VIDAL CALLS IT "MILITARIZED KEYNESIANISM"

Reading in Gore Vidal's novel, THE GOLDEN AGE, pp. 365-368, I find Vidal does a wonderful exposition that unravels how socialism became state capitalism from the time of Truman to the time of Bush, through the finagling of the military/industrial complex with a judicious dose of fear mongering. Even the good guys are complicit. I've included a long passage from the novel, but I hope you'll find it interesting. Two of his characters, Peter Sanford and Billy Thorne are summing up their views of history. We're meant to dislike the Thorne character and sympathize with Peter in the book. Billy Thorne is squirming his way through the McCarthy era by metamorphosing from being a communist to being a capitalist, meanwhile betraying all his old comrades as he does. Peter remains true to his beliefs which had allowed him to vote for the Communist Norman Thomas in a past election:

[Open quote.]
“Of course, it [arms race with Russia] will cost us a lot, but it will bankrupt the Russians. So maybe the average American couple may be reduced to only one and a half Chryslers per year, but that’s only for a decade or two. A mere generation at the outside. Meanwhile, our defense industries will grow richer and richer as they pay more and more people more and more money to build weapons of every sort while, thanks to the withholding tax, Roosevelt’s one stroke of genius when it came to financing all-out war for all-out peace, the newly rich working class will gratefully finance through their humble little taxes the federal machine that hires them to build these weapons that we need to defend freedom and democracy, forever. What Truman’s people learned from Roosevelt’s act of necessity in wartime is how to use, in peacetime, the same methods to finance an ever-expanding federal apparatus to save us from a savage adversary, longing to destroy us. Oh, they have the nation by the balls, which is why they are grateful for Senator Joe McCarthy’s demented ravings.” Out of breath, Billy lit a cigar.

“I had not believed,” said Peter, gulping the last bit of cheesecake, “that you were so sincere an employee of the Wall Street Journal. You have actually come full circle from communism to capitalism.”

“The scales have fallen from your eyes at last.” Billy blew smoke across the table. “Taken to their logical conclusion, the two are nearly identical. Where the ideal communist’s socialist state would use the national wealth for the good of the citizens, strictly regulated, of course, by a centralized money power, we are now, in the interest of defending ourselves against an enemy both Satanic and godless—very important point, ‘godless,’ in selling high taxes to simple Americans of deep religious faith—we are creating a totally militarized socialist state by ignoring such frills as the welfare of the people themselves. After all, the true American likes to stand on his own two ruggedly independent feet, which our nuclear state will encourage him to do. He is also free to go to the church of his choice, unlike the communist Russian slaves. I must say the accidental brilliance of our leadership still astonishes me. Haberdasher Truman and Lawyer Acheson and Soldier Marshall are creating a militarized economy and state that leaves those two bumblers Stalin and Mao far behind in the dust, staring skyward at our B-29s soon to start darkening their red skies. Peter, you have made me poetic.”

Save it for the Journal.”

“They would never use a word of it. We’re not supposed to give the game away, ever. But, to be fair to my editors, they believe what they write even though it’s always wrong, as the masters of our new nation intend it should be.”

“Militarized Keynesianism,” Peter said, as the change for five dollars was brought him.

“Not a bad phrase.” Billy was in a good mood.

“So you don’t think that in this new world order there is room for World War Three?”

“Who knows? We do keep pushing the Russians. And it’s possible that one day they’ll really push back. But I doubt it. They had their chance over Berlin only to discover that our airlift worked. Next month they’ll accept our terms. No more airlift and we win again, for now Then Congress will start implementing National Security Council order number twenty-something-or-other and you’ll see every last Republican—penny-pinchers to a man—voting in the name of national defense for the biggest amount of government spending the world has ever seen. We are now inventing mega-socialism in order to protect the free world.”

“It sounds more like reinventing fascism.”

“Mussolini wasn’t from Missouri.” Billy put out his cigar. “Not only is industry going to be supported by the federal government but the universities, too.”

“How?”

“Huge federal grants to higher learning to find new scientific ways of defending freedom. Also, new ways to silence the so-called humanities. We’re even planning to set up independent journals and newspapers all around the world to counteract reactionary, un—American papers like yours. Our periodicals will be known as ‘liberal,’ of course, in the Americans for Demonic Action sense. At last true benign socialism.”

“What was wrong with socialism before?”

“It was Russian and they were far too poor and dim-witted to do anything with so noble a concept. They also wanted to look after the education and so on of their people. That’s not for us. Ever. What’s good for General Motors….”

“Is good for General Electric. Yes. I understand you, Billy.” And Peter thought that now, finally, he did.

At the door to the Brass Rail, they parted. Billy’s last words were, “I’m fairly sure Clay’s going to run against my ex-father-in-law next year. I hope Diana doesn’t take it too hard. Ruthlessness is part of Clay’s charm. He’s going to be president, you know If not by 1960, ‘64.... Read his book.”

“I have. Fire over Luzon..

“No. No. That’s Harold Griffiths’ great gushing tribute. Read Clay’s Vision for America:’

“I haven’t seen it.”

“That’s because I haven’t finished writing it.”

Billy stumped down Seventh Avenue towards Times Square. Peter went back into the Brass Rail and rang Latouche and canceled their meeting. Apparently, the movie star John Garfield was being fired from a film because he had known communists in his youth. Peter said that he would do what he could, which was very little. As he hung up he wondered if the bill for a militarized state, based on keeping the citizens in a constant state of panic, might prove, in the end, more devastating than World War Three, which so many, so excitedly, predicted was at hand.
_____________________________________________________________________

“At this moment, probably the strongest ideology in the world is nationalism. This atmosphere is not favorable to bringing about a world without war.” —Norman Thomas [American communist of last century.]

“It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.” —Authur C. Clarke [science fiction writer of last century.]

“Unh? What’s that Clarke fellow mean? And who’s them Vidal and Thomas guys? Sound like comoonists to me!” —George Bush [American presidential bumbler of current century.]

LIKE BUSH SAYS: THE GRAPES OF WRATH IS A COMMUNIST MOVIE.

Never mind that the book “The Grapes of Wrath” was based on was written by one of America’s few Nobel Prize winners. Hitler and Stalin didn’t appreciate their nation’s greatest writers either. Fascists like Hitler and Stalin just have never appreciated the Hollywood or literate crowd of their day. Doesn’t that hatred in current America sound familiar?

America is really into another age of repression, but what is most worrisome about this repressive period is that the media is voluntarily censoring itself. Power, prestige and money are corrupting way too many of these sissies in the media. Those who don’t kiss the royal Bushass have lost all courage to present the truth to the liars in office. They’re mindless wimps who don’t know what makes America great, and that’s certainly not anything that Bush has done for us. Under Bush, we’ve lost a lot of stature. To the world at large, we’re kind of like Germany as viewed by conquered Poles during World War Two. Eric Alterman calls a bushbaby a bushbaby in his column below:

[Open quote.]
column | Posted February 10, 2005

THE LIBERAL MEDIA by Eric Alterman

Better Red Than Dead?

The United States government is currently run by a group of people for whom verifiable truth holds no particular privilege over ideologically inspired nonsense. For members of the mainstream media, trying to maintain a sense of self-importance and solemnity and to keep the wing nuts from crowing for more scalps, this requires a series of stratagems to keep up the scripted charade, no matter how foolish it makes them look or feel while doing so.

The easiest of these stratagems is simply to stack the coverage with political partisans and give them free rein to spout GOP propaganda. That's what the cable news networks do, as Media Matters for America demonstrated. Consistent with cable inauguration coverage, for example, MSNBC offered viewers of its State of the Union commentary eleven right-wing pundits and just two Democrats or liberals in response.

A second technique is more often deployed on network television, where such naked partisanship is frowned upon, but executives are, if anything, even more worried about appearing unsympathetic to the red-state, red-meat offerings of George W. Bush. This is to ignore the substance and focus on the spectacle, the "feelings" and the atmosphere. CBS's Bob Schieffer, on his best post-Dan Rather behavior, for instance, marveled, "One of the best-delivered speeches that I have heard President Bush make. He was confident, he was direct, he drove his points home."

On ABC, Cokie Roberts found herself enthralled with a faux-dramatic--and most likely fully staged--embrace between an Iraqi woman seated next to Laura Bush and the mother of a soldier who died for Bush's folly in Falluja, gushing, "To have that completely spontaneous hug was something that leaves you with goose bumps." Tim Russert--who, like so many Democratic pols who transition to media megabucks, is committed to proving his bona fides by kowtowing to Republicans at every opportunity--professed, "You can feel...in this town" that Democratic "nerves are frayed." Russert was reacting to a rare display of Democratic spirit during the speech--booing when Bush sought to mislead the country into dismantling the most successful government program ever attempted in America: Social Security. To Russert and much of the permanent Washington establishment, the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat--or at least one who's willing to act that way.

The standard for this kind of contentless coverage is set, per usual, by the reporting of the New York Times. If the lead reporter of the newspaper of record can ditch the substance part, well then, so can everybody else. Reporter Todd Purdum marveled at Bush's "penchant for thinking big, or speaking grandly." He then referred to Bush's "first State of the Union address three years ago...he stunned the world with his denunciation of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an 'axis of evil,' and his warning that he would 'not wait on events while dangers gather.'" Purdum failed to note what was obvious to any "reality based" observer: that the "axis" idea was logically incoherent, and the arguments vis-à-vis Iraq were based on evidence later deemed imaginary. Instead, Purdum explained that Bush "has long since proved both the extent, and the limits, of his ability to match his actions to his words," which is an awfully nice way of saying that the man is full of it.

