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I know, I know...tell you something you didn't already know.

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/08/the_death_panel.php

Aug 11 2009, 11:59 am by Marc Ambinder

Zeke Emanuel, The Death Panels, And Illogic In Politics
For political charges to stick, they've got to correspond to some discernible reality. They have to track with what an average voter experiences -- or believes -- is within the realm of the possible. During the presidential campaign, voters rejected John McCain's contention that President ObamTherea was a radical socialist who palled around with terrorists because the Obama voters knew from the campaign and the primary did not seem like a rabble-rousing Eugene Debs.



Over the weekend, Gov. Sarah Palin, former Speaker Newt Gingrich and others seized on a few lines from one of the major health care bills to try and encapsulate the Democratic Party's entire approach to health care. As Palin wrote on her Facebook page,

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society.

There are several immediate problems with this, not the least of which is Palin's chosen format. Facebook is not generally a place where serious political charges are lobbed. And Palin, having abdicated her elected executive position a few weeks ago, lacks the automatic standing to be a valued participant in the health care debate. If you're Sarah Palin, and you face an American public that is skeptical about your intellectual bona fides, you've got to choose your spots more carefully. Reading the post, it's hard to see what Palin actually meant. Her political spokesperson later confirmed that Palin was referring to the principle of "community standards," which she linked to a New York Post piece about Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a noted cancer physician an a presidential adviser on health care economics and the brother of the Chief of Staff. (Emanuel is also an occasional contributor to the Atlantic.)


Emanuel, in a few journal articles and an Atlantic feature, has written about the enormously complex emotional, social and economic decisions that individuals and the health care system confront whenever someone begins to die from a terminal illness. Emanuel's thesis adviser at Harvard was Prof. Michael Sandel, a noted communitarian who has argued that our political debates bracket gut-level values to our detriment.  Emanuel writes in the tradition of a communaritan who believes that procedural liberalism -- the reigning philosophy of government today -- does not allow for priorities among health care services because it "cannot appeal to a conception of the good."  Emanuel writes: "But without appealing to a conception of the good, it is argued, we can never establish priorities among health care services and define basic medical services."  Emanuel sketches out a "civic Republicanism" telos -- that is -- our health care decisions as a society should be yoked to a system that "promote(s) the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic."  He notes that such a system would deny "services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens."  


Emanuel is setting up a contrast: our health care system today treats everyone equally -- as if they ought to have equal access to every possible procedure or treatment. To most of us, the status quo seems intuitively right. Everyone is equal -- equal under God -- Emanuel doesn't say this, but he might as well -- and therefore it would be evil to make distinctions.  What Emanuel is arguing, here, is that this liberalism substitutes one goal -- equality -- for another -- a healthy society -- and that substitution may be responsible for the limited choices that policy-makers confront. He also points out a trade-off between providing a basic level of coverage for all and providing the opportunity for anyone with some coverage to get every possible benefit, treatment and procedure.  


Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich aren't debating the moral philosophy of John Rawls, whose formulations Emanuel borrows. They're taking Emanuel's academic point about health care values, assigning it to Emanuel as if Emanuel were advocating for something he isn't, then jumping over the entire health care colossus, and they assign this distorted belief to  Barack Obama by implying an argument that actually disproves the linkage they are trying to make.


On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Gingrich, who hasn't always defended Palin, decided to take the bait. Didn't matter that the "death panel" about which Palin spoke wasn't in the health care bill -- (not even in any of the four or five bills that Gingrich subsequently referenced.)  Didn't matter that the provision in question simply allows the government to pay for end-of-life and Hospice discussions with your doctor -- something that virtually everyone with Medicare wants because they often can't pay for lawyers to advise them about the process, specific language about which that was written by a pro-life Republican.  


"I think people are very concerned when you start talking about cost control," Gingrich said.
"You're asking us to believe that government can be trusted. Communal standards historically is a very dangerous concept."


Gingrich is conflating Panel's tertiary fear about Emanuel with the provision in the health care bills that would establish panels of experts to evaluate procedures for their effectiveness. (As Harold Pollack notes, end of life care would not be a priority for these panels anyway.)


Gingrich alleged that Emanuel is an advocate of euthanasia and wants doctors to bring cost-benefit decisions into their end-of-life counseling sessions."  Actually, Emanuel's research shows the opposite.


Let's say a doctor begins to counsel a patient with terminal pancreatic cancer. Right now, the health care system incentivizes doctors to keep that patient in a hospital and on chemotherapy until the day she dies. Late-stage pancreatic cancer is almost always fatal, and the chances that the patient will go into remission are very slim.  The doctor has no incentive to tell the patient that hospice care may well be a better alternative.  The last few months of life would be much more comfortable. Hospice care costs more than hospital care in most circumstances, Emanuel found -- and so the end-of-life counseling that a doctor provides has little to do with saving money. If there is any cost-benefit analysis in this scenario, it's simply that the patient may value comfort at the end of her life over aggressive, painful treatments that aren't likely to work (and might actually hasten death if they don't).  

Even if you're familiar with the facts -- Emanuel opposes euthanasia, he favors giving families more information about end of care decisions (because families often want this information and don't know enough about the future to ask about it), he understands the difficulty in convincing people to think about the costs and benefits of treating their dying loved one at the end of their life, and he is not writing the health care bill -- Gingrich's follow-on to Palin's attack is simply an exercise in unreality.  

[inadequate staffing and potentially explosive intermingling of maximum-security prisoners with those sentenced to less harsh confinement.]

The emphasis in last paragraph is mine.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/08/report-warned-of-violence-at-chino-prison-baracks-hit-by-race-riots.html

The Chino prison, which houses 5,900 inmates, nearly twice its designed capacity, remained on lockdown Monday and visits were suspended at nine other state prisons from which officers were drawn to help quell the Chino riot Saturday night. Those officers were also helping relocate about 1,000 inmates displaced by the destruction.

The disturbance, reportedly sparked by racial tensions between Latino and black inmates, appeared likely to deal a setback to efforts by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to desegregate the teeming "reception centers" in the state's 33-prison network that house incoming prisoners and probation violators.

A 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision rejected California's practice of segregating the reception centers by race as a means of combating violence among gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia and the Black Guerrilla Family.

The high court's decision in a case brought by imprisoned murder convict Garrison Johnson led to a negotiated settlement in which corrections officials agreed to stop using race as the sole criteria for assigning bunks in the reception centers.

The reception centers are supposed to house inmates for their first 60 days but are often where a prisoner serves his entire sentence for lack of cell space.

California has 158,000 prisoners in facilities designed for 84,000. A special three-judge federal court last week ordered the state to reduce its prison population by nearly 43,000 over the next two years to bring conditions up to constitutional standards.

The judges' decision was informed, at least in part, by a report from a former Texas corrections chief now consulting on California prison security, Doyle Wayne Scott, who visited Chino two years ago and witnessed what he considered inadequate staffing and potentially explosive intermingling of maximum-security prisoners with those sentenced to less harsh confinement.

-- Carol J. Williams in Los Angeles and Nicole Santa Cruz in Chino

As tensions build with Kim Jong Il, and we discover that the former president of South Korea jumped off a cliff to end his life last month...well, a lot needs answering...we are gearing up for shore-offensives with N. Korea--times could get slightly more interesting...

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20090626-212518/The-consequences-of-Korean-extremism

World View
The consequences of Korean extremism


By Sung Chul Yang
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:31:00 06/26/2009

Filed Under: Nuclear Policies, Politics, Foreign affairs & international relations


SEOUL—Once again, the Korean Peninsula is experiencing one of its periodic bouts of extremism, this time marked by the suicide on May 22 of former President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korea's second test of a nuclear device. Roh's suicide is a disaster for his family and a national shame, while North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's nuclear blast is something of a temper tantrum, but one which may have dire consequences for the two Koreas and the world.

