Oh, And By The Way...

...the Chimp says "don't buy gas if you don't need it." I'll try not to. In the past, I've often bought gas when I didn't need it - just to look at it. Just to smell it. Just because I could.

Man, he gets even MORE stupid every day.

This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land

Adding something profound to the zillions of words about Katrina on the web is an impossibility. We sat and watched the news tonight and I ended up sobbing at what I was seeing in New Orleans. Apparently, Americans all over this great land are beginning to understand the enormity of what is happening to the most vulnerable among us.

And yet, it appears that no one in a position of authority has a meaningful response. In fact, in some cases it appears that the refugees are being blamed for not leaving the city when they were told to do so before the hurricane hit. Can you imagine?

I am distraught for my country. I am beyond frustration at not being able to do anything.

As someone said to me recently: "If we can't handle a natural disaster, how the hell will we handle a major terrorist attack?" And this: "What does it tell those who would harm us about our preparedness?" Now that's a scary proposition, isn't it?

The Chimp says he's sending money. But right now, it doesn't appear that money is actually the answer. The refugees need transportation - where are the airlines or even small private planes (dare I even say "corporate" planes?), where is the shipping industry with barges, where are the cruise ships? People need food and water.

Looting?
If one more fucking person says anything about "looters" I might rip their lips off. What would you do after being scared shitless by the initial hurricane, knowing your home is gone, your job is gone, and that you have no money or resources? What would you do if you knew there was food and water or medical supplies in a drug store and you were desperate? This is commonly known as "nothing left to lose." Yet, the Chimp says we should show so-called looters "zero tolerance." Well, I say let's show zero tolerance to the incompetence that passes for crisis management.

Read My Lips...

Driving to work this morning, I was in a bit of stop-and-go traffic on the Mass. Pike. At one point, I looked in my rearview mirror and watched a woman read my bumper sticker with her lips moving. Yes, she was alone in the car. Yes, she pursed her lips afterwords. Yes, I laughed out loud.

Here's my bumper sticker.

Roll Your Own

Want your own Bullshit Protector? Here ya go.

Joe Trippi: Will You Give Me a Job?

A few months ago, I read Joe Trippi's book "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." It's must reading for anyone wanting to know more about a bunch of things: how to have a career in campaign management, how to use the internet to advance a cause, the inner workings of the Dean 2004 campaign, and why citizen journalism is the future.

Joe's one of the reasons I started this blog.

Today's post on his site is another reason. Read it.

I watched Joe try to make his way as an MSNBC analyst after the Dean campaign closed up shop, and he did a fine job, especially considering the nutjobs he was up against...like that lightweight Joe Scarborough and Andrea Mitchell, another reporter supposedly complicit in the Plame case.

But overall, I like the way Joe thinks, his humanity and his credibility. He's the kind of guy I would love to work for. Any chance you're hiring, Joe?

Take the Democratic Loyalty Quiz

Time for some fun!

I ended up scoring (drumroll......) 10 out of a possible 10. Surprise!

Here's my description: You are a pure, unabashed, die-hard Democratic loyalist. You are appalled by the way Republicans are turning America into a theocratic, corpo-fascist police state, and you'd gladly walk through a furnace in a gasoline suit to elect a Democratic president. In your view, there is no higher form of patriotism than defending America against the Republican Party and every intolerant, puritanical, imperialistic, greed-mongering, Constitution-shredding ideal for which it stands.

From TalkLeft.

This One's For Tony

As has been previously documented in this blog, my late father was a rabid Bush hater - from GHWB to his sons who were governors of Texas and Florida when my Dad passed away. As a veteran and member of the American Legion, I suspect Dad would have had exactly the same reaction as this guy to listening to the Chimp speak. Isn't this a fabulous picture?



Bill Moyer, 73, wears a "Bullshit Protector" flap over his ear while President George W. Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

Courtesy of kos and atrios.

Worse than Nixon?

Well, the Chimp's approval rating has now dipped below Nixon's during Watergate. More here on a survey done between August 18 and 21, 2005.

"George W. Bush's overall job approval ratings have dropped from a month ago even as Americans who approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president are turning more optimistic about their personal financial situations according to the latest survey from the American Research Group. Among all Americans, 36% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 58% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 33% approve and 62% disapprove.

Among Americans registered to vote, 38% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 56% disapprove, and 36% approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 60% disapprove."

