Funny: Today they are "discussing" impeachment

There are frequent discussions about "envy" of various sorts, like penis envy, fashion envy, and so on. But today I have a serious case of "writer's envy". While the bloggers and the independent news sources are feverishly chasing down the latest "non-statements" about impeachment in the hearings(they can't use the word and can't call Bush a liar?), Eugene Robinson offered this cogent and eloquent commentary about the Obama/Berlin event that poured acid rain on McCain's trip to the grocery store (Did you see the clip on the Daily Show, where the applesauce fell all over the floor at McCain's feet? It was a priceless Mastercard moment.) Here's Mr. Robinson:

The Dream Campaign Goes to Berlin
While John McCain pouted in obscurity, Barack Obama capped off a whirlwind tour with a commanding performance on the world stage.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080724_the_dream_campaign_comes_to_berlin/

I want to write like this when I grow up.

Testing the Waters

While sitting in a waiting room this morning, while someone tried to fix my truck, I encountered two elderly ladies (caucasian) and posed a question to them. I said I reported some for the AARP on political affairs and the eldlerly (I do) and asked what they thought about the current presidential race and the candidates.

The first lady declined to make any comment at all. Her lips were sealed. She seemed horrified that I would even ask.

The second lady, a retired veteran of the US Air Force, was quick to say that McCain was "seasoned, experienced, knew the 'buttholes' in Washington and could lead us through our problems".

"That other guy", she said, was "a great 'oratator', a smooth talker and very persuasive. In fact he could probably talk you into anything." She was also adamant about his lack of experience, but defended his charm.

She concluded, "I don't like McCain but I'm gonna vote for him. Besides, that other guy, if he gets the job, won't live long enough to do anything, anyway."

Then I found out it would cost $1074.00 to fix my truck.

Too much for a Friday night

Special Edition of Sawdusttx

Set your clocks back: it is 1984!!!!! George Orwell lives!!! Doublespeak has arrived!!!!

7/18/2008: Tonight this was reported in a story on MSNBC.com:

"The two leaders agreed that improvements in security should allow for the negotiations "to include a general time horizon for meeting aspirational goals, such as the resumption of Iraqi security control in their cities and provinces and the further reduction of U.S. combat forces from Iraq," the White House said. "
The bold and italics are mine. This article attempts to make clear that these two leaders are trying to make clear (????) that a general time horizon is not a time schedule for a troop withdrawl. Got that? Well, I know what it is NOT, but just what in the world is it, exactly? And who, exactly do these two leaders think they are leading?
And would someone please tell me WHAT THE HELL an aspirational goal is? I thought aspirating was something you did into a mask in the hospital.

What few marbles were rolling around on the floor of the Executive Branch have been lost completely. I have said it before on this blog and I will say it again:

The government thinks we are stupid and we let them get away with it!

I wish I was at the Pool

Flip-Flops are For Kids

I do not remember when the term “flip-flop” started being used in general conversation, but I’m sure it was about the time the rubbery, sandal-type, thong thingies showed up as swimwear attributes.. I have no idea where the name came from, or who might have coined it, but presumably it came from the sound the soles make as you walk across poolside concrete: flip-flop, flip-flop. I know the phrase has also been used to describe the actions of a fish out of water, going flip-flop frantically, as it tries to get back into sea.

I have never owned a pair of flip-flops and never worn any. And I have never helped a fish back into the water, but the flip-flop metaphor is in use nearly everywhere the media covers politics today, and it is time for some usage correction and an apology. To be blunt, I’m sick of hearing and seeing it.

The term “flip-flop” has become an extremely derogatory one. After John Kerry’s campaign, it has been used widely to describe the way in which a politician seems to abruptly modified his or her position on an issue. This invariably brings about massive consternation from the politico’s former supporters on the previous position and a great hoopla generally ensues. Then matters usually get out of hand for few hours, until someone else makes an even bigger faux pas.

Over the weekend, I heard (of all people) Gov. Scharzenegger state (after blasting Bush on climate change: a flip-flop for a Republican) that if a politician, “after 20 or so years in a warm, comfortable place “ (or words to that effect) realizes that relevant conditions and factors have changed enough to warrant a reasonable change of mind, that is a “good thing” (or words to that effect). He went on to say that if the current presidential candidates find themselves facing that option, it is to their credit for having the resolve to modify their stance.

However, we should remember two things. First, politicians make this position-altering maneuver more frequently during campaigns than they do after being elected. Post-campaign changes are rare, but not unheard of. Don’t forget that George W. made any number of position promises (before he started signing signing statements) before the election, only to wind up immutably sticking with “stay the course” for almost eight years. He has done this despite raging public furor during much of the same time. Like myself, I guess George doesn’t own any flip-flops, either.

Secondly, politicians do not actually flip-flop. They simply slide, smoothly and craftily, but not entirely unnoticed, with linguistic fluidity, from the left to the right or the right to the left. Along the way they graze over and sometimes acknowledge the middle. But they do not go instantaneously from black to white. Although many of them would like to convince us they have the ability, they are not magicians. And despite their bluster and magnanimous claims, they are incapable of moving mountains. They may slide and slither, talk in vague metaphors and exaggerate, pontificate and try to reverse trends, but they do not flip-flop. They are not capable of anything so spectacular or complete. And let’s not forget, as politicians seem to most often, that usually a fish that flops too much on the beach soon dies of exhaustion and is eventually swept away by the tide.

