We were playing a game, suggested by my 12 year old niece, which is where there is one fewer chair than person and you call out a “Anybody who [— —],please stand up.” At which point, everyone in the category runs for a different chair vacated by other person in the category.

My brother-in-law says “Whoever voted for Bush in the last election.” I’m not sure what this is getting at, as I am sure he knows that his parents didn’t vote for Bush, my brother and I didn’t vote for Bush, and the under-18 crowd of kids or the foreign exchange student did not vote for Bush, and I’m fairly sure he does not know who my parents voted for at all. (His parents are of a Union-type variety, and my mother thought she could get my brother and I off our seats by saying “Whoever was given a greeting of “Happy Festivus.” — which I think was supposed to suggest a sort of Bohemian culture. I might have said that “Well, when you start hearing it, it’s a sign that it’s passe”, but nevermind. I note Rick Emerson’s greeting of “The following post will not contain no, I repeat no obligatory, tiresome references to Festivus and/or Chrismukkah.”) My father and my sister exchanged places — they might have been sitting next to each other. My mother expressed that she did not remember who she voted for — a nice bit of repressed memory, and I imagine her at the polling place treating the election as a necessary scab that had to be removed — arms outstretched as she pulled the level as she looked away.

My brother-in-law is flummoxed and sighs. “That didn’t work out very well.” I utter, “Hey! I voted for the Libertarian!” My brother-in-law says, “Yeah, that sounds about right. I thought you might have.”

I’m… not sure what that is supposed to mean. (I assume he heard all the same things about Kerry and “I actually voted for the $80 Billion before I voted against it” — which was actually a statement that was not part of his crime-list, but can easily be construed onto it.)

At any rate, my sister laughs and says “Whoever does not know the name of the person they voted for–” To which I Snided “Badnarik!” And the game continued. Losing steam toward the end, but that’s the nature of these things.

It probably is a relatively common occurrence on long-range travel services (in this case Greyhound Bus) that a mentally handicapped person disrupts the travel.

I say this because I travelled by Greyhound, and an elderly Mrs. Robinson kept walking up the aisle from her seat because “she had things to do” in “her home” — from what anyone can gather the most specific chore she had in mind was “making the bed”, which consisted of trying to drag the legs of a teenage girl who was lying across two seats, largely sleeping.

She had to be carted back to her seat several times. Eventually, a plan was devised to stop her at the outset, and all hubdrub was cornered off to the back of the bus. She should have been riding with somebody, but she wasn’t. Failing that, someone should have been there at her destination, someone making it a point to get there early for their mentally handicapped friend, but, alas, nobody was.

I am reminded of the shooting of the mentally handicapped man who was shot by air-marshals recently. A sad case, and my first thought was “Well, you probably can’t blame the air marshals.” My opinion has shifted a bit based on new and troubling information. (Apparently, he was running away from the marshals, for one, and for another he never uttered that he had a “bomb”.) Nonetheless, assume the best of the air marshals. I still found a few troubling aspects about the reaction of various pundits and opinion-meisters. There was some reportings on the incident as though nothing bad happened — nothing terribly off about a mental handicapped shot down. Anyone who half-joked “Well, that thins out the herd” (as I heard on one radio station) — Phooey on You.

On the Greyhound Bus trip, the man next to me joked that perhaps she was just shipped out to a random location by her caretakers that were sick of her. He immediately made a caveat apologia, “That would be mean.” My father, an ex-social worker, relayed an actual incident where something like this happened, a Mexican woman wanting to go to “Washington” to meet the Government because she was being chased by the Mexican government. She wound up in Central Washington, the only logic being that this has a heavy Mexican population and thus some Spanish speaking caretakers would more likely be available than somewhere else.

I assume the disruptive mentally infeebled elderly woman made it fine. Social workers were called in to the Tacoma Greyhound station. At least she wasn’t shot to death, although in the darkest recesses of many on the bus as she tested everybody’s patience, she was surely mentally killed.

My earliest memory of Christmas-time is of eating mud pie after doing some sleigh-thing or other in Bickleton, Washington. I remember the mud pie at the end of the day because I was horrified by the prospect of mud pie. My mom had to tell me that it is not actually a pie made of mud.

I remember my kidnergarten class did a rendition of “Little Drummer Boy” for the Christmas Pageant Assembly. My first grade class attended the thing, but did not perform. Whoever was sitting next to me asked the teacher, also sitting next to me, if we were going to perform. She said “No.” Such is the case with us special-ed students, I suppose. (As if the rest of the student body were dazzling and impressing.) By the time I was in the fifth grade, my class did a stupid “rap” for “‘Twas the Night before Christmas”. The first performance we were ahead of the taped background; but by the second performance (for the parents) we had the timing correct.

