better. And then the magic number was reached in the series - ACK, all hell has broken loose and the author has been devoured by marketing.

Rowling has said from the beginning that she was following Harry through school. Also from the beginning, the war between good and evil has been imminent. Harry starts out the series as an 11 year old boy. In the last book, puberty well and truly had him in its nasty little grasp, even as the Death-Eaters were beginning to regain their grasp on the wizarding world.

Far from despairing that Rowling had lost her touch with Harry, I was ecstatic that she was talented enough to let Harry be realistic, even in his fantastic world. She demonstrated an amazing skill in letting a major character, and a majorly loved character, do what the Bobbsey Twins, the Hardy Boys and the Boxcar kids never did: grow up.

"And yet I mourn Harry — the Harry I first met in 1997, before he was killed by the hype that now surrounds him."

Not only do I find this statement offensive in the context of the article . . . I also find it true.

You see, I also mourn the little kid I was at 11. And the kid I was at 7. I miss, as Erica Wagner does, the energy of those kids. And the energy of the countless kids I've known throughout my life. I miss our esteemed Andy at 17, bringing a snake from the biology room into our English class on the first day we were discussing Paradise Lost. I miss a friend's nephew, Sean, at age seven when he thought I was way cool for getting him a Robin action figure of his very own. (And he thanked me by insisting he had to be Robin for Halloween that year.)

But, that's a part of life, growing up and missing who we used to be and wondering exactly how we became who we are. I'm sure that somewhere in Rowling's mind, Harry is mourning the mostly innocent 11 year old who was so amazed at the wizarding world.

As to Wagner's complaint that the last book was too long by half, you can't please anyone. If the book had been shorter, we wouldn't have been happy with it because we wouldn't have believed some of the plot twists. The book was as long as it needed to be. Of course, I'm in love with Stephen King's It which many said was too long. But I loved the world and I wanted to know more about what was happening with each character.

I don't think Harry's dead. I don't think Rowling has let the hype turn her writer's head from the history she's faithfully recording for us. I look forward to watching Harry grow and change. And I'm so grateful that Rowling is gifted enough to capture change instead of having her head turned by success and sticking with the "energy" and "innocence" of her original books.

I think some people are just unhappy when others succeed. And when the unbridled fun of new discoveries wear off, and hints of realities start creeping in, they give up. But then, those people are only reading for escape despite all of their protests that they are serious critics who are dispassionately dissecting the work. Frankly, once they see the reality of -gasp- a "child's" book, they get frightened. One, they're forced to remember all of the other children who've grown up and are, in some way, "no more." Two, these kind of people tend to believe that children can't handle reality.

Rowling, on the other hand, knows that they can.

Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses.
"It is time," he said "for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything."

Dumbledore goes on to tell Harry the details of his life just after his parents were murdered, why Dumbledore made the decisions he did. And then:

"Eleven, I told myself, was much too young to know. I had never intended to tell you when you were eleven. The knowledge would be too much at such a young age.

"I should have recognized the danger signs then. I should have asked myself why I did not feel more disturbed that you had already asked me the question to which I knew, one day, I must give a terrible answer."

You see, Rowling knew from the beginning, when Dumbledore first refused to answer Harry's questions that Harry would grow up, that she was not going to keep him in the helpless throes of childhood that plagues so many kids in children's books. From the beginning, there was that age old pitting of children against the adults who "act in the interest of the helpless" children. She warned the critics that things would not remain static and stagnant. As usual, they ignored the signs just as they ignore the intelligence of so many children and so many readers.

The Case For Space

2005-07-14T12:30:00.000-05:00

A GuestBlog By El Capitan

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 was supposed to be the day we sent astronauts back into space aboard the shuttle after a 2 1/2 year delay following the Columbia disaster. A fuel tank sensor glitch will kick the launch back to Saturday at the earliest, and odds are that one or two other gremlins will be found, possibly pushing the launch back even further.

This is disappointing, but after watching two shuttles burn up with the entire crews lost, I'm not going to question NASA's caution. The 3rd times the charm, as they say, and one more shuttle mishap will pretty much nail the coffin shut on NASA's credibility, and kill the space program until private industry is in a position to take the ball and run with it.

