More Musings

Gone for three weeks, I'm happily back from wrapping up finals and a great week in Philadelphia visiting my brother and his family. Saw Independence Hall (for the second time), Camden's great aquarium, drove to the Jersey shore and put my son's feet in the Atlantic Ocean and traveled to see Walt Whitman's home and his resting place. Wonderful time. On with the news:

The Bushies are finally getting their comeuppance regarding the shoddy job done in Iraq. This in no way is a reflection on the men and women ordered there; this is strictly a top-down failure of historic importance. The majority of Allies now favor China as a world leader over the U.S., the overwhelming majority of Americans disapprove of everything Bush is doing in the White House, and the Downing Street Memo continues to not go away. If you love your country, if you wish to see people of conscience and patriotism take action, then please join in signing circulating calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush. Never in my lifetime has such an atrosity (lying to go to war, lying to the American public, carrying out war crimes and attemping to cover everything up in the media) been enacted by a president. Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice and all of the miserable bastards are culpable; they need to be removed from power.

Karl Rove yesterday called "liberals" (such a farce in what that word means versus how it's used) weak on the war on terror. Whenever under the gun, change the subject, control the lexicon of the topic, and fire a cheap shot. People call Rove a genius, he is. So was Hitler.

Welp, Bush is snubbing the United Nations' 60th anniversary celebration. Now, the organization needs some major reworking. So does this country. However, snubbing the organization whose actions were actually working in the nation that your policies have now undermined does little to build credibility in the eyes of the world that your intentions were pure.

Raise your glasses and drink a pint to Bert and Ernie, who, while being gay liberal urbanite east-coast elite blue-state in-touch-with their-feelings communists, won't be cut from the federal budget. Maybe, just maybe the majority of Congress realized that PBS doesn't hate the United States. What I've seen PBS hate is narrow-mindedness, ignorance, demagoguery and intolerance. Call me a hater, too. Oh, and while drinking a pint, please drink some of this www.yardsbrewing.com. It's absolutely wonderful. And try to get it in your neck of the woods. When a beer tastes great after the sixth one, you know it's good! Chris, you'd really dig this stuff.

Everyone, you're going to love this: A conservative organization calling itself Human Events, assembled a committee to "formulate a list of the most dangerous books of the past two centuries" (SF Chron, June 12, 2005, page C3). Phyllis Schlafly's on the committe; what does that tell you? Here's the list of the top ten and others in the top 20:

1. The Communist Manifesto (okay, see #6 and see who actually read these things!)
2. Mein Kampf. (Okay, I'll give 'em this one, but who wouldn't?)
3. Quotations From Chairman Mao (notice nothing from Napoleon, the czars or the State Dept.?)
4. The Kinsey Report (the Kinsey Report??!!! People masturbating and having sex. Stop the ride, I want off here. God forbid we act like the creatures that we are. Hands above the desktop at all times).
5. Democracy and Education by John Dewey (when education serves as the basis for a free people and independent-thinking minds act for themselves then you know it's written by Satan himself).
6. Das Kapital
7. The Feminine Mystique. (Yep, the book that reveals the myth of women's happiness living lives heaped on them by those in power. And yet women are the devil. Why am I surprised? They've always been the devil in Western society).
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy (Comte) (A. People must have heard of and read the book for it to be influential B. Because the concept of relativity and non-absolutism challenges the powers that be, it must be bad.)
9. Beyond Good and Evil (Gotta throw Nietzsche in there because anyone who...ah, screw it.)
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes. (I would love to read this group's revisionist version of the Depression with Hoover's economic policies carried out. Volunteerism? The only thing that people would volunteer to do is let other Americans starve and die.

Others in the top 20 (put your seat belts on):
The Origin of the Species (honorable mention)
Coming of Age in Samoa by Margeret Mead (I'm familiar with this book from college. Anything that shows how societies don't keep their women virginal until they're 50 must be evil).
The Population Bomb - discussion of runaway pop. growth (no birth control! Yikes!)
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill (damn these Scottish free-thinking lower-case l liberals who try to define western civilization and freedom with actual democracy and freedom!)
Silent Spring (of course, crucify the tree-huggers)
Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader. (You got it; Nader is the antichrist)

According to the article, Freud, Simone de Beauvoir and I think the cast of Sesame Street are also on the list. "Teacher, how do you spell fascism?" "Easy. Shut up and do as I say."

Okay - some nice aphorisms to remind myself that not everyone's out to get me:

Appreciation is a wonderful thing; it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. - Voltaire

No umbrella, getting soaked, I'll just use the rain as my umbrella. -Zen monk Daito

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. -Winston Churchill

More to come...