An Apology Followed by a Short Rant

First Friday and the Saturday Markets...it has been a while since I missed both, but while Missoula rocked, I shivered with a temperature approaching 103 degrees. Bob Wire released his new CD at a Union Club event, Allard's new exhibit opened at the RMSP Gallery, Mark Moss opened a new show at Noteworthy and Zeppo played the Top Hat. To miss all that and more made me feel deprived, indeed.

I thought for a time I might be the second person to die of swine flu in Montana, and as the fever mounted and aches and pains flared, I thought dying wouldn't be so bad. According to my doctor, I didn't have swine flu, "just" a stomach virus. "Just" a stomach virus. Holy shit. If something worse comes along, I'm going into isolation to avoid it.

I asked my doctor when I became a sick old man. It doesn't seem that long ago, I was just a normal person. She told me not to be silly. She said I was flexible and strong for my age. If that is true, there's a lot of sick folks out there.

My apologies for not reporting events, as I usally do. I'll try to get back in the swing of things. Total Fest arrives at the Badlander and Palace this week, and next week will see Roots Fest in full swing. Someone will have to cut off my legs to keep me away from those events. Maybe I better not give anybody ideas.

Most of the time, I just turned my phone off to suffer without interruption, but I goofed and a charity call came through. Paralyzed Veterans is one of those charities I often feel guilty about being too poor to donate to regularly. I usually apologize for being unable to help and hang up. This time something else popped out of my mouth. I blame it on the fever. My end of the conversation went something like this:

Why are you calling me? I don't have any money. Why don't you call those assholes who lied us into the Iraq War in order to make themselves richer? Better yet, why don't you round those fuckers up, drag them into court and examine their finances to find out exactly how much they profited from the war? Then you could take those ill-gotten gains away from them and use them to heal the veterans wounded due to their greed. They made a ton of money from their war, and there might even be enough to help heal the nation.

Hello...hello... I'm talking to a dead line.

Sunday Interlude and Sermon

Steinbeck wrote a book titled Moveable Feast, and I thought of it, as I provided a feast for the mosquitoes out at Fort Missoula. I was there before dawn one morning to photograph the iris garden. There must be over 200 varieties, a bounty for any flower lover. If you go out there, don't forget your citronella oil. If you go to shoot the iris, take some scissors or hand pruners to nip off dead blooms to clean up your frame.

The sermon for this lord's day comes from the trial of the Grace CEOs. I will not revisit or argue the verdict, but I will point out the common truth once more shown by it. As the world now stands, corporate profits are more important than human lives. People are being murdered everywhere to guarantee American corporations continue to stack up profits.

The bottom line dictated the invasion of Iraq, and it paid off well for the people who invested in it. Cheney and Halliburton made tons of money, as did several other big companies and the rich people who controlled them. A million dead meant more weapons sold, more profits, higher stock returns, and a huge victory for the free market. It is only one example of native people being killed to make the oil beneath their lands available for American industry to suck up.

The republic is dead; we are empire, the largest and mightiest the earth has ever seen. So has it been since the beginning of human history: empires rise and fall. Read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It is a blue-print of where we stand and where we are going. The decline has already begun, our government is corrupt to the core, we are constantly fighting someone somewhere, mercenaries are doing more of the fighting and the rich get away with murder.

Our religious leaders are the same Pharisees and hypocrites Jesus dealt with in his time. They are greedy, lying tools of men who would rule the world. That's the reason church and state should be separated, because the leaders corrupt each other. Serving your religion requires serving your government, while the government makes superstition rather than reason the law of the land. They make a good team for controlling the masses...and making themselves rich.

Thus, we have people labeling themselves pro-life who will do anything to preserve zygotes, a handful of mindless dividing cells, claiming human life begins at conception, while ignoring the murder of real, thinking, feeling humans worldwide. Does that make sense?

We want the whole world to give us their natural resources, sacrifice their cultures and eat McDonalds, drink Coke or Pespsi, wear Nikes and Levis, watch our movies, buy our music, worship our god, believe our superstitions. Sometimes we kill them for refusing our generous offers.

Aren't those iris something. They were my mother's favorite flower and I inherited her collection, when she died. I doubled the size of the iris beds, over the next four years. That is one thing I do miss from Arkansas. There's a bunch out at Fort Missoula. Go see them before they are gone.

Democrats Demand...?!

I just saw a headline about the Democrats demanding the Big 3 automakers come up with another plan by December 2. Boy, aren't they being tough. NO! They're being wimps again! They should show their leadership now and present a plan. The best one I've heard was given by an economist on Thom Hartmann's show. He said the government should buy controlling interest in GM's worthless stock and give it to the employees. There's a plan, one I would vote for.

Dammit, are Pelosi and Reid going to continue controlling things? I don't like either one of them. If we are going to have a new administration, the legislature needs new leadership, too.