Every time a delay comes up, however, is more time and opportunity for the doomsayers to get up on their soapbox and piss & moan about the colossal "waste" of taxpayer dollars on NASA's pie-in-the-sky programs. The detractors come in many different flavors, everything from the "The Apollo Moon Landing never happened" whackazoid crowd to the "This Money Could Be Better Spent On...." social justice whiners.

Is NASA wasteful? Yeah, more than likely. No governmental entity will ever be as cost-efficient as the private sector. The importance of what NASA is doing, however, is sufficiently significant that I'm willing to accept the bloated NASA bureacracy in order to keep taking these baby steps into space.

"Well, El Capitan, why's it more important to futz about up in space than to feed the poor?" you might ask.

OK, I'll tell you my opinion, and if you're a regular reader of Andy's who shares his general worldview, you probably ain't gonna like what you hear. In fact, you might even be offended. Well, that's a risk I'm willing to take! Here goes...

1) The Ends Justify The Means

In the case of NASA and our space exploration up to this point, the 'Means' is measured mostly in dollars (several billion of them), but also in human lives. While it is by no means inevitable that we'll expand humanity's base of operations from this one planet to colonies throughout the solar system and beyond, there's a very good chance that we will. We're going to lose more lives along the way in pursuit of that goal. Tens, dozens, hundreds, possibly thousands of lives are going to be lost in the effort over the next thousand years. That part IS inevitable. So, how can any reasonable person ever justify deliberately putting our explorers in harms way?

Because that's where trailblazers have to be. Progress is rarely made by those taking the safe, easy route. Think about the untold thousands of explorers, sailors, soldiers and settlers that perished in the opening up of the New World. What rational person could say that their sacrifice hasn't been repaid many times over? To paraphrase R.A. Heinlein, the birth of a new nation, like any birth, involves blood and pain. So it is with the birth of our outward expansion to the rest of the galaxy. There will be more fatalities, more accidents, more weeping families being handed folded flags. As we honor the fallen heroes of this nation's founding, so too will we eventually honor the ones who died to take humanity to the stars.

2) Scientific Advancement

The space program has produced an almost immeasurable increase in our advancement of technology. I'm not referring to Tang or freeze dried ice cream or zero-G ballpoint pens. Instead I'm thinking in terms of the advances in electronics, miniaturization, composite materials,and the hundreds of small innocuous improvements in technology that make it possible for you to be reading this in the comfort of your home on a computer that's easily affordable to anyone with a minimum-wage job.

The kind of rapid development the space program has fostered is really only possible in a capitalistic society, usually under threat of conflict. You always see great leaps forward when you really need to whoop up on the other guy. Once the techno-genie is out of its military-issue bottle, though, the sky's the limit, no pun intended! Anyone with intelligence, a vision of the future and some investment capital can do what they will with the know-how.

Case in point is Burt Rutan & Paul Allen, whose company Scaled Composites won the $10 million X Prize for having the first reusable suborbital spacecraft reach 100 km in altitude, then do it again inside a 2 week period. No government funding involved, and the long term benefits of their investment will be huge.

35 years from now, when you're paying $500 for a first class ticket on the 45 minute ballistic orbital flight from D/FW to Tokyo to see your grandkid graduate from Tokyo A&M (Gig 'em, Ninjas!) you won't mind so much the $55 per taxpayer annual price tag for all that NASA does.

3) Taking The Long View & Cheating Malthus

No doubt some of you raised an eyebrow in the above example where I mentioned the possibility of lives lost over the next thousand years. It's not too surprising if you have never thought that far ahead. Our current society rarely expects us to look past the next commercial break, much less to the year 3005.

Taking the long look ahead is absolutely necessary if you want to do more than just take life as it comes. You need to ask yourself, where do I want humanity to be in a thousand years? In 10,000 years? Does that sound presumptive to you? If it does, you need to shed that inferiority complex pretty damned quick. Those are going to be your ancestors reaping the outcomes of the decisions we make today. The pace of world events moves too quickly now to think about only ourselves and our kids. Like it or not, we have a responsibility to future generations.

