Crippled
In a few days I will enter the medical center at UCLA, so that my surgeon can repair a tendon torn in four places by a lifetime of stress. I will not be able to walk for at least five months. I am not looking forward to this.
I, of course, am now forced to think about crippled minds and you know where that will take me. It seems that George Bush doesn't like the man elected in his democratic election in Iraq. While the concept of democracy in Iraq is itself the thinking of a jackass, he sems now to have lost his mind completely by decrying the results of the elections.
Perhaps he thinks the elections were rigged, since they were guided by Republicans. Of course, the Iraqis had only voting machines to rig. They do not have a Supreme Court to uphold their clear deceptions.
I give Al Gore a lot of credit. He slipped out of public life quietly, when he witnessed the death of democracy. He knew all was lost. Why make a fool of himself as John Kerry has? I believe that screwball envisions himself as a viable candidate for the presidency. One more jackass.
I opened up tonight for one reason only. The obvious. The immutable. The most important point to be made of our presence in Iraq. I am probably mistaken in thinking that no one makes this point - at least not every day as it should be made - but it is so simple and I do not hear it. For 5,000 years (jump in here to correct me, archeologists) the part of the world that is now Iraq has known two forms of government. And only two. Autocrcracy and Theocracy. Rule by one man (this is the land of Muhammad) or by religion (ditto).
Enter George Bush. The reformed drunk who has lost more brain cells than he could afford is going to bring democracy to Iraq and to the world. The hubris of his thinking and actions is beneath contempt. With one stroke he felt he could change 5,000 years of history.
I always knew that the second we leave Iraq there would be Civil War - to create an autocracy or a theocracy. I must admit I was surprised that civil war erupted right in front of our faces. Bush, however, sees this only as a blip on his screen toward democracy.
So we have a president who killed a few centuries of democracy in this country, thinks he can change 5,000 years of history in Iraq, and is simply killing Americans and Iraqis each day in his mad belief and deception.
If there were any justice he would be held up for war crimes.
Finally, I'll take this opportunity to mention that the president's rant that Congress gave him the OK to go to war is a lie, pure and simple. Congress told him that, if it became necesaary to attack Iraq, it would provide the money in order to protect American interests and American lives. Skip one beat. George Bush attacks Iraq, saying that Congress - even Democrats - have voted to go to war. How long will you allow him this lie?
Today the president announced a new Chief of Staff. Oh, for God's sake!
I'm going to leave - put on your coats - with an unrelated thought. Quelle Suprise! (Correct my French, if necessary. I am not above being made the fool.) The immigration law coming out of Congress now must include that anyone who employs an illegal alien - don't you dare use the word immigrant - automatically goes to jail for two years. No public sevice, no early parole - two years. I suggest that you Beverly Hills matrons phone your hairdresser on his new phone cell right away.
Shutting Up
Living an hour from Los Angeles in Laguna Beach, California, I saw the march of (supposedly) hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans and illegal immigrants from Mexico today as local news. It strikes me that, being a child of the seventies, I've rarely witnessed a march for a cause that is totally without merit. The marchers are basically asking for open borders between the United States and Mexico, citing the fact that Mexicans are cleaning our houses and washing our cars in Beverly Hills.
I'm almost afraid to see what shifty California politicians will do with this one. Basically, the argument is, "We're here and more of us should be able to come illegally to live, work, and take from any government program we can get our hands on."
You're reading this from a bleeding heart liberal, not from an icy Republican. We cannot talk of saving America from terrorists while maintaining open borders. It is as insane as Bush's destruction of the world to chase down ten terrorists (whose numbers have increased exponentially in response to each of Bush's terrorist acts upon the world). Come on. You know it's true. You'd have to be an idiot not to. Ah ha. I have a problem, don't I?
Well, for you idiots out there, look at it this way. You see a fly in your living room. You go to the tool shed (Oh, yes, I know you have one.) and get a sledgehammer, dragging it inside your home. You begin to strike at the fly with your sledgehammer. Missing, of course, time after time. As you continue, you smash your furniture to rubble and slam holes in your inside and outside walls. Multitudes of flies seize their opportunity and swarm into what was your living room. Have you noticed yet that careful use of your fly swatter may have solved your original problem without creating others? Now you need money to repair your room and replace your furniture. You need to rebuild and secure your home. Of course, now you have thousands of flies in your house, so after all that - with your neighbors watching your lunacy the whole time, hoping you will just get out of the neighborhood for good - you have an enormous problem and the once invasive fly begins to seem as though he were the nuisance he actually was by comparison.
