In Honor of the "DC Madame" and her list of Political Pervs...

Flynt is tracking 20 congressional sex scandal leads

"Larry Flynt, the porn-industry magnate who first linked Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) to the escort service of the “D.C. Madam,” said Wednesday that his investigators are tracking more than 20 leads on alleged congressional sex scandals."

What's that I see on the horizon? Is it a whole flock of republican sex scandals headed this way? Why, it is!

Update: Here we go!
[McCain campaign co-chair] Rep. Bob Allen arrested on sex charge

It isn't too late

Does anyone remember this?

It isn't too late to send him there. We can still do it. Please, please, let's send Bush and his crew to Mars.

How cheerful

Little bits of random information from a mailer I received from Mother Jones magazine: 60% of U.S. companies don't pay taxes, half of the FDA's drug evaluation budget is funded by drug companies, four of the top richest people in the U.S. are Walmart heirs.

Lovely.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but...

This is from ImpeachCheney.org

He's the one, you know. Those of us who have maintained that Bush is the stooge and Cheney pulls the strings have been right all along. Cheney must be impeached first. If Bush went first, imagine a world where Cheney was president...!

Yup, it's independence day...

And everyone will be blogging the Declaration of Independence. You know what? So will I. Part of it, anyway. Because it is that important to remind ourselves that, eventually, we cannot tolerate the status quo anymore.

From the Declaration of Independence:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another... whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends [life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government... experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

I tell ya, a lot of us are this close.

Walking the Walk and All That Stuff

These tidbits from the independent column of Blogwatch detail a few very interesting tidbits about our beloved "lesser of two evils" party:

Third Party & Independents:: Facts on Democrats: Part One
Third Party & Independents:: Facts on Democrats: Part Two

Reading these posts, it appears that Dennis Kucinich is the Dem that most closely shares my values. I am still doing research on the candidates, but, as usual, the ones I like are the ones who don't stand a chance, like Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson.

I say "as usual" because in '92 I liked Paul Tsongas (Clinton struck me as the most conservative of the democratic candidates that year, simply an easy sell to the crossover vote, typical Dem strategy). Tsongas was the only one who was responsible enough to say that if people wanted the government to provide goods and services, they would have to be paid for with taxes. No one else was honest enough to admit that. Tsongas lost the primary, but developed cancer and died before his first term would have been completed.

But that's in the past. I'm saying Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson are the guys to watch. As my luck runs, I will watch them lose the primaries to corporate meat puppets of the military industrial complex, and we will have more of the same horrific, surreal political nightmare we have been subject to since the dawn of the new millenium.

Saturday Music Appreciation Day is Back at Constantly Amazed!

For the longest time, Blogger wouldn't let me post You Tube videos. Now I can again, finally... so, for now at least, they are forgiven.

Tagged...

...with the task of offering 8 interesting, random facts about moi:

1. Politically, I'm a Pluralist: I pick and choose what I think are the best ideas from whatever political ideology I want; left, right, up, down, whatever.

2. I am a great bass player. No, I am more than a bass player... I'm a Bassist.

3. My favorite art style right now is Googie (like this or this or...)

4. However, my favorite artist at the moment is not googie at all, but is instead the dark and demented, late, great Edward Gorey (try this or this or...)

5. I used to be a typesetter, and I loved it.

6. I have always cultivated madness in the belief that it is good for my art. It has been said that manic-depression is good for one's art. I am hoping paranoia, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and mild autism are helpful, too.

7. An embarrassing truth: I think young-people's books, especially those produced over the last few years, are the coolest. I'll take Lemony Snicket over Stephen King any day.

8. I am still convinced that the greatest television show of all time is Northern Exposure. No matter how messed up our civiliation becomes, at least we had that.

Now... am I supposed to tag eight other people? Do I even know eight people? Okay, um...

um...

uh...

Ball-n-Cheney

(Warning - naughty naughty language - as usual - what else would you expect on my $^&$#*! blog?)