Times editors might have taken a lesson from the Boston Globe, a paper with whom they share a common owner, which provided a presidential "fact check" demonstrating Bush's willingness to mislead the nation in the service of his ideological obsessions. In the Knight Ridder newspapers--a chain whose coverage of the leadup to war, by the way, puts to shame that of almost every other paper, particularly that of the Times's credulous correspondent Judith Miller--Kevin G. Hall had the honor and honesty to report that the President was seeking to destroy Social Security on the basis of calculations that were transparently phony. He wrote, "President Bush's warning that Social Security faces a looming financial crisis is based on the assumption that the U.S. economy will grow by only 1.8 percent each year, on average, for most of the next 75 years. Since 1950, the U.S. economy has grown, on average, by 3.5 percent per year." However, he noted, "If the economy continued to grow over the next 50 years at a rate anywhere near the past pace, Social Security wouldn't face a financial crisis, though it would require small adjustments to balance its income and costs." (Perhaps this is the kind of reporting of which the oh-so-smart folks at ABC's The Note complain, "Can we stop reading those repetitive, boring, and incomplete journalistic Q&A's on how private accounts would work, blah blah blah, how the system is currently funded, blah blah blah, what the President is proposing, blah blah blah?")

Of course, journalism is by definition a process of selection and omission, so it can be a little unfair to single out what reporters failed to report about Bush's speech. But the unhappy fact is that almost everything this Administration tries to sell to Americans is snake oil, and the mere act of reporting it without comment implicates the media in the fundamental dishonesty that is this President's modus operandi. When he says "freedom," he means the freedom of the United States and its allies to jail and torture anyone they choose. When he says "liberty," he means the liberty of other governments to profess to share the alleged aims of US foreign policy and then--like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Egypt--jail and silence all critics without inconvenient criticism from the United States. (If you play the game right, you can even provide weapons to anti-American terrorists and fund anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda on behalf of the terrorists, all the while remaining a close friend of Bush & Co.)

This is apparently what NBC's Andrea Mitchell had in mind when she spoke of the Administration's "democracy agenda that Condi Rice is going to be bringing to Europe and the Middle East." Or perhaps she meant an American invasion of Iran; or the destruction of Social Security. It's hard to know in a post-truth society what anything means anymore, except more nonsense and lies, dutifully reported.
[Close quote.]
________________________________________________________________________

“I have seen the truth and it doesn’t make sense.” —Unknown author. [Depending on which way one squints and his tolerance for irony, the author of that statement could or could not be George Bush, senior or junior. It could even be Dan Quail!]

THE DRUNK OUT OF NOWHERE or
IF THERE WERE A GOD, HE’D WORK IN STRANGE WAYS.

You are standing on the small concrete porch in front of Sutton Hall on the campus of Eastern Washington University in the state of Washington. The sun’s low in the western sky, a wonderful end to a gently warm day when out of nowhere he walks up the front walk, freshly shaved, newly washed short sleeve shirt and khaki pants. The low sun shining in his face hi-lights his thin features. There’s an aura of scrubbed newness about him that is quite strange. Something’s not quite right. He approaches close and in a timid voice says, “Is there some club here I heard about? An AA club?”

Immediately you know what he’s all about. You’re one too, but you’re sober, have been for a few years, and you think it’s wildly coincidental that out of all the people in this small Washington town and on this campus he’s walked right up to you to ask. AA members have a tendency to conflate coincidence with the will of a power greater than themselves, and you’re no different.

In a small town like Cheney, of course there’s no club, just a living room that a religious group lets drying out drunks use to meet once a week. The Konoinia House. He tells you he’s fresh out of detox, just released, and he’s thumbing his way to Seattle, all the way across the state. He tells you a lame story about someone over there who’ll put him up, if he can just get over there. His plan sounds desperate and unsound. Nothing about the story makes sense. Nothing’s clear or firm or quite put together right. You expect him to hit you up for a couple of bucks. You’ve heard stories of wet drunks who go from club to club only to finance their drinking binges.

He hasn’t eaten all day he tells you, and so you make some calls to scrape a little money together from friends of Bill (all poor because they’re going to college), and then you take him down to a local restaurant to buy him dinner. He only want’s soup and coffee. He tells you he can’t keep anything else down. Up close beside him... now you see how bad off he is. The soup spoon shakes so badly that most of the chicken noodle spills before he gets it to his mouth. Coffee splatters into the saucer when he tries to lift the cup to his lips.

This guy is barely detoxed. He’s just been sobered up and put back on the street. He’s sober less than a couple of days, you guess. He won’t be specific about anything. You can only guess.

You take everything in and you mention “fear”. He says, “Yeah.” You ask him what he’s afraid of. He says, and his voice breaks with trembling, “Everything.” Coffee shakes out of his cup all over the counter. You recognize the feeling.

You’re not sure how you can help this man. There’re no facilities for drunks in Cheney, you're pretty broke, and he seems to be so far gone that he needs care, so you offer to get him a room overnight at Sutton Hall if you can get permission. You plan to look for advice from other recovering drunks the next day.

Fortunately, veterans rent Sutton Hall from the school (it’s shortly after Vietnam) and manage their own affairs. Some of this is because the school really is glad to keep the vets separate from the youngsters, specially the hot bodied young women. Marijuana and alcohol float freely around Sutton so there’s tolerance for this one more forlorn drunk for just one night. There are lots of empty rooms... you can get him a room for a few bucks, no trouble.

You drop some singles through the office door slot and lead him upstairs three flights to a small, dirty room in the old building. Your footsteps echo in the wood stairwell and squeak on the linoleum. You get him a set of sheets from your room and make a bed for him. You notice how uneasy he is. In fact you guess he doesn’t want to stay, but he sits down on a leatherette chair and glumly watches you make his bed which is actually a spring supported bunk bed like you might find on a military base. He’s getting ever more silent. A bad sign, you think. He’s lost. About like a five or six year old away from home for the first time.

“Come on.” You lead him from the room and walk him down and around the corner to show him your room, very close to his. You say, “I’ll be right here all night. If you want anything come see me. I don’t care what time it is.” You’re trying to put his mind at ease, stop the terror you know he feels. “I’ll leave my door ajar.”

Then you lead him back to the room you’ve given him. His silence increases. You imagine he’s not even hearing you anymore. He’s somewhere lost inside himself and standing in the middle of the small room, staring defensively at the bunk as you leave the room.

In your room you try to watch TV on the small black and white set you bought at Goodwill, but you’re uneasy about leaving the man alone. After less than twenty minutes, you walk back to his room on the squeaky linoleum floor. His door’s open. He’s gone. In the middle of his clean white sheet is a tiny puddle that looks like coffee grounds. Is it vomit? Has he crapped his pants, bleeding from his asshole? Blood coming out of an asshole looks like coffee grounds, you think you’ve heard.

You go in search of your man. Outside first, and up and down the street in the dark outside the building, but you know you aren’t going to drive all the streets of Cheney, looking for him. If he’s gone he’s gone. He could be anywhere. He might even be crashed in the bushes around the admin. building across the street.

Back in the vet’s dorm, in the TV room on the first floor, you ask a few vets if they’ve seen him. “Nope!” Okay, you’ve done your duty, you tell yourself as you trudge the stairs back up to your room.

At the top of the stairs on the third floor, you hear a door slam, and out of a corner room comes your man on crazily lurching legs. He’s shoeless and supports himself against the wall. The linoleum’s slippery under his stockinged feet. He’s drunk as a skunk, and he’s only been out of your sight for thirty or forty minutes. You’ve heard of this phenomenon. A “low bottom” drunk loses all capacity to resist the effects of alcohol. It’s one more of the long term effects of alcoholism, like a wet brain. One drink can get an alcoholic madly drunk.

“Hey, what happened to you?” you ask.

“I’m fuckin’ drunk,” he slurs.

“I can see that.” You make a broad joke which passes over his head. He’s definitely one of us, you tell yourself.

Okay, that’s that. Like a good alcoholic your man has reconnoitered and achieved his mission to find a drink in strange territory. You lead him back to the room you got for him. You suggest he go to bed and sleep it off as you take a seat on a chair near the door.

Suddenly, he’s on his knees before you and, with hands in folded prayer position, pleading with you. “Please. Please. I don’ wanna stay here. Please. Please.” He’s terrified of being inside this room, terrified! You don’t know why.

He continues begging, and you give in real quick. His insanity is scaring even you. He’s loud. You can hear his voice echoing along the corridors of the third floor. This is worse and more irrational than you’ve encountered in your brief sobriety on any twelve step call to a drunk in distress.

He can’t put on his own shoes so you sit him on the bed while you put on and tie his shoes for him, then you take him down the stairs, supporting his stumbling steps all the way down. He can’t walk, really, on his own.

You get him into your Pinto around the corner from the front door of Sutton Hall, and ask him where he wants to go, what he wants to do. He says take him to the Interstate. He’s got to thumb. He’s got to get to Seattle. Got to.

Interstate 90 is about five miles from Cheney at Four Lakes, Washington, so you drive him there and pull off to the side of the road. It’s dark, the westbound entrance to the interchange is a few yards ahead. At a distance, somewhat below your line of sight, an occasional headlight flashes by on the interstate.

“You can’t thumb tonight. You won’t get a ride.”

He tells you he’ll sleep by the highway tonight and start in the morning.

“In the weeds? By the road?”