Think Progress tell us Nixon's rating during the 1973 was 39%, by the way.

And, here's this interesting point:

"The increases in the personal financial ratings, however, are coming mainly from those approving of the way Bush is handling his job. A total of 54% of those approving the way Bush is handling his job say their personal financial situations are getting better, compared to 5% of those saying they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job, and 61% of those saying they approve of the way Bush is handling his job say they expect to be better off a year from now, compared to 6% of those saying they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job."

Lonely Boy

Things are lonely in Crawford, but the Chimp's answering machine has been busy. (Courtesy of the Randi Rhodes Show.)

Anti-War Vigil: Wednesday, August 17

Almost forgot to record for posterity the pro-Cindy Sheehan candlelight vigil I attended. There were about 60 people who gathered on the rotary in the center of Westboro, Mass. My friend, Rita, and I attended, along with people of various ages and sizes. Not much to report other than people came, lit candles, stood on the perimeter of the rotary facing traffic (which was mostly unaware or reacted positively).

I was shocked to hear that more than 400 people showed up on Fountain Square in Cincinnati. Is that true?

Here's a picture of our vigil:

Learning from the Past

From the Illustrated Daily Scribble.

Bush Vacations for a YEAR

Did you know that the Chimp has spent more than an ENTIRE YEAR of his presidency at his fake ranch in Texas? Amazing. Here's a funny post on that topic from The Huffington Post site:

"Since he's been in office, Bush Jr. has had almost 400 days at his play ranch in Crawford. I make silly comedies for a living and I haven't had 400 days off total in my whole life. This guy is the president, and he is riding his bike like a seven year old who just figured out it makes a cool sound when you put baseball cards in your wheel spokes.

And George Jr. isn't just vacationing. He's vacationing mad. You know, like when people drive mad? "Well then fine! Let's just go to the store!" And then the person goes 110 in a 25 zone while insisting everything’s all right. Well George W is vacationing mad. "You think my war is a mess? Well I'm going to Crawford to ride bikes and I don't care what you say!" "You think I made a terrible appointment in sending Bolton to the U.N.? I don’t care... I'm going to Texas and I'm not even wearing a tie! So screw you all!"

and this:

"But George's vacation isn't all idyllic little league games and bicycle rides against sun-rimmed Texan horizon lines. All vacations have their spoilers. Occasionally there are mosquitoes or rain showers or the mother of a dead Army soldier living on your lawn. What a drag that must be. Imagine you're the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. You start a war based on manipulated intelligence -- or, as some people call them, lies. Now thousands are dying because of your hubris and deceit. Rather than face up to the problem you go for an extended vacation to Texas to ride your bicycle. But then the mother of one of the boys you basically sent to their death comes and lives on your lawn! Talk about your Shakespearian hijinks! Only instead of "out damn spot" it's "away damn brush!" or "ride damn bicycle!"

Why I Booed Barbara Bush

At a recent Red Sox game, the first pitch was thrown by former First Lady and Chimp-mother Barbara Bush. I booed her loudly from the cheap seats at Fenway, and many people cheered her and her goofball husband, aka 41. Someone I mentioned this to said "What did she ever do to you?" Here's what. This quote from the Today show (prior to the opening of the Iraqi war):

"Why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

Perhaps this is a question Cindy Sheehan could answer for her.

Anarchy in a Bookstore

For years, I've performed my own small anarchy when I visit bookstores, particularly the large chains (Barnes & Noble and Borders). When I see a particularly disagreeable book on display, I cover it with a more agreeable book. For instance, a few years ago there was a nauseating book extolling the loving relationship of Ronnie and Nancy Reagan. That usually got covered with something by an author like Hunter S. Thompson (or someone of his ilk).

In recent years, books about the Bush Family have been particular targets. For every happy little Barbara Bush book I find one in praise of Hillary Clinton, which I place on top of it. For the past few years, the Clinton biographies have been excellent ammunition for my own little propaganda war.

This morning in the Boston Globe, I found the perfect add-on to my anarchy in the form of "reshelving." In this particular performance art, bookstore customers re-invent the categories in which books are found.

Here's the story (which I include below in its entirety) and I encourage all like-minded individuals to become a Minister of Reshelving. I plan to do it at my next visit.

