"LIBERALS THROW PUNCHES LIKE GIRLS"

Wacko Ann Coulter gets off on infuriating her audiences. That's why she likes to speak in LA, New York, college campuses. She loves it when outraged audiences jump up and scream. At one event, "they would call me 'fascist' or 'racist' or whatever. It was great." Now finding respectability at cocktail parties, she admits not so long ago she found it slightly embarrassing to be right wing. "You would go to a cocktail party and it would take 45 minutes to determine the person you were talking to was a right winger. We were like homosexuals with a scarf in the back pocket." Now she's out as a conservative and not the least bit afraid of people she infuriates for a living. "Nooo," she says, "Liberals throw punches like girls."

Phew. Well, other than delineating all that's offensive in her comments--all of it, actually--it's the last line that intrigues me, because for the most part, she's right about that, sexism aside.

As the pundits are now unanimously noting, it took Dean to get the other candidates to get to the point. While Dean's own campaign may be floundering (and the pundits are doing their best to make this happen by repeating it constantly), nonetheless his moral outrage, expressed angrily at times, has resononated with many of us. He, with no guile, speaks truth to power.

Now the other contendas are beginning to express themselves with that outrage. But they need more.

The net is filled with commentaries on why liberals and progessives won't or can't fight on the same turf as the extreme right. It's all true, and good for us. Because--we're right, and they're wrong--not just in substance, but in political demeanor.

But these are no ordinary times. Let's take the gloves off. We don't have to surrender the moral high ground, which we've always had by definition* if not action, but we do have to throw stronger punches. Dean taught us that.



*A modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in
moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification
for selfishness." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

(UN)HEALTHY MARRIAGE INITIATIVE

1.5 Billion, "to promote strong, lasting.legal unions between low-income men and women," because "research definitely shows that marriage is the fastest route out of poverty." Below is a list of where that money could be spent that actually would make a difference in the lives of low-income people. Oh nevermind, you all know that list.

It's not the lack of relationship skills that keeps so many impoverished urban women from marrying," says the New York Times. "It's a lack or worthwhile husbands. Jobless. poorly educated, and incarcerated men don't make good mates, and women who marry them don't get the financial and social benefits that marriage provides to the middle class." Rather, spend the money on useful things like "like pregnancy prevention, health insurance, job training for single moms."

Of course, this empty gesture is really a sop to social conservatives, to remind them, as Froma Harrop says in The Providence Journal, that "Bush is their guy.

Ellis Henican in Newsday points out that the Bible Belt is hardly in any position to lecture America about marriage. Rate of divorce among
Baptists: 29%;
Nondemoninational Christians: 34%;
Five states with the highest divorce rates: Nevada, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma.


As for the rest of us:

Agnostics: 21%;
Northeast Liberals: 19%.

As Henican says, "it could be that the president and his people need a little counseling of their own."

HAPPY FUN PLACE

As reported in The Week, January 30 2004:
Teachers in schools across the country are introducing new jargon to students as young as 6 years old in order to comply with government-mandated curricula. As some schools, children are to write a "brief constructed response" or an "extended constructed response" instead of a paragraph or essay. Multiple-choice tests are now called "selected-response assessments." Rather than compare books, kids make "text-to-text connections." Said one Maryland high school senior: "It's like renaming a prison "The Happy Fun Place."

RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE? YOU TALKING TO ME?

"Imagine no religion...it's easy if you try." It's getting harder by the day in a land ruled by theocrats.

On a political discussion list I'm on, one meathead posted yesterday some diatribe about how America was founded on religion, that on top of the Washington Monument, visible only from above, is a huge inscription "Laus Deo"--honor God or something like that. That 92% of Americans support the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. That religious inscriptions honoring God abound in our early statuary and public monument. And thus the separation of church and state is just the usual liberal...oh, need I go on. We were entreated, in typical internet bombast, to spread this religious screed to everyone we know. I wrote back:

"It's exactly because of this intertwining of church and state that the "separation" has evolved through decades of Supreme Court decisions since the monument was built and most of those inscriptions were written. As a country we recognized the need to expand upon the original amendment to prevent theocrats from creating the tyranny of the majority. We now cherish separation such that discussions about "under God" are critical to the continuance of religious freedom--and freedom from religion--whatever the outcome.

Similarly, there was nothing explicitly stated about privacy in the constitution, either, yet that concept has evolved through Supreme Court decisions to be one of the most valued aspects of our system, even if now threatened by the Patriot Act I and proposed #2.

And of course the constitution as written only allowed rich white men with property to vote. All hail the sacred writ.

It took centuries of judicial activism to create the body of law that now underpins this republic, and which we desecrate every day--especially this administration. And yes, judicial activism, that very concept that right-wingers condemn when they don't like a court decision, but which is as necessary to the creation of a free state as the first amendment. (We are reminded of Bush's unimaginable temerity and hypocrisy in his State of the Union comments about judicial activism, which of course is the reason he was standing at that podium at all.)

It doesn't matter how pious or religious you are. Who cares? That's your choice, your business. You have no God-given right to judge others who choose a different path. When you do, as you always do, you betray God, as you do this democracy. I swear these people wouldn't understand Christianity if it bit them on ass. If Christ were here today, any doubt who would do the crucifying this time?

You want to pray, acknowledge God, in a public forum, do it, but do it silently and privately. Anything else is just a thinly disguised equivalent of the antecedents of Taliban fundamentalism, or Islamic Sharia Law. How dare anyone impose their religious values or traditions on anyone else, anywhere, anytime!"

Then today The Boston Globe printed a column titled "Intolerance spans the religious divide" by Cathy Young--A contributing editor at Reason magazine (the magazine of "Free minds and free markets"--e.g., libertarian), who makes her own religion out of trying to always look at both sides of an issue while ending up chastising everyone. She seemed to think the left had gone too far criticizing Bush's public religiosity: "I happen to agree that on many occasions, President Bush has gone too far in injecting religion in his political rhetoric. But it is equally true that his critics have used and misused his faith to impugn his policies." Oh, Bush-wa.
Here's the URL for the column:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/01/26/intolerance_spans_the_religious_divide/

I wrote this letter to the editor in response. They didn't print it. Too much bombast, I guess.

