"It's Only a Song . . ?"

I suppose it’ll be all right if I first point out here that I’m a strong son of a bitch, a guy who stood up to everything the government of the most powerful and ruthless nation on the planet could throw at him.

But I cry sometimes. It isn’t often, and when I do, it’s almost always a song that does it. Whitney Houston or Dolly Parton singing “I Will Always Love You” does it every time. I heard the song again on TagWorld – I can never resist playing it – and I’m sitting here blinking to see as I type this.

You see, of everything they took from me, none was like, not even close, to Karen. Words always fail me when it comes to her, and this won’t be an exception. When I search for words, strange enough I always come to another girl. Beverly.

Beverly was my high school sweetheart, my first wife, and she died when we were twenty-three. A poet, perhaps, could describe pain like that, but I can’t. It was years, long, agonizing ones, before the memory of that sweet face and person didn’t erase my mind and awareness of everything around. I’m strong, like I said - disciplined by a German nobleman grandfather to a level you couldn’t possibly understand – and that didn’t happen often, either. The song then was “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”

Losing Karen was, I think, even worse. Our marriage pounded by IRS and the United States, my wife tormented daily by telephone calls from federal revenuers pretending to be all manner of creditor, she found sanctuary with another man, one with the kind of principles that would let him take advantage of my – and her - plight. You won’t understand sufficiently if I don’t also point out that I didn’t owe the government taxes or anything else, a fact determined years later in court. You probably need also to know that for some reason Karen and her paramour took particular delight in tormenting me with their relationship, flaunting their illicit affair – we were still married and his wife was in a hospital, dying of cancer – publicly.

And I acted very badly. Stalked continuously, almost relentlessly, by both the man and members of his family, I did everything I could to retaliate. The one honorable thing I managed was restraining myself when he forced me off the road with his car and attacked me with blows and kicks. Even then, I might have lost my head, done what the government was apparently hoping for, and given in to murderous rage.

I might have, that is, had I not learned of my son’s attempts at suicide, and gone to get him - to do whatever it would take to save him. I did that, and he recovered. But it cost me the last of everything the United States would take from me, take just because they can.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I’ve heard it ad nauseam. “Unbelievable!” I’ve heard it and I know that it’s just the American version of the “German excuse” (after the war in Europe, Germans would tell interrogators, Ich habe nicht davon gewusst – I didn’t know anything about it).

It just happens that everything I’m saying is the truth, and among everything I lost were the only things I ever really wanted.

You see, to understand, you must know even further that I never in my life ever wanted anything more than simply to be a husband and father. In youth and as enamored of sports heroes as any boy, I would go to the anniversaries section of the newspaper even before the sports page, in order to read about the champions there. I would study the faces and expressions of the couples, even their clothes. I wanted to learn what it was about them that made them so successful at living. And loving.

Oh, yeah – I suppose that’s “unbelievable,” too. It just happens that it’s also the truth. Both of my parent’s parents were married for more than fifty years. I thought they were superhuman. Sometimes, these days, I wonder if they weren’t.

But I wasn’t man enough to accomplish anything of what I wanted most. Oh, I made staggering amounts of money – one million, seven hundred sixty-seven thousand, two hundred thirty nine dollars and seventeen cents in a single month, once – owned cars and planes, traveled, and did everything the very rich do. I rose to the top of my profession. My favorite sport, too.

And it cost me everything I really wanted. Internal Revenue Service and the lust for power and wealth of the military industrial corporations they serve wasn’t satisfied with having destroyed my businesses and marriages – not even with having taken steps to assure that I would never be gainfully employed again. Uh-uh. They wanted to silence me – for ever, if possible.

When relentless harassment – stops (more than a hundred in a few years) by police and law enforcement incited with falsified records and reporting, burglaries, run-down attacks (six) with motor vehicles, muggings, and more – had made it clear that I must, I broke off all contact with my family. “Conspiracy,” for instance, is the easiest crime possible to prove; prove one member of any group guilty of anything, you will have proved conspiracy by all to any jury today.

This, I had already learned, is a nation vicious as only capitalism – greed exalted to the highest possible degree – can make it. I knew it was only a matter of time before IRS took the war on my family to the next level.

So a song written by Dolly Parton says the rest:

“If I should stay
I would only be in your way.
So I'll go but I know
I'll think of you
Every step of the way.

“And I will always love you.
I will always love you.
You my darling you . . .

“Bittersweet memories,
That is all I'm taking with me.
So goodbye, please don't cry.
We both know I'm not what you need.

I hope life treats you kind
And I hope you have
All you've dreamed of.
And I wish for you joy
And happiness.
But above all this,
I wish you love.”


And when I hear it . . . Well, I’m not a poet.

Revisiting Orwell's "1984" - Our "Fair and Balanced" Media

Well, gosh – here we go again. Another of the great minds agrees with stumbling, mumbling, Neanderthal me. This one says his piece in language so close to the language I used when I said it long before – three years in this case, but usually more recently – that my friends all think these guys are reading my website. Rita, my wife, will never be convinced otherwise.

Actually, it may indeed be coincidence. Most of this stuff isn’t rocket science (which, even if it were, I’d still get right), you know, and – since it’s still just logic and math – unbiased people have to get the same answers. Two and two are four, whether you’re adding or multiplying, in any language. It doesn’t make any difference whether you’re Democrat or Republican, either.

Yes, I know you THINK it does, but it doesn’t.

The latest example of what I’m talking about is today’s story that Comptroller General of the U.S. David M. Walker is warning us of “looming disaster for America's economy if an effort isn't made to control spending.”

Well, now. General Walker heads the Government Accountability Office (talk about your oxymorons), the supposedly independent, nonpartisan Congressional watchdog that evaluates the spending of American tax dollars and advises Congress on improving government programs. I don’t know how they manage to say stuff like that with a straight face - I always expect a punch line right after something like “independent, nonpartisan” - but it IS the kind of thing they always say.

Anyway, Walker says the “decision-makers” – his terminology, again; I couldn’t say that with a straight face, either (the words “decision-maker” always makes me think of Iraq and how we got into that mess) – “suffer from tunnel vision and myopia.”

Stop right there. It sounds like he’s on our side, doesn’t it? “Independent?” “Non-partisans?” DAMN – you haven’t been paying attention!

I thought by now you’d recognize a CIA-style “limited hangout” when you saw it; guess not. Walker says that “getting the budget under control could even require steep tax increases if action isn't taken now.” NOW do you get it?

What’s this, the latest “limited hangout” about? Yes, Mordecai, it’s about justifying more tax raises and concomitant impoverishment of even more people.

But this guy is good – with the rhetoric, anyway. Among the Goebbels-ian deceit he puts into his talk is this little gem. Asked during the course of these U.S. Senate hearings about President Bush’s cost estimates for sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq this year, Walker said. “It is unclear what much of the $5.6 billion is to be spent on."

Yeah, we noticed that, too – and it didn’t take a Ph.D. in accounting, either.

At any rate, the news story emanating from the hearings had the Comptroller saying that since the year 2000, America's total social insurance commitments and other fiscal obligations have increased to $50 trillion from $20 trillion, a number representing four times the nation's total economic output.

Book-keepers like Walker don’t deal in exponential growth, apparently, because my numbers come out closer to sixty-five trillion. He probably, I suspect, didn’t add all the illegal aliens we’ll be adding to the Social Security rolls before the Bush League leaves office. Throw in the time it will take the dithering Congress to come to realization and do something, you have the whole twenty million aliens drawing Social Security.

Wait a minute! If I put that into the mix – at the rate illegal immigration from Mexico is pouring in – the number comes closer to 71 trillion (70,666,000,000,000, matter of fact). According to the “Comp General,” rising national health care costs are the greatest culprit, and if that doesn’t tell you our government intends to make all of us who’ve been working all our lives to provide for our own retirement pay for the Mexicans, too, nothing will. It might tell you about social programs in general, matter of fact.

I’m afraid it’s Tubesville, folks – as in “down the tubes.” Now that you have a celebrity wonk telling you, you’ll maybe forgive me for my “I told you so” here and years ago. You might consider the fact, though, that my friends and I have been planning for it all for several years now, knowing damned well what is coming.

Actually, Walker holds out hope (don’t forget, of course, this is CIA-style “limited hangout” – they figure you’ve got more to give) by saying that we could save the country by cutting federal spending by sixty percent or by doubling federal taxation.

Well, we know for certain what chances are for that first one, so that leaves the second. He said tax revenues should be more than 18.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product, but below 25 percent.

Incidentally, I’d have liked to be at those hearings, because nothing here adds up. Nothing! Have a look at that “sixty percent or doubling taxation.” And twenty-five percent of GDP is about 3.25 trillion. Even at today’s prices and without projecting for inflation and the like, the taxation Walker is talking about won’t so much as cover, once they’ve grown to welfare size, the “anchor babies” of the twenty million Mexicans who are already here illegally. Pie in the sky, anyone?

And did I say “Tubesville?” Yeah, I think I did.

I told you this was “limited hangout.” As we used to say in the scatological jargon of the military, BOSEHIC – “Bend Over and Spread ‘Em, Here It Comes.” To know how right I am, and have been for a long time now, you’d have to have some idea as to what a trillion dollars is. I haven’t the space here to do what our wondrous public schools education doesn’t seem to have bothered to do for you, but suffice it to say that the entire Gross Domestic Product – that’s the total market value of all the goods and services produced within the borders of a nation during a specified period (wages + rents + profits + interests + adjustments for dividends, corporate income taxes, and corporate profits) – is less than thirteen trillion.

