Dear Senator McCaskill

by Pa Rock
Concerned Citizen

Dear Senator McCaskill,

I received your self-laudatory email today in which you paint Congress with the broad brush of wastefulness and then go on to make it seem as though you are are going to tame the spending beast. The entire content and tone of your email puts me in mind of Ronald Reagan who arrived in Washington, DC, in 1981 and promptly proclaimed that the federal government was our enemy. He was still singing that same basic song eight years later, even though he had been the head of the federal government all of that time.

Your communication boasted of new legislation which you were sponsoring that would solve a lot of our fiscal problems. You referred to it as pay-as-you-go legislation, and stated that it would require Congress to find a way to pay for all new entitlement spending or tax cuts, rather than adding to the national deficit. Okay, I understand the politics of the legislation: hindering the ability to cut taxes would be taking a strong swipe at the Republicans, but you give them something by messing with future entitlement programs - giving some credence to their unending braying about entitlement programs being giveaways to lazy people. Shame, Claire, shame!

Your "PAYGO" legislation adroitly ignores the biggest government waste of money - the war industry. Obviously the entitlement program for Blackwateer (excuse me, "Xe") is going to be left in place and allowed to flourish. We will fund murdering thugs like Erik Prince's evil cabal, but hungry kids can just suck it up! Smooth move, Claire!

But that isn't what really got me going about your silly email. You state in the missive that you will only vote for a health care reform bill if it's deficit-neutral. Got an election on the horizon, Claire? Got a sugar daddy in the insurance industry? Everyone knows, me and you included, that you are going to do the right thing and support good health care legislation. Everyone knows, including the two of us, that Congress will find a way to make it deficit neutral. So why all of this tough guy posturing if not to play to the hillbillies in the Ozarks and the morons in St. Louis County. Claire, you're better than that.

If you are intent on changing Congress, how about beginning with straightforward, honest communication. If you want to role play, join a Little Theatre!

And here is something else about Congress that needs immediate attention:

The Congressional email service is lousy. It is intentionally lousy. It was designed to deliver messages en masse from members of Congress to their constituents - and to prevent input from citizens. I hit the reply button on your email tonight, typed in a few cogent remarks, and sent it. It was immediately bounced back. I knew that would happen because I have tried previously to answer Congressional junk email with the same disappointing results.

That's shameful, but it gets worse...

If a person goes to any Congressional homepage, your's included, and sends an email through the access there, the email won't go unless a myriad of questions are answered about the sender and the message. The sender has to select a topic that best relates to the comment being sent. Then, an immediate reply is fired back automatically relating to the subject that was checked. If you send the email at night, the comment comes back the same night - even though the Congressional office that should have responded to the email was closed. The citizen sending the email has no way of knowing whether any human read the message, let alone the member of Congress to whom it was addressed.

If Congress doesn't want public input, they should just say so.

Get a grip Claire. If you want to save the public's money - go to where the money is - in the wallets of the old white boys running the military-industrial complex. It is not un-American to expect accountability in defense spending. Seems like I remember George Bush saying that this war would soon be paying for itself. Why hasn't that happened? Enquiring minds want to know!

How about a good, thorough audit of the defense contractors? You are a fan of audits, aren't you, Claire? If you want to save money - go to where it is!

Monday's Poetry: "The Square Root of Three"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

This week's selection falls under the general heading of cult poetry. It was featured in the movie Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo, which is easily the second best Harold and Kumar movie ever made. There is a scene near the end of the movie where Kumar (Kal Penn) is breaking up his ex-girlfriend's wedding (a la Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate and Bruce Willis in Blind Date), when the bride suddenly turns to him and complains that he never does anything spontaneous, or lame, or whatever. Kumar immediately rises to the challenge and begins stepping over furniture while reciting this poem - a poem that he was supposedly writing the day they first met in the university library, just minutes before they had sex in the university library. How sweet is that?

The Square Root of Three
by David Feinberg

I'm sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that's good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I'll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

Kumar's recitation of this poem is the high point of the movie. He never misses a beat or a syllable as he climbs over furniture and steadily closes the distance between himself and his lady love. It is a very touching scene, one that even surpasses the bong-smoking incident in the airplane restroom, and the duo's inadvertent parachuting into George Bush's Crawford ranch house.

They just don't write movies like that anymore! And the poem ain't bad either!

John McCain Says Something Smart! (Stop the Presses!)

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

John McCain, the ex-POW and war hero who married his way into money and a political future, can be inspiring. He was a beacon to political outsiders in 2000 when he tried to block the Bush juggernaut with his "straight talk" express. But Karl Rove, who was driving the Bush juggernaut, rammed right into McCain's bus in a place called South Carolina by convincing the Republican primary voters of that state that the Arizona Senator might be just a tad too open minded on the subject of race to carry the GOP's Klan robes, much less its banner.

So McCain lost that nomination and went slinking back to the Senate with his tail tucked militarily between his hind legs - where he licked his wounds and waited for another try when Bush left office. This time Johnny Boy wasn't going to take any chances with the bigots and morons who run the Republican Party machinery. In a bold, though stupid, move, he made a pilgrimage to Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he planted a big wet kiss on Jerry Falwell's flabby ass. From there he quickly spiraled downhill until he was left with almost no integrity - which made him a shoe-in for the Republican nomination. He frosted the cake by selecting completely incompetent and vacuous Sarah Palin as his running mate. It was a match made in Heaven - on a day when God was off fishing someplace else!

The principled John McCain of 2000 could have run a tough race against Obama, but that John McCain would have never gotten the nomination from his angry white party. The new McCain was offensive to enough people to secure the Republican nomination, but found it impossible to get enough ordinary Joe's to hold their noses and vote for him. He couldn't get the nomination being a human being, and he couldn't win the election being a moralistic cretin.

What's a John to do?

McCain is too old to run for President again, (Please, Lord, let it be so!), but he still has to pander to the know-nothings who run the Republican Party because he has a Senate primary opponent in 2010 who is well to the right of most of humanity. That is why he came out earlier this week and said that he would vote against confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. (McCain has spoken passionately in the past about the need to incorporate Hispanics into American culture and government.)

But even with McCain's continuous sucking up to people he knows in his heart are illogical and dangerous kooks, he did manage to say something bright today on Twitter. Here is his most recent tweet - I was quite impressed:

"Town hall meetings are an American tradition - we should allow everyone to express their views without disruption - even if we disagree!"

As reported for the past several nights on several television networks, these "spontaneous" crowds showing up to heckle Congressmen and public officials are not spontaneous at all. They are being recruited, provided with scripts of how to disrupt and rattle the speakers, and are even being bussed from event to event. Kudos to Senator McCain for having the cajones to speak out against these mindless agitators!

