The Fish Is Always the Voice of Reason

A surgical strike, if your doctor performs surgery with his golf clubs.

I'm Alexander Hamilton. Bow down before me!

The Department of Not Learning From History. Officially, the Bush regime claims to respect the history/traditions/humanity of the Iraqi people, but apparently they tolerate the soldiers on the ground treating them like subhuman ragheads.

This will make them like us!

Open Letter to GIs in Iraq

"So here is my message to you. You will do what you have to do to survive, however you define survival, while we do what we have to do to stop this thing. But don't surrender your humanity. Not to fit in. Not to prove yourself. Not for an adrenaline rush. Not to lash out when you are angry and frustrated. Not for some ticket-punching f***ing military careerist to make his bones on. Especially not for the Bush-Cheney Gas & Oil Consortium."

The World According to Bush. Pretty much what I've always suspected... Thanks to Choices for Women for bringing this to my attention.

Farmers in India accuse the Coca Cola Company of being a blight on local agriculture and ecology.

I recall reading somewhere that Coke and products like it are "the cigarettes of the future." It is hard to think of any product--except, of course, cigarettes--that is harder to defend. My brother, a long time soda drinker, quit soft drinks and lost 40 pounds without any other diet/exercise/lifestyle changes. For more reasons to kick the habit, click here. Or here.

Try drinking the the official beverage of the human race, or the official beverage of a significant part of the human race.

Why talk radio is right-wing turf. It's the simplicity of the message, according to the author. Perhaps, but that's not all, in this blogger's opinion. Right-wing ideology appeals to the reptilian brain, which governs "feeding, fighting, flighting, and fornicating." Why otherwise would communism, which also boasts a rather simplistic worldview in its elements, be such a dismal failure in its attempt to capture the human imagination, while fascism reincarnates again and again? Think about it.

An attempt to accurately account for U.S. casualties in Iraq, based upon U.S. government sources, it says.

Now for Iraqi casualties. Ted Rall claims that roughly 44 Iraqi civilians are dying per day, eight more than the daily average for Saddam Hussein at the top of his game.

Ted Rall makes yet another (sarcastic) comparison of Iraq with Vietnam. I have another difference which, so far, I haven't heard anyone point out. In Vietnam, the U.S. had parties with whom it could conceivably negotiate. No such thing exists in Iraq.

Is there such a thing as too much Bush-hatred? For reasons other than mental/physical/spiritual health, I mean?

More parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. This article (once again from the British press) argues that the main difference is that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating faster than did Vietnam.

More intolerance of dissent in dubya's America. These people have actually fought in wars, unlike some people.

The "new America." Can anyone confirm this stuff? The article seems pretty anecdotal, but cops, and the powers that be, have never quite behaved as advertised. And of course Americans are more willing than ever to ignore shady, police state tactics so long as they are used on people who are somehow not like oneself.

Commentary from Tom Laughlin, star of the Billy Jack films of the 1970s. Scoff if you must, but Laughlin has many interesting things to say on the parallels between the 1954 CIA-backed coup (at the behest of United Fruit) in Guatemala, and the current situation in Iraq.

"The incontrovertible facts presented here will show you, in a way that is literally crucial for every American if they want to remain free and vote intelligently, how people in the highest levels of power in our Government, including the White House, lie and manipulate Public Opinion – “engineer consent in a democracy” -- to convince the American people we must go to war “In the Interest of National Security” and to keep America safe, when in reality that war is being waged for a secret political agenda or for the benefit and profits of a private corporation."

Discovering this site caused me to become interested in reviewing the Billy Jack films. I've seen "Billy Jack" multiple times, and have just finished watching "The Trial of Billy Jack." They are almost embarassing to look at now, but there is also a guilty pleasure in returning to a time when right and wrong was so clear... In "Trial," the Indian shaman goes into quite a bit of detail about the "shadow," which some of you would recognize as a Jungian concept. In brief, the shadow is the side of yourself that you prefer not to acknowledge, and often attack fiercely when you see it in other people. The self-righteous sixties/seventies radicalism of the Billy Jack movies is a sort of shadow side for me, and I'm sure I could be very ironic and funny in mocking it, but I think I'll pass. I wish Mr. Laughlin luck in his continuing efforts to fix what appears to be an irreparably broken world.

