Palestine Dispatch: "It's Not a Wall, You Fool. It's a Cleavage."

[I am now featuring snippits from others in far-off, exotic lands...from the Middle East to Houston, TX. Perhaps if I am lucky, I may even find someone from Fresno. You will not be disappointed.

The following piece is the first in a series from the Holy Land, written by a sage I have known for many moons. I trust him, and so should you. I must warn you that reading this is highly addictive and should be done with caution.]

"Woke up today at 6:55 AM. Pressed snooze twice
before actually rising. I fried an egg and placed it
between some fresh toast with a bit of jam and butter.
One of my favorite breafasts. Read a bit of a book
trying to put into context my new living situation in
East Jerusalem. When I eat, I like to read. This
part of the book is about the Haredim, those
ultra-orthodox jews who wear black coats, black hats,
beards, and grow their locks long. When I see the
kids I think of New York in the 1920's, at least how
it is potrayed in movies.

After this I make my 30-40 minute commute to work
through the desert backroads to Ramallah, capital of
the Palestinian Authority. Today I chose to listen to
Peter Gabriel's album "SO", could be the Pixies or
Carmina Burana next time. Thoughts going through my
this morning were 1) what is my American identity, 2)
what would it be like to be kidnapped.

The line of cars to enter through the Israeli Defense
Forces checkpoint was very short. Four youngmen with
M-16s, pointed down with fingers on the triggers, said
good morning in hebrew. I said, hello, and showed
them my id. They waved me through.

I arrived to the office and started my working day.
The song "Another Day in Paradise" comes to mind now
writing this."

Oh Brother! NPR Hits Bottom.

This shall be quick, as I have much to do on this blustery Monday nocturne. Lend me your eyes and I'll quickly tell you about what I do every weekday night between 5:30 and 7.

I drive home from work.

This I have done for two and a half years. It would have driven me insane had I not had this little concern for what is happening in the world. Hence, I listen to talk/information radio. It not only gets me home alive, but sometimes I learn something. So...get in the passenger seat and let's both take a little trip through my radio dial.

I am what is usually known as a moral relativist. Conservatives do not like moral relativists because they have been told by folks like George Will that moral relativists have made America a lost nation with no moral fiber. Conservative Catholics may see it differently. To them, MRs were responsible for that pesky little Reformation thing. You see, when there s no Universal Church, there is no universal Truth. If there is complexity, then spiritual and social uncertainty breeds mystery. Mystery's child is called relativism. This is bad, folks!! Very bad indeed.

Golly....sidetracked again.

A moral relativist may also be known in today's parlance as a "liberal." Ergo, I tend to listen to "liberal" radio. Most often, I will listen to Dennis Bernstein and the other sandinistas on the KPFA program, "Flashpoints." I enjoy Flashpoints, but considering that their program consists mainly of the Daily Palestinian Report, the Daily Haitian Report, and the Daily Palestinian Report, sometimes I crave variety.

Air America is good alternative, but the Randi Rhodes Show is on between noon and 7:00 at night. I like Randi, except when she tends to loop her points and...well, try this: "George Bush is is is is a friggin' moron [coda] George Bush is is is..." This goes on for nearly two straight hours, and of those two hours, commercials take up almost...two hours straight. I just don't like the format. To be a moral relativist, one must be genuinely confused....I mean perplexed by the complexities of the world which surround us like oxygen. This means that your format of three minutes of Randi Rhodes followed by a five-minute commercial break does not satisfy the moral relativist's need for complete, thorough examination and discussion.

So...I press a couple buttons and shazam! I have arrived at NPR!

I weep for National Public Radio, once a bastion for thoughtful, mature informational programs. NPR was hard-hitting journalism, yet tended to treat subject matter in a balanced fashion...simply the best of "mainstream" current events. Today, NPR is a place where listeners pretend to know what is happening in the universe between Mars and Venus. To hear Terry Gross's chirpy, goofy strains everyday is to know that everthing's okay and you can sleep snuggly and warm at night without upsetting conservative Christian brownshirts.

I shan't get into the history of what happened....just google: "NPR has become a corporate whore because Republicans have finally been able to cut Federal funds once earmarked for NPR's integrity and existance." Google that and save me from going on and on about this. Two things have happened. First, NPR has become a news eunich (remember, we don't want to upset corporate underwriters or the American Taliban). Second, they have chosen to run more human interest and lifestyle stories.

Arrrrghhhh!

To be continued...I have work to do

Quote of the Decayed

My comrades and I had made photocopies of the following and were going to plaster them all over North Fresno during the 1991 Persian Gulf Massacre. Fresno was afire with war hysteria, especially the intersection of Blackstone and Shaw, where pro-war goons were knuckle-dragging American and Israeli flags.