We should abandon this phrase when talking politics. It is inaccurate. Flip-flop is a poolside noise, a cheap rubbery piece of footwear, the dying effort of a floundered fish. But politicians cannot do it as adroitly as is widely reported in the media. The frequent media use of flip-flop should be discontinued. And an apology is due to whoever invented the silly things for so horribly maligning their image in the public rhetoric. Flip-flops are for kids and for adults who wish they still were. Flip-flops are a cultural convenience: politicians are not.

Life goes on in Texas

P.S. After I wrote this, I realized that I should have mentioned that flip-flops can be bought at Wal-Mart and politicians can be had anywhere. And I think both are made in China.

Some current thoughts.

Getting Around to the Middle

Follow this very circuitous route: start with a story heard on NPR, then move on to one heard in the MSM about Rush Limbaugh, proceed to reports of Barack Obama’s perceived shifting platform positions, then read other reports of McCain’s struggles to emerge with a consistent position on almost anything. What do you get? Well, I got an interesting perspective on this drama and the middle of America. And it appears as if it all has to do with percentages and alienation. And suddenly I wondered, “What is so wrong about the middle?” Why is moving ot the middle a bad thing? Don’t most people live there?

To begin with, consider that improperly embroiled and unjustifiably embedded in our current political milieu is the role of the conservative and largely religious right. They are generally referred to as fundamentalist, evangelical, fervent or all three. Not all of those on the right are fervently religious, and not all of those who religious are on the right, but I never met a pair of them who did not agree with and like one another. And they would both like to have a great deal to say about who the next POTUS will be, the future legislative habits of the Congress and the decisions that will be handed down later by the SCOTUS. Veering hard off in the other direction is the “left”. They claim to be different, but they ultimately want the same things. You could call them “ardent”.

This essay travel route starts with the NPR story. One researcher reported that she has concluded that only 7 (seven) percent of the US population is truly evangelical. That is reference point one. Point two comes from MSNBC, who reported that Rush Limbaugh, a well known spokesperson for the conservative right, has just signed a new eight year contract with talk radio for $400,000,000.00. He won this prize because, presumably, he speaks to an audience of five (5) percent of the US population.

Disclaimer: I am not a mathematician or a statistician, and the only facts available to me are those I get from the media. But after looking at several different opinions and estimates, I have settled on the number of English speaking, legally residing, non-hearing impaired or reading/listening disabled persons in the United States to be about 280.000,000 people. If that is the case, then NPR’s 7% figure represents just slightly less than 20 million people, and Mr. Limbaugh speaks to only about 14 million. We can safely assume, based upon the demographics, that they are hardly mutually exclusive and many are one in the same. So maybe we have 25-30 million people in this group, out of (maybe) 280 million? It would be hard to argue that this is a majority of Americans.

Reference point three is a comment I heard on the radio. Quoted approximately, “Why is it that everyone is afraid of the right and the right isn’t afraid of anyone?” This is clearly someone’s opinion, but it does somehow ring true. If you only use Mr. Limbaugh as an example (and he has plenty of company), he seems unafraid to say anything about anyone. The NYT, however, puts him on the front page of their magazine, and offers deference. Today, Think Progress has published that the NYT is Limbaugh’s “lap dog”. But it is reasonable to suppose that everyone is afraid of a junkyard dog. In the same vein, the slightest critical or cynical remark made by the Obama camp is immediately seized upon, impugned and pounded by any conservative with access to the airwaves. And they do this with no shame. On the other hand, if Senator McCain or one of his “surrogates” says it’s time to “bomb, bomb Iran”, exile a colleague to Belarus or kill Iranian civilians with cigarettes, the media is quick to applaud his wit, sense of humor and “candor”. It would seem that sensitivity is one-sided in these matters.

Reference point four: Barack Obama is alienating the left by moving to what appears to be a more centrist position, then alienating the centrists by moving even farther to the right than they would like, and then risking the complete alienation of the right if he doesn’t move that way at all. So he reassures the lefties by telling them that they are not seeing the big picture, attempts to sedate the centrists by showing them that he has moved in the “right” direction (theirs) and then meets privately with the evangelicals in an attempt to convince Billy Grahams’ son that he is not Satan (or Muslim). That was not as easy as it looked: it took forcing compromise from the left, some mesmerizing in the middle and some pandering to the right. But the alienation persists. From some vantage points, it seems to grow worse by the day. While there are defenders of each platform, they do not like to sit at table together. The McCain contingent is, all the meanwhile, huddled together in the far right, trying to help the Senator remember who he alienated yesterday, who he should not like to alienate tomorrow and wondering which issue will be newly introduced or discarded whenever he speaks again. We are practicing alienation to become an alien nation.