Senator, I don't know what you put on your Fruit Loops this morning, but whatever it was - keep pouring it on! America is a better place when the real John McCain actually does some straight talking. Please consider doing it more often.

She Wants Her Country Back!

by Pa Rock
Amused Observer

There is a video circulating on the Internet that is as funny as it is scary. It is a clip of Congressman Mike Castle's (R-Del) recent town hall meeting. One very angry (and bizarre) woman gets the floor, begins angrily waving a document that she says is her birth certificate, and explodes that President Obama is refusing to produce his birth certificate (not true) because he was actually born in Kenya (also not true). The elderly Republican congressman appeared to be mortified by the crazy woman, but a group of hillbillies whom she probably collected at the local tavern on her way to the town hall hooted and hollered and cheered her on.

The authenticity of the Presidential birth certificate has been has been verified by several sources - including factcheck.org - which is where I viewed it. The document says quite clearly that he was born at 7:24 p.m. on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. But Nutbag Lady and her Hillbilly chorus were having none of that. She stated adamantly that he was born in Kenya. Where is the proof for that?

The most telling part of the scene occurred as she was winding down. She dropped her head, began rocking sadly from side to side, and said, "I just want my country back!"

Implied, but not stated: She just wants her "white" country back.

Sorry, Honey, but that ain't gonna happen. I spent eight long, miserable years "wanting" my country back from George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their gang of thieves, war mongers, and environmental rapists, but I had to sit politely and wait the bastards out. Many of us had serious doubts about whether Bush was actually elected either time, but we didn't go psycho over the issue because the government had to function.

A major difference between Obama and Bush (and there are many!) is that Obama was clearly and decisively elected.

This noise about the President's birth certificate is very reminiscent of the GOP's campaign against the Clinton's that lasted throughout Bill's eight years in office. It was a cheap and tawdry effort that succeeded only in keeping his popularity ratings unusually high. The Republicans spent eight years slinging crap, and the American people didn't like it. And now it's starting again!

The Republican's did manage to make a comeback, barely, in 2000 with the questionable election of George Bush. But they are so fragmented and self-marginalized now that a comeback in the foreseeable future is unlikely. The most viable Republican presidential candidate at this time is Mitt Romney, a Mormon. How's that gonna play with their hate-riddled Christian fundamentalist base?

The Republican Party appears to be hellbent on self-destruction - from the Palin's, to the Cheney's, to Joe the Plumber, to the religious right, to the loony birthers. I wish them God-speed in their race to become totally irrelevant!

Got Soul?

by Pa Rock
Barstool Philosopher

Sunday's foray into the metaphysical left me thinking about the concept of the soul. When I sit and ponder, I wonder:

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that humans have souls. If that is true, does it necessarily follow that all humans have souls? People also have arms and legs, for the most part, but some do not. Not all humans possess the sense of sight, but most do. If the soul exists, is it necessary equipment, like a brain, or can a person function without one? Are we born with souls or do they develop as we mature?

Years ago a young man and I were talking about human life being created in laboratories, something that was well within the realm of possibility even then. He grudgingly admitted that scientists might be able to manufacture sperm and an egg, and thus produce life through chemistry, but he was adamant that such a laboratory creation would be born without a soul. So sex is necessary for the creation of a soul?

How would one know if an acquaintance had a soul or not? What would a soulless individual look like? Would he resemble a movie zombie, stumbling through a decaying cityscape and ripping the heads off of innocent bystanders? Or would he be a suave and charming sociopath like Ted Bundy, equally capable of flattery or butchery?

Is it possible for a soul to detach itself from the individual before death? Could a creature with a soul be a serial killer like Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer? Could a creature with a soul avoid service in a war (Bush, Cheney, Rummy, or Wolfowitz) and then cavalierly send the children of others, less privileged than themselves, off to the sands of slaughter? Could a person with a soul harbor that much evil?

Can a soul be consigned to Heaven or Hell for eternity by some overgrown hall monitor with a pulpit? What is Heaven? What is Hell?

Does conscience trump soul, or complement it? Or are they the same?

Is living well the best revenge?

Coming Attractions

by Pa Rock
Entertainment Writer

Though I can't reveal my sources, it is my understanding the some amazing films are scheduled to be released by Hollywood prior to next spring's various film awards. What follows is a sampler of what to expect at your local multiplex:

Gee Wee’s Big Adventure:

Yes, the news has already leaked – former president George Bush has been signed to make a movie for MTV. The worst President in the history of the United States couldn’t score a book deal, and there were few offers for lucrative speaking engagements, but not to worry – he’s going Hollywood!

The ex-Pres will be taking on the goof-ball character created by world-class fisherman and master baiter, Pee Wee Herman, in a spoof of life in the White House. The plot focuses on Gee Wee having a few too many Harvey Wallbangers at the bar at the Watergate one evening, and deciding to revisit the White House. He gains entry through the same steam tunnels that Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver used to exit the place in Dave. Gee Wee stumbles around the halls of the White House and tells the various night porters and cleaners that he is a guest staying in the Lincoln bedroom. The fun starts when he enters the War Room and discovers that the Obama administration has inexplicably forgotten to change the nuclear codes. Well…so much for France!

If you’re looking for some good, old-fashioned entertainment, Jug Ears the Nitwit will capture your heart!

Daughters of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane:

Glenn Close and Meryl Streep give it their best as the aging daughters of the macabre Hudson sisters in this bush league sequel of the cult classic from the 1960’s. Unfortunately, they start off as too old and crotchety, and only get worse as the movie drags on. Rumor has it that Betty White was too busy to rescue this film, and Bea Arthur was too dead. Director Sean Penn might have saved his bacon and his celluloid if he had given those juicy roles to Goldie Hawn and his ex-wife, Madonna.

Die Hard with a Pacemaker:

Bruce Willis is back as the tough-as-nails John McClane, a former police officer who has a penchant for getting involved in daring rescues. This time McClane is out to save his two good buddies, Clint Eastwood and Tommy Chong, from the evil machinations of the staff at the Hasta La Vista Nursing Home. The job won’t be easy, however, because the hospital’s chief administrator, Arnold Schwartzeneggar, isn’t about to let them go without a fight – a good fight! If you are a fan of flying bedpans, runaway wheelchairs, and geriatric food fights, this movie won’t disappoint!

Rumor has it that television personality Ann Coulter is being considered as the lead in a female version of this same film concept. Ms. Coulter, ever the corporate lackey, will reportedly launch a venomous attack on a group of liberal biddies who are protesting the forced consumption of Metamucil at Shady Pines. Tentative title: Die Hard with a Vibrator.