The North Korean bomb, estimated at four kilotons, does not come anywhere near the magnitude of the atomic bombs of 15-21 kilotons that America dropped on Japan 64 years ago. Indeed, this vainglorious attempt by Kim Jong-il reminds Koreans of the mother bullfrog in Aesop's Fables who puffed herself out to imitate an ox.

Yet North Korea's world-defying belligerency is not utter madness. Rather, it is a by-product of its own acute fears of regime collapse.

As a Korean, I am always puzzled by Korean extremism. Where in the world can you find a more isolated, regimented and militarized dynastic mutation of a communist totalitarian system than in North Korea? Where on earth can you see a nuclear-armed, missile-shooting panhandler such as Kim Jong-il? Is there another country where only a father and his son have ruled like demigods for the last 61 years?

Likewise, where else but in South Korea can you find a Christian church whose registered membership runs upwards of 800,000, and where nearly 100,000 adherents attend each of the three Sunday services every week? Where else can you witness an ex-president commit suicide by jumping off a cliff near his residence? And this in a country that had an estimated per capita income of $40 in the 1940s but has now become the world's 12th or 13th largest economy.

Cornelius Osgood, an American anthropologist, attributed Korean extremism to the peninsula's weather. He observed that the Korean temperament is a product of long, harsh Siberian winters and hot, humid summers, with only short springs and autumns.

I believe, however, that Korean extremism stems from the country's geography and history. Surrounded by hostile neighbors, such as Chinese, Mongols, and Manchus in the north and Japanese across the sea, Koreans have struggled tooth and nail for thousands of years to retain their ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and political identity.

Setting the blame game aside, what can be done with North Korea? Unfortunately, putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle is next to impossible. The effectiveness of available options is limited, and all of them are pregnant with unpredictable political and military consequences.

"Economic strangulation" of North Korea appears to be the fallback option. Strengthening and tightening United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718, crafted in the wake of North Korea's first nuclear test in October 2006, should be the immediate task. The Security Council is already at work drafting a new resolution. But, to make the new resolution effective, China's full and unwavering participation—which has not yet been the case—is critical. Any unilateral measures against North Korea by individual countries must be executed within the broader framework of the new resolution.

And, even if new sanctions are imposed, the door to the Six-Party Talks must be left open for Kim Jong-il. In this eyeball-to-eyeball situation, the other five parties in the talks—China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and South Korea—must not give in first to North Korea. At present, public opinion worldwide, particularly in South Korea and Japan, is highly volatile. A cooling-off period is necessary. Seeking dialogue with North Korea immediately after its missile tantrum and nuclear brinkmanship is unwise and impractical.

After tough and effective UN-led sanctions are imposed, the concerned parties must wait until North Korea feels the pain of the economic squeeze. But, as North Korea is one of the world's poorest and least globalized states, the effectiveness of sanctions will be limited.

At the same time, the nuclear threat is not the most immediate danger. The bigger threat today is actual combat, for, the day after North Korea's nuclear test, South Korea announced its full participation in the US-led Proliferation Strategic Initiative, which seeks to intercept ships that may be involved in illegally transporting nuclear technology. North Korea blasted this South Korean decision as a "declaration of war." So great care and cool heads will be needed in the seas around Korea in the days and weeks to come.

Rising tension on the Korean Peninsula is shattering fast the glimmers of hope for re-unity that followed 10 years of progress under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun governments. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, through his flip-flops, and Kim Jong-Il, with his renewed nuclear blackmail, both seem determined to see relations deteriorate.

The two current leaders in Korea must not repeat the mistake of their predecessors in the latter part of the 19th century. Blinded by internecine domestic power struggles, they failed to see the great powers' strategic gambits in the region. That failure led directly to the colonization of Korea by Japan.

Worsening inter-Korean relations will certainly make both sides less secure and stable politically, economically, and militarily. Caught in this vicious spiral, North and South Korea will become far more vulnerable to neighboring powers' strategic maneuvers. As a result, growing inter-Korean hostility may ultimately prove far more lethal to the well-being of all Koreans than Roh Moo-hyun's tragic suicide and Kim Jong-il's futile fireworks. Project Syndicate

Sung Chul Yang, former ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the United States and currently a distinguished professor at Korea University in Seoul, is the author of "The North and South Korean Political Systems: A Comparative Analysis."

[Reprieve]

Ok, so this comic from thepaincomics.com, Tim Krieder, is a writer now.  Well, supposedly always was, but his writing is making more dough for him than the comics, which I can't blame him for pursuing given the state of the journalistic economy right now.

Anyway, this essay of his is kickass to me, because it highlights this ability of the human mind to expand and shrink as needed.  This innate tool we use to accommodate the current tragedies of the day, and then a similar skill level in retrieving your everyday-ness once the consequences of said tragedies are gotten over, so to speak.  I've had a traumatic last 6 years or so, and really, I marvel at how NORMAL every fucking thing is for me.  In fact, beyond normal--I feel like I should be in a rubber room with a gag, a syringe of something equal parts lethal and sedating, and a full-body tourniquet in certain parts of my life.  But here I am, still in suburbian hell, living "THE life."

Sigh.

So here goes.  Enjoy.  I somewhat like this guy, I guess, since I'm shoving him in your faces lately:
http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/reprieve/

June 2, 2009, 9:38 pm
Reprieve
By Tim Kreider

Fourteen years ago I was stabbed in the throat. This is kind of a long story and it's not the point of this essay. The point is that after my unsuccessful murder I wasn't unhappy for an entire year.

Winston Churchill's quote about the exhilaration of being shot at without result is verifiably true. I was reminded of an old Ray Bradbury story, "The Lost City of Mars," in which a man finds a miraculous machine that enables him to experience his own violent death over and over again, as many times as he likes — in locomotive collisions, race car crashes, exploding rockets — until he emerges flayed of all his free-floating guilt and unconscious longing for death, forgiven and free, finally alive.

I'm not claiming I was continuously euphoric the whole time; it's just that, during that grace period, nothing much could bother me or get me down. The sort of horrible thing that I'd always dreaded was going to happen to me had finally happened. I figured I was off the hook for a while. In a parallel universe only two millimeters away from this one (the distance between the stiletto and my carotid), I had been flown home in the cargo hold instead of in coach. Everything in this one, as far as I was concerned, was gravy.

My friends immediately mocked me out of my self-consciousness about the nerve damage that had left me with a lopsided smile. I started brewing my own dandelion wine in a big Amish crock. I listened to old pop songs too stupid to name in print. And I developed a strange new laugh that's stayed with me to this day — a loud, raucous, barking thing that comes from deep in the diaphragm and makes people in bars or restaurants look over at me for a second to make sure I'm not about to open up on the crowd with a weapon.

I wish I could recommend this experience to everyone. It's a cliché that this is why people enjoy thrill-seeking pastimes ranging from harmless adrenaline fixes like roller coasters to suicide attempts with safety nets, like bungee jumping. The catch is that to get the full effect you have to be genuinely uncertain that you're going to survive. The best approximation would be to hire an incompetent hit man to assassinate you.

It's one of the maddening perversities of human psychology that we only notice we're alive when we're reminded we're going to die, sort of the same way some of us only appreciate our girlfriends after they're exes. I saw the same thing happen, in a more profound and lasting way, to my father when he was terminally ill, and then to my mother after he died; an almost literal lightening, a flippant indifference to the silly, quotidian nonsense that preoccupies most of us and ruins so much of our lives. A neighbor was suing my father for some reason or other during his illness, but if you tried to talk to him about such "serious" matters he'd just sing you old songs like "A Bird In a Gilded Cage" in a high, quavering old-man falsetto. When my mother, who's now a leader in her church, sees people squabbling over minutiae or personal politics, she reminds them, diplomatically I'm sure, to focus on the larger context.