Actually the horror of the pre-Christmas Break day of school was the entire school body being herded into the assembly room and watching old films on the reels. Disney predominated. Bad Disney. We cheered on Donald Duck cartoons because the alternative was something like “The Apple Dumpling Gang.” The atmosphere stunk of wet boots and bad air circulation. These are not pleasant memories. The weird thing is that they continued right on through middle school. There was a Simpsons episode that correctly captured the general mood of this peculiar Christmastime tedium, wherein Skinner shows a horrid Christmas-themed low-grade production, and the dvd starts burning as though it were an overheated old film reel.

Fred Barnes asks the question: Why aren’t there any heroes being pumped up out of our current wars?

Instead of heroes, there are victims. The two most famous soldiers in the war are Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman (in Afghanistan). Lynch was captured by Saddam’s troops after her truck crashed. Stories of her heroism in a gun battle with Iraqis turned out to be false. She was rescued later from an Iraqi hospital. Tillman, who gave up a pro football career to join the Army, was killed by friendly fire. “The press made that a negative story, a scandal almost,” says a Pentagon official.

But Fred Barnes. Don’t you see? As you state yourself, it’s not like the United States have “heroes” for lack of trying. The Pentagon pumped up the two famous heroes, and their stories of valor deflated before our very eyes. The only reason they are victims is because the Pentagon, attempting to create myths, crushed out their very human stories. Jessica Lynch’s “victimhood” came up when she had to tell the cameras that the story of her rescue was cockamine, in a supposed dark moment in the initial “March Toward Saddam Hussein’s Statue”, a story designed to uplift America– a tale of valor and then “rescued” from the arms of well-meaning Iraqi doctors confused by the proceedings of American troops running in guns in tow. The scandal of the Pat Tillman story happened when it turned out that the Pentagon was making stuff up about him over whole cloth, to plaster on about during the NFL draft.

And, yes, Pat Tillman is a hero. Who ever said he wasn’t? Case in point:

“We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, Kevin and Pat, we weren’t in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, ‘You know, this war is so f— illegal.’ And we all said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.”

By the way, Mr. Fred Barnes… in regards to There are no household names like Audie Murphy or Sgt. York or Arthur MacArthur or even Don Holleder, the West Point football star killed in Vietnam (what is it about football that its stars become those selected to be our heroes of our war? Never mind…): you forgot to mention that other household name of the Vietnam War. He commanded a swiftboat. He won a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. The initials are JK. Remember him?

Sigh. To be honest, in the service of wars (just and unjust ones alike) — medals and accolades are meaningless to me. I can’t really rate. Because, if we’re not careful, we’ll end up creating half-men half-apes to fill that niche for heroes.

lyndon johnson masturbate over body of jfk

… A scatological literary hoax in which Paul Krasner published in his magazine, The Realist, what were purported to be censored chapters of William Manchester’s book, “The Death of a President.” In those supposedly suppressed pages, Krasner had LBJ masturbate on the body of JFK in the cargo bay of Air Force One as the dead president and the new president flew from Dallas to Washington.

thesis statement for the cask of amontillado

The Cask of Amontillado was written by a drunkard.

mark dayton skull and bones 1969

Mark Dayton graduated in 1969 from Yale. Was he Skull and Bones? I can’t seem to dredge that one up. (But how does a fairly unsuccessful one-term Senator fit into the Grand Conspiracy?)

if hitler asked you to execute a stranger would you

You never know for sure unless you’re in that situation, but I would hope not.

coca cola versus sams choice

Coca Cola is the largest cola brand in the future, although Coca Cola itself has an identity crisis that keeps it second to Pepsi in this nation. (Gotta be “hip for the Kids” at the same time as “Traditional with rich history.”) Sam’s Choice is the generic store brand of Corporate Behemoth and Destroyer of the American Economic System Wal-Mart. They both “taste like Malted Battery Acid”.

anti-masonic campaign slogan

“Fine. Don’t Show Us Your Handshake! See if I care!”

Um… In lieu of actual campaign slogans, here’s some history:

The party had its rise after the mysterious disappearance, in 1826, of William Morgan (c. 1776-c. 1826), a Freemason of Batavia, New York, who had become dissatisfied with his Order and had planned to publish its secrets. When his purpose became known to the Masons, Morgan was subjected to frequent annoyances, and finally in September 1826 he was seized and surreptitiously conveyed to Fort Niagara, from whence he disappeared. Though his ultimate fate was never known, it was generally believed at the time that he had been foully dealt with.