He mumbles something. Finally, you let go. You release the drunk and let him go. You turn him over to whatever fate has in store for him. You pull out your last bill, a fiver, and hand it to him. “Here. This’s all I got.”

He mumbles again. You imagine it’s a thank you. He opens the Pinto door and staggers out. He’s already standing better. You wonder why so quick. Was everything an act? Does he know he’s acting or is it all real terror and fundamental demoralization?

Anyhow... your man, your mark for good deeds, staggers away into the weed fields beside the highway. In the dark his form disappears fast, like a ghost, leaving you there with your thoughts. You can’t quite believe he’d rather sleep under the stars in the weeds beside the road than in a secure room, but you don’t know what has happened to him in small rooms in his life, in his youth, in his childhood. You don’t know anything at all, you decide, about his life. You U-turn your blue Pinto and head back to Cheney. You watch a little black and white TV then, on your knees, thank your lucky stars you’ve come this far before flying toward a sober sleep. As consciousness slips away, you hear yourself think you hope your own luck continues. They tell you that what you’ve just done helps towards staying lucky when it comes to alcohol.

BUSH’S PINOCHIO NOSE ON COLLISION COURSE WITH SPACE ALIENS

Bush is so full of lies about budget matters and war matters that I don’t know why he’s not impeached. CBS got rid of its rush to judgment employees, yet Bush and his whole lying crew remain at the helm of our titanic ship of state. Will his devoted followers ever get wise? In a recent Inland Northwest, INLANDER, a once upon a time conservative writer exposes more of the holes in George’s Iraqi underwear:

[Open quote.]
Mission Accomplished 2?
by Arianna Huffington

Quick, before the conventional wisdom hardens, it needs to be said: The Iraqi elections were not the second coming of the Constitutional Convention. The media have made it sound like last Sunday was a combination of 1776, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Prague Spring, the Ukraine's Orange Revolution, Filipino "People Power," Tiananmen Square and Super Bowl Sunday — all rolled into one.

It's impossible not to be moved by the stories coming out of Iraq: voters braving bombings and mortar blasts to cast ballots; multiethnic crowds singing and dancing outside polling places; election workers, undeterred by power outages, counting ballots by the glow of oil lamps; teary-eyed women in traditional Islamic garb proudly holding up their purple ink-stained fingers — literally giving the finger to butcher knife-wielding murderers.

It was a great moment. A Kodak moment. And unlike the other Kodak moments from this war — think Saddam's tumbling statue and Jessica Lynch's "rescue" — this one was not created by the image masters at Karl Rove Productions.

But this Kodak moment, however moving, should not erase all that came before, leaving us unprepared for all that may come after it.

I'm sorry to kill the White House's buzz — and the press corps' contact high — but the triumphalist fog rolling across the land has all the makings of another "Mission Accomplished" moment.

Forgive me for trotting out Santayana's shopworn dictum that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it but, for God's sake, people, can't we even remember last week?

So amid all the talk of turning points, historic days and defining moments, let us steadfastly refuse to drink from the River Lethe that brought forgetfulness and oblivion to my ancient ancestors.

Let's not forget that for all the president's soaring rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy, free elections were the administration's fallback position, more Plan D than guiding principle. We were initially going to install Ahmed Chalabi as our man in Baghdad, remember? Then that shifted to the abruptly foreshortened reign of "Bremer of Arabia." The White House only consented to holding open elections after Grand Ayatollah Sistani sent his followers into the streets to demand them — and even then Bush refused to allow the elections until after our presidential campaign was done.

And the election doesn't change that.

Let's not forget that despite the hoopla, this was a legitimate democratic election in name only. Actually, not even in name, since most of the candidates on the ballot had less name recognition than your average candidate for dogcatcher. That's because they were too afraid to hold rallies or give speeches. In fact, many were so anxious about being killed that they fought to keep their names from being made public.

And the election doesn't change that.

Let's not forget that many Iraqi voters turned out to send a defiant message not just to the insurgents but to President Bush as well. Many of those purple fingers were raised in our direction. According to a poll taken by our own government, a jaw-dropping 92 percent of Iraqis view the U.S.-led forces in Iraq as "occupiers" while only 2 percent see them as "liberators."

And the election doesn't change that.

Let's not forget that the war in Iraq has made America less safe than it was before the invasion. According to an exhaustive report released last month by the CIA's National Intelligence Council, Iraq has become a breeding ground for the next generation of "professionalized" Islamic terrorists. Foreign terrorists are now honing their deadly skills against U.S. troops — skills they will eventually take with them to other countries, including ours. Iraq has also drained tens of billions of dollars in resources that might otherwise have gone to really fighting terror.

And the election doesn't change that.

Let's not forget the lack of progress we've made in the reconstruction of Iraq. The people there still lack such basics as gas and kerosene. Indeed, Iraqis often wait in miles-long lines just to buy gas. The country is producing less electricity than before the war — roughly half of current demand. There are food shortages; the cost of staple items like rice and bread is soaring. According to UNICEF, nearly 1 in 10 Iraqi children is suffering the effects of chronic diarrhea caused by unsafe water — a situation responsible for 70 percent of children's deaths in Iraq.

And the election doesn't change that.

Let's not forget the blistering new report from the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, which finds that the U.S. occupation government that ruled Iraq before last June's transfer of sovereignty has been unable to account for nearly $9 billion, overseeing a reconstruction process "open to fraud, kickbacks and misappropriation of funds."

And the election doesn't change that.

Let's not forget that we still don't have an exit strategy for Iraq. The closest the president has come is saying that we'll be able to bring our troops home when, as he put it, "this rising democracy can eventually take responsibility for its own security" — "eventually" being the operative word. Although the administration claims more than 120,000 Iraqi security forces have been trained, other estimates put the number closer to 14,000, with less than 5,000 of them ready for battle. Last summer, the White House predicted Iraqi forces would be fully trained by spring 2005; their latest estimate is summer 2006.

And the election doesn't change that.

And let's never forget this administration's real goal in Iraq, as laid out by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their fellow neocon members of the Project for the New American Century back in 1998. Long before Bush landed on freedom and democracy as the 2005 buzzwords, they already had their eyes on the Iraqi prize: the second-largest oil reserves in the world, and a permanent home for U.S. bases in the Middle East.

This is still the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the election, as heartwarming as it was, doesn't change any of that.

Publication date in Inlander: 2/10/05
[Close quote.]
__________________________________________________

“Nice guys finish last, but we get to sleep in.” —Evan Davis

SOCIAL SECURITY! IN DEBT TO THE CHINESE?

THE NATION magazine is always full of informative bits of information that the neocons don’t want the average American to know about. And here’s one that you may find hard to believe:

“But here is the really funny thing about the personal/private accounts debate. Not only are they not personal accounts, they're not private accounts either. They are in fact US government loans. (Bear with me now, because this will only hurt for a moment.) You see, your payroll taxes will still be used to cover the benefits of current retirees, but under Bush's scheme the government will place a certain "diverted" amount into an account in your name. It sounds like a personal retirement account, but it's not. It's a loan. Because if your account does really well (above 3 percent), when you retire the government will deduct the money it lent you (plus 3 percent interest) from your monthly Social Security check leaving you with almost the same amount you would have received under the current system. If your account does really poorly (below 3 percent), you are out of luck. According to Congressional Budget Office, the expected average return will be 3.3 percent, so the net gain will be zero.

“… our largest single loan officer will likely be the Central Bank of China. And who runs China's Central Bank, China, and the Chinese people with an iron fist? Why, it's our old friends, the democracy-loving, freedom-marching Chinese Communist Party. So Bush's personal retirement accounts=private retirement accounts=US government loans=US government borrowing=Chinese government lending=Chinese Communist Party loans.”

Want to read more about these private accounts, specially to see that they’ll actually be in the hands of the Chinese government? Read this.


A DICTIONARY FOR INTERPRETING REPUBLICAN DOUBLESPEAK

THE NATION magazine is collecting together a dictionary of definitions for words as the Republican Party has been using them lately. Eventually, it’ll become an honest to goodness book, a dictionary. For those who can’t make any sense out of what those nuts in the White House are talking about, here’s a sample of the help that’ll be coming your way soon.

ACCOUNTABILITY, n. Buck? What buck? (Martin Richard, Belgrade, MT)

BIPARTISANSHIP, adj. When Democrats compromise. (Justin Rezzonico, Keene, NH)

CHECKS & BALANCES, pl. n. An antiquated concept of the Founding Fathers that impedes autocratic efficiency; see also REFORM. (Robert B. Fuld, Unionville, CT)

FOX NEWS, n. Faux news. (Justin Rezzonico, Keena, NH)

GOD, n. Senior presidential advisor. (Martin Richard, Belgrade, MT)

NONPARTISAN JUDICIAL NOMINEE, n. An active member of the Federalist Society. (Mark Hatch-Miller, Brooklyn, NY)

OWNERSHIP SOCIETY, n. 1) A society where you're on your own. (John Read, Owings Mills, MD); 2) A society where one-half of society owns the other half. (Anne Galvan Klousia, Corvallis, OR); 3) The euphemism used by robber barons and their political lackeys to promote or justify the extreme concentration of wealth into the hands of a powerful few. Synonyms: PLUTOCRACY, CORPORATE FEUDALISM. (Ken Stump, Seattle, WA)

SOCIAL SECURITY, n. Broker security. (Bruce Clendenin, Dallas, TX)

SPREADING PEACE, v. Preemptive war. (Bruce Hawkins, Silver Springs, MD)

STAY THE COURSE, v. To relentlessly pursue a disastrous policy regardless of how far conditions deteriorate. Antonym: "To cut and run." (Aja Starke, New York, NY)

TORTURER, n. 1) White House Counsel. 2) Attorney General. (Martin Richard, Belgrade, MT)
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“When I was young the dead sea was still alive.” —George Burns

EVIL IS AS EVIL SEES or WHAT’S A “PERSONALITY EXPERT” BUT ?