It didn't last, of course. You can't feel grateful to be alive your whole life any more than you can stay passionately in love forever — or grieve forever, for that matter. Time forces us all to betray ourselves and get back to the busywork of living in the world. Before a year had gone by the same dumb everyday anxieties and frustrations began creeping back. I'd be disgusted to catch myself yelling in traffic, pounding on my computer, lying awake at night wondering what was going to become of me.

Once a year on my stabbiversary I remind myself that this is still my bonus life, a free round. But now that I'm back down in the messy, tedious slog of everyday emotional life, I have to struggle to keep things in what I still insist is their true perspective. I know intellectually that all the urgent, pressing items on our mental lists — taxes, car repairs, our careers, the headlines — are so much idiot noise, and that what matters is spending time with people you love. It's just hard to bear in mind when the hard drive crashes.

I was not cheered, a few years ago, to read about psychological studies suggesting that most people inevitably return to a certain emotional baseline after circumstantial highs and lows. You'd like to think that nearly getting killed would be a major, permanently life-altering experience, but in truth it was less painful, and occasioned less serious reflection, than certain breakups I've gone through. If anything, it only reinforced the illusion that in the story of my life only supporting characters would die, while I, its protagonist and first-person narrator, would survive. I've demonstrated an impressive resilience in the face of valuable life lessons, and the main thing I seem to have learned from this one is that I am capable of learning nothing from almost any experience.

I don't know why we take our worst moods so much more seriously than our best ones, crediting depression with more clarity than euphoria. It's easy now to dismiss that year as nothing more than the same sort of shaky, hysterical high you'd experience after being clipped by a taxi. But you could also try to think of it as a glimpse of grace. It's like the revelation I had when I was a kid the first time I ever flew in an airplane: when you break through the cloud cover you realize that above the passing squalls and doldrums there is a realm of eternal sunlight, so keen and brilliant you have to squint against it, a vision to hold onto and take back with you when you descend once more beneath the clouds, under the oppressive, petty jurisdiction of the local weather.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6238096.ece

The American "shock jock" radio host Michael Savage, who was included on a Home Office list of 16 people banned from entering the country, last night urged his listeners to boycott Britain.

He told his audience that Americans should not travel to Britain or buy British goods, and delivered a personal message to Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, who made the decision to include him on the list of unwanted foreigners: "Unless you remove my name forthwith, unless you admit you made a mistake, I will bring a major libel suit against you personally and I will win."

Mr Savage opened fire on the Home Secretary on the conservative news website WorldNetDaily , where he said that his message to her and the British people was: "Shame on you. Shame that you've fallen to such a low level."

"It's interesting to me that here I am, a talk show host who does not advocate violence, who advocates patriotic traditional values — borders, language, culture — who is now on a list banned in England.

Har, he's gonna sue for defamation.     (sorry, I find this all too amusing, even tho it's quite a misstep)

This is a testimonial of sorts...so it's not really a rant per se.  It probably sucks, so don't mind if it does too terribly much.
************************************************************************


One day, you're a perfectly "normal" citizen, a Joe Sixpack or a Jill Someoneorother...and you're sitting there, practically minding your own business.  Then you notice that you've been on this rather pervasive yet thought-provoking and confrontational forum for a bit, and you FINALLY get the in-jokes, can make a few yourself, yadda yadda.  You almost feel like you belong there, but don't really bother trying too hard for the most part.  It's actually good enough to just soak up the atmosphere and read up on what's going down.

THEN, oh my god, you're sitting on a bus with a pocketful of people you were at a conference with, on your way to the airport of all places, and they're bitching about their divorces, mortgages, the cost of gas.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, you hear yourself telling them that "the imposition of order equals the escalation of chaos," that there was this cat, in a box, but it was dead, but it wasn't...that equalizing order with disorder doesn't amount to a hill of beans...religion, yeah, that goes nowhere fast...the government, it doesn't exist...

Holy shit.  You've gone viral.

It's ok.  Take a breath.  Obviously, months and months of reading all that stuff has finally sunk in.  And what's more:  you've started to believe in it, apply it, and make it yours!  That's a good thing.

Know why?  Because otherwise, you're just wasting your time.  And telling those pocketful of people on the bus?  That's just natural.  Because when you "get it," and they DON'T, you feel the uh-oh welling up until you have to just say, "Well, you see, there's these two guys at a bar, and one of them is on a barstool..."

Geezus, I wrote this awhile ago.  It's horrible, but it makes me laugh.  My apologies for your waste of time if you decide to read it.   
******************************************************************************

My Life as a Robot Assbaby Introduction, Part I

by Jenne

Not many would know me by my gender.  Robotic assbabies have none, to tell you the truth.  It's not like we're androgenous, either.  We just have to choose after our "age of majority" what we will be when we "grow up."

I've never liked this, really.  It's bad enough my father produced me in order to escape the inevitable heartbreak that human babies cause a broken marriage.  But to have the stigma of being anally produced via jumped-up technology?!  Bah!  Recipe for disaster in the schoolyard, and make no mistake.

I have been called everything from SuperFudgePacker X25 to SpacedockingMachine.

My own mother was a very sad little thing.  She'd had a few aborted robot fetuses before I was born.  Her birthing module was quite old and decrepit by the time I came out.  She shortcircuited her own wiring and was only good as a hotplate by the time I was weaned from her mainframe.

All I ever wanted, as long as I can remember, was to be a normal kid.  I really didn't care how I was born--I mean, coming out of your mom's ass is pretty much how every biological being makes their entry into the world!  No, it was something deeper.  Something that told me:  X25, you are special.  There's no one like you.

Of course, this wasn't true.  I have a twin.  I have two, in fact.  When my dad saw how helpful I was around the house, he cloned me again and again, til he had triplets.  He named us X25, Y2K and Z27.  Y2K hates his name, cuz all the kids called him "Millenium Bot the Snot."  When we complain about this, our dad just laughs and says kids can be cruel.

We need a special robot school for us assbabies, I think.  Of course, there'd only be ramps instead of stairs (can I just say that I HATE stairs?!  As soon as you have gotten the slope JUST right, BAM! someone pushes you the rest of the way down!  Kerplunk kerplunk kerplunk!), there'd be warm motor oil for lunch, and electrical outlets at every desk.

Dad refuses to home school us, says we have to learn how to deal with the "real world."  All I know is, if we can survive a public school full of boring, squishy mammals who cough, spit and vomit everywhere, then we can do ANYTHING.  School really sucks.

Especially if you're a robot assbaby from the suburbs.

Turkey, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken.  It's like an orgy of fowl.  (at least that's how it sounds, and perhaps because it rhymes with fuckin')

Anyone had this/done it/hated it?

I am intrigued enough to do this for Xmas Eve at my place...we're deep-frying our turkey for T Day tomorrow.  Something we've done a lot.  But the turducken sounds...interesting.

I saw you can BUY one of these already "stuffed" in the grocery store when I bought our turkey for tomorrow as well.  But I'd like to do it myself, if I'm going to do it at all, that is.

Anyway, anyone with an experience, good or bad, with TURDUCKEN?

http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/daily-bread/2008/11/20/king-beers-toppled

Damn, dude...American hegemony has fallen far, far off the charts.  Even our piss beer has no braggin' rights.   

So I made my own up.     Jenne don't do this shit that often.  And yes, the signs are still there.  I put them up with our Halloween display--so they got some definite traffic.  Apologies ahead of time if they are too large...I tried to resize...

Go to www.fuckjohnmccain.com for the annotations:

***********************************************************************

My friends, I have the experience, I have a plan, I have a big stick, and I walk softly with Ronald Reagan. And Roosevelt and Lincoln are here, too, and a lot of other qualified Americans, who are good Americans, and who know how to fix the problems in America that America has. And might I just mention that I know how to reach across the aisle and say, with full confidence: Fuck John McCain.

