My Daughter Lives in Hattiesburg, MS

August 30, 2005:

Hurricane Katrina has devastated Mississippi and Louisiana. My daughter Kristina and her family live in Petal, a suburb of Hattiesburg, and the news from there isn't good. Living as I must, there's not a damned thing I can do. I haven't even the money I'd need to drive there, and couldn't get there if I could drive. Roads are littered with fallen trees and building debris. Knight Errant can't even go to the aid of his daughter. How do I feel? Nothing. Numb. It's been that way for a long time. When you're running before the government's hounds, you haven't time for anything but survival. You tell yourself there'll be time for all that once the war is over. Except the war is never over when the U.S. is your enemy. I couldn't, for instance, do anything when first one wife, then a second, went to another man for everything women need (in the U.S., of course, that's mostly money). I couldn't get to a son's wedding (I was recovering from being rammed by a car, so stiff and sore—eyes swollen shut, too—that's I could barely move). I missed my youngest son's graduation party (made the graduation, but fell asleep in the stands—drove for fourteen hours to get there), too. Cops stopped me three times on that trip alone. Every time a family event occurred, the kind a normal father would attend, I was recovering from a bullet wound, from having been run down by a car, or the latest seizure of everything I owned. No car. No money. I was living off the fields, the lakes and rivers. So I lost my family. Another tax. Oh, I still know who they are. I even know where a couple of them are, like Krissie. But my family all seemed to kind of forget about me, too. Too dangerous, I guess. IRS takes your money and property right off the bat, and the U.S. version of Americans have different priorities than the citizens of most other places. When my family heard stories like those I tell in my books or here on the website, stories about other people who were viciously devastated (What's the difference between a hurricane and a government agency? Check with the survivors of Ruby Ridge or Waco—not much, in other words) by "Internal Revenue" collection, they did what they had to do, I guess. They got numb, too. Still, they were always on my mind . . . Like Krissie.
In the Land of the Free.

Perspective, the Fundamental Basis of Logic and Reasoning.

For some time now, certain of my better educated (masters and doctor-degreed) friends have insisted that I devote some of this site to logical and mathematical exposure of the media's propagandist approach to news. A recent segment on the O'Reilly Factor, Fox News, night before last has convinced me to comply. I suppose the fact that I was watching something like that requires some kind of explanation. The fact is, I've been helping a high school teacher friend find examples of media bias and propagandist mind-bending, and that's how I happened to watch O'Reilly hectoring one "guest" after another (ill manners seem to be characteristic these days of the petty intellectual). In O'Reilly's affected reasoning, after all, to watch and listen is to lend support.

The fact is, viewers of this kind of insidious and Goebbelsian persuasion might easily expose it for the mendacity it is. So why don't they? Why would anyone choose to employ a calculator or computer, for instance, that clearly functions seldom and poorly, and gives wrong answers and faulty information? The easily demonstrated fact is that propagandists like Fox News and the other major television networks exploit the benighted educational state of the "American" (there are thirty-four nations in this hemisphere, you know) public. Some years ago, while traveling for the United States Judo Association, I did a number of surveys in the nature of those first reported by columnist James Kilpatrick. I found that one person in 50,000 could so much as define the word "epistemology." That, for the reader's information, is the study of the nature of knowledge, its origin, limits, foundations, and validity. Logic, like epistemology, is a philosophic science, the science of correct thinking. In fact, it might be good to list the related schools of philosophy, in order that we might know which of the several we happen to be using for a tool in what follows. The philosophic sciences are:

Ontology, the science of the nature of being "in general." Epistemology, the science dealing with the problems of knowledge. Psychology, the science of dealing with "rational" or "philosophical" psychology, dealing with man as a "being." Theodicy, the science of God, First Cause, and Creator - sometimes called "natural theology." Logic, the science of correct thinking. Ethics, the science dealing with human acts, sometimes called "moral philosophy." Politics, the science of man's social ends, including the forms of state organization. Axiology, the science which studies the general nature of "value." Aesthetics, the science which studies value judgments having to do with beauty as distinguished from the moral or useful.