Silence of the Clams:

Disney’s new underwater extravaganza shows the kid in all of us how Mother Nature really works. The clever mixture of schools of shimmering fish doing choreographed swimming in their own excrement, dancing squid and octopi, swirling streams of poisonous pollution, and a little lighthearted cannibalism – all artfully synchronized to the music of Queen – is a sure-fire winner! Look for a special guest appearance by Sponge Bob Square Pants.

Rocky 15:

Everything sags in this sad ending to the Rocky series. Sly Stallone crawls out of the ring for the last time, packs his bags, and hitchhikes to Arizona where he rents a trailer on the hot edge of nowhere and spends his golden years breeding scorpions and punching his pointless views into a daily blog. He may be permanently punchy, but he keeps right on typing!

See you at the movies!

Suicides Temporarily Shut Down Ft. Campbell

by Rocky G. Macy
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

As a former mental health provider at Ft. Campbell, KY, I was saddened, though not necessarily surprised, to learn about the rash of suicides that has plagued the post over recent months. According to news reports this week, the 101st Airborne Division (basically all of Ft. Campbell) has suffered eleven confirmed or suspected suicides recently, including two in the past week.

This week, in an effort to take a breather and examine the problem, and hopefully stem the tide of this horrific dynamic, the base commander, Brigadier General Stephen Townsend, announced a three-day stand-down to focus on the problem and look for solutions. Regarding the rash in suicides, Townsend told his troops, "It's bad for soldiers, it's bad for families, bad for your units, bad for this division - and our army - and our country - and it's got to stop now. Suicides at Ft. Campbell have to stop now!"

Yup. Brigadier General Stephen Townsend has ordered the suicides to stop. That ought to get the job done - after all, the man has a star on each shoulder.

One hundred and fifteen U.S. soldiers took their own lives in 2007. That number rose to 128 in 2008, and this year it is already at 64 and on track to beat last year's total. Sadly, of all the army units, Ft. Campbell is in the lead.

I worked as a mental health provider at Ft. Campbell from 2005 to 2007, so I have some understanding of what is happening. First. like most military units, Ft. Campbell has a shortage of mental health professionals. And even if every slot for social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists was filled, it would still be an uphill struggle to evaluate and monitor every soldier who has gone through the trauma of one, two, three, four, or even five long tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.

One tour can ruin a marriage and destroy a family. Loneliness and infidelity take their toll both at home and in the combat theatre. One tour can take a happy, well-adjusted young person and return him (or her) with emotional and psychological issues that will impact the veteran for years - or longer. And that's just one tour.

Multiple tours take all of the risks and dangers of one tour and increase them exponentially. If one tour doesn't wreck a family, two very well may. Fathers and mothers return from the desert to discover that their children have grown up and away from them. The parent who had remained at home has become the decision-maker, the go-to person when something needs to be approved or accomplished. It takes months for the family to re-group as it was prior to the deployment, and by the time it does, the next deployment has rolled around.

I've harped on this before, but it needs to be explained again - so bear with me. Numerous deployments are a product of the dishonest way this war has been waged. Bush, Cheney, and Rummy didn't want to institute a draft - because each of the three had clear memories of the social upheaval that resulted from the draft for Vietnam and did not want to see the country get that fired up over their oil war. (They also undoubtedly remembered all of their own artful dodging to keep from going to Vietnam, and did not want to put today's children of privilege in that same predicament.)

So having a draft was out of the question. Bush, Cheney, and Rummy did not want to do anything to create and stoke public resentment to their Middle East misadventure. Where, then, were the troops going to come from to fight their war?

One way was to recruit soldiers from the general population. Recruiting quotas were increased and recruiters were forced to scrape the bottom of society's barrel in order to meet those quotas. The minimum enlistment age was raised to forty-two, and recruiters routinely told marginal applicants how to pass drug exams and falsify other entrance requirements. Steven Green, also a member of the 101st Airborne Division at Ft. Campbell, was brought into the army with no difficulties, even though the young man had obvious psychological issues - issues that led to the slaughter of an Iraqi family.

The other method was to not let soldiers out of the army when their terms of enlistment expired (a back door draft called "Operation Stop Loss"), and to keep pumping them into the combat zones over and over.

In a line obviously stolen from a social worker, Brigadier General Townsend said, "Suicide is a permanent solution to what is only a temporary problem."

It's not a temporary problem, General, it's a recurring problem. Something has to be done to get these young people off the combat merry-go-round.

General Townsend, you and your brother generals need to step up to the plate and let the Defense Department and the President know that the mental health of your troops is being worn away. The casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are not limited to the battlefields. Many of those brave men and women appear to be fine when they march into the hangars at your base for reunions with their families, but they are often ticking time bombs (or land mines, or IED's) that will suddenly go off weeks, months, or even years after the welcoming bands have played their last happy notes.

Good mental health is not something that can be "ordered" to occur. For our troops to have even a semblance of a chance for a future of good mental health, multiple deployments must come to an end. If these are wars that have to be fought, bring back the draft and share the burden with those who couldn't be bothered to volunteer to serve. And maybe thirty or forty years from now when we are on the verge of some other major military operation, our country will have the leadership of people who actually went to war and understand its reality.

The men and women at Ft. Campbell are in my thoughts and prayers.

The Bush Legacy

by Pa Rock
Angry Citizen Journalist

I don't want to write about Army Sergeant John M. Russell, the soldier accused of killing five American troops at a mental health clinic at Camp Liberty in Baghdad. There hasn't been much hard news released on the sad event, just a lot of surmising and second guessing. So I really don't want to write about it until I have a clearer understanding of what actually happened out in that mean desert. I don't want to write about it...but I can't help myself!

You see, for the past five years I have worked in military mental health clinics - so this shit is personal - very effing personal!

Every man or woman who does a tour in a combat zone is negatively impacted - every single one, no exceptions! No, they don't all go on a killing rampage, but they suffer physical hurts - and psychological injuries that may not manifest themselves for months after the troop returns home. And their relationships with loved ones suffer also. It's damned hard to keep a marriage together after one partner has spent twelve or more months living in close proximity with a group of strangers - people who tend to become more like family than the actual families as the stress of war takes it toll.

That's after one long tour. Sgt. John M. Russell, 43, of Sherman, TX, was on his third tour in Iraq. Why, one would wonder, would anyone have to serve three tours? (I know some Special Forces troops who have been to the desert five times!) Vietnam required one tour, and a person could volunteer for a second tour if they wanted an opportunity to get out early.

