Memorial Day 2008

In the not-too-distant past, my Dad and his two oldest brothers served in WWII-Pacific Theatre. His two younger brothers served in Korea. My husband served in Viet Nam. His father and two uncles served in WWII, one saw combat in Italy. An Aunt was a medical worker in Viet Nam. None were drafted, all were voluntary enlistments. These close family members represent Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. They all served overseas during times of war. Every minute they spent during those years is one minute longer than Bush or Cheney or any other of our current chickenhawk leaders or their children did when their time came.

Our current war involvement has been so sanitized that we are not even allowed to see the dead. But this is what memorial day means to me -- a chance to reflect on the war dead, the lives they would've had if war had not intervened. I will be spending Memorial Monday at our local war memorial touching the 20th century names from WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, all etched on cold hard granite slabs. It is the centerpiece of our cemetary. I will be thinking about the big blank slab of granite that stands next to them, the one waiting to receive the 21st century names of the dead from Iraq and Afghanistan. When that slab is finally carved with names is when we will finally be allowed to honor them, because it will mean those wars are over.

Here is Norah Jones, singing a sultry American Anthem (5-minutes):

Since none of my family has ever really talked about their war experiences, I am left with war movies to try and understand their experience. Here is my short-list of some Classic "War" Movies: Slaughterhouse Five, Catch-22, Dr. Strangelove, Johnny Got His Gun, M*A*S*H, and Apocalypse Now. (note: some of these links are videos). Each of these has helped me to understand different aspects of war. It seems to require some distance in time before a definitive movie can be made about any particular war. If I seem conflicted, it's because I am. Just because war is truly a failure of diplomacy, it does not mean that some wars aren't justified.

The author of Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, after being released from a German P.O.W. camp, found himself on a troop ship coming back to America. He asked a fellow soldier, "So what did you learn from all this?" ... The soldier replied, "Never to believe your own government".

To our current military serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, I would like to apologize for our commander-in-chief. Hang on. We are working hard on getting you a better one soon, one that will be bringing you back home to us. Every single one of you, whole and sound.

PLUM ISLAND

Did you happen to catch the news crawl today blabbing about the Bush administration's flawed study concluding that a highly infectious animal disease research facility could be safely moved to the mainland? Say what?

Not seeing any actual news story on TV, I googled it. OMG, they're talking about PLUM ISLAND! Isn't that the island that Hannibal Lecter was offered in "Silence of the Lambs" as an alternative to his solitary isolation cell? Even Lecter (Hannibal the Cannibal) refused it, pointing to the Animal Disease Center located there. He preferred to take his own chances on a long-shot escape, risking death, rather than endure living there. Lecter called it "Anthrax Island".

Should it be a shock to anyone anymore that the Bush administration would rely on flawed studies that confirm whatever they are promoting? The Homeland Security Dept and officials from the GAO are conducting hearings today. Perhaps C-Span will show some of the hearings, or maybe Keith Olbermann. This is what our TV news is down to, a quick news crawl and then C-Span or Keith. The administration contends that modern laboratories have the highest security to prevent an escape of the virus.

What virus are they talking about? Foot-and-Mouth disease (FMD), a catastrophic destroyer of livestock. It has been avoided in the U.S. by confining research since 1955 to the 840-acre Plum Island, located off Long Island NY. The Plum Island facility has had a history of accidents, the GAO contends, seven that the GAO is aware of between 1971 and 2004. The secrecy of the facility makes it likely there have been more accidents as well as possible exposure to many deadly diseases beyond FMD. But even just FMD scares the willies out of any rancher/farmer as it would lead to severe losses in meat production as well as milk with millions of livestock being slaughtered in order to halt the spread should FMD escape.

The prime motivator for our Dear Leaders to move this facility onshore seems to be their desire to use Plum Island for a National Bio-and-Agro Defense Facility that will study diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans. This means officially authorizing research beyond FMD-like viruses (which do not directly sicken humans). It's something they've been wanting to do for some time. Local Long Island activists prevented the facility from expanding to include diseases that affect humans in 2000, which would require a Biosafety Level 4 designation. In 2002, Congress again considered the plan. And here we are back again, this time considering moving the FMD facility onshore so as to free up Plum Island. Why am I not reassured that all this is strictly in the nature of defense? Why do I suddenly feel like a penned animal awaiting whatever highly infectious disease might be thrown my way?

There are five mainland sites being studied by DHS: Athens GA, Flora MS, Manhattan KS, Butner NC and San Antonio TX. I think we can safely discount the San Antonio possibility since Bush would never seriously risk harm to Texas beef.

Here's the GAO's concern: the 2002 Agricultural Dept study that Bush is relying on only addressed whether it was technically feasible to do the research onshore. Given the potential for human error at such a facility, this seems a highly selective criterion. Regardless of the degree of technology, all research labs are subject to human error, lack of proper maintenance, equipment failure and deviations from the pristine standard operating procedures.

One danger of working with these viruses is that they can be carried in the labworkers lungs, nostrils, clothing, vehicles, etc, making all facility employees a possible mode of transport for virus escape. Employees are not even allowed to have or be in contact with pets or visit zoos while they are working at the facility. Other methods of transmission include mosquitos, bats, birds, even ticks! There is some evidence that Lyme Disease was manufactured on Plum Island and accidentally spread 9-miles away to Old Lyme, Connecticut (the place the disease was first identified & named for).

After a 1978 accidental release of FMD into cattle holding pens on Plum Island, the United States only avoided international quarantine and mass livestock slaughter on the mainland because it was confined to the island. As it is, the whole island had to incinerated, every living thing, in order to contain it.

Leaving aside the moral issue of continuing Plum Island at all, isn't it just plum crazy to consider risking mass exposure to FMD and who-knows-what-other viruses being researched by moving such a facility onshore?


Here's a 3-minute overview by John Siegenthaler Jr, Associated Press:

Government research on the feared foot-and-mouth virus research facility moving from isolated Plum Island, N.Y. to a site on the mainland. The question is if the virus escaped, could an outbreak be contained? from April 2008 ...


If you're interested in seeing more about Plum Island and have the time, here's a longer report from July 2007 (30-minutes):

VVH-TV News Chief Investigative Reporter Karl Grossman interviews author Long Island native and lawyer Michael Christopher Carroll about his work on "Lab 257" taking us on a shocking journey inside the notorious Plum Island biological research facility. Carroll spent five years researching this highly detailed and powerful account of the secretive government installation that sits just off the coast of some of New York's prime real estate, an installation that has had its share of meltdowns, mishaps and downright scary security breaches, including two known releases of deadly viruses into the air.

Owned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Plum Island lies just off the coast of the North Fork of Long Island. This otherwise uninhabited, woodsy island has a long history of controversy and secrecy, as Carroll so intricately details, and just may have put the millions of residents of the Tri-State area in utter danger of exposure to fatal animal diseases, including Rift Valley fever, West Nile virus, and even anthrax, time and time again.

VVH-TV News attempted to have an interview with officials from the Department of Homeland Security but were denied.

**** UPDATE: Click here for quick news summary of the hearing conducted today. It was closed-door, not shown on C-Span or anywhere else. Transcript text/video won't be officially available for 90-days.

