The Whirlwind Is In the Thorne Tree

Today remains Saturday, 31 March 2007.

Let's see if this works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1sS1TmXF38&mode=related&search=.

Tomorrow, HH, Boomer, child of the Cold War, child of the Nuclear Age, turns 55.

What better run-up to my birthday, than the youTube above: a nuclear bomb test? Back in the day of my generation's childhood, we were led to expect same at any moment.

Yes, you must paste the address into your magic carpet (Mr. Zen will shortly teach me how to add CLICK HERE stuff.).

Now groove on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GQj-0bT2J0&mode=related&search=

Fascinating mashup of 1950s atomic cannon documentary and a Johnny Cash tune.

BREAK BREAK BREAK.

Damn. I thought that JC tune, "The Man Comes Around", was ancient, and, as GWB would say, "I did the Google", and it's 2002, one of the last he wrote.

Back in the day, after The Cuban Missile Crisis, I woke up every morning amazed I hadn't been incinerated overnight.

What's really changed?

Here's to You

Today is Saturday, 31 March 2007.

On Halloween 2007, Tom Paxton, the great folk singer of Chicago, Illinois and Bristow, Oklahoma, will be 70.

Here’s Tom and Pete Seeger singing “Ramblin’ Boy” in 1965.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yNfnqueYQY

It’s been the great honour of HH to know and produce in concert both Tom and Pete.

On this date in 1621, British poet Andrew Marvell is born.

To his Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Halley's Comet

Today is Friday, 30 March 2007.

On this date in 240 B.C.E., astronomers in China observed the perihelion of what would become known as “Halley’s Comet”.

Your author observed the comet’s last apparition in 1986, and hopes to hang on, via life support of any variety, to see its return in 2061.

Your author studied at The New School for Social Research at the time, and had seen the comet through his father-in-law’s telescope while on a visit to Tulsa. Your author told one of his teachers, with whom he was studying paleo-astronomy, how his grandmother, as a babe-in-arms in 1910, had seen the comet while nestled in her father’s arms, on a hilltop in NE Kansas. His teacher said, “Now I’ve seen the comet three times: through the eyes of Halley, through the eyes of your grandmother, and now through your eyes”.

On this date in 1853, Vincent Van Gogh was born. Cf. his great painting (Museum of Modern Art in NYC: “Starry Night”). Cf. also Don McClean’s heartbreaking song, “Vincent”.

Coincidence?

Insert my Vincent Price voice here: “I don’t think so”.

Blood of Spain, Revised

Today is Thursday, 29 March 2007.

For all intents and purposes, the ‘conflict’ known as “The Spanish Civil War” ended on this day in 1939. It was, of course, far more than that.

Through the blood of Spain, the Fascist dictators of Germany and Italy, through their support of and armed intervention on behalf of, the Fascist Francoist regime, experimented with the military tactics and strategies which would, within the year, begin to drown Europe in blood.

"Bring flowers to the rebels failed".

Bartok

Today is Wednesday, 29 March 2007.

HH is a megafan of Bela Bartok.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx4YNNXAn7g

Serious piano.

Regarding Elizabeth Edwards

Today is Tuesday, 27 March 2007.

Hide and die.

Such seems to be the message of many to Elizabeth Edwards.

“How dare that skirt continue her political collaboration with her husband, and assist his bid for the White House, now that her cancer has returned? After all, skirts should be barefoot and pregnant, and keep their apple-lovin’, sin-worshippin’ mouths shut.”

From many reports, I deduce that Elizabeth Edwards is a full political partner in her John’s career, probably his closest advisor. Whatever his dream is in running for President, probably a mixture of idealism and ambition, she is partner in that dream.

It’s her life. If she wishes to spend what may be her final years as partner in her husband’s presidential campaign, more power to her.

If I discovered I had x probable years to live, I certainly wouldn’t crawl into a hole and await the Grim Reaper --- I’d put every action I’ve ever believed good into warpdrive.