Why three or more tours? Our troops were forced to do multiple tours because chicken hawks like George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfield (who all declined to take part in Vietnam, but were not too proud to send your kids off to the Middle East) wanted in the worst way to avoid a draft. They were spared Vietnam tours due to family privilege, but all were in college during the draft protests of the sixties - and none wanted to see those types of events soaking up valuable newsprint or television air time. That was not the story they wanted told. "Stop Loss," the practice of not allowing soldiers to exit the service when their enlistments were up, was another form of this back door draft.

Sgt. Russell's unit apparently did everything right. According to some news sources, his superiors recognized signs that he was losing it. They took his weapon and had him escorted to the mental health clinic. Once inside, the angry sergeant got into a loud disagreement and was told to leave. Somewhere outside of the clinic he acquired another weapon, reentered the clinic, and opened fire. Where did he get another weapon? Hey, it's Iraq, a country where guns are as ubiquitous as grains of sand.

Two of the casualties were supposedly doctors, one Navy and the other Army. I've known several Army doctors (psychiatrists) who served in Iraq, as well as countless combat soldiers from Ft. Campbell, and I am, quite obviously, hoping that none of my friends or acquaintances were among the victims - but whoever died, they were friends, and relatives, and loved ones of many, many people.

I can't bring this to a close without folding in the case of Steven Green, a former Army private who was convicted last week of masterminding the murder of an Iraqi family and the rape of their young daughter. Green was only on his first tour of Iraq, but he obviously did not have the psychological strength to deal with it - a fact that should have been caught as he was trying to enlist. But we had quotas to meet - and an honest draft to avoid.

And I have to take one swipe at Texas, the home of record of Sgt. John M. Russell and Pvt. Steven Green. Texas is pure testosterone - a place where any seven-year-old boy who isn't a sissy is expected to be learning how to play football, and every ten-year-old male has at least two guns and an NRA membership card. Football and killing things. If there are any better indicators of emerging manhood, I'd like to know what they are. (Somehow George Bush missed the macho boat, though. He went to college and became a cheerleader, and then graduated and hid from the war.)

The killings at Camp Liberty this week marked the fifth incident of the Oil War in which one of our own has gunned down his comrades. The gun advocates will quickly point out that guns don't really kill people (and other assorted horse shit), and the fuzzy headed liberals will argue with equal fervor that those young people are not responsible because the war is so damned loud and wrong and stoked with machismo that no one could hear their cries for help.

So, if they guns can't be held responsible, and the shooters were themselves victims, who then is to blame?

My vote goes to the chicken hawks: Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield! Boys, you broke it, and damn you all - now you own it!

Peace, brothers and sisters. It's the only real answer!

The Tea Party Mentality

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Today marks the deadline for paying 2008 income taxes, and the public citizenry from coast-to-coast marked the occasion by holding symbolic "tea parties" created to form some link with the American patriots who dumped the British tea in Boston Harbor over two centuries ago. The original protesters were defiant because they were being taxed without representation in the British Parliament. While today's rabble are represented in Congress, many feel powerless to stop government from engaging in practices and programs that they personally oppose. The way to defeat the beast, they figure, is to starve it by not paying taxes - or at least by calling attention to their concerns through dramatic action - like tea parties. The mobs were intense and vocal.

And they also had a lot of fun mugging for the cameras - and Fox News was absolutely giddy putting up wall-to-wall coverage of their political antics.

And then there was poor Texas! First Chuck Norris threatened to run for President of the Republic of Texas, and today the Lone Star's crackpot governor, Rick Perry (the one with the great hair!), played the enabler to Norris's egomaniacal ambitions by talking about leading the state into secession! Even Texas deserves better than those two bozos!

I am old enough to remember well when Ronald Reagan was President. Most of today's protesters revere Reagan as somewhere to the right of God. Reagan "lowered" taxes several times, and each time that he did, my taxes went up. He was lowering taxes, just not mine. The business classes and the very rich did very well under Reagan, but their tax windfalls never did trickle down to those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

My take home pay has actually increased with Barack Obama's tax cuts. His new tax cuts really do cut taxes - for everyone making less than a quarter of a million dollars a year. Tax cuts that cut taxes - what a concept!

In fairness to democracy's foot soldiers and their tea bags, they are also fired up about the zillions of dollars going out of the treasury to try and help pump up the economy. I don't like it either, especially when monster banks like Bank of America take the free money while raising interest rates on credit cards (even to their good customers) - and while plotting the overthrow of America's unions.

Yup, that sucks. But know two things: 1. We are in this mess because America put George Bush in the White House (kinda sorta), and he spent eight years deregulating everything. The result was an unfettered economic system that overdosed on its own greed and avarice. 2. We have a much better opportunity of surviving the Bush mess with the powerful intellect of Barack Obama at the helm of the ship-of-state. I may not like the plan, but I am willing to give it a chance.

A good portion of today's protesters probably are genuinely concerned about the massive debt that we are piling on our grandchildren. I certainly am. But I have been concerned for a long time. I was concerned when we went charging off to Iraq without provocation. I was concerned when stories started making the news about pallets of currency being moved around in Iraqi warehouses by forklifts, and those forklifts were operated by private companies with names like Blackwater, and Kellogg, Brown, and Root. I was concerned when Dick Cheney clearly showed us the arrogance of the executive branch by running the war and the economy in secret, revealing the identity of a CIA covert agent for political payback, and telling an inquisitive and respected member of the United States Senate to "go fuck yourself." That wasn't my America.

I voted for Barack Obama to get my America back. It was once a decent place that stood out as a bright and shining example of democracy and civility. The Bush administration of crooks and liars threw our greatness into the crapper. The rich got richer, the poor got much poorer, and hate became the order of the day. That must change, and suddenly there is hope that it can change.

But I came of age in the sixties, and I appreciate a good national protest as much as anyone!

Make tea, not war!

Civil Disobedience in Size Ten

by Pa Rock
Cultural Commentator

George Bush was making his Grand Farewell Tour of the Middle East on December 14th of the year just past, when the relevancy of his entire presidency and foreign policy was knocked into a cocked hat by a couple of flying shoes. He was in the middle of a large press conference in Iraq when an angry Iraqi journalist named Muntadir al-Zaidi loosed a barrage of hostile Iraqi verbiage that declared Mr. Bush to be a dog, and then he let fly with one of his shoes - and then the other. Our President, surprisingly agile - possibly due to his cheerleader training at Yale - managed to successfully duck the flying footwear. In an effort to recover some of his dignity, the President joked that he thought the shoes were a size ten.

The incident resulted in al-Zaidi becoming a hero throughout the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular (with shoe sales of that particular model going through the roof!), quickly disproving the CIA and Blackwater claims that we are generally seen as liberators by the people of Iraq. The famous shoe-thrower has been in jail since the incident where reports indicate that he may be recovering from broken bones and cigarette burns. A trial date is pending which could result in him being subjected to some serious punishment. Clearly Iraqi officials do not view al-Zaidi with the same adulation as do the common folk of their country!

