Well, The Change Was Made Uptown...

Hastert AND Lott in one day? Wow? I sure wonder what the heck's going on? Are they both going on the payroll of massively powerful lobbying firms? I bet; they both have until the end of the year. However, two more openings to be fair game next November. And yet, what I still see is a Democratic Party that's going to implode by February or March, not based on the war but on the domestic issues the Democratic Party can't seem to unite around.

Dana, Dana, Dana. There is no Dana, only Zoul, I guess? Who made who(sic)?

On the note of heavy metal, Kevin DuBrow, lead singer of Quiet Riot, died today. I used to love the band's 1983 release, "Metal Health". It was so over-the-top, testosterone-laden cheese that as a nine year old I couldn't get enough of. I didn't know who Randy Rhoads was at the time and it doesn't matter still today. I guess DuBrow's death has as much relevance as Brad Delp's from earlier this year, but it's still a bummer. I wonder how he passed?

This one was called all along. Who cares about this week's "peace accords", summit meeting or whatever one wants to call it; the neocon plan was never to simply overturn the government of Iraq. It was to establish a military presence in the region. And, as Allen Greenspan's candid statement regarding oil bears greater weight, we can only assess the most recent war as one of imperialism.

I'm watching a very difficult film, "The Wind That Shakes the Barley", about the Irish independence movement led by the IRA and Sinn Fein after World War I. My own roots, only one generation removed from this contemporary struggle, make it a complex situation, a history with a bloody, checkered past and a story that has a different ending depending on who tells it.

I'll need to recall an amazing story about the new U2 box set, a girl I met in Washington, D.C. and the Joshua Tree tour from twenty years ago. It's a trip.