Alan Rickman is better than christmas

DivaJood and I have a little friendly rivalry over who gets to take Alan Rickman home. Very well, Diva, I will concede him to you for the nonce, as The Sheriff of Nottingham from Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (turn this one up, the sound is low):

Rickman is so versatile. But I have to say, I particularly love him as the bad boy.

Now for both Diva and Enigma, here is Alan, The Magic Man:

lots of Harry Potter scenes ... Hot-cha-cha!

Mememememe!

Another Meme Tag ... this time by the unsinkable Utah Savage! Never fear, I will get her for this, sometime somewhere when she least expects it. In the meantime, it's a pretty good way to pass the hours until the OR & KY primaries tomorrow.

1. What was I doing ten years ago? In 1998, I was ... Working long hours, many weekends in my construction-related biz. Not paying enough attention to myself. Spending too much time stuck in gridlock, swearing at people who persisted in pissing me off (hint: everyone ahead of me on the road). On Sundays, hub & I tended our organic avocado grove (this was therapeutic, certainly not a profit-earning venture). Thinking all the "interesting" times were in the past (boy, was I wrong)!

2. Five things on today's To-Do List. I no longer do to-do lists. Here are five "highlights" of what I did today: First, I woke up (hey, don't knock it; someday I won't wake up). Second, I closed all the windows so the house would stay cool for as long as possible since temps were expected to hit 105 today. Third, I met with an architect to review my latest home design (more about that some other time). Fourth, I returned a Library book, Homo Politicus by Dana Milbank (a good read). Fifth, I noticed the temps were 108-degrees, time to go home & clip the dog's nails as well as my own -- actually my car said the temp was 118, but it is always 10-degrees off.

3. Things I'd do if I were a Billionaire. Now I must assume, by the way this is worded, that my "billionaire" status is an ongoing thing, not a recent lottery jackpot, nouveau-riche thing. Well, I'd spend plenty of time managing my billionaire foundation set up to do good works all over the world. I would concentrate on what would help make things better TODAY, not years/decades from now. I want immediate results for my money!

I would have self-sustaining homes, using off-the-grid technology, in places like France, Australia, Switzerland, Hawaii and Antigua. When I was not "in residence", these homes would be available for local university students to study what "self-sustaining" means.

I'd reserve exclusive luxury space on the first commercially available round-trip to the moon. If I liked the trip, I'd buy property on Mars and set up a Biosphere Colony.

I might finally get my anthropology/paleontology degree; then as global warming melts Antarctica, I'd fund & participate in an archeology project to hunt for evidence of pre-ice age man down there. I have a theory that we've been through all this before.

I would sponsor a yearly gathering of the Blogger Tribes, all expenses paid for a fun-filled lost weekend somewhere. Is Ted Turner's Montana Wildlife Preserve/Ranch for sale? We could have a Blogger Retreat there! No hunters allowed.

Finally, I'd pay someone to exercise my body for me while I consume spaghetti and haagen-daz and meditate on the cosmic zipper. I'm sure enough money would make this feasible. I hate to exercise!

4. Three bad habits? A) I am too detailed -- no detail is too small for my small brain to latch on to. B) I am too linear -- if things don't follow my own contrived sequence, I try to force them, often with disasterous results. C) I relate everything to myself -- it can't be all about me (can it?)!

5. Five places I have lived:
San Diego (sun, surf, avocados, what's not to like?)
Spokane WA (holy shit, 52" of snow & white supremecists hiding in the hills)
Hollywood CA (briefly in the 60's, my first non-desert experience)
Palm Springs CA (I liked it; husband hated it)
Las Vegas NV (in the 1950's-60's, not the same las Vegas as today; read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson, for the truth about my final year there, searching for the American Dream)

6. Five Jobs I've held: (I think these are all the same job, really)
Self-Employed, small biz, 25+yrs in construction.
CFO for an Exporter of Comm Equip in the pre-cell phone era (don't ask me too much about Central America).
Accountant (this is my "skill", such as it is).
Waitress (I lasted 2 weeks; quit when I couldn't force myself to be pleasant any longer; I'm sure I would've been fired soon).
Babysitting (don't laugh; this paid for all my clothes & entertainment during Jr High/High School; little kids loved "the redhead with the metal mouth").

Finally, I am supposed to tag five unsuspecting bloggers with this meme. OK, here they are, but I will be surprised if any of them do it:
1. Dada's Dally
2. Grubstreet Journal
3. Enigma Watergate Summer
4. EProf2
5. whoever the hell else reads this and wants to play!

Answer the same questions on your own blog and let the meme grow... or not, it's up to you. I had fun with it and wonder if you really learned anything you did not know.

Bush to Abdullah, hey buddy can you spare a drop?

The following transcript was smuggled out of Riyadh today. It appears to be one side of the conversation at President Bush's desparate meeting with an unnamed Saudi Arabian King. We have no idea if it was properly transcribed or even if it is genuine. Translations of the King's side of the conversation are not available. Formal greetings have been purposefully redacted, so we enter in mid-conversation:

Yeah, heh-heh, ya might say I got mysef into a bit of a jam. Been playin fass & loose with mah job re-spon-si-bill-a-tees. Ya see we got oursels this thang called the consteetooshun which I done ak-si-dent-all-ee used to wipe mah arse with. Well yeah, ya might think so, but how was I s'posed to know? It was the only paper in that liddle room with the big glass toilets -- they call it the Smithsonian Drawing Room, which is where I figger ya drop ya drawers when naychure calls. Sure seem like a stoopid place to put 'portant doc-yoo-ments right out there in publick. 'Course normally I'da looked for a more private place, but I was newly ee-leck-tud an I didunt know mah way 'round none too good. They's lucky. If I'da had chili thet night, we'da prolly lost the Declarayshun ah Independunce too. Heck bells though, you'da thought I'd done kilt democracy or sumpthin the way some people carried on. Blame that stoopid Smithson guy for a bad toilet design, I say.

But ... oh yeah, why am I meeting with you about this Smithson guy? Ah ain't! Thet was all jes in the naychure of background info; hit's top secret stuff we yoonahtary egg-zeck-yoo-tiffs are s'posed to keep to oursef. I dunno why, but they tell me thet's how this whole mess done started.

Well yes, I do trust you. Y'alls been mine and my Daddy's frens forever an a day, as we say down on the ranch. Yes, I know what frens do for one another; they hep them out in a time of need. What? 'Course I know 'bout Quid Pro Quo; I didunt go to Yale an Harvord for nuthin! I'm not no appeaser! Ya don't have to remine me.

But I still got another daughter. No, she's not blond. Ya unnerstand the blond one HAD to get married unner a big ole cross in order to satisfy mah party's christian base? Yes, they are similar to your Wahabbists, only we find it more easy to satisfy them with meaningless rituals and religious symbols. You got mah sympathy on that, tryin'a deal with those nasty 'hobbists.

But before we proceed with thet neh-go-she-a-shun for my other daughter, I need to know if you can hep me out. You know what I'm talkin 'bout. Yes, THE OIL, what did'cha think, what else ya got, we don't need no more sand, man!

OK, here's the deal, 'doolah. You ferget thet ya awready invested so much money inna 'murican financhal trayshurees an reel estate. You ferget that due to my bad management, we done lost it all. You ferget all 'bout the declining Yoo-Ess Dollar which is killin yore bottom line. We all got bottom lines. Instead, you jes start pumpin out sum more of that sweet crude our way, an we'll call it even.

