The only way to counter the power of organized money is with organized and outraged people. Believe me, what members of Congress fear most is a grassroots movement that demands clean elections and an end to the buying and selling of influence—or else! If we leave it to the powers that be to clean up the mess that greed and chicanery have given us, we will wake up one day with a real Frankenstein of a system—a monster worse than the one created by Abramoff, DeLay and their cronies. By then it will be too late to save Lincoln’s hope for "government of, by, and for the people."

 

I think it’s nice that Mark Foley has found his way into rehab. The timing is auspicious indeed.  And it’s nice that the GOP leadership are finding just enough space – for the moment – between his sins and their own, to be able to distance themselves. Moral relativism is nothing if not convenient.  But let’s have a show of hands:  Does anybody out there really believe they didn’t know and turn an indifferently blind eye?  I mean, spare us.

Killing innocent people, torturing, draining our treasury, stealing elections, spying on American citizens without due process, leaving the people of the Gulf States hanging on their roofs for their dear lives, etc., do not bestow democracy, and the people harmed should not be reduced to punctuation marks.

My son and the others will not go down in history as “commas” but as more victims of the war machine and I hope as the last victims of wars for profit.

How can George keep a straight face when he talks about the enemy being willing to “kill innocent people?” When has BushCo every shied away from murdering innocents?

George Bush* will be an asterisk in history.

*Impeached, removed from office, imprisoned for crimes against humanity.

The sooner the better.

[truthout.org]

There’s been another school shooting?

NICKEL MINES, Pa. – Six people were shot to death at a one-room Amish
schoolhouse in Pennsylvania’s bucolic Lancaster County Monday, and at
least three young girls were hospitalized in critical condition,
authorities said.

Words fail.

I got a phone call from moveon.org a little while ago. They wanted me to volunteer to call other moveon.org members, to get out the news that there are only 36 days until the election.

I declined.

I told the guy that I’m busy and I don’t think people want to be called at home, and that if you set up a grassroots Internet network, you should stick to it. I’ve been getting their e-mails. He said they’ve been getting a good response. Which I said is further proof that they’re preaching to the choir.

I didn’t ask him if any of the people giving them a good response were grateful for being reminded to vote in a month, that otherwise they would have clean forgotten about it.

It’s not the calling that I really object to; it’s the implication. Are the liberals and progressives really stupider than the Republicans? Do we need a reminder? And if we do, what good does it do to call a month in advance? In 36 days, any idiot will forget again that his village is voting.

Yep, I think the choir knows there’s going to be church, and when and where. The ones that need reaching are the lost sheep; the ones who just might be persuaded not to vote Republican again, out of purblind fear. And I’m not inclined to talk to those asshats. Sorry, I know that’s a tasteless opinion. But this morning, it’s the one I have to own.

All that being said, don’t forget to get out and vote. I’ll remind you again when you’re coming out of your halloween candy coma.

I was sick last weekend, and I’ve been recovering steadily. It wasn’t a virus, and that’s all I have to say about that. Anyway, I got a call from my personal trainer, who suggested I take hot baths with Epsom salt for my ailment. (I’m not throwing the trainer thing out there to stroke my ego; I need a professional to help me exercise, and I haven’t traded the Toyota pickup for a Hummer, thank you very much.)

The hot & salty bath was such a success with the aforementioned mysterious ailment, and so relaxing, that I’ve continued the constitutional each evening this week.

As I was stepping out of the tub this evening I was thinking that it’s time to stop, because I don’t need to do it anymore, and it costs dough to heat the water. So tonight may have been the last for a while. But I wondered why I’ve been doing it. Prior to last week, after all, I hadn’t taken a bath in a tub in many years; I think there was one, when my shower head was broken about 10 years ago, and before that not since childhood.