When I noted that my friends and I have been planning for years now, expecting this, I might have added that I, personally, saw it coming even earlier. That has a great deal to do with my defensive eaves-dropping on the government, but it also has to do with my avocationally passionate study of history. The wars we fought in Korea, Vietnam, and two in Iraq are not the only wars “Americans” are fighting. There’s one in its own way even more brutal where the poor and middle class are concerned. That war is the class war, the all-but-always vicious assault being waged by the rich in order to become even richer. Greed, history taught me, is an addiction that makes all the other addictions pale by comparison. Look around, as I’m wont to say.

The U.S. class war has now reached proportions to which few historians – none, that I can find – have ever dreamed. By fraudulent finesse – usually, in the form of lobbying Congress and the state legislatures - and deceit protected by the legislation so obtained, without so much as getting their hands dirty, let alone firing a shot, the richest five percent of “Americans” have increased exponentially since 2000 their wealth and power.

The remaining ninety-five percent of the population has on the other hand seen their income and opportunity plummet. Eavesdrop in the halls of Congress for a half hour and you’ll know why.

Only a few years ago, incidentally, and curious about the trend made inexorable by the mere fact of Internal Revenue Service – it’s purpose, you know is to redistribute the nation’s wealth; either they’re doing it or they’re a near total failure – I compiled these figures: the approximately (I don’t have the same research capabilities as, for instance, the news media has) five hundred billionaires in the world have an income equal to that of the poorest fifty percent of the people here. These five hundred have wealth equal to that of approximately three billion human beings. Finally, the exploding wealth of the greed-obsessed means that sometime in the year 2,012, 6.9769 X108 (.00000006.9767) of the world’s people will have income equal to the rest.

I leave it to the reader to calculate what will happen then. As Thomas Jefferson once observed, “. . . man is the only animal which devours his own kind; I can think of no milder term to apply to the general prey of the rich upon the poor."

Neither is there any room for doubt about why the United States' plebian five percent are slaves to the patrician ninety-five percent. The losers are, pure and simple, so because they do not have access to their supposed representatives in Washington, D.C. They don’t have access to the courts, either. The cost of both is far beyond their means, kept there, of course, by their opponents in the class war.

Oh, yeah – I hear it every time I bring it up. It’s the anthem of people like FoxNews host Bill O’Reilly. The rich are rich because they deserve it, because they’re smarter, because they’re more talented, because they work harder. What Bullshit! I’ve known them, eaten with them, drunk with them, and protected their soft asses. The truth is – and if you can’t see that by watching what happens when one gets too big for his breeches and buys his way to public office, you’re too far gone to save – that I wouldn’t trust most of these clowns with my checking account, let alone my finances or life. Certainly not with the nation’s finances or life.

O’Reilly, incidentally, with his bosom buddy, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, often and blatantly encourage – in the case of O’Reilly, even demand - that the rich wield their economic power to control the news media and public’s information, that in order to keep the poor ignorant of what's going on. You need more proof of the effect of CIA Operation Mockingbird? Consider the assault independent and un-funded by government public radio and television networks are under.

Contrary to indoctrination of yourselves and your children by the government-controlled news media and educational systems, the rich are seldom the big-leaguers they are made out to be. I’ve known dozens of corporate CEOs, for some of the nation’s biggest companies, and I can tell you that I wouldn’t trust them with “executive operating” of a lemonade stand. Most of these guys got where they are by lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting, and walking all over their co-workers. They excel, all right – they excel in acquisitive rapacity, greed.

Uh-uh, save it! I’ve not only broken bread with the Captains of Industry, drunk with them, and covered their butts, I listened. I’ve heard their contempt for everything they profess publicly to believe, from the people they exploit to the system and government that gave them their power. I’ve heard them betray their concupiscent lust – not a few times twisted and depraved – their fascination with fame, and their willingness to prostitute literally anything and anybody for money and power.

How else do you explain the individual who makes a hundred and fifty times what an employee of his company makes, then cheats to get even more (how many Enrons have been in the news of late, huh?)?

There’s a better question, too. How is it that we can elect these same people to high office, then wonder when the government and nation comes to be in the shape it is? It’s like putting the town drunk in charge of the liquor, then wondering where it all went. There’s no reasonable doubt about why we’re in the shape we’re in as a nation, why we’re in Iraq, or any the rest of our troubles. NONE!

Some things, as I said, are just numbers – book-keeping. Numbers add and subtract the same no matter who’s doing them. George W. Bush created wholesale the economic hardship we’ve come to by orchestrating horrendous debt. “Orchestrating.” What else do you call cynical tax cuts intended to benefit the richest five percent I speak of here (in fact, the richest one percent got as much as forty percent of his tax forbearances). Add to that the societally insane war in Iraq, where no one has benefited (unless you consider military industrial complex corporations like Halliburton).

The day before our Comptroller General testified, the news channels were telling us that the administration and its prat-falling generals say we’ll be in Iraq, “for generations.” We’ve spent there nearly $600,000,000,000 – six hundred billion dollars, thus far. How much did Mr. Walker say tax revenues will have to be?

Had you any money left after the taxes you’ll be paying, you should buy Halliburton – that way, you’ll be paying one hand with the other.

‘Splain to me, Luci, how it is that Mr. Bush – planning it all without error as he does everything else - could justify tax cuts to corporations whose annual incomes already average in the billions. I can’t imagine it, but I have no doubt whatever that he’d try. The man seems to have no shame (he’s of the patrician class, don’t forget).

Which brings us back to the Comptroller General and the latest “limited hangout” by the rich and federal. Just as it is in real warfare, deception is the critical weapon in class warfare. Do you really believe, when a wonk like this begins to wring his hands about the “state of the union,” that he really gives a shit? First off, David M. Walker works for the federal government, a government owned lock, stock, and barrel by the military industrial complex corporations. He knows, as does every blathering bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. what would happen were he to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

And you know, too. Compare what will happen, now that he’s said as much as he has, with the current global warming debate. Go out on the highway: See anybody slowing down in order to burn less fuel and put less hydro-carbons in the air? Sure you do. Private debt in the U.S. isn’t in the dozens of trillions (excluding the federal, it’s almost forty trillion, now) because the public is so self-disciplined, self-controlled, and moderate. Here’s a site that should be entertaining. http://mwhodges.home.att.net/nat-debt/debt-nat.htm

In order to take back control of our country – which is to say win the class war - we need first to take back control of ourselves and our own lives. When we can’t be used as cannon fodder like slaves, we’ll know we’ve done that. That's for just one thing; there are many more “things.” Suffice it to say that to take governing power back again means that the people have to take the weapons of class war out of their enemy’s hands. Only when one corporate lobbyist doesn’t have more power than the voters of several states (or more) have can that be done.

Fifteen years ago, I took power over me and my affairs back from the rich. I stopped using their system, both economic and legal. I went to the wilderness, lived entirely off the land, and I rode a bicycle. It isn’t necessary, however, that the public flee to the wilderness. The experience taught me how powerless the government can be made. Government in the United States is a kind of “pigeon drop” swindle, wherein the dupe must be a participant in order to be defrauded. Simply refusing to take part in the electoral process, for instance, would send a message that would shake the patrician royalty to their boots. They have the French Revolution seared into their memories, you know. It’s part of every Patrician’s education; and it is his worst nightmare. Society has its absolutes, too.

“This country with its institutions,” as Abraham Lincoln observed, “belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”

That’s why the first time the super rich in the guise of the military industrial complex’s new CIA risked betraying their coup d’etat was the program of deceit by propaganda known as Operation Mockingbird. The only way to fight a bull as powerful as a nation’s people is with a cape – the cape of deception. It has worked magnificently. In the words of the poet Markham writing about the French Revolution, “stunned and stolid, a brother to the ox,” the people of the United States have been reduced to the pitiable level of the peasant who was the object of Markham's poem. Using state-of-the-art propaganda and opinion-control devices more effective and powerful, even, than those of the “Inner Party” of another writer, George Orwell, the “American” public is kept living in a reality only virtual, believing contradictory nonsense their grandparents would have scoffed at angrily.

To restore the Land of the Free, the people must wake up, wake up to the fact that they have the power to rule their lives any time they decide to recover it. The way to re-take our nation is refusal to be deceived. We need to take back the free press. Contradictory nonsense like that of the last few days – the Comptroller General’s “revelation,” the specious global warming “debate,” and the odiously dissimulating like repeated again and again – amounts to nothing more than a demonstration of the pitiable, docile and subservient state to which the public and its poor have been brought.

This, in short, is nothing more than the latest newspeak and doublethink from the ruling military industrial complex plutocracy. Nothing but a stunned, stolid, and stupefied “Man with a Hoe” would believe this claptrap, but it permits the rich to control his money and his very life.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

"On Bullshit" - "Ain't No Jack S. Like OUR Jack S."

The first photo - obviously, perhaps - is U.S. Senator James Inhofe. The second is Marlo Lewis, Jr., "Senior Fellow at the Enterprise Institute." I've been listening in wondering amazement to these two guys for the past several days. Remember Al Capp's Archetypical politician, Senator Jack S. Phogbound - "There ain't no Jack S. like OUR Jack S."? I couldn't help but be reminded.

A couple of years ago, Harry G. Frankfurt, a Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University wrote a book handed to me by a friend. Pat my jet jockey friend seemed to recognize in the book my own assessment of the nation, government, and media. Entitled "On Bullshit," its central thesis is that bullshit and the related concept of humbuggery are distinct from plain lying. Frankfurt argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to audiences in a manner different and more pernicious than liars. Bullshitters deliberately construct illusory falsehoods, deliberately making false claims about what is true.

"A bullshitter," Frankfurt says, "is far worse than a liar" because "he does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does," but "opposes himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all." The other day, listening to exerpts - I really have to get myself a transcript; this has to be classic - of Inhofe's puerile posturing and pontificating as he questioned former V.P. Al Gore, I couldn't help remembering "On Bullshit." This was blathering bullshit's state of the art.