Yes, you unnerstood me, EVEN! Mah other daughter, not-Jenna, to marry the Saudi Royal Prince of your choice, thus uniting our two famblies by blood AND oil. Ah jes luv bein a uniter. WHAT? She's not worth it? I can go screw mysef?

But but, I don't think you unnerstand. We need to git oil prices down so that the 'merican peoples will vote for mah party in November. Yes, we still have ee-leck-shuns, apparently that part of the consteetooshun wadn't too badly smeared. Not for lack of effort on mah part! Yeah, we are working on resolving that issue, but it's not been easy without Karl.

What? Ya say if I send Karl yore way, you might jes think about sending us more oil? Well now! I was sure we could do bidness! Laura, han me the Karl phone, the one that has a pickshure of Jeff Gannon on the display. Yup, the one you keep in yore purse! I think we're about to do us a liddle Texas style bargainin, yeee-hawww!

Jes make sure ya get the oil flowing soon, so our gas prices can start comin down. But not too soon, if ya know what I mean. September and October would be perfeck fer some cheap gas.

Oh a'course you can cut back the flow, so our prices go back up, starting in Mid-November! And this time, you can jes ferget about any restraints. You jes cut back as far as you feel like. Mah stool-pidgeun, Muck-Came, unnerstands we still got us a passle o'money to be made on this oil deal. No, you can truss him. That was just his vote-voice talkin about dee-vel-oh-ping wind and solar power. He unnerstands Quid-Pro-Quo as good as any Yalie, and he's awready workin on sending y'all some really cool military stuff to hep with protectun yore eyeranfren's oil.

Yes, not-Jenna will be heartbroken, but she'll unnerstand. I'm sure she'll get another chance at a patriotic wedding alliance soon. I hear that new Putin Puppet, Meddievevvie, is lookin for a bride. Not-Jenna is already studyin rooskie. I got a Soulsheneetzin layin aroun on mah nightstan with her name on it. It's right nex to the Kamoo and the three Shakespeers. I wunner if that Shakespeer dude has written anythin new lately? I get 'em 3 for a buck at the local Crawford flea market. Hit's a good deal cuz there's yoozhulee a lot more'n 3 fleas inside. Laura uses 'em to set her presriptables on ... the books, not the fleas! The fleas she gives to me, dangit!

Oh wait, ya still here, 'doolah? Well, let's shake, sheik, heheheh ...

**********

Firm Hand-Shake, Kiss-Kiss, Nod, Nod, Wink, Wink, fade to black ...

Mom's Day

Today is the day designated by the Hallmark people as Mother's Day. I guess it's nice to have a special day devoted to Mothers on the calendar, but I really think if your Mom isn't in your heart every day, then just flipping a page on the calendar isn't going to put her there.

My mom has been gone for 10+yrs, but definitely not forgotten. Technically dying of ovarian cancer, she had suffered from Alzheimer's for the last decade of her life. Saying goodbye to someone who has Alzheimer's has usually been done years before the funeral, as you watch the grim progression of the disease robbing them of their memories and ability to make sense of the world, bit by bloody bit.

For some reason, I always think of easter egg painting on Mother's Day. My mom was very creative that way, always finding things to do with her children that would provide great memories and learning experiences. Some of our easter eggs took on a Faberge quality while others were simply decorated with rude comments in white wax crayons. These were especially fun to write some cutting insult about a particular sibling with, and then hand the invisibly-inscribed egg to the sibling in question to dip into the dye, hardly able to contain yourself while they watched for the slowly forming jibe to appear. It was like a ticking time-bomb egg message!

For the last two Mother's Days, living in Utah, I have had the pleasure of watching a hummingbird family building a nest, hatching eggs, feeding the nestlings, and finally watching them fly away to parts unknown. I don't know why they have chosen this particular small pine tree on the east side of our home, but they have built their nest on the same branch two years in a row now. It is on a steep rocky slope which has prevented good photos without risking my neck (literally). Last year's nest was so sturdy that it survived our winter winds, rain & snow and was still there, albeit very ragged looking, last month when I finally knocked it down. Maybe that inspired them to quickly build another in the same spot.

The following photo is from last year. The two babies look full grown and were about a week from finally flying away. The nest is no more than the size of a silver dollar, but very comfy looking, lined with soft downy feathers & pieces of lint. At this point, the babies were so large, the mother could not stay in the nest with them, but was constantly flitting around feeding them. At night, she & her mate would hover around the nest, practically on top of the babies, to provide some warmth. I'm guessing they slept on the same branch.


The next photo is the new nest this year on Mother's Day. There are two eggs, same as last year, but they seem to be a little behind, because by this time last year, the eggs had hatched. I don't know if they could possibly be the same breeding pair, perhaps this nest was constructed by one of last year's nestlings who remembered this spot as a nice place. I will be keeping an eye on them.

The photo is so blurry because I had to hang onto a nearby tree with one arm to keep from slipping & falling down the hillside. With the other arm, I had to reach up to my limit & point down at the nest. Naturally, all this activity scared the mother hummer away. The mother is about the size of a large moth. The eggs are jellybean size.

I think my mom would've loved these hummingbirds, although with her slightly skewed sense of humor, she might've been hoping the mother hummer would abandon the nest so she could give these lovely little eggs to her grandkids to decorate. I miss you, Mom! You always made me laugh!

Happy Mother's Day to everyone, human and otherwise!

Wedding Bell Blues

The following is "snipped" from 23/6 news (motto: some of the news, most of the time) ...

"Saturday is the big day—Jenna Bush is getting married. The wedding will take place in Crawford, since even Jenna doesn't want to be associated with the current White House. The lucky man is Henry Hager, a stand-up guy who, in honor of his country and his new father-in-law's top priority, will go to fight in Iraq immediately after the wedding.

"Just kidding. He's finishing his MBA. But, no doubt, he'll be supporting the troops in his own way, perhaps on the crucial investment banking front.

"The final question: What will Daddy Bush's toast be like? The wedding is top secret, but you can make your own version of his remarks with our George Bush Wedding Toast-O-Tron."

OK, this is Silly, Dumb, Juvenile .... yes! yes! yes! .... click here to fill in the blanks yourself. Here are mine:

Greetings, Christian soldiers.
As the bride's banker, I would like thank you all for coming.
To my daughter's drinking buddy, I just wanna say, she's your problem now.
I have audited his finances and I can say that Henry is a strong man.
To Henry and my daughter, number two, I want to say that the path to a successful marriage is to stay the course.
And so, in honor of the oddly similar-looking couple, let us all make the tax cuts permanent ... or, uh, whatever it was I was talking about.

After the happy nuptials, the handsome bride and pretty groom will be personally instructed by the President in the finer art of ranch management:
Here we see Fraternal Twin not-Jenna modeling her maid of honor outfit and new tattoo:
If that outfit doesn't make it painfully obvious why Jenna is getting married and not-Jenna is not, here is the final proof ... the she-wolf in heat demonstrating the "technique" that won Henry Hagar's heart: Actually, I feel kind of cheated. Previous white house weddings have been pretty lavish public affairs. Is this a sign of how low in popularity Bush is, or is it right in line with how secretive this whole administration is? Perhaps it just means Dick Cheney was the wedding planner. We'll know for sure if we see this wedding banquet item: roasted ranch-captive quail, braised with sweet iraqi oil, served with souvenir buckshot casing on the side.