Subburdenite! You were to be a part of this madness. In fact, this posting is dedicated to you, you filthy Marxist scalawag! [Insert snicker here]

"George Bush is my shepherd, and I am in want
He maketh me lie down on park benches
He restoreth my doubt in the Republican Party
He leadeth me in the path of destruction for his party's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the alley of the shadow of starvation,
I do fear evil
For thou art against me
Thy politicians and profiteers, they freighten me
Thou preparest a reduction of salaries before me
In the presence of mine enemies
Thou annoint my income with taxes
My expenses runneth over my income
Surely unempoyment and poverty will follow me
All the days of the Republican Administration
And I will dwell in a rented house forever."

Oh My Lovely Fresno!

My favorite view of Fresno is when it fits neatly inside the driver's side mirror in my car. When those moments come, I am usually blazing down the highway on my way back to that blue state known as "The Bay Area."

I should say that there could be no greater misnomer for California as when people call it a "Blue State." A cooler shade of violet (in aggregate) than say, Kentucky? Perhaps, but all one needs to do is hop in the car and head southeast for about three and a half hours, exit at Herndon Avenue off 99, and you are finally in the city of William Saroyan. Of course, I hear Saroyan always hated the place.

There is little one can call "blue" about Fresno. These days, Fresno is populated by a special tribe of folks waiting for the Rapture which will bring Jesus returning to Earth in a 1976 Chevy Corvette, ready to do battle with all the moral relativists who have attempted to turn the world into a Six Flags Marxist Hell. I can't remember how it goes, but I think Jesus will press the little red button in the middle console inside his car and a giant hole will open up in the ground somewhere near Deadwood, South Dakota. At that point, everyone who voted for John Kerry in 2004 will be sucked in.

Had you picked up Sunday's edition of the Fresno Bee, flipping between the Values/Religion and Business sections, you would have found a quite comprehensive wrap-up of the ever-popular week in high school sports. You see, when not attending sub-mega churches on Saturdays and Sundays, people run high school sports through their veins like it was the last junk on the streets of Philladelphia. The can't get enough. This weekend last, I learned that Clovis West, my very own high school, lost in the state championship game held the night before in Sacramento.

Sports is the prince to King Jesus in Fresno. Beyond high schools, there is always Fresno State....the Bulldogs. In fact, the Red Wave boasts itself as the nation's largest community sports booster organization. Of course, under ex-basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, the Bulldog Foundation perfected the art of turning itself into a first-class money laundering operation for the basketball players. They did quite well for a while, until they were brought down by a few player scandals involving sexual battery, rape, armed robbery, and grand theft auto. Rumor has it, however, that Fresno State will rise up one day out of the ashes and become once again the San Joaquin Valley's premier sports juggernaut, surpassing even the hapless Golden Eagles of Clovis West.

No one can doubt the taste of the average Fresnan. Growing up in the city William Saroyan wanted to explode with a giant bunker buster shit bomb, I noticed that when it comes to the latest fashions and trends, Fresnans love a good thing when they see it and don't give up easily. For example, most pop culture observers and sociologists agree that disco officially died in 1979. In fact, they point to the "Disco Demolition Derby" at Commiskey Park during a Chicago White Sox game that same year as the defining moment in the downfall of disco. In Fresno, most would agree that disco was around until about 1984, but correctly add that it survived in certain pockets in and around Clovis well into the Nineties, fighting a longtime insurgency against Cyndi Lauper and the Macarena (did I spell that correctly?)

But I digress. Politically and socially, there is absolutely nothing even remotely blue about the place. There are two political parties in Fresno: the Republicans and the Dixiecrats. The mayor of Fresno is a man known quite affectionately as "Bubba" and had starred with Carol O'Connor in the TV classic, "In the Heat of the Night." Mayor Bubba was elected back in 1922 to bring about a cultural renaissance in Fresno; to make all those city folk in Loz Angeleez and the "Gay Bay" stand up an start inveen' the place. I think the jury is still out on that.

As sure as the clock strikes 4:16 in this office of mine, I shall continue this landscape of the country's largest city that does not have an interstate highway running through it. Until then, I bid you all a good day.

Question For The Day

Where in the hell is Michael Moore these days?

Dachshunds of the World Unite!

Quote of the Day

"Those rebel sharpshooters couldn't hit an elephant at this dis-"

-Last words of Gen. John Reynolds, 1865

That's The Ticket!

As horrified as I was five years ago when the Republicans stole the Presidential election, putting a drooling, giggling frat boy in the Oval Office, all I could muster when confronted with this was to tell a Republican relative of mine, "Well, here's your shot. You control the government and the media and cannot complain about the Democrats messing anything up. Congratulations." In short, the next five years would bring about the most corrupt and inept administration in the nation's history. And this is not some desperate attempt at hyperbole. One can simply google "Teapot Dome" or "President Grant" and compare how those scandals match up with what we have seen from the Bush Crime Syndicate.