Bloviating more with his expression and pompous manner, even, than with his smart-ass schoolboy debate team semantics and elocution, Senator Inhofe repeatedly questioned whether global warming was "manmade," continually - almost continuously - attacking Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth."

"Are you ready to change the way you live?" Inhofe demanded irrelevantly. Illogical on several counts, actually, I could only wonder how this Tu Quoque Fallacy by implication might prove something about the factuality or lack thereof of Gore's contentions having to do with global warming. I also wondered why Gore didn't simply make that point, instead trying to deflect the obnoxious Oklahoman by insisting that he, Gore, was changing his personal energy sources to "green."

Gore - and while I was never a fan, the former VP is beginning to gain my respect - also cited the consensus among the world's most esteemed scientists that global warming is indeed "manmade" and is rapidly reaching crisis proportions. I also wonder how anyone living in this nation for the last several decades, as I have, can have any doubt of that.

But Inhofe was undeterred. Acting like that schoolboy I referred to a minute ago, he repeatedly interrupted and shouted (well, he didn't actually - just his manner, tenor and tone) down the former Vice President in mid-sentence. More, Inhofe trotted out his best "Bubba" bumpkin character, rudely berating his adversary - belittling him for being disingenuous. In what folks back home in Iowa refer to as a "snotty" tone, Inhofe averred that Oklahoma has experienced three "extremely" cold winters lately, and smirked, "Where's global warming when you need it?"

Leave the one liners to Jay Leno, senator - you're funny, but not the way you intend.

Did I say "irrelevant?" Yeah, think I did; I must have - there was little else in the rube impersonation, except the ad hominem stuff - much of that by simpering implication, too - that is. Real senatorial stuff.

Following fallacy with non sequitur, Okalahoma's senatorial embarrassment then condemned Gore by association denouncing "the George Soroses, the Michael Moores, and the Richard Bransons" for conspiring to frighten decent, god-fearing folk with global warming. I could just hear old-time comedian Red Skelton, doing his San Fernando Red, the Politician bit.

Inhofe also produced theatrically a placard supposedly listing the names of "a hundred scientists" who believe global warming is a hoax. I think I'd check that list, if I were the nation.

It went on that way, becoming a display of remarkable patience by Gore more than anything else. Those forbearing with the senatorial blowhard, incidentally, also included the Chairman of the committee, California Senator Barbara Boxer, who reminded Inhofe like a teacher might remonstrate with an unruly schoolboy that "elections matter," and he was no longer the committee chairman. Bubba Inhofe's Neanderthal behavior where the lady was concerned probably didn't do him any good with the distaff side of Oklahoma politics, I'd guess.

A fair summary of this the most recent display of political bloviating and bullshit would have to observe that where Inhofe is concerned, the Grasshopper in Aesop's famous fable was smarter than the Ant. He'd probably argue, too, that that was about winter and cold, this is about global warming. Senator Bubba is a stickler for details, you know.

Now, I need to point out yet again that I don't think Senator James Inhofe is as stupid as he makes himself seem. I just don't believe a man can be as educated and experienced as he surely must be, yet still sound like a flat-earther or earth-centrist. As my grandfather once counseled, this guy is stupid like a fox is crazy.

And then, we have Dr. Lewis. Right up front, I learned when I looked that he holds a bachelors in - guess? - Political Science (surprise!) and a Ph.D. in GOVERNMENT. And the subject of his supposed expertise here is physics and environmental science . . .? Why does that sound like "Doctor" Laura Ingraham to me?

Whatever. Now, I don't usually dismiss anyone's argument so cavalierly as I'm about to this one, but the whole salami where Lewis' argument is concerned can be summed up by simply noting that the good Doctor of Government and Political Science somehow become an authority on Earth Science has attempted to prove his point by disproving his opposition's argument. That's known as "irrelevant conclusion," ignoratio elenchi classically, and appeal to ignorance ("Remember Pat Robertson's "I can't prove there are no missiles in Cuba, so there must be" ?), and it proves absolutely nothing about global warming. NOTHING!

The global warming argument gets crazier all the time, and for blather, bullshit, fog and smog clearing in that regard and in the future, I refer the reader to my logic page here. You won't find many of the logical fallacies nor much of non sequitur reasoning having to do with the subject that isn't listed there. Meanwhile, I demonstrate there certain fundamentally conclusive arguments, incontrovertible ones:

"It should be clear," I note on the logic page, "even if you're as biased as Oklahoma Senator Inhofe (gee, I wonder how you bias a U.S. Senator - who are the people most associated with fossil fuel pollution, again?), that we can't breathe air that is one hundred percent carbon dioxide." Matter of fact, there must be a point - CO2 in the air, that is - where a human being begins gasping for breath. And, of course, no one disputes that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have soared since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

"So the real question - simple as hell and the one reasonable people care about - is how long do we have before we start gasping for breath (notice that no one disputes, either, that some of us are already gasping for breath on account of air pollution)? These people are trying to tell me they don't know how to discover when it is that we start choking on account of being asphyxiated? Have them call me.

There's another question, too: Why all the debate about 'global warming?' Why the effort by what seems to me to be just about everybody - that's pro and con the argument - to make it all sound so doubtful? Take the question of ocean-level rise. There are so many cubic feet of ice at the poles, a definite and estimate-able number. There is so much water on the planet, also a definite and estimate-able number.

You're telling me, Senator Inhofe and all the global warming doubters, that you don't know how much the ocean will rise, once all the snow has melted? Are you also telling me, folks - everybody supposedly debating - that you don't know how much the oceans have risen, and how much ice has melted? Call me.

As I said, this gets goofier and goofier. Crazy like a fox.

Why the "Bullshit" of which Professor Frankfurt writes.? Consider Lewis' essay:

"And the media have already rolled out the red carpet for his activism, taking every opportunity to promote green politics, from personal carbon “offsets” to massive legislation." This is political posturing, not science. More, it constitutes an irrelevant ad hominem attack, appealing to ridicule and to existing emotional bias and proving absolutely nothing.

"An Inconvenient Truth purports to be a non-partisan, non-ideological exposition of climate science. In reality, it is a sci-fi disaster film in the guise of a documentary." This one not only appeals to ridicule and fear, it begs the question, assuming already what it seeks to prove. Prove something, Mr. Lewis; otherwise, sit down and shut up.

"Example: Gore bombards us with scene after scene of devastation from hurricanes, floods, droughts and the like, creating the impression that global warming has made the world a more dangerous place. In reality, both mortality rates and aggregate mortality related to extreme weather events have declined by about 95 percent since the 1920s. The world has become safer as it warmed up!" Once more, appeal to ridicule, plus ("mortality rates, etc.) irrelevant conclusion (even were it true - which it isn't), and wishful thinking ("safer as it warmed" etc.), and argumentum ad logicam (even if Gore's reasoning is false, it doesn't necessarily mean his conclusion is).

"Example: Gore warns that half the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and half the Greenland Ice Sheet could melt or break off and slide into the sea, raising sea levels by 20 feet in our lifetimes or those of our children. No scientific studies support this claim." No, and that's not what Gore said, either. This one is the classic Straw Man Fallacy, particularly odious in that it plays upon and relies upon the ignorance of the audience. The person who uses it is an arrogant S.O.B.

And, "No scientific studies . . ." We need scientific studies to show that ice melts when its warmed? Whew - I'm glad we've called in an eminent scientist to help with this.

"When the former vice president calls global warming 'a moral issue,' he implies that all right-thinking people must support the Kyoto Protocol global warming treaty or similar regulation to curb emissions of carbon dioxide. However, neither Gore nor the media consider the obvious moral objection to his agenda: its enormous potential to perpetuate global poverty." Appeal to fear ("perpetuate global poverty") and the Straw Man Fallacy again. Gore makes no such implication, the truth being the reasonable presumption that no one wants to ruin the atmosphere (and die of asphyxiation or worse). "

Right thinking" people will want to continue breathing, whatever the protocol otherwise. That may, actually, tell us something about people like Senator Inhofe and Mr. Lewis.

"Carbon dioxide is the inescapable byproduct of most of the energy that fuels America’s, and the world’s, economy. Stabilizing atmospheric CO2 levels is not even remotely possible unless China, India, and other developing countries restrict their use of carbon-based energy." That's the fact - and the author's conclusion has to be that we simply have to die of asphyxiation or starving to death. Nothing can be done. More, Lewis also states what he cannot possibly show ("unless China, India, and other . . . ), the Ipsedixit and Proof by Assertion Fallacies. This guy is a demagogue more than anything else.

"Consequently, Kyoto advocates view the treaty as just a “first step” in a long march toward a de-carbonized future. But the global economy is moving in exactly the opposite direction. Demand for fossil energy is growing, especially in developing countries." This is the Repetitive and Assertive Fallacy again ("Tell a lie often enough"); besides, it's irrelevant conclusion again. It's also Argumentum ad Numerum, the "everybody's doing (or thinks it) it, so it must be right." The fact that we're going to make things worse doesn't disprove the former Vice President's contentions. either.

Goofier and goofier, Lewis goes on: "The federal Energy Information Administration projects a 71-percent increase in global energy consumption between 2003 and 2030, with three-quarters of the increase occurring in developing countries. And in 2030 as in 2003, fossil fuels are projected to supply about 86 percent of world energy consumption." More of the same. "If you're being raped, lie back and enjoy it." Like telling an alcoholic to cure his alcoholism by drinking more, besides. That'll end the problem, all right.