Can you believe this story? What good will name calling do in the scientific effort to understand people who seem to have no capacity to feel compassion for the suffering of others, which is what happens when presidents launch wars which kill untold numbers of innocent victims and homicidal criminals who torture their victims while killing them? Bush loves to use the word, “evil” to describe people in other lands who resist his illegal invasion of their country by his fiat. Is Bush more innocent because he doesn’t do the blowing up and rending of flesh in person whereas homicidal persons who also cut up and eat their victims do it on the spot? Dr. Stone needs to wake up and smell the beefsteak.

[Open quote.]
Dr. Michael H. Stone, a personality expert at Columbia University, favors use of the term "evil"…. He is now working on a book urging the profession not to shrink from thinking in terms of evil when appraising certain offenders, even if the E-word cannot be used as part of an official examination or diagnosis….

[But some scientists can arise above their need to moralize behavior in order to better understand it.]

"Evil is endemic, it's constant, it is a potential in all of us. Just about everyone has committed evil acts," said Dr. Robert I. Simon, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School and the author of "Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream."

Dr. Simon considers the notion of evil to be of no use to forensic psychiatry, in part because evil is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, shaped by political and cultural as well as religious values. The terrorists on Sept. 11 thought that they were serving God, he argues; those who kill people at abortion clinics also claim to be doing so. If the issue is history's most transcendent savages, on the other hand, most people agree that Hitler and Pol Pot would qualify.

"When you start talking about evil, psychiatrists don't know anything more about it than anyone else," Dr. Simon said. "Our opinions might carry more weight, under the patina or authority of the profession, but the point is, you can call someone evil and so can I. So what? What does it add?"
[Close quote.]


I’M A REAL DOG

Yesterday, I caught myself picking on Mertie’s dog Chichi for no good reason at all. I don’t mean I kicked or physically abused him. But truth is, Mertie and I had an argument the previous night, and she said something that made me feel read badly about myself. This seldom happens between us, but it did this one time….

Anyhow, the next day I found myself calling ChiChi some names in a shaming voice (as if he understood them) and just generally getting a kick out of the shamed dog look he so easily adopts. Later in the day, I recalled my action, then I recalled my own shame with Mertie’s words the previous night, then I saw that I got pleasure out of seeing shame in ChiChi’s demeanor. Then I saw what I an ass I can be, but more valuably, I caught myself being the animal I am and my need to lord it over other animals to make them bow to my power. Over and over, I’m reminded what evolution has given me to work with, and, again, I’m amazed that others can’t catch themselves in their animal lives as I can catch myself.

I think I’ve learned a valuable lesson here.


ODDLY ENDS

At the Salvation Army a couple of days back, I bought “Rio Grande”, the Ford/Wayne flick. Now I got two of the Ford/Wayne cavalry trilogy . “Fort Apache” and it. Next I need to get “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”. I hate what John Wayne stood for and what he did to fellow actors in the black listing days, but when I was a child, I loved his simplistic movies.

I hope at least a few Americans understand the difference between Martin Scorcese’s “Raging Bull” and George Bush’s “Waging Bull” performances.

How powerful is this god fellow that he needs so many hustlers out there in TV land and in the world and on radio to make sure we all think he exists? If he’s so damn powerful, why doesn’t he just get up off his lazy ass one morning and take a walk around the world up there across the skies of the globe?
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“I’m as pure as the driven slush.” —Tallulah Bankhead

MORALITY, SEXUALITY, INCEST AND GENETIC MAKEUP TOO

Just some interesting reading. Click the link and read on.... Or you can take a day off from reading and wait for my next blog entry.

[Open Quote.]
Does morality have a biological basis? An empirical test of the factors governing moral sentiments relating to incest by D Lieberman, J Tooby and L Cosmides.

Are our moral attitudes shaped by culture alone, or does our evolved psychology help generate them? Due to the deleterious effects of inbreeding, many non-human animals have mechanisms that enable individuals to identify their close genetic relatives and avoid having sex with them. Results reported here support the evolutionary psychological claims that the human mind has mechanisms designed to (1) identify potential siblings in the social environment, and (2) inhibit sexual desire toward them—an outcome that also shapes moral judgments relating to sibling incest. Non-conscious mechanisms assess kinship based on how long two individuals co-resided from infancy through adolescence. The longer individuals lived with opposite sex siblings during childhood, the greater their moral opposition to third-party incest as adults. These results undermine (1) the claim that moral sentiments are solely a reflection of ambient cultural norms and, (2) Freud’s claim that moral opposition to incest originates in incestuous desires toward parents.

Read the full text at this link.
[Close quote.]
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“Democracy will not be salvaged by men who talk fluently, debate forcefully, and quote aptly.” —Lancelot Hogben [What!? The pen is not mightier than the sword. Well? Is it?]

SO MUCH FOR ANY ONE DAY

A beautiful, sunny warmish day in old Spokane. Excellent for a mid-February day in a supposedly cold climate region of America. But how can I explain the ravages of fate, always nearby to lift up the downtrodden and humble the mighty? Just a few days ago as I rose complacently up the escalator at River Park Square on another wonderful day just like this one, I placed the palm of my right hand on a cold, fresh slimy booger some wonderfully modern human had placed on the rubber handrail of the conveyance which at that moment was levitating me into the upper regions?


ANOTHER TRY
AT GETTING AN ATHEISTIC GUEST COLUMN IN
OUR LOCAL NEWSPAPER

An Atheist’s Testament

Please understand I speak only for myself although I believe many atheists will agree with much that I say here. In the first place, I’m a modern American atheist, not a sadistic, idealistic seminarian like Joe Stalin. Modern American atheists are fully committed to democracy and the Constitution. We especially support the freedoms outlined in America’s Bill of Rights. Being a minority, our well-being depends on those protections.

Central to our beliefs is an acceptance of responsibility for what we do as human beings. We believe in no controlling power outside ourselves to credit for our constructive or blame for our destructive human traits. The buck stops with us. Other than that, atheists are much like any American.

I’m always amazed when religious Americans blanche when they meet an atheist. Two young baristas recently clung together and literally stepped away from the counter when I said I was an atheist, as if standing near me could harm them. That was amusing and troubling at the same time. I asked myself, “Given absolute power unchecked by Constitutional law, what would the fear those young women demonstrate drive them to do?” Would they gas atheists, burn our books or banish us as Hitler’s Christians and Stalin’s atheists did to those they feared? Though not generally paranoid, atheists must consider these possibilities. Individual freedoms are not guaranteed to any minority unless they remain vigilant.

Atheists are not, on the average, any worse or better than any American group. They enjoy the same sorts of American activities as any U.S. citizen. The marriages I know of are just as successful or unsuccessful as the average American marriage. My atheist friends are as educated and personable as anyone I know. They tend to read widely and a lot, a disappearing American activity. They are selfish and accomplish good deeds proportionately as often as any other group though, being a smaller group, atheistic activities are less likely to be publicized than those of more visible groups, unless they threaten national Christian hegemony.

If atheists had a state to themselves, it would probably be Missouri, the “show me” state. Because of our core materialistic bent, atheists are sensitive, sensible and common sense people, that is, we defer to our senses in our quest for truth. I tend to believe the evidence of my senses and quantifiable scientific research into matter rather than flights of imagination, and I tend to dwell in concrete reality rather than imagine forces outside the realm of concrete experience. In discussion among ourselves, an atheist motto is “Bring me the evidence”. We frequently ask questions like “Can you prove that? Isn’t that hearsay evidence? Where’s the research that supports your claim? What corroborates that statement?” and we make statements like “I can’t merely take your word for it!”

When atheists discuss solutions for cultural perturbations, we stick with how things actually are as research reveals them to be rather than moralize about how we’d like them to be. For that reason alone, atheists are less likely to be disappointed in life for they accept life on life’s terms rather than wish for how life ought to be or moralize endlessly about the imaginary or real wrongs of others. Our solutions begin with an objective, unflinching and scientific look at how things are and, given that reality, we then ask what can be done to improve the situation. Far too many suggestions for improving America begin with people sadly or smugly moralizing about how things ought to be rather than with observing the facts of the situation and referring to the accumulating evidence of how our common evolutionary inheritance influences human consciousness and behavior.

Given a modern atheist’s rational optimism about life, I am less likely to see bad everywhere or to awfulize the human condition. Atheists recognize how far science has brought us from the Dark Ages when religious superstitions of all kinds distorted human thinking. In fact, whenever I catch myself thinking or saying how bad life is or others are, I immediately ask myself if America’s unconscious, pessimistic religious moralizing is once again poisoning my thinking, and I attempt to clarify my sensibilities.

Finally, because of our core beliefs, modern atheists never want to escape from life into some imaginary, wished-for afterlife. After all, for atheists, this life is the only life we have. There is no other reality to compare it to, favorably or unfavorably. How could we, then, be disappointed with the only life there is?
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“How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter.” —Woody Allen

YELLOW DOG PUBLICRATS

Down South, yellow dog Democrats have all now become yellow dog Republicans. Sad to say their ability to shift from blind followers of one party to blind followers of another party only demonstrates that many Southerners have an enlarged capacity for "blind following". I'm pretty sure it has something to do with their Bible Belt roots which foster the psychological need to have some godlike personage above them to watch out for them and punish them if they fail to do as told.