Let me say that again. Fuck John McCain.

I know, I know, all the big pundits are piling on now, talking about how he's changed and this isn't the guy they remember from back before he sold his soul to run for President. Here's the problem: McCain has been a complete dickhead his entire career. Starting the very first night he was elected to the Senate, when he screamed at one of his volunteers because the podium he was supposed to speak at was too tall. Pure class, right there. And if that's how he treats people who give up their weekends to work for him without pay, imagine how he's gonna treat the rest of us.

You know what we need for our next President? An unstable asshole. That is a brilliant fucking idea. How about we pick some slob whose idea of etiquette is shoving a ninety-two-year-old on the Senate floor. What could go wrong with a guy like that? I can see the commercials now: John W. McCain, an Unstable Man for Unstable Times.

Or how about we get a guy who's so unable to control his temper that on diplomatic missions he tries to wrestle the foreigners he's supposed to be meeting with. I'm starting to think that the only reason he doesn't want to meet with Ahmadinejad is that he's not sure if he can take him in a fair fight.

[We'll pause here in case the Senator himself is reading along. Gotta give him time to trip – repeatedly – over the name of a foreign leader who comes up, oh, every ten minutes in his own fucking speeches. Tell you what, if we're going to spend an hour and a half watching you pace back and forth like Gary Busey on a meth bender, do you think you could spend five minutes of your debate prep memorizing the name of your nemesis? We've got things to do over here, motherfucker. We can't spend all night watching you tamp down your Tourette's.]

Ok, all caught up Senator? Good, now where were we? Oh yeah, a fair fight.

Like this motherfucker would ever fight fair. Can you say "Obama pals around with terrorists"? Fine, you wanna be that way? How about we start spreading a rumor that you're "proud" of your friend who broadcast instructions on how to kill cops? Or we could imply that your website has an endorsement from a guy who sold fifty million dollars worth of missiles to the evildoers in Iran (again with Iran, have you figured out how to pronounce that guy's name yet? No? Good show, Mr. Foreign-Policy-is-My-Strength) and then turned around and gave that money to a group that raped and killed hundreds of men, women and children. What's that? They were freedom fighters? Uh, no. If your friends are going to go around murdering nuns, we're going to go ahead and call them terrorists. They can be Freedom Terrorists if you want. And what the hell, let's go ahead and say that you made a personal donation to those motherfucking terrorists while they were on their killing spree.

Pretty mean, right? Also, pretty fucking specific, because that shit is what we call facts out here on Main Street or Average Avenue or fucking Salt of the Earth Speedway or whatever neighborhood you're pretending you've been anywhere near since you married into more money than God had before Fannie and Freddie foreclosed on paradise.

Money, by the way, made on illegal liquor sales, and not during prohibition, when it was cool like that. How do you get out of that kind of trouble? If you're Cindy's daddy, you lawyer-up with future Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist and he gets you off. Does it worry anyone else that every right-wing debacle in the last fifty years involves the same twelve assholes? Need another example? Remember the fuckwads who put out a push-poll claiming McCain had an illegitimate black child back in 2000? The same guys McCain said had a "special place in hell"? Hell, apparently, is the McCain campaign, cause he fucking hired them.

Which I guess isn't that surprising, since McCain has changed positions more times than Jenna Jameson in a double feature. But not on important issues. Just stuff like privatizing Social Security, the Bush tax cuts, coastal drilling, ethanol, gay adoption, affirmative action, the estate tax, torture and negotiating with Cuba, Hamas, and Syria. But at least he stood firm in opposing the lobbying reform, campaign finance and immigration legislation written by... Senator John McCain (R-Hanoi).

This guy's not a maverick, he's a fucking weathervane.

Oh, but there are "advantages to experience and knowledge and judgement"? I know you don't know how to use a Google, but those of us who do have a pretty easy time finding some major judgement fuck-ups in your past, Mr. Experience Man.

Let's just put it this way: if I was a gotcha journalist, I think by now I'd have stuck a mic in McCain's face and asked what he was thinking when he said, just a few weeks after Al Qaeda held their coming out party by bombing two US Embassies in 1998, "You could say, look, is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that's depicted?". Yes, Bin Fucking Laden. Post terrorist attack: 'Is he really that bad? '

Go ahead, you know you want to go back and read that again. Take your time, I'll wait. All done? Now, tell me, where the fuck were the questions about that, Brokaw? Way to hold his feet to the warm, toasty fire.

But at least he was right about that surge thing. I mean, he and Bush got almost everything else wrong, but they backed the right horse this one time. Except (and if you've been getting your war news from any channel that spends more on graphics than foreign correspondents, you might want to hang on to something here) the surge isn't the thing that's turned down the American death toll in Iraq to "only mildly horrific."

I know! I was surprised too, until I took ten seconds to look it up for myself. Bush misleads the media and they totally fucking fall for it, and then they feed it to the public who buys it hook, line and sinker. Who'da thunk that'd work? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me twenty seven times and apparently we're plum out of shame and we've moved on to... hey, was that a Friends re-run you just clicked past, dude? Go back! This is the one where a group of mid-twenties New Yorkers live in apartments the size of small aircraft carriers and nobody says a word about it through the entire show. It's fucking hilarious.

Hmmm? Oh yeah, Iraq. Nothing else has been going on there that could have made those insurgents stop shooting at our soldiers, right? Well, nothing besides the fact that we started paying them not to shoot at us. From where I'm sitting this is a major breakthrough in military strategy. Instead of getting shot at now, we've got ourselves on a ceasefire payment plan. And then, if we ever cancel our subscription, they'll have twice as many guns. There's no way that fucking plan could backfire. Unless we run out of money, I guess.

Oh.

Fuck.

Well, anyway, at least things are getting better, right? I mean, you said you walked around Baghdad "with no body armor on," so those Iraqis must be as safe as a tofu burger at a Palin rally. Yeah, except unlike the average Iraqi, you had a hundred soldiers and five helicopters guarding your ass. Oh yeah, and fucking body armor. Exactly how out of touch do you have to be not to notice that you're wearing Kevlar?

But at least we don't hear much about that ugly ethnic cleansing stuff anymore. We must have had something to do with putting a stop to that. Right — we let them fucking finish. All cleansed! Nothing succeeds like success, huh?

And since the surge is working so well, let's export it over to Afghanistan. That country's all Arab-y, it'll probably work there too, right? Exactly which class at Annapolis was it where they taught you that a tactic that works in urban warfare is a good one to try out in the fucking mountains? It's practically the same terrain, just flipped forty five degrees and with goats instead of... well, instead of everything.

Wait, you don't think that's why the commander of US forces in Afghanistan himself says this isn't the right plan, do you? I know all you Republicans like to say that soldiers make good Presidents, but do you think maybe we could amend that to soldiers that don't completely suck at being soldiers? Seriously, after crashing three airplanes, who the fuck gave this asshole his wings back so he could fly off on real combat missions? Oh right, dear old dad. What's it like having a father who's so powerful you can fuck up over and over and never pay the price?

Wait a minute, that sounds so familiar...

Anyway, did you hear that McCain was a war hero, too? Yes indeedy, he sure is shy, but if you're willing to ask him a question about any other topic, he'll be happy to tell you all about it. I guess that's why you get more donations from soldiers than That One, right? No? Don't worry dude, the troops in the field always send more money to the guy they don't want to be their next Commander in Chief. It's strategic. I think they call it a "Surge," or something.

But you'd be winning right now if Obama would have just done eighty seven town hall debates with you? Yeah, cause you really connected during the one you got. You know what you should do? You should get your wife's company to sponsor some more debates! They could put up the cash, and give out free beer and auction off prizes and stuff, and maybe you could get other rich people to pitch in if you, like, promise to make their dad King of the Economy and mention his name over and over during the debate.