"Energy poverty is a scourge, shortening the lives and impairing the health of untold millions of people around the globe. An estimated 1.6 billion people lack access to electricity. And some 2.4 billion people still rely on traditional biomass—wood, crop waste, and dung—for cooking and heating." As someone who recently lived for most of ten years without electricity, I find "biomass" fuel use less than terrifying, to say nothing of probative. You know, now that I recall, this seemed to be Senator Inhofe's reasoning, too. Man, with doctors like this, I hope I never get sick. "You're illness is well advanced, so let's just do nothing, and see what happens."

And Somebody is gonna make a dandy profit from the sale of all that electricity, right?

"Reliance on traditional biomass causes daily indoor air pollution many times dirtier than outdoor in the world’s most polluted cities, and kills about 2.8 million people a year, most of them women and children. It takes a heavy toll on forests and wildlife habitat. For people living in energy poverty, “backbreaking labor” is not a metaphor but a daily reality." ?????? Irrelevant conclusion, among several other fallacious things. If we don't destroy the planet, we'll destroy ourselves? Can we get another opinion, please?

"The real inconvenient truth is that nobody knows how to meet current much less future global energy needs with low- and zero-emission technologies. In the policy-relevant future, affordable energy for most of the world is going to be carbon-based, CO2-emitting energy." This is the fallacy known as Appeal to Consequences, of course, to say nothing of Appeal to Fear, the Slippery Slope, the Assertive Fallacy ("It's true because I say so" - over and over). Ipsedixit.

This will do. This stuff isn't an argument, it's (in both instance) a speech. It's Professor Frankfurt's "bullshit" - that of a cynical demagogue.

And it's obviously bought and paid for. The fact of what's going on is as obvious as the Rocky Mountains. The Global Warning Argument, all of it, is a colossal Red Herring. THINK! Recognition of the fact that we are polluting the planet to the point of ruin means that we have to stop what we're doing and a great deal of that has to do with our favorite toy, the automobile and things that oxidize fossil fuels. We stop burning oil. Remember what I've inferred happened after World War Two? People who had become accustomed to "earning" billions were faced with return to normal - before the war - profits.

What do YOU think that meant, and means? What would you have done, had you the power?

Now we have a corporate capitalist culture, the oil industry, grown as rich as the military industrial complex corporations (you really think they're not incestuously related by now?) facing a similar fate. Imagine how things would be, had society developed steam power and steam powered vehicles to their fullest (we may well do it, anyway - now). Whole nations - Brazil, for instance - have shifted to a rival product, bio-fuels. What would YOU do, were you in the oil companies' shoes?

On the other hand, what might it be that motivates those who say the planet's atmosphere is being polluted at a alarming rate, warming a part (or haven't you noticed the careful, almost desperate effort to talk ONLY about the warming?) What will proponents of global warming gain - monetarily or otherwise - from persuading the nations and societies of the planet to cease or control fossil fuel emissions and other pollutants?

This is far, far from the first time the Bush League has squelched and propagandized science it (and the military industrial complex lobbyists that control it) didn't like (in fact, I haven't space here to list and discuss them all).

Come on, people - even if this were as complicated as rocket science (it isn't), it's also a matter of common sense.

Couldn't Sleep Again - Can't Trust the Watch

Everyone who visits here and reads, everyone who knows me well, friend and foe alike, knows that I not only said months before it happened that Operation Iraqi Freedom would prove to be a catastrophic blunder. They also know that I said with detailed accuracy what would happen. In fact, when our Commander-in-Chief strutted and preened like the adolescent schoolboy he is under the “Mission Accomplished” banner on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, I said “Yeah, you REMF S.O.B. you’ve got your tit in the wringer now; too bad it won’t be you that pays the big price for error in combat.”

I was damned near – and as far as I know totally - alone in that. “Expert” and “analyst” after “expert” and “analyst” did the Talking Head routine on television, all supporting our REMF in Chief. Not one apparently knew what was about to happen. That’s with the one possible exception of U.S. Army Special Forces Major Bob Bevelacqua, who did say that our Army Special Forces “were a good fit” in Afghanistan, seemingly expecting the guerrilla warfare that would occur there – perhaps result after invasion. He didn’t predict, however, Taliban resurgence and he didn’t predict what is happening and has been happening in Iraq.

Now, before continuing, let me say two things up front. I’m not particularly proud of about having been right. Anyone with even a modicum of training in military tactics knew damned well what was going to happen.

Secondly, one of the guys I’ll be talking about here, the guy with the Heritage Foundation, apparently served his country honorably and well for twenty-five years. I respect that, having done twenty-three myself. That I say “apparently” is due the fact – also known by everyone who visits here and read, and all my friends – that nothing about this benighted country is as uncertain as its records. When, for instance, I applied for Social Security “benefits” some little while ago, the Department of Defense had to be dragged kicking and screaming (as it were) to admit that I so much as served in our military.

“For purposes of Social Security and Veterans Benefits,” they would “concede” that I “had service (well f-u-u-u-u-ck you, too!).

One of the guys of whom I will speak is offended because I referred to him as a “so-called analyst.” Well, to paraphrase Steve Martin, “Exc-u-u-u-u-se me!” Where the hell were all of you "experts" and "authorities" when Bush was lying through his teeth about his reasons for going into Iraq? While several of the arms inspectors came back from Iraq to say there were no WMDs there, not one of FoxNews or the rests' “analysts” agreed. Not one.

Oh, one more of those “before I starts.” Sherry says – as though it were some kind of monster faux pas – that I always sound “bitter and angry.” Yeah, baby, you’re damned right I am. And only when the scum-sucking populace of this country finally gets fed up enough with the crowd in power here to tie a can to their tails and run them out of town, or throw their sorry asses in the Potomac, will our young men and women stop being wasted on this new Vietnam. Yes ma’am, I’m mad. In fact, I’m so damned mad I’m writing this at two in the morning, unable to sleep.

Whatever. And now another of these talking heads, a guy who prefers to remain “anonymous” – that's the way he signed his comment on my last “blog” – protests that he IS an analyst. Okay, I concede. A guy who drives a truck – including those who roar past me at ninety miles an hour, flatten signs and light poles by running over them at corners in cities, and the rest - is a truck driver. You do “analyze,” so you’re an analyst. Mea Culpa. Mea f------ culpa. Nevertheless.

Nevertheless, I’m searching the record for any record that you said anything in any of your appearances concerning what has happened and is happening in Iraq. That you’re not alone in what I find – there is general after general and colonel after colonel on the list here – doesn’t expiate much. Anybody who didn’t expect this doesn’t know diddly about the history of Iraq and the Arab, the history and character of Islam, the Arab mind; or, even, how to find Baghdad – on a map or otherwise.

There’s more. Where the hell were all you experts on the military when the DOD was poking guys who return from Iraq in every imaginable state of disrepair into Building Eighteen at Walter Reed? Where have you been for the last thirty years? WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU ALL THE WHILE TWENTY YEARS AGO WHEN I WAS ALL BUT BEGGING CONGRESSMEN AND SENATORS, NEWSPAPER, TELEVISION NETWORK, COURTS AND THE REST – EVEN SOLDIER OF FORTUNE MAGAZINE - TO LOOK INTO THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION? Huh? Huh? Huh?

"Maggots on their bed sores." A decoration to go with their Purple Hearts - huh?

"Analyze," your ass.* The people who come on FoxNews and the rest analyze nothing. They act in a play, read a prepared, Operation Mockingbird script - the better to make suckers of the people of my country, and they’ve really pissed me off. I’ll tell you all one thing that one of you has gotten right. Colonel David Hunt, sometime after the World Trade Center (where were all you “analysts” on that one? – I wrote about it almost twenty years before it happened; odd, isn’t it, that I’M not an “analyst?”), answered a “why” question by saying, “because nobody gets fired.”

Well now. How about that? See, I come from a time before humanist, feminist, and lunatic liberal metrosexuality, a time when guys who fucked up as badly as George W. and the White House Bush League got fired. Not analyzed. So did commanders who led their troops into ambushes after their point man radioed back warning – like Iraq. Bodyguards who went to sleep on duty like our FBI, CIA, and Military Intelligence did before 9-11 got canned. Watchdogs who didn’t bark went to the dog pound.

Limp dicks didn’t go to bed with the same woman twice.

Pissed off? “Angry and bitter?” DAMNED RIGHT. Damned near a trillion dollars a year (yeah, I know what you “analysts” say – I know better because I include all the numbers) on military spending, and we can’t beat guys armed with RPGs, AK’s, and “I.E.D.s.” I haven’t forgotten Vietnam, in that regard (or otherwise), either. Two hundred billion a year on FBI, police, and law enforcement generally, and we get 9-11. Posturing and pontificating pricks like you guys all over the place, and we get Iraq and Afghanistan – to say nothing of Vietnam. Billions on FEMA and we get New Orleans after Katrina.

And we get the VA mess. I haven’t had tears in my eyes in a long, long time (my website probably explains that, too), but last night, watching the guys on the Paula Zahn show (I think – I was so damned mad, I literally couldn’t see straight) and knowing damned well from personal experience how they’re being treated, I damned near “lost it.”

In the vernacular of the "Steve Canyon" "grunt," “Downtowners, if you fuckers want to analyze, analyze THIS” (and if any of you really were in the military - the real one - you know the gesture I'm making).


* There perhaps couldn't be a better example of the conniving dissimulation of the media and the "analysts" I speak of here than what is told the public about "Defense Spending." Often, I do a little "CIA Reading" (look it up) of magazines like Aviation Week, wherein insouciant members of the military industrial complex make clear their confidence that nothing will ever stand in their way to the trough provided them by the Pentagon and filled constantly by the taxpayer.

Whereas television "analysts" routinely - and frequently, I might add pointedly - repeat the fiction that defense spending is around four percent of the nation's GDP - "Gross Domestic Product" - the truth is that it is much more, at least ten percent more. One of the guys I'm talking about here - the Heritage guy, I think - is among these "experts."