**********

UPDATE: I've been updating wedding info in the comments, but this is too good not to put in the post. The wedding band is SUPER-T. Click here for some samples (Super Freak, Sexual Healing, Brick House, The Bird). No offense to Jenna, but why would she pick her father's favorite band for HER wedding? These guys have been around 40-yrs, doing the same thang, playing country clubs whenever the good ole boys decide they need to get funky. They are the ones Bush conga-danced through the white house with. Try to imagine the Cheneys and other whitebread conservatives pretending to move to that groove. What a day for Jenna! It would be like as if at my wedding, 32-yrs ago, I had selected Arthur Godfrey or Benny Goodman or Les Brown and his Band of Renown for the dance music.

Finally, here we see the Crawford Angel Sculpture, donated by Bush to the town of Crawford, decked out in bridal veil & flowers in honor of Jenna's wedding. Since it's as close as the tourists could get to the ranch today, they were reduced to taking photos of a hunk of rusty iron. There's something so sad about this, it pretty much sums up the day, wouldn't you say?

High School Memories across the Racial Divide

I went to an experimental high school in the 60's. It was experimental in many ways. It was a brand new high school built to handle the first wave of baby boomers then beginning to clog up the educational system. In its first year of operation, I entered as a 9th grader. In an effort to build up some kind of school history, it was the first high school to allow 8th graders as well. So I managed to avoid the problem of being a freshman low-man/woman on the totem pole.

Our campus was college-oriented with much emphasis on critical thinking as the pathway to knowledge. Honor students were allowed to sky-out of any class at half-time. This idea was meant to encourage those students who didn't need intensive teacher time to pursue their own interests in the library or science labs (my two favorite haunts). Classes were 65-minutes long. At the half-time 5-minute break, heralded by muzak over the P.A., the sound of books snapping shut and many feet exiting the classrooms must have been depressing for those non-honor students who were stuck in class for another 30-minutes. The only class you weren't allowed to leave at half-time was Phys Ed (more about that below*).

The classrooms themselves were made up of modules of moveable walls that did not extend up as far as the ceiling. This would supposedly allow for future classroom size changes, but in reality all it did was allow sound to penetrate from classes on either side. For some reason, those other classes always seemed to be having MUCH more fun!

Being a brand-new school, we had brand-new teachers, too. Most of them were only recently credentialed, so this was their first job. We had the highest rate of "single" teachers, too ... at least they were single at the beginning ... by the time I graduated, many of the "singles" had married each other. These marriages usually happened during summer vacations, thus causing great confusion when your new fall curriculum schedule would arrive in the mail at the end of August naming who you thought was the baseball coach as your english lit teacher. These mailed schedules were also when you would find out that not enough other students had signed up for "history of poetry" or "russian revolution" for them to honor your first- or second-choice electives, thus ensuring you would be spending at least a semester studying "typing" or some such third-choice (actually typing turned out to be one of the more useful electives I ever fell into). One year none of my 3 choices were available, so I received a note telling me to call my counselor for an appointment. I ended up with a semester of "Mythology" which turned out to be one of my favorite classes.

Another barrier we broke in our new school was the color barrier. Being a brand-new school, we were also the first school in our city to be part of the mandatory bussing requirements of the 60's. About 1/3 of our school were black students bussed in from the west side of town where no high school, new or otherwise, had ever been built. Another 1/3 of the students came from a very wealthy area of town, the elite kids who for one reason or another were attending public school rather than private. The remaining 1/3 were students like me who happened to live near the new high school. This made for an interesting culture clash. I think I can safely say that most of these groups of students had never had much, if any, contact with the other groups. Throwing us all together in a new high school did not make us any more inclined to be friendly to each other, either.

The student parking lot was telling. Mercedes and BMW's were parked side-by-side with junker corvairs and dented ford fairlanes. Gas was cheap, so every once in awhile a big Dodge Charger or Pontiac GTO would peel out, burning rubber, which nicely covered all the cigarette fumes. Teachers usually went for sensible cars, like impalas or volkswagons, although Mr Fox drove a mustang and Madam Adam drove a pink T-Bird convertible. To the side, the big yellow busses would line up as each school day began and ended. I envied all of the students with cars and even the busriders, because I had to walk to school, pouring rain, winter wind or sweltering heat.

There was much racial tension. Race riots occurred many times as the tumultuous events of 60's America boiled over into flashpoints. The Watts riots were reflected at my high school. When Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, we had race riots for a week. A race riot meant that all the classrooms were locked down. When it came time to go to your next class, teachers would escort the students past throngs of "rioters". During these times, there were no black students actually IN class. They were holding meetings in the cafeteria or other common areas. At some point during these meetings, waves of black students would spill out and roam the hallways, driven by the heat of the moment or pent-up feelings of anger and despair. At these times, we would hear lots of yelling and banging around of lockers and other school property (remember our walls didn't go all the way up to the ceiling). I'm sure these outbursts would seem very tame by today's standards. While the property damage was pretty bad, the amount of actual personal violence was minimal. Since these were the years before metal-detectors or gun-carrying school police became commonplace (meaning we had no use for such things) you might wonder what we were all so fearful of.

It was fear of the unknown. Fear of the other. Fear of people who didn't look like you, talk like you, dress like you, or act like you. Fear was present in all three groups of students, across the racial divide, and between the have-mores and the have-littles, too. Everything and everyone in one of the other groups seemed so strange, and strangers can do you harm, right? So it seemed we were at an impasse in my first couple years of high school. No group really understood what the other groups were so upset about. Aaah, but then came the summer of love, 1967, and a new way of thinking was born, so powerful that it even penetrated my desert backwater of a town. Returning to school in the fall of that year we found the old groupings of students had suddenly morphed into anti-war protestors, long-haired hippies, afro-wearing black-power proponents, feminists, sports jockeys, popular society-types and/or egghead nerds. The original three groups had branched out to encompass a whole range of individual interests!

*Time out for sports: We were only required to take 2 yrs of high school P.E. Nothing could have made me happier since I was so small & unathletic. Even though I aced the written tests, P.E. invariably brought down my gradepoint average. Some semesters it almost cost me my honor student status. The only P.E. activities I was any good at were gymnastics and modern dance. Team sports were torture for me. I sure hope no gym teacher today is still allowing team captains to pick their own teams. It is completely humiliating to be among the last to be picked because nobody wants to be stuck with you on their team. This is where the black basketball players taught me a good lesson. Of course, the black girls would always pick their friends first, the same as any other team captain. And at the end of these miserable popularity contests there would always be me & few other klutzes to be forced on whatever team was unlucky enough to still need players. It was 50/50 that I would end up the only white girl on the black girls' team. At first, this terrified me. They were all so big! They were all so fast! They were all so fit & they played to win! I thought they would just run rough-shod over me, pound me into the ground & wipe the floor with my ass. But they didn't. They knew the value of teamwork & they worked hard to give me some unimportant play that wouldn't cost them many points (because they knew I would blow it). I can't tell you how good that made me feel. At some point, they discovered I knew all the rules of any game being played (as I said, the written tests were my ace-in-the-hole to getting a passing grade in P.E.). From then on, they would always say, ask D.K. if this is a foul or if this is allowed or whatnot. Not so when I was forced on the white girl's teams where I was benched & forgotten. One of my fondest P.E. memories was when Althea was a team captain. No one was bigger or faster than Althea. Everyone respected her (if they didn't, she would teach them respect, and they would have the bruises to show for it). I don't know if it was because she knew she would end up with me one way or another, but I'll never forget the times she actually picked me early on, not making me wait with the unwanted until the very end. Althea was also patient in giving me free-throw pointers. She didn't guffaw and make rude remarks when I airballed. She'd just throw back the ball and order me to TRY AGAIN. To this day, I think that was one of the most important lessons I ever learned in high school.