Now that Dick Cheney, all-powerful king of all the world, is back in the news, it is appropriate to recall he stellar performances of days gone by. Remember his speech at the Republican Convention in 2004(ish)? What a silver-tongued devil.

Only The Most Important News Items of The Day Can Shake Me From My Procrastination Coma

Yes, I've been away again, dammit, too long. But when a story this big, this important, this significant, this relevent, comes along... I can't lie dormant any longer. The sleeping giant has awoken!

This is the kind of thing that effects all of us. How long can this sort of thing go on!? How long can we sit idly by and allow this to happen!? Is there a limit to our tolerance!?

What am I ranting about now, you ask? Just this:

Rampaging squirrel injures 3:
"An aggressive squirrel attacked and injured three people in a German town before a 72-year-old pensioner dispatched the rampaging animal with his crutch.

The squirrel first ran into a house in the southern town of Passau, leapt from behind on a 70-year-old woman, and sank its teeth into her hand, a local police spokesman said on Thursday.

With the squirrel still hanging from her hand, the woman ran onto the street in panic, where she managed to shake it off.

The animal then entered a building site and jumped on a construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm, before he managed to fight it off with a measuring pole.

"After that, the squirrel went into the 72-year-old man's garden and massively attacked him on the arms, hand and thigh."

Rampaging squirrels! OMG! AAAAUUUGGGHHH!!! How long are we going to allow these criminal rodents who roam about committing violence without remorse to continue their wild invasion? They have no regard for human life. They're not even human! And they're everywhere. And you know where they're coming from, right? That's right. They're coming from over there.

We can't allow this, can we? We must stand with our allies, the Germans, to battle this scourge. I mean, today it's Germany, tomorrow, well, France, then maybe Spain and/or Portugal and, well, I don't know, maybe Norway, I doubt Italy or Greece, but then eventually Britain and then...

Say hello to your little friend!

A snarling, spitting, growling and glowering sqirrel-from-hell, with nuts on his mind and you in his crosshairs!

You know, if we don't stop them over there, they'll "follow us home". And once they do, they'll end up taking the nuts that our right-thinking American squirrels won't pick up, only before too long, there won't be any nuts for any squirrels anymore! What do we have to do... build a fence!?

Memorial Day (plus bonus links)

(Apologies for the profanity that is sprinkled throughout my writing. When I re-read my posts and discover the frequent vulgarities, I think to myself, "Goddamn it, what the hell was I thinking?")

Memorial Day. It's a great day to say that I do not "support the troops", I do not believe that soldiers who fight (or fought) in Iraq or Afghanistan are heroes, and I am sick to death of all the obsequious kow-towing for the corporate stormtroopers and oil nazis (yeah, I said it) who are the fingers and toes, the teeth and the claws of Cheney and Bush and the rest of their vile syndicate of neocon pigs.

I apologize to those fellow bloggers whom I respect so highly, and who I am surely going to offend with this post, who write of honoring the fallen. But I say this "I oppose the war but support the troops" line was bullshit 15 years ago when it accompanied our first war against Iraq, and it is bullshit today.

"The troops" are not defending our country, or our freedoms, or our way of life (unless you define our way of life as an orgy of consumerism and excess consumption). They're carrying out the marching orders of powermongers whose gluttony is boundless. Invade and conquer, destroy and possess, crush all dissent, crush all opposition, death and carnage from above and below. Dick Cheney says they're defending democracy, so they must be heroes.

Give me a fucking break. The troops are either 1) gullible dupes who got sucked into hell as victims of their own ignorance, in which case they have my sincere and utmost sympathy, or 2) they are violent assholes who love to shoot and kill (and they are out there in droves), or 3) they are rightwing idealogues who share the sentiments of Cheney and Bush and the rest, in which case I say to hell with them, they (2&3) are more dangerous to our country than the foreign terrorists.

Memorial Day. Yeah, I honor the memory of those whose sacrifice actually meant something for this country, who defended America and what it really stood for, the freedoms which this administration wants to abolish (using "the troops" as their instrument). But as for the dupes of the military-industrial complex, they have only my sympathy. And the willing participants of American imperial expansionism and exploitation receive only my contempt.