To The Editor, Boston Globe:

Cathy Young seems to have made an illogical leap in her column on religious intolerance (January 26).
At one point she states that "I happen to agree that on many occasions, President Bush has gone too far in injecting religion in his political rhetoric." But she closes with "Lack of religious devotion should not be a basis for a smear. But neither should religious belief -- and the truth is that the intolerance of the religious right can be fully matched by that of the secular left."

While the column fails to make a compelling case to support the closing contention, any intolerance that does exist on the left is not of religion per se, but of that injection of religion where it doesn't belong.

Simply, those who try to inject religion into politics or public policy, according to our constitution, do not deserve tolerance. In fact, in defense of the constitution, it is our duty as citizens to restrain any person or institution from such behavior. We are guaranteed not only freedom of religion, but freedom from religion.

President Bush and the religious right can be as religious as they want. If they kept it to themselves, it wouldn't be anybody's business but their own. But they don't, and what Young misrepresents as intolerance is their just reward.

COMIC RELIEF--IN THE NICK OF TIME

I proclaim a hiatus, a caesura from negative reports. As of today, only funny or uplifting stuff. I will begin to reprint Dave Barry's columns from when he was still funny. Wait, there's that flying pig again...


The town of Bolinas, CA voted 314-152 to adopt the following ballot measure (the official wording): "Vote for Bolinas to be socially acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the bluberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks, and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and make it beautiful."

The San Francisco Chronicle attributed the town's support for it to the fact that its sponsor, artist Jane "Dakar" Blethen, is a beloved, though eccentric local character.

I nominate her for a federal judicial appointment.

PUTZ APPOINTS PUTZ

I just liked the alliteration in that headline.

So Bush makes a recess appointment of Charles Pickering to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, to trump Democratic filibuster to one of the most reactionary, anti-choice, anti-civil rights and civil liberties nominees possible, and perhaps in history--except maybe for the other nominees being filibustered. Pickering is far worse than Thomas or Scalia. In fact, this is one of the most un-American people I have come across--among so many on the extreme right. It's almost unfathomable that Bush would push for this guy. Almost.

Here's just one of many summaries appearing on various progressive websites about this sneak attack, this one from NARAL:

"President Bush has been pushing Charles Pickering’s controversial nomination to the Fifth Circuit for several years. When the Senate was still in pro-choice hands in 2002, the Judiciary Committee defeated this nomination for good reason. In 2003, pro-choice Democrats successfully filibustered Pickering.

Pickering's lifelong role as an architect of the anti-choice movement – as well as his hostility to other established constitutional rights and liberties – drew opposition from an unprecedented coalition of pro-choice, civil-rights, labor, environmental, and gay and lesbian groups."

And as for the latter, here's what NGLTF says:

Following is a statement from National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman on the appointment of Charles Pickering:

"Wednesday, in a bald attempt to win African American votes at the expense of gay Americans, the White House told the media of their plans to unveil a $1.5 billion dollar plan to promote marriage (as if the African American and gay communities are mutually exclusive communities). Yesterday, the President laid a wreath at the tomb of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Today, through a recess appointment, he anointed Charles Pickering to a U.S. Court of Appeals, an individual who has spent his life opposing everything Dr. King stood and fought for. This kind of hypocrisy is both breathtaking and appalling. We stand in solidarity with the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP of Mississippi and national NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and all fair-minded Americans in opposition to this action."

Any president has a right to make recess appointments. Clinton did it to circumvent opposition from the right on nominations. But of course Clinton didn't appoint an extremist condemned by every moderate to liberal social and political organization in the country, and many not so liberal.

This is simply an appalling action. Of all the cynical moves by this administration in the past month, including the aforementioned visit to the tomb of MLK (with buses lined up to block the 1000 protesters that showed up), this one takes the cake.

Every time we ask how can it get worse, it does. Every time we think it can't get more cynical, it does. Every time we think it can't get more extreme, it does. Every single goddam time.

As usual, "At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency? Have you no shame?"

"THEN, AS TODAY, THE DEFENDERS OF THE STATUS QUO ALWAYS SEEMED TO HAVE GOD'S LIPS TO THEIR EARS."

A divided three-judge panel of the 11th District Ohio Court of Appeals ruled recently that a heterosexual couple may not marry under state law if one member is transsexual.

Although Jacob Nash was born female, he changed his sex in the late 1990s and obtained a revised birth certificate from his home state in Massachusetts. Nonetheless, the Ohio courts have continued to ignore this legal document in denying him the right to marry his partner, Erin Barr.

In a Dec. 31 decision, which is expected to be appealed, Judge Diane V. Grendell insisted that the U.S. Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause might require Ohio to respect Nash's Massachusetts birth certificate, but it does not require Ohio to take the extra step of declaring Nash a male under Ohio law.

Instead, the judge turned to the legal authority of Webster's New College Dictionary, where she found "female" defined as "the sex that produces ova or bears young," and "male" as "the sex that has organs to produce spermatozoa for fertilizing ova." Once she determined that Nash failed to meet the latter specification, she grounded the rest of her opinion in the state law that prohibits same-sex marriage.

Grendell cited a host of conservative precedents in the course of her 17-page opinion, including a dissenting opinion in a state Supreme Court case that was overwhelmingly resolved in favor of two women who sought a name change.

In another example, the judge found a quote from a Texas transgender marriage case with which to dismiss the underlying complexity of the matter before her: "We realize," wrote the Texas 4th District Court of Appeals in Littleton v. Prange, "that there are many fine metaphysical arguments lurking about here involving desire and being, the essence of life and the power of mind over physics. But courts are wise not to wander too far into the misty fields of sociological philosophy."

In contrast, Grendell's dissenting colleague, Judith Christley, wrote that advances in civil rights have "required that we rethink the long established history and origins of our prejudices. Without exception," she went on, "the continuation of those prejudices was defended in the name of natural law, the God-given order of things, and because it had always been that way. Then, as today, the defenders of the status quo always seemed to have God's lips to their ears."

--Reported by Ann Rostow, Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network

OY, THOSE WACKY ORTHODOX JEWS

We'll get there, but first:

Boston's ultra-putz Archbishop O'Malley is continuing his Jihad against family values, security for children, stable relationships, and love.