(Bear with me: this will all come together, soon)

Point five to consider is more complicated. The right always believes, without any shadow of a doubt whatsoever, that it is always right (Arianna Huffington says they are wrong: read the book). But since the right has been holding the reins for so long, the left has been left to pick up the pieces. It has unfairly laid the whole responsibility for that effort on Obama, who has left the left afraid he is moving too far right, thereby leaving some of them alienated. The centrists, while encouraged, are still suspicious of the left leanings and maintain some alienation. And the right, despite any and all efforts, will always feel alienated if they don’t get their way, completely. (I have never understood why the very people who most loudly proclaim the need for brotherly love, display the least of it when it comes to the needs of their fellow man). Alienation seems to be one common activity that everyone claims to want to avoid, but routinely employs it. The term “Change” has been long introduced by the left, promoting it as a snake oil elixir that promises societal salvation. Lately it has also been adopted by the right as a codeword for “pacification by duping” or the modus operandi for McCain’s responses to audience questions, i.e., “change” the subject. In either case, the use of “change” has produced even more alienation. America, as a people, have become very good at not liking one another very much. Wasn’t there mention of an alien nation?

The last reference point in use here is the fact that our society breeds on sensationalism rather than facts. We digest a steady diet of what Bill Moyers calls “bumper sticker” bits of information. Sadly, these gossipy fragments of fact seem to make up most of what people think they know. Even worse, these “fragments of fact” are the only informational input that most people ever hear and therefore on which they are able to draw conclusions or base their beliefs. And when people go about their daily business, and make critical decisions, based upon perhaps only half of the information available, you are asking for trouble. Six years ago, half of our “information” said Saddam and Iraq were dangerous. The other half of the “intel” said otherwise. We acted on the wrong half, under the wrong leadership with only half a plan, and look where it got us. I won’t go there: it is too grizzly.

My composite thesis for explaining. collating and understanding the significance of these points of reference goes like this:

If the numbers used here are even close to accurate, then a minority of the population is perceived to be exerting a disproportionately strong influence on the majority. One might think this improbable, but it is not impossible and it may even be inevitable. And the inevitability stems largely from the nature of the times we live in. Evidence would support the premise is that it is not this small group of people who wield such influence over popular sentiment, but it comes cumulatively from all the people they talk to .One person hears from another person who thought they heard Limbaugh or someone else say that all citrus fruit imported from Central America was laced with spores that cause lymph-node cancer: within a short time the story is an urban myth and American media gospel. It is picked up by the MSM and Fox News, and the boycotts begin. Fruit growers and sellers are immediately assaulted and attacked; just as the tomato industry was just pummeled for salmonella. Or consider that a religious leader of the far right implies that Obama will enslave white males after his election, and says this in front of a congregation of largely uneducated, uninformed white men. Before long, the story has made its’ way to the MSM and the political, anti-abortion (a-political?)pamphlets of the Catholic Church (this really happened). Firstly, people report and relay sensational information fervently and inaccurately. Secondly, the electronic media (MSM, blogs, web sites,etc.) spread information so quickly that reasonable containment is impossible before verification is even considered. If you doubt this, read Thomas Friedman’s book, The World Is Flat. Before you can finish the first two chapters, the world will have changed several times, fortunes will have been made and lost and most of what you heard on the radio this morning will have been found to be untrue by afternoon. And it will all have been done electronically, in the blink of an eye.

Before someone rushes to mount a defense of the right, it should be also noted that one can only guess that about as many people (25-30 million?) on the left-hand side of this information equation behave in much the same way. Perhaps 14 million people (maybe more) listen to NPR, and another 14-15 million attend liberal places of worship, read left wing journals and blogs and spread around other bits of information just as generously. For instance, for many days prior to this Fourth of July, there were blogs and articles predicting the government “false flag” bombing of the Houston ship channel on the holiday. That hasn’t happened, many were convinced it would happen, it hasn’t yet happened and the articles have vanished. But there were certainly people who left Houston and south Texas for the week, just in case. There is enough blame for reckless behavior to go around on both sides. Dan Rather lost his job this way. But sensational, “bad” news, condemnatory knee-jerk slurs and mud-slinging travels faster and with more gusto than anything without an element of slime attached. Readers and conversationalists will always gravitate sooner to a story about Britney Spear’s lack of underwear than they will one about saving an oil-soaked duck in Alaska.

This brings us, finally, to alienation, or the attempted avoidance of it. It has become the American societal castigation trap. In attempting to alienate no one (that means to please everyone), sooner or later you alienate someone else. In making the left happy, you spurn the right or the centrist. To appease and mollify the right, you incur the wrath of the left. So you promise change and then deliver some disguised repetition and/or watered-down compromise. When this happens, the barn starts to burn from both ends, and no fire department can prevent total immolation of the ideas at stake. If all goes badly, the end result is a charred, blackened and numb middle. Nothing gets done in the end, but the alienation remains.