The last of these "cooked books" figures I've seen had it that the Pentagon's budget - and that included Homeland Security - was $434 billion. That "expert" "analyst" didn't mention veterans' benefits (those being stolen or otherwise), military retirement, foreign military sales, military space programs, or interest on the national debt attributable to military spending.

Oops! How could we leave that out? It's at least half of our interest on the debt. Then there's the Social Security SCAM. Hidden in the nearly $500 billion budget for Social Security expenditures are something like $100 billion actually going to the military industrial complex. More, and in order to further camouflage the debt having to do with military expenditures, Social Security - still paying its own way out of payroll deductions, by the way - is routinely and regularly raided. That's hundred of billions of dollars, "borrowed" in order to obviate the need to issue bonds and perform other feats of federal "creative finance."

The fiscal prestidigitation, by the way, also serves to shift the tax burden to the working class and poor, not the rich who support the military industrial corporations. SURPRISE!

Think we're finished? Yeah, sure. Hidden away by "creative finance" and Pentagon funding books-cooking are things like the School of the Americas, budget something like (secrecy like that having to do with all that "national security" we seem to have so damned little of these days is a mighty handy tool for any thief, huh?) $40 billion.

Finished? Nope - not yet. The small change from it all is things like six or seven billion to provide for all the secrecy, protection of what at last count was 15.6 million.

It goes on, but now I'm boring you. I haven't mentioned all the waste, the embezzlement and outright theft, you'll notice. Remember the $225 dollar screwdrivers, $13 dollar apiece screws, the $1,150 wrenches, $750 coffee pots, and the like? What do you think happened after Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley caught the MIC boys with their hands in the cookie jar? They just stopped? Sure.

You do eat hay, don't you? Well you ought to - you're a jackass.

Bet your life - you've already lost your ass (and your country) to them - they've hidden their "pork" somewhere in the non-military budget. That's how it's done.

My point here is why haven't all these "analysts" told you all of this? Why do guys like the Heritage wonk continue to recite nonsense like the "four percent of the GDP" figure? One guess, and George Orwell called it "Newspeak" in his 1948 (what a co-incidence - the year the CIA was chartered) novel, "1984." It's the language foisted upon the nation and its media by CIA Operation Mockingbird, birthed at about the same time (another co-incidence).

Put it with the coffins returning from Iraq and Afghanistan you can't be shown, smoke and mirrors screens like the Anna Nicole Smith Tactic, and the latest on the U.S. Attorney firings. And have some more hay.

"The Moojas Know We Can't Stay Forever . . ."

The Fall of Saigon, April 30, 1975.

Everything seems to be about word definition these days. In a world where for most people reality is made up all but entirely of words, that’s crucial. Put another way, the power to manipulate opinion by manipulation of language is the stuff political power is made of today. Equivocating, twisting, and otherwise torturing the meaning of words is the chief stock in trade of the modern government and its resident propagandists.

Think about it. Not only does democratic rule depend upon control of the public’s opinion, so does tyranny. No tyrant doubts that the people can pull him down: there are always too many “subjects” to defeat in open warfare, should they revolt. Tyranny, of course rules by fear – “kill one and terrorize a thousand.” So, however, does democracy. “Government,” George Washington observed,” is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

But whereas tyranny originates from fear, democracy begins with public choice. And choice depends on opinion. “There,” Shakespeare said, “is the rub.” The tyranny of the majority must not only obtain power by shaping the public’s opinion, it must keep power the same way. Is it any wonder, then, that in the Twenty-First Century with its marvels of science and technology – space flight, nuclear-powered vessels, brain and heart surgery, and the rest – propaganda and the methods of mind and opinion control should have been a proportionately funded and concomitantly developed science? Assured control of what you think, my friends, is of paramount importance to those who aspire to power and control of your money and destiny. It is in point of rationally incontrovertible fact the matter daily uppermost in their minds.

And we, the people of the United States, live largely – decisively so, anyway – separated by science and technology from the real world and its reality. Recently, I learned that most children in a local high school didn’t know what a callous was. Most were incredulous when I explained. Amusingly perhaps, all but a tiny percentage gave a job at MacDonald’s as an example of hard work.

Where things like the war in Iraq are concerned, everything becomes surreal for most – a percentage as high as eighty percent. No one, including young men and women about to leave for Iraq and mortal combat, has any real idea about the reality of a gunfight. Some years ago, teaching law enforcement personnel, I found the same thing. In every instance of the kind of ignorance encountered and refer to here (and I interviewed literally hundreds over a period of years and across the length and breadth of the nation), I found reality supplanted by a Hollywoodian special effects, made for television, virtual-only reality.

During preparation of this website, I took issue over something pontificated to the public by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, that being the “humanity” of our precision bombing (surgically accurized ‘Shock and Awe”). When I pointed out the actual effect of a two-thousand bomb’s detonation, a number of people honestly questioned my description. They didn’t believe me, apparently even when they had read the same figures on internet websites. It didn’t take me long to realize why. All of the same people had no concept whatever of blast effect. The gas-fire explosions of Hollywood and television, you see, produce only fire and smoke in theatrically huge proportions, no blast. Debris from the special effects “blast,” moreover, floats through the air, rather than hurtles at screaming, bullet-like velocity.

During premier of the movie entitled Saving Private Ryan, I was among veterans interviewed by a local television station concerning the flick’s then much-vaunted reality. I said I hadn’t seen the movie, probably wouldn’t bother, and that the idea of reality in a movie about war struck me as pretty silly. To the interviewer’s protestations, I responded with the question, “How does the combat in Saving Private Ryan smell? Have you any idea how a bunker smells after everyone in it has been blown to shreds by a shell or grenade?” The woman at the table next to mine choked, then sat staring at her plate obviously struggling to keep ingested the bagel she had been eating.

And so on. TV and the movies are at least a virtual reality, a visual, even emotional depiction. Words are something else, too – something capable of even more surrealism. I used to entertain and tease my sons by demonstrating that I could with words alone create in their minds a ten-ton chocolate Sunday, topped by a five hundred pound cherry. I could create a king in France (there is no King of France, you know), marry him to a princess – the Princess of Lower Slobovia, no less – and the like. It was great fun.

And it’s the stuff political power is made of. I won’t bore the reader here with a re-iterated description of the staggering volume of prevarication to which the public is being subjected these days by our media and government, however. My point relates more to a news item on television this morning, that having to do with the most recent tactical device to be employed by “insurgents,” combatants engaged in “sectarian violence,” or whatever today’s bon mot may be. The tactic, first Fox News, then CNN, said, is that of including small children among occupants of an explosives-laden vehicle intended to first penetrate check points, then be detonated with the children inside once the bombers have exited the vehicle and fled.

Horrible. Depraved. Despicable. But there’s a problem with the story - whether to believe it. In the first place, I – for one – actually find it hard to believe that any human being can stoop that low. It simply doesn’t seem humanly possible (at least until you consider carpet bombing, “shock and awe” with 2,000 lb. bombs, and the rest). Then there’s the fact that FoxNews has time and time again demonstrated itself willing to say almost literally anything in order to further the public’s support of this all but totally asinine operation. You can’t, in fact, rationally believe anything they say or portray having to do with the present administration and its demagogueing, messianic-appearing machinations.

More, I know about Operation Mockingbird, the CIA propaganda program designed specifically to serve exactly that purpose – to create, in other words, the Orwellian nation in which we have come lately to live.

Looking for corroboration, I switched to CNN, then channel after channel, trying to find another report of the story. After a time spent dodging the advertisements – more outright lying and fraud designed in the state of the art by the very best of opinion control experts – I found the story again. Sure enough, it was also being reported elsewhere. But was it true? This is a story about Iraq, after all, and the major media are also ruled by IRS and the government. When I had checked the BBC and Frankfurter Zeitung, the German newspaper online, I also found the story, but both sources got their story from a report by a U.S. Brigadier General, Michael Barbero.

Tilt. What’s the truth? Well, I’ll have to check with my sources in Iraq. I’ll know in a few days.

The experience nevertheless serves to make my point having to do with the Mockingbird media and the effect of words on the mind. In the hands of a skilled propagandist using state-of-the-art technology and the super-funding available to governments like ours, the mind becomes putty in the hands of an artist.

The “state of the art” has reached heretofore unimaginable proportions, none more insidious than what I’ll call pointedly the Anna Nicole Smith Tactic. Desperate to keep the public distracted from the carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan, to say nothing of divert attention from the fact of what the taxpayers are getting for their two-thirds of a trillion dollar a year military spending, the media hides this and similar truth behind the smoke and mirrors of lurid tabloid material masquerading meretriciously as news reporting.

I’ve spoken of it here before, but the latest example of the smoke and mirrors deception is more subtle, and a good example of the genre. I speak of the current flap over firings of U.S. Attorneys by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (incidentally, have you ever seen a man with a more vapid, “what’s going on – where am I?” look?). Having sworn to do something about getting our much put-upon (three and four tours in combat sounds more like German troops in World War Two than U.S. soldiers) troops, the poltroon congress needs – desperately, as I said – a distraction. Anyone who has watched these affairs can predict what will happen, and I won’t waste ink here except to point out what the Congress would undeniably rather be doing.

The pandering of lobbyists in the halls of Congress must resemble the feeding frenzy of sharks, all to assure that our young men and women stay in combat, dying and being maimed solely in order to assure continuingly massive profits for the military industrial complex. “America,” the final outcome of this as plain as the nose on your face. Worse, you have had what must certainly be the most object and demonstrative lesson in history, that of Vietnam.