So, what kind of life do you want your progeny to have? Are you interested in having your grandkids having the majority of their incomes sucked up by the government to give to poor people overseas because "it's just not faaaaiiiirrr...." that we have so much and they have so little? Well, keep voting liberal Democrat, and that's a likely outcome. In the name of 'doing what's fair', they'll have your grandkids living on a 1200 calorie a day diet and busting ass 7 days a week to keep the teeming world fed.

Personally, I'd rather have my grandkids working on an orbital farm, taking advantage of constant sunlight and harvested ice from comets or asteroids, growing virtually unlimited amounts of food and turning a healthy profit at the same time. I just don't see that happening unless there's a government in place that will reward those that lay out a substantial investment on a long-term project and not be in fear that their labors will be nationalized by politicians looking to win votes. Oh, don't get me wrong, conservatives can be scumbags, too. Hell, they don't even try to hide it behind a cloak of morality like the liberals. It's hard to argue, though, that the party of big business is going to be more helpful than the social justice crusaders in helping private enterprise go where it wants to go.

OK, here's where I'm going to seriously annoy some people. Buckle up...

Until such time as we can generate unlimited amounts of power, have nanobot factories create any item we desire out of stockpiles of raw materials, and have unlimited room for expansion, we are *ALWAYS* going to have poor people. Untold millions of 'em. It is inevitable. Sure, that bell curve of human prosperity may have its median shift back and forth, but there's always a bottom half.

Give a group of capitalist entrepreneurs 50 billion dollars, and odds are you'll wind up with several huge companies employing many thousands of people, and generating (over time) 200 billion dollars in tax revenues and profits, each one with the potential to spin off other successful ventures.

Give 50 billion dollars to millions of poor people, and you mostly end up with several thousand extremely wealthy corrupt officials, and several million additional poor people. Global populations are expanding at an unprecedented pace, thanks mostly to advances in food-producing techniques created by those Eeeeevil multinational conglomerations. Sooner or later, though, the Law of Diminishing Returns is going to catch up with us, and Malthus is going to raise his ugly head.

If we reach the point (through poor planning, natural progression, whatever) that food production no longer keeps pace with global population growth, you can count on several things happening.

First, your grandkids and great-grandkids will more than likely already be sacrificing whatever futures they might have had into the effort to keep the world fed. When those efforts fail to measure up, look for wars, purges, epidemics, and the general setback of progress for a good long while.

We've got a pretty good chance of outrunning Malthus in the long run, but only if we don't play the Social Justice game, and we don't keep all our eggs in one basket. To generate the unlimited amounts of power and the nanobot factories and have unlimited room for expansion, we've got to drag ourselves off of this rock and get out where things can get done. No, it's not particularly fair that Americans have reached their current level of prosperity while the 3rd world has languished in general poverty. OTOH, it would be criminally negligent for us to cease our efforts to advance our society in a fruitless effort to make everyone on the planet live in relative parity. No one has EVER been taxed into prosperity, and a world where everyone is forced to be equal means any blade of grass growing too fast is gonna get mowed down. That way lies stagnation and disaster.

If there's one thing we are good at as a democratic & capitalist society, aside from making piles of dollars, it's giving others a helping hand. When we've reached the technological level that we can have unlimited amounts of power, the nanobot factories and unlimited room for expansion, you better believe that we're not going to keep it for ourselves. We may have a drive to succeed, but we have a conscience as well.

The poor of the world may well have to wait a while longer before they get all they desire, but they'll get it a lot quicker if they start hauling on their own bootstraps instead of our coattails. Heading out into space offers humanity its greatest opportunity, but only if we have the desire and fortitude to achieve it.

For more info on taking the 'Long View', please visit these sites:

www.longbets.org
http://www.longnow.org/

The Plame Game And Why America Got Hurt

2005-07-14T00:54:00.000-05:00

I think that this post:The Big Lie About Valerie Plame, written by a fellow CIA agent, really explains what the significance of outing Valerie Plame was. It tells you a little bit about Valerie Plame herself; her character and her patriotism. I really hope that some of you click through and read it; liberals and conservatives alike.