SPECIAL BONUS LINKS

A Brief History of United States Interventions, 1945 to the Present

Let the Bloody Truth Be Told: A Chronology of U.S. Imperialism

Jerry Falwell Burns in Hell

...actually, I don't believe in hell. The headline is simply my way of saying “good riddance to bad rubbish.”

Falwell, like so many others throughout the history of Christianity, used that religion to enrich and empower himself, and as a vehicle to propagate his hatred and bigotry. To him, Christianity was a force to be used to crush opposition and dominate his victims. It was a strict code of control he wanted to force on the rest of us.

I’m not a Christian, but if I was, I would say, “Thank God Jerry Falwell is finally dead.”

Why Do I Get So Depressed?

Forgive me truthseekers, for it has been a long long time since I have blogged. I used to give explanations for that, but my wife has clued me into "Blogging Without Guilt", which is blogging without getting all anxious and guilt-ridden during those periods of not blogging. I'll try... but I still feel like I have somehow failed to meet my obligations by not blogging night and day. Argh!

In the time I've been away, I have continued to accumulate links to the extent that, laid end-to-end, they would reach to the recently-discovered Earth-like planet and back again 78 times. I'll bet there are bloggers on that planet with the same problem.

So, I am sliding back into the fray by looking at the general topics of the day, as it were (I maintain my nerd status by using the phrase "as it were" wherever possible). The big topics at the moment are the war and the 2008 presidential elections (global warming is on the back burner for now, so to speak).

Today, I'll start with the war:

One thing that bothers me to no end about the war is that the press is absolutely silent on the real reason for it. The Democrats never mention this either, nor do anti-war pundits for the most part. Occasionally it is briefly referenced, but not often enough or emphatically enough, even though it is possibly the most important aspect of the war(s).

The purpose of the war is the war. It was never about terrorism, or WMDs, or Saddam Hussein, or Osama Bin Laden, or Al Qaida, or the Taliban, or about "spreading democracy". Oil is a part of it, but it is secondary to the overall purpose. Oil is, if you'll pardon the metaphor, gravy. The purpose of the war is to wage war, permanently.

We know the Bush administration neocon tactic of engaging in warfare to manipulate American society and facilitate the success for their agenda, both foreign and domestic. Ordinarily, approval ratings skyrocket for world leaders who wage war, and that rule held fast for this president for quite a while. But that aside, the Bush/Cheney/Neocons are the military-industrial complex, and they need to maintain a permanent presence in the middle east to maintain their power here. They never, never intended to do any of the noble (or ignoble) things they claimed, like establishing peace, rebuilding, or any of that. Those poor people in the middle east are lambs to the slaughter, as far as this presidential administration is concerned. It's goal is to remain there permanently and perpetuate bloody warfare forever, or at least for as long as they live (they couldn't care less about future generations). It's their business. They are the Halliban, they are the Carlyle group, they are the Project for the New American Century, they are in the business of waging war to enrich themselves with money and power.

Until the press addresses that issue powerfully enough to capture the interest of the mainstream public, the situation will not change.

Tax Day Fun: IRS Totally Bogus?

Truthseekers, dig this article that I found on the web in time for Tax day: 31 Questions and Answers about the IRS, Revision 3.3.

It contends that the IRS has no authority, and that is it a totally bogus, unconstitutional, fraudulent organization. Now, I believe in "pay-as-you-go" as much as any liberal. But as for the IRS as an entity, I found this information to be quite interesting. You might, too.

Happy Easter Redux

Here is my third annual reprint of tidbits from 2003's easter post. Happy Oestre, Pagans!

Easter Origins

Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a fictional consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period March 22 to 25. "About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill...Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection."

Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians "used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation."

Many religious historians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus' life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus' life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Ancient Christians had an alternative explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit deities in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity. 4 Modern-day Christians generally regard the Attis legend as being a Pagan myth of little value. They regard Jesus' death and resurrection account as being true, and unrelated to the earlier tradition.