And yet you stand by, in the words of Markham, “stunned and stolid, a brother to the ox.” Brain-dead, rendered effectively unaware by relentless Operation Mockingbird propaganda disseminated by the nation’s Uriah Heep media, you stand by while thousands are being maimed and killed. Buffaloed by words being wielded like a bullfighter his cape, you suck up cynical, Orwellian slogans and logically half-baked argument like the lurid prophesies of what will happen in the aftermath of our leaving.

Think! What will happen not only became inevitable with the invasion that will forever remain astonishing in my mind for its utter tactical and strategic stupidity, there is no way for us to stop it without causing over time its equivalent. People are going to die (oh, there’s a way to prevent that, but you – Mockingbird brain-washed and indoctrinated – would never do that), lots of them and no matter whether we stay or leave. We did that; we did it when we elected George W. Bush and the swine in Congress.

To quote Herb and others writing from Iraq, "The Mooja's know we can't stay forever, and when we leave, the place is all theirs. It's their country."

Yesterday, I answered mail from a U.S. Senator concerning, it said, national security. “Security?” I answered. “The way you can give us security is impeach that moron, then resign – all of you!” They won’t do that, of course – not as long as the press can go on covering up what they are. People are going to die on account of our “Mission Accomplished,” all right. Congress and the media see to that. The question is how we can justify forcing our own to be among the dead by keeping this Jack S. Phogbound gang in power.

Human sacrifice intended to appease the gods and expiate crime like what we have done in Iraq went out of fashion long ago. At that, only because it was the Mayans and the Aztecs was it ever the “American Way.”

Iraq, Global Warming, and Pascal's Wager

First things first, and there isn’t anything more important where national affairs are concerned than Iraq. There are few things personal as important, either. We’re entering the fifth year. Words failing, that’s almost all I can say, anymore. The war that our Louis the Fifteenth said would pay for itself with oil is now costing all of us save the rich (who don’t, of course, pay anything without profit) $630,000,000,000 – that’s six hundred, thirty billion dollars.

That, in case you like most "Americans" pay no attention to history, is the most since World War Two.

Even with past spending adjusted upward for inflation, the $630 billion provided for the military this year exceeds the highest annual amounts during the Reagan-era defense buildup, the Vietnam War and the Korean War.

When the cowardice of cutthroats called Congress approves a nearly $100,000,000,000 – that’s one hundred billion dollars – “emergency” (strange how it can be an emergency for anyone who demonstrates as little concern for our troops as these jackasses) spending bill in the next few weeks, they will have appropriated $607,000,000,000 – six hundred, seven billion - for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. About seventy-five percent of that will go to Halliburton and their military industrial complex ilk in Iraq.

You may have noticed that, now that the elections are over, the Congress’ Democrats are changing their tune on the war and the spending. Did I say cowardice? Yeah, I did – make that craven, crawling cowardice. Lobbyist scum-sucking cowardice. Throw in deceit . . . oh, never mind! What’s the use?!

"They (the belly-crawling, ass-kissing sycophants our fuehrer now rules) have a responsibility to get this bill to my desk without strings and without delay," our Dubbya says. Damn! –but I detest that miserable caricature of a man!

This is a turning point in the history of civilization, folks - not only ours, but that of mankind. This is also what the military industrial complex has been looking for since they seized power here in the fifties. That’s a war just about without foreseeable end, a war with all of Islam. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee last week that winning “the war on terror” – what a genius stroke that was for the neo-conservatives and military industrialists – “will require still greater resources. “

Damned right it will. If we happen to run out of people to impoverish and force into servitude, there are millions of illegal aliens we can import for the purpose. This is becoming just about as Orwellian as you can get (strange, isn’t it, that “1984” has popped up in the news again?). Read it, see the parallels – it’s damned near a script for the Bush League Administration and what’s coming.

"The country's not mobilized," Schoomaker said. "Less than one-half of one percent of the people are participating in this. And I absolutely believe that we've got to get people out of the spectator stands and onto the field. ... I believe that this is a very long, serious fight that's going to continue to get more and more dangerous."

Read that again, folks. Presumably, the Two-Minute Hate rallies will begin soon. Watch FoxNews for the first announcement. Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity will, no doubt, lead them.

If anyone should remind the General that the United States is spending almost as much on its military as the rest of the world combined spends on munitions and armed forces, Fox, Hannity, and Coulter will be brand him a traitor.

There’s more from the Ministry of Truth, too. One James Carafano, one of those supposed “analysts” at the Heritage Institute in Washington, said military spending isn't high (!) when compared to the overall size of the U.S. economy. “Analyst,” apparently, is now the Ministry of Truth title for a White House Tony Snow who reads the script handed him by his boss. Probably the Bush League’s equivalent to the Ministry of Love guy, O’Brien, huh?

After all, Carafano asserts, defense appropriations currently equal “only” about four percent of the country’s gross domestic product. We can handle a lot more. There are only about forty million poor, and – excuse me if I repeat myself – we can import a whole, lot more from Latin America. Plenty to go around. They’ll be glad to serve in our military, too (something already being bandied about in Washington – citizenship, should they survive). Does that remind you of anything? Rome, maybe?

And we spent seven percent of the GDP during the Cold War, goddammit. As the lady in San Angelo, Texas I mentioned a while ago, said, the poor here have TV. "When you have a bigger house, you buy more insurance," Carafano said. "When the nation is worth a lot more, we have to spend more to protect it."

Remember Reichsmarschall Herman Goering? "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

Neither was Carafano satisfied with his demands: "We have not had any follow-up attacks to 9/11; that's a pretty powerful success story," he said. Yeah that IS interesting. And clever, huh? -the way they veil that particular threat, I mean. What, Mr. Carafano – should we expect another 9-11 soon? Hmmmm!

Anyway, we’re obviously not spending enough. "On the other hand,” the “analyst” said, “the world's best-equipped military is being fought to a standstill by a handful of zealots in Iraq.” Yeah, we noticed that, too. And, well, now – by god, we can’t have that; and anyone who refuses to “support the troops” (arrrgh! –that phrase pisses me off) will be declared an “un-person.”

It occurs to me, incidentally, that you might not have read “1984.” Well it’s on Wikipedia, I suppose. You’ll be able to handle the synopsis – it’ll be only a page or so.

On another matter having to do with the same mentality and Ministry of Truth control, Hate Rallies against those of us who want to do something about pollution of the planet and its atmosphere also seem to be in the offing. Same thing there - threaten the oil companies profits by letting up on the accelerator in order to pump less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and you’re in danger of becoming an “un-person.” The "Inner Party" includes the oil company corporations, you know. War is damned profitable for them, too.

Three or four hundred times the carbon dioxide and water vapor in the atmosphere has nothing to do with global warming, and anyone who thinks that needs to work on his doublethink. That will not be tolerated by the people who put Big Brother in the Ministry of Plenty – oops, Mr. Bush in the White House.

The Ministry of Truth is also pumping out data to prove that the earth has in the past been even warmer than it is now. They do not also point out that that is irrelevant, however. The planet a long time ago was a lot of things it isn’t now. It had dinosaurs, for instance; more, there was a time when it could only support primordial live forms, too. Or no life at all. Hardly something we ought to encourage, I should think.

Look, folks, this is Pascal’s Wager. Remember? Pascal’s Gambit, as it was also called, had to do with religion and the existence of god, but it is a logical schema that applies here, too. Even if we’re not certain about the result of what we choose to do, it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to risk the planet when all we might gain is save a relatively few jobs and the lifestyle of some of our “Rich and Famous.”

When you think about it, Pascal’s Gambit, and game theory related, apply where Iraq and the possibility of war with all of Islam is concerned, too. It is thunderously (as I am wont, of late, to say) obvious that the time of colonialist capitalism is ending, anyway. There isn’t anything left to exploit to that degree. To risk a war that might do more damage to mankind than global warming – and might also put the finishing touches on that, besides – would be stupid.

The scariest part of it all for me in either case is to listen to supposed experts – “You can never trust a capitalist,” the heroine in my novel said, “everything is for sale” – base their pooh-poohing of the idea that global warming has human causes on irrelevant conclusion like proof the planet was once warm or warmer. These people obviously – at least presumably (I once pointed out here that education and intellectuality do not equate to intelligence) - think better than that.

The same is true of the similar arguments by “analysts” who inveigh – and similarly - against “cut and run tactics” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. to paraphrase Pascal, if you stop attacking Islam, and peace – even generally – ensues, your gain in lives saved, destruction abated and prevented, is “infinite” – enormous, at least. That, I should think by now, is obvious (notice that I didn’t say “thunderously”).

Even if, when we stop attacking Islam, Moslems continue their jihad, to make ourselves invulnerable is not only eminently possible (even results in higher employment and economic gain), we gain enormously – again in terms of lives saved, etc.

If the reason for the war in Iraq is the World Trade Center and the lives lost there, parenthetically, we’ve gotten one hell of a poor trade.

If we go on attacking Islam, and force Moslems to universal jihad, our loss may, indeed, be infinite. The only winners would be industrial military complex corporations like Halliburton.

There’s one more thing to think about, eerie in its mien. We seem to be risking severe or fatal – for us, anyway – damage to the ecosystem out of some kind of male minimalist daring and stubbornness, the same thing that seems to demand that we refuse to “cut and run” in Iraq. I’m beginning to think on second thought (if you’ve been reading here, you know what I mean), that maybe we should let women rule.

Maybe they will, anyway – what we’re doing lately sounds too damned much like the machismo of a game of “chicken” to suit me. Maybe we - men, I mean - will kill ourselves with the stupid games we insist upon playing.

The Wrath of the Saxon

The recent saga of Anna Nicole Smith has demonstrated far beyond discussion or dispute where the hearts and minds of the U.S. public are. As an analyst and tactician, I can tell you that it tells you all you need to know about the reasons we are in the state we are, and what the future holds. We're going down because we're too arrogant and self-interested to know the danger we've put ourselves in.