First, on Sunday he urged Catholic lawyers on Sunday to oppose gay marriage, saying the institution of marriage and the family are under assault and attorneys need to help protect them.

"The social cost of the breakdown of family life has already been enormous," O'Malley said at the annual Red Mass, which is dedicated to judges, lawyers and others in the legal system.

"It's not a question of live and let live, it's a question of right and wrong," O'Malley said.

He didn't give specifics on what the lawyers could do to protect marriage and the family.

But later, in an interview, he said: "We hope that they will use their profession and their understanding of the law to defend marriage. They're in a better position than any of us to understand what needs to be done to correct a very complicated situation that the court has put us in."

Not that complicated. Rational, caring, compassionate human beings, including the Catholic Rainbow Sash Movement, support same sex marriage and oppose these Jihads. Here's what Rainbow Sash has to say:

"Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley of Boston urged Catholic lawyers to oppose gay marriage. We will ask the Archbishop to explain in plain English how gay marriage will under mind the marriage of heterosexuals. What is troubling about the archbishop call to arms are religious figures dictating public policy. Will Archbishop O'Malley go as far as Bishop Raymond Burke of La Crosse, Wisconsin who is refusing Holy Communion to Pro Choice elected officials, Bishop Burke cited Vatican doctrine, canon law and teachings by the U.S. bishops in an announcement telling diocesan priests to withhold communion from such lawmakers until they 'publicly renounce' their support of abortion rights. Will the Archbishop impose the same standard on those catholic lawyers and judges who do not agree with his opinion on matter of Gay Marriage which is also contrary to Church Law?

"The Rainbow Sash Movement would remind the Archbishop misrepresenting the facts and stereotyping a whole community of people is also a sin, we in the gay and lesbian Catholic Community recognize it as 'homophobia.' He further states 'The social cost of the breakdown of family life has already been enormous,' and just what does that have to do with legally affirming gay and lesbian families? Another question the Archbishop appears to be tap dancing around.

"Another question posed by the Archbishop was, 'What do we want to teach our young people about marriage?' The Rainbow Sash Movement would hope that he would want children to be taught to affirm the love between two adults, regardless of sexual orientation, race, or gender who have entered into loving committed relationship. The Archbishop apparently finds the children of gay and lesbian families, not as worthy of the protection of law, and must see them in a lesser light than he sees the children of heterosexual families, or he would support equal rights.

"We respect the teaching authority of the Church. Because of this, we find particularly troubling the increase in the use of violent and abusive language directed at members of the gay and lesbian community. Such language is inappropriate. Certainly the Archbishop must be aware that his language is divisive and exclusionary which is contrary to sound pastoral practice.

"Archbishop O'Malley should be preaching Recognition of the inalienable dignity of the human person is the only path toward justice and reconciliation. Instead he seeks to divide the Catholic Community.

"The RSM would remind the Archbishop we are most Catholic when we are inclusive and embracing, when we are exclusionary we do not reflect the Gospel Values of Jesus Christ.

"We call on the Archbishop Boston to apologize to those faithful gay and lesbian Catholics and their children who have been harmed by his words. Further to enter into dialogue with the gay and lesbian community of Boston to understand who your gay and lesbian neighbors are, gay baiting should have no place at the Eucharistic table."

To find out more about the Rainbow Sash Movement visit our web site at http://www.rainbowsashmovement.org.

But O'Malley is not likely to respond or care about all that, because he answers to a higher authority--not God, not Christ, but the uber-putz Pope. That's about as far as you can get from God. If these two were Muslim, they'd be Khomeini & Sons. Let's say it again--anyone with that authority and audience who tells the world not to use condoms to prevent AIDS because the virus leaks through them, well, that's far more than unacceptable ignorance or faithful adherence to dogma (what's the difference?)--it's tantamount to murder.

The only good news is that this miscreant is ready to kick the bucket any minute. And, brothers and sisters, when that happens, he's going to find a warm reception in his final destination. Extremely warm.

O'Malley, on the other hand, will be with us for the time it takes for, oh, a couple of hundred gay-bashings, a couple thousand kids being emotionally damaged because their same-sex parents won't have the protection of legal (and subsequently cultural) legitimacy, thousands or other LGBT youth tormented by guilt, and more than a few loving people dying alone and in misery because their partners are not allowed to visit them in their hospital deathbeds.

Next on the Jihad to-do list, today the Boston Globe reports that "the state's four Roman Catholic bishops will mail a flier to more than a million Catholic households in Massachusetts, urging the faithful to support a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

The initiative, a partnership between the state's four Catholic dioceses and the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the church's political advocacy arm, was announced Friday . The state's highest court ruled in November that it is unconstitutional to bar gay couples from civil marriage. Since then, O'Malley has called on priests and other Catholics to defend traditional marriage."

Traditional marriage?

"Marriage as we understand it - voluntary, monogamous, legally egalitarian, based on love, involving adults only - is a pretty recent phenomenon. For much of human history, polygyny was the rule - read your Old Testament - and in much of Africa and the Muslim world, it still is. Arranged marriages, forced marriages, child marriages, marriages predicated on the subjugation of women - gay marriage is like a fairy tale romance compared with most chapters of the history of wedlock."
- Katha Pollitt writing in The Nation, Nov. 26.]


And oh, that headline? Well, it turns out the Catholic leadership isn't the only bastion of medieval religious ignorance and savagery.

Today's Globe also reports that "The Jewish Community Relations Council, the major public policy voice of the Jewish community in Greater Boston, has voted overwhelmingly to endorse same-sex marriage.

The endorsement, by an umbrella organization representing 42 Jewish groups, is part of a growing effort by liberal religious voices to counter the strong opposition to same-sex marriage voiced by the state's Catholic bishops."

So far, so good.

But my landtsmen are not all of one mind. Some don't seem to be of any mind at all. As if wearing full beards and heavy black robes and hats in blistery summer heat, or voting Republican, weren't evidence enough, this'll do:

"The leader of the Orthodox opposition to the Jewish Community Relations Council vote, Rabbi Gershon C. Gewirtz of Young Israel synagogue in Brookline, declined to comment. The Coalition for Marriage referred calls to Rabbi Chaim Schwartz of Agudath Israel of New England, an Orthodox advocacy organization, who said, "This is an issue we believe is bringing about decadence in society." "It's not that we do not believe in the civil rights of gay couples -- we believe each person should be able to live in this great country -- but we don't believe in calling it marriage," Schwartz said. "It's morally incorrect, and what's next? Bestiality? Marrying a dog? Marrying your cat?"