Basically, moreover, there are just three laws of logic:
1. The Law of Contradiction; i.e., contradictory statements (per ex., A is B; A is not B are contradictory statements) cannot both be true.
2. The Law of Identity; i.e., everything is what it is.
3. The Law of Excluded Middle; i.e., of two contradictory statements, one must be true, the other false.

If you think these trite, you haven't been listening to our media, or for that matter, our present administration and their bewildered and muddled leader (the man is a veritable reincarnation of Mrs. Malaprop). Next, we need to recognize the classic fallacies of logic. They are too many to list here, but a good (excellent, in fact) dissertation on them may be found at http://www.fallacyfiles.org/. Today's politically sycophant media is a study, and an object lesson, in logical fallacy. Take all the logical fallacy from the reasoning implied in television's ubiquitous commercials, and there would be little left. The same can be said for political—especially presidential—campaigns.

Finally, mathematics, especially in its statistical application, is a devastating measure where combating the relentless propagandist lying of business, the media, and the federal version of government are concerned. I have already used Fox News' O'Reilly Factor host Bill O'Reilly's muddled logic having to do with Jane Turner and Cindy Sheehan as an example of challenged reasoning and the rhetorical pratfall that resulted (that his redneck pseudo-patriot fans will nonetheless continue to dote on him merely serves to demonstrate the necessity for what I propose to do here). Let's begin with math. Daily, we are regaled with numbers, most having to do with federal spending of taxpayer dollars, that are simply incomprehensible. They are incomprehensible—and their recitation to a stupefied public therefore cynical in the extreme—because all comprehension is dependent upon perspective. Without perspective, certain knowledge about the identity and value of things, there is schizophrenia. Insanity.

Allow me to elucidate. How much is a billion dollars? That will it buy? What does it cost (all money value relates to what is required to earn—i.e., exchange effort or property for it). When a man like Bill Gates is said to earn $65,000 an hour, what does it mean? What is the value of $484 a second? What can one do with that amount of money? We are told that Iraq is worth the nearly 2,000 lives we have paid for it. What is Iraq worth in dollars? What is life worth? To whom?

Let us consider, since I mentioned it, Iraq and its costs. First, what is the life of a soldier worth? Well, a jury found recently that the life of 59 year old Robert Ernst was worth $253,000,000—two hundred, fifty three million dollars. That jurors also found the manufacturers of the painkiller VIOXX negligent might be compared to the now exposed errors (or "torts"—a "tort" being the breach of a civil duty owed to another, and requiring a response in "damages"—money) in the administration's reasons for acting in a manner which resulted in the soldiers' deaths. Using the Ernst case as a modulus (he was 59, meaning he had much less life, and therefore value, left than most of the soldiers in question), the lives of 2,000 (the U.S. admits 253 "private military company"—i.e., CIA— soldiers have been killed) of our young men and women are worth approximately, and at very least, $506,000,000,000—five hundred, six billion dollars.

In other words, were the parents of the young men and women killed and injured in Iraq to sue successfully in an American court, they might expect to be awarded $506,000,000,000 by the jury.

If we include in our costs the monetary "damages" owed our wounded soldiers by their negligent, culpable, or malfeasant Department of Defense commanders, we might also use our civil legal system and jury awards for injury as a modulus. Without explaining the methods plaintiff's attorneys use for assessing damages (they are well known and promulgated), we may assess the average damages per soldier at $1,000,000. Inasmuch as approximately 6,000 soldiers have been wounded, we have a figure of $6,000,000,000—six billion dollars. The total liabilities having only to do with personal loss and suffering, therefore, is $512,000,000,000—five hundred, twelve billion dollars.

Material costs thus far are in excess of $200,000,000,000—two hundred billion dollars. Additionally, the US has pledged $100,000,000,000—one hundred billion (that's absurd, incidentally, witness the costs of a single hurricane here recently). Thusly, if we included only these casts (and there are obviously many more), the cost of the war thus far is $812,000,000,000—eight hundred, twelve billion dollars.