Patriarchal fascist sexists wish every female/womyn [blast from the past!] would end as an invalid. Actually, they’d prefer they all begin and middle that way as well.

Go Elizabeth!

Death to sexism!

Impeach Gonzalez 2

Today remains Monday, 26 March 2007.

Yes, “Anonymous”, a cabinet member may be impeached, as can members of the Federal judiciary. The question of impeachment of a member of Congress is unsettled.

I should of course have mentioned two other reasons for impeaching and removing Gonzalez.

First. Gonzalez claimed initially to be entirely out-of-the-loop in regard to the district attorney firings. Justice Department documents now show that Gonzalez and the White House were not merely in-the-loop, they were the Prime Movers. Either Alberto (“Fredo”, as W. Bush calls him) “misspoke”, in which case he is so divorced from reality as to require institutionalization, or he lied flat out and with malice aforethought to the People of the United States.

Second. Gonzalez has been a steady champion of torture as a “weapon” in the undeclared (and therefore Constitutionally non-existent) “war on terror”. For example, his infamous memo to Bush of January 2002, in which he labels the provisions of the Geneva Convention regarding humane treatment of prisoners as “quaint” and the restrictions on inhumane interrogation techniques as “obsolete”.

To Gonzalez, the President is an elected Fuhrer, and his methods may mimic those of A. Hitler, J. Stalin, and S. Hussein.

Gonzalez is unfit for any office of public trust in the United States. His values do fit him for any office under Kim Jong-il.

Impeach Gonzalez

Today is Monday, 26 March 2007.

The Counsel to the President is often called “the President’s lawyer”.

This is valid, if understood to mean “lawyer to the institution of the office of President”. The Counsel is not, and must not be, lawyer for the President in the sense of the lawyer I hired to prepare my will. In his behaviour as Counsel and as Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez has betrayed his oaths of office. In practice, Gonzalez’s loyalty is to Bush as private citizen Bush, and not to the President as an elected employee of the people of the United States.

(This is hardly surprising. During Bush’s first term as governor of Texas, he was called to jury service. This would have entailed the embarrassing public disclosure that Bush had been three times arrested: for public intoxication and vandalism, for public intoxication and grand larceny, and for drunk driving. This might have put an end to his political ambitions. It was Gonzalez who convinced a judge that Bush should be coddled with special treatment, and exempted from the jury service which is a responsibility of all citizens.)

Of course, the selection of United States attorneys will almost always degenerate into a political process, in the sense of a partisan patronage process. Once US attorneys are installed, however, they must completely insulate themselves from partisan considerations and influence, and serve only the People of the United States through obedience to the rule of law. The Attorney General must likewise ensure that the attorneys are insulated.

Gonzalez should therefore be impeached, tried, convicted, and removed. Firing or resignation are too good for him, and for Bush: the full range of the high crimes and misdemeanors committed by Gonzalez at the behest of his master, Bush, must be publicly, thoroughly, and relentlessly exposed and punished.

Republicans crow that the GOP is the party of “law and order”. It's long past time for them to walk the walk.

As Yet Untitled

Today is Sunday, 25 March 2007.

On certain dates, I think, “she would have been 38 today”, and similar thoughts.

My father, who died last year a week before his birthday, would have been 83 today.

His birthday is exactly a week before mine.

He was so fortunate to have his birthday fall on the 13th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911.

The Triangle Factory was located on the east side of Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. An exemplary sweatshop, where immigrant women worked 60-72 hour weeks for the magnificent sum of $1.50 a week. The stairway doors of the factory, located in the upper floors of the building (8-10), were usually kept locked to bar entry to union organizers.

Of course, they blamed the fire on a woman’s match or cigarette, not the inherently unsafe conditions.

146 women burned to death or jumped to their deaths from the 9th floor.

Each year, a commemoration is held, and a fire truck raises its ladder to the 6th floor, as far as fire truck ladders could then rise.

Haley's Comment

Today is Saturday, 24 March 2007.