Well, maybe. If my choice were Rabbi Schwartz or a dog, I'm going with the one who understands unconditional love.

MoveOn's Bush-in-30-Seconds Contest Awards transcripts

The Drudge report printed these, with a bit of condescension and scolding in their intro:

"Celebrity activists unleashed a torrent of obscenity-laced insults and allegations against Republicans and the Bush Administration -- just a week after the site's founders apologized for posting two political messages on the Internet comparing President Bush to Hitler."

I think Margaret responds quite adequately.

The hate email to her that the Drudge excerpts generated are at:
http://www.apj.us/20040114CroMag.html

MARGARET CHO (Comedian) --

* "Despite all of this stupid bullsh-- that the Republican National Committee, or whatever the f--- they call them, that they were saying that they're all angry about how two of these ads were comparing Bush to Hitler? I mean, out of thousands of submissions, they find two. They're like fu--ing looking for Hitler in a hawstack. You now? I mean, George Bush is not Hitler. He would be if he fu--ing applied himself." big, extended applause) "I mean he just isn't."

* "I think this last year has just proven how stupid Republicans are." (big applause)

* "For example, Judge Roy Moore, or Jay Moore or whatever, in Alabama. [inaudible] ... Ten Commandments statue stay in the lobby of a courthouse. 'You can't move the Word of God! You cannot remove the Franklin Mint edition of the Word of God!' [said in Southern accent] People are protesting there and like, I think it could have been solved so much easier if they had just placed a golden calf next to the statue and then people would have started worshipping that. And then they could have moved the Ten Commandments to Bush's office -- which he needs them, desperately. Or maybe he needs a new version of the Ten Commandments -- George W. Bush's Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not steal...votes. (big applause) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's...country. (big applause) Thou shalt not kill...for oil. (big applause) Thou shalt not take grammar...in vain. (big applause) I mean, whatever fu--ing happened to separation of church and state? I mean, you can't like, impose your god on my god. God has many names. God is God, God is Jehovah, God is Allah, God is Buddah, God is Beyonce. (laughter) You know, you cannot impose your God on other people. And ah, George W. Bush is coming out with the weirdest stance on same-sex marriage as well. What he says about it is, well, 'well, we're all sinners.' No we're not! Just because somebody ate an apple one time does not make us all sinners. And if it was from the tree of knowledge, I think she should have eaten more than one. (laughter) Possibly even baked a pie." (applause) "I don't understand the whole same-sex marriage thing. He was quoted by saying, 'well, you you uh, just gotta take the speck out of your own eye before you take the co-- out of your neighbor's.'" [in Southern accent] (laughter)

* "I mean, I'm afraid of terrorists, but I'm more afraid of the Patriot Act." (big applause)

CHUCK D (Rapper -- Public Enemy)

* Cut off, but he appears to refer to American government under Bush Administration as "cancer of civilization."

* "But truly, seriously, quite frankly, the people are smart enough to realize that the world is important and we only have one life [or right, unclear], that's tired of this bullsh--, or better than that, tired of this Bushsh--" (big applause)

* "Americanization is like McDonaldization"

* "Son of a Bush and his crew is at it again, because, we do not want 8 years run by a Colon, a Bush and a Dick." (big applause)

JULIA STILES (Actress)

* "I was worried that some soldiers over in Iraq who are actually younger than I am would see some salacious report on MSNBC and think that I was attacking them and not the government that put them there. And I was afraid that Bill O'Reilly would come and, with a shotgun at my front door and shoot me for being unpatriotic. But I decided that that's actually, that fear that was silencing me is actually why it's so important that MoveOn exist and do this ad contest..."

AL FRANKEN

*"I'm Al Franken. I'm here to present the funniest ad award. I'm a last-minute substitution, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was supposed to be the presenter, but unfortunately he was murdered."

MOBY

*Said he had "contempt" for Bush, called him a "big fat f---ing liar."

GENERAL CLARK SOFTENS HIS IMAGE

"I think there's an impression that the armed forces is a male-dominated, hierarchal, authoritarian institution," he told The Times about his gender gap, notwithstanding the fact that the armed forces is a male-dominated, hierarchal, authoritarian institution.
--Maureen Dowd-"The Argyle General"-New York Times, January 11

FLORIDA'S GOV. BUSH ASKED TO REMOVE ANTI-GAY CANDIDTE


Washington, D.C.--A member of a Florida commission that helps select state court judges has inappropriately asked nominees about their religious beliefs and should be removed from office, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

The Miami Daily Business Review reported January 8 that Broward Judicial Nomination Commission (JNC) member O'Neal Dozier has asked several candidates for Broward County judgeships inappropriate questions about their religious beliefs, such as whether they attend church and are "God-fearing." Several of those judicial nominees complained about those types of questions.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, sent a letter to Gov. Bush today calling on him to fire Dozier.

"Dozier's overt religious bigotry is wholly unacceptable and he must no longer be allowed an official role in the selection of judges in Florida," Lynn wrote. "It is appalling that in 2004 judicial nominees are being subjected to an inquisition. Religious litmus tests are unconstitutional in America."

In addition to grilling candidates about religion, Dozier has also been accused of questioning judicial candidates about their personal lives and their stands on controversial social issues. One woman said she was asked whether she could balance her duties as a single mother of twins with her duties as a judge. Another candidate was asked his opinions on the Supreme Court's decision last summer that overturned a Texas sodomy law.

According to the Miami Daily Business Review, Dozier said such questions are appropriate. "I am totally against that ruling," he told the newspaper. "We cannot have a judge who feels sodomy is OK." Dozier has repeatedly expressed an intolerant and theocratic approach to government. According to a report in the New Times Broward-Palm Beach late last year, Dozier told a Religious Right gathering, "We as Christians must take control of the government. We should be the ones in charge of the government."

