Friday, November 17, 2006

one whole world

Hungry mountains, soft rolling waves
I’d tread slow those brown, grassy hills,
and light cross those wide rolling plains.
I want to know the dark earth of the vale,
and lie still in the heavy silence of the forest
where the wild cat roars her yearnings
and the small squirrel lives in grace.
These large trees, they can not hold us
they will not share their wisdom of ages
That vast vision would soon devour
and leave of us no lingering memories
no odours nor high ideals to carry higher
no questions, unanswered or holy grails
I hunger for the mountains,
they are of the beginnings and of the end
I thirst for the waters,
they are the mean and of the way
I plea for the hills and vales,
but they are quiet to my ministrations
and follow the past, not deviate
I love for the white bear and the grey goose
while they share their turn at the wheel
that grinds all this away.
—May 23, ’89

Thursday, November 16, 2006

The real war


We are in a war for our very survival, and it's not with the Iraqi or Saudi Arabia (although I'm not sure we shouldn't be at war with this country that funds terrorism around the world, by the by pictured at right is President George W Bush mouth kissing Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah), nor are we at war with Islam.

We are at war with our selves. As modern humans we are destroying the ability of the Earth to support human life, our life, and we are doing this for the most pathetic of reasons -- short-term personal profit for a very limited number of people, some would reasonably say, for the personal benefit of an inconsequential number of people.

We need to change the paradigm from one of personal benefit to one of human benefit, within a global perspective that benefits all living creatures.

The class war currently being waged against the poor and the middle class will destroy the planet.

Capitalism must be constrained or we will not survive.

We don't live in a capitalistic economic system, despite what pubic school teachers and chamber of commercial officials would say. We live in a highly leveraged, completely corrupted economic system that has been jiggered to benefit the wealthy while spoon-feeding platitudes about equal opportunity, and 'anyone can grow up to be president', to the growing number of unwashed, illiterate, uneducated American masses.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Watch 'em in the privacy of your own home

A friend of mine, who works at high levels of government in international affairs, was recently in China. He returned with a 'joke': "China's population is impossible to count. So we round it off to something between 1.2 and 1.5 billion. America's population is 300 million. America ... just a rounding error."

If you want to know where we're headed and what we're doing, it's all on DVD. Take 'em home and watch 'em. Unlike most of the crap the puppetmasters are peddling, the following movies are worth watching. Afterall it's your tax dollars at work:"The Road to Guantanamo"













I must confess, five years ago I interviewed Michael Winterbottom, the director of "The Road to Guantanamo", for the San Francisco Examiner, and found him to be a most thoughtful and insightful person with a liberal (as in freedom loving) perspective. I'm happy to recommend this movie.

Two more good ones to watch:
"The War Within"

















"Paradise Now"




















By the by, you'd never know it by reading American newspapers or watching American television, but Pakistan, one of the world's nuclear powers, is tettering on the edge of a potential devastating and globally destablizing civil war brought on by the CIA's murderous "meddling". A CIA instigated "action" recently brought about the deaths of an estimated 80 Pakistani and destablized the country's precarious government.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Rummy says goodbye


Yep, this administration has brought honor to America and dignity to the White House.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Welcome Home, America


Paul Masse (of Masse's Pastries in Berkeley, California) baked up a batch of true blue freedom cookies in celebration of the return to reason!

God, it feels good to be living in a country full of hope again.
I'm not the only person who realizes how very close we came to losing everything that makes America great. One more Repugnican 'mandate' and there wouldn't have been much left of the American Dream for us to cling to.

Speaking of man-date, when are members of the Repugnican Party (and its rabid Evangelical enablers) going to confront the reality that the only folks who fear gay marriage are self-loathing, self-denying homosexuals like Ken Mehlman?
For too many years, as the grand leader of the Grand Old Party, Mehlman (the top on the far right) used fear of a Gay Planet (and Gay Marriage) to win elections for freaks like Mark Foley (the closeted homosexual Republican child-molesting Congressman from Florida). So who was surprised when Mehlman was drug kicking and screaming out of the closet on national television Wednesday November 8?
Yup, he resigned the very next day.
Geez. Any middle-schooler could tell you that if this issue is too important to you, it's time to take a look inside the closet.

I'm all in favor of the defense of marriage, but divorce, not homosexuality, is the big threat to marriage.
Frankly folks, everyone (and by that I mean straights, gays and the just plain twisted) should just live in sin. Forget marriage. Evil, filthy, dirty, disgusting sinful sex is a whole lot of fun!
If you're living in sin, you don't have to snort a snootful of meth while taking it good from a male prostitute to make the experience even more deliciously evil, but, hey, don't believe me, just ask the godly Pastor Ted Haggard -- he's the married, gay-hating Evangelical leader on the bottom also on the right.
He also recently resigned his position with the church he founded when his out-of-church activities became public knowledge.
Haggard says he's sorry.
He also said gay sex is still bad.
Do you forgive him?



While I'm on a mewling jag, there are a whole bunch of folks who claim the Big Beautiful Blue Wave that swept our glorious country on November 7 only came about because the new Democratic candidates were more conservative and/or this year's Democratic Party operatives were better organized than their Repugnican counterparts.
Bull shit.
I followed these campaigns closely (a shout out to DailyKos, Josh and the Hinester) but I'm going to point out for special notice two prime examples of our newly elected not-conservative candidates.

The first is our brand spanking new California Congressman Jerry McNerney, a freaking ALTERNATIVE ENERGY expert and local entrepreneur. He was blown into Congress by a mighty wind that came from the local folks on the ground with absolutely no help from the Democratic Party until the last few weeks.



Similarly, our new Senator from Montana is a freaking ORGANIC FARMER who also got no help, no support, nothing from the Democratic Party until the last few weeks.
But what Jon Tester and Jerry McNerney did right is run entirely local on the ground campaigns, stressing values like hard work, love of country (and county) and the willingness to admit that our country was running out of control!
Senator Tester (sounds good, huh?) even took time off from campaigning to get his annual harvest out of the fields! God, you have to love real honest working folks.

The Republicans lost this election for the same reason the Democrats wandered in the wildness for the last 12 years. They listened too faithfully to their so-called leaders -- that bunch of out of touch idiots like James Carville blathering on mindlessly about 'strategies' in Washington D.C. -- rather than listening to the folks on the ground in town who are worried about their jobs, their schools, their kids in Iraq, and the cost of health care. All issues are local, all elections are local, all victories and losses are local.

Enough.
Welcome back, America.
It's a brand new day of hope, optimism and good-hearted, open-handed life in America!
It's great to be back home.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Just a few days until...



the nightmare begins to recede