ONE MORE MORNING IN A CYBER CAFE ON THE ROAD BEFORE I GO TO BE OFF THE ROAD

I decided to look up the one other place called a "cyber cafe" in Missoula. Guess what? It's like that "cafe" on Nantucket island. No cafe, but internet access. And, except for free, it's the best deal I've come across yet. Only three bucks an hour, but it took me the better part of twenty minutes to find it. It's on Kensington, and Kensington is one of those streets that starts and stops several times to leap over railroad bridges and stone walls. It's called Mountain West Internet and Cyber Cafe on 800 Kensington, Ste 106. Even then, you go down a narrow corridor and make a couple of turns till you actually come to the door. Hidden like that 2 Union Street upstairs place on Nantucket.


WHAT. NOW I DON'T WANT TO STOP!?

Maybe Jack Kerouac is still alive in me after all. I thought I was ready to come home, and, yet, today, with this cool air, mountain viewing morning, sunshine peeking through the clouds morning, I'm resisting returning home. Last night I was so tired, all I wanted to do was be home. I even called my wife out of schedule to let her know how much I missed her. Now I'm getting used to the adventure just as it's ending. I recall how getting into the adventure was hard at first too.


HALLIBURTON AND CHENEY: PALS TO THE END

Senator Waxman is following the deals that were struck so that Cheney's old buddies could get the bid-free Iraqi business. Follow that as closely as you can, for it's that kind of dishonesty that will topple the President by appointment Bush regime in Washington.

Pius mouths often cover the worst sort of dishonesty. Just like wealth is at the root of the South's Bible Belt platitudes and god-beliefs, so wealth is at the root of that Southerner's, Bush's, dealings in the world. Texas (and many Southern states) are at least a century behind the rest of us in civilization. It's got to do with slavery.

Slavery put the South behind and made them cling to that Bible which justified their slavery. That clinging to chivalry and the high falutin' attitude they carry around in their psyches is what has put them behind. They don't dare face the falsity of their whole belief system, the self-righteousness and pomposity they live with. The most scary part of it is that for their defensive lie to be effective they gotta believe it themselves.

Most of us in the 60s and 70s saw the falseness of our moral and "holier than thou" pretenses. We saw that we were phoney. We saw that what others call evil is only the dark side in each of us imbedded in our evolutionary natures. We found we couldn't maintain an attitude of separateness from the bad that people do. We knew that we were the problem, not some other guy who "hasn't found Jesus" or some "evil culture" outside of our own. That's Bush's chief difficulty, seeing that he is no better than those he calls evil. When he sees that, he'll quit being a danger to the world. The whole American South is still waiting to do that. Until they do, they are a danger to democracy.

Of course Saddam was a bad dude, but in his own mind, he was only defending his regime from evil men who wanted to topple him and his cronies from power. That all Bush is doing too. He's defending himself and his capitalist cronies from losing power in the world. He's protecting his turf. And to do that, he's justified the killing and maiming of thousands of innocent Iraqis.


WHOREALDO IN AFGHANISTAN

Saw Whorealdo covering one soldier doing good work in Afghanistan this morning, and I could identify with what the soldier was doing. Only thing, one fine soldier in one place does not a successful policy make. And on top of that, I thought, "What am I to make of this? We're spending all this wealth and life in foreign countries while in my very city of Spokane, where 22 percent of the people live below the poverty line, Bush is cutting housing subsidies by cutting HUD funding. Not only that," I thought, "we're still dumping women and children off welfare here."

What are we to make of this, eh?