New Times said Dozier also observed that homosexuality is "something so nasty and disgusting that it makes God want to vomit."

According to the more recent Miami Business Review article, Dozier said, "There is no such animal as separation of church and state in the Constitution."

Dozier was appointed to the judicial nomination commission by Governor Bush, and AU's Lynn urged Bush to act quickly to remove Dozier from that official post.

"As I am sure you are aware," Lynn wrote, "state and federal law forbid religious tests for public office. In our highly pluralistic society, it is outrageous to require judicial nominees to profess certain religious beliefs, participate in religious activities or conform their lives to the tenets of a particular faith."

LIBERAL RADIO IS COMING AT LAST!

Al Franken announcing his upcoming radio talk show, which will launch with the new liberal talk radio network Progress Media: "My first priority is to get sued by a right-wing jerk in order to generate interest in my new show, the O’Franken Factor. Our hope is to do drug-free talk radio, although I understand it’s never been done."

Here's the full press release:

Contact: Adam Schiff
Dan Klores Communications, Inc.
212-981-5216
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AL FRANKEN INKS DEAL WITH PROGRESS MEDIA TO HOST RADIO TALK SHOW

Robert Kennedy Jr. Also to Host Show
Network Finalizes Agreement on Chicago Station

New York, January 13, 2004 - Progress Media announced today that comedian and best-selling author Al Franken will hit the airwaves to host his own radio talk show when the radio network launches. The signing of Robert Kennedy Jr. to co-host a talk show and a radio network distribution deal in Chicago were also announced. Franken’s show will air weekdays.

“Al is one of the new masters of political humor. His entertaining and insightful comedy and commentary has established him as one of the savviest and most engaging voices in America today. We are thrilled to have him aboard,” said Progress Media Chief Executive Officer, Mark Walsh.

This ends a year of speculation about whether Franken would jump into radio. “Our long national nightmare is over,” said Franken. “I’ve signed.

“My first priority is to get sued by a right wing jerk in order to generate interest in my new show, The O’Franken Factor,” Franken said. “Our hope is to do drug-free talk radio, although I understand it’s never been done.

“Quite simply, my plan is to alter the political landscape, drive this radical right-wing president from office and stand as a beacon for ordinary Americans who work hard and play by the rules. Short of that, I’d just like to get on in Albany,” added Franken.

In addition, the network is unveiling another program in its lineup. “Champions of Justice,” co-hosted by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Mike Papantonio, will bring a fresh and entertaining perspective to talk radio from the top legal minds in the country with a focus on informing Americans about the inner workings of corporations and how they influence our daily lives.

“I am excited to be affiliated with Progress Media, which will provide Americans a breath of fresh air and a much needed alternative to the status-quo,” said Kennedy.

“Al Franken and Robert Kennedy Jr. are important ingredients to achieving our core mission: entertaining and engaging programming,” said Walsh.

In its first major distribution announcement, Progress Media has completed a transaction with Multicultural Radio’s WNTD 950AM, a full-signal station in Chicago.

“It is an extremely significant event for Progress Media to have clearance in the third largest media market in the country" said Jon Sinton, president of the network. “Combined with other markets we are close to finalizing, Progress Media will have tremendous reach right out of the box.”

In addition, Progress Media expects to announce additional distribution deals and acquisitions in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other major media markets across the country.

Progress Media is led by Walsh; New York-based investor and Chairman of the Board Evan Cohen; radio pioneer Jon Sinton; Lizz Winstead, co-creator of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show;” Shelly Lewis, a longtime network news producer most recently with CNN’s “American Morning;” Dave Logan, a former XM and Chicago radio executive; and Martin Kaplan, an associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California, who will host a talk show about the news media.

THE NEWS WILL MAKE YOU CRAZY. TRY THESE.

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as
good. Luckily, this is not difficult. (Charlotte Whitton)

Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups:
Alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat. (Alex Levine)

My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying. (Ed
Furgol)

What's the use of happiness? It can't buy you money. (Henny Youngman)

Q. What is the difference between Michael Jackson and a grocery bag?
A. One is made of plastic and is dangerous for children to play with.... the other is used to carry groceries.

MISSION TO MARS

For those who haven't yet felt the Alien of Disgust burst through their chests at this transparently cynical and incredibly annoying proposal by the Smirking Chimp, I offer this palliative---Ha! There is none!

But our sources in the White House have leaked the real plan.

The timing of the fruition of the plan is not arbitrary. When the Moon is ready for human and simian (you can see it coming) habitation, the plan that Bush and his corporate masters (there's a neutral phrase) have embarked on to totally degrade the Earth environment will be completed.

And so who will be the first inhabitants of the Moon? Don't misunderestimate this team. Those of us still alive who haven't mutated into some kind of spongiform blob will be able to see, even through the haze of sulfuric acid we'll still fondly call our atmosphere, a 5000 foot tall billion-kilowatt laser/neon sign: "Welcome to Halliburton"

TEFLON IS ONE THING, BUT THIS IS RIDICULOUS

Can we beat Bush? The media and the pundits, along with unindicted co-conspirators New Democrats, are declaring the front-runner Dean as unelectable.

They were saying this about Kucinich until recently. Well, they still are, but now with Dean they have a juicier victim. Kucinich was presented with this shibboleth at the recent Iowa debate, when a panelist told him that many Democrats don't think he's electable. He responded, with a chuckle, "Well, you know, I'm electable if you vote for me."

Anything can happen, but with Kerry continuing to self-destruct, and Clark still polling in at best 2nd place in most places, it sure looks like Dean will win the nomination.

So the savagery against Dean intensifies. He's too angry. He's naive. He changes his mind (the old flip-flop attack). Kerry and the other candidates continue to provide great sound bites that Karl Rove can use later on against Dean--and no doubt will.

It's all so depressingly familiar.

News of late has provided hope that Bush will finally get the same treatment from the press--and thereby the public, who seem to be programmed more than ever to believe everything the talking heads tell them--that the Democratic candidates have been getting. That is, consistent diminution of their integrity and credibility, and savage attacks on their competency, especially in foreign affairs and national security.