Jump forward a couple of weeks to an orphanage in Tikrit, Iraq, the hometown of Sadam Hussein. The reason the orphanage exists is due to the abundance of war orphans. It is understandable that the city might be somewhat hostile to the country that they view as responsible for the deaths of their favorite son and the parents of the orphans.

An Iraqi sculptor by the name of Laith al-Amiri managed to raise $5,000 to build an outdoor sculpture at the orphanage. Some of the orphans even helped with the project. The result was a giant shoe sculpture on a large concrete base. The statue measured over 11 feet in height, over 8 feet in length, and was nearly 5 feet wide. The shoe itself (sitting atop the concrete base) was the size of an Iraqi sofa. It was made of fiberglass covered in copper. In a nod to the environment, not a hot George Bush priority, the giant shoe doubled as a planter for a big green bush. Iraqi government officials quickly ordered the big shoe's removal - the will of the people be damned! So much for freedom of speech - and all that jazz!

Jump across Europe and the English Channel to Great Britain. Chinese Premier Wen Jiaboa was speaking at Cambridge University last week when an audience member blew a whistle and shouted: "How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator? How can you listen to him unchallenged?" Whereupon, he took aim and threw his shoe at the premier, missing his mark. He, too, was arrested and remains in jail.

So where do fair-minded people come down on this particular type of protest? Do we label it assault or attempted assault and demand a criminal penalty? Or do we go to the other extreme and declare it a harmless act of civil disobedience? Never mind Jesus - what would Henry David Thoreau do?

My thoughts on the subject are evolving, but I feel the need to give fair warning that the older I get, the meaner I get - and I wear a size ten!

The Cap Executive Officer Pay Act of 2009

by Pa Rock
Pissed-Off Taxpayer

The American Congress, traditionally the bane of the poor and those without influence, has been given a once-in-a-generation opportunity to repair its reputation of greed, corruption, and general indifference to the true needs of the country and the people whom it is supposed to serve. This past Friday one of the Senate's junior members rose and proposed something so daring and radical that it swept past surprised lawmakers, lobbyists, and other defenders of the status quo and made its way into public view. Claire McCaskill of Missouri introduced a piece of legislation that a friend of mine aptly refers to as a "Maximum Wage" bill. She has, with one bold stroke, captured the anger of America's little guys and crafted it into a political bomb.

Here's how it has worked over the years. Those with money and privilege stayed busy preaching about the greatness of America, a country where anyone could become rich and any boy could grow up to be President. That was the "talk," but the "walk" was a much different story.

The rich, in point of fact, have expended a great deal of effort demonizing the poor as shiftless welfare cheats and criminals. When some observers pointed out that America's corporations were receiving a far greater share of government welfare than the poorest among us, they were shouted down as being un-American. And on those rare occasions when one of our "betters" was caught red-handed and convicted of a crime, he or she was sent to a country club prison where they were protected from coming into contact with common criminals. F. Scott Fitzgerald informed us that the rich were different from you and me. That was our lot and we shouldn't question it or rock the boat.

Today, as America teeters on the edge of what could easily be a depression as devastating as the one that submerged the country and the world in the 1920's and 1930's, the national government is trying to be proactive in averting the worst possible scenarios. President Bush, under the guidance of Treasury Secretary Paulson, threw billions of dollars into failing banks, not bothering to load the free money up with any pesky controls or accountability. America's bankers took the money and immediately put it to work: paying bonuses to the executives that had run the banks into the ground!

So here's what Senator McCaskill told her colleagues on Friday. (The emphasis is mine.)

"There are a lot of things we need in this country right now. We need jobs. We need something to stimulate our economy. We need certainty in the credit market, but probably more than anything, what we need in this country right now is confidence, confidence that we can face down these problems and move forward like America has always done. And what do we have instead of confidence? Everyone I work for is mad. You know, anger can be constructive if we channel it. And I’m here today to say it's time that we channel this anger and change the law. We don't need anger. We have a bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer. My colleague just talked about some of them.

"Let me review. These financial institutions on the brink of extinction come to the American taxpayer for hundreds and billions of dollars at the very same time they think they're going to buy a $50 million corporate jet. They're going to pay out $18 billion in bonuses. They paid an average of $2.6 million to every executive at the first 116 banks that got taxpayer money under TARP. Let me say that again. An average of $2.6 million in executive pay to the folks at the first 116 banks that got money from the taxpayers. They don't get it. These people are idiots. You can't use taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion in bonuses. Merrill Lynch is unbelievable. They saved $3 billion to $4 billion from the pot of money that was going to Bank of America. The sale is going to close the first week in January. They always gave bonuses in January. You know what these sneaky guys did? They decided to give their bonuses in December before Bank of America took over - paid out $3 billion to $4 billion in bonuses in December and that quarter Merrill Lynch lost $21 billion. What planet are these people on? What could they be thinking about?

"So here's what this bill's going to do. This is called the Cap Executive Officer Pay Act of 2009, and it's very simple. Going forward if you want taxpayers to help you survive, if you want the people at your financial institution to have a job tomorrow, then you're going to have to limit everyone's pay at your company to the same salary that the President of the United States makes. Is that so unreasonable? It’s eight times the median household income in the United States of America. $400,000 a year. I don't think that sounds like a bad deal. Should these people be making more than the President of the United States? Now, really? Should they? They should not be making more than the President of the United States. So every executive going forward cannot make more than $400,000 a year. And they would have to limit that executive compensation for everyone in their company until they pay back every dime to the taxpayers. Now once they're off the public dole, once the taxpayers aren't footing the bill, then it's not as much our business what they get paid. But right now they're on the hook to us. And they owe us something other than a fancy waste basket and $50 million jet. They owe us some common sense. And if any of them think it's a hardship to take the salary of the President of the United States, I dare them to say so out loud right now. Because that's not going to instill confidence.

"What is going to instill confidence for the men and women in these companies to realize that everyone in this country needs to tighten their belts. It's time for everyone to realize that we must have our financial institutions survive, but not with a culture that thinks it's okay to kick the taxpayer in the shins while they drink champagne and fly in fancy jets. It doesn't work. Not in the United States of America. I ask my colleagues to sign on to this bill. I think it makes sense. We should have done it in the first place, but I don't think any of us thought these guys were this stupid. I don't think any of us would believe that they would take billions of dollars of bonuses while their institutions were literally days from being wiped out. But they did. And we've learned our lesson. And so I hope all my colleagues will sign on this bill. I hope that we can get it passed quickly so that from this day forward the President of the United States will make the same amount of money as the executives at these companies that owe the taxpayers hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars."