SLEEVES, FEELINGS AND LIFE AT A DISTANCE

"... predictably, anyone continually knitting his life into contexts of intention, import, and clarifications of meaning will in the end find that he has lost the sense of experiencing life." (MYTHS TO LIVE BY, Campbell, p. 133)

That brief paragraph is most interesting, for if anyone "knits" his life together by finding "meanings" and has lost "the sense of experiencing life", I might be that one in my 67th year of life. In my drinking years I struggled with the fear that I felt too much and understood too little. I could now describe myself as having been a tad obsessive and compulsive. Now I think I understand a bit more but feel the experience of life quite a bit less. My long dead father's letters to me, what few there were between us, were always detached and distant too, and always quite formal sounding. In those days when I "wore my feelings" on the proverbial sleeve, I'd show his letters to me to my friends and ask them if they didn't also think his letters were very unaffected.

"The first and foremost aim of Zen, consequently, is to break the net of our concepts—which is why it has been termed by some a philosophy of 'no mind.' A number of schools of Occidental psychological therapy hold that what we all most need and are seeking is a meaning for our lives. For some, this may be a help; but all it helps is the intellect, and when the intellect sets to work on life with its names and categories, recognitions [sic] of relationship and definitions of meaning, what is inwardmost is readily lost. Zen, on the contrary, holds to the realization that life and the sense of life are antecedent to meaning; the idea being to let life come and not name it. It will then push you right back to where you live—where you are, and not where you are named." (Campbell, p. 133)

The preceding paragraph is probably why I'm currently trying to begin to practice some form of Zen meditation or discipline which I always find hard to do. I don't have the discipline to sit still and work at something which I imagine will take away from my time for reading and keeping up my journal and Blog. Except for my AA meetings, I've rarely been able to practice anything other than reading and writing on a regular basis. I would hope I could develop something like the following practice for my life which would still free me to read and keep up on my writing projects, uncreative as they've become.

"This, finally, then, is what is meant by the Mahayana Buddhist term zen, ch’an or dhyana = “contemplation.” It is a way of contemplation that can be just as well enjoyed while walking, working, and otherwise moving about in this world, as while sitting in a lotus posture, gazing at a wall or at nothing, in the manner of a Bodhidharma. It is a way of participation, living gladly in this secular world, both in the world and of it, our labor in the earning of a living then being our discipline; the raising of our family; our intercourse with acquaintances; our sufferings and our joys." (Campbell, p. 149)


MORE BUSH FUCKUPS

North Korea has the bombs now, and why not? If your neighborhood contained a roughneck who had no compunction about attacking you just because he felt like it, wouldn't you arm yourself in self defense? If I were Iran, I'd arm myself to the teeth also. This Bush character is a rogue ruler, ready to run roughshod over anyone he pleases. It's the Christian thing to do, he must think.

During Bush's first term, the Centers For Disease Control was required by him to remove all links to comprehensive sex education from its website. Recall, Texas has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the Nation after Bush got done with them when he was governor there. The mess he made in Texas ought to be spread nationwide, don't you agree?


HEROES

When a man no longer believes in heroes and quits searching for someone to lead him that's the chief sign he's finally matured and stepped out of his father's shadow at last to claim his own place in the sun.


A NEW AGE GONE OLD, AS ALWAYS

Toward the end of Chapter Eleven in Vidal's THE GOLDEN AGE, he captures the thoughts of men and women of the arts who "felt" America's greatness in their bones right after the second world war. I was reminded of how we felt under the Kennedy influence as we sensed the approach of a new age of peace and prosperity for the world. Vidal even introduces himself as a character in this chapter who meets Peter Sanford. Peter thinks of Augustan Rome when he surveys the fallen world around triumphant American arts, martial and otherwise. I really appreciate Gore for reminding me of how I felt in those hopeful days of my youth. He captured it for me briefly and intensely.
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"Every hero becomes a bore at last." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

ZEN BUDDHISM CHAPTER in MYTHS TO LIVE BY
by Joseph Campbell

[Open quote.]
In India two amusing figures are used to characterize the two principal types of religious attitude. One is “the way of the kitten”; the other, “the way of the monkey.” When a kitten cries “Miaow,” its mother, coming, takes it by the scruff and carries it to safety; but as anyone who has ever traveled in India will have observed, when a band of monkeys come scampering down from a tree and across the road, the babies riding on their mothers’ backs are hanging on by themselves. Accordingly, with reference to the two attitudes: the first is that of the person who prays, “0 Lord, 0 Lord, come save me!” and the second of one who, without such prayers or cries, goes to work on himself. In Japan the same two are known as tanki, “outside strength,” or “power from without,” and jiriki, “own strength,” “effort or power from within.” And in the Buddhism of that country these radically contrasting approaches to the achievement of enlightenment are represented accordingly in two apparently contrary types of religious life and thought.

The first and more popular of these two is that of the Jodo and Shinshu sects, where a transcendental, completely mythical Buddha known in Sanskrit as Aniitabha, “Illimitable Radiance”—also, Amitayus, “Un-. ending Life”—and in Japanese as Amida, is called upon to bestow release from rebirth—as is Christ, in Christian worship, to bestow redemption. Jiriki, on the other hand, the way of self-help, own-doing, inner energy, which neither begs nor expects aid from any deity or Buddha, but works on its own to achieve what is to be achieved, is in Japan represented preeminently by Zen.

There is a fable told in India of the god Vishnu, supporter of the universe, who one day abruptly summoned Garuda, his air-vehicle, the golden-feathered sun-bird; and when his wife, the goddess Lakshmi, asked why, he replied that he had just noticed that one of his worshipers was in trouble. However, hardly had he soared away when he was back, descending from the vehicle; and when the goddess again asked why, he replied that he had found his devotee taking care of himself.

Now the way of jiriki, as represented in the Mahayana Buddhist sect known in Japan as Zen, is a form of religion (if one may call it such) with no dependence on God or on gods, no idea of an ultimate deity, and no need even for the Buddha—in fact, no supernatural references at all. It has been described as:

a special transmission outside the scriptures;
not dependent on words or letters;
a direct pointing to the heart of man;
seeing into one’s own nature; and
the attainment thereby of Buddhahood.
(Campbell, pp. 129-130)
[Close quote.]


Yesterday's post reflects my interest, I suppose, in the "way of the monkey" as described above, the way of self illumination, by the effort of self, clinging to the mother back of scrambling experience. Anything else is too foreign for my strictly American sensibility. Without malice, I must say, I don't understand how religion can be a part of a true American consciousness since most religions are not set up to be democracies. Most are paternal and structure themselves from a top down perspective. People don't vote on their dogma, unfortunately. It's their mental quirk to accept things without questioning them that makes religious people such dangers to a democratic consciousness.


OKAY! A POLITICAL THOUGHT, FIRST IN TWO DAYS

Was reading our excellent local weekly, The Inlander, and came across an article about the sex education classes which Washington is getting ready to teach in state schools. Of course the abstinence only people are out there already, muddying up the issue with lies and half-truths. Cara Gardner steps up and debunks a few of the Christian lies, but to Christians, lies are just tools they use to get themselves to believe in Jesus so they never run out of or get sick of lies. When your whole life is a fabric of lies, how can you discern the truth when you see it?

But it's not Cara's arguments that interest me in her column; I'm more interested in some facts about Texas. As you may know, the entire South is out of step with the world, backward and rooted in prejudices and untruths. The South has higher murder rates than enlightened Northern states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Michigan, for instance. Poor educational systems compound rampant ignorance and prejudices. Poverty results which, of course, complicates the process of getting good schools. In almost every measure, the South falls short so why do we elect guys like George Bush who exemplifies the South's failed philosophies of life? Well, there are a lot of Christians in America and they just can't tell the truth from a damned lie.

In Cara's article we can find that Bush's well-funded "abstinence only" programs while he was Texas governor put Texas dead first in the number of girls between 15 and 17 who got pregnant. And Texas was in 5th place overall in number of teens who got pregnant. So Bush's abstinence programs just got everybody happily pregnant. Wonderful! Now why would anyone follow George Bush's lead on teen pregnancy. His ideas were proved false in Texas, his home state. (INLANDER, February 16, 2005, p. 15)

Let's face it, the drive to procreate is one of the strongest drives in the human animal. It overrides reason and judgment almost every time, and those who don't give in to the imperious urge are often pretty miserable people unless they marry early. And, then, having been goaded into marriage by their sex hormones, many of those young spouse end up in miserable marriages later in life from which they flee in divorce and unfaithfulness.
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"Familiarity breeds attempt." —Goodman Ace

BUDDHISM IS ONLY A WAY TOWARD BUT IS NOT ILLUMINATION

"And for forty-nine years thereafter the Buddha taught in this world.... But he did not, and he could not, teach illumination. Buddhism, therefore, is only a Way. It is called a vehicle (yana) to the yonder shore, transporting us from this shore of the ji hokkai (the experience of the separation of things, the many bulbs, the separate lights) to that, yonder, of the rihokka, beyond concepts and the net of thought, where the knowledge of a Silence beyond silences becomes actual in the blast of an experience." (MYTHS TO LIVE BY, Joseph Campbell, p. 136)


WHAT'S HAPP'NIN' IN THE "NOW BLAST" (2/10/05)

Sitting, yes sitting, at the Starbuck's at the corner of 2nd and Division near the heart of Spokane, Washington. Sunny as a mother-*)^%#@)* and cold, 22 degrees, and I've just come from dropping off a load of crap at the Rockwood Clinic just up the road. We're trying to see if I have a load of unhealthy bacteria up my butt that are causing me to show the symptoms of IBS which I've had for years now, that's irritable bowel syndrome to you. You see, a couple of times recently, I've slightly crapped my pants, fortunately at home, having gotten in the door in time to keep the embarrassment localized. Didn't want to raise a stink about it in a public place.