Herewith, a response to the comment by “Anonymous” to the column, “Massa Barbour Hates the Poor”.

Mayhap, “Anonymous”, you weren’t out and about in 1960 in the American South, land of the Confederate Swastika.

One such as Haley Barbour, 12, white son of a white lawyer, yes, a self-absorbed adolescent, would nonetheless known everything about racism. Would have seen it every day, breathed it, smelled it, lived it, profited from it.

Sure, it’s exculpatory to pretend oh, he was just an adolescent, he didn’t know, he was just consumed! by hormones. He didn’t notice how Blacks were treated under segregation, the Second Slavery. Didn’t notice the victims of lynching, “Strange Fruit”, hung from the trees of Mississippi, and the fire bombs raining down on those “of the colored persuasion” who dared demand freedom.

Just bidness as usual. The every-day environment. Didn’t notice it anymore than he did the rain he didn’t bother to come in out of.

And those adolescent Blacks, they didn’t notice Sharpeville or lynchings or firebombs or every ordinary day’s quota of racism, because they were too busy being happy 24/7 in the Land o’ Cotton, doin’ what they do best: singing and dancing and picking the cotton.

Adolescence in the states of the Old Confederacy in 1960 was kin to adolescence in Germany 1933-45: in the former, whites and Blacks, in the latter, aryans and Jews.

Sometimes “the child is father to the man”. I doubt Haley started off a bleeding heart, and hardened into a callous scourge of the poor (white as well as Black).

Yes, like the rain, which the Good Book says falls equally upon the just and the unjust, Massa Barbour’s grocery tax falls equally onerously on the poor of every pigmentation. For this reason I say, “Massa Barbour hates the poor of every race”.

Granted, I should have said, “race”, since “races” are non-existent.

But I don’t get your reference to “demon spawn” at all.

I don’t believe in demons: Haley Barbour is just another white capitalist oppressor --- his appetites for power and money don’t require demons to power them.
__________________________________________

1980 – Appropriately, given the topic, on this date, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, champion of the poor and the oppressed, was assassinated in the cathedral of San Salvador, as he celebrated Mass, by the death squads of Major Roberto D’Aubussion, backed and financed by the Reagan-Bush1 regime.

The Rite of Spring

Today remains Wednesday, 21 March 2007.

Captain's Log, Supplemental.

Here it is, fellow squids: this week's happy post.

The Rite of Spring, by Igor Stravinsky, in a fascinating human-computer piano reduction, performed by Fazil Say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-rqOJDo0-8

Massa Barbour Hates the Poor

Today is Wednesday, 21 March 2007.

By average income, Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation.

Tax on groceries: the highest.

Tax on cigarettes: 3rd lowest in the nation.

The governor of Mississippi is white-boy Haley Barbour, former Chair of the Republican National Committee, and co-founder of a Washington-insider lobbyist firm that made millions off of lobbying for … surprise, surprise, as Gomer Pyle would say … tobacco companies [!] … and it just seems that this old boy, Haley Barbour, is a proud political bedfellow with his outstanding supporters, the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white-supremacist group, which is the re-named White Citizen’s Councils of the 1950s, the white-supremacist middle-class comrades of the Ku Klux Klan. Or maybe Haley just like speechifying to their meetings.

A bill before the Mississippi Legislature would have raised the cigarette tax from 18 cents a pack to $1 dollar a pack, and cut the grocery tax in half.

Don’t say ol’ boy Haley don’t stay bought.

Yesterday, Haley’s boys in the Mississppi Senate killed that bill dead.

Massa Barbour still serving his masters.

All’s well, on the plantation of Massa Barbour’s masters.

What a cruel tax: on food, the necessity of life.

Massa Barbour hates the poor of every race.

FULL DISCLOSURE

Massa Barbour was born in Yazoo City, MS; his daddy was a prosperous lawyer. I was born in Gulfport, MS. My father was a sergeant in the USAF; my mother was a former school teacher. Massa Barbour became a white-supremacist; I believe biological racism is evil crap.