The coffins here are just part of the price for your sickening state. There will be more. The military industrial complex who rules here has all the same attitudes, just in far more colossal proportions. You, too, "Americans," are something to exploit – prostitute is a synonym for "exploit" in this case – and they’ll get to you, too, sooner or later. Capitalism is exactly what it says it is.

First, however, (also reminded by the photos) I need to get a couple – a few, actually – things out of the way. Lately, I’ve gotten a raft of “invitations” to join this or that group, each supposedly intending to aid this or that group of abused people. I’ve begun replying like this:

“I only help others personally and in the flesh. There are several reasons for that, not the least of which is the fact that money sent to “charitable organizations” all too often is like money sent to the U.S. government in the form of taxes. I trust no further comment is necessary.

“As ‘Knight-Errant’ (now Knight Errant Associates), I do what I can, none of it in the form of funds. That’s as it was with my country. I defended her with help I thought she couldn’t waste (until Vietnam, now Iraq, I believed that, you see). I often bought those seemingly destitute and homeless a meal, I made investigations and defended, gratis, people beset by tyrannical officials, and that sort of thing – I often taught people to help themselves - but I don’t give people money. The United States government demonstrates daily what happens to money given the dishonest and dishonorable.

“If I can help otherwise, I will.”

Next, and by way of answer to more mail, something from the Bible: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

Love, I said, is a one-way street. I have it on pretty good authority, what?

Then, in another vein (definitely):
Not many things make my ass as tired as what seems to be a nation beating its breast about whether we are offending this individual or group and their native country or culture. After the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, not-so-mirabile-dictu, we experienced a groundswell of patriotic fervor.

I know because everywhere I went, pursuing my hobby, bicycling, I picked up flags blown off cars and lying in the gutter. The ostentatious patriotism of waving the flag wasn’t matched by the respect necessary to stop and recover our national symbol. That’s patriotism, today’s “American” style.

There was more, though not so obvious. The debris had barely stopped falling from the World Trade Center when that same ostentation began offending others in a different manner. Our patriotism, the political correct crowd said, was offensive to foreigners. If it weren’t bad enough that those here legally complained, even those here to steal somehow managed to draw the sympathies of pandering politicians and their supporters. It takes your breath away sometimes, like the illegal alien college girl who recently had the chutzpah to complain that she felt put upon by the complaints of citizens being defrauded by her contemptuous actions.

Now, I’m not against immigration, sure as hell not by people from Mexico like those with whom I worked in the fields when I was a kid. Just stop and let us make a record that you’re here. We won’t treat you like we’d be treated if we were to sneak into your country, that’s sure. I’ve got nothing against anyone who comes here looking to make a better life (besides, you’re in for a helluva shock – our media lies like a rug about all that).

One thing, though – spare me the bullshit about how our population is almost entirely made up of immigrants. First, it isn’t so. I, and most “Anglos,” were born here exactly the way most people on earth were born in their native country (that’s what the world means, you know). Everybody – except Adam and Eve, maybe (you have to think about that, too) – has ancestors who immigrated at some time. Besides, none of that has anything whatever to do with the matter.

But there IS something everybody would do well to think about. It’s by Kipling, and called “The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon.”

“It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.

“They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.

“Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

“It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.”

It was not suddenly bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.

There’s another poem, too, also by Kipling and about those same Saxons. It’s worth reading and knowing, especially by those who seem so damned intent on infuriating the seventy-one percent of this nation that is still German.

"MY son," said the Norman Baron, "I am dying, and you will be heir
To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for my share
When we conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and a nice little handful it is.
But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:--

"The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, 'This isn't fair dealing,' my son, leave the Saxon alone.

"You can horsewhip your Gascony archers, or torture your Picardy spears;
But don't try that game on the Saxon; you'll have the whole brood round your ears.
From the richest old Thane in the country to the poorest chained serf in the field,
They'll be at you and on you like hornets, and, if you are wise, you will yield.

"But first you must master their language, their dialect, proverbs and songs.
Don't trust any clerk to interpret when they come with the tale of their wrongs.
Let them know that you know what they're saying; let them feel that you know what to say.
Yes, even when you want to go hunting, hear 'em out if it takes you all day.

"They'll drink every hour of the daylight and poach every hour of the dark.
It's the sport not the rabbits they're after (we've plenty of game in the park).
Don't hang them or cut off their fingers. That's wasteful as well as unkind,
For a hard-bitten, South-country poacher makes the best man-at-arms you can find.

"Appear with your wife and the children at their weddings and funerals and feasts.
Be polite but not friendly to Bishops; be good to all poor parish priests.
Say 'we', 'us' and 'ours' when you're talking, instead of 'you fellows' and 'I.'
Don’t ride over seeds; keep your temper; and never you tell 'em a lie!"

The theme of these poems is rooted deeply in history. During most of my early years, I was steeped in German tradition. We are slow to anger, it said, but terrible once aroused (need I mention the last two World Wars?).

Enough of that. There are simply some things you need to understand. This is a German-based culture. The Protestant work ethic, our way of life, is German. The theme of our Declaration of Independence, and our Constitution, that all people have something called “rights” – it’s a German word, you know – is German.

On the other hand, the idea that the United States is a multi-cultural community is being used to dilute our national identity. We have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle. It’s almost entirely German. Our unique culture and way of life developed over centuries of struggles and victories by millions of men and women who have loved freedom in a way only the Saxon German understands. We speak English, a German language (and nearly spoke plain, Hochdeutsch German, incidentally), not Spanish, not Portuguese, not Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language.

What do I mean? I mean that if you want to live here, to become part of our culture, learn the god-damned language!

There’s more. "In God We Trust" is our national motto. This is not a sectarian religious statement. Where the hell you got that idea, none of us will ever understand. It’s not some Judeo-Christian, right wing, or political ideology. It’s not one of your half-baked, superstitious chants or slogans. The nation adopted the “In God We Trust” motto for the same reason that the Sprichwort – that’s a German custom, too, by the way – is so much a part of Germanic culture. The people who founded this nation were theists – people who knew they were creatures of god, and subject to his rules. That damned simple (read Thomas Jefferson, if you need to; in fact, read our history, instead of obviously self-serving running off at the mouth).

The truth is that we are happy, most of us – the so-called silent majority - with the culture we have and have we have no desire to change it. We don’t, frankly, really give a good god-damn about how you did things where you come from. If it was so damned good there, why are you HERE? This is our country, and it’s our way of life. None of us wants to live the way Africans, or Mexicans, or Guatemalans, or Russians, or Arabs in general, live.

And we don’t care to have you wave your foreign flag in our faces, either. Any day now, you’re going to go too far, and have the damned thing shoved right up your asses.

Frankly, no matter what our humanist and feminist liberals say, we don’t give a damn what you think. WE have the right to speak our opinion, but in our country, we expect that same behavior from you that we would expect were you as an individual guest in our homes – the good grace to mind your manners and watch your mouth. If you want to demonstrate, go home and do it – where it might do some good (it doesn’t, it didn’t – or you probably wouldn’t be here).

There’s one right you do have, however. That’s the right to go home. None of us will stand in your way. It’s true that we’ve let ourselves be taken over by militarists who will stop at damned near nothing, including using our own citizenry like condoms or ass-wipe, but that’s our affair – we sure as hell don’t need the added burden you represent.

We may have to defend ourselves against the outrage of nations like the one you came from, but we don’t need to defend ourselves from both outside and inside. We have enough problems. We don’t need illegal immigration, especially by people with the f------ chutzpah of Mexicans who get caught being here illegally, to say nothing of using social and education programs intended for our citizens, yet say they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong. Are you nuts?

We don’t need, either people like the nitwit humanist liberal Florida legislator who said the other day that she found the word 'alien' offensive when applied to individuals, “especially to children.” “An ‘alien’ to me,” bubble head said, “is someone from out of space." Note the fractured English. That kind of peculiar ideation is exactly what’s gotten us into the “pickle” we’re in.

We need to hear from that (German) “silent majority,” and I have an idea we’re about to. The experiment in Saxon ethos and personal liberty that was the United States of America is about to undergo cataclysmic metastasis, the wages of societal excess and ideological repudiation of its essential character. When the attempt to assimilate people and cultures who represent the very antithesis of the Germanic ethos that birthed and energized it is done, it will nevertheless recover.

Having watched what it knew was inevitable happen, the “silent majority” will re-build their nation, wiser and less tolerant of the forces to them obviously responsible for its collapse.

To the others, latter day and earlier immigrants legal and illegal alike, you might be well advised to read those poems again. The Wrath of the Saxon is real.

Captain America Is Dead; Indeed.

Of course, we’ve all heard that Captain America is dead. R.I.P., "Cap."

Captain America has been dead for some time now, actually. You do remember what he once stood for, don’t you? The “Spirit of America?” “Truth, Justice, and the American Way?” An “America” who battled the Nazi and the “Jap,” and went like the Lone Ranger to the aid of other nations?

Captain America has been dead in the minds of the world for some time now. But now he’s dead in the comic books, too.

In the comic book story, it was a sniper; here in the real world it has been neo-conservatism and its miscreant progeny. Born in 1941, the comic book Captain America did not interfere and dictate to other nations. He did not invade, seize the head of a foreign government in order to kidnap and bring him here for trial and imprisonment under our laws, nor did “Cap” set up drum-head trials in the hapless nation in order to execute their head of state, either. Old-fashioned honorable and incorruptible, comic-book heroes like Captain America didn’t condone and support things like Schools of the Americas, establishment of secret prisons in foreign countries, or parking nuclear aircraft carrier battle groups off their shores each time they misbehaved where our “interests” are concerned.

Captain America didn’t torture prisoners, in order to obtain “critical intelligence.”