'Nother thing. For awhile, now, I'm going off my 10 mg of Lexapro. I've only been on the stuff for about a year as a response to frequent physical chest and gut discomfort, the result of retirement getting under my bee bonnet. Also, my good doctor informs me that the class of drugs associated with Lexapro sometimes causes diarrhea (hey, I almost spelled this correctly without the aid of spell check but I typed it with two "h's" instead of two "r's") and urgency when it comes to bowel movements. I have both things, but I've had diarrhea all my life so who knows? A long time ago, a doctor back in Ohio told me that I had "a hyperactive gastrointestinal track". In those days, I used to get a stomach flu almost every winter which would knock me off my feet to writhe on the floor. Codeine was my only relief, and that narcotic didn't stop my bowels from cramping; it only made the pain feel real distant. Kind of like marijuana does. Or should I say "did"? Aren't you glad I got down off my high horse of philosophy, religion and politics to inform you about my bowel functions? "Tis better, by far, to curse the digestive system than reveal the falsehoods of the Christ mythology, eh?

I'm looking forward to seeing how it feels again to be without antidepressants under my skull bonnet. But I don't want to return to an almost constant stress pain in my chest which I was beginning to feel late in my life. I said, at the time, that most of my younger life, I had the resilience to take that pain without noticing it too much, but that as I was getting older, the pain was harder to ignore and dodge. Youth does have it's compensations.

I'm curious to see if I can start up a Zen practice of meditation which doesn't ask any power to come into me other than my own increasing consciousness. I went to two sessions of meditation at the Radha Yoga Center, but when I tried to call "the light" into me, and to revel in the light, I was blocked. It felt too much like calling on Christ to help me. But the Zen practice that Joseph Campbell describes in MYTHS TO LIVE BY which calls for every activity in life to be meditative and full of mindfulness interests me. Probably because that is most near my own nature which is more extroverted than introverted. As soon as I finish Vidal's THE GOLDEN AGE, I'll try to do some reading in Zen practice. Perhaps, though, I'll find that no religious practice will work for me. Too bad I can no longer drink with safety. That bar life I used to lead certainly was full of intense "nowness". Pardon my invented word.

ILLUMINATION

... was thinking even more finely on the experience which others describe as illumination. Though it's a personal experience, still most practices seem to want to call in some force outside of self to get the illumination. Why meditate on a candle? But, better on a candle, which has little meaning for me, than on a "divine" light shining "above" me or an imaginary Jesus in the sky. That concept seems to block me more than free me. Illumination is a feeling which I think is described by Jung's term "individuation" or an attempt to have a transcendent experience. But nothing can transcend the emotive systems in the human body. It's all inside work anyway, an illusion of transcendence which is not transcendent at all. For that original Radha person, her experience can even be called illusory, an illusion, not much different from a psychotic break, which, of course, is what William James suggests is the source of much religious convulsions.

I think what I'm looking for is a perfectly natural way to heighten my consciousness in every waking moment. No outside force, no supernatural means, no drugs, just my individual consciousness intensified.
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"I've steered clear of God. He was an incredible sadist." —John Collier

LONG BUT BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN: GODLESS CONSTITUTION

from THE NATION magazine (Feb. 21, 205)

Our Godless Constitution This link will take you to THE NATION magazine where you can see the original essay which is copied below. You don't need to go there, but you might want to think about subscribing to THE NATION. I've got a credit card which helps support that magazine.

by Brooke Allen

It is hard to believe that George Bush has ever read the works of George Orwell, but he seems, somehow, to have grasped a few Orwellian precepts. The lesson the President has learned best--and certainly the one that has been the most useful to him--is the axiom that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. One of his Administration's current favorites is the whopper about America having been founded on Christian principles. Our nation was founded not on Christian principles but on Enlightenment ones. God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent.

Our Constitution makes no mention whatever of God. The omission was too obvious to have been anything but deliberate, in spite of Alexander Hamilton's flippant responses when asked about it: According to one account, he said that the new nation was not in need of "foreign aid"; according to another, he simply said "we forgot." But as Hamilton's biographer Ron Chernow points out, Hamilton never forgot anything important.

In the eighty-five essays that make up The Federalist, God is mentioned only twice (both times by Madison, who uses the word, as Gore Vidal has remarked, in the "only Heaven knows" sense). In the Declaration of Independence, He gets two brief nods: a reference to "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God," and the famous line about men being "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." More blatant official references to a deity date from long after the founding period: "In God We Trust" did not appear on our coinage until the Civil War, and "under God" was introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance during the McCarthy hysteria in 1954 [see Elisabeth Sifton, "The Battle Over the Pledge," April 5, 2004].

In 1797 our government concluded a "Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, or Barbary," now known simply as the Treaty of Tripoli. Article 11 of the treaty contains these words:

“As the Government of the United States...is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion--as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Musselmen--and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

This document was endorsed by Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and President John Adams. It was then sent to the Senate for ratification; the vote was unanimous. It is worth pointing out that although this was the 339th time a recorded vote had been required by the Senate, it was only the third unanimous vote in the Senate's history. There is no record of debate or dissent. The text of the treaty was printed in full in the Philadelphia Gazette and in two New York papers, but there were no screams of outrage, as one might expect today.

The Founding Fathers were not religious men, and they fought hard to erect, in Thomas Jefferson's words, "a wall of separation between church and state." John Adams opined that if they were not restrained by legal measures, Puritans--the fundamentalists of their day--would "whip and crop, and pillory and roast." The historical epoch had afforded these men ample opportunity to observe the corruption to which established priesthoods were liable, as well as "the impious presumption of legislators and rulers," as Jefferson wrote, "civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time."

If we define a Christian as a person who believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ, then it is safe to say that some of the key Founding Fathers were not Christians at all. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine were deists--that is, they believed in one Supreme Being but rejected revelation and all the supernatural elements of the Christian Church; the word of the Creator, they believed, could best be read in Nature. John Adams was a professed liberal Unitarian, but he, too, in his private correspondence seems more deist than Christian.

George Washington and James Madison also leaned toward deism, although neither took much interest in religious matters. Madison believed that "religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize." He spoke of the "almost fifteen centuries" during which Christianity had been on trial: "What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution." If Washington mentioned the Almighty in a public address, as he occasionally did, he was careful to refer to Him not as "God" but with some nondenominational moniker like "Great Author" or "Almighty Being." It is interesting to note that the Father of our Country spoke no words of a religious nature on his deathbed, although fully aware that he was dying, and did not ask for a man of God to be present; his last act was to take his own pulse, the consummate gesture of a creature of the age of scientific rationalism.

Tom Paine, a polemicist rather than a politician, could afford to be perfectly honest about his religious beliefs, which were baldly deist in the tradition of Voltaire:

"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.... I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church." This is how he opened The Age of Reason, his virulent attack on Christianity. In it he railed against the "obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness" of the Old Testament, "a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind." The New Testament is less brutalizing but more absurd, the story of Christ's divine genesis a "fable, which for absurdity and extravagance is not exceeded by any thing that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients." He held the idea of the Resurrection in especial ridicule: Indeed, "the wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds every thing that went before it." Paine was careful to contrast the tortuous twists of theology with the pure clarity of deism. "The true deist has but one Deity; and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in every thing moral, scientifical, and mechanical."

Paine's rhetoric was so fervent that he was inevitably branded an atheist. Men like Franklin, Adams and Jefferson could not risk being tarred with that brush, and in fact Jefferson got into a good deal of trouble for continuing his friendship with Paine and entertaining him at Monticello. These statesmen had to be far more circumspect than the turbulent Paine, yet if we examine their beliefs it is all but impossible to see just how theirs differed from his.

Franklin was the oldest of the Founding Fathers. He was also the most worldly and sophisticated, and was well aware of the Machiavellian principle that if one aspires to influence the masses, one must at least profess religious sentiments. By his own definition he was a deist, although one French acquaintance claimed that "our free-thinkers have adroitly sounded him on his religion, and they maintain that they have discovered he is one of their own, that is that he has none at all." If he did have a religion, it was strictly utilitarian: As his biographer Gordon Wood has said, "He praised religion for whatever moral effects it had, but for little else." Divine revelation, Franklin freely admitted, had "no weight with me," and the covenant of grace seemed "unintelligible" and "not beneficial." As for the pious hypocrites who have ever controlled nations, "A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under color of law"--a comment we should carefully consider at this turning point in the history of our Republic.

Here is Franklin's considered summary of his own beliefs, in response to a query by Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale. He wrote it just six weeks before his death at the age of 84.

“Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the universe. That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.

“As for Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as it probably has, of making his doctrines more respected and better observed, especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any particular marks of his displeasure.”

Jefferson thoroughly agreed with Franklin on the corruptions the teachings of Jesus had undergone. "The metaphysical abstractions of Athanasius, and the maniacal ravings of Calvin, tinctured plentifully with the foggy dreams of Plato, have so loaded [Christianity] with absurdities and incomprehensibilities" that it was almost impossible to recapture "its native simplicity and purity." Like Paine, Jefferson felt that the miracles claimed by the New Testament put an intolerable strain on credulity. "The day will come," he predicted (wrongly, so far), "when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." The Revelation of St. John he dismissed as "the ravings of a maniac."

Jefferson edited his own version of the New Testament, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," in which he carefully deleted all the miraculous passages from the works of the Evangelists. He intended it, he said, as "a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus." This was clearly a defense against his many enemies, who hoped to blacken his reputation by comparing him with the vile atheist Paine. His biographer Joseph Ellis is undoubtedly correct, though, in seeing disingenuousness here: "If [Jefferson] had been completely scrupulous, he would have described himself as a deist who admired the ethical teachings of Jesus as a man rather than as the son of God. (In modern-day parlance, he was a secular humanist.)" In short, not a Christian at all.

The three accomplishments Jefferson was proudest of--those that he requested be put on his tombstone--were the founding of the University of Virginia and the authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. The latter was a truly radical document that would eventually influence the separation of church and state in the US Constitution; when it was passed by the Virginia legislature in 1786, Jefferson rejoiced that there was finally "freedom for the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammeden, the Hindu and infidel of every denomination"--note his respect, still unusual today, for the sensibilities of the "infidel." The University of Virginia was notable among early-American seats of higher education in that it had no religious affiliation whatever. Jefferson even banned the teaching of theology at the school.

If we were to speak of Jefferson in modern political categories, we would have to admit that he was a pure libertarian, in religious as in other matters. His real commitment (or lack thereof) to the teachings of Jesus Christ is plain from a famous throwaway comment he made: "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." This raised plenty of hackles when it got about, and Jefferson had to go to some pains to restore his reputation as a good Christian. But one can only conclude, with Ellis, that he was no Christian at all.

John Adams, though no more religious than Jefferson, had inherited the fatalistic mindset of the Puritan culture in which he had grown up. He personally endorsed the Enlightenment commitment to Reason but did not share Jefferson's optimism about its future, writing to him, "I wish that Superstition in Religion exciting Superstition in Polliticks...may never blow up all your benevolent and phylanthropic Lucubrations," but that "the History of all Ages is against you." As an old man he observed, "Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been upon the point of breaking out, 'This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!'" Speaking ex cathedra, as a relic of the founding generation, he expressed his admiration for the Roman system whereby every man could worship whom, what and how he pleased. When his young listeners objected that this was paganism, Adams replied that it was indeed, and laughed.

In their fascinating and eloquent valetudinarian correspondence, Adams and Jefferson had a great deal to say about religion. Pressed by Jefferson to define his personal creed, Adams replied that it was "contained in four short words, 'Be just and good.'" Jefferson replied, "The result of our fifty or sixty years of religious reading, in the four words, 'Be just and good,' is that in which all our inquiries must end; as the riddles of all priesthoods end in four more, 'ubi panis, ibi deus.' What all agree in, is probably right. What no two agree in, most probably wrong."

This was a clear reference to Voltaire's Reflections on Religion. As Voltaire put it:

“There are no sects in geometry. One does not speak of a Euclidean, an Archimedean. When the truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to arise.... Well, to what dogma do all minds agree? To the worship of a God, and to honesty. All the philosophers of the world who have had a religion have said in all ages: "There is a God, and one must be just." There, then, is the universal religion established in all ages and throughout mankind. The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems through which they differ are therefore false.”

Of course all these men knew, as all modern presidential candidates know, that to admit to theological skepticism is political suicide. During Jefferson's presidency a friend observed him on his way to church, carrying a large prayer book. "You going to church, Mr. J," remarked the friend. "You do not believe a word in it." Jefferson didn't exactly deny the charge. "Sir," he replied, "no nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir."

Like Jefferson, every recent President has understood the necessity of at least paying lip service to the piety of most American voters. All of our leaders, Democrat and Republican, have attended church, and have made very sure they are seen to do so. But there is a difference between offering this gesture of respect for majority beliefs and manipulating and pandering to the bigotry, prejudice and millennial fantasies of Christian extremists. Though for public consumption the Founding Fathers identified themselves as Christians, they were, at least by today's standards, remarkably honest about their misgivings when it came to theological doctrine, and religion in general came very low on the list of their concerns and priorities--always excepting, that is, their determination to keep the new nation free from bondage to its rule.

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"I should warn you that underneath these clothes I'm wearing boxer shorts and I know how to use them." —Robert Orben ???????????

WES ANDERSON’S FILMS EXUDE POST-HIPPY SENSIBILITY

Hey Dan Webster,

Just saw “The Life Aquatic” and, finally, after having seen also “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tannenbaums”, I got a take on this Wes Anderson fellow.

This is where I come from: a lit. and MFA guy, I used to believe heavily in novels, story line and plot, i.e. “making sense of existence”, “telling a story about life”, “moralizing”. But existentialism began to wear away at that sensibility.

Next... in comes my current interest in science, specially, evolutionary psychology where the clinical and experimental study of consciousness is exploding. From what we now know of how consciousness evolved and how it works, we know that each of our brains more or less experiences incoming data as a raw series of unconnected bits of electro/chemical impulse and that consciousness emerges in the process of making connections between bits of info in order that each of us human animals can survive and pass on our genes. There is no central place in the brain where all the info goes to be processed and where decisions are made. No god, no continuity of conscience, no overarching morality. In short no sign of a soul or central processor. We are animals. RELATIVITY writ large. Just survival.

Wes is showing us a 21st Century world without strong story lines and without too much rational explanation. It truly is an absurd but practical reality we experience when we get to studying the processes of consciousness.

Wes Anderson’s films make sense of the hippy generation. They’re post hippy. They come out of the sensibilities of the Sixties. Very few films have made sense of those days because of costuming (how quaint) and the difficulty in giving a rational (in dialogue and narrative) explanation of a fundamental psychological change in sensibility and reality. I feel clearly that’s how Wes Anderson’s films “feel”.

Wes’s reality is definitely a post “hippy (happy) days” reality. Families fragmented, boys looking for dads and husbands and wives playing around with other people, divorces, the old, manly spirit of adventure reduced to a sort of posturing Costeau [sp], women in charge of families while man/boys play around at survival. In short, no story line but lots of human interaction and emotional moments and survival of the bloodline stuff. Sexuality underpinning, as evolution would predict.

On and on and on.... I’m in that part of understanding Wes where my mind just rackets around and goes “wow” every once in awhile, experiencing the kind of reality that makes Oliveria quiver like a leaf in autumn in a wind storm.

I intend to put this letter on my Blog too.

Geo


MOVIES

This week I checked five movies out of the library:

New Waterford Girl
Series 7: The Contenders
Cronos
8 Women
La Belle Noiseuse

The best of the five was the satirical look at reality shows in “Series 7: The Contenders”. In this one, the contestants try to kill one another while cameras follow them around, with minute by minute interviews, checking in on how they feel and getting their comments on the spot. This should become a cult classic, I’d hope.

The next best was the French film, “La Belle Noiseuse” which I thought did a wonderful job of recreating the extended process by which a painting is created. A two reel job, the director spends a lot of time following the artist around in his studio while he picks up a brush and drops it to pick up another and following him as he throws a cushion aside and selects a stool for the model to sit on. Or just stands musing before he throws a line on canvass. We watch him pin paper to a frame for drawing and arrange the model’s body with fierce motions that cause her pain.

Next “Cronos” for its seriocomic effects, specially the part Frankenstein, part vampire hero.

“8 Women” was a mixed bag for me, though the slow unraveling of the motives and the secrets of the women was interestingly done. That kept me watching. However, the film’s suicidal ending was ridiculous.

“The Waterford Girl” was another absurdist film, though not absurd enough to make it interesting. Supposedly, other critics found Liane Balaban’s debut film performance as Mooney Pottie (15 year old who moons around—get it) a success. Once or twice I did feel her angst, but the silly premise that she was a girl of great talent weakened any effect her character could have. I thought someone so inept could not have the natural strength which would lead to artistic success. Though Mooney’s adventures with her friend, Lou, are supposed to show how she grew into a more mature teen, I thought most of the adventures were rather insignificant.
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"Fame lost its appeal for me when I went into a public restroom and an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door." —Marlo Thomas

YOU THINK CHRISTIANS ARE NICE PEOPLE?
HERE'S HOW X-TIANS SMEARED JOHN MCCAIN IN 2000

from THE FAMILY, Kitty Kelley, pp. 595-596:

[Open quote.]
The Bush team retained the services of Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, to run grass roots in the state, and they immediately started attacking with push polls, telephone banks, e-mails, anonymous mailings, automatic dialings of untraceable hate messages, phony front groups, and radio talk-show call-ins to pillory McCain with lies that he was a liberal reprobate who abandoned a crippled wife to father black children by black prostitutes. Preposterous charges of extramarital affairs, abortions, wife beatings, mob ties, venereal diseases, and illegitimate children were flung at him, while his wife, Cindy, was tarred as a wayward woman and drug addict who had stolen to support her habit, his children were vilified as bastards, and his friend and supporter from New Hampshire former U.S. Senator Warren Rudman was subjected to vile anti-Semitism. The poison drip saturated South Carolina for eighteen days and nights of slaughterhouse politics.

“I’ve seen dirty politics, but I’ve never seen a rumor campaign like this,” said Terry Haskins, the speaker pro tem of the South Carolina House of Representatives and a McCain supporter. “It’s a vile attempt to destroy a man’s reputation just to win an election, and I know it’s organized because none of these rumors existed until the day after New Hampshire.”

On February 12, a week before the election, Bush was caught by a C-SPAN camera talking to a state senator. Neither man realized he was being watched.

“You haven’t even hit his soft spots,” said the senator.

“I know,” said Bush. “I’m going to.”

“Well, they need to be—somebody does, anyway.

“I agree,” said Bush. “I’m not going to do it on TV.”

By the time he finished mauling McCain in South Carolina with his anonymous smear campaign, George had almost surpassed his father’s vile race-baiting.

“We suspected that Ralph Reed was behind it all,” said Mark Salter, McCain’s administrative assistant, “but we couldn’t prove it, because there was no paper trail . . . They operated under the radar system used political action committees no one ever heard of. . . which gave Bush complete deniability.”

Federal Election Commission campaign records would show that Ralph Reed was paid more than half a million dollars by Enron “for ongoing advice and counsel.” Karl Rove had recommended the conservative political activist to Enron in 1997, feeding suspicions that Rove wanted to keep Reed’s favor for Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign.

One aspect of Reed’s fiendish operation in South Carolina targeted 140,000 Republicans throughout the state with flyers from the Christian Coalition titled “10 Disturbing Facts About John McCain.” A southern female, who identified herself as being with a religious group, followed up with a phone call to these same voters. In a honey-sweet accent, she related horrendous stories about McCain and expressed concern about such a man becoming President. Before hanging up, she said, ‘You all be sure to listen to the Reverend Robertson this Sunday.” When Pat Robertson appeared on one of the morning talk shows, he made a veiled reference to “some of those other things that are in John McCain’s background.”
[Close quote.]


FLYNT RETALIATES FOR S.C. WITH NEWS OF BUSH JR'S ABORTION

from THE FAMILY, pp. 599-600:

[Open quote.]
George’s scorched-earth tactics in South Carolina enraged his critics, especially Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, who felt that Bush’s stand on sexual abstinence before marriage was the height of hypocrisy. Bush’s pledge to put federal funds into abstinence programs further outraged Flynt, who argued that such programs did not reduce teen sex. Pronouncing Bush a menace to society, the pornographer hired two investigative reporters to explore every aspect of the governor’s sexual past. In October 2000, he claimed to have hit pay dirt.

Appearing on CNN’s Crossfire, Flynt alleged that George W. Bush had impregnated a woman in the 1970s when he was living at the Chateau Dijon in Houston. According to Flynt, George arranged an abortion through a physician, who purportedly performed the procedure at Houston’s Twelve Oaks Medical Center.

“When I said that we had the proof, I am referring to knowing who the girl was, knowing who the doctor was that performed the abortion, evidence from girlfriends of hers at the time, who knew about the romance and the subsequent abortion. The young lady does not want to go public, and without her willingness, we don’t feel that we’re on solid enough legal ground to go with the story.. . One of the things that interested us was that this abortion took place before Roe v. Wade. . . which made it a crime at the time.”

Without confirmation from the woman, who Flynt said had married an FBI agent, the mainstream press would not touch the story. “Walter Isaacson [former editor of Time] would not go with it because Larry Flynt was involved,” said Brian Doyle, an assistant Time editor. “Even though he had four affidavits from the woman’s friends.” Michael Isikoff of Newsweek said, “Certainly, there was a great deal of circumstantial evidence to support it, but without the woman herself coming forward to admit that Bush arranged her abortion, we could not do anything with it.” Richard Gooding of The National Enquirer said that when he interviewed the woman, she denied having had an abortion. “She admitted they dated exclusively for six months, but said they never had the kind of sex that would get her pregnant.”

The story was pursued because of Bush’s stand against abortion and his threat to support a “human life amendment” to the Constitution, which would overturn Roe v. Wade. As governor, he signed eighteen antiabortion laws, and as a presidential candidate he promised to appoint only pro-life judges.
[Close quote.]


I'LL FINISH "THE FAMILY" TONIGHT

Hey! I'm almost done with Kitty Kelley's book, and if you've been paying close attention, you see how she writes her books. Mostly, she quotes other people and what they have to say about her subjects. That way she does not have to duck slander charges. I think her books are fair in that she quotes people who are friends, people who are enemies and people who are mostly neutral about her subjects. For other details, she refers to documents which have been found to support what her sources come up with, such as journal pages which show that Bush Sr. wrote one thing in his journal while saying the opposite to the public. When she quotes someone about specific allegations, she'll usually quote someone else who recalls an event or act differently. She did that a lot when delving into Bush Jr's National Guard record.

I'd hate to have her do a book on me, but I do think she's fair—as long as her readers realize how her techniques work. Believe it or not, I was able to see George Bush Jr. (as a young man) through sympathetic eyes. I was a lot like him. I was also able to forgive him some of his attitudes about things. But the biggest impression I came away with is that the rich do live lives so different from ours that they just can't understand what it's like to live workaday lives. Thus they get a sense of privilege which shields them from compassion for others. That lack of compassion, translated into governance, the will to win at any cost, could give us an America in which the political surface is so covered with lies that under the surface a sea of lying sharks can do anything and everything they want undetected because we'll have lost the instinct for truth.
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"Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent who get all the publicity. But then—we elected them." —Lily Tomlin [The phoo is on the Bush-league feets now.]

RON REAGAN JR. COMPARES REAGAN SR. TO GEORGE BUSH JR.

from THE FAMILY by Kitty Kelley, pp. 572-573:

“There’s a sense of entitlement that all the Bushes have,” said Ron Reagan Jr. in 2004. “They feel as if they’re entitled to everything that comes their way. I know that the first President Bush felt that he deserved to be President because it was his ‘turn’ to be President. It was his due. He’d served all the people he was supposed to have served. He’d put in the time. He’d done favors for all the powerful people he needed to do favors for. So in his mind, he deserved to be President. . . His son George W. Bush was ‘run’ for President. They [the party establishment] came to him and said, ‘You’ve got the name recognition, we can raise the money and run you .. .‘ I think they looked around at the other potential candidates and thought, ‘There’s no one else out there we can control.’ They found the perfect empty vessel in W. He’ll go wherever the wind will go. And ‘they’re’ in charge of the wind. That doesn’t mean he’s stupid. I don’t believe he is. I think he’s of average intelligence . . . My sense of him is that he’s not ideologically motivated at all. But he’s certainly willing to use an ideology to benefit himself. I think George W. Bush’s ideology is the ideology of self.”

The forty-six-year-old son of President Reagan said he did not share the same sense of entitlement as George W. Bush. “I don’t know why I don’t have the same feeling,” Reagan said. “My father wasn’t from old money for one thing. He did most of what he did on his own. He had help; obviously, he didn’t do everything by himself. No one gets to be President of the United States without help. But he became President on his own accomplishments... Remember when the first President Bush spoke about the vision thing? Well, for my father, vision wasn’t a ‘thing.’ You can argue with my father’s point of view and his policies, which I’m certainly willing to do, but he was a man with a genuine vision. He had very specific beliefs, and he stood by them. . . My father wrote his own speeches. He used to write his own radio addresses. I grew up watching him do that as a child. The Bushes can barely read their own speeches, much less write them... I believe the Bush vision—for both H.W. and W. —is probably wrapped up in their family fortunes rather than in anything that has to do with the good of the country.”


BUSH GAFFES IN 2000 SOUTH CAROLINA CAMPAIGN

from THE FAMILY, p. 597

“What’s not fine is, rarely is the question asked, are, is our children learning?” (January 14, 2000)

“You’re working hard to put food on your family.” (January 27, 2000)

“This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It’s what you do when you run for President. You gotta preserve.” (January 28, 2000)

“The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case.” (January 30, 2000)

“How do you know if you don’t measure if you have a system that simply suckles kids through?” (February 16, 2000)

“I understand small business growth. I was one.” (February 19, 2000)

“I don’t care what the polls say. I don’t. I’m doing what I think what’s wrong.” (March 15, 2000)

“Laura and I don’t realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis.” (April 15, 2000)

“Well, I think if you’re going to do something and don’t do it, that’s trustworthiness.” (August 30, 2000)

“We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile.” (September 4, 2000)


DUMBER THAN DUMBO BUSH'S DEFICIT DISASTER

Let the Democrats set us straight.

[Open quote.]
The proposed 2006 federal budget President Bush released yesterday would drive America deeper into debt while making cuts that will hurt veterans, farmers, and other working Americans.

Bush's budget leaves out the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently running at $5 billion per month. It leaves out the cost of his Social Security privatization scheme and makes other unrealistic assumptions and ignores costs in an attempt to paint the rosiest picture possible. But his budget does nothing to decrease the deficit.

Despite Bush's failure to rein in the deficit, his budget still includes cuts to programs that will hurt Americans who need the most help. Areas Bush wants to cut include:

* Medicaid
* Veterans' health benefits (forcing veterans to pay more for health care)
* College loans
* Education programs that help poor children
* Farm subsidies
* Community development grants

Bush's allies in Congress are already expressing their opposition to the cuts in his budget. One Wall Street economist called the numbers "not credible," saying they "haven't been for the last few years and they shouldn't be looked at with much seriousness now."

Sincerely,
Doug, Eric, Jesse, Nancy, and Josh
The DNC Internet Team

[Sources: Washington Post, 2/8/05; New York Times, 2/8/05]
[ Close quote.]
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"The cost of living has gone up another dollar a quart." —W.C. Fields [Notorious dipsomaniac.]