Now, for further assessment, we must return to the axiological question of value. To the disinterested taxpayer—I mean the "American" willing to spend the life of his neighbors' son or daughter—our $812,000,000,000 figure may be acceptable. Everything, to a capitalist, after all, has its monetary price. But what is the value of a son or daughter to his or her mother? Or his or her father? What is the axiological value of a future brain or heart surgeon, a Doctor Jonas Salk, a state-of-the-art Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez or Mother Theresa, to our society?

And so on. What is the axiological value of U.S. pride, the need to win? Or the need to evade having to admit error, and hide defeat? How much does that depend upon identification of who is paying the costs? What are the ethical considerations—what has the Iraq war and our manner of justifying it done to our national mores and morality? How does one justify the killing and maiming of tens—now hundreds, actually—of thousands of Iraqi citizens, in order to save what is now clearly a smaller number from death and torture at the hands of a dictator? We have now reported the deaths of more persons due the war than that claimed before the war due Saddam Hussein's brutality. What are the psychological considerations—what has the war and our manner of justifying it done to the mentality and world view of our children? What are the political considerations—what has the Iraq war's acceleration of the U.S. presidency's rise to imperial status done to our legal system and government structure? How much damage has been done to our confidence, and therefore, our trust in government (no one, not even his political or fraternal supporters, not even his siblings, actually trusts a convicted liar).

What is the logic of attacking Iraq? To save "American" lives? To prevent or reduce monetary or economic losses? To demonstrate the tactical skill and projected power of our military? To establish a democracy in an Arab country? To fight the necessary battle elsewhere? The casualty figures due the war are here. Do the numbers. The economic and dollar costs are here. Do the numbers. Even the "doctored," "cooked," and "spun" media reports of the war's conduct thus far make the relative competence and efficiency of our military clear and ineluctable. Consider the history of the Islamic nations and peoples, read their religious works regarding democracy. There is no logical way to reconcile the two. See the three fundamental laws of logic here. Finally, to split our forces by sending a large part of our defense forces to Iraq, spending hundred of billions of defense dollars there, while leaving our gates and borders at home open to hordes of aliens breaching them and refusing to spend even niggardly amounts for prevention requires no Vegetius, de Saxe, Frederick the Great, or Clausewitz for analysis.

This, then, has been an effort to provide perspective. Perspective is the sine qua non for intelligent reasoning. There is no way to measure anything without a known standard for comparison. Let me conclude with the following observation. As a nation, we do stupid things like invade Vietnam and Iraq—Grenada and Panama (did you realize we suffered more casualties in Grenado than the Cubans did?—see what I mean by a dissimulating media?), too—because the government and its sycophant media engage relentlessly in destroying perspective (the reason you don't see the coffins coming home from Iraq). In the future, I will do all I can to provide perspective. I will, for instance, compute how many of the world's sick and starving children could be saved from their plight by the cost of one bombing raid, aircraft carrier, or the like. I will explain the effect on our economy of a single member of society who "earns" five hundred dollars a second. I will calculate the effective cost of legislation like the new energy bill on the price of gas at the pump (Did you know that the price of gas in the U.S. per gallon is more than nine dollars? You've already paid more than six dollars, in order to make the price today only three. It's the capitalism, dopey.) Et cetera. Perspective. It's time someone told you—"America."

Teaching NO SPIN to an English class in Texas

My assistance to the high school teacher seeking examples of media propaganda and opinion control is getting interesting (I have to watch tenebrous and benighted "info-tainment" bloviating and blarney like the "No-Spin Zone," but it's for a good cause). Last night, "Correspondent" O'Reilly took Jane Turner (I think, we came in on the middle of the segment, and I don't know the lady), a former FBI agent, to task for her intended "support" of certain supposedly (How the hell do you know if a guy like this says so? As the old Spanish proverb says, "En boca del mentiroso lo cierto se hace dudoso"—In the mouth of a liar even what is certain is doubtful.) "left wing" factions. The Left, of course, is EVIL. Anything that agrees with them is, therefore, EVIL.

Now, mind you, O'Reilly doesn't really believe that. He's not stupid (not many are that stupid). The talk show host recognizes the logical fallacy he's arguing, but accuracy, much less truth, are not his purpose. He is a propagandist. Have look at his reasoning. It says that one shouldn't point out that the king is naked, if someone evil - an outlaw, for instance - is also saying it, that if I see someone in trouble, I should not go to their aid if someone who espouses something bad is also going to help. By helping the guy in need, I support the outlaw's cause.