Bush's attacks on the environment, to benefit corporate interests, are the most blatant, the most severe, and the most successful of any president--ever. While I can't quite see how allowing skimobiles in Yellowstone benefits corporate America, there must be a constituency he needs and thus is pandering to in this regard. The recent blocking of the rescinding of that restriction by a federal judge is one small victory against many losses.

I intend to write a piece about the whole environmental devastation soon, but for now, if you can, check out the Sept 2003 issue of Vanity Fair, an article titled Sale Of The Wild. Here's the intro blurb: "Dept of the Interior employees are horrified by how Secretary Gale Norton and her powerfull deputy, J.Steven Griles, have allowed industry to exploit America's wilderness. Probing stealthy bureaucratic maneuvers and Grile's ties to coal, oil, and gas, the author finds a massive, irreversible (emphasis supplied) landgrab." This long and well-researched article is ultimately horrifying.

But none of this sticks to Bush. Like Reagan and Iran-Contra (among other impeachable and corrupt actions of that administration) the Teflon effect is in full force.

That news I mentioned? It's a multi-part story. First, it's the Paul O'Neil story. The fired former Bush Treasury Secretary revealed in a recent book by Ron Suskind, and detailed in a 60 Minutes interview Sunday, that Bush and team had begun planning for the invasion of Iraq days after the election. That Bush, in that now-famous quote going around the world, in cabinet meetings was "like a blind man in a room full of deaf people." By now you all know this and more. The BBC today did a longer story on this affair than NPR. The world is chomping at the bit for ways to nail this administration. We're with 'em.

Not surprisingly, some American pundits immediately tried to dismiss these volatile criticisms as sour grapes. O'Neil was fired, so he's angry, and this is his revenge. He was fired, basically for speaking up about his opposition to the tax cuts.

He reveals in the interview that Bush was initially against the 2nd round of cuts. Bush actually was concerned that they had already given too many cuts to the wealthy--Bush's words, not mine. This was a clear acknowledgement that the administration knew the bulk of the cuts were going to the rich, unlike their then-and-now insistence of the opposite. More lies exposed. But Rove insisted they "stick to principle" and so Bush acceded to another round of manna for the rich.

O'Neil thought this was bad policy, and said so publicly. Goodbye, O'Neil.

So now the media appears to be doing the administration's dirty work by dismissing O'Neil's reports and claims as sour grapes.

Well I say hooray for sour grapes. While I don't believe for a minute that O'Neil's motivation is what is being ascribed to him,if it were, who could blame him? And if it were, that doesn't for a second negate the veracity or integrity of his claims. If we aren't allowed to act out of anger at injustice, we are silenced.

The tactic may or may not work against Dean and O'Neil, but that won't stop the Rovians from trying. Of course, now they want to investigate O'Neil for exposing classified material. That isn't the case, as is obvious, but the administration's response to questions about whether this investigation will be seen as vindictive is,"well, we don't see it that way." Hold on, there's a pig flying outside my window.

By the way, I think this news about the clear acknowledgment that the tax cuts benefited the rich are far more important than the news of the pre-9/11 Iraq invasion plans, or that Bush was disengaged at meetings.

For one, we all know he's the tool of the puppetmasters Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld et. al. It is too simplistic to say he merely does what he's told, but we all know who's running things.

We also all know about the Iraq plans. That "news" has been all over the progressive media for over a year. In fact, we know that Perle and Wolfowitz proposed this neo-con strategy back in the Bush Pere administration, but Poppy vetoed it as too volatile--and offensive. When Bush Jr. won his coup, they immediately renewed this long-time scenario. 9/11 gave them the creds (according to them) to proceed. This is not news! It's incredible that mainstream media would try to pretend it is.

The next bit of hopeful news is the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace's report that the administration 'systematically misrepresented the threat posed Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile programs." Julian Borger, writing in the Guardian, suggests that the report, by four experts on weapons proliferation at the Endowment, "is likely to re-ignite calls for a commission to look into the government's pre-war intelligence claims."

Finally, an Army War College study reports that the Iraq invasion was "an unnecessary preventive war of choice" that has robbed resources and attention from the more critical fight against Al Qaeda in a hopeless US quest for absolute security. The whole story, as reported by Will Dunham of Reuters, is at the end of this post. I'm reprinting it because it has so far received little or no national coverage

And then there's the Valerie Plame incident, the investigation of which Asscroft has finally recused himself from.

While it may come to pass that any of these reports, or the aggregate of all of them, or the seeping out of the news of totality of the environmental destruction, and no doubt more exposes to come, will finally result in positive action against this administration's continued disregard for the truth, the constitution and the will of the people (and the O'Neil story still has legs), I admit to pessimism.

There are impeachable offenses here. Ultimately Clinton was impeached because he lied. The lies of this administration continue unabated, and continue to be exposed, yet so far there is no sense of national outrage among the body politic, no indication that the administration will be held accountable for its calumnies, and not a heck of a lot of diminishment of Bush's standing in the polls.

A while back the pundits we're saying that Congress had no stomach for impeachment, after the Clinton debacle, since many congresspeople, while they went along with it, did not support it (wha?) and felt the whole think was, well, icky.

A lot has happened since then. It's time to renew the calls for impeachment of this damnable president.

THE AMERICAN WAR COLLEGE REPORT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Iraq invasion was "an unnecessary preventive war of choice" that has robbed resources and attention from the more critical fight against al Qaeda in a hopeless U.S. quest for absolute security, according to a study recently published by the U.S. Army War College.

The 56-page document written by Jeffrey Record, a veteran defense expert who serves as a visiting research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College, represents a blistering assessment of what President Bush calls the U.S. global war on terrorism.

Pentagon officials on Monday said Record was entitled to his opinion, but reiterated Bush's view that Iraq is the "central front" in the war on terrorism.

Record urged U.S. leaders to refocus Bush's broad war to target Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, and its allies. Record said the Iraq war was a detour from real anti-terrorism efforts.

Record criticized the Bush administration for lumping together al Qaeda and President Saddam Hussein's Iraq "as a single, undifferentiated terrorist threat."

"This was a strategic error of the first order because it ignored critical differences between the two in character, threat level and susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and military action," Record wrote.

"The result has been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable al Qaeda," Record wrote.