OK, back to post-1967/68: By this time, we'd started having black history assemblies (Bill Cosby spoke at one of them) wherein racial diversity was suddenly seen as something to be proud of, not something to fear. I think it was obvious that something wonderful was happening when the junior class president started dating a black girl. All of a sudden, even the cafeteria, last bastion of separatism, was breached. Black and white students began eating lunch with each other, finding humor in each other's stories and vowing we would NEVER let fear rule us again. We made it through my final high school year without a race riot. We even had a black cheerleader and a black prom queen & king that year. These were major achievements for the once disenfranchised because we ALL had to vote and that meant whites voted for blacks. At graduation, my "escort" down the aisle toward our diplomas was one of the black basketball varsity players. He was so tall & handsome, I think all 400 of our graduating class were jealous!

I bring all this up because in this election year we are suddenly seeing race front & center. It didn't start out that way, but ever since the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries, we are hearing more and more that many white people simply won't vote for a black man. I never realized closet racism was so rampant. This makes me sad because I thought we were beyond that. Apparently not. Apparently some people think that a candidate's leadership qualifications, their ability to win votes, and their vision for America don't count if they aren't white. If that is where we are in America, 150-yrs after the civil war, 45-yrs after civil rights, then it is a very sad statement about us as a country. I'd like to remind people who find themselves feeling this way, that fear is the way we die. I'm sorry if laying this out so starkly is offensive.

There's a great speech in Spike Lee's "Malcom X" which I think applies to these retrograde racial attitudes that seem to pop up whenever we begin to feel pride in our progress or at least hope that the issue has receded in importance: "You’ve been had. You’ve been took. You’ve been hoodwinked. Bamboozled. Led astray," Malcolm (Denzel Washington) says in the movie (I can find no record that Malcolm X ever said this in real life, but no matter). These words have special meaning for me this election year when I feel it is so important to vote for change, to vote your conscience in spite of (maybe even because of) the diversions being thrown down our throats.


Thanks for allowing me to walk to down high school memory lane, and most especially for enduring my Phys Ed humiliations.

Two for Two

OK, so maybe you gotta be jewish or have a jewish spouse, but husband & I always enjoy Richard Lewis when he gets the final word on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Whether he's following Rachel Maddow or John Dean, he manages to capture the ongoing outrage in my house. The fact that he sputters and flies off on tangents is just indicative of how much there is to sputter about in his 8-minute time slot. Here are his last couple of appearances. Just go with the flow ...

Man on a Mission (why George Bush's "Mission Accomplished" almost wrecked his marriage, and why John McCain's "half-pope my-friends gesture" drives him to despair!):


Nobody does it Bitter (why he's a democrat vs a central-casting photo-op republican):


Yes, he's fixated on lap dancing, he had addiction problems, he gets so tangled up in his own psychoses, he can almost make you lose your mind .... but he still makes me laugh! I hope his jokes and angst help more people realize that McCain is a flag-wrapped war bomb who we must make sure doesn't inherit the vastly expanded unitary powers Bush & Cheney are handing to the next president.

Dancing Around The Flatline

I am in the middle of a full-blown eye allergy attack. Haven't suffered from allergies in years ... 25-yrs to be exact. That was when I finished up a 2-yr allergy desensitization program involving injecting myself with increasingly larger doses of the things I was allergic to so as to force my immune system to realize these were harmless things and not to overreact everytime a cat walked by or a ragweed blew around in the wind. This go-round, I am mainly having eye allergies ... you know the red, itchy, swollen, stayed-out-too-late-drinking-the-night-before eyes, except in this case, I've been fighting a constant battle for a couple weeks. The battle is to keep my hands away from my eyes. They are so swollen & itchy that without mind control, my hands simply cannot restrain themselves.

So with eyes like this, I need to stay indoors, but my time spent watching TV, reading or at the computer is very limited because my eyes are too irritated to focus. It hasn't stopped me from LISTENING to the news however. What I've been hearing has me thinking:

A couple days ago, it was announced that our GDP growth ("the broadest measure of US economic health") for Jan-Mar 2008 was .6% (that's 6/10ths of 1%). Well, that certainly lets Bush off the hook, doesn't it? I mean, now he can officially say we are NOT in a recession! Since there are only three more quarters left in this year, and since a recession is defined as two CONSECUTIVE quarters of negative GDP, I imagine he is breathing a big sigh of relief that he won't be handing an official recession over to the next president.

Nevermind that most other economic factors indicate otherwise: job loss (240,000 jobs lost during Jan-Mar 2008), the ongoing & getting worse home mortgage crisis, inflation (which is offically being estimated at 4% this year, but which we all know is far far higher than that), increased costs of gas, food, everything! Are we looking at an economic FLATLINE, which is the final medical reading before pronouncing the patient's death?

And I have to say, knowing how much money the big war profiteers (oil corps, Halliburton, Blackwater, etc/etc) are making now, OBSCENE amounts of profits really .... just think how bad ALL other economic sectors must be doing for the OVERALL GDP to be an anemic .6% !

So, what does The Fed do in reaction to this news? They LOWER interest rates this week, for the 7th time since last Sept, making the Fed interest rate now 2.00%! Do these guys know what they are doing?

Lower interest rates will cheapen up money, encouraging people and businesses to borrow and spend more, which will in turn drive inflation up even more. Rate cuts put pressure on the US dollar, which in turn raises oil prices. In fact, oil prices are up 50% since last July when The Fed first started making noises about embarking on a prolonged rate cut policy. It sure looks like they are stoking inflation and oil prices just to keep technically saying we are NOT in a recession.

Today, I heard there were another 20,000 jobs officially "lost" in April. But we're supposed to feel good because they had originally projected 75,000 jobs would be lost in April. A total of 260,000 jobs have been lost since January 1, 2008. The CNN analyst reporting this tidbit actually laughed when asked if this portends a rebound!

They didn't even mention what the real economic fall-out is from job loss. Up and down the line, people will be hurting, real people who can no longer afford things like rent, health care and food. And thanks to Bush, the social service network has been cut back so severely, where will these people turn for help to survive? Will the beneficiaries of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy be willing to step up to the plate to help rebuild our social network? Like the CNN analyst, I am laughing at that idea!