But let’s go back to the numbers. If you add both the devoted right and the entire energetic left together, you still have less than half the population involved in the daily political-cultural ethos. But that is of course before the rumor mill goes to work or the MSM contributes. And we have left out an accounting for the children, the infirm, the mentally challenged and the senile. But even so, there is still every likelihood that more than 50% of the population doesn’t know or doesn’t care. This huge group either doesn’t act on good information (which is irresponsible) or proceeds on bad information (which is both irresponsible and reckless). At the risk of sounding elitist, as long as this majority has a paycheck, gas money and enough left over to buy movie tickets or beer on Saturday night, they are just THERE. And the chances are that they feel alienated, in one way or another. Barack Obama may not have been so far wrong when he described them as “bitter”. And just how long did it take the electronic media to flash that message up across every television screen in the world? The irony may be that the comment was made in earnest as an observation from the left, but the sentiment is one harbored mostly by the disenfranchised (alienated) right.

All of which is to say that getting around to the middle may or may not be a good idea. It depends upon your perspective and your long term vision of future. Those on the left tend to be those with the visions and the broader perspectives. Those on the right are more likely to be interested in short term gains, more control and some immediate gratification. Those in the middle will either be tugged in one direction or the other or be left untouched. They may also be alienated, because they have been denied any long term vision of the future: sort term gains equal simple survival. Those coming from either end of the spectrum, if they are to come together at all, will need to endorse some compromise. The word compromise means with promise, and implies that in order to secure any future betterment, one must give up, or leave behind, a few ideas, notions and possibly material possessions to accomplish that. Some people do not care for the word compromise or the concept. Those who reject it completely will continue to burn the barn from their end. They will perpetuate and propagate alienation.

Obama is reaching toward the center. If the left can endorse this as a compromise, which leaves their long term goals intact for future reference, the sparks of the fire may be kept alive for future use. But at the same time. I doubt pandering to the right is helpful: I find it very difficult to co-mingle pandering with compromise. If the right can also embrace compromise, then their fire can be similarly be subdued and a middle ground of humanitarian progress can be reached. But at least for now, the left wants to yell betrayal, and the McCain camp, the neo-cons and the addicts of half-truths seem to prefer the raging fire on their end of the barn. Until this tension is resolved, and these alienations eliminated, America will remain three territories at odds: the ardent 25 million on the left, the fervent 25 million on the right and all those millions in the middle, left to wonder and struggle on.

Life goes on in Texas.

After the Fireworks

Despite my better judgement, I actually sat about 20 yeards away from a real, honest-to-God, blow-em-up fireworks presentation on July 4. It was on the shores of Lake Buchanan, about 65 miles west, northwest of Austin, in the hill country. It was fun, noisy and colorful, and the two "presenters" were semi-pros at this; no one was hurt and everyone applauded. These same two pyrotechnical hobbyists also manufactured a large noise maker (they call it a "Salute"), which upon detonation merely creates a giant orange glow in the sky and leaves everyone nearby deaf for several minutes, afterwards. That monster went off at the local firehouse around 11 PM. Fortunately, there were no fire calls at that time, because all of the firemen in attendance couldn't hear a thing. During the evening, I was thinking, though, about two possible events which could have occured in today's world, but did not.

The first was that the DHS did not rush out to Lake Buchanan, in miniscule little Kingsland, TX, and arrest our two "bomb makers" as terrorists, under the Patriot ACT, for trying to blow up a fire station. I fully expected to to see Howard Chertoff in a hard hat, with the Army National Guard in humvees and heliocopters, but they never materialized. I was disappointed. And all of that so close to Crawford,too. A wonderful missed propoganda opportunity. They could have saved Dubya and preserved the peace of west central Texas. And spent millions in the process.

The second thought was that I was reminded of the warnings I'd been reading for weeks, from writers and bloggers on the far left, that the government would set off a "false flag" attack, to rally support for the bombing of Iran, by blowing up the Houston ship channel during the holiday festivities. By midnight, that had not yet occured. I'm still waiting. I don't trust anybody. And if it had happened, the boys at the fire house wouldn't have been able to hear it, anyway.

All the while, as the rockets produced red glares, and the bombs were bursting in air, all around the miles of shoreline around Lake Buchanan, I kept remembering that the Chinese had invented gunpowder. And as all of these explosive devices were going off, a little cash register in my head was calculating the increase in the US/China trade deficit and how much the cost of these fireworks were adding to the vast sums of money we already owe the Chinese banks for financing the war in Iraq (Ted Koeppel says it is somewhere between $600B and one Trillion. How the hell much is that?). Not that it matters, much: what could our national holiday have possibly cost us? I'm sure it was less than what we pay Halliburton a day for food a fuel in the desert or what we spend for electricity a day in the Green Zone. Or what it would have cost to save Kingsland, TX from the terrorists.

Life goes on in Texas

Not feeling like a firecracker

July 4 is just two days away. Fireworks are null and void in most of central Texas: we have had no rain in weeks and the world is very brown and very dry. One good bottle rocket and your whole house and yard could be the neighborhood's largest hot dog and marshmallow fest.

The news has announced that on this Fourth, our National Shrub will be speaking to new citizens, being sworn in that day at Monticello: this raises hypocrisy to new levels. At the same time, Dick Cheney will be blustering about pirates ar some such nonsense, from the deck of the USS Constitution in Boston Harbor: another moment in the theater of the absurd. Had Bush and Cheney both stood on and for the real Constitution while they were in office, instead of shredding it, we wouldn't be facing the messes we are . This too, shall pass.