Of course, if everyone actually believed that, especially where the matter in question is concerned, there would be no opposing view. The Bush League would continue feeding our soldiers' bodies into the pyre of sacrifice being offered up to the great god greed and its Halliburton-like devout. Everyone would be happy, because there would be no doubt that we were doing the right thing. No one but me sees BIG BROTHER in this?

Mr. O'Reilly also supports his argument with the assertion that Fox News has become very popular, and he equates popularity with power. That's also exemplary of the kind of logic and reason you find on the media today. The fallacy is that of Argumentum ad Populum, sometimes called the bandwagon or authority of the many fallacy. That MacDonald's and Budweiser are very popular certainly doesn't mean they have great food or beer. Pornography is very popular, as are cocaine and heroine. Like Budweiser, this stuff is insipid pap, and it serves no one but emotion-driven, vacant heads. It's painful to watch, realizing that "Americans" have become too stupid to know better.

But the kids here will have a chance to learn the diction, rhetoric, and composition of propaganda. They may wonder, too, how a republic is possible where the people aren't permitted to know the truth. Well, here in Oceania, "Freedom is slavery; Ignorance is Strength."

Oh, one more thing. Ever notice how you'll never hear the body count (six today; sixty for the month) on shows like the NO SPIN Zone? No pictures of the caskets coming off the plane. No mention of the fact that many of the wounded will also die. No mention that the casualty figures don't include the private military (that's "security, " mind you).

You won't hear anything about Halliburton's latest excesses in billing to the taxpayer, either. And this is the NO SPIN Zone.

See why I say the government NEVER tells the truth?

Today we sent a mother and her daughter into combat

Today we sent a mother and her daughter into combat in Iraq. I'm sure no modern nation has ever sunk that low, and I need to say to my friends overseas everywhere that I have never been so ashamed of my country in my life. Even I never dreamed we would do anything so despicable. All I can say is, "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make insane." We've caught a disease that calls itself "feminism," and it may prove fatal.

I watched Bill O'Reilly last night (I'm helping a high school teacher obtain examples of media biases, staged "conservative"-"liberal" disputes, and other government propaganda techniques). On the Cindy Sheehan matter, O'Reilly is obviously uneasy. It must be hard for any decent man with integrity to read the lines he's handed by his masters, but he's paid well. And the bottom line obviously matters a lot to Bill.

First, however, to brand the woman whose son was killed in Iraq a liberal, it is necessary to commit the logical fallacy of division. Because anyone holds one opinion that supports one ideology, religion, or point of view, or the like does not make that person a supporter or member of that ideology, religion, or political point of view. Generally, it means he is a moderate. Or just someone who thinks.

Secondly, the fact that Sheehan may have changed her mind toward the Bush League and its mendacious methods where Iraq is concerned actually speaks well for her credibility. The ability to change one's mind is usually an indicator higher intellect and integrity. Scientists, for instance, do that all the time, and it is a hallmark of their method. They pride themselves in that. I happen to pride myself on the ability to do that. It requires iron will, sometimes. I can't help noting that polls indicate that a whole lot of people are changing their minds where the war and Mr. Bush are concerned.

The religious, the fanatical, and the like do not change their minds. They pride themselves in that.

I'm encouraged somewhat by the fact that the public here seems to be changing its mind where the Bush League and its war are concerned. Of course, we're taking a fearsome beating, and that has a way of changing the mind, too, you know. On the other hand, maybe that means the folks are beginning to come back to the good, common sense I always attributed to my country. I hope so. Next, we'll be sending children to combat.

Natalee Holloway and a "challenge"

Okay Tim, let's see indeed. If there's anyone in Aruba, or anyone who is very familiar with the place by virtue of having been there, who's reading this, give me an e-mail (judoknighterrant@yahoo.com). There are some questions I have, things the media haven't mentioned - either haven't the smarts to so much as consider or have to be politically correct about - and I might be able to help learn what's happened. It's pretty clear by now that she's not on the island (unless she's alive, and hiding or being hidden), and that suggests (strongly) the white slave trade our government covers for so resolutely.