Damn! You already did that, didn't you? How'd that work out for ya?

(Jesus Christ with jimmies, how fucking sad is it that you learned, just now, from me, that the money funding McCain's housing habit comes from the same place as the money that got the press sloshed at the debates. It's fucking sad, dude. It's as sad as it would be if the only guy asking McCain tough questions in this election was a late night talk show host. Fuck. fuck. fuck.)

You'd think with Budweiser sponsoring the real debates you wouldn't need to set up your own homestyle versions where your – how do we put this – touched supporters can embarrass the fuck out of you by saying out loud what your ads only imply. (And maybe all the white folks could be a little less shocked! shocked! that there's still fucking racism in America? It's embarrassing. Pretend like you were paying attention for the last two hundred years, could ya?)

Oh, and while we're talking about your rebel rallies, you might want to get your supporters to ease back on questioning your opponent's religious beliefs. Otherwise we're going to have to bring up that thing where you say you're a Baptist, but you've never been... wait for it... baptized. For shizzle.

And despite the fact that they never ask you about any of this shit, you still feel the need to complain that the media elite aren't treating your campaign with enough fucking deference? What kind of pussy runs away from a sit down with Larry King? What are you, afraid he might ask you one of those probing questions, like "We're back with the maverick John McCain. What do you make of this new Britney video, Senator?"

Awww, did the mean media people hurt your feewings, Johnny-wonny? Did they make fun of your stwaight tok expwess? Do you need mommy to kiss it and make it all better? Maybe she can buy you a wittle hospital to go with your eight houses, you fucking crybaby.

And now, after the last two "elections," we have to listen to you cry about fucking voter fraud. Ok, first off, it's not voter fraud, it's some guys trying to make a buck by copying a few names out of the phone book. Well, ok, to be fair there is some organized voter registration fraud going on. I'll give you that. Wait, remind me who got arrested for that, again? Oh yeah, Republicans. It takes some serious balls to point fingers while you're in handcuffs, asshole.

Look, we don't really have time to listen to you bitch anymore, ok? We're slow, but after two shady elections we've figured out that in order to win this thing we have to get more votes than you fuckers can steal. What's that? You want to introduce us to McCain version 9.0? Later, dude, we have to go vote for our country first.

Hey Cookin' Spags:

So, seems a lot of us just think up of stuff to cook, don't always have an idear or whatever.  Or just want to share what's on the menu.  So I thought I'd start a fread that sort of says "this is what I'm planning to make    insert random time frame here   .  If you think it's a laem idear, then don't reply, no big whoop.

****************************************************************************

So, on Saturdays, I like to watch DIY and food network shows.  I'm weird that way--it's just what I do if I'm home and don't feel like doin' nothin' else.  On the fn channel, Rachel Ray (GAG!) was giving out her schtick on Halloween Food.  Something I like to do myself-- usually do a pumpkin curry soup and grilled cheese sammiches.

She did baba ganouche (yay!) and homemade mac-n-cheese.

I AM GOING TO TRY THAT BABA GANOUCHE!  That's probably like the ONE middle eastern food I have not tried to make.  We've made dolma (stuffed grape leaves), hummus is a mainstay here, etc.  But the baba ganouche, not so much.  We buy canned or have someone else make and bring.  Not so good--not for peeps like H and I who consider ourselves pretty middle eastern savvy in the kitchen.

So!  This is what I'm gonna did (gratutious Justin Wilson reference there):

2 eggplants
tahini
garlic
cilantro (she used parsley, eh to that)
olive oil
lemons (fresh from mah tree!)
salt
fried onions (she used roasted pine nuts)

Ok, cut the eggplants lengthwise--oil those fuckers up.  Both sides.  Put on baking sheet and broil til they are flat.  In your food processor, put fresh herbs, grated garlic (2 cloves), tahini (3 tblsp), juice from 2 lemons, salt and eggplants (extrude with fork or spoon into food processor once cool enough, throw away skins, put in liquids from roasted eggplants on baking sheet into the food processor as well, that way no added oil needed), and WHIRL AWAY.

Once desired consistancy, put into bowl and put fried onions on top for garnish.  Enjoy.  I will be macking on this soon.

So, my husband's aunt was out from Londontowne (along with his cousin), and she cooked for us.  She made these eggs for us this past Summer when we visited over there that he insisted she make over HERE for him so he could learn how.

Ingredients:

tomato paste
habaneros
onions
garlic
eggs
salt
red pepper
black pepper

So, she chopped the habaneros, garlic and onions and sauteed them a bit before adding the tamato paste (about 2 tbsp it looked like, for about 1 onion and 3 cloves of garlic).  Add the salt, red pepper and black pepper to taste.  Then, in the midst of everything, just crack the egg and plop it in...let it fry there in the stuff without turning them over.  They should be sunny side up when you serve.  Usually they eat it with plain yogurt/sour cream and bread.

Critique:  It was an intersting and colorful dish, but not my fave as far as Afghan dishes go.  I would probably keep down the garlic taste (I'm finding my husband's family tends to OVER-garlic, esp his mom, whereas his dad balances it out, and unfortunately,  my husband's been cooking too much like his mother lately--not enough balance for me to hack too much of what he makes without a lot of sour cream or bread).

Hey, just a question for the chefs (both official and unofficial) here at PD:

Any notion of what to do with 3 pomegranates vis a vis cooking dinner?

TIA

So this is just my flounce from MW's infamous Political Pagan forum...pay no attention...just said I'd put it up here...

******************************************************************************

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it. 
~Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness


Bourgeois patriotism, as I view it, is only a very shabby, very narrow, very mercenary, and deeply antihuman passion, having for its object the preservation and maintenance of the power of the national state—that is, the mainstay of all the privileges of the exploiters throughout the nation.
~Mikhail Bakunin, Letters to a Frenchman


Every patriot believes his country better than any other country . . . In its active manifestation—it is fond of killing—patriotism would be well enough if it were simply defensive, but it is also aggressive . . . Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the interests of a whole to the interests of a part . . . Patriotism is fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone.
~Ambrose Bierce, Collected Works


It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam.
~Zbigniew Brzezinski


In America, unlike Europe, there is both a peculiarly immediate sense of hostility and a coarse, on the whole unnuanced, attitude toward Islam.
~Edward Said


There was a time when I was content to simply sit back and absorb, to only spar and quibble when necessary to defeat a general mocking purpose to subvert creative and intelligent thought.  However, lately, this forum has become a desperate struggle to prove beyond shadow of a doubt that all men are truly created equally.  Apparently, those who would like to speak counter to this principle, one upon which the most powerful, the richest country in the world was supposedly founded, endeavor openly to cast derision and suspicion on a whole religion.  A whole subset of peoples.  A very large and diverse subset of peoples.

And generally, these are the very same antagonists who purport to have no real, everyday contact with the very same group they are endeavoring to rape of their rights.  You cannot have any credibility as a patriot, as a human, as a thinking, cogent being if you have no access to a group you seek to destroy the very life of.  For when you take a man's religion and way of life from him, if only to protect your own, you have forfeited much that is in store for yourself.  There is no honor in removing freedoms from another simply on the basis that you fundamentally disagree with his premise.  Without knowing him, his family, his birthplace, his heart.  To presuppose and prejudge what you know of his existence is to lie to yourself and those around you.  To create a fabrication built on fear of what might be or what can be rather than what is would be to perpetrate those very evil ideals that all democratic regimes tout as their sole purpose to destroy and eradicate.

In short, in removing those rights you would give to yourself from another on the auspices of who they might harm but without general proof or specific fact, you have become what you think you are fighting:  an enemy of patriotism, an enemy of your own people, an enemy of those who would shed blood in order to bring less harm for future generations.  If you would take away someone's rights to their religion, to their home, to their given country, then you would burn down your own home, you would rape your own wife, and you would kill your own children.