I said some time ago I would wait out the primaries and the general election to see who would win, then plot my course of action from there. I have learned much from McCain and Obama of late: I'm flip-flopping. While I was very relieved when the Democratic primary was over, Hillary threw in the towel and Obama became "presumptive", that relief has now given way to dismay and disillusionment. My enthusiasm for BO has gone from , Oh, Yeah! Right on!", to "Oh, well. If I have no other choice." I started becoming uneasy when he wrote a check from his supporter's donations to help out with the Clinton campaign debt. They have lots of money and they spent like drunken sailors. And he gives THEM a check? Maybe Barack is afraid of Bill. Then, as the press says, Barack's knees got "wobbly"on what to do about Iraq if elected, he has waffled and been decisionless about the FISA bill and possible prosecution, and now he is pandering to the religious right about faith based initiatives. First he seemed to moving to center stage, which is fine: we cold use some of that. But now he seems to be moving much farther to the right of the stage. Most of what I applauded and that I thought he stood for seems to be fading away as he works purely to garner votes and thereby sacrifice principals. As some have suggested, we really should make "character" an issue in this campaign. I feel somewhat betrayed, because Obama, like MCCain, seems to be becoming one rather than having any. I was reminded by two articles this morning, that I should not forget that he is a politician. Oops. My "wait and see" attitude has become more of "wait and worry". Pandering to evangelicals pushes me about as far as I can go without coming completely unglued. Too bad. Alas, poor Obie. I thought I knew him well.

What follows is the latest installment in what happens when my fingers get stuck in the keyboard. One early reviewer denounced it as much too long and my son decried it as much too dreary and pessimistic. Grab a new cup of whatever you are drinking, and read on if you are brave and stalwart:

The United Jurassic States of America

An Allegory (?) in Memory of George Carlin.

When my youngest son was very small, even before he could read well, dinosaurs were his best friends. From his first introduction to these human precursors, he had a strong kinship with them. We bought and read books about them, he looked at the pictures, drew pictures of them and built skeletal models. If we could get to a museum, to see an assembled fossil, we went, and any even remotely relevant television program was a must see. He (we) marveled at them, fantasized about them and made up a terrible and unending strings of “saurus” jokes all the time.: “My triceratops yours”; “Move your big bronto butt over so I can sit down”; “you must have a brain the size of a walnut”, “Clean up your room. What are you, mesosaurus wrecks?”etc. And if Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble had lived next door, Nick would not have given them a second thought.

But certain aspects of being “dino-aware” demanded awe and respect. There was never any denying the impressiveness of the really big ones, like the brontosaurus: it towered over everything; you had to pay homage to the king, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and marvel at his teeth and his speed. The warriors of this society commanded attention as well, the varied ancestors of the rhinoceros, with their heavy plating and horns, and tails lined and rowed with deadly spikes. And some were even reported to fly (dactyls ?). Some were the first stealth predators (remember Jurassic Park?), the dreaded raptors (we have fighter planes named for them, today) and some were merely content to loll about, eating greenery. They were the first vegans, I guess.

But carnivore, herbivore or omnivore, on land, in the water or in the sky, they made their mark on the face of the earth for millions of years and later re-appeared in stone and imprint to captivate the minds and imaginations today of scientists, anthropologists and young children like my son. But they went extinct. Oops.

The reason for recalling such memories and the many images of these early creatures was that I was busy looking for a symbol, a metaphor or a suitable collection of word pictures to use to describe the United States of America, today. It, too, has many forms and descriptions, has many aspects and behaves in many different ways, on and in the land, the water and the sky. It is leaving its mark and its impressions on the face of the earth, as well. It is attracting attention and captivating the minds of scholars, politicos, historians, the general populations of the world, and, for now, at least, contemporary cultural anthropologists. Some day, if we manage to do our worst, the children and grandchildren of these curious groups may well be the kind of anthropologists that sift through the remains, skeletons and remnants of what once was here, in an attempt to figure out what we (The United States of America) once was. They will, some days hence, be looking to discover what we did, what we stood for, stood against and what we did about it. They will examine our (possibly charred) fossilized remains, look at our WMD’s, rifle through our vast accumulated waste and search for the answer to the question of why we (the US of A) went extinct (this is a lot like the phrase “went missing”, used in today’s inaccurate vernacular, but far more serious. You can sometimes be found and recover from being missing. Being extinct is far more permanent. Ask a dodo).

Put rather simply, the United States of America was born somewhat abruptly.If you look at the short span of space and time of human existence, the US emerged almost over night. In the grand scheme of events, from the first thirteen oppressed colonies, it appeared as a nearly full-grown bird of freedom almost instantaneously. The mark left behind by its birth changed the face of the world. The Founding Fathers were propelled by their indignance and resentments, their zeal and their collective intellect, to say, “Enough. No More. George, go home! And stay there!”. Supported by the keen desire for liberty and the compounded robust and restless ire of the people, and motivated by the then radical notion that “all men are created equal”, the great bird took to the sky and vanquished the oppressor. The revolution dawned a new day. Funny, that today, many are again saying, “George, go home. Stay there”. Déjà vu.