In an earlier post I suggested that the time has come to consider nationalizing the banks that are unable to make it on their own. If legislation cannot be enacted that gives the public some control over its money and the shameless actions of America's uber-bankers, I have now come to the conclusion that we would be better served by bulldozing the failed banks and eating their corporate officers!

It would be a small return on our investment, but better than nothing at all!

Amazing Joan, How Sweet the Sound!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

It was a cold night in October of 2005. I was sitting front-row-center in the balcony of Liberty Hall, a small and ornate theatre in Lawrence, Kansas, that has been a landmark on Massachusetts Avenue since just after the Civil War. The place was packed – every-seat-full – with old codgers like me, and the doorways were crowded with the young people who worked in the theatre and stood waiting to catch a glimpse of the angelic soprano – a woman who had been an entertainment and political force in America for nearly half a century. The lights dimmed, the audience buzz quickly subsided, and the curtain went up.

And there was Joan Baez, looking much younger than her sixty-four years and resplendent in her buckskin jacket, tee shirt, and jeans. From the tip of my nose to the tip of hers could not have been over twenty-five feet. I had an unobstructed view from one of the best seats in the house! Joan was bookended by two male musicians, one probably half her age, and the other younger still. But while being simply dressed and standing in the center of a minimalist musical trio, the lady dazzled! Her pristine voice rang clear to every corner and crevice of that landmark theatre – and there actually were no bad seats!

As the curtain came up, Joan was strumming her guitar and broke into singing “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” one of her few songs that achieved substantial popular appeal. Within seconds the audience was singing along.

Joan Baez is emblematic of the 1960’s. She was a featured vocalist at Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous March on Washington in 1963 when he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and before the decade ended she was on stage at the Woodstock Festival. Joan had been an angry and outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. At one point she was so controversial that the Daughters of the American Revolution, an organization of fascist biddies, denied her permission to perform in Constitution Hall. Joan’s husband, David Harris, was arrested for evading the draft and spent much of their brief marriage in jail.

There were two ladies from rural Kansas sitting next to me. One said that when she had been a student at a major university in the south in the early 1960s she had bought a ticket for a Joan Baez concert that was being hosted by her school. She was seated in the audience when it was announced that the show was cancelled. Joan had learned just before she was to walk on the stage that the community’s African Americans citizens had been denied access to the show, so she refused to go on. The lady said that she had been waiting over forty years to attend a Joan Baez concert.

I had been extremely fortunate in getting a good seat. I emailed a request a few weeks earlier at the exact moment tickets went on sale. Apparently there was a long line standing in the rain in Lawrence who snapped up most of the downstairs seating, and many others were trying to get tickets on line at the same time as me. The show sold out very quickly. My son, Tim, was attending graduate school at the University of Kansas in Lawrence at that time, and I had wanted to take him to the show so that he could get some sense of what the sixties had been about. But Tim, a promising playwright, had a play in rehearsal and couldn’t get away. Perhaps buying a “single” had been key to my getting the great seat.

During August of 2005 anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and a group of war protesters had been camped out at Crawford, Texas, on the road leading to George Bush’s play ranch. The group busied themselves raising hell and attracting national media attention while the President vacationed a few miles away. Joan Baez was a regular visitor at the month-long encampment. She talked about that protest during her concert in Lawrence, sharing anecdotes about the hardships of camping out in a rustic Texas in August. She said that she had asked Cindy Sheehan about her favorite folksong, and Cindy had replied that it was “Joe Hill.” At that point, Joan began to sing the famous labor ballad to her Lawrence audience, and again, many sang along.

Joan sang hard for two hours, and then it was over. Some fans rushed forward and placed a bouquet of roses on the stage, and she graciously picked them up, thanked everyone, and said her good-nights. It had been a wonderful evening, a connection to my youth with a vibrancy that will echo in my memory for years to come.

America is Transformed!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Barack Obama was declared President-Elect of the United States at 9:00 p.m. Arizona time tonight. Powerful scenes have played out all over America since that announcement was made less than an hour ago: a sea of people awaiting Obama at the victory party in Chicago's Grant Park - including a tearful Jesse Jackson, college students crying with relief and happiness at Spellman College in Atlanta, happy crowds in Harlem, and, my personal favorite, thousands yelling and cheering outside of the White House fence! George Bush can literally hear the future through his bedroom window.

Happy days are here again! May they last a long, long time!

The Goldwaters of Arizona

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

My daughter, Molly, lived in Arizona for a decade before I moved here. A couple of years ago while she was working in hospice care, Molly asked me if I had ever heard of some guy who ran for President named Barry Goldwater. Molly had learned this antiquarian name while working with an older lady who had been one of the good Senator's last caretakers.

Barry Goldwater was the Republican candidate for President in 1964. He was solidly trounced by the incumbent President, Lyndon Baines Johnson. I remember him well. I was sixteen that summer, and I was a Goldwater supporter. That's right. Liberal old Rock was once an enthusiastic partisan for Barry Goldwater, a.k.a. "Mr. Conservative." I even gave a speech in his behalf at a high school mock political rally. (I'm actually not ashamed of that. Another Goldwater supporter that year was a 17-year-old girl in Chicago by the name of Hillary Rodham.)

Goldwater was a political freak, so outside the mainstream of American politics at the time that those who supported him were routinely were laughed at and ridiculed. A week before the election he was given a modicum of respectability through a thirty-minute television speech by an unemployed actor named Ronald Reagan. Goldwater wound up winning his home state of Arizona and five states in the cracker belt of the American south. Two years later Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California, and went on to an even better job in January of 1981. Barry Goldwater went on to serve a couple of more decades in the United States Senate before returning to Arizona for his final days.

The Goldwater family has been in the news this week talking about politics, and from their public pronouncements, they seem to be divided along generational lines similar to those that affected the Macys and the Rodhams and many other families in 1964. Senator Goldwater's niece, C.C. Goldwater, declared yesterday that she and her siblings, and most of her cousins, were supporting the candidacy of Barack Obama. She said clearly:

"Our generation of Goldwaters expects government to provide for constitutional protections. We reject the constant intrusion into our personal lives, along with other crucial policy issues of the McCain/Palin ticket."

She added:

"My grandfather (Paka) would never suggest denying a woman's right to choose. My grandmother co-founded Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the 1930's, a cause my grandfather supported."

C.C. Goldwater also said, in discussing the current campaign, that

..."the Republican brand has been tarnished in a shameless effort to gain votes and appeal to the lowest emotion, fear."

But no good deed goes unpunished, and today Barry Goldwater's son, Barry M. Goldwater, Jr., took issue with his niece, saying that she should work within the Republican party to promote the values that her grandfather stood for. He went on to declare that he supports McCain.