Faculty at the Army War College, an academic institute run by the Army since 1901, produce analyzes of military and national security issues, with scholars encouraged to take a critical look a existing policies.

Lawrence Di Rita, the top Pentagon spokesman, said, "There's no question he's entitled to his views."

"People are publishing stuff all the time. That's the value of kind of having people throw analysis out there. You learn even from analysis you don't agree with. I don't even want to characterize it as something I don't agree with because I just haven't read it," said Di Rita, adding that he does not know if Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld plans to read the document.

Record faulted the administration for fusing disparate enemies such as rogue states, terrorist groups and weapons of mass destruction proliferators into a monolithic threat.

In doing so, he said, the administration "may have set the United States on a course of open-ended and gratuitous conflict with states and non-state entities that pose no serious threat to the United States."

Record said the administration's declared goals "are unrealistic and condemn the United States to a hopeless quest for absolute security," as well as being fiscally, politically and militarily unsustainable.

These goals include destroying al Qaeda and other such transnational groups, making Iraq a stable democracy, bringing democracy to the rest of the autocratic Middle East, ending terrorism as a means of irregular warfare, and stopping proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to real and potential enemies, Record said.

In an interview, Record took issue with the very concept of a war on terrorism.

"Terrorism is a common noun. It's a technique. How do you make war on terrorism as opposed to specific terrorist organizations?" Record asked.

"I don't think that it is within America's power to rid the world of terrorism. ... The idea that you're going to be able to expunge this form of warfare from the world, I think, is really stretching it."

Douglas Lovelace, head of the Strategic Studies Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where Record works, said the report "should enter into the debate or at least be considered by those who are formulating strategy and policy."

STRESS MANAGEMENT


Stress Management Imagery
___________________________

Picture yourself near a stream.
Birds are singing in the crisp, cool mountain air.
Nothing can bother you here. No one knows this
secret place. You are in total seclusion from
that place called the world.The soothing sound
of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a
cascade of serenity. The water is clear.

You can easily make out the face of the person
whose head you're holding under the water.

There now, feeling better?

WHA?

OK, so I'm a crank. But, really, why haven't we all turned into axe murderers by now.

Because the Iranian earthquake kills over 30,000 people, but one remarkable 90-year old woman is found alive after 9 days, and, see, THAT's the work of God. Kills 30,000, saves one.

It's a frickin' miracle.

"The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness."
--Paul Varley

HOW EMPHASIS AFFECTS MEANING

While listening to a radio show about Abraham Lincoln on WBUR's "The Connection" today, I heard a recorded reading of the Gettysburg Address. The speaker also referred to the Emancipation Proclamation.

All my life I have heard those words pronounced with either the accent on the second word, "proclamation", or no emphasis on either word. I didn't realize how flat, lifeless and meaningless the phrase sounded until the speaker spoke with a strong accent on the word Emancipation. That way, there's meaning, emotion and power.

Say it out loud both ways and see for yourself.

Similarly, the phrase "of the people, by the people, for the people" is always pronounced with the emphases on of, by and for. This reduces the phrase to some autonomic abstraction, again with no emotion or power. Say it out loud with minor emphasis on the of, by and for, but with major emotive emphasis in each case on the word "people.": "...of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, for the PEOPLE..."

The difference is like day and night. It's as if I never heard these words before. I was as moved as if I had been there at Gettysburg.

It seems so obvious after the fact. Why does this happen? It may be our tendency when learning or teaching our history by rote--as so many of us did, and I bet still do-- to reduce famous quotes to some mindless rhythm with all the life and dynamism of iambic pentameter. "This is the forest primeval. The murmering pines and the hemlocks..."--daDUM, daDUM, daDUM, and on and on, ad infinitum. We carry this flatlined boredom with the phrases all of our lives, until that pronunciation becomes the commonplace, as does their meaning.

The inflection and accents define the concepts in ways the author surely never intended, and makes them not only boring, but deprives them of their passion, power and beauty. It's sheer luck, I think, that it also doesn't deprive them--so far--of immortality.

In a time when our leadership seems to be doing its best to subvert this profound concept, it's worthwhile to say this out loud a few times every morning. Maybe it could help convert that sense of political fatalism and despair many feel to confidence that "...a new nation, conceived in liberty... shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, for the PEOPLE shall not perish from the earth."

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM

Don't you get so tired of hearing the same tired and untrue phrases used by conservatives from, it seems, the day they came crawling out of the primordial ooze? Phrases like "tax and spend liberals." In the manner they've perfected of accusing others of the very malfeasances they themselves thrive on, and making it stick by constant repetition, so they have done with this one. Which administrations spend more? Think expansion of government (an example of the linguistic tomfoolery right there); think deficits. Yes, they sometimes cut taxes, but for whom? This is nothing to be proud of. And during Reagan-Bush, my taxes went up.

Since the Massachusetts Judicial Court decision about same-sex marriage, we are hearing once again from the right the complaint about courts practicing "judicial activism", that being an egregious affront to civilization. The courts should not be creating law, after all, or deciding public policy. That should be left to the noble hearts who in Congress--but only when the Right has a majority. Otherwise the courts are merely correcting bad legislation that will bring about the downfall of western civilization* or worse.

We hear that phrase used whenever any court decides in opposition to any position held dear by the right. We always have. I first heard it from a constitutional law professor in college, a "strict constructionist"--code for idiot, I later realized, (as "judical activism" is code for "we don't like that decision"). Under 'strict constructionism", we never would have had a right to privacy as we understand it today, and all that it implies and means to us today, as that right is not literally articulated in the constitution, but is the result of decades of court decisions, activism in service of the fulfillment of the founder's dreams in a world they could not foresee, and in the cause of human dignity.

Judicial activism is what the courts do. It's what they were created to do. It's their job, dammit. That's why it's so important to not appoint whackos and idealogues like Thomas and Scalia to the courts, and why the federal court Bush appointees who would judicially activate the most extreme hardships on us and further reverse decades of social progress must be stopped at all costs.

But let's get to the main point--the hypocrisy of these phrases, for if the 2000 Supreme Court decision appointing Bush president is not the crown of judicial activism, then the world was created in six days.

So if it suits them, it's fine. If not, it's "tax and spend"--oops, I mean "judicial activism."