This little allegory in no way means or does diminish the horror of what I find - this is just me - was poorly tagged 9/11. (Doesn't say enough. Doesn't speak of the horror in those towers, the aftermath of tears, nor the direct hit on our Pentagon. We should think of better nomenclature. Who strays from the point more than I? It's just that one wrong touches another, then another, and so on, until I believe there is no beginning and no end. Well, the beginning was our failure to build good will and treat the rest of the world with respect and honesty. We were never capable of that it seems. The next wrong was George Bush. And then everything was lost.)
So...there is no question that even before, or as, we protect ourselves from "terrorists," we must secure our borders tightly and in every possible way to prevent any undocumented person, any person we cannot follow, to enter our country.
Sorry, Mexican Angelenos, you're not protesting a wrong, you are hoping to maintain one. The price of your easy back-and-forth between Mexico and America is way too big for us to pay. "Us" being the people whose houses you clean and the rest of the 300,000,000 people who have a right by birth or naturalization to live in America. Mexicans have no greater or lesser right to the American Dream (boy, is that a laugh!) as other people. There are many nations of people yearning to breathe free.
Our borders must be tighter than any in the world now. And forever probably. Anyone who desires to live here knows that is true. We're all dealing with hard truths now. I know it's rough. It certainly is for me. Pain is relative, I promise you.
By the way, before you slip away, if you haven't already, I think British Intelligence, the best in the world, would have made a life-saving fly swatter after we were attacked. Precise, effective, it would have given us a fighting chance - assuming our borders had been secured.
Going For Broke
The state of my finances is embarrassing. For someone who just turned 56 I can claim no savings or investments, tens of thousands of dollars in debt (so much that I really can't bear to let you know how many tens), and...I have income in the area of $20,000/yr.
Oh, there was a day when things were different - not that I ever saved - and I pulled in $100,000/yr and appeared to have no debt. That is "appeared" to me. When my income dropped precipitously, I found that I had never made a profit in business. I seemed somewhat awash in cash for someone on the low end of the middle class, but don't you know, I was spending more money than was coming in. No one checked the books!
An inheritance might bail me out, but that doesn't have much appeal for obvious reasons. Barring that, I will die in the hole, so to speak.
Along with most Americans and every level of the United States government.
This week the Senate took a budget, already beyond America's means so that George Bush can continue killing, tapping, cheating, lying, committing every venal sin with the exception of hiring hookers for himself, needing weapons of mass destruction to get it up, don't you know?...
they decided to enlarge the president's sinful budget, not simply by increasing the nation's debt, but making it lawful to increase the nation's debt - lest you think these guys are pulling something.
You see, this is an election year, and Republicans want you to know that as long as they are in power, programs you support will indeed be funded - until after the elections. They are so incredibly brilliant that they will fund programs you want without any taxes.
They're working it the same way I do. No income. More spending. And here's the catch - neither of us soon will be unable to fund anything. New tires for my car, already ten years old - the car that is - will be unavailable to me. No credit left. Will my parents be able to afford them for me from their Social Security? I can't help but mention, because no one Republican or otherwise ever does, that, if I get new tires, it is Franklin Roosevelt's vision and feeling for Americans that I must thank. And he was rich!
I'm off point. I'm sorry. Let's just go as far back a bit to Bill Clinton's balancing of the budget. That seems now like a feat beyond believability. Or worth anyone's time and interest. I gotta say, I think the Clintons are our lone best hope now, but that blow job of his really cost us.
And so, if you push Republicans to kill taxes and increase spending, there won't be any money for tires soon.
As someone who is ill and financially defeated, I'm more and more afraid to live in the United States now. Of course, you and America don't owe me much - and I need a lot - but the things you count on - Medicare, Social Security, clean air, education for any but the wealthy, and a job - won't be around for you either.
When you vote in November - and you must, really - you will be asked to send mostly old, white, rich men who already make hundreds of thousands of dollars each year fleecing you, as they tell you they are making your life easier by eliminating taxes, unless you are already broke...you'll be asked to send these despicable animals back to what is for them the Promised Land. You'll be asking them to lie some more. And some more.
This country was founded by old, white, rich men. There are 300,000,000 Americans now, diverse and deserving the democracy for which they pray each night. And whether the hyphenate that helps describe your ethnicity is African, Latin, Italian, Irish, Jewish, keep going, there's one for you, you who have sent those old, rich, white men to Washington for nearly two-and-one-half centuries will do it again.
I beg you on my knees, please don't do it again. They will break you in every way a person can be broken. I'll be dead, but you will be here. And the son you loved from the moment he opened his eyes will probably lie dead in sand and burning heat. You will be here with old, rich, white men and their twin daughters in white gowns.