All this has transpired while the Democrats cower and snivel, afraid that anything they say or do might piss off a few unemployed conservative bloggers. The most recent example of this was the attempt by Russ Feingold to pass a resolution of censure against the chimp for his shredding of the FISA Law. Senator Feingold bravely stands up as a latter-day Jimmy Stewart and declares that Bush and his Brownshirts have broken the law through their policy of illegally spying on American citizens. The fact that they have also committed impeachable offenses by way of waging aggressive war, outing CIA agents, policies of torture and kidnapping, allowing New Orleans to die, lying about conflicts of interest, and being either criminally negligent or complicent in the attacks of 9-11....every one of these things should have put the lot of those crooks behind bars. But Senator Feingold came forth and decided that a vote of censure for the spying was the most feasible way to bring about some kind of justice. And one would think that the Democrats would line up in support of their warrior brother.

They didn't. Again.

Again, the party of Wilson and Roosevelt unleashed a collective "meow" and crawled back under the rocks where they live, afraid of all those big, bad Republicans. One more time: screw them!

I caught some flak from people when I declared my desire that John Kerry lose to George Bush in '04. My thinking was that the only way for the modern conservative beast to be struck down would be for it to remain in power in order for this country to truly feel the wrath of the policies implemented in the last five years. Basically, Americans are not very intelligent, relatively ignorant, too comfortable (even in their misery), and will only get off their asses if they lose their jobs, houses, cars, or bank accounts. This country is in a bad state of affairs and this has only come about through years upon years of conservatives running a stealth insurgency while Democrats just basically forgot their base.....just left them behind.

So John Kerry runs against the chimp in '04 and cannot muster the strength to counter the lies, nor the record of the Republicans. Despite the foul play committed in that election, John Kerry lost, but I felt warmed with the knowledge that the conservatives would make themselves implode in scandal, recklessness, and corruption, thus energizing the Democrats and putting them back on top beginning in '06.

Of course, this hasn't happened. The Democrats continue to fail at mustering any cohesive counterattack on any issue, most recently with their lack of support for Senator Feingold. The only answer to this is to throw the bums out. Before getting rid of the Republicans, the Democrats must also be shown the door...at least the conservative DLC scalawags. A brave new generation of go-getters is desperately needed. To this, I would propose that Senator Feingold run for President with George Clooney as his running mate. Clooney recently posted an article on the Huffington Post basically saying, "I'm a liberal! Kiss my ass!"

George Clooney and Russ Feingold....think about it.

Happy International Women's Day...For Now.

Here's a news bulletin for the vast majority of men and women in this country who do not listen to Pacifica radio: today is International Women's Day. Ladies: it's your day. Remember....honor. Celebrate!

Celebrate? Has this guy missed something? Have I not had enough coffee yet? Don't we have a Mother's Day?

The short answer is that yes, we do set aside a day to honor mothers, and yes, that is a good, wholesome, and wonderful thing. Are the rest of you childless, single ladies feeling left out? Ignored? Well, I suggest that if the answer is yes, you had better get off your asses, marry someone, and start cranking out puppies. International Women's Day is NOT coming to a theater near you anytime soon. That is the sad fact.

Just this morning, I read an article about the recent abortion law passed in South Dakota. It is now a felony offense for a doctor to perform an abortion in that state, even in cases of rape, incest, or the health of the mother being put in jeopardy. This law is certain to go all the way up through the court system and will probably not survive due to it's violation of court precedents going back to Roe v. Wade. It's a test case, but what disturbs me is that this has not caused outrage across the nation, especially among women.

International Women's Day was founded in 1912 out of solidarity with working women in the United States. In those days, women were in the forefront of mass demonstrations in most of America's great cities, demanding rights for equal pay, better work conditions, and most importantly: respect, something Aretha Franklin was still trying to find sixty years later.

Ladies: your grandmothers, aunts, great-aunts, mothers, and other warrior sisters fought long and hard for the rights which you have today, but may not have next year or the year after. Perhaps you will be fine, but your daughter or niece may not be able to get an athletic scholarship. Perhaps she will not be able to have a career beyond Wal-Mart. Maybe the forecasters are wrong; maybe conservatives do want to completely illiminate Roe v. Wade, not just chip away at it bit by little bit. Is South Dakota a mirage or a bellweather? Do you care?

It appears not.