I used to have a long standing belief that the wealthy class realized it was in their best interests to ensure a vibrant middle class. Without the middle class, there is nothing standing between them and the poor. I was sure they realized that masses of very poor people are unlikely to play by their rules. I wonder if they've heard of the latest phenomenon known as "home foreclosure rage"? This involves people who have become violent as they are foreclosed out of their homes. They trash everything in the home on their way out, ripping out cabinets, countertops, plumbing & light fixtures, doors and carpets. They use sledgehammers to destroy tile floors & punch big holes in the walls & ceilings. Why not, they figure? They are losing everything they worked for, they will realize no gain from the forced bank sale of their home, they are contemplating bankruptcy. Wealthy people need to take a clue from this. People who are fed up and have nothing to lose, will not refrain from property and maybe even personal violence. Mere anarchy is always about 3 night's sleep and/or 6 meals away!

Of course, the Dow seems to love all this since it finally burst through the 13,000 ceiling this week. Stoking inflation keeps the stock market rallying! After hearing this news, I was not surprised when the next TV commercial break featured LUNESTA "for a good night's sleep". Does anyone remember SOMA? Jeez, we need to be staying awake, not sleeping through this!

********

I believe that finishes my allergic rant to economic news. I would appreciate any ideas anyone has to help alleviate my itchy red swollen eyes. Right now, I'm taking anti-histamines & using natural tear eyedrops, cool compresses & just waiting for the allergy season to let up, hoping it was just something odd about this year. I can't use steroid meds, even nasal sprays. I really want to avoid having to go through the pain & expense of a desensitization program again. Last time I tested positive for so many thousands of allergens, the allergy clinic said there was virtually nothing I WASN'T allergic to!

random thoughts on Sticker Shock

Do you think this photo was a dyslexic sign changer moment, or a portent of our future? I've got a bad feeling it won't be too long before that "high performance" price doesn't look so out of place!

I've sure been hearing some convoluted excuses for why our gas prices are so high. Here are a few being flung out by neocon justifiers:

1. Gas is not any more expensive today, considering inflation, than it was in the 1970's. {except it now takes two wage earners to supply the gas for one vehicle}

2. The problem with comparing today's gas prices to those of decades ago is that gas was too cheap back then. {so you don't believe in the free market anymore?}

3. Gas prices are being driven up because Democratic leaders refuse to fund more refineries. {if they are, it's the about only thing related to this oil war they've refused to fund}

4. It's only a temporary increase until we own the Iraqi Oil Fields. {I don't even know where to start with this argument. Since when do our gas needs justify human slaughter? Also, when you consider the expense of this whole war and the ongoing cost involved in future administrating & defending of any oil fields we happen to be able to "take over", what did we really accomplish?}

5. President Bill Clinton caused it by not killing Osama Bin Laden during his administration. {okie, dokie, so what's YOUR excuse?}

6. You should be proud to pay higher gas prices. It supports our efforts to Spread Freedom around the world! {well, when Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy are rolled back, so that they are Spreading Freedom to the same extent I am, I will consider if I am proud or not}

7. Americans are too in love with their SUV's. {so tell me again what you are filling your corporate jet's fuel tank with?}

8. We could have cheaper gas tomorrow if liberal environmentalists were less concerned about a few caribou in ANWAR. {drilling ANWAR today would only supplement our oil addiction for a few years, a poor payoff for adding to global climate change}

9. China and India are being wasteful with fuel. {if they are, who did they learn it from & shouldn't we now be leading in another direction? }

Well, I'm sure we've all heard these and many more "excuses" for higher gas prices. I've even heard that higher gas prices are good because it discourages consumption {like oh, that's all we were waiting for, higher gas prices, like we couldn't have a national alternative energy policy today if that's what it was all about!}

Funny, they never seem to mention what we all know ... that is, who benefits from soaring gas prices and why we are really engaged in oil wars ... Robber Baron Oil Boys who are all simply profiting too much on this deal & sense there are much more profits to be made. Just remember the rule of business is to "never leave any money on the table" (or in the buyer's wallet)!

**********

Finally, here is something useful: want to know where the cheapest gas in your neighborhood, or wherever you happen to be driving, is? Mapquest has done it all for you! Click here , enter your zipcode OR street/town you are driving through, and they have it all mapped out, including directions & current prices for all grades of gas at each station.

Lowest prices in my area are hovering about $3.50 for regular. I will find out for sure this week at COSTCO.

Springtime Romance of Karl and Hillary

LOVE IS IN THE AIR!

Let's all sing some Cole Porter:

BIRDS DO IT !

BEES DO IT !


Even educated fleas do it .... (for 23-seconds)

LET's DO IT !!!

OR, LET's NOT !!!
These photos were found in the National Geographic Photo Gallery. Karl and Hillary were found on FOX TV. Why doesn't she just get it over with and jump parties? Karl is waiting with open arms!

God, Guns and Jobs: Pennsylvania Primary 4/22

Pennsylvania voters find themselves in a unique position today. They have the power to stop the implosion of the Democratic Party.

Senator Clinton has staked her campaign on a big win there, thinking Pennsylvanians will be swayed by stupid soundbites, meaningless trivia, negative attacks and outright lies. Her campaign engages in old-fashioned dirty politics. And she continues to do this even though the numbers show that no matter how big she might win in Pennsylvania or any of the remaining primary states, she will still lag behind Senator Obama. He has won the votes, and in a democracy, winning the most votes should mean winning the election. Apparently, Senator Clinton thinks otherwise. She thinks your vote only matters if you vote for her. She also thinks if enough voters don't vote for her, she will hurl the so-called superdelegates at the democratic convention. But then, we voters are only regular ordinary people. Our votes are added up individually whereas each superdelegate's vote equals 75,000 of our votes.


Large swaths of Pennsylvania seem a lot like my state of Utah and its sister state of Idaho. UT and ID are very religious states. UT and ID are socially conservative, tending to support the republican party line. UT and ID are gun-friendly states. Hunting and Fishing are not pastimes here, they are serious business. We should probably declare a state holiday during Deer Season since everyone has gone out of town to bag their deer. UT and ID are also made up of many small towns and rural areas. Oh sure, we've got a couple big cities (Salt Lake and Boise), but the main occupations outside those cities are farming and mining. UT and ID are not rich states, in fact our rural area population earns far less than the national average. Yet because of our family-oriented culture, there are virtually no ghost towns. Heritage and family keep us anchored close to the towns we grew up in, even though we might earn more money elsewhere. And do I need to say, neither UT or ID are very ethnically diverse?

The TV pundits have shown us maps of PA displaying a classic T-pattern, with Philadelphia on one side and Pittsburgh on the other. What they are telling us about the space in between those major cities sounds a whole lot like the spaces here in UT and ID. But the TV pundits are telling us that those spaces in PA belong to Senator Clinton and voters in those spaces will hand her a PA victory. Belong!?! As if she is entitled to them! Well, since I think we are much alike, I want to remind Pennsylvanians of the UT & ID democratic primary results, and encourage them to similarly vote their convictions:

UTAH -- Obama = 57%; Clinton = 39%

IDAHO -- Obama = 79%; Clinton = 17%

So it is really up to Pennsylvania voters today. They can decide in the voting booth whether the democratic party continues to fight amongst itself or moves on toward the future showdown with Senator McCain. If Senator Clinton continues with the same tactics she has been employing, she will ensure a compromised democratic nominee limps out of the convention to compete against the republican fixers. I just can't get the image out of my mind of a divided democratic party engaging the tired, but still vigorous, McWarDog!