Wiccans and other modern-day Neopagans continue to celebrate the Spring Equinox as one of their 8 yearly Sabbats (holy days of celebration). Near the Mediterranean, this is a time of sprouting of the summer's crop; farther north, it is the time for seeding. Their rituals at the Spring Equinox are related primarily to the fertility of the crops and to the balance of the day and night times. Where Wiccans can safely celebrate the Sabbat out of doors without threat of religious persecution, they often incorporate a bonfire into their rituals, jumping over the dying embers is believed to assure fertility of people and crops.

Oh, cool! My employer is encouraging us all to one of the 8 Wiccan Sabbats!

More about Easter

In Norway, in addition to skiing in the mountains and painting eggs for decorating, it is tradition to solve murders at Easter. All the major television channels show crime and detective stories (such as Poirot), magazines print stories where the readers can try to figure out who did it, and many new books are published. Even the milk cartons change to have murder stories on their sides. Another tradition is Yahtzee games.

In the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, a tradition of whipping is carried out on Easter Monday. In the morning, males whip females with a special handmade whip... [consisting] of eight, twelve or even twenty-four withies (willow rods) and is usually from half a meter to two meters long and decorated with coloured ribbons at the end. It must be mentioned that while whipping can be painful, the purpose is not to cause suffering. Rather, the purpose is for males to exhibit their attraction to females; unvisited females can even feel offended. The whipped female gives a coloured egg to the male as a sign of her thanks and forgiveness. A legend says that females should be whipped in order to keep their health and fertility during whole next year. In some regions the females can get revenge in the afternoon when they can pour a bucket of cold water on any male.

Whether it's Spring Solstice, Fertility, Jesus, Rabbits, or whatever... even the celebration of the marketing of hideous crap, there's room in the basket for eggs of every color.

And let's not forget what these guys said:

"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine." - George Washington

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion ..." - Treaty of Tripoli, 1797

"Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa." - The U.S. Supreme Court, 1947

"The national government ... will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality.” - Adolf Hitler

So, happy easter, everyone... another ancient ritual celebrating the natural order of things. Seasons change. New life appears, and old things pass away. Amazing, isn't it?

It's (not) my party and I'll cry if I want to...

Fresh on the heals of my last post, which was critical of current environmentalist icon Al Gore, I offer another post which shines a spotlight on the failings of some current leaders of the left.

Now, don't get me wrong: I am still a Progressive, I still abhor the Bush/Cheney neocon oil-nazis and the republican corporate plutocrats, fascists, xenophobe dupes, and perverted christopaths who support their criminal regime.

But I also hold a special kind of low opinion for those on the left who pretend to represent us, yet engage in the same vile hypocrisy and villainy as Republicans.

I mean, I expect republicans to do all the horrible things they do, so I don't lose any respect for them when they inevitably do them. Not anymore, anyway. How could I? They're so far beneath contempt as it is, they've plumbed depths of depravity that haven't been realized since antiquity. That's conservatism for you.

But, I hold liberals and, yes, Democrats, to a higher standard. I expect them to learn from their past mistakes and improve their behavior, not engage in the conservative ideal of repeating their mistakes over and over again until people accept them as the norm. In short, Democrats need to do more than proclaim their values, they need to live them.

Which leads us to things like this:

1. Nancy Pelosi would rather prolong the war in Iraq than impeach Bush/Cheney.

2. Diane Feinstein is a war profiteer.

Their is no room for hypocrisy in my progressive left. I expect my political representation to be above reproach, period. Lawmakers expect us to toe the line, so we have every reason to expect them to do the same.

Now, just so you know I have not given on the the Dems, dig this, truthseekers:

Cynthia McKinney's Speech at the March 17th Anti-War rally at the Pentagon

Cynthia McKinney
Remarks in front of the Pentagon
March 17, 2007
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G3eq-I7CzM

Well, it seems that George Bush and Democratic Leaders were right.

They confidently told us that not only would Democrats fund the surge, but that the Democrats would not stop action in Iran, too.