AN ANNIVERSARY FOR MASSA BARBOUR

On this day in 1960, during a peaceful demonstration in Sharpeville, South Africa, the white-supremacist police of the apartheid dictatorship (modeled on Nazi Germany) massacred nearly 100 Blacks.

Haley Barbour was 12. Did his heart leap with joy at the news?

In the Fifth Year of War

Today is Tuesday, 20 March 2007.

We have entered upon the 5th year of the Bush-Cheney Conquest of Iraq.

More than 500,000 Iraqis have been killed, or some 2% of the population.

The equivalent in this country would be 6,000,000 Americans killed.

Some 2,600,000 Iraqis have been made refugees, internally or externally, or some 10% of the population.

The equivalent in this country would be 30,000,000 American refugees.

Bush, Cheney, and a majority of Americans profess to be Christians.

“Do unto others … “

All Bush, Cheney, et al. can propose is more killing.

It is far past time for Americans to rise up and force Congress to remove Bush and Cheney, thus elevating House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the Presidency.

Americans must demand that the Federal Government place the questions and governance of Iraq under United Nations control, and demand the United Nations find just solutions that benefit Iraqis, not the selfish national interests of the USA/USE/USS or any other nation.

In Memory of My Father, et al.

Today is Monday, 19 March 2007.

Today is, of course, the 4th anniversary of the commencement of the Conquest of Iraq.

Today is also the 1st anniversary of the death of my father.

I have decided it is more appropriate to reserve my comments on the 4th anniversary for tomorrow, and observe a moment of silence in honour of the 1st.

Only this: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Horace: It is sweet and becoming to die for one's country.

Up the Republic!

Today is Saturday, 17 March 2007.

With apologies to the Irish,‘tis the day after My Lai, and, of many suffering people, the Irish can tell us how to do live with style and humour, as can many others.

So, I’m not makin’ a Paddy joke, which would be appreciated by a lass of Irish descent I once dated, and who had a frightening collection of Irish jokes, and, if I could find her a new one, she was always delighted.

Let us return now to those days of yesteryear.

The year is 1969, I’m a senior in high school, and the movie is, and Homeland Security will probably be headin’ to me house as I type this, The Assassination Bureau, based on an unfinished novel by Jack London, starring Oliver Reed, the divine Diana Rigg, and Telly Savalas.

I’ve not seen it since, and I’ll not fudge with “The Google”, so this how I recollect it.

The AB is an old public service organization, which takes out bad people too powerful to be dealt with by legal means. As our story opens, a hundred and a few pence years ago, the executives of the Bureau discover one of their number is subverting their activities in a bid for global power. Oliver Reed must stop it.

There’s a dirigible involved, and, other than the presence of the classically trained and beauteous (may I be permitted the remark) Ms. Rigg, I don’t recall much, except the finest line in the film.

The Russian member of the Bureau, in a lusciously semi-Feodor line: “To us Russians, life is no laughing matter, and death … isn’t all that funny either”.

(OK: so I went Wiki on this, and I’m pretty close to the plot details, all things considered, but not exact.)

And, as an old thespian myself, a good word for Diana Rigg, much better known on the other side of the Pond.

She has been a stellar performer in, among many, many other works of genius: distinguished in a Muppet movie, a Vincent Price movie (Theatre of Blood), and much Shakespeare, including a King Lear.

The other day, after I spoke well of Bobby Darin, a dearest friend, in a private communication, wrote: “Next we’ll hear you had a crush on Sandra Dee”. OK: it was the Fifties, and “further deponent saith not”.

But how could one not have an artistic crush on such artistry as that of Diana Rigg?

(Yes, I’m going overboard, but many of us American thespians have a thing about trying to convince our compatriots to discover the work of many, many Brits, compared to whom the work of such as Angelina and Brad are … here it comes, the pits.)