The growth of the anti-Masonic movement was due more to the political and social conditions of the time than to the Morgan episode, which was merely the catalyst. Under the name of “Anti-Masons” able leaders united those who were discontented with existing political conditions, and the fact that William Wirt, their choice for the presidency in 1832, was not only a Mason but even defended the Order in a speech before the convention that nominated him, indicates that simple opposition to Masonry soon became a minor factor in holding together the various elements of which the party was composed.

Wow. The candidate for the “Anti-Mason Party” was a Mason. Talk about playing both sides to the middle.

which united states president have red hair

Sometime before becoming president, Andrew Jackson had red hair, Thomas Jefferson had reddish hair, Dwight Eisenhower not only once had hair but it was red when he did have it, Martin Van Buren had red hair, and Calvin Coolidge and Ulysses S. Grant actually had red hair while in office.

former joint chiefs of staff general details nwo taking over of america

If you say so.

june 24 1988/what happened

Leonard Cohen played a concert in Reykjavik.

I don’t know if Mitt Romney is in Skull and Bones. And I assume that Kurt Cobain was for gay rmarriage, though I don’t know when he might have been asked.

I come back to my earlier conclusion on the matter of how Presidential Succession oughta work in cases of Impeachment, which I’ve altered to align a bit with Richard Nixon’s stated reason for quitting “does not have a large enough base in Congress to be effective” (but really, the case is more along the lines of “Public Loss of Confidence”):

There oughta be a law. A president in his second term who cannot muster an approval rating over 40 percent for a month’s duration shall be removed. He shall be replaced by a member of the same party who has successfully positioned himself apart from the president. (The second part of this law will help clear up a wee bit the Woeful state of the Senate — where a party wraps themselves tightly around their man in the White House, Legislature becoming Parliament, political Independence Lost for fear of how a weakened Party figurehead will tear your political fortunes down. In the current climate… may I suggest Chuck Hagel (Soitenly not goddamned John McCain.) I’ll work out the mechinations of this new rule later.

The basic problem with the current order of succession at the moment is that the first person in line, the vice president, is now more than ever an integral part of the Presidential Administration, and bound down with the same corruption causes that afflict the first president. I wonder how easily it will be from henceforth to elect a vice president into the presidency after the eight long years of the administration. (Then again, Dick Nixon and Al Gore are both saddled with the regret of not simply arguing that they will be a continuation of two popular presidents, both feeling like they needed to distinguish themselves from Dwight Eisenhower or Clinton Penis.) The problem comes into glaring light with the current occupants: Dick Cheney is the most powerful vice president in American history.

At least in the current line of succession we go to the Legislative Body after president and vice president. Okay in a pinch. But face it: we’ve evolved into a bit of a Parliamentary System, and thus… need a parliamentary solution. Margaret Thatcher is thrown overboard because the British public just becomes sick of her. The same is supposed to be about to happen to Tony Blair. But the vote of no confidence is simply met by reshuffling the party head.

Which is why I go with the “Stay Inside the Party” model. Let’s face it: the other party lost the last election, and thus does not deserve to sit in the president. I have suggested a threshold before on how a nation might replace the beleagured second-term president with his loser in the election prior: if the scandal that undid the president had been uncovered before the election, would it have been enough to unseat him? If so, the other guy/gal gets to take his seat. If not, and we are meeted out by the under-40 rule, you go to the “Find someone within the party” rule. The “Member of the Same Party” rule, thus, is a sort of do-over for the governing party. They can reconfigure themselves around their new leader, and bury the old decayed bones of corruption met by the former head. The ship of state is not burrowed under.

The 40-threshold does not apply to the first term, to allow for a president to mete out his learning curve and the public to figure him/her out.

The problem with the Capitol Hill Blue article which found George W Bush saying,

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

beyond it being a bit too obvious a scion to Bush-opponents, was its similarity to the most bizarre moment of Bush’s Social Security Reform Tour, where he observes that there are pieces of paper in filing cabinets:

The office here in Parkersburg stores those IOUs. They’re stacked in a filing cabinet. Imagine — the retirement security for future generations is sitting in a filing cabinet.

But somewhere along the line I just have to ponder some things about “Capitol Hill Blue”. Previously we had the story of just how absurdly narrow the “Bush Bubble” was… an early parody of the recent Newsweek “Bush In a Bubble” story that conforms to what I think of the man and his administration. Shortly after the “Capitol Hill Blue” story, the story comes out in the Washington Times (if I’m remembering correctly) that Bush is only associating with five people — Condelleza Rice, Barbara Bush, three other women in his circle that I can’t remember. The story falls in line with the Capitol Hill Blue story. Maybe the rumours are just boomeranging around… I don’t know.