Now, we are not surprised when the unelected, illegitimate Administration of George Bush ignores us, but we are shocked that the Democratic majority in Congress chose war over us as we say Bring our troops home now!

The answer is clear: Our country has been hijacked.

What about a livable wage for America's workers?

What about the right of return for Katrina survivors?

What about repealing the Patriot Act, the Secret Evidence Act, and the Military Tribunals Act?

Why is impeachment "off the table"?

Our country is bankrupt yet this institution has "lost" 2.3 trillion dollars!

I want that money back . . .

For jobs . . . for health care . . . for education . . . for our veterans!

The Democrats have become so timid they won't even repeal the Bush tax cuts as a strategy to deal with a bankrupt nation.

Seems the story is the same: more money for war, but we can't feed the poor.

It's hard to believe, but now the Democrats are full partners in George Bush's wars.

And by funding his wars, the Democratic Congress is explicitly complicit.

Complicit in war crimes! Complicit in torture! Complicit in crimes against humanity! Complicit in crimes against peace!

The FBI spied on us; Condoleezza, Dick, and George lied to us.

In 1957, Dr. King observed that "Both political parties have betrayed the cause of justice."

And so it must be repeated today.

Our beloved America is dividing again into two Americas. Our struggle is for nothing less than the soul of our country.

We want an America that is respected in the commonwealth of man; we want our values to shine like a beacon throughout the world.

As an American of conscience, I hereby declare my independence from every bomb dropped, every threat leveled, every civil liberties rollback, every child killed, every veteran maimed, every man tortured.

And I sadly declare my independence from the leaders who let it happen.

We will not stop. We will win. We will get our country back!

Guess who I would like to see run for president?

Question Authority, Green Version

An article entitled The Green Imposter describes how environmentalist causes were trampled underfoot by... guess who? If you read my blog sometimes then you'd assume I was talking about Bush (1or2), or maybe Reagan. Nope. This article describes a betrayal of green values during the Clinton/Gore administration. Now, if this was just another rightwing character-assasination piece, I wouldn't give it much credence. But this is coming from a powerful progressive media voice, Counterpunch. They tend to pull no punches and announce their observations regarding the emperor's new clothes, no matter which emperor might be the topic at the time. And apparently Al Gore has some concrete-colored skeletons in his closet. You can read the article and see what you think. All I can say is that it serves to remind us all: Question authority. Trust no one.

The article doesn't alter my belief in the profound importance of environmentalist causes (or as they used to be called, "conservation"). What is does do is serve notice to keep a critical eye on whomever is employed to deliver the message.

The Other Lemmings

Here is one I liked from The Progressive Daily Beacon: "Epler's World: An Inconvenient Republican Truth..."

W.C. 'Bill' Epler, February 10th, 2007

There's a sad game many of us have been playing which it's time to stop. It's called: "Surely our Republican neighbors have been duped."

We know these people; some of them are our in-laws, some of them are our neighbors, some of them are colleagues at work, and we just can't bring ourselves to believe that they live in the same moral/irrational sewer as George W. Bush.

But isn't that exactly what people said about the German supporters of Hitler during WW2? That's a rhetorical question, because, yes, that's EXACTLY what people said about the German supporters of Hitler during WW2. And they were wrong, dead wrong, monstrously wrong. That's what the Nuremberg trials were all about.

We can't have it both ways. It may be comforting to think that our Viva Bush neighbors, relatives, and colleagues are brainwashed puppets, but it's not that simple.

People support George Bush because in some sense they "are" George Bush. Republicans = Bush - he hasn't raped anyone. The doors to their bedrooms have always been open.

So what does this mean? It means that what is now happening in America isn't politics as usual. What's happening is virtually a species war.

Republicans aren't just Americans with different views, even though that probably used to be true when politics was Americans debating Americans (this was when Republicans were Americans first and Republicans second).

But that's no longer true and here's the proof. Let's use Jesus' dictum of, "Ye shall judge them by their fruits." Isn't that what Jesus meant? Wasn't he warning us not to be taken in by spinning? Walking the walk is what counts, not talking the talk.