And death still isn’t very funny either.

And back to St. Pat's, and for all who recall their history:

All honour to the Easter Rising: 'Éirí Amach na Cásca'!

All honour to Michael Collins!

Up the Republic!

In Memory, My Lai

Today remains Friday, 16 March 2007.

I stand conflicted.

Should I mention that, yes, Bobby Darin Rules, but, thank you, Lucy Brown, the immortal Armstrong, doing "Mack the Knife"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUkf5Bj09Fk

Damn straight.

Death ruled at My Lai, but Mr. Louis reminds us, life rules even more, if we stand together for life, rather than death.

It's an odd choice, to say the least, but let's stand conflicted together.

In memory of the dead of My Lai, here's Satchmo.

Today Remains My Lai

Today is Friday, 16 March 2007.

“O that my head were waters, O that my eyes were a fountain of tears, that I might weep for the slain”. --- Jeremiah

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times”. --- Charles Dickens

On this date in 1968, American troops murdered some 427 or so civilians at the village of My Lai 4, in southern Viet Nam.

The worst of times: many of the soldiers of Charlie Company “followed orders”, that horrible phrase that must go back a thousand thousand years, and committed the massacre.

The best of times (and I use “best” here in a very jaundiced way): one helicopter crew, seeing what was happening, landed, trained their heavy machine guns on their fellow troops, and held them at bay while a handful of wounded civilians were evacuated.

The news broke in newspaper articles by Seymour M. Hersh in November 1969. See his book, My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath (Vintage, 1970). Also excellent is Four Hours in My Lai, by Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim (Viking, 1992).

I need to expand this column with much more texture and nuance. It will probably take a few days at least. My Lai made a tremendous impact in my life, as it did for many. I invite your thoughts.

Happy Day 2: Death From Above

Today remains Thursday, 15 May 2007, the Ides of March.

“Another precedent is broken”.

[Name that tune.]

This column is dedicated to another special friend, the column whence HH goes happy theme twice in one day. Who knew? (Don’t worry: doom and gloom returns tomorrow.)

HH is perhaps soon to be a foster father.

In the front yard of the family compound, an old oak tree, some three stories + high. In the tree top, I noticed this AM two hawks are building a nest.

Will they complete it? Will baby hawks be born?

If baby hawks are born, will this qualify me to sport a T-shirt with an adaptation of a paratrooper slogan: “My Foster Children Are Death From Above”?

Certainly brought me back to the Thoreau thing. I sat for an hour this morning, watching the construction site, and really listening to all the bird and other natural sounds I normally hardly heed.

Yes, humanity is destroying this world, but, while it lasts, for a few of us, it’s a wonderful life.

[Oops, that’s not so happy is it? Well, the special dedicatee and moi are both hardcore movie junkies, so let’s just justify that sentence as Coming Attractions for the morrow.]

Bobby Darin Rules!

Today is Thursday, 15 March 2007.

"Ceasar, beware the Ides of March".

This one is for a special friend, who wants me to post happy columns every once in a while. You know who you are, and I know where you live.

Bobby Darin was and is a genuis. Compared to the B Man, Sinatra sucks.

Check out Bobby's Mack the Knife:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBTITHA8twI

It's not just the masterful singing, but check out the body language, especially the hand moves. This man had all the moves, way before hip hop (the clip is from 1959).

Enjoy.

Anger Before Dawn

Today is Tuesday, 13 March 2007.

Marine General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has disgraced himself and should resign.

He couldn’t be bothered with the atrocities committed against American veterans at Walter Reed Hospital and in VA hospitals.

But, “I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts.”

According to his remarks in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, he believes homosexuals in the military should be given, as it were, the boot.

And, according to a CNN report yesterday, the military believes that 1 in 3 of those who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan require treatment for mental or social adjustment problems.

Today’s column is written at 7:12 AM, and either it’s too early, or I’m too infuriated, to think of a good “kicker” to end this column.

Submissions are invited.