What you do to your neighbor, you do to yourself.  What you would do in harm of another for the sake of a false idol set up on an altar of religious prejudice is just such criminal agenda as you would accuse those you do not even know.  History is not kind, it is not politically correct, and it shows time and again that when you seek to destroy a human spirit out of protection of your own, you have given up forever those rights you thought you were fighting for originally.

One would hope, with the amount of political, historical and sociological education that is available in today's world that the above would be rote.  The above is, in essence, the distillation of the past few centuries' worth of higher thought.  But no, there resides on this board a large set of posters who would rape their neighbors of their rights, for mere comfort of supposed safety.  Those who would do so, according to Benjamin Franklin, do not deserve said safety, for they have removed any hope of truly obtaining any for themselves.

The amount of hand wringing and teeth gnashing that goes on in Political Pagan vis a vis the inherent evils of Islam can only be said to be specious, vicious fear mongering.  An informed, experiential, historical discussion on Muslims, their religion, their various cultures and languages has really yet to take place.  And this "War on Terror" is 5 years old.  You have enough scholars and those who know Muslims to have a real, weighty conversation on such things as "Why?" and "How?" and "What to do?"  But this is destroyed through racism, calls for out and out genocide, and a pervasive sense of selfish patriotism that has no sense of forethought or hindsight.

I hope that those of you who are left here will realize, in the end, it will indeed be your loss to accept the above in any shape or form.  To allow it to continue is to pass poison to your children's lips and then forcing them to swallow.  For as long as racism and prejudice are allowed to seep into the corners and crevices of a society that should damned very well know better, there will only be more ammunition for those that would destroy liberties for the innocent.  You join their ranks when you engage in their similar mindset, as painful as that is to hear.

Thank you to those of you who have argued in my name against such grievances, and thank you to those who continue to take back this forum from savage thoughts of murder and revenge instead of understanding and a quest for peace among all.  Forums such as this one always have a delicate balance, as the fulcrum can shift so very easily from right, left, center and back again.  I miss this place, but not what it is today, but rather where it was a few months ago.  I cannot endure any longer, however, in a place where I am considered evil because I have married an ethnic Muslim.  My children will not be the bearers of such nastiness.  I will no longer reside where my blood is unwelcome.

I pray and hope that one day you will not exist under such scrutiny and you will not have to bear what I have here in PP, a place where all peoples are welcome in name only.  I hope you will not have to defend the honor of your mate, the goodness in the hearts of his people.  That he will have to fight the innate desire to ghettoize his entire generation of Afghan Muslims from those he's lived amongst for most of his life tears the both of us to shreds. What it will do to our sons, I have yet to discover.  I only know what I've seen here, a place where people are brought to expand and open their minds, but has only served to beat down those who have a different train of thought.

Good luck, All.  Even those of you so misled.  One day, you may find what I speak above to be the veriest of truths, and for that I hope your own truth about yourself is revealed as plain as could be. 

http://www.myspace.com/fourandahalfinchesraw (fixed it, sorry, it's wrong on their site, but right in my brother's myspace update)

And soon to come on this site:

http://www.fourandahalf.net/

It's a lot of wiener, butt and fart stuff, yes.  So, if you find that humor  , it's PRObably not for you. 

I don't know, I've had this boiling, roiling feeling lately that I just need to bbllllpppptttfffttt! out.  I want to go on this Tourrett's fit from hell and just MOTHERFUCKING YELL IN SOMEONE'S FACE TO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET THE FUCK OUT AND FUCK OFF AND AND AND...and then what?!

What, indeed?   

Stop, look, listen.

And then, when I do, I get all wound up again, and it starts up again, and I just want to YELL AND SCREAM AND KICK AND FUCK SHIT UP UNTIL I CAN'T STAND MYSELF OR ANYONE ELSE ANYMORE BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL SO FUCKING STUPID AND INTO THEIR OWN SHIT BUT THEY DON'T GIVE A FUCKING SHIT WHO THEY ARE SCREWING OVER WITH THEIR WHINING AND MANIPULATING AND FUCKING UP THE ASS BECAUSE THEY GET AWAY WITH IT ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

*pant, pant*

I know.  It's stupid.  It's stupid, crazy, badwrong and lame.  And tired.  Fuck an EL it's tiring.   I'm just over it.  Plain, simple, over it.  No frills, no chills.  I look, I stop, I breathe.  But, out of the corner of my eye, within the peripherals, there it is AGAIN!

AND I'M TRYING TO FUCKING JUST CATCH MY BREATH OVER HERE, AND THERE IT IS, NOT LETTING ME GO, NOT LETTING ME FUCKING GET A MOMENT TO MY FUCKING SELF ALREADY!  KNOCK THAT FUCKING SHIT OFF!  GET THE FUCK AWAY!  JUST GO INTO YOUR CORNER AND MOTHERFUCKING DIE ALREADY!  CRAWL AWAY AND DIE!  BLEED AND CODE, YOU SHITFACEDCUNTBREATHINGMOTHERFUCKINGSHITHEAD OF AN ASSHOLE!

Sigh.

I hate being sick during the holidays.

(just ignore me, I'll go away)

I don't think we have a close bead on how crucial this really is.  Babies die without it.  Humans shrivel and become useless.  You really don't know how important it is until you lose it.

Try, for instance, a disease that disallows you to open your mail.  Read a book.  Drive your car.  Without benefit of antibacterial existence.  You can't use a salt shaker.  The occasional neighborly handshake or friendly hug?  Deathtrap.

The kicker is when you can't hug or kiss your children.  The little beings you brought into life and love. Not being able to comfort them when they are hurting, not being able to kiss them goodnight or high-five them for a victory.  That is death.   That is a chamber in hell.  And I couldn't possibly wish it on my worst enemy.

When a sneeze can mean a bolus of antibiotics and a week-long vacation in your local hospital, you start to rethink the world in terms of germs and ickies.  Hand gel and soap are your only saviors.  Shower before bed, constant clean clothes and sheets.  All washed in hot, hot, hot.

Forget ice, forget fresh vegetables.  The steamier, the most scorchingest on Earth...the better.  Microbials and viruses become the deadliest of murderers...and salvation is not in love's gentlest of touches, tho you may yearn yet for the squishy embrace of a 6 year old.


7:17 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove


Holy Frailty, Batman!


...and so it goes.

I have to give it up to Vonnegut...there isn't a more succinct statement on the human condition than that 4-word phrase.  I was recently called out for vapid 4-word statements.  I guess the 4-word conglommerate is losing its touch, after all...

There's not much that's witty you can say about how ephemereal the actual living, biological world is.  When you capture that fragile butterfly in your hands and marvel at its intricacy, what should be uppermost in your mind (and probably isn't!) is how magnificently this creature is put together.  Its insectuous sinews and webby features are the epitome of delicacy and enticement of beauty.

To crush it, to allow it to be entrapped and pin it to a trophy case, is also entirely inevitable.  Power over our own lives sometimes depends on the power we have over other living things.  I think humans have a unique ability there, to see the dichotomy in the living and in the dying.  It's the sick and the needy we have problems with.  It's the hopeless and the helpless we least want to deal with.  Because that which is difficult in others to solve is also our closest, most chimeric quality in ourselves.

I can't imagine not being able to nurse a loved one like my husband or my child back to health, allowing someone else to do so would physically impair me to a large degree.  It's a sickness within my own psyche that I must have the power to heal, to strengthen, to give purpose to the purposeless.  What I reach for is not always within my grasp, for nature does not always succumb to nurture, no matter how hard the active party tries.  Attempts, in fact, to come between what has to be and what you want to be can eliminate much good that could come in the interim.