The same thing is true for Republicans. You can't support an irrational, immoral thug without being an irrational, immoral thug. And that includes our sisters, our fishing companions, and our employees.

This is a hard and desperately painful truth, but it must be confronted. Republicans (with exceptions that prove the rule) are like the sleazy suitors of Penelope who Odysseus came home to in Ithaca. When he massively asserted himself to rid his kingdom of their cancer, one of them asked him why he was so furious. Remember his answer? He said, "It's because you were trying to steal my world."

That's the definition of a Republican: Someone who's trying to steal your world. Someone for whom might makes right and the end justifies any means. Someone for whom money is God and who is willing to do ANYTHING to get more, including killing your children.

So these aren't neighborly disagreements anymore. These are people who are anti-science, anti-environment, and contemptuous of humanity. Their spirituality is fake and stinks. Evangelicals are where Christianity ISN'T. Jesus spoke of love and compassion. Compare his words to the recent terrorist remarks of people like Pat Robinson. The marriage between Republicans and the Christian Right (or the UN-Christian Wrong) is truly made in hell.

So no more blinders, please. Time to see it like it is. Republicans aren't dupes and neither were the supporters of Hitler (or your tyrant of choice).

So long as this is unclear, we will keep trying to have ethical, rational conversations with criminals who break into our homes and abuse our families. And we will keep trying to have ethical, rational conversations with people who pretend George Bush didn't murder New Orleans through unimaginable incompetence.

It helps to see that Republicans really KNOW that Bush's energy policies are raping Mother Nature, and that Republicans really KNOW that Bush has lied to us about everything in Iraq in order make greed vampires like Cheney/Halliburton rich beyond the dreams of Midas.

. . . they also well know that 9/11 was an avoidable horror that happened on his watch!

The point is that Republicans aren't deluded or "taken in" by these things any more than all of the rest of us, it's just that they simply could care less so long as the cash register keeps dinging and they get to keep one upping all the non white, non Protestant, non old money, non good ol' boy suckers -- and so long as their pitiful Religious Right fear of life gets to hide on the other side of the universe from reality. And our President? Well, doesn't his smirk say it all?

It's been said that terrorism isn't the problem; terrorism is a symptom of the problem. Same thing here. George Bush isn't the problem; George Bush is a symptom of the problem.

Today's radicalized Republicans are the problem.

In other words... those who still support these psychos... what the hell are they thinking!?

I'm back 8^)

Well, it seems like forever since I last posted. I feel bad about it being so long... you know, fellow bloggers, that feeling you get, that you owe the world a daily post, and you feel pressured to provide it, and when you don't, you feel like you've let everyone down? Am I just crazy?

I tried several times to post a Youtube video, but I keep getting an error message and it won’t work (aauugghh!). Is it just me? I welcome any helpful hints here.

I have so many idea-inspiring links saved that there is no way I could possibly get them all organized and written about. I mean, piles and piles of ‘em, mountains of ‘em, folders stuffed with ‘em. But that's okay. I'll just jump back in with some free-form stream-of-consciousness commentary, just like the good old days.

One thing that has happened while I have been away is that Sacramento Ca, the capitol city of a state that is regarded as one of the nation’s most liberal, lost Air America. Lost it! That means I don’t get to listen to Randi Rhodes at lunchtime anymore, which I used to enjoy a lot.

Sacramento has had major problems delivering Air America from the beginning. Again, this should not have been the case here on the blue left coast. It started out okay, but it was on a station with a very weak signal, so it was quite hard to pull in most of the time. Still, I loved listening to Rachel Maddow et al in the morning, etc.. Then, they suddenly dropped that station, and jumped to another. They compounded things by not broadcasting Air America stuff all the time, replacing it with local programming. They also made asinine decisions like replacing Rachel Maddow with Jerry @$%#! Springer. Stupid. It was just a downward spiral from there. Finally, AAR tanked in Sac.