Unscuppering Scooter

Today is Monday, 12 March 2007.

The question is not if convicted perjurer Scooter Libby will be pardoned by W. Bush, but when.

Libby, known in D.C. as “Cheney’s Cheney”, simply knows where too many bodies are buried. It’s either a pardon or an unexpected, tragic, but timely heart attack.

Already, Libby’s soft-on-crime apologists are making the case with arguments which strike a curious historical chord.

Return with us now to those days of yester-year, when, on 24 December 1992, President George H. W. Bush pardoned six federal officials indicted in the Iran-Contra criminal conspiracy. (Unfortunately, they were not charged with high treason, for overthrowing the Constitution by setting themselves above the law.) His justification had four points.

“First, the common denominator of their motivation --- whether their actions were right or wrong --- was patriotism”.

So, one may violate the law with impunity, by merely claiming to be a patriot?

Truly a case, as Dr. Samuel Johnson said in 1775, of “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

“Second, they did not profit or seek to profit from their conduct”. Of course they did: while they weren’t seeking cash profit, they sought the profit of acting as kings who crave unchecked power, trampling on the law of the land.

“Third, each has a record of long and distinguished service to this country”.
Irrelevant, when they boasted of putting their own private notions of national security above the law of the land.

“Fourth, they have already paid a price --- in depleted savings, lost careers, anguished families --- grossly disproportionate to any misdeeds or errors of judgment they may have committed”.

Mr. H.W. Bush ignores the fact that the crimes committed were committed under colour of overthrowing the Constitution. Throughout most of history, high treason was punished by death. “Depleted savings” and “lost careers” seem a small price to pay for having used public service as a personal piggybank rather than a sacred trust.

The White House Iraq Group (WHIG), created in August 2002 by now-disgraced and –defunct Presidential Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and chaired by the disgraced (but unfortunately non-defunct) Presidential rasputin Karl Rove, was essentially the marketing brains-trust for stampeding Americans into supporting the conquest of Iraq by ensuring the ubiquity of false information regarding Iraqi military capabilities and nuclear threats, Iraqi support of al-Queda, etc. Members included Card, Libby, Condoleeza Rice, Stephen Hadley, and long-time Bush cronies Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin.

Yes, indeed, Scooter knows where the bodies are.

Not only in the metaphorical sense of evidence, but of the 500,000+ Iraqis and 3,000+ dead in the Conquest.

To protect himself, Cheney et al., and the Republic Party from impeachment and incarceration, W. Bush must have promised Libby a pardon.

The only question is: before or after 3 November 2008?

Scooter Scuppered, or Aspiration or Ambition?

Today is Wednesday, 7 March 2007.

Hint: if you suspect you may in the future have to claim a faulty memory in a multiple felony trial regarding national security, don’t boast to friends that you can recall the titles and plots of all 79 episodes of Star Trek, as did Scooter.

(I pride myself on my memory. Alas, born in 1952, I don’t think I could have accomplished that feat after 1975. Libby was born in 1950.)

This advice arrives a tad late for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Jr., convicted felon.

Libby’s lawyers tried to portray their client as mentally frazzled and lost in a crush of Matters of State, so how could he recall accurately the fate of one little covert CIA officer and her husband, who didn’t amount to “a hill of beans in this crazy world” (Rick/H. Bogart, Casablanca, 1942)?

Libby, at the direction of President of Vice Dick Cheney, for whom he was Chief of Staff, smeared CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Why?

In defense of the intelligence (now ain’t that usage a hoot if ever I heard one!) fabrications which gulled a majority of the Congress and the American public into supporting the Conquest of Iraq.

Under American and international law, the terms for conquest are “conspiracy to wage a war of aggression” and “waging a war of aggression”. (Since 1946, and the Nuremberg Tribunal.)

The penalty for such aggression is hanging.