Wow! What a great story! An epic adventure in humanity! A monumental triumph! What an inspiration!

However, 200 hundred years have passed and that revolution has faded. Some say we have been asleep, off duty, unaware. It has given way to a reverse evolution, a de-volution. The great symbol of liberty, freedom, success and equality evolved backwards from an eagle to a dinosaur. Almost imperceptibly to some, time began running rearwards and the behemoth, lumbering beast of the Jurassic past came back to life. This “saurus”, however, is not so loveable or loved.

Unlike the extinction of the first dinosaurs, which occurred when Mother Nature and the universe arbitrarily decided to pummel the earth with a giant asteroid (if you subscribe to that theory: my son and I do). This event caused enough cold and darkness for long enough to starve out every living thing (almost) and life nearly had to start from scratch. Life as a dinosaur was mostly fun until that happened. The end of their existence was not their fault. They never saw it coming or had a clue. Suddenly, someone had to ask, “Who turned out the lights?”, and “Where did my lunch go?”

Note: If you are a believer in or practitioner of Intelligent Design, this would be a good time to stop reading .If you have any visions of an early George W. Bush, riding a saddled dinosaur around the early Texas range, rounding up prehistoric cattle or chickens for dinner, you will not find any comfort or solace in this piece, from this point forward. It just gets to be more like real biology and Darwin. Sorry.

This was a sad and unfortunate, non-storybook ending for the Jurassic Park inhabitants, but it need not hold true for this modern day dinosaur called the United States of America. At the moment, there is no one, giant asteroid on the galactic horizon, that we know of. But our dinosaur has some internal tumors and ulcerations that require immediate attention. There are also some outside extremists and agitators, a few meddling boneheads and the usual assortment of idolaters and misguided icon worshippers (bureaucrats) lurking about, but there always have been. If we are lucky, they usually die from a lack of attention as the health of the afflicted beast improves. Despite the last nearly eight years, we still have some available medications that will help: common sense, rules of law, a Constitution and some remaining shreds of democracy. And therapists are standing by to take your call, should you want to join in the cause: philosophers, historians, educators, scholars, ethicists, and an educated public. Many of us truly believe that most of the smaller, current and short-sighted habits of this beast are fixable with time. But the bigger public behavior problems, the eating habits and the extremely impaired vision problems of this creature are going to be hard to tackle. And they certainly cannot be addressed all at once. That would require major surgery, aka, another revolution, and it doesn’t seem like America is quite ready for that. At least not just yet. Besides, you don’t just “move” something this big, overnight.

Working from the inside, out.

Our big, lumbering mammal’s organs are all sick. Any physician worth his mettle will tell you that nothing that manifests itself on the outside of a sick being will be pleasant, as long as the insides are not well. All thinking and behavior is adversely affected by the illnesses within. So we go first to the brain of old saurus, which, like those of all dinos, is quite small, limited in capacity and able to deliberate only very slowly. The poor thing suffers from believing that it is an all-powerful “megasaurus” and doesn’t even know that it processes information at only a snail’s pace, and its little brain has become almost completely ineffective, when it comes to problem solving. Its arteries (the halls and offices of congress and the federal agencies) are clogged with inept elected officials (aka, dolts), incompetent political appointees (FEMA) and lobbyists (robber barons). It is almost pure administrative cholesterol. Blood thinners and anti-coagulants in the form of more open, less expensive and more aggressive elections would help all that. But something needs to be done soon. And don’t call in the drug companies to help; it will cost too much , take too long to test and evaluate, be subject to approval by the same government that needs the treatment (it is in denial) and will no doubt have bad side effects. If you leave it up to this “brain”, the cure will never get to market. There is too much money at stake. To remove the lobbyists alone, you would need to flood K Street with something which is a total disincentive for personal gain. There are some remedies on the market which can help. These include virulent doses of humility, a ban on limo services, no free lunches (or vacations in Ecuador or Paraguay) and certifications that the participants are both germ and slime free. And a general tax on greed. All tough to pull off, but doable if these clowns are all subject to evaluation by a new and sanitized EPA. We have the technology; we just have to use it. It is all outlined in a book called “Ethics”. I know we have a copy, somewhere.

A small but especially troublesome (and troubled) corner of the brain is called the Executive Branch. Both its’ East and West wings appear broken and it hasn’t flown for some time. Before it flounders around on the floor any more, or leaves behind more remnants of misguided loyalty feathers, the whole area should be scrubbed, flushed out and sanitized. This is particularly true for the chairs of the POTUS and Vice-POTUS: these held the resident WMD’s. The entire branch should be made ready for new blood, fresh air and less accumulated fecal matter. Weapons, bald-faced lies, self-delusion and cowboy arrogance should be eliminated completely. Clear out all the brush.