Air America’s failure in the Sacramento market was like a gift from heaven to local right-wing commentators. It was mortifying… it seemed to validate all the Rush O’Hannity bullshit about how progressive talk is doomed to failure in this country. Maybe they’re right. Maybe we’re in too much of a minority. Or, maybe their audience listens to the radio, while ours concentrates on the internet. Who knows?

The good news is that the original station, the one that AAR was on before the switch, remains true to their progressive roots, and carries Mike Malloy (go, truthseekers!).

So, lately I have tuned in a couple of times to rightwing talk radio to see what they’re up to. Yikes. I’ll tell you what: if we were judged on debate points, we would have no worries at all. For example, I listened to Michael Medved, a right-winger who fancies himself to be quite “fair and balanced,” and whose show I supposedly one famous for allowing honest debate.

During a call-in show about impeachment of “president” (sic) Bush, what do you suppose his response was to those calling for Bush’s impeachment? You guessed it: “If you’re going to go back and retroactively impeach presidents,” (employing the metaphysical strategy that one reason not to impeach Bush is because his actions took place in the past), “why not go back and look at Clinton?” oh, yes, he did, “because [he did this and he did that and blah blah blah]…”

I had to laugh. The theme of the program was that impeachment of Bush was a bad idea propagated by “Bush-haters”. And his defense was that it isn’t fair to impeach Bush after Clinton did all those horrible things. I wanted to say, “Dude, guess what: Clinton is not president anymore! You had your chance while you were impeaching him for that other stuff… what, eight years ago?! It’s over!” Or, as the right-wingers love to say, “Get over it!”

And, it goes on. I have no progressive talk radio where I live. Pity me.

Just For a Diversion: The World of Music Nerds :)

Okay, here's a step away from current events. Some of you already know I check out the usenet newsgroups now and then, and one in particular is alt.guitar.bass. The following post there made me chuckle a little... this is so totally a great example of guitar-nerd-speak. I know you twang-bar-kings out there will dig it, and those of you who are not musicians can get a giggle at what some people consider understandable conversation:

"Consider this scenario. I want to substitute the G7 - as the V of a 2-5-1 progression in C - with a tritone. So I pick a Db7 chord. When it comes to creating an impro line around this chord, do I use, as a first choice, a lydian Db7 scale? Additionally, can I also consider G7 as a Bmin7 b5 chord, and again what are the scalar possibilities available, other than the lydian approach?"

I wanted to reply to it with a smartass remark about avoiding a dominant flat on a minor-7-sus-4-pentatonic triad, but I was nice and didn't. By the way, Carlos Santana says it's all in the soul, anyway.

Argh

I've been gone so long it's crazy. I feel bad about not blogging since... Presidents Day? Yikes. I got really busy in January, and the ripples were winding down in February, but I'm ready to come back now.

As for political blogging, news gets so totally fucking depressing that I can hardly stand it. This article kind of addresses where it's at right now... and it only scrapes the surface.

I can hardly stand it anymore.

Here's the article:

Turn off the life support: America is dead

By DOUG THOMPSON

03/09/07 "Capital Hill Blue" -- -- Maybe, just maybe, it's time to pull the plug on this failed democratic republic called The United States of America.

Turn off the life support. Disconnect the IVs. Bring in the priest for last rites. The US of A is brain dead with no chance for revival.

Some 40 years ago, I lost friends in the heat and squalor of Vietnam. They died in a war that never needed to be fought, supporting a cause that didn't exist for a government that lied to justify the fight.

A few years later, as a young reporter, I wrote about the attempts of Richard Milhous Nixon to destroy the Constitution of the United States. He failed because the system worked and both Congress and the Supreme Court exercised their powers in our system of checks and balances to restore order to a faltering nation.

"The lessons of Vietnam and Watergate provide a roadmap for the future," I wrote at the time. "With luck, our leaders can use that roadmap to avoid the mistakes of the past."

Now, 33-and-a-half years after the Vietnam War came to an end without resolution and Nixon left office without honor, I'm losing family of friends in the heat and squalor of Iraq. They die in a war that never needed to be fought, supporting a cause that doesn't exist for a government that lied to justify their sacrifices.