I'll cast my lot with C.C. Something tells me that the man who authored Conscience of a Conservative would not be pleased with the massive debt incurred by the Bush administration. I doubt that Senator Goldwater would be impressed with our Dear Leader abdicating his duty as Commander in Chief and allowing "yes" men in uniform complete latitude in conducting the abysmal war. And I don't really believe that a man whose central philosophy was that the government should intrude in people's lives as little as possible would give two damns about what people did in the privacy of their own bedrooms!

Barry Goldwater was a giant of the times. Bush, Cheney, McCain and Palin all claim to be conservatives, but they are just bungling dwarfs not fit to stand in his shadow. It is time that they all piled into their clown car and drove off into the sunset - because a new day is fixing to dawn in America!

A Nation's Shame Ten Years On

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Matthew Shepard had just barely reached adulthood when he was robbed, pistol whipped, tortured, tied to a wooden fence, and left to die in the lonely, cold Wyoming night a decade ago this week. When a bicyclist found him the next morning his first thought was that he had stumbled upon a scarecrow. Somehow young Matthew had managed to live through the night. He was removed to Ft. Collins, Colorado, where he died on October 12, 1998, without ever regaining consciousness.

Matthew Shepard was a gay man, slight-of-build and mild-of-manner, who was attending the University of Wyoming at Laramie, a backwater community steeped in cowboy tradition and homophobic pride. He undoubtedly had an awareness of the dangers of being openly gay in the middle of a shit-stomping cowboy culture, but on the night of October 6th he got careless. Matthew went to a local tavern for a drink. There he met two other young men, rough, cowboy types, who convinced him that they were also gay and lured him into a pickup truck.

The men, Russell Arthur Henderson and Aaron James McKinney, told Matthew to give them his money. He resisted, and they began to beat him as McKinney drove his pickup out of town, past the Wal-Mart, and into the crisp and clear prairie night. Evidence presented months later in court showed that they struck him in the head at least twenty times with enough force to fracture his skull in six places. As their night of savagery came to an end, they stretched Matthew's arms and tied him to a wooden fence, leaving an image eerily reminiscent of a crucifixion.

Henderson and McKinney initially tried to use a "gay panic" defense, claiming that they feared their young victim was going to make sexual advances toward them and perhaps even commit rape on their larger and tougher bodies. When the futility of that defense started to become apparent, they changed their tactic to stating that the torture and murder was the result of a robbery gone bad. The two had stolen Shepard's wallet containing a twenty dollar bill and his size seven patent leather shoes. Eventually both young men were found guilty and sentenced to two life terms each with no possibility of parole.

Sadly for Matthew's family and friends, the outrages committed against him did not end with his death. The "Reverend" Fred Phelps and his loyal band of Christian fascists from Topeka showed up at Matthew's funeral shouting homophobic epithets and holding signs that said "Got Hates Fags" and "Matthew Shepard is Burning in Hell!" The Phelps circus also came back to town for the trials of their heroes, Henderson and McKinney.

The United States government passed some limited hate crimes legislation in 1994, but the act never addressed crimes related to gender, sexual orientation, or disability discrimination. After the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard new, more comprehensive federal legislation was proposed. It didn't get to the President's desk during the Clinton administration, and Bush has stated an intent to veto the bill if he receives it. McCain has previously voted against the bill, and Obama said that he supports it. One can hope that the Matthew Shepard National Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act will be a priority during President Obama's first term.

The dark days of the Bush administration have witnessed states taking the lead in social legislation when the feds would not act. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have passed some form of hate crimes legislation. Sadly, Wyoming remains one of five that have not. The others are Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, and South Carolina.

It has been ten years since the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard. Some have chosen to learn and grow from the awful circumstances of his death, while others have determined not to let their homophobia and bigotry and rabid "Christianity" be tarnished by the light of reason. If this young man's brief life is to have a lasting meaning, our citizenry needs to recognize the awfulness of hate crimes and resolve to eradicate hate from our lives. That alone might be just recompense for the crucifixion that happened on that cold Wyoming prairie ten years ago this week.

'Splain Yourself, Sarah!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Actor Matt Damon is in a major snit over Sarah Palin's creationist views. Apparently McBush's silly girl holds with some fundamentalist thinking that the Earth is only six thousand and some-odd-years-old (created on a Tuesday, if memory serves), and that humans and dinosaurs co-existed around four thousand years ago - and the fossil record be damned! One version of that report has the Governor of Alaska saying that she knows it's true because she has seen photographs of human footprints intermingled with those of dinosaurs.

I haven't seen any photographs like that, but I must confess to having never encountered a Christian fundamentalist home-schooler's science textbook either. The photos are probably between the chapters detailing how a man can live in the belly of a whale, and the best techniques for walking on water.

The Bush administration has had a great time rewriting science, but something tells me that they are going to be small potatoes compared to the outrages that would be foisted on the scientific community by a McBush-Palin administration.

Hey Sarah, who did Cain and Abel marry? Me and Matt Damon want to know!

Banned Books Week: Day Two War: What Is It Good For?

by Pa Rock
Cultural Commentator

I can vividly recall the most difficult book that I ever read. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 was so bewildering with its many quirky characters and numerous time shifts that I abandoned the effort to complete it twice, each time after finishing a couple of hundred pages. The third attempt was just as mind-muddling, but I resolved to stick with it and master the complex book just so that I could understand what all of the hype was about. And it was in the final hundred pages or so where all of the plots, sub-plots, snippets, and varying time perspectives came together to reveal a meaningful tale about the senselessness of war.

Joseph Heller was a bombardier with the Army Air Corps on an island just off the coast of Italy during World War II. After the War he spent the next six years writing his masterwork, Catch-22, a war story that revolved around Captain Yossarian, a bombardier for the Army Air Corps on an island just off the coast of Italy during World War II.

Heller's book was a tragic, yet humorous, examination of the horrors and shenanigans of war. His Captain Yossarian wanted nothing more than to go home. Each time he came close to completing the required number of bombing missions needed to get sent home, his colonel, who desperately wanted to be a general, would increase the requisite number of missions. (A bait-and-switch gimmick much like the one used by George Bush in the Oil War to keep troops from leaving the service after their time was up through a back-door draft called "stop-loss.")

Milo Minderbinder was the mess officer for Heller's fictional outfit. Milo saw war as a profit making venture. (Think Dick Cheney and Halliburton.) He bought and sold goods on the black market and formed a syndicate of war companies in which he and all of his friends held shares. Milo sold opportunities, and once arranged for the Germans to bomb his own unit - for a fee, of course.