This is what her antics remind me of (click to enlarge):
I am sorry if you find this rude, and I apologize to the hyena who is afterall only procuring her meal, not ripping apart the democratic party, not scurrying away with little chunks of her opponent, and hoping by doing so, she can persuade superdelegates of her electibility. By the way, there is a real children's book titled, "Hillary, the hyena who lost her laugh". While it sounds hilarious (click on link & read the little plot summary), I really think it should be sold in adult book stores ... haven't our children been scared enough?

OK, last but not least, when the polls close today and we start receiving the results of the PA primary, we should not forget Operation Chaos, which is Rush Limbaugh's shameful attempt to impose on democrats the candidate the republicans most want to run against. That would be ... (drumroll for all you pseudo-dems who are implementing Rush's dictum) ... Dittory!

8 AM update: already this morning, there is this report of malfunctioning PA voting machines. Looks like Operation Chaos is working just fine for Hillary.

Inflation is a bitter pill

Do you know what the real rate of inflation is?

Want to try and figure this out together?

Bear with me now, it's going to get a little personal before it turns political. And I'm very sorry, but taxes DO need to be discussed. Inflation is a bitter pill.

After filing my tax return recently, since I had all the numbers at my fingertips, I decided to spend time figuring out what MY real rate of inflation is.

The "official" government published inflation rate for 2007 is 3%. "Official" inflation figures for Jan-Mar 2008 are on track for an annual rate of 3 to 4% for 2008. Using the CPI (Consumer Price Index), our government has constructed a complex calculation of inflation that is highly subjective. It is subjective and therefore subject to political manipulation.

For instance, the "official" inflation rate does not include food or fuel. Is that a bitter pill, or what? If it ignores basic cost-of-living items like food and fuel, what else does it ignore? I'm sure it's not just me having trouble swallowing the bitter inflation fairytale of 3-4%. But why would our government deliberately deceive us? I'll get back to that in a minute.

First, I'll lay out my personal facts, gathered from my own personal tracking of my own personal expenses. Having worked for years in the accounting profession, I'm not completely inept at this sort of compilation. I've categorized my normal recurring day-to-day living expenses very broadly. Here are my major cost changes over the past year which I think illustrate the destructive power of inflation (in just one year):

Groceries and Household Items: Up 37% ! (the price of bread alone has increased by 50% in the last year)

Health Care: Up 50% ! (Rx meds alone are costing my husband & me $3,000/yr out-of-pocket)

Pet Care: Up 75% ! (yes I track pet food, pet supplies and vet care for my two old dogs separately)

Entertainment and Travel: Down 50% ... of course this is a discretionary category which we've cut way back on. Who can afford to travel and entertain much anymore? Not long ago, we were blowing 10% of our annual income on this. BTW, I include gas in this category, so you can see we are really going nowhere!

Routine repair & maintenance of home & autos: Up 16% (note these are actual expenditures & do not include a provision for buying a new car someday)

Fortunately, many categories like utilities, taxes & insurance remained about the same for us. Not for long! our utility provider has just received approval to increase their rates, and our medical insurance has also announced a premium increase effective in July. Since we cut way back on travel, gas price increases did not affect the overall amount we spent on gas (yet). We are very fortunate to NOT have gotten sucked into an adjustable-rate mortgage, so that helps. And with no children, we do not have child care or education expenses to cover.

Still, even with no increases in many expense categories and with the Entertainment & Travel category down by a whopping 50%, overall, we spent 16% more on normal everyday living expenses this year than last year! This is an important number as it represents my own personal true rate of inflation. I bet it's not that much different from many Americans. Why are our real inflation rates so much higher than the "official" government rate?

Well, there is that pesky reliance on the CPI (Consumer Price Index) which doesn't include food or fuel. A better indicator might be found in the Commodity Price Index (also known as CPI, just to confuse you). The Commodity Price Index is used by businesses in order to track the rising costs of their raw materials. I trust it because businesses need to know the truth about their bottom line. Using the Commodity Price Index for last year would yield an inflation rate of 15%. Sound eerily similar to my own personal inflation rate of 16%?

So let's think about it. Who benefits from publishing an "official" inflation rate that is far less than the actual rate? Certainly not people whose wages are tied to the "official" inflation rate, who are told their annual measly 3% raise at least covers inflation. Not retirees receiving social security and/or pension benefits, who think there is a true cost-of-living increase built into their plans. Not fixed income savers either, who depend on interest from their savings, which are being steadily eroded by a higher actual rate of inflation than is "officially" published. In previous inflation cycles, interest rates on savings closely tracked inflation rates. This time, interest rates are being artifically suppressed as true inflation rates are being purposefully underestimated. Coincidence?

Who benefits from that sort of manipulation? If true inflation rates were recognized, our government would have to deal with the facts or go bankrupt. The facts would dictate openly raising taxes. The Bush years have given the wealthiest among us a huge tax cut (unprecedented in a time of war when taxes are usually raised to pay for increased military operations). But politicians know rolling back those tax cuts is an unpopular solution for their wealthy contributors, so they repeatedly try the more subtle approach of manipulating the numbers and hoping we won't notice. They think we believe that the rate of inflation is whatever the government says it is. Do you?

If you do, then you are in for a lifetime of steadily decreasing purchasing power, even though your annual raise covers the "official" rate of inflation. It will be an incremental, year-by-year, systematic impoverishment of anyone whose income is tied to the "official" inflation index. In addition, there are many of us who will need to face that we won't be collecting anywhere near the benefits we paid for & were promised would be there for us in those annual social security benefit statements. Just another broken government promise about which I am bitter.

In the end, it comes down to trust. We need our government to tell us the truth. If the truth means raising taxes, then we must embrace the social economics of what constitutes a fair tax. If taxes are fairly collected and used wisely and fairly, to the benefit of society as a whole, for the betterment of citizen's lives, to provide safe infrastructure, and to ensure quality education and health care, we might just have ourselves something we could be proud of, something that we could proudly pass on to future generations.

So, trust, yeah .... what a concept in a presidential election year! This is what it has boiled down to for me. Who do I trust?
John McCain? No way, he has never even pretended to care about social justice.
Hillary Clinton? Which Hillary? She's all over the board, saying & doing just about everything (including the kitchen sink) to get elected. I don't even know what she stands for anymore. She now thinks the people's votes don't matter, so why would she think our concerns about inflation matter?
Barack Obama? Yup, I trust him. I trust him to pursue the facts, to analyze them & consider intelligent options, to explain to us what those options are, and then together we can go forward and solve the problem. He is a decent man who has not lied to himself or us.

It won't be easy. It's not reducible to a sound bite. But if we want to live in a fairer, more socially equitable country, then knowledge is our first and irreplaceable line of defense. To gain that knowledge, our government must stop lying to us. It would prefer to allow inflation damage to be hidden behind deliberately blurred & outright manipulated statistics, so that promises can be legally kept, while being broken in substance. That's why we must educate ourselves. I trust Barack Obama to help us in this quest for the truth.

By the way, while the "official" government inflation rate for 2008 is being estimated at 3-4%, the Consumer Price Index for March alone was up .8%, which would be an annual rate of 9.6% if this continues for the rest of the year. But, the Commodity Price Index for January-March 2008 is up 5.1%, which would yield an annual inflation rate of 20.4% for 2008. Which index do you think has more validity?