Bush vs. Reality. History shows that reality usually wins. I thought these guys believed in objective truth. Perhaps Bush and his handlers should familiarize themselves with the following quote from commy-pinko-sickie science fiction author Philip K. Dick:

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away."

What should we call it now? America's East Bank?

"It's funny, but we often hear the War Party bloviating about how the current conflict is like World War II – yeah, but which side are we? It is positively eerie that a real life American general sounds like nothing so much as a German officer in some World War II movie set in occupied France:

'Zere vill be reprisals!'"

Yep, we're in the same boat as Israel now, but do we really *want* to be?

Kit, editor of PaperFrog.com, writes about changing his fonts, and his aging eyesight. Having turned forty some time ago, I would agree that the year is definitely a biological milestone. AS much as I tried to convince myself that age is a state of mind, I started to notice that muscles and joints were not quite as resillient as before. Amazingly enough, my eyesight is as good--that is to say bad--as ever.

In spite of that, I have to wonder whether our subconscious is programmed by the "dominant paradigm" to sabotage us at a certain age. Could we, like Alobar and Kudra of Tom Robbin's brilliant novel Jitterbug Perfume, simply learn how not to die? Most religions and philosophies agree on one point: such thought is the height of folly and blasphemy. But maybe that's part of the problem. And if we are all going to die anyway, what's the harm of a little denial?

I've always been a closet John Cougar Mellencamp fan, back to the days when he was just John Cougar, and all my friends thought he was uncool. Now that he's written the bitingly political, antiwar, anti-Bush song, "To Washington," I'm making my fondness public. Visit his site, buy his new album.

Nader is once again planning to make a serious bid for the presidency. I'll confess to the fact that I did vote for Nader in 2000. And no, I do not feel that my vote--or that of any other Nader supporter--gave the election to the shrub. In no state that Gore won or lost was the Nader vote in any way decisive. If anything, I would place the blame on all those liberal, Jewish retirees in Florida who couldn't get enough of Buchanan.

That being said, I will not vote for Nader if he runs again. I do not regret voting for him in 2000. It was worth it to have the feeling, once in my pathetic life, of voting for someone out of idealism. Bungee jumping was also an experience I would not have wanted to miss. But both are once in a lifetime experiences, and they're going to stay that way. I am now officially registered as a Democrat, and I plan to vote for Kucinich in my state's primary,or possibly Sharpton if he's still around. Sharpton seems to have matured a lot since his rabble-rousing, Tawana Brawley days. After these candidates inevitably lose the nomination, I will vote for any candidate the Dems nominate, unless it's Lieberman, which I can't see happening.

Why avoiding the draft will be much more difficult this time around. It looks like the fascism left-wing radicals and other alarmists have been saying is "just around the corner" for decades now really is just around the corner.

The good news: Europeans don't judge the U.S. strictly on the misdeeds of the Bush Administration.The bad news: Columbine is much more influential in forming their opinions.

"Apparently, if such awards are any indication, when Europeans think of America, they're not just thinking of Ben Affleck and J. Lo, or even the Bushes' military exploits in the Middle East. They're thinking of children shooting each other."

A challenge to classical left-wing demonology: The CIA as the voice of reason and probity.

"While the nation's attention is focused on the slow-motion deterioration of Iraq, the White House for months has been at war on the home front -- clashing repeatedly with the CIA in a rare series of public disagreements. They've fought over intelligence that seemed to predict the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They've fought over whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They've fought over a seemingly vindictive White House leak that identified an undercover CIA agent."