Of parallel interest, significant and indicative in that regard, is the matter of the teachers who allegedly (assuming the guys were that lucky) had sex with their students. The latest case , that of Pam Turner, has men across the country looking at one another and shaking their heads in wonderment (she abused them?). Hell, we're all hoping to be abused like that.

The nation's ideology-addled - the feminists and femi-nazis, I mean - cluck in vindicated satisfaction. Others - mostly metrosexual "males" or those masquerading as such, I presume - grouse that had the teacher been a man, she would have gotten ten years. They're right of course, but it's far beside the real point of it all.

Folks, we now have proof positive that the nation and society have become completely unhinged, FUBAR, where the subject of sex is concerned. Raving radical feminism has now forced us by means of its "political correct" armlock on our legislators and courts to equate sex between an underage male and an adult female with sex between an underage female and an adult male. "Abused?" "Battery?" "Endangering the welfare of a child?" You're insane.

I happen to have insight, in that my own first sexual experience was with an older woman. She was in her forties, I was fourteen or fifteen. She happened to be a teacher, though not in my school (I was baby-sitting for her at the time). We had sex on a regular basis for several months thereafter. "Abused?" The night it happened, I had been fantasizing - for hours and without hope, I thought - sex with the beautiful and voluptuous woman. "Endangering the welfare of a child?" You must be crazy! How the hell was I hurt?

People, this has gone far enough. For what I should think would be obvious reasons, one may decide that a mature man shouldn't have sex with a girl who is under a certain age. I should think you might think that better than if he were the same age, less likely that they might get her pregnant, but what the hell, I guess you consider that the older guy has a better chance of taking advantage of his age . . . or whatever the hell you're talking about.

You can even - you have, matter of fact - make homosexualality legal and accepted. Who the hell should care? I don't know how you know what's age is right. Or wrong. You just talk to god, I guess. Both my grandmothers and my mother were sixteen when they married. I guess that makes my grandfathers and my father rapists. The grandmothers didn't seem to feel abused, both stayed married to the men who raped them more than fifty years. Mom and dad divorced, but that was about money, not sex. I was the product of rape, its seems. I can even accept that you might not want women who teach your sons to have sex with them. I'm damned if I know why you should so insistent on that (other than talking to god, of course), but the arbitrariness of it is okay, so long as you recognize it as that.

The trouble, anymore, is that you don't. And I get more scared daily of what nitwit nostrum one or the other of your ideologues and pressure groups might next impose on all of us. And me.

Oh, by the way: Mary Latourneau, another teaher who had sex with her student, has also had to two babies by her "victim . . ." She got out of prison, where we put her on account of it all, a while ago. The judge has forbidden her to see her husband (they married her 'victim" while she was in prison. Along Latourneau's route from prison, men held up signs, "I'm 18, baby - take me home."

"Insanity is relatively rare among indivicuals," Friederich Nietzsche observed, "but among societies and nations it is the rule."

August 10, 2005:
The latest "dog that didn't bark" revelation comes from "Able Danger," still another (U.S. Army, this time) of the myriad of super-secret snoopers into the public's private affairs. They knew Atta and Company were plotting the WTC attack, couldn't do anything about it, couldn't tell the FBI, and—here's the part that makes you want to toss your cookies—it's all because there were laws prohibiting it. They're government, and the government never violates the law . . . My God—how cynical can you get?! If they string the "revelations" out a little more, no one will be able to remember what they're talking about. On the other hand, imagine how it all would have sounded if we'd heard it all at once. Don't hold your breath until that happens . . .

Meanwhile, a couple of our "führers" (it's the German word, I speak German, and our politicians bellow border to border, sea to sea, that they're "leaders") are on TV, selling their books concerning why the "dog didn't bark." Just coincidence, the timing. Of course.