The Ministry of Reshelving
By Joshua Glenn | August 21, 2005

"EARLIER THIS SUMMER, Jane McGonigal and three dinner companions were chatting about doublespeak, censorship, and surveillance when someone idly commented that George Orwell's dystopian novel ''1984" should be reclassified as Non-Fiction, or even filed under Current Events. ''Five seconds later, I said, 'Wait--we could actually do that,"' recounts McGonigal. So last Monday she took the lead in launching the Ministry of Reshelving project, an ambitious, opt-in performance piece whose goal it is to secretly reshelve 1,984 copies of Orwell's book in bookstores in all 50 states.

Though such an undertaking sounds daunting, it's child's play for McGonigal, a doctoral candidate in performance studies at UC-Berkeley who earns a living working as a designer and ''puppetmaster" for 42 Entertainment, an Emeryville, Calif.-based outfit that creates elaborate ''alternate reality games"--played by thousands via chatroom, cell phone, e-mail, even billboards and want ads--in order to drum up excitement for various new products. But McGonigal's true passion, she said via e-mail from San Francisco, is ''making games that give people a platform for changing social norms and public policy." As of this writing, she reports, some 55 ''ministers"--from California, New York, Idaho, Kentucky, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and a half dozen other states--have relocated over 100 copies of ''1984." Evidence of these hijinks is being posted around the clock to the photo-sharing website Flickr (flickr.com/groups/reshelving).

Is Boston behind the curve? By no means! On Thursday morning, McGonigal said, a Bostonian ''minister" informed her that a copy of ''1984" had just been moved from the Fiction section of the Borders in Downtown Crossing to the Political Science section, where it was reshelved next to a book titled ''Inside the Mind of Bush."

This was too good not to pass along. I hope someone reading this will join the fun!

Ashes to Ashes

Here's how Hunter S. Thompson is going into the afterlife this weekend. I ab-so-lute-ly LOVE this idea. Do you think Johnny Depp will pay for my funeral?

A Marvelous Piece of Writing from Today's NY Times

Left Behind (an excerpt):

"LIKE President Bush, I enjoy clearing brush in August. We both like quittance of the suit and tie, freedom from duty and detail and to breathe deeply the insouciant air of summer.

He makes for his ranch in Crawford, Tex., a town with no bars and five churches. I come to my holdings near Carrigaholt, here in County Clare, where there are six bars and one church and the house my great-grandfather left more than a century ago for a better life in America.

Of course, we have our differences - the president and I. He flies on Air Force One with an entourage. I fly steerage with hopes for an aisle seat. His ranch runs to 1,600 acres. My cottage sits on something less than two. He fishes for bass stocked in his private lake. I fish for mackerel in the North Atlantic. He keeps cattle and horses. I have a pair of piebald asses - Charles and Camilla I call them, after the sweethearts on the neighboring island.

I suppose we're just trying to reconnect with our roots and home places - Mr. Bush and I. He identifies as a Texan in the John Wayne sense as I do with the Irish in the Barry Fitzgerald sense. And we're both in our 50's, white, male, Christian and American with all the perks. We both went into our fathers' businesses: he does leadership of the free world; I do mostly local funerals. Neither of us went to Vietnam, and we both quit drink for all of the usual reasons. I imagine we both pray for our children to outlive us and that we have the usual performance anxieties.

The president works out a couple of hours a day. I go for long walks by the sea. We occupy that fraction of a fraction of the planet's inhabitants for whom keeping body and soul together - shelter, safety, food and drink - is not the immediate, everyday concern. We count ourselves among the blessed and elect who struggle with the troubles of surfeit rather than shortfall. "

Read the whole story - it's worth it! Most interesting, the article's author is Thomas Lynch, a funeral director/poet from Michigan. He's also written two other books: "The Undertaking" and "Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans." Both books look quite intriguing to me. Hmmmmmmm...perhaps I'll spend my birthday money this way?

One Mother to Another

If you've read this blog for a while, you know that I have a fairly strong affinity for John and Elizabeth Edwards (you remember...the former VP candidate? Ha ha). I'm on their mailing list and yesterday I got an email from Elizabeth, which I thought was touching.