No, Captain America is dead all right – dead long ago. But even the comic book version is also a product of, encapsulated in, the workings of the real world, you know. He’ll be back. The “Cap” will be back when it’s profitable for Marvel Comics. After all, the miracle of resurrection requires only that the cartoonist draw the costumed, shield-carrying hero again.

And he’ll be back in the real world, too. Oh, drawing the hero resurrected will require some effort, things like “plausible denial,” “limited hangout,“ and other “damage control” devices. This is a post-CIA Operation Mockingbird world, don’t forget. “Deception,” a former CIA Director of Counter-Intelligence once observed, is a state of mind; it is also the mind of the state.”

Don’t forget, either, the real “issue.” In the real world, what killed the Captain America was his insanely addicted desire for corporate profit. Being rescued by a super-hero who then demands your wallet lacks something of the comic book story. Do you really think we’d be in Iraq (or anywhere else), were it to cost corporations like Halliburton rather than enrich them? Would we be brandishing the mailed fist of nuclear carrier battle groups and torturing people, were there no profit in it? Sure we would. So resurrection of Captain America, corporate-style, will take some real economic and diplomatic legerdemain.

But we’re up to it. For a capitalist, addiction to money is as powerful a motive as there is. It’s the only reason for life, in fact – his or his victim’s.

Yeah, we’ll try to draw the character again. We did very well with the old one. Very profitable. We’ll use those “plausible denial, “limited hangout,” “damage control” colored pencils, and voila! Captain America will be back. A new alter ego like the lamented Steve Rogers will don the red, white, and blue costume, take up the shield, and sally forth. And “Americans” – the modern, U.S. version, that is – will buy it just like always (well, hell - try to imagine anything the public in this country won’t buy; a short – very short - review of recent events should convince you of that).

Yes, selling the new Captain America to the rest of the world will, indeed, take some doing. The rest of the world has already seen one change of the alter ego inevitable where super heroes are concerned. They know the hero behind the Mighty Wurlitzer and its Mockingbird program costume and shield of “Cap” isn’t a Steve Rogers. This guy works for Halliburton. His object isn’t “truth, justice, and the American way,” it’s the bottom line.

This guy’s shield isn’t the Vibranium-Adimantium alloy of that wielded by Captain America, its corporate law firms. This “masked crusader” doesn’t bother to master boxing and judo, he lobbies congress and the state legislatures and practices tactics like the Pinto Rule (remember? – let the victims of your mistakes die, because the cost of the lawsuit settlements will be less than the cost of correcting the mistake?) This guy’s athletic muscle is tons and tons of money.

And the world isn’t into meeting this Captain America head on in conventional combat, either. As I once (1958) asserted during a conversation with General Tom Van Natta, no one would try to stand up to a U.S. with all its military muscle. Who can match our fifteen trillion dollar military? Neither are today’s “Red Skull” adversaries “into” trying to penetrate the shield that is our nuclear missile submarines, either. But we won’t give them a choice, I said all those years ago. We’re a capitalist country, and that’s not capitalism.

Nope, I said, their only choice would be the “death of a thousand” cuts, or guerrilla war (1958, and a second john lieutenant knew it then – what does that tell you about the public and what it will believe?). In the fatal issue of Marvel Comics, Captain America is killed by a sniper, someone shooting from the cover that is the modern version of impenetrable jungle, the city. Guerrilla war. The only way to deal with a super hero gone bad.

So, Captain America is dead. The comic books had to tell you?

Meanwhile, back in the real world, where reality resembles the comic books more than they do reality, an illegal alien woman from Mexico caught availing herself of college tuition grants and a dozen more programs intended for our people doesn’t think she has done anything wrong (!). She has millions of similarly illegal aliens supporting her, too, and threatening to use the power of the vote to legalize her theft. “’Splain dat one, Luci.”

You thought I jested about comic book reality? Recently, school boards have begun announcing their intentions to hire illegal Mexican aliens as teachers in order to educate bi-lingually the children of illegal aliens attending our schools. Surreal? How about this: our president is in Brazil negotiating with the government there in order to assure that Brazilians will be able to undercut our own farmers in the U.S. market for bio-fuels. Does anyone remember the definition of “treason?” How about “capitalism?”

It gets even more bizarre. Elsewhere in the news, a pizza store owner who has announced acceptance of Mexican pesos (presumably, he’s found a bank here or in Mexico to help him) personifies the truth of the illegal immigration debate. Pizza Patrón founder Antonio Swad says right in our Anglo faces that it’s about profit, “not a political statement.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

”You really don’t see the parallel “Pizza for Pesos” draws with the reason we’re in Iraq?

Take away the profit, what do you think would happen? Well, try to imagine the super hero Captain America selling pizzas. The corporate one will sell anything. While you’re thinking about what killed Captain America, here are a few more: The people who guard you while you sleep, prevent terrorists from boarding airliners (unless they happen to scream “racial profiling” or the like), and do “security” work not only get minimum wage, but many or them are aliens (“work Americans don’t want to do,”) you know.

Parenthetically, the better to make the point, a true story: during my travail under criminal assault at the hands of the “Nation of Laws,” I worked several times for security guard companies. Having within a short interval at one such cohort been obliged several times to defend myself against violence at the hands of would-be perpetrators of crime against the premises and property I was guarding, I asked why it was that I seemed to be the only member of the guard contingent who seemed to have so much trouble.

“Well,” the captain confided, “you’re the only one who actually protects the places you guard. You don’t expect the old farts, women, and fat people we hire to risk their necks for minimum wage, do you?”

To my flabbergasted reaction, he confided further that his company just paid the cost of whatever was damaged or stolen as a result of the guards’ cowardice or sleeping on duty (the Pinto Rule, again?), the better to keep the contract and client. If the security company kept overhead – including, I assume, wages – down they made a profit.

The people who protect you from your enemies are not Captain America, in other words. He didn’t used to work for pay, remember?

Did I say surreal? Comic-book? Last night, obviously expecting attentive consideration from her audience, a magnificently coiffured woman wearing pearls and garbed in a manner costing at least the monthly salary of a private soldier in Iraq held forth authoritatively about what U.S. policy and tactics in Iraq should be. Her opposition in the supposed debate was even more of everything theatrically meretricious, her greatest assets where reason to persist in watching is concerned being heroically-proportioned mammaries.

G.I. Jane doesn’t even bother to wear the costume any more.

Meanwhile, turning the pages of the comic book that our electronic and print media have become, we come to the massive, “plausible denial,” limited hangout,” effort that is the latest Veterans Administration revelation. The latest edition of Media Marvelous Comics has it that the Captain America super heroes of the U.S. Congress really care about the minimum wage soldiers they sacrifice on the altar of their god, capitalism.

Several scripts for the Operation Mockingbird drama are being considered (currently, the Goebbelsian strategy is to avail our superheroes of the super speeds provided them by technology in order to test alternatives). Which will prove most effective in mesmerizing the hapless, stunned and stolid, brother to the ox, herd represented by the voters? There is little doubt, state of the art what it is, that the “limited hangout” – in this case a scapegoat – will be most effective. The public has sucked this one up repeatedly – it should work again. Ostensibly (you don’t really think anybody get fired, do you?) someone is found to be at fault, shifted to another six figure salaried job – and the story falls out of the news. “The system works.”

Lord!

By the way – you don’t see the parallel between Building Eighteen at Walter Reed and that of the forty million poor in the U.S. and the portrait of the nation being promulgated by the media? REALLY?

You don’t see a parallel between the story of the guard company and that of the nation’s government bureaucracy? Really? You don’t recognize that a person devoid of any skills (or one having been totally deprived by the system of assets and recorded qualifications having to do with employability) will do nothing to jeopardize his job and put his salary at risk? Phenomenal!

Go back and consider, now that it has been discussed again and again, the World Trade Center debacle. See if you can still think that way. See if you can imagine Captain America having behaved as the various persons must have.

It goes on an on, as one might expect of an equation or system as big as a nation and culture. Consider along the way the peculiar form of entertainment known as “rap music.” Try, if you will, to imagine music or entertainment reduced to a more fundamental and/or primitive state. In this cultural embarrassment, particularly for the Afro-American communities, nothing remains of civilized music except rhythm. There is no melodious sound or tone, nothing of musical instrumentation or related artistry, nothing but emotionally scatological smart-mouth. This is the stuff of aboriginal proto-intellect and consciousness awakening. If it's Captain America, it's the great man with a bone in his nose.

At that, the resemblance to the bloviating bilge of today’s political punditry can’t be mistaken. That never occurs to you – really? Amazing!

Finally, speaking of “rapping” diatribe and oratorical hyper-nonsense, we have the totally surreal, comic-book spectacle – fully aware of her purpose, I use the term anyway – of the strange woman named Ann Coulter. The appeal to the intellect of Coulter’s tawdry blabber is about what her physique would be to prurient interests, were she to stoop so low – and, given her previous remarks, she may – as to disrobe on television. Trust me, Ann – stay in costume, even if it’s one of Captain America's Femizons. "Nightshade," for instance.

Ann Coulter personifies radical capitalist neo-conservatism, the George W. Bush Administration, and the very ugliest of what we have become - utterly nothing left of heroic America. In that, I think, she does us a favor. An idealist always looking for something good to say about even people of the most reprehensible behavior, I can’t help wondering if that isn’t what she has in mind. Like Sean Hannity and Michael Savage, her male counterparts in the FoxNews-genre electronic info-tainment media, this shrewish, vicious virago simply can’t be for real. She has to be yet another comic-book villainess. Poison Ivy, for instance; no, that was Batman, wasn't it?. Whatever.

The Spirit of America and Ann Coulter, after all, are Captain America and the Femizons. You can’t be more diametrical.