It's not that I'm spouting words of wisdom here, these are simply the tired thoughts of a weary nursemaid.  I have no other real outlet for expressing the excruciatingly slow process that is my life in action and nonaction at this moment.  I am in constant wonder at how all this comes about.  I'm forever in a patient waiting room.  With no windows, and no doors.  There's only a desk, with a white-smocked nurse behind it, and only she can spell me my hours of anguish and pursuit.

And the more I think about it, the longer it takes.  So, I will put these words to commitment, and think no more. 

There's a man I know.  He was once a boy.  Grew up slowly, though he had to be a man before he was ready.

This man was raised to a poor family, went to bed hungry most nights in his young life.  That rumbling tummy made sure he ate his fill and then some as an obese adult.

He met and married the love of his life while still yet a babe, not yet able to grow a beard.  His daddy drank himself and smoked himself a young death, and his mother ate herself into oblivion through nine pregnancies, hungry though her children were.

Not knowing what the man would be when he grew up, he graduated early and worked his way through hell.  Real estate, used cars, llp's and llc's.   Property managment and loan brokership waged wars in his career with the manager's position at Smith's Food King.

He left and came back to his wife and 3 kids in the 80's.  He lost and found his religion about the same time.  From a mountain vista, he found his heart's desire, a property of gold that would make him his millions, one day.

This man had dreams, loftier than you can see.  His little rumbling tummy remembered the bad days, and while his mind forgot them, his heart and his stomach wouldn't let him forget.  Bigger WAS better, don't you believe it.  And he bought every luxury his money could buy.

Any stranger needing family, any family needing a rich stranger, he was their man.  His love for his grandchildren superseded all, to the point that he supported the marriages that brought them into this world.  He gave life where he wanted to, he played a bit of god here and there, and no one thought ill of it.

His children, beholden.

One day a gatecrasher came with guns blazing and fire in his belly.  For a greedy gremlin had stolen this man's bank account.  Lo and behold friends were yet enemies, and the law was not on this poor man's side.  In chains he was bound to try and protect his heart, and sadness filled him, pouring out through every pore.

For he was yet a young man, not quite 50, and he had many babes yet to hold, many sons and daughters still to love.  A young wife, if not in years but in mind and soul, yearned still to be at his side, a love yet unrequited and waiting for him.

So this man is now bound, to try and wrest his future from clutches of vultures.  There are those still wronged with no rights.  There are victims on this battleground aplenty and bitterly soured on lapping luxuries.

The story is yet untold, the end result not quite finished.  This man is still living, still in prisoned, though we still find him hopeful.  Foolish hopes can feed a man's soul, even while his belly aches, starving himself and building strengths of mind and body to protect the little he has left. The little they allow him to have.

The lessons we learn from this man can only be thusly said, to take not for granted what we dreamed and built before, that we can use this to build again, even as they may take from us all things great and wonderful

Good intentions.  Let's discuss those, shall we?

I have a theory.  That when someone is "well intentioned" and that's about all you can say, they are actually selfishly trying to LOOK good while doing something that's essentially bad.  Gross generalization, but there it is.  I'm getting down to the nitty-gritty, here.

You see, when you do something that causes someone else some trouble, you are not really doing it "for" them.  You are rather hurting them in the guise of wanting to help, wanting to do something good.  But if you are harming them, you are not accomplishing that, are you?  Instead, you are fucking them up no end and unapologetically, because you "meant well."

Which, actually, you didn't.  You don't "mean well" unless, truly, the outcome IS well.  See, people don't NEED you fucking their shit up because you want to "do something."  If you truly REALLY wanted to do something for them, that has a positive vibe as well as outcome, then you would.  You wouldn't do something that caused them trouble, grief or undue strife.  Instead, you would seek to make sure that everything you did is on the up and up and comes out as well as can be.

Now, if the forces of fate work AGAINST you, and despite all you have done things turned out badly, then motherfucking FIX it.  Fix the fucker.  Right away.  Because if you don't, then you cannot claim to have the "best of intentions."

All you did is pave the road to hell, and back again.

You're living on borrowed time.  You know that, don't you?  You're not invincible, nor are you all-powerful.  You have a terminal disease.

It's called Life.

You were born, you were raised.  You grew up, you made your choices.

How are those workin' out for you?  Because, in the end, you know what matters most, don't you?  That when the long tunnel of the lived and living is past, you can say, "Well done."

If you can't, woe to you.  You have "A" shot at this.  No more.  No less.  It's a gift with a curse at the end.  I have to say I've seen almost all at this point.  A man brought to the edge of paradise and shown the pits of hell, only to cavil and cling to what little of hell he can.  And another man who lived in hell, escaped and lived in paradise only to be thrown there again, to be shown how only the foolish think they can really ever escape.  Myriads others with similar and dissimilartudes...as they are interwoven into the tapestry that is the homo sapien sapien desperately escaping his destiny.  Which should be known as "that which cannot be outrun."

There's no proverb, no parable that can truly explain what it is we are given in living this disease down into its eventual end.  Sometimes it's a gentle sigh into the dark of night, a pleasant dream that ends in nocturnal ignorance of a passing into the ether.  At other times, it's a frightful mass of jangled emotions and fears, regret warring with a shoulda-woulda-coulda factor that never quite gets at what it was you wanted to say in the first place so why babble about it now.

The thing is, you have to face it.  At the end of the day, you have yourself and that's it.  You are the only thing that can make you happy. You are the only one really looking out for you.  Your regrets your happiness your sorrows your joys are yours to own, and yours alone.

And in that loneliness is the hope of finding only the lonely, who all can congregate under that umbrella of conjoined humanity.  A conditional truce that binds us as we all look about us and hope that our existential dilemma extends dearly into the human condition.  That we don't die alone.  That we can give and take with the freedom in our own little minds and farm out what fears and troubles bring to us.

The damnable part, of course, is when we are caught out in our own lie...that this isn't just a blip on the radar of time.  That we are actually a meaningful phenomenon.  That we can be and be seen and heard and tasted and felt. 

And it will actually mean something.

(that's when you just give birth and hope for the best, really)

NOT unreality...not the lack of reality...but apart from reality, away from reality.

It's that point when, to all intents and purposes, there is a reversal of reality, you are taken from it, and placed instead in disreality.  Where the surreal is the real.  Where life is death, death is life.  The not is, and the is never really has been.

And the disbelief in the disreality causes a lack of cognizance, a dissonance, with the center of being.  So that there is an imbalance of proportion, and gaining back the fulcrum seems the impossiblest of tasks.

When you reach disreality, you wonder why it has to be, even while you know the very direct because it came into being. But you still question the necessitation of consequences, the necessitation of the action, the weight and counterweight to the scales.  Off-center suits when you are in surreality or impracticality.

But the unrecognizable disreality brings pain, absence of control, horrifically dark feelings that swell and never subside.  Disreality is the conjunction of all forces opposite that bring it all into lopsided focus, when you say goodbye to what was irrevocably known, and you enter the world eternal of the inconceivably unknown.

...my husband's family, in Aghanistan. Kabul, to be exact.

Now, it wasn't what you and I would jump to believe, knowing what we all now know about Afghanistan (and wasn't readily or easily known before 9/11/01). There was no roadside bomb. No suicide jihadist mission. No public square hanging for not wearing a burkah the right shade of color.

None of that.

Instead, there was a lonely, desperate 21 year old mother of 2 who killed herself with rat poison. After surviving the Talibs, and civil war, this woman's life was so awful, that she ingested rat poison so that she can no longer life in this plane of existence. She was my husband's mother's niece. His cousin.

We have a digital video of her from when my husband was in Afghanistan visiting her last year in May. She's usually off-camera, though. Somehow, she manages to not be in the shot more often than not, even though the whole family is gathered on the floor around a glossy mat, with food and drink all over the place.

Apparently, she was being abused and beaten by her in-laws. To the point where her brothers, one of them a powerful police chief for the new Afghan government, had taken her from her husbands' family's home and removed her to Kabul. But this, apparently, had not been enough, and they are now at her funeral, mourning the loss of this one young and desperate life.