I'm pretty underwhelmed about the dog. "I told you so" gets boring even for the guy who told you so. If I'm overwhelmed it's at overweening chutzpah of the CIA, Halliburton, the IMC (Industrial Military Complex) and their latest commercials effort. Hey, this stuff promotes war and that's their business (yeah, I also know that means warmongering—sometimes, definitions can be a bitch, can't they?). So we have the latest casualty figures from Iraq and Afghanistan on the flow strip (if at all), and the smoke screens like the Supreme Court nominee "battle" in Congress, Natalee Hollways's mom harassing the media's scapegoat for covering our complicity in the white slave trade, and the odious like every ten minutes all day. Like the casualty figures, things like the fact of the Bush League's cut of spending on our own highways, in order that he can blow up Iraq highways is carefully mollified by the best in the propaganda business, hidden behind the stench of some other red-herring "news." The way they mix this in order that George can get lemonade out of all his lemons is truly impressive. If we could only put these guys to solving the illegal immigration problem, we'd have something!

(Folks, in Texas we're being swamped under the veritable torrent of these people. The Bush League's invitation has flat driven them bonkers It's like the federals are holding a one-cent sale on tacos. Hell, we can't even handle all the damned old wreck cars they abandon when our totally overwhelmed sheriff and police departments look their way, much less the way they wipe their asses and throw the toilet paper in the corner, piss on the floor in the bathrooms (hitting a urinal instead of the sidewalk seems to require a little practice), and steal everything they can carry, haul, or drag away. Vicente, maybe you could include that in your next pamphlet instructing them how to evade the Border Patrol. Tell them the toilet paper goes in the stool (el excusado, señor), and setting up a few practice urinals doesn't seem like too much to ask.

The feds tell us it's "against the law"—in the U.S., isn't everything, anyway?—for us to stop or arrest—even report illegal aliens, it seems—and you'll be arrested if you do. Meanwhile, though, it's okay to give them food or money . . . Or a job.

Excuse me, but having relied with some success upon logic and reason all its time, my mind always seems to overheat in the effort of trying to understand the orchestrations and machinations of the federal form of government. If you can detect any thread, even a shred, or rationality in any of this, I'd enjoy to hear from you. Remember, though, I think.)

You know, I can't get over what's in that parenthetical aside. Here we are having the odiously-named Patriot Act rammed down our throats, we're paying new billions for a new "Homeland Security" Agency, we're invading country after country in a supposed effort to hunt down (or is it up?) terrorists, and the rest—and we're offering illegal aliens free medical care and medicine, social security benefits (that's while the program promises to go broke shortly), protection from the citizenry they're trying to maim and kill (to say nothing of bankrupt), education and social programs even our own citizen can't get, and a party every Cinco de Mayo day? Have you heard the old expression FUBAR?

So. What do we do about it? The people we have put in charge of all these things they're bungling and covering for with clever think-tank propaganda and behavioral science are obviously incompetent (you hire a mechanic, he takes the car apart and can't figure how to put it back together again, what is that?). They bungle everything they touch. They sell us out to the highest bidder, every time they get a chance (WHAT IN HELL DO YOU THINK LOBBYING IS ABOUT?). They cruise the world, pissing people off, picking fights, and looking for excuses to make war (I still want to know why it is that people like Halliburton are permitted to profit by a war that supposedly protects them and their interests as citizens), then sock it to us for the "security" they provide to protect us from the enemies they make.

What a racket! Profit by blowing it up, then profit by re-building it. Pick a fight and invite terrorists into the bedroom, then charge billions to stand guard. Which you don't—you just SAY you do—because you can exploit the "terrorist" after he's done his thing.

And behind our backs, in the halls of government and the industry controlling it, they call us "assholes." Even when they're being nice (meaning in public), they call us "subjects." When the Potomac's plenipotentiaries call you a citizen, his buddies in Gucci Gulch (the halls of Congress) are sneering. So is he.

And we deserve it. Peoples always get the government they deserve. That simple.

Already forty more this month . . .

Dogs that don't bark, governments that don't work, and the odious like

A CIA commander says we let Osama bin Laden get away. Really? That would be like the "dog that didn't bark" before the World Trade Center, wouldn't it? I'm not going to comment—for anyone bright enough to be reading this, it shouldn't be necessary—beyond the observation that here's an opportunity for those who want to wake up and look around. The kind of lateral, outside the box (the box being orthodoxy and political correctness) thinking a detective or scientist does. Or a guy who survived a criminal attack by the government . . .