The feminist spirit ran it's course and died somewhere in the post-Murphy Brown Era. Political pundits talk about the Revolution of 1994, where Republicans took control of Congress for the first time since the Ice Age. Does anyone remember the Revolution of 1992? Anyone? That was the election year that not only brought Clinton to the White House, but also an unprecedented number of women to the House and the Senate, as well as governorships nationwide. It was also the same years that I found myself in the middle of a massive protest in Times Square. Six-thousand women and men were there to demonstrate against the Supreme Court possibly ruling against women in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a case which would have given states greater power to regulate abortion services. 1992 was a great year, so what the hell happened?

Conservatives began infesting the body politic, attacking Hillary Clinton ad nauseum, and polluting talk radio across the nation. 1994 was the year things began to change bit by bit. The economy was getting stronger, but people were falling asleep. George W. Bush oozed his way into the White House and conservatives now control this country: the courts, Congress, the White House, the media, and the majority of state houses. We are currently in a cold war on terror which will get pretty hot when this country is again attacked. At that point, all bets are off as women and minority shall be the first in the camps.

I exaggerate on that last point, but the fact is that when women lose their reproductive rights in a "free-market" world like that in which we live, everything else will probably go with it. So turn off the TV, get out today, and celebrate International Women's Day. It's your day...at least for now.

News flash: George W. Bush is not, repeat....NOT Winston Churchill!

It's difficult to be a bon vivant these days. One would like to close his or her eyes and forget all the horrible things happening in the world. Perpetual sleep....ignorance....being shielded from all the cares of the world. This is the world our ancestors wanted for us: to plug our brains into our own over-self-indulgenses rather than the ideals of the American Revolution, which take a lot of work and can sometimes be a little messy. I can say that I long for a day where we all live in a happy, marshmellow world sheltered from the great tempests of war, famine, poverty, or TV shows like "American Idol."

Of course, back here on Planet Earth, things continue to spiral further into the abyss of absurdity. We are already into the sixth year of the long national nightmare which has been full Republican control of the government and the media. Just this week, the AP reported the leak of a video showing the Great Leader meeting with cabinet officials the day before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.

The video showed Bush listening, or rather "hearing" officials point out the dangers faced by areas immediately in the path of the coming storm without asking any questions. Bush then spews out his familiar boilerplate about everything being A-okay and that's it. Bush goes off to bed to dream about puppies and Katrina becomes one of the most devestating hurricanes to ever hit the United States, with New Orleans being rendered virtually destroyed. The greatest absurdity of all this is that this is supposed to be some kind of scoop in the media. George W is not intelligent? George W is not curious?? George W does not care??? The only response to this crap I could possibly give is to ask you, the reader, to read the transcripts of the 2000 debates with Al Gore. There, you will see a confused, adolescent, snickering fool who had no business even being there. You must then ask yourself if you still think all these latest scandals involving the chimp are news to you. If they are, then I have no hope for you and I tremble for my country.

Moving along....

Iraq is in the initial stages of a low-grade civil war and surprise! The troops want to come home, or so spake the latest Zogby poll, the first of it's kind polling American service personnel. I don't want to say, "Screw the troops!" but I honestly do not know why they must be lionized so much and their opinions about war and peace given such credibility. Does no one else matter? That same Zogby poll which showed that over seventy percent of the troops want to come home also showed that ninety percent of those same troops think Saddam Hussein was in league with Al-Qaida and was involved in 9-11. At this point in time, there is absolutely no excuse for that, even when most troops do have access to the internet. It should be pointed out that the Stars & Stripes has been surprisingly critical of the Pentagon throughout.

Apart from that, however, there are those in the military, like Scott Ritter and Col. David Hackworth, who have been completely ignored or cast aside as lunatics. Now that we know that everything we've been told about Iraq was in fact sold, do you see Scott Ritter on CNN these days? No, you do not....and you should. He is still regarded as "radical" and most Americans who cannot read are still denied his proper place on Sunday morning chat shows.

By the way, Col. Hackworth passed away recently, so I don't think he'll be on CNN anytime soon. Of course, a dead Col. Hackworth propped up in a chair is always better than Wolf Blitzer anyway.

The military has commited tremendous atrocities in Iraq which cannot be denied, from the use of white phosphorous and depleted uranium shells to cluster bombs. Acts of torture against men, women and children have become commonplace in what has been crafted as a prison state we built with our tax dollars. The first and last thing a soldier, sailor, or airman pledges to do in the military is to "uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States." Are they in violation of their oath if they participate in these acts? If the war is in fact illegal, are they violating their oath by allowing themselves to be deployed? These issues are probably a little too heavy for the average grunt and most people would say that they are just doing their jobs. Of course, that excuse didn't work a bit at Nuremburg, no matter where defendants were in the chain of command.

Chihuahua Not Happy About Destruction of Gill Theater

Chihuahuas Protest Destruction of Gill Theater