Here's an excerpt:

"Casey Sheehan was born May 29, 1979, the first born child of Cindy and Pat Sheehan. It was a long labor. Fifty-one days after Casey was born, our first child, Wade was born, also after a long labor. They started school the same year, played the same games, watched the same television shows, loved the same country. On April 4, 1996, three weeks after going to Washington as a winner in a national contest about what America meant to him, Wade died in an automobile accident. On April 4, 2004, eight years later to the day, Casey, who loved his country enough to wear its uniform, died in Iraq. Cindy and Pat's hearts broke, as had ours.
We teach our children right from wrong. We teach them compassion and honor. We teach them the dignity of each life. And then, sometimes, the lessons we taught are turned on their heads. Cindy Sheehan is asking a very simple thing of her government, and she and her family, and most particularly Casey, have paid a very dear price for the right to ask this.

Cindy wants Casey's death to have meant as much as his life - lived fully - might have meant. I know this, as does every mother who has ever stood where we stand. And the President says he knows enough, doesn't need to hear from Casey's mother, doesn't need to assure her that Casey's is not one small death in a long and seemingly never-ending drip of deaths, that there is a plan here that will bring our sons and daughters home. He doesn't need to hear from her, he says. He claims he understands how some people feel about the deaths in Iraq."

I can't imagine what it's like to lose a child. Although I continue to support Cindy Sheehan's vigil (in fact, I'm attending a local event tonight in support), you get kind of blase after seeing it on the news and on every progressive blog. But reading Elizabeth's words reminded me again of the genuine loss of Casey Sheehan and his breathren (and sister-en?) in Iraq. What a waste. No wonder people are pissed off.

I know I am.

The King...and Us

For reasons that even I don't recall, one of my nieces and I developed a "thing" for Elvis Presley when she was a kid. I truly have no idea exactly what started our mutual fetish, but for anyone who knows our family's wacky sense of humor, I think it might be kinda clear. So, to demonstrate our devotion to the King, Molly and I would give each other the tackiest, most off-beat Elvis memorabilia we could find - for birthdays or Christmas, or as souveniers from vacations we took over the years.

We even had our own Elvis sighting when she was about 9 or 10 years old at, of all places, a chili parlor (only Cincinnatians will know what that is). We spied, through the kitchen door, a dishwasher with very black sideburns, but never could get a good look at his face...which prompted my crazy girl to leave a note for him on our table, written in shredded cheese: "Are You Elvis?" We'll never know for certain, but for a bit of time (and over the years), we enjoyed the idea of meeting our hero.

But, should you be one of the "dis-believers" who think The King actually left us in 1977, I remind you that it has been 28 years since Elvis keeled over while supposedly taking a dump. So, let's take that as a reminder to be careful out there, folks!

Wish I'd Said That

Love this post about our Bipolar President. Har!

A Guest Posting

Someone near and dear to me recently shared his outrage about recruiting. Thought I would share it with you all, too.

"I think this latest news story is just disgusting. What's even more disgusting is the Pentagon's public statement, and our willingness to accept it! Are they [the Pentagon, the press and the public] SO oblivious as to provide and accept this explanation?!

An excerpt: 'The Pentagon has blamed recent recruiting shortfalls in part on an economy that's providing other opportunities to high school and college graduates.'

In other words...we no longer can get enough POOR PEOPLE to fight our wars? What, THE MINIMUM WAGE ISN'T LOW ENOUGH TO MAINTAIN OUR 'NATIONAL SECURITY' or any other excuse for troop deployment?

The Pentagon has to admit now that poor people and disadvantaged might actually be smart enough to know 'shit from Shinola'-- that given the chance between risking death for uncertain causes or finding jobs with a even a slightly better longevity quotient attached to their meager paycheck is a better choice.

What is our country coming to when it admits the ALL VOLUNTEER ARMY is based on the lousy economic opportunities afforded our most disadvantaged citizens?! And what does it say about our population and our press when we accept such statements from the department that puts these troops, our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, in mortal danger?

Like other such Pentagon/White House dogma such as 'We're fighting them in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here' it shows the blatant disregard our 'leaders' have for the value of any lives other than the privileged and entitled.

Perhaps someday we'll just offer land mines with our Happy Meals or let our garbage collectors round up the terrorists in a brilliant lower-class economies of scale labor coup, but till then just buy another magnet for your car and 'Support the Troops.'

Wanna really support the troops? RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE or else reinstate the draft to provide some equity in our public share of the 'defense' burden!!"

Phew, couldn't have said it better myself!