One method used frequently by logicians and other Sherlockian types is to carry an hypothesis to it's logical conclusion. Consider, for instance, what would have happened if they had captured Osama. Think of all the fun Halliburton and the Bush League would have missed. That might be a good start on you way to a clear head.

The Speech, Aruba, Iraq; and connections

Twenty-seven more. Dead. Ended. No more life. More than eighteen hundred. Every morning, the first thing I do upon rising is turn on NPR, in order to learn - straight from the shoulder without the pap - if my friends have been killed. Dreary. I have a friend fighting in Iraq, you see.

Every weekend, it's perhaps worse. At the coffee shop my friends and I frequent, I'm reminded again and again that days before we invaded Iraq on the asinine but apparently successful pretext that it had something to do with "terror" and the World Trade Center attack, I predicted all but exactly what would happen and where we would be now. A couple of friends are pretty close to demanding that I do something.

This weekend, it'll be worse. I'll ask my friends how many letters they've written in order to add their voices to those opposing the Bush League and its self-serving war. I get some hang-dog looks. "Americans" - there are 34 nations in the Americas, you know - are a people singularly concerned with only their interests, just like their miscreant president. They just talk over coffee. They forgot to write the letters they promised me they would. But they do worry about Lonnie, our police officer friend who has gone to Iraq. That's nice.

Lonnie was back a couple of months ago, by the way, on leave. I think we made his time with us a little difficult. When we asked how things were going, he struggled before he said, "It's . . . difficult." Lonnie is a loyal soldier, you see. He was also one of those who heard me predict before we invaded what would happen and what's happening now. It's difficult, all right.

Meanwhile, corporate "America's" hideous profit soar. Industrial Military Complex companies like Halliburton's profits are not announced, of course. Neither does anyone - except me, I guess - wonder how anyone can stoop so low as to profit from a war being fought by your own country. Isn't their freedom being protected too? If our families can contribute the bodies and lives of our young people, why can't our corporations contribute their goods and services? If was isn't profitable, doesn't that guarantee - especially in a capitalist nation - that there will be found every possible pretext for war?

Remember the reasons we were given for our being in Iraq? Remember the truth?

Remember Luis Diaz? Diaz got out of jail today after twenty years. DNA has finally proved he wasn't guilty. Why do I mention Luis? I mention him because his life meant little or nothing to the rest of us, either. Like soldiers and others who have no way to defend themselves - people who can't afford to pay lawyers whose hourly fee is more than a social security dependent person's monthly income - against the vicious mad dog that is government, Luis Diaz lost his life. A lot of it, anyway.

But I can't get my friends to so much as write a letter in protest. And that, my fellow "Americans," is why more than eighteen hundred of our best are dead, hundreds - no, thousands - maimed for life. That is why our legal system is a bad accident looking for somewhere to happen (and that while our addled media bloviates concerning Aruba and its handling of the Holloway matter). That is why a judge was obliged recently to order a state to provide proper medical care to its inmates (while our government and is sycophant media can get away with continuing to rail about prison conditions in Cuba).

You don't have the time to write a letter. You didn't have the time to do even the tiny amount of research that would have been necessary to disprove lies as obvious as an elephant in the bathroom where Iraq was concerned. You don't build weapons of mass destruction in your garage, you know. Neither do you grow bacteriological or chemical weapons in your bathtub. Your government has been bragging for decades that they can read your license plate from outer space - remember? They can (and they do) bug your phone from there, too.

We have the government we deserve. Our president personifies the nation he "leads." He's everything we are, a clumsy, muddled, but rich kid who buys whatever he wants, then ruins it (he did that all the way to the White House - why are we surprised that he's doing the same there?)

But you don't know history. It's another failing common to the people who are too apathetic to write their government a letter. So you won't realize that it's only been since WW-2, where we fought a character who called himself "the Fuehrer," that everyone in government started calling himself a "leader." "Fuehrer" means leader, you know. Do you wonder what that's about? I don't. I read history.