And there were dozens of other strange individuals populating Yossarian's island. Woven together they told a tale of the uselessness, tragedy, and universality of war, albeit in somewhat of an absurd manner. Joseph Heller did not view war in a particularly patriotic light, and that attitude has resulted in Catch-22 often landing on lists of banned books.

Another war book that should be equally objectionable is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, a story of the U.S. military in Vietnam. Like Catch-22, The Things They Carried was also semi-autobiographical in nature, with the central character being an Army company clerk named Tim O'Brien. It is the story of O'Brien's year in Vietnam and the people and situations he encountered. This book is much more readable than Catch-22, and every bit as good - if not better. Both books define war in less than heroic terms. I have not seen The Things They Carried on any banned book lists yet, but it is so good that I'm sure that honor will be forthcoming!

More on Pygmies

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

I had a comment from "Anonymous" on my blog last night about the shortcomings of G.W. Bush and Sarah Palin. Anonymous is my favorite correspondent, and I want to take some space tonight to reply by to what he (or she) had to say. The comment was:

I do not think it is fair to blame all that is going on in government on George Bush. The stage for what is going on was set way before he came into the presidency.

Anonymous, I agree with your statement entirely. The government is an accumulation of sins and mistakes that goes back over two hundred and thirty years. There have also been some marvelous things to come out of our national government: the emancipation of the slaves and social security are two examples.

One of the biggest problems that I have with our current President is that he has been in snooze mode for most of the past eight years and left governing to his half-wit sycophants. But, on those few occasions when he has actually been the decider, he decided wrong - take for example the Oil War in Iraq and his two choices to sit on the Supreme Court.

In the eight years that George Bush has been in office, the foxes have been given complete and unfettered access to the hen house. Anything that could be deregulated has been (hence our current economic mess for which he does deserve much credit), and our national resources have been drilled, and mined, and cut down like there was no tomorrow. The thieves clamored to get it all carted off before this administration left town. The party, they realized, would one day come to an end.

Well, the party is ending. George Bush is not responsible for everything that has happened in government during the time he was in office. Lots of people had a hand in the carnage. But he did fritter away an amazing gift (or theft, depending on your point of view): the Presidency of the United States of America. How sad for him, and how sad for us. He came in with a robust economy, and promptly sent out rebates as a way of starving social programs. Then he used a national tragedy to start a war with a country that had no involvement with that tragedy. And now four thousand American troops are dead - and many other thousands have suffered wounds, homelessness, and broken families, thousands of Iraqi children are dead or maimed, and our national prestige is in the toilet - all so that George Bush could resolve some teen angst issues that he had with his dad. What a sad waste.

I did not say George Bush was responsible for all of the ills of government. That would have been an irresponsible statement. I said that he had been a national embarrassment - and that statement is easily defensible.

Of Pots and Kettles and Pygmies

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

What really scares me about Sarah Palin being one heartbeat away from the Presidency is that I consider her to be George Bush's equal in the realm of foreign policy. When he was first elected President, Mister Bush had been to three foreign countries and was not overly focused on world events. He didn't have to know where Spain was (incidentally, he still doesn't!) because Cheney and Rummy would be there to handle all of that international stuff anyway.

Today in another stunning Bush foreign policy failure, North Korea announced that it is resuming its nuclear program. There's no reason why we should be surprised by their insolent attitude toward the United States. Why, in a fit of diplomatic buffoonery, our Dear Leader once referred to their Dear Leader as a pygmy! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Mister Bush, himself, is mighty short of stature, whether the focus is on ability, wisdom, conscience, or height!

Ms. Palin, with her saber-rattling and ferocious Christian righteousness, looks and sounds an awfully lot like our last national embarrassment. Surely eight years of a bad joke is enough for anyone!

We are better than that.

It's Still the Economy, Stupid!

by Pa Rock

As I have written previously in this forum, I have expended quite a bit of effort in making sure that I have enough of a retirement plan to keep myself from being a burden on my children. To achieve that goal I have made it through life without ever owning a new home, and only once buying a new car (a 1976 Chevrolet Chevette with a sticker price of $2,900). The jobs I have held have never been on the high end of the economic spectrum, but they have always been satisfying to me and of service and benefit to others – and they have always had some form of retirement option.

I am currently drawing one retirement check while working full-time. By the time that I am sixty-six (which gets closer every day) I will be eligible to receive four retirement checks each and every month. In addition to that, I have a 401-K that I have contributed to off and on for years.

Let me tell you about that 401-K:

First of all, it has quite a few options, but they are all based in the stock market. A year ago this month my plan hit a high-water mark of $30,000 (not much, but I do have four back-up retirement checks). Today that fund is down to just over $23,000 and still heading south. This past Monday when the Dow dropped over 500 points, I lost twenty cents less than $666 in value in my 401-K. (Was that a message from God, or what? I’ve got to quit injecting my views on religion into this blog!) Yesterday, the stock market went up a little, but I must have the wrong stocks in my 401-K because it continued to fall. Today was another big loser on Wall Street.

At some point my 401-K may extinguish itself. I hope not. I trust that my government will, sooner or later, begin making wise economic decisions that aren’t based solely on the protection of privilege, and the stock market will recover. But if that doesn’t happen and my 401-K ends up with a zero balance – I still have my four retirement checks – one of which will be Social Security.

Most people in the United States will eventually qualify for a Social Security check of some amount. It was originally meant to give the elderly a way to live on their own without being a burden to their family or being carted off to one of the numerous poor farms that were prevalent before and during the Great Depression. Today, however, the checks are generally too small to guarantee independence to the elderly. They require another source of income, such as a retirement check. And most companies have either raided their retirement funds before declaring bankruptcy, or they have gone with the far cheaper option of contributing a low level of matching funds to a 401-K.

And what happened to the value of those 401-K’s? (See above!)

What does Dear Leader want to do to improve the Social Security system? Why, allow individuals to invest “their” money in the stock market? And what does John McBush want to do to improve Social Security? He supports privatizing it – putting that money under the control of our trained business class? Or perhaps Halliburton!

Our 401-K’s are going down the toilet now because of the greed and corruption of America’s world-class business leaders. Do we really want to give them access to our Social Security funds also?

If you two goobers (Bush and McBush) want to help the elderly to have an independent and secure life, force businesses to redistribute their wealth. Corporate America needs a whole lot less money for the CEO’s and Board Members, and decent wages and benefits (including health and retirement plans) for the people at the bottom of the food chain who are actually doing the work that produces America’s wealth! If the government has money to throw away, such as on subsidies to Bear Stearnes, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG, why not redirect it into subsidies for good companies who are willing to treat their employees like human beings?

And keep your grubby hands off of Social Security!