Now stare back at the supposed Bush line that It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!

That appears to be his attitude with regards to his wire-tapping of American citizens in the name of security. How does Bush defend himself? By claiming that he has “Legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” He is just making stuff up now. And why not? They’re just pieces of paper — that Constitution, and that Congressional Resolution!

(“Total Information Awareness” is in effect.)

For their part, Capitol Hill Blue has this to say about their reliability.

I don’t buy the “if you piss off both sides, you’re doing your job” line. You can easily skewer this in your mind to claim Independence when there is none. Bill O’Reilly reads his mail — a couple shouting about his right-wing bias, and then a couple clamouring about his left-wing bias (who are those people?), and then, with deep satisfaction in his voice, a letter saying how “Fair and Balanced and unencumbered by any ideology” O’Reilly is. It’s a game you can too easily slant to the direction you want.

Never mind. Assume that Capitol Hill Blues is Garbage, parroting out the worst fears the American populace have about the Administration in Power. There remains truth in what they say… and they do it with more courage than the New York Times, which has been sitting on their “Survelliance” story for over a yearbecause the Bush Administration told them to (stopping the election of John Kerry, I may add). And now Bush is shocked… shocked… SHOCKED… that the New York Times printed such a story. SHOCKED, I tell you.

… because he believes in Original Intent. And originally, a lot of the Founding Fathers had problems with the Constitution… you see?

It would be possible, in a calmer political climate, to believe that George W. Bush and John Murtha are both partly right about Iraq. It’s a notion worth considering this week, as Iraqis go to the polls for their most meaningful election since Saddam Hussein was chased from his palace.

So sayseth the famous unsigned editorial writer of the Oregonian, in a formula opinion creation I like to call the “Ingratiating Sensible Center”, a formula that works as “a little from column ‘A’; a little from column ‘B'” or “In between the two extremes, lies the truth”.

I may say something different. It may not be a “Skull and Bones trick” (and if you’ve read this blog long enough, you know that my definition of that phrase is “lead to a single opinion through political elites framing the boundaries of the debate), but it may be the case that It would be possible, in a certain mindset, to believe that George W. Bush and John Murtha are both saying the same thing about Iraq. It’s not exactly the manner that Kerry and Bush were saying the same thing about Iraq during the 2004 election, but this seems to be an accidental concurrence with Bush and Murtha.

Consider that Bush Administration keeps hinting of “significant troop withdrawals”, something easily thought of as an mid-term election-year stunt, perhaps trunacated by the supposed “last ditch effort to save the neo-con plan” by Cheney–Wolfowitz–et al. Nevermind that, though. Now Consider that Murtha’s plan is more aptly termed “Cut and Stay” — we’re not leaving the area. So, what? Fortify the bases we’re building in Iraq, stay out of the Iraqi Government (largely chosen by the USA, mind ye)’s way, and … “Onward to Victory!!!”

The Cairo meeting had every Iraqi politician say that US troops should leave, and that Iraqi Insurgents have a right to kill (or some euphemism thereof) Occupation troops. That was enough to get Raed to vote. And if Raed voted, we’ve achieved some sort of milestone with the Iraqi psuedo-Democracy. We’ve appeased the necessary Insurgent-sympathizers.

We can “leave” and “stay”, right? Right?

I tend to skip the Vietnam War with my war analogies, perferring the Korean War. It falls into line of where wars take us a bit more easily: not the best result; not the worst result — and you adjust your future plans accordingly.

I see that Jennifer Aniston is GQ’s “First Woman of the Year”. A curious choice. But, as GQ editor Mark Healy insists it’s not a gimmick and “Sometimes, when you think someone is deserving, then you make room.”

I guess I don’t follow Hollywood close enough to know why she is more deserving than any other actress or female celebrity who doesn’t look awful with a sideways view of her breast. She appears in the tabloids a lot, largely by her own doing? (Publicity Hound, I suppose.) She is going to be in a bunch of movies next year?

The featured article contains several photographs of her shirtless, and scanning it I see a pull-quote showing that she is in favour of World Peace… something along the lines of “At a time when we should be coming together, we’re splitting apart.”

Okay. I will now pick my blog’s “woman of the year”. Maybe there are women more deserving than the choice I picked, and maybe there aren’t. I can’t say for sure.

From Pakistan, I choose Mukhtran Bibi.

