Da Bears!

Bear attacks killer moments after being shot. Go Bears!
What in the hell business do grown men have going around shooting bears in their natural habitat? If the guy needs meat, how about Kroger? if he has enough money for a high-powered rifle and ammo. He's lucky he's only a bit sore. The bear is dead!

Hippie Thanksgiving

This can be a wonderful country.


After we painted Lisa’s fence this Spring, north of San Francisco.













Patches and Hubba on the bus back from The Haight on our way to see "Lennon" the musical in preview.

Don’t Believe Everything You Read, But Read Everything

Here’s the big one, folks. Ready for some static cling in the hair on the back of your necks? We live under an oppressive rule more pervasive than I ever thought. And if you are ever too lazy to get involved in actually thinking about who you are voting for, please read this. (Thanks to Elly’s favorite friend.)

“Bush Hails Mongolia (?) for backing Iraq War (?)
(My italics, my parentheses.)

Our fearless leader triumphs in Mongolia! Like my old Italian friend used to say, “everybody’s got to be somewhere.”

Yawn, Genghis Kahn. “Have you ever heard of jet lag?” Mr. Armageddon can chat it up anywhere.

Pseudo War; what is it good for?

Absolutely nothing, and, as they say in Lite beer commercials, less. Five more American soldiers die yesterday; three “insurgents” commit suicide rather than face capture and torture.

What is wrong here? The evidence in American socio-political-governmental culture is overwhelming that the Bush Administration invaded Iraq under false pretenses with ulterior motives. Even the ulterior motives are turning out to be folly, whatever they are, (own the oil, globalization for corporate greed in the name of democracy? End terrorism like putting out a fire with gasoline?) Under the auspices of what? a crusade (Bush’s own word), an “onward Christian soldier” charade?

It is amazing the opponent commits suicide rather than be captured. Guess they’ve seen the torture slide show on the Internet.

As the poor suffer, as American taxpayers are milked dry, as generations of our offspring face a bleak future in paying for the lies, the crimes, the tragedy of a falling Bush empire, the rich benefit: The Cheney kind, the oil companies, the Halliburton gangs, and all the other thugs Bush surrounds himself with (“Oh, sure, Bush ain’t the best but I’ll vote for him because of the good people around him.”)

What in the hell is this all for? Enough is enough. Impeach the criminal gang.

Why do we write?

"People make the mistake of regarding commitment as something solely political. A writer is committed to trying to make sense of life. It's a search. So there is that commitment first of all: the commitment to the honesty and determination to go as deeply into things as possible, and to dredge up what little bit of truth you with your talent can then express." --South African novelist Nadine Gordimer

How much is enough, already?

What! Bush’s American occupation authority in Iraq puts $85 million in cash in the hands of a convict! Robert J. Stein, who served in the Army, was convicted for fraud in 1996.

He was also previously fired by a construction company for “. . . falsifying payroll records and making out false invoices for nonexistent purchases of materials for a construction job at an Air Force base.”

This guy was hired by the government as a controller and financial officer! A soldier of payola handing out the dough to clean up our mess in Iraq. So he gives the money away to cronies (that word again) who turn around and reward him and his wife with money, and cars, and real estate, so the allegations go.

The work sometimes never exists and when it does it is “shoddy.”

The man was charged yesterday with skimming “at least $200,000 a month” in bribes from the money earmarked to rebuild what we blew up in Iraq. And, as they say in advertising, more.

The sorry-ass news broke yesterday. The Times picks it up today.

How much more crime and corruption has to bubble to the slimy surface of this country and its government before some serious changes are made? This is just disgusting.

Torturous

If Bush can say, “We do not Torture,” I can say I don’t write to criticize him or Dick Cheney. If you think we should not condone torture, click here. Why do I feel like I’m living in Nazi Germany?

Careful how you vote; God might get you!

If your town or school board slouches away from "intelligent design," forget your prayers. God will not answer, says Pat Robertson, God's Twenty-first Century earth spokesman. What is that man going to have God do next? Strike down us wayward bloggerszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh help me!

Happy Veterans Day?

I have heard it in conversations on airplanes: recruits going off to basic, saying they enlisted "for the chance to get my education paid for by the government." Hell, I've heard it from friends of my son. Now 175,000 wait over a year with their tuition in limbo. Bring me your poor, your tired . . .

Power to the people of mid-eastern Hollywood

Looks like things are shaping up after Wilma. Jane's power was restored tonight. Hot showers are in order.

This is a picture of trucks from Raleigh, NC. in front of Jane's house. She snapped it shortly before the real lights came on. Time to shut off that noisy generator.

Two weeks without electricty in this day and age is a burden. I hope all the older folks in those high-rise buildings have their elevators working now.

What price, what freedom, who’s freedom?

LONE WOLF, America--The Associated Press reports a Cobra helicopter shot down near Ramadi.

Now 2,037 dead American military men and women, some fifteen to sixteen thousand wounded, maimed, life-changed. Hundreds of thousands “free” Iraqis killed. Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) was founded on the lies of fear, based on pornographic dreams of rich people and insecure wanna-be intellectuals. Come on! Bring it home. Call it a day. If we want real democracy we’ll clean up the military mess and go back and fix what we broke the best we can.

We click off lives lost as we click off the days in Iraq with no end in sight. And how many terrorists have we killed today. And how many innocents have we killed today. And how many more will make it just?

How many have we tortured today? How many have we freed today? Weigh it, balance it like the books, like the profit margins of the top oil producers, in billions of dollars stolen in one quarter of this year. Lies and fakery.

How slowly can Libby, Rove, Cheney and Bush spin in the wind? And how long until we cut them off? Impeach them now. End the war now. Save us all now.

When Colin Powell said, break it we own it, the neocons salivated over owning all that oil. They got it wrong. We own something other than that coveted black gold. We own a wicked liquid, the blood on our hands. Bye, guys. Time for new leaders in government, in business, in education. Bye, bye.

Borrowed this from The Writer’s Almanac:

“Yeats said that a writer must work a way inwards, into self-knowledge. I am always surprised at what I find in myself and this to me is the most rewarding part of being a writer." --Doris Lessing

Is the Bush administration influencing domestic policy?
Mayor wants to cut thumbs off graffiti artists. What’s next? plucking the eyes from strip club patrons?

And the quote of the day (yesterday, from Thinkexist.com):

"Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn't the dream destroy reality?"
- George Moore.