Another despot occupies the Presidency, an evil man whose lust for power surpasses Nixon and who poses a far greater danger to the Constitution. This time, however, the system is failing to protect America from despots. George W. Bush rides roughshod over a compliant Congress. The Supreme Court, packed with knee-jerk right-wingers who helped put Bush in office in 2000, abdicated its role long ago.

For a moment - a brief one to be sure - we held out hope that the voice of the voters might be heard after the November midterm elections. But turning out the corrupt Republican leadership of Congress was not enough. Democrats who control the House lack the balls to take Bush on and the razor-thin majority in the Senate can't even get a vote together on a non-binding resolution.

Democrats Thursday unveiled a plan to bring troops home by the end of 2008 but Bush is already threatening a veto if the bill gets out of Congress, which is probably won't.

In the meantime, we've learned that Bush lied about both the size and cost of his "troop surge" that he claims will bring peace and stability to Iraq. Not only are we sending more troops in than he said, at a cost far higher than he projected, his own general on the ground says they will have to stay longer than he told the American people earlier this year.

Over at the U.S. Department of Justice, an contradiction of terms if we over heard one, the FBI has lied repeatedly about its use, and abuse, of the rights-robbing USA Patriot Act to obtain information on U.S. citizens. I find it disturbing that in all their rhetoric about restoring America to the people, the new Democratic leadership of Congress doesn't say a damn thing about repealing the USA Patriot Act, an ill-conceived bill crafted by former attorney general John Ashcroft, and hastily voted into law after 9/11 by shell-shocked representatives and Senators who later admitted they hadn't even read it.

Today we learn that the federal government, at the direction of the White House, routinely ignores the Freedom of Information Act and hides more and more government documents under a cloak of secrecy.

Both Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid joined with Republicans to vote not only for original passage of the USA Patriot Act but also to reauthorize it. Bush has used the act to justify spying on Americans, wiretapping without warrants and strip away the last protections of the Constitution.

While Congress slept and the Supreme Court looked the other way, the Bush administration has gone on its merry way seizing absolute control of the United States government. He fired independent thinking U.S. attorneys, replacing them with lockstep right-wingers who share his view of totalitarian control of government. He ignores the laws of Congress, issuing "signing statements" that give him the power to do whatever he wants. When the federal courts declared his wiretapping of Americans illegal, he ignored the ruling and appointed an in-house review panel that declared the program "legal."

It doesn't matter who controls Congress. Congress is a dead institution, ruled by timid legislators who no longer exercise any real role in the governing of this nation.

It doesn't matter what the Supreme Court may or may not do. The President of the United States has declared himself a "war time President" and granted himself dictatorial rights that no one in Congress or the Court appears able to successfully challenge him.

The America we used to cherish is dead, replaced by a ruthless dictator. The America that more than 3,100 men and women died for in Iraq no longer exists. We might as well pull the sheet over Uncle Sam's head and prepare for the funeral.

Or can we, as a people, regain control of our government? Perhaps, but doing so will require drastic measures. I'm not talking about kicking out one party of political hacks and replacing it with another: Been there, done that, witnessed the failure.

We need to rethink this experiment called America. Maybe we need to start with a clean sheet of paper. Maybe it's time to recognize that our present America is a rotting corpse, devoured from within by the cancer of politics, corruption, greed and a lust for power.

Maybe it's time for a new American Revolution. After all, the last one started because another guy named George tried to destroy our way of life.

Happy Presidents Day. Say, About Those Dead Presidents...

...how did they die, anyway?

Here's how... and here's what they said.

...from the "internets"

"What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known." -- Bush

"We know exactly where Saddam is hiding his WMDs. They're North, South and West of Tikrit. That's a known." -- Rumsfeld

"Filthy liars." -- Me

Happy Darwin Day!

February 12 is Darwin Day! Woo hoo! Rock on, those of you who eschew the literal interpretation of Genesis!

Still Tryin' to Get Back to the Blog...

...but I swear, every tricky day has been followed by: