September 2003 Week 2
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September 2003 Week 2
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Monday September 8 , 2003 To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) Christian got mad at Monica for no particular reason, and poured a bottle of curdled yogurt into her backpack, last Friday he marked up Austin (The little boy Christy brings home) with markers an was just about wild. He has been picking on Cindy and calling her names, as he got off the couch he put his foot up against Autumn's head and pushed her away. He needs to get in and see the Doctor again... his medication is just not helping him make good decisions Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. I heard that the Supreme Court upholds the concept that the clause in the First Amendment referring to Freedom Of Speech extends to protecting the Anonymity of the Speaker. In other words a person can lie their little heads of on the internet in the press or virtually anywhere and be protected by the First Amendment. . Obscene Phone callers and other perverts (as long as they don't threaten) Telemarketers, Bill collectors, Child Pornographers, Spammers, Politicians, Charities, PAC's anyone can say anything they want to say and be guaranteed their "Right to Anonymity". If you read the First Amendment you'll see that there is nothing there that implies in verbiage or intent that anonymity is insured. There is an outfit called "United Seniors" who gave the Republicans $13 million dollars to smear Democratic Candidates as being against Senior health Care when in reality the United Seniors is a consortium of Pharmaceutical Companies who want to be deregulated. This sort of deceit goes on in virtually every aspect of our lives and it is being protected by the Supreme Court. To me Freedom of Speech means I have the right to say anything I want to say as long as I believe it to be the truth or my heart felt opinion. I do not have the right to say my neighbor is a thief when I do not know that to be true, I do not have the right to say that the misrepresent myself. Bush wants $87 Billion for his war, he says we have enough soldiers in Iraq out of one side of his mouth and admonishes the UN for not giving us more troops, he says the UN is being spiteful for not bailing his butt out with money and manpower after spending a year bashing them for being ungrateful. He is in over his head with his Occupation and he's in over his head with the economy. What's it going to take to get his Dittohead supporters to wake up. Tuesday September 9 , 2003 We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves. George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] Went to visit what's left of my money at Smith Barney, things are improving... slowly... I talked politics with Diane for a while and vented some of my observations... she agreed with most of it... she voted for Bush and has become disillusioned by him somewhat... the problem with Democrats is that there is no one but Dean and Kerry worth looking at... both are pretty sharp guys but I don't know if they have the intestinal fortitude to take on the Bush Machine, I agree with her. The people handling Bush are masters at 'spin' and will make an issue of every misstep, they will do what ever they have to do to win because they have too much to lose... it's going to be like having a sword fight in a mine field. Bush will be well programmed and stand his ground like the finely tuned marionette he is. They have to call him when he answer questions with his customary pep-rally rhetoric... nailing the little weasel down with facts he can't dispute. Calling him on his lies and misrepresentations and distortion of reality will be their only hope. He is twofaced and they need to get that across to the public. There is no easy way out of the mess we are in in Iraq, in the budget, the National debt, international credibility... all of it is a quagmire... the solution is going to be pretty harsh and no one has the balls to tell the American public what has to be done... Wednesday September 10 , 2003 Anger is a thief who steals away the nice moments. Joan Lunden I saw something described as "A Sargasso Sea of Ipse Dixits" Meaning a series of statements asserting a need with no facts supporting them... Sound like anyone you've heard about? I have seen Ipse Dixit in crossword puzzles, I don't remember ever bothering to look it up. Saragasso sea in in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, there is a thick mat of strange bulbous algae that covers the ocean there that isn't found anywhere else... I never knew that... Lost another $20 out of my wallet ... it is hell to live in a house with thieves... you never know when you have just misplaced something or if your mind is playing tricks or what. I don't know who took it this time... it makes me sad... and angry... and really depressed.
Thursday September 11 , 2003
I made it to the Optometrist 10 minutes early and waited almost 40 minutes to be seen, I was there for about two hours. I ordered some prescription reading glasses, the Optometrist says that the astigmatism in each of my eyes is different so that over-the-counter reading glasses will cause me to have the watering and burning sensation I get when I try to focus on a book for more than abut 2 minutes. "B" told me that he busted a neighbor's window down at Gustavo's house, I said why are you telling me this? He said "Because Gustavo told his Mom that I did it. I said "How did you break it." He said Robby and I were trying to open it and it broke." I said "So you were trying to break into it.! "But, "B", that was wrong!", "but I didn't think I would get caught" he is completely without understanding... utterly clueless. I went to the ROF... Usual folks plus Carrie and a friend of hers named Vicky that I don't think I have ever met. It was a pleasant enough evening... I just need to learn to leave earlier. Friday September 12 , 2003 Johnny Cash & John Ritter... died yesterday. They have had Johnny Cash's Obit sitting in the "Any minute now" file for about two years, maybe longer... but John Ritter took the media by surprise. Johnny Cash led a full life and made some major contributions to the Country music world, he has never been my favorite person but occasionally he has sung songs held interviews that caused me to reevaluate him as a human being. There always seemed to be something fragile in his tough appearance, a vulnerability. It seems as though he was hiding behind those black outfits and tough-guy lyrics. He sang a song on the Larry King show several months ago that almost moved me to tears... it's on his last CD, called American IV: The Man Comes Around, the title song is powerful enough but the song he sang that night was "Hurt" a, believe it or not, "Nine Inch Nails" song... with the lyric's cleaned up a bit... John Ritter's dad, Tex Ritter was a hero of mine back in the 50's, he seemed to always be in a, "Perils of Pauline", things may look hopeless but don't you never give up, type situation. John was only 54, Christy's age... I have seen him do some very good acting in some very mediocre movies, I think that being identified with his Jack Tripper roll in Three's Company deprived us of seeing a really fine actor... His career was just taking off again with his new Sitcom... so sad. I went to see "Once Upon A Time In Mexico" William Defoe, Johnny Depp, Antonio Banderas. It was a strange movie, I enjoyed it but I don't know why. Waiting to see Secondhand Lions on Sunday... may see the Matchstick Men tomorrow Saturday September 13 , 2003 boob·oi·sie (b A word coined by H. L. Mencken I just downloaded a bunch of H. L. Mencken quotes, what a curmudgeon... he appears to have been a bit of a bigot too... which surprises me for some reason. I should have expected it I guess, many people of his era were, by today's standards, flaming racist and anti Semite elitist snobs... if you aint white you aint... whatever. Some of these quotes would have put him out of a job today. There is a strange dichotomy here, we are so quick to condemn, intolerant of intolerant people... I took the kids out to the movies today, they watched "Dickie Roberts, Former Child Star" They liked it, "Better than "Joe Dirt""(Duh, Joe Dirt was awful, I couldn't sit through more than about 2 minutes of it) I saw "Matchstick Men", every time I am about to write off Nicholas Gage he comes up with a movie like this, a great script, excellent acting, involving plot, totally believable characters, Cage was incredible, it was a good movie, really good, I won't tell you anything about it... if anyone out there has seen it please write and let me know Sunday September 14 , 2003 Acocdrnig to an Elgnsih Unviesitry sutdy the oredr of letetrs in a wrod dosen't mttaer, the olny thnig thta's iopmrantt is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer of eevry word is in the crrecot ptoision. The rset can be jmbueld and one is stlil able to raed the txet wiohtut dclftfuiiy. Somtehnig I hvae oberevsd in my own witirng mnay tmies... I was told about a site that seems to have all of my favorite column's posted. When I first looked at it I was concerned that they didn't have Margolis and a few others but they are there.. What's neat is that folks can join and post comments there. . take a look if you are so inclined... http://www.smirkingchimp.com. I saw "Secondhand Lions". I didn't realize that it was a sneak preview, Apparently that if is is advertised on the Net but not at the theater it's a Sneak... cool, the theater was about 80% full... they applauded when it ended... I disagree with the way the movie started... because it hung like a pall over the whole movie... if you see the movie and, if you can remember, please let me know what you think. I had a movie orgy this weekend, I haven't had the opportunity (or the desire) to see so many movies in years. They were all good movies too, "Once upon a time in Mexico" was pretty weird but I did enjoy it...
A few of the articles I read this week... Some of you won't want to read this because it pretty damning, there is no 'spin' no conjecture here. If you can refute anything Margolis says I would love to hear it. THE TRUTH ABOUT 9/11
Exploiting the Atrocity
In response, I received a torrent of outraged mail. At a time when the nation was shocked and terrified, the thought that our leaders might be that cynical was too much to bear. ``How can I say that to my young son?'' asked one furious e-mailer. I wonder what that correspondent thinks now. Is the public - and the news media - finally prepared to cry foul when cynicism comes wrapped in the flag? America's political future may rest on the answer. The press has become a lot less shy about pointing out the administration's exploitation of 9/11, partly because that exploitation has become so crushingly obvious. As The Washington Post pointed out yesterday, in the past six weeks President Bush has invoked 9/11 not just to defend Iraq policy and argue for oil drilling in the Arctic, but in response to questions about tax cuts, unemployment, budget deficits and even campaign finance. Meanwhile, the crudity of the administration's recent propaganda efforts, from dressing the president up in a flight suit to orchestrating the ludicrously glamorized TV movie about Mr. Bush on 9/11, have set even supporters' teeth on edge. And some stunts no longer seem feasible. Maybe it was the pressure of other commitments that kept Mr. Bush from visiting New York yesterday; but one suspects that his aides no longer think of the Big Apple as a politically safe place to visit. Yet it's almost certainly wrong to think that the political exploitation of 9/11 and, more broadly, the administration's campaign to label critics as unpatriotic are past their peak. It may be harder for the administration to wrap itself in the flag, but it has more incentive to do so now than ever before. Where once the administration was motivated by greed, now it's driven by fear. In the first months after 9/11, the administration's ruthless exploitation of the atrocity was a choice, not a necessity. The natural instinct of the nation to rally around its leader in times of crisis had pushed Mr. Bush into the polling stratosphere, and his re-election seemed secure. He could have governed as the uniter he claimed to be, and would probably still be wildly popular. But Mr. Bush's advisers were greedy; they saw 9/11 as an opportunity to get everything they wanted, from another round of tax cuts, to a major weakening of the Clean Air Act, to an invasion of Iraq. And so they wrapped as much as they could in the flag. Now it has all gone wrong. The deficit is about to go above half a trillion dollars, the economy is still losing jobs, the triumph in Iraq has turned to dust and ashes, and Mr. Bush's poll numbers are at or below their pre-9/11 levels. Nor can the members of this administration simply lose like gentlemen. For one thing, that's not how they operate. Furthermore, everything suggests that there are major scandals - involving energy policy, environmental policy, Iraq contracts and cooked intelligence - that would burst into the light of day if the current management lost its grip on power. So these people must win, at any cost. The result, clearly, will be an ugly, bitter campaign - probably the nastiest of modern American history. Four months ago it seemed that the 2004 campaign would be all slow-mo films of Mr. Bush in his flight suit. But at this point, it's likely to be pictures of Howard Dean or Wesley Clark that morph into Saddam Hussein. And Donald Rumsfeld has already rolled out the stab-in-the-back argument: if you criticize the administration, you're lending aid and comfort to the enemy. This political ugliness will take its toll on policy, too. The administration's infallibility complex - its inability to admit ever making a mistake - will get even worse. And I disagree with those who think the administration can claim infallibility even while practicing policy flexibility: on major issues, such as taxes or Iraq, any sensible policy would too obviously be an implicit admission that previous policies had failed. In other words, if you thought the last two years were bad, just wait: it's about to get worse. A lot worse. We're Not Happy Campers
The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is warning that the "Jewish" dolls — banned in Saudi Arabia for a decade — are a threat to Islam. The A.P. reported that a message posted on the mutawwa's Web site chided: "Jewish Barbie dolls, with their revealing clothes and shameful postures, accessories and tools are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West. Let us beware of her dangers and be careful." This, from a hypocritical desert kingdom with more lingerie stores in its malls than Victoria has secrets. It's probably useless to start correcting the inbred Saudis on facts, but just for the record, Barbie was a knockoff of a German floozy doll. The place so eager to protect itself from "Jewish" toys and "the perverted West," the breeding ground of the 9/11 hijackers, is still the Bush administration's close ally. Osama bin Laden is urging the Muslim world to pursue a jihad against America, even as America pursues a GWOT in the Muslim world. (GWOT is how some Pentagon documents refer to the Global War on Terror.) They're out to get us, and we're out to get them. Far from being the swift and gratifying lesson in U.S. dominance that Cheney & Co. predicted, our incursion into Iraq is turning into a spun-out, scary lesson in the dangers of hubris. Democrats are combing through the $20 billion part of the White House request involving rebuilding Iraq, trying to make sure there isn't any
I've actually gotten to the point where I hope Dick Cheney is embroiled in a Clancyesque conspiracy to benefit Halliburton. Because if it's not a conspiracy, it's naïveté and ideology. And that means our leaders have used goofball logic and lousy assumptions to trap the country in a cockeyed replay of the Crusades that could drain our treasury and strain our military for generations, without making us any safer from terrorists and maybe putting us more at risk. On 9/11's second anniversary, seven in 10 Americans still believe Saddam had a role in the attacks, even though there is no evidence of it, according to a
Iraq never threatened U.S. security. Bush officials cynically attacked a villainous country because they knew it was easier than finding the real 9/11 villain, who had no country. And now they're hoist on their own canard. By pretending Iraq was crawling with Al Qaeda, they've created an Iraq crawling with Al Qaeda. As Donald Rumsfeld finished up an upbeat talk at the National Press Club here yesterday, brushing off hecklers and calling the global war on terror "well begun," cable began airing fresh Flintstones video of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri encouraging the Iraqi and Islamic fighters to "bury" American troops and send them to their mothers in coffins. The Bush team's logic before the war was infuriatingly Helleresque, and it still is. Mr. Rumsfeld, who was so alarmed about Saddam's W.M.D. before the war, is now so nonchalant that he said he did not even bother to ask David Kay, who runs the C.I.A.'s search for W.M.D. in Iraq, what progress he'd made when meeting with him in Iraq last week. "I have so many things to do at the Department of Defense," Rummy told The Washington Post. Asked at the press club why our intelligence analysts did not predict the extent of Iraq's decayed infrastructure, Rummy said dismissively, "They were worrying about more important things." Yeah, like how to get Dick Cheney off their backs. Testifying before the Senate on Tuesday on the $87 billion request, Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon official who pushed so hard to own Iraq and control it, said, "We have no desire to own this problem or to control it." There may not be much choice, given Colin Powell's pessimistic warning to Congress yesterday that no allies want to help us pick up the tab for rebuilding a country full of people who revile us. I never thought I'd say this, but watching Dan Quayle's marble bust, unveiled yesterday at the Capitol — soon to join John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Spiro Agnew — I was nostalgic for the days when Murphy Brown's baby amounted to a serious mess. |
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)n. A class of people regarded as stupid and gullible.
n my first column after 9/11, I mentioned something everyone with contacts on Capitol Hill already knew: that just days after the event, the exploitation of the atrocity for partisan political gain had already begun. 
ASHINGTON — The Saudi religious police are harassing Barbie.