Mukhtaran Bibi (c. 1972 – ) is a Pakistani woman from the small and impoverished village of Meerwala, located in the rural tehsil (county) of Jatoi in the Muzaffargarh District of Pakistan. Also known as Mukhtar Mai, Mukhtiar or just Mukhtaran, she was gang-raped on the demands of tribesmen — or by some accounts, on the orders of a panchayat (tribal council) — of a local clan known as the Mastoi. The Mastoi clan reportedly had bitter disputes with Mukhtaran’s clan, the Tatla.

After the conviction of her attackers, Mukhtaran became a symbol for advocates for the health and security of women in her region, attracting both national and international attention to these issues. [If I have to spell it out, traditionally women from these areas after being raped kill themselves out of shame] Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf awarded Mukhtaran a financial settlement of Rs.500,000 (about US$8000) [President Perev Musharraf having to be dragged and prodded by international pressure] which she used to build two local schools, one for girls and another for boys. There were no schools for girls in Mukhtaran’s village before this and she never had the opportunity to get an education. Some Western donors have also come forward with contributions.

Okay, so the editorial dictums of GQ and struat.com/election are different. For the record, I could just as easily have tossed up a hot sem-nude celebrity that I find attractive, and could’ve done so on a whim… and I would have picked someone hotter than Jennifer Freaking Aniston.

I see from Jeff’s latest “Elsewhere” link that Chris Elliott is “Struat.com’s Man of the Year”. The voting tallies show that he beat out Lyndon LaRouche by just 4 third place votes.

“And the Washington Redskins today have now defeated the New York Niggers. Next game in our NFL double header: the San Francisco Spics versus the Atlanta Honkeys.”

Okay. That’s the National Football team as composed of teams named after racial epiteths. The “Washington Redskins” is a perenial sore-spot, regularly derided by Native American groups and laughed off by the rest of us (honkeys like me) as being on par with PETA’s attempt to change the name of the Green Bay Packers to the Green Bay Pickers.

Behind the names lie ugly legacies. Slaughter. Genocide. Terrorism. Torture.

Torture.

We’ve all heard about Alan Dersowitz’s “Ticking Bomb Scenario” and his proposed time-is-of-the-essence-and-we-have-this-procedure-in-place-to-quickly-obtain “Torture Warrant”. Time is of the essence, and you have a person in custody who has information that will save innocent life. Torture is justified to get this information out. Right?

My answer is, “Sure, I guess.” Except I keep stumbling upon this problem with the proponents of Alan Dersowitz’s solution.

On the message board I frequent and sort of administer, there was this bellicose-fueled poster (self labeled “Independent”, who gets “both sides of the story” by listening to “both right wing radio and NPR!”… and he voted for Gore in 2000, but because Bush “will take the fight to the terrorists” will vote for Bush in 2004) who initially sided with the idea that Torture was justified at Abu Gharib. It echoed Rush Limbaugh’s famous “Skull and Bones” defense. He shortly backed down on that idea– I believe after it became clear that the people in abu Gharib were not “The worst of the worst”, and he sidestepped himself to the “few bad apples” storyline of what happened at Abu Gharib.

The next thread we get is the “Say there’s a ticking time bomb and we needed to extract the information. I say, Torture ’em!”

I admit I wasn’t terribly adept in this oh so crucial message board squirmish, and my posting of various news items of descriptions of what happened at abu gharib got a “What’s your point?”. We’re no longer working with what happened at abu gharib, after all, and we all agree that that was bad, but now we’re looking at hypothetical scenarios involving the worst of the worst.

The problem, which I was unable to express at that time, beyond a “when the hell does this even happen??” was that he had just come off defending Abu Gharib, where he for some reason thought the prisoners were the “worst of the worst” and where there really is no “information” that needs to be gotten out with immediacy… and find-tuned it to a more hypothetical, and not on the plate, “worst of the worst”.

He was still defending abu Gharib! And everyone bringing us to the “ticking bomb scenario”, (conditioned by entertaimnet blockbusters the Fox Hit “24”, a show that looks as though it was stoked up and brought into clearer focus after Bush’s meeting with Hollywood executives in the final months of 2001) – torture looks as though they are defending something else entirely, too.

Which brings us back to the “worst of the worst”.

There’s this pro-torture pundit who chimed in with a “Water-board Zarqawi? In a heart-beat!”

To which I can only say, “Well. Sure. I… guess.”

Get back to me after you actually get Zarqawi, okay? In the meantime…

Perception management has every Muhommad on the streets of an Arab country as being, defacto, Zarqawi. I say that with the message board encounter over abu Gharib in mind.

Now you head to the Mathematics of An Iraqi Insurgency, my “inexaustible supply” metrix, with that “Yes! Torture Zarqawi!” … and the multitudes of “#3″s we keep capturing, and… these insurgents are terrorists…

The Washington Redskins have defeated the New York Niggers.