As Doctor Samuel Johnson wrote: "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." (Boswell: Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson)

Libby would have us believe that he, “accidentally”, thanks to “faulty memory”, forgot he had engaged in a conspiracy to smear Wilson so as to support the fabrication of intelligence to wage a war of aggression, the latter being a capital offense.

Ethically speaking, Scooter should have concentrated his mind wonderfully long ago.
____________________________________________

On this date in 161 A.D./C.E., Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (26 April 121 – 17 March 180) became co-Emperor of Rome (last of "the Five Good Emperors" --- well, whatever). While fulfilling his bloody duties of Imperator, he also wrote the classic of Stoic philosophy, a favourite of your author, the Meditations. Go figure.

From the Meditations, and Scooter, et al. might wish to ponder:

"A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires."

Is Ann Coulter Off?

Today is Monday, 5 March 2007.

Ann Coulter has always been off, in the sense of rotting food.

Her comment at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, however, may indicate she’s also off her game.

She once was known for reliably over-the-top vile and stupid statements.

“I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.”

Or: “Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.”

Or, arguably her “masterpiece”, regarding 9/11 widows: “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.”

So her CPAC comment was very lame: “I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”

Nothing even vaguely clever or creative there: just a schoolyard bully imagining they’re hilarious geniuses by throwing around common vile slurs.

But the CPAC audience nevertheless rose to the occasion, with extensive laughter and cheering.

I’m not sure there’s an actual technical term for what Coulter does. She’s of the ilk of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, mixing neo-fascist rhetoric with barnyard bigotry into a vile stew of “entertainment”.

(They remind me of the Nazi Julius Streicher, who published the newspaper Der Stuermer. It combined fascism, anti-Semitism, and pornography. He was hanged at Nuremberg.)

But Coulter needs to remember the first rule of marketing such tripe: each comment must be more “creative”, outrageous, and incendiary than the last. Of course, at some point, one ends up off the scale, and finds one’s audiences (and revenues, the primary consideration) radically diminishing.

Such was the case with Robert Welch, founder and owner of The John Birch Society. He began by “discovering” a network of Commie anti-white supremacists in the U.S. Air Force, and escalated to naming Dwight Eisenhower (!) a “conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy”. Welch and the JBS then found themselves consigned to the outer regions.

On second thought, Ann, I hope you get your mojo back, and accelerate toward the cliff. The sooner we’ve seen the last of you, the better.

Lynch the Bitch!

Today is 1 March 2007.

In Largo, Florida, a town near Tampa, 5 out of 7 city commissioners hate the bitch.

[For the record, while I abhor the bigot slur “bitch”, it seems necessary and appropriate in this context.]

This is the only conclusion to which I can come, when I learn, in The New York Times of this date, that the City Commission of Largo has voted, 5 to 2, to initiate the process of terminating City Manager Steven B. Stanton, who has served without their complaint for 14 years.

His crime: Mr. Stanton is in the process of becoming a bitch.

He is in the process of having sex-change surgery.

The commissioner who introduced the resolution for termination, Mary Black, member of the Daughters of The American Revolution, said, “I do not feel he has the integrity, nor the trust, nor the respect, nor the confidence to continue as the city manager”, according to AP.

Of course, Mr. Stanton had the integrity, trust, respect, and confidence before he decided to become a bitch.

Another city commissioner, Andy Guyette, said, “I’d second-guess every decision he made. There was a lot of hiring and promoting and firing and every one of them could have been influenced by this whole scenario”.

Yes, we all know bitches favour their own.

Can you say, “Patriarchal fascism”?

Full disclosure: I’ve had friends who had “issues” with “sexuality”,“were” “female” and believed themselves to “be” “male”, and so on, and ain’t that a caution, I must put it all in “ “.

The Museum of the Bourgeois honors the 2, including Mayor Pat Gerard, also a bitch, for voting in favour of Mr. Stanton. At least 2 persons in Largo don't hate females.

Yo, you Largo Bigot 5: why don’t you just lynch the bitch (Southern Style), or burn her like a witch (Pilgrim Style)?