I'm not giddy about Obama, as some are, but I am relieved. However, now that Washington is preparing for the second coming of the Clinton Doctrine, I'm already getting worried, as well. When Clinton was elected, we partied as the Obama people are partying now.

Our chosen savior continued the policies begun under Reagan and carried on by George I. After pointing out in the Presidential debates that Reagan and George I gave tax breaks and subsidies to companies who closed domestic plants to open new factories overseas, Bill did little to change the flow of jobs to other countries. He didn't make ridiculous proclamations such as announcing ketchup packets to be servings of vegetables, but then big Willy let his little willy lead him around and was embarrassing, in his own inimitable fashion.

When the GOP said they were going to shrink government, they were referring only to the departments which did the planet and people good. When the reduce welfare movement started, corporations were already getting more hand outs than citizens were, but that didn't stop them from crowing about putting single mothers back to work. This was another GOP tradition continued by our hero, Bill Clinton, whose victory we had cheered enthusiastically.

Anyone who remembers Janet Reno and Madeline Albright, knows it wasn't all sweetness and light under Clinton. Albright now admits her wording was clumsy when stating the deaths of half a million Iraqi children was a price worth paying to achieve their goals in the oil lands. Her wording was clumsy? The embargo they enforced left innocent civilians without proper medical equipment and medicines. It kept people from having clean water, and rebuilding the damage from the first Gulf War. George II and his neocon cronies have now killed more in Iraq than Clinton did, more than Clinton did there and in Yugoslavia combined. That's a hell of a stat to be comparing.

The people who ordered the bombing of civilian targets (i.e. "propaganda outlets" such as television and radio stations), during Clinton's time are lining up for positions in Obama's term. Even Albright is on the list. Others include hawks that supported every lie told to get the Iraq war rolling. I can neither pronounce nor spell the name of the secretary under Carter, who bragged that the U.S. had tricked Russia into invading Afghanistan, which would be THEIR Vietnam. He's another good Democrat from yester year.

There's always hope, and I have some. I'm just not overflowing with it, because it seems I remember seeing this movie before. If there is to be change, we are going to have to fight for it every step of the way. The rich and powerful do not wish to share their wealth and power. They will continue to pay any price, including human lives, to increase their status. Believe it or not, they exert their influence on Democrats as well as Republicans.

If domestic programs continue to be cut, while our bloated military continues to spend more than the rest of the world's military combined, you will know the sell out has begun. If an acceptable universal health care program is initiated, while the pentagon gets a budget cut, change will have actually begun. Justice for all must become a reality. Without it, there can be no peace, snd peace is what I hope for.

Orwellian Pro-life and Torture

Doublespeak, newspeak, the meaning of words changes rapidly. Pro-life is such a positive sounding term, but so many who preach it are pro-death for people who disagree with them. So many support the war we were lied into, which has caused a million deaths in Iraq, and left four million homeless. Pro-life for fertilized eggs, but not for human beings. So self-righteous, so sure their god is the only god, worshiping mammon in a capitalist temple, while claiming to be so holy.

Lower gas prices are supposed to help incumbents in the election. That explains why they dropped so fast, and shows plainly how easily the price is manipulated. Think oligarchy and plutocracy, instead of democracy, because it is long gone. The republic is also dead, replaced by empire.

Back to the pro-lifers, who don't care how many people are killed in other countries by our military. They don't know, nor care that American corporations, around the world, hire militias to keep the farmers in line and execute serious opposition. Their attitude here is also pro-death.

Anyone, who reads, who hasn't read Orwell's 1984, must do so. Read a prophet as accurate as any who ever lived. Listen to our leaders spouting inane remarks, similar to "war is peace."

Pro-lifers and death go together like McCain and torture. He would never approve it he said, and our government would never do it. But our government did torture. It continues to torture, and McCain supports it. It's enough to make your head spin.

Our old allies are now our enemies, and former enemies are our best allies is a scenario from Orwell. The government propaganda machine always claims we are winning, but everything goes to the war, and the ruling class, leaving little for common folk. Look around...read 1984, or Animal Farm. That's another terrific ditty, more satirical, slightly less grim.

Riverbend hasn't blogged in months

Riverbend was a young college girl in Iraq, when the invasion began. Her blog was a first hand report on the devastation that followed and how it affected her life. On October 22, 2007, she reported her family had arrived safely in Damascus, Syria, having given up on their home in Baghdad. She hasn't blogged since then. I hope she's safe.

Riverbend titled her blog Baghdad Burning. Beneath the title was this quote: "...I'll meet you 'round the bend, my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend..." Read it all here.

A collection of writings from the blog, published as Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq, can be found at Amazon and other booksellers.

An ongoing blog with daily updates from Iraq is available here. Warning: this site does not contain the type of sugar-coated pablum our mainstream media is reporting.