Now, I'm off to get my throat cut...

What Do You Get When You Mix An Evangelical Christian Conservative, a Lesbian English Professor, a Hip Urban Pagan Chick and a Libertarian Pirate?

2005-07-13T06:22:00.000-05:00

Why, you get the wonderful guest bloggers who will be here when I am out!

As most readers know, I am heading into surgery early tomorrow. I should be fine; I will be in the hands of some excellent surgeons. As it so happens, you, my readers, will be in the hands of some excellent bloggers; I have a assembled a very diverse group of folks with a great variety of viewpoints to entertain you in my absence. Just to give you a brief introduction to my guests:

Beth from yeah, right, whatever who is a politically a conservative and an Evangelical Christian. I have yet to find anything at all I agree with her about other than that we both need oxygen, water and food to survive; yet she is a pleasure to disagree with because she has always treated me with respect. She was one of the Co-Organizers of the 2005 Texas Blogfest for which she deserves many accolades. I find her blog infuriating politically, yet witty and entertaining and often very emotionally warm on issues aside from politics.

Ender from Red Monkey. Ender and I have a long and odd history; she was my very first girlfriend, but it turned out she was as interested in girls as I was. Somehow the Goddess navigated me through the minefields of adolescent rejection and incomprehension to an understanding that even if we could not date we could become friends; and close friends we have remained. Until recently she was a Writing Professor at Notre Dame University. She is, I believe, becoming a liberal Christian with a lot of Native American influences in her faith. She and her spouse, Amber (who is kick ass entirely on her own) live in Indiana.

NYPaganChick at The Naked Truth shares my Pagan faith. My confession is that when I very first saw her blog and the title, I patiently went through her blog from start to finish and was rather disappointed that the title did not actually mean she herself was naked. I was rewarded because I got to meet someone new who has a great sense of humor, a perceptive eye and a fun outlook on life. Politically she is in my end of the spectrum, a progressive. She is also a proud New Yorker and a Latina. Oh, um, regarding nakedness, she does offer a lust du jour every now and again...

...Also she is looking for a job (somewhere besides Wisconsin apparently).

Our final guest blogger is my old friend El Capitan from Baboon Pirates. El Capitan is a very talented writer; a Libertarian politically (for the most part) and an Agnostic when it comes to faith. He and I disagree an awful lot, but almost always I come away from our disagreements with a new perspective and a greater understanding of the issue in question. I hate to admit it, but sometimes he is even right. El Capitan is a gun aficianado with a great deal of skill in that field; a chef, and a bit of a pirate in all the best ways.

So there you have it: conservative to liberal, Agnostic to Pagan, straight to gay and all great people and great writers. It's really an honor to have these folks here. Please enjoy their visit; I know I will.

My wife will post brief health updates as warranted.

Quick Miscellaneous Notes
I did do something yesterday that I have meant to do for a long, long, time. I wrote, got witnessed and notarized the following:

Power of Attorney in case I become incapacitated or die.

Medical Power of Attorney for the same reason.

Advanced Directive to physicians and Jeb Bush.

Guardianship of Child in case of incapacitation or death.

Last Will and Testament

They were not all that hard to do and I recommend that you do so as well. This means that Laura will not have those additional stresses should something go wrong.

Of course I directed that my remains should be cremated and a small portion of them be put into envelopes and mailed anonymously to all elected Republican officials. Is it too over the top to ask a small note that simply says Anthrax be included?

You can find out more here. That site will not help Texans though. You just have to wade through the Texas government site like I did to find the forms.

Last Topic
Karl "Benedict" Rove: Look, the upshot is this. There is nothing Karl Rove has done that is so terrible that he can't make up for it by going to Iraq and clearing IED's off the roads so that our soldiers don't get hurt. If he would do that from now until when the war ended, I'd consider his debt to society paid.

The man is a scumbag; always has been, always will be. The only thing that has changed is that we can now put the word treasonous in front of scumbag.

Peace to ya'll
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of Her hand.