Once this is done, there will be less chance that the Judiciary enclave, or the mysterious “mental rule book and cloakroom” of the brain, will tip any further to the right. Although small, this component of the brain has the ability to bring the whole beast crashing to the ground if it gets any more lopsided. And if dino goes down completely, well, there’s that extinction thing again. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” will echo around the world.

Somewhere, buried under all of this mess in this troubled brain, is an item labeled, “The Constitution of These United States.” When we find it again, (it has been under wraps for about seven years), we should be very careful not to lose it again, spill anything on it, blur it or alter it in anyway. THIS IS THE COLLECTION OF CAREFULLY CRAFTED DEMOCRATIC THREADS, PROVIDED BY THE FOUNDING FATHERS, IN WHICH THE FUTURE BALANCE HANGS. ITS’ CONTENTS ARE THE BEST AND FINAL DEFENSE AGAINST EXTINCTION.

Other Vital Organs

By all reports, and according to some recent medical prognostications, the heart of the dinosaur is still beating. But within the last 100 years, it has done itself no favors, health-wise. For openers, it has become the worst of all possible omnivores. It can’t think very well, but it sure can eat. It devours everything in sight: natural resources, clean air and its sources, huge quantities of oil, human energy and civil liberties. The seemingly unending desire to consume the elements of the high life, private airplanes, most of the world’s food stuffs and energy, expensive automobiles and prime real estate has pushed the liver to its limits and starved the stomach for nutrients. The military industrial complex drives even more consumption and the imbalance of sustainable trade is leaving the body muscles weak. The muscles, the tendons, the plasma, the electrolytes and whatever else it takes to keep this dinosaur upright and moving consist of the people who live inside the beast, the populace. They strive to convert whatever raw energy is left, after the military and the corporations and the diplomats are done, into useful products, capital and the replenishment of sustainable resources. It takes more and more effort every day for the dinosaur to just walk, and it has grown obese, cannot turn and adjust quickly and relies mostly on fond memories of when it used to be lithe, slim and attracted the fond attention of the rest of the world. Those days appear to be gone, forever. And the muscle and the tendons and sinew and the bloodstream cannot live on bread and water forever. If you just keep gorging the liver on an empty stomach and clogging the arteries, you are asking for a heart attack. I doubt there is a single defibulator big enough to jump-start this once athletic behemoth.

There are other complications involved if we take dino into rehab. Lately, because he was told there isn’t enough oil, he has taken to drinking large quantities of ethanol. Everybody else in the world saloon may be doing it too, but it is bad for the liver, causes an equally expensive drunk and puts a crimp in the corn supply/food chain. Along with the ethanol, dino has swallowed the story that there isn’t enough oil, that “peak” oil is here and that we have to go drilling in places we shouldn’t to get more. It’s too cold for dinosaurs in the ANWR, and dinos can’t really swim, so the coastal shelf is out, too. Those K Street lobbyists in that brain that needs flushing have clogged up some more arteries with big oil money; the drunken dinosaur has been convinced he needs a new, different and more expensive fix. He is wobbling down the street, gazing lustfully at nuclear reactors, and has also just discovered he is not the only creature in the neighborhood. It seems there is another dinosaur waking up in China and one in India. They are also both omnivores and both like oil. China’s dinosaur is healthier, has more muscle to flex and more money to throw around. Sadly, most of that money came from OUR dinosaur in the first place. What goes around comes back to Chinese banks.

As the dino wobbles, he is inhaling lots of toxic fumes, because the brain has been ignoring the warnings of the EPA and the Al Gore influences for a long time. The dinosaur has a smoking habit, refuses to try nicotine gum and this entire foul intake is making all the people and the planet sick. American Dino and his Chinese soulmate are exhaling CO2 at a great rate. But the brain likes smoke filled rooms, so no one is paying attention. And the big energy boys from K Street are in there, puffing away.

The rest of the problem

Bringing the dinosaur back to good health is one mighty and noble goal. If that can be achieved, the next round of challenges have to do with what to do about how the beast has interacted with the rest of the planetary neighborhood. The dinosaur has very large feet, poor vision, a large dangerous spiked tail, bad spawning habits and a real knack for alienating other dinosaurs and people in general.

In wobbling around, the big feet have stepped on many people, countries and governments that didn’t invite the intrusions. Civil rights and liberties have been abused, wealth misappropriated, resources plundered and entire cultures mauled. In the wake of the beast’s wandering, the tail has lashed back and forth behind it, often leaving death and destruction, havoc and despair. And the wandering path has been global. Please remember that this dinosaur does not bear young: it only lays eggs. And most of the eggs it has laid have gone rotten. Very few have hatched new freedoms or great birds of liberty like ours once was. While having no inkling of some of the devastation left in its wake, our dinosaur is also not popular around the world. Perhaps most sadly, the fact is that the dinosaur’s own vision of itself is so weak and inaccurate, that it has no clue how poorly he (it) is perceived on the world stage. By the way, this “selective perception” also allows dino to ignore misery in its own back yard. This is another vision problem. Look in Wikipedia under “Katrina”. In addition to the fixes and cures mentioned earlier, dino could use a good optometrist.