For me, if we are looking at a true rate of inflation of 20%, I need to make some personal changes. Since my 2008 income won't be increasing by more than 3%, I have to figure out how and where to reduce my living expenses by another 17%. And that of course ignores even trying to make up for 2007. Does your 3% Cost of Living raise still sound good to you?

Thanks for bearing with me as I sorted this out in my mind. It is painful to look inflation squarely in the face and realize that only by studying it & the deeply unfair ways in which it redistributes wealth can we hope to outwit it. Our currently blind government has in effect created an Inflation Tax on the people who can least afford it instead of an open & fair tax for all. If we complain, they say we are promoting class war. It's time for a real change! Otherwise we'll soon be choking to death on that bitter inflation pill. VOTE OBAMA!

Real Time gets real

Here's the opening monologue on Real Time with Bill Maher, April 18, 2008, with "bitter" remarks about The ABC Debate (5-minutes):


Even better, here is tonight's segment with Jeremy Scahill, featuring clips from his recent trip through Pennsylvania -- surprising to see the support for Obama in these "bitter" jobless, gunloving, religious smalltowns (4.5 minutes):


Finally, more of Jeremy Scahill & the Bill Maher panel tonight, discussing issues Americans would really like to see addressed. Cornell West talks about the economy. Markos Moulitsas weighs in on "bitter" (6-minutes):

The Sound You Heard

On Keith Olbermann tonight, one of his guests said the sound we all heard last night during "The ABC Debate" was 50 million shoes hitting TV sets across America. I think that was a conservative estimate.

Watching this giant disney crapfest, full of crap questions, poised by crap journalists, droning on and on, I did not throw my shoes, but that was only because I wasn't wearing any. Numbed by the excruciating triviality of the questions, but determined to see it through to the bitter end, I adopted the classic "Scream" posture:

THE SCREAM (painted in 1893) by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, depicts an agonized figure derived from an actual moment in Munch's life when he experienced an intense sunset that "filled the sky with tongues of fire". He wrote in his diary that he "paused, feeling exhausted and had to lean on a fence, trembling with anxiety, as an infinite scream passed through nature". The bloody sky was probably the aftermath of the Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883 whose ejected ash turned the skies red in most of Europe and Asia. The person depicted is not screaming but protecting himself from the scream of nature. It is considered a reflex reaction typical of anyone struggling to keep out distressing noise.

I think "The Scream" really captures the frustration that anyone watching last night's debate hoping for some real discussion of real issues must have felt.

This debate really was the worst I have ever seen. Many online sources and blogs apparently agree. Enigma has put up excellent posts on the debate itself as well as contact information if you wish to express your opinion about the whole debacle.

I can only add my personal feelings of despair over the media wasting so much time & effort on crap questions, forcing the candidates to explain things they have already explained many times instead of addressing the very real & urgent issues that our next president will have to confront.

Where were the real questions? This was nothing more than a shim-sham show of shameful sad sycophantic suck-up shills!

ABC could've incorporated Robert Reich's recent blog about Obama and Bitterness and Old Politics into their debate questions. He points out, "we are heading into the worst economic crisis in a half century or more. Consumers are at the end of their ropes, fuel and food costs are skyrocketing, they can't go deeper into debt, they can't pay their bills." He also notes, "HRC and McCain seek to make political hay out of choices of words that can be spun cynically by mindless spinners of the old politics ... demagogues on the right and left continue to try to channel the cumulative frustrations of Americans into politics of resentment ... but 80% of Americans know the nation is on the wrong track. The old politics and the old media are irrelevant now."

As if to prove Mr. Reich's point, Charlie Gibson and George StephanopoulASS focused on meaningless tacky flag lapel pins!

Another real concern is our health care mess. If you watched the debate, you probably missed PBS's Frontline, Sick Around the World, detailing how five capitalist democracies have handled their health care. Click on the link to watch the full program, or view each country separately. Germany & Switzerland have systems that we could easily adopt here tomorrow. Taiwan's & Japan's systems would be more difficult, but are ones we could work toward. Great Britain's system has the longest history of providing health care as a basic right. One thing all these systems have in common is a national recognition that health care should be a non-profit enterprise.

Well, those are only two areas that ABC could've delved into. We all know there are many others, but most of the media seem to think we only care about crap. I wonder what Edvard Munch would've painted if he'd personally endured these debate questions. Instead of a bloody sky, I'm envisioning a cesspool sky (same agonized human, though).

What is a Progressive Patriot?

Politics Plus is a wonderful blog by the prolific Tomcat. Tomcat is a tireless researcher of data and pursuer of freedom. He prowls the back alleys and byways of life in ceaseless pursuit of information. Every so often, he honors fellow bloggers with a Progressive Patriot Award. I don't claim to satisfy the requirements he laid out in any but the smallest degree, but am still quite honored to have been featured in his April awards, and will attempt to follow his rules about passing the award on & displaying it proudly.

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The following is a snip directly out of Politics Plus April 2nd post:

"... Progressive patriots serve the state with their consciences ...

"Here are the next three Progressive Patriots:

Buckdog: This is the first time I have made this award to a non-US blog. Dawg bites neocon butts north of the border and does a fine job of it. He is one of my favorite sources for progressive Canadian news.

Distributorcap NY: Like the name suggests, DC is a New Yorker struggling for progressive values in a clear voice with great humor as well.

Redheaded Wisdom: Red's blog is a mix of personal and political. She is dedicated to taking back our country and restoring it to the values of peace, freedom, and equality.


"Folks, when you pass this award along, please make these instructions clear to the people to whom you give it.

Politics Plus introduced the Progressive Patriot Award to honor bloggers with the courage to stand up and oppose those in power when they abuse that power to the detriment of the people and fight for progressive ideals, such as human rights, tolerance, non-aggression, freedom and equity. If you receive this award from me or another blogger, please do the following to accept it. Display the award graphic proudly in your sidebar. Copy this paragraph into a post on your blog. In that post, pass the award on to a minimum of three and a maximum of five deserving bloggers. If you receive the award from another blogger, reply to this message HERE with a comment including the name and URL of your blog and the identity and date of the blogger who awarded it to you. I will then add you to a special blogroll of Progressive Patriots here."

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So, Tomcat is asking us to pass the award along? No problemo! There are so many bloggers that I would consider Progressive Patriots. Here are just a few that I read everyday:

Ramblings (Fran in Oregon writes with much passion and conviction about politics and everything else, with special razor-bladed sharpness in her condemnation of this war).

Immoral Minority (Gryphen in Alaska never misses a story and cuts to the chase so succinctly, he must have those laser eyeglasses we were all promised in the back page ads of Superman comics).

Watergate Summer (Enigma, whose fireplace mantle must be full of awards, is a muse of inspirational quality and is passionately dedicated to honesty, which might make her a little dangerous to those who would suppress truth).

Dada's Dally (even though he thinks people are evolutionary dead-ends and might profess to hate the label patriot, it is obvious Dada loves this country and even some of its people, which makes his criticisms that much more poignant ... and always well-written with that special Dada Zing)!

Grubstreet Journal (Cart is an Australian bloke who will hate being labeled as a progressive, but loves to whack away at conventional ideology & keep us informed of what the continent down under is thinking about ---I call that progressive).

Now, I will attempt to figure out how to "display the award graphic" in my sidebar. Thanks, Tomcat! May your catnip always be plentiful.