Depression is rife in Afghanistan. Years of being shut away behind closed doors with curtains on the windows so that passersby cannot look in, and continued use of burkahs in public, as well as other factors that make it really difficult to be a woman in Afghanistan has brought about a nationwide suicide epidemic. It's getting better, but there are some societal ills, like in-law abuse (you wouldn't believe how rife it is...I know at least 4 or 5 different stories telling the same exact tale just in my husband's family alone).

Basically, for those who don't know, when the woman marries into the husband's family, she leaves her own family for good. She is not to return. To return to her family's protection is a shame brought upon her people who raised her. Essentially, she is the property of her husband, and any children she has by said husband are retained as the husband's family's property as well.

So this cousin of my husband's, though she had two strong, strapping brothers to help her, she really had her hands tied in a lot of ways. Her only support was her brothers, but the abuse had set in, along with the depression, far along enough that she had to take her own life, leaving her children to the mercies of their father's abusive family.

Now, this situation isn't particularly juicy in terms of newsworthiness. It's sort of a blip on the radar. I had to watch my sons' fish that we'd kept as a pet for the last 4 years die its last breath two days ago, and I have to say that incident, watching my sons cry and get upset over losing one of their only two pets, probably affected me more than the news of this woman's tragic demise.

However, it affected me enough to want to share it here...however unworthy it might be to read and ponder. It points to a lot of obvious problems in this woman's subculture, such as treatment of women, lack of medical resources for depression, etc. etc. But it also points to a funky aspect of the human condition. I know that I, myself, might be dead by my own hand if it weren't for my own two children.

And so I have to wonder at what this woman had been through, that ending her life through such pitiful and desperate means, would bring her to such a pass. Even with so much to look forward to, so much survival behind her, and the luck of having family willing to support her and help her out, against convention though that may be.

When Your Dad's in Prison...

...you find yourself using the past tense with strangers and acquaintances while talking about him...no one wants to hear that shit.

...you sometimes forget, in the hurly-burly business of life, that half your heart was ripped away 2 years ago when they arrested him. Because he's been away long enough to be able to forget, until you remember, and then you can't forget for a long, long time.

...you find yourself angry for no reason, and then it occurs to you that this is the usual useless anger against the the government institutions that are supposed to bring justice and protection but have only wrought paranoia, persecution and impotence in your life.

...you get to drive 200 miles, each way, in the desert heat, where it's 100'F at 8:30 a.m. to go visit him. You get to stand in line with society's finest, most of them dressed in their Sunday best, because The Man(tm) says that women shouldn't dress like women and men can dress like WASPs. No bare arms; no bare legs passed the knee; no blue shirts or blue pants; no clothing that is body-conforming whatsoever. So stand in that 115'F heat for 2 hours, sweating outside in line to get in to that godforsaken hellhole, and then have your paperwork ready for those sonsofbitches to hem and haw over. It's worth it. Yeah, it is.

...you get to go through the grueling line, with a 5 year old and an 8 year old, and two hours later be told they can't see their grandfather, because you screwed up and didn't bring the right paperwork. So you get to go by yourself, instead of the whole family, wearing your men's shorts and men's shirt because it's against the law to dress like a woman in a man's state prison.

...you get to go through an agonizing process of putting shoes in a bin, putting your life in a small, plastic bag with $30 of loose change or $1 bills. You put your arms over your head and twirl. No drugs on me! You go through a metal detector, and hope to god you pass through. If you're like my aunt and have metal dental implants, you have to have a doctor's note stating such. Otherwise, no visit for you!

...you get a blacklight-visible-only stamp on the inside of your wrist, get your shoes back, get recorded by hand (after they already recorded you by computer), and then sent out into the yard, alone.

...you get a heavy metal door slammed shut behind you. The heat is incredible. The tower above you looms, as does the cage you are in. 75' of chainlink with barbed wire blocks out the sky. The heat bounces back at you. You walk 15 paces alone to the first gate. And you wait.

...you get to turn back, looking at those who'd just processed you, like you were a criminal too, and then you look up, hoping they see you, down there, in your man's clothing. As you reach out to touch the gate, it suddenly slams back, and then you walk through.

...you get to hear the slam of the gate shut behind you and walk an additional 15 paces to the next gate. You are still alone, still in the heat, with all 75' of the "cage" around you, above you, hemming you in. Your outside "cell" is 5' x 5'x 75'.

...you walk through the final gate as it opens automatically, and you walk slowly in the searing sunlight, with the haze coming off the blacktop, to the pod where your inmate awaits you. Blessed air conditioning greets you, as does more processing.

...you give the guard your id, your processing ticket, show him the possessions they've so generously allowed you to have, and then wait for him to unlock the door to the visiting lounge.

...you get to have nasty vending machine food that is apparently 125 times better than the slop they serve in the mess hall to the general pop. Everything is either $3.50, $3.00 or $7.00. Cokes are $.75, bottles of water $1.25.

...if you get in early enough, you get a nice table inside right away, assigned to you and your family. You pile up the snacks before the rest of the inmates' families buy them out of the machines. You line up at one of the 3 microwaves to heat them up. Fatty, greasy residue inside the microwaves speaks to the nature of the food everyone consumes with such gusto on these weekend days.

...if you get in early enough, and more people show up, you get to be shoved out into that 115'F heat, to concrete tables, assigned of course, with this black mesh awning overhead. The unlucky ones get assigned the one of the 4 tables without the awning.

...if you get in late enough, you get the early birds' tables, but less time with your inmate.

...you get to have your poloroid picture taken, for $3 at the cost of the inmate, with your loved one. You can take the photo to WalMart and have them blow it up so it looks "better." You can also take it to a service that chops out the prison background and prison id on the inmates' clothing and puts you in paradise, a brand new car, or on vacation.

Like it never happened. Like it's just an awful, horrific dream from which you'll one day awaken. You didn't get those swollen ankles from sitting outside in the heat for 2 1/2 hours, eeking every second out of your visit. You didn't spend $60 on crappy vending machine food, or $75 in gas to get there and back. Those flies and gnats on your windshield...they don't exist.

The pain, when you hug them goodbye, when your heart stabs you with every beat as you leave them behind. It's not there. It never was.

It's just a nightmare.

Go back to sleep.

Gallows or otherwise.

Silly made a point in the n00b/BIP is all about (fill in this blank) that I think is a pretty good one.

The "old" PD had humor, used a lighter touch rather than the constant barstool to the noggin that the BIP does. (I stated that strongly, forgive me the hyperbole)

What, if anything, can be contributed to "lighten the load"?  I like the idea of inserting the absurd.

Any takers?  Discussion?

I'm starting this thread because, truly, the answer is NOT as obvious as it's usually treated.

If you are USED to your cell, if you've decorated it, feted it, shared it with others on holidays, why leave it?  Sure, the destruction of your cell was fun, it was personal growth and whatnot, but if you have no plan of action, and you liked quite a bit about your cell...why leave?

So, what happens to ideals in the BIP?

Are they allowed?

Are they used as a noose?

I think most of the people on this forum have them.  Are they a new rope to hang yourself with?  I often wonder how much we enslave ourselves to them when they are hidden so well within our own mindsets.  They creep out unbeknownst to even the most discerning self-aware thinker (beware the psychobabble sprecht--sorry, have no other way to describe it atm--I'm sure I'll learn more lingo to use anon).

Anyway, I'm just wondering what folks hereabouts would think about so-called Ideals/Idealism.  It does exist here...it fairly echoes throughout the forum's halls.  For a place that decries much of the preset notions that society forcefeeds us, there's a fair bit of dogma (catma, wevertf) nevertheless that creates a soupcon of rigidity to what is to be known/unknown and sought/left behind...