In the last of what has been nearly a decade, this “brain’s ” behavior has been particularly disruptive in this regard. Its vocabulary (“speechifyin”) and social skills (unsolicited back rubs) from the executive branch, have been below par and disgusting. Both the executive and legislative branches have co-opted and abused the MSM to the point where no outlay of information is credible or to be trusted. The “brain” is convinced it can tell the American people anything, and they will accept it as gospel, “good news”.

But the good news is increasingly the bad news. The rich get richer and the poor get even less than they used to. And the middle class is vanishing into the bowels of a dinosaur totally unaware of their role in the possibilities of survival and the avoidance of extinction. What’s that you say, “SO?” Thank you, Dick.

Expats leave every day, in mourning of the imminent passing of an old friend. They leave a country that once trumpeted the word “freedom” louder than any country on earth. They are being replaced ever more quickly by immigrants leaving behind lost hopes and dreams and dreaming anew that the dinosaur here will save them from despair and nothingness. They have no clue it is dying because its skin still looks attractive and superficially glamorous. Ah, Hollywood. Thank you, Madison Avenue. But unless the cures are implemented soon and the rejuvenation process begins quickly, it will be as if another meteor has struck. I have no idea who is going to turn the lights back on, this time.

Postscript

The following thoughts were running through my head, and jotted down on paper next to me, as I wrote the piece above, but I did not include them at the time, for reasons of length. I also thought it might be too many dreary observations for one article. But after sleeping on it, I decided, “Why not?”, so here goes:

The exact moment (unknown) when the cosmic forces of nature chose to pull the plug on the dinosaurs, the meteor collision with earth created a huge cloud of dust and atmospheric debris that encircled the earth. At least that is what most scientists think what happened. The climatological result of this was a cloud cover which effectively blocked out the sun’s rays for an extended period of time, thus creating an extremely long “winter” on earth. Not long thereafter, the plant life died off and the food source for the herbivores died with it. Not long after that, the herbivorves died off, and because there was no McDonald’s or Burger King for T-Rex to stop at, the food source for the carnivores died off, too. Thus endeth the tale of the dinosaurs. Or so I understand it.

A few years back, a small oil-producing country in the middle east, led by a despot and dictator, was reported to have “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD’s). Because they were supposed to pose a threat to the security of the United States…and because of several other bogus claims made by the brain of our dinosaur… we attacked that country, deposed the dictator, oversaw his execution, and killed (and are still killing) countless civilians while making countless thousands more homeless. We have been engaged in “hostilities” there ever since (“hostilities” sounds bogus, too). And there were no WMD’s. The dictator was not guilty of this charge…..but we only verified that much later. Too late. Dead. Extinct.

Recently, for some newly “revealed” reasons, which may well be bogus as well, we have accused yet another small, middle eastern, oil producing country of aiding and abetting the 911 hijackers, supplying arms and munitions to insurgents in the first country we invaded and just generally being disagreeable. Dino seems to think that any time you cannot pronounce someone’s name, you should wag your spiked tail. There are more than a few rumors of war, as well as verifiable evidence, that the United States, in its best dinosaur clothing, may well soon bomb that country as well. (We seem to want to wag that big, dangerous tail, some more).

Part of the rumors, again partly verifiable, insist that we might use something called “tactical nuclear weapons” to conduct this proposed bombing. Sound interesting? Read on.

Everything that I have been able to read tells me that “Tactical Nuclear Weapons” (TNW’s) are still just nuclear weapons. Tactical or not, they are indeed WMD’s. Once you detonate one, there is not much control over what happens afterwards. It is a hideous fire bomb of an explosion, Hiroshima all over again, and the fallout afterwards is deadly, long lasting and unpredictable. I could be wrong, but it sounds to me like the United Jurassic States of America is about to kill and make homeless another several thousand innocent people. The ailing dinosaur is about to use WMD TNW’s on a country which doesn’t have any verifiable WMD’s at all, after basically destroying a country for having WMD’s it didn’t have in the first place. . Are you following this?

Incidentally, the Vice-Potus of the brain is reported to have recently ordered the covert shipment of WMD TNW’s from North Dakota to Florida, over American dinosaur soil, for imminent shipment, to an “undisclosed location” for use against the country that doesn’t have any WMD’s that we know of. I didn’t know the brain was capable of being either that smart or covert. You learn something new every day. But since they got “found out” (something like “went missing”), does that mean it’s not covert anymore? Or “undisclosed’?

The link to the story above:

The first dinosaurs became extinct because they could not survive an extended, cold, dark, sunless winter. If the great, lumbering dinosaur of the United States chooses to instigate the use of WMD’s in the form of Tactical Nuclear Weapons…a horrid, despicable, cowardly act…. both large and small dinosaurs (China, Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia) around the planet could opt to retailiate and/or join in the fray. These detonation of these weapons will cause the atmosphere to fill with dust and debris and cause a dark, cold nuclear sunless winter. You can figure out the rest of it for yourself. The lights will not come back on for along, long time and you can forget all about all of those suggestions I made earlier about restoring the dinosaur to health. ‘Night, George.

Life goes on in Texas.