Is it because I like getting wet? No, not really. Relaxation? Partly, but I have a big comfy chair for that. Is it the increased quality time with my rubber duckie, Duckie? No, he’s more loquacious than Rumsfeld doing self-psychoanalysis. Cant shut the little ducker up.

Here’s why I like to take baths; also one of the reasons I like going for a swim:

It makes everything stop. It makes you just sit.

When you’re in the bathtub, or the pool, that’s all you’re doing. Can’t multitask in the drink, folks. No laptop, no TV (the only room in my place without some screen coverage) and no phone. OK, You can read a magazine. Pick one that’s not brand new, just in case.

In his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig explores
the question of quality. No doubt I’ll bring it up again in this space, Inshala. He says that Quality is the properties of something which make the observer aware of himself, or something to that effect. And since I just couldn’t go on to bed tonight, knowing that the image in the last post was the last one posted here – that it might stick hard in your consciousness of quality, I offer Rembrandt’s Apostle Paul.


Now tell me, doesn’t that visage make you more aware of yourself? Doesn’t the
world make more sense with this one hanging on a wall somewhere, than with the
other? There is a difference between art and crap.

I’ve been thinking a lot about drivel today. You know what I mean. I happen to believe that it’s valid for a society that encourages creative expression to also encourage the criticism of it. There should be a consciousness of quality.

When someone creates a beautiful or meaningful thing, we ought to applaud. And when somebody makes something ugly, we ought to say so. We ought to stand up and say, “That’s Crap!” If for no better reason than that the children should be taught there’s a difference.

Not all art is artful. Sometimes, it’s OK to send the artist back to the studio, to the writing desk, with a sympathetic admonition to take a class and try again.

Case in point: it’s time to say “That’s Crap!” to reality TV, in all its misbegotten incarnations. I refuse to watch anything fictional that doesn’t have a script evidently written, on purpose, by a writer. And all that Survivor and Fear Factor stuff is fictional, ladies and gents.

Moreover, we need to tell the truth. Lies and damned lies should not be manifest and tolerated in our media, and any media sources that lie for a living should be anathema.

Case in point: the other day, I happened to glance at the cover of the National Enquirer (I know, it’s too obvious an example) in the grocery store. On the cover was a photo, purportedly of Steve Irwin swimming inches above the giant stingray that took his life. Dramatic. Compelling. Problem: when the slobs faked up the photo, it didn’t occur to their tiny indehiscent minds that, as much as Steve undoubtedly loved his trademark khaki safari shirt, he wouldn’t wear it while scuba diving. He probably owned a wetsuit, don’t you think?

That’s crap!

We all know crap when we see it, but there used to be in this country a breed of insightful and literate persons who had the guts to call it when they saw it. Where are they? Where are the critics – excluding hypesters – of art and entertainment? The boot of political correctness has kicked them to the curb, and I say it’s time to get them back, and pay them well. The last bubbles of “American Culture” are circling the drain.

He wants to change the world
only because that is what art
does. He wants to stand
in a high place and draw it all
into himself;
all the mass and movement
of it, the music and time
and bleeding, surging life,
and let it sit quietly in a space
within him – near his lungs –
where it can breathe in and out
with him, bearing away the hours
and the small, animal sounds
of pain; and near his heart,
where it can find a new rhythm.
Something less a locomotive
than the sea.
And when it has rested
for the years it takes a tree
to stand and live and die,
he’ll take it out and set it
softly on a table in the sun.


© 2006 by Kyle Kimberlin
all rights reserved

Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

“Margaret Atwood, the internationally acclaimed novelist, yesterday issued blunt advice to budding authors: don’t do it.

At a master-class at Glasgow University, the Booker winner, joked with an audience of creative writing students: ‘If I were your parent, I would say: ‘why are you doing it?’ You should go get a proper [job]’.'”

The Scotsman

Well that’s not exactly follow your bliss, is it? She may have a point of course, but really … how do you spell a raspberry, a Bronx cheer? ptbtbtbtbtbbbbbt.