*Ghandi was once asked what he thought of Western Civilization. "I think it would be a very good idea," he replied.

LOVE THE SIN, NOT THE SINNER

Has anyone figured out yet that I detest organized religion? You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

Love the sinner, not the sin. How many times have we heard that? What does it mean?

Here's another variation. Recently Newsweek ran an article about the Episcopal Church and the fallout over the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop. Apparently the magazine printed a photo of people holding vulgar signs in protest of the consecration. Jill Kinsella, Dir. of Communications for Christ Church-Episcopal in Plano,TX, wrote in to decry that "both legitimate camps in this debate agree that the group in that photo (known to many) is so outlandish and hateful as to be irrelevant to anyone except police departments. We are saddened...that all orthodox Episcopalians might be painted with the broad antigay brush that this photo depicts. The orthodox believers in our church have been very outspoken against the new bishop...[but] we have been careful to express our dissatisfaction in a respectful pastoral manner that is aimed at the behavior, not the person." (Emphasis supplied.)

At the behavior, not the person. Love the sinner, not the sin.

How boorish. What a terrific example of willful self-deception, self-congratulatory blather, and an attempt by the real sinners to expiate their own sins.

But it doesn't hold an ounce of water, because the obvious, intrinsic and inalienable fact is that for LGBT people there is no distinction between the person and the behavior. The person is the behavior. The behavior is as intrinsic to the individual as air is to the human body. This is not rocket science.

But it may as well be to the ignorant hypocrites who have convinced themselves that this is a legitimate distinction, and spout it with such offensive and self-righteous piety. They are good people, we are supposed to conclude, because they love us in spite of our sins or behavior.

This specious distinction becomes just another example of the bankruptcy of any true moral code in these people and institutions.

Rather than buy them the respect and legitimacy that they crave from us, it reveals the cravenness in their hearts and their bastard illegitimacy.

So screw you, Kinsella, and all your weasel-mates in all the other churches that try this same gambit. You are exposed, you have no clothes, and you are fooling only yourselves. Please go directly to hell, do not pass god, do not collect 200 mea culpas.

A COMMON ENEMY (That's us, folks)

Here's an interesting article about the origin and status of the Arab world's attitute towards the US. It was sent by a friend, and can be found on Common Dreams, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1214-03.htm


Saddam an Important Symbol in the Arab World
by Joyce M. Davis

WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein may be under lock and key, but experts warn that the anger at the United States that he came to symbolize in the Arab world and Iran is far from contained. It still seethes in every capital from Rabat to Tehran, in the streets if not always in government.

"To some extent, Saddam was a measure of the depth of the region's alienation from the West," said James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. "He symbolized the anger; he symbolized the divide."

Yet with Saddam's regime relegated to history, the danger is that Iraqis and other Arabs will see a common enemy in the Americans who destroyed him, and keep fighting to end their occupation of Iraq.

Arab and Muslim anger is rooted in a long history of humiliation, by British colonial rule, by the creation of Israel, by poverty, by the failure of U.S.- backed governments to allow open democratic government and more broadly by the perceived inability of some Arab and Muslim countries to succeed in the modern world.

When American troops invaded Baghdad last spring, Iraqis rushed to topple statues of Saddam. It was a pivotal, yet for some Arabs humiliating, moment in the region's history.

The rampaging Iraqi men didn't rid themselves of Saddam's evil; they needed American Marines to do that for them. Other Arab leaders didn't send armies to liberate the Iraqi people; President Bush did. And even the feared Islamic jihadees (holy warriors), for all their threats of suicide bombs and terrorism, proved too weak to defeat the Arab leader they hated most.

The fact that it was hated Israel's friend and protector that toppled Saddam wasn't lost on millions of Arabs.

As a result, according to Suleiman Nyang, a political scientist at Howard University in Washington, although Saddam wasn't beloved in the Arab world, his demise is seen in the Middle East and beyond as another sign of Arab weakness and degradation at the hands of the West.

"If it is a humiliation for the Arab people, it is one that Arabs themselves are accountable for," he said. "It is unfortunate that a guy like Saddam Hussein should have remained in power for so long. The Arab people don't fight for their freedom the way other people fight for freedom."

And any gratitude for what the United States did expired quickly, as attacks against American troops picked up speed amid popular discontent at the sight of U.S. soldiers patrolling Iraqi streets and neighborhoods.

"It is a very painful experience that the Arabs are undertaking," said Clovis Maksoud, a former Arab League ambassador to the United States and the United Nations. "There will be a lot of soul searching, a period of ferment. Profound changes are going to take place."

Saddam's regime was built on the mid-20th-century version of Arab nationalism, a secular, socialist ideal espoused by former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ruled Egypt from 1956 to 1970, and the late Syrian President Hafez Assad, who ruled from 1970 until his death in June 2000, succeeded by his son Bashar.

By emphasizing their common language, culture and heritage, Saddam's Baath Party proposed that Arabs could achieve self-determination, independence from the West and a revival of their once-glorious civilization. Arab nationalism was the antithesis of Islamic militancy, which promoted unity under the banner of the Muslim faith.

Like other secular Arab leaders, Saddam despised and feared the growing popularity of Islamic movements. He was especially leery of the Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq, whom he feared might launch an Islamic revolution like the one that took over neighboring Iran.

Even before Saddam's downfall, many Arabs had abandoned the movement he represented. Their secular leaders had proved to be despots, more concerned about holding on to power, enriching their cronies and crushing all efforts at democracy. Their powerful patron, arms supplier and role model, the Soviet Union, had collapsed.

Arab nationalists had proved unable to recapture Arab land from Israel; and some, such as Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Jordan's King Hussein, even had abandoned the struggle and signed peace treaties with the Jewish nation.

In the eyes of many Arabs, their secular leaders had become little more than puppets of successive foreign powers, from the British colonialists to the Soviets to the American invaders.

Increasingly, Arabs turned to a new movement to redress their grievances: militant Islam.

After Saddam's defeat in the first Persian Gulf War, he tried to recast himself as a born-again Muslim, summoning the faithful to support him in his self- proclaimed jihad against Western imperialism. The pose won him little support from devout Muslims, who didn't believe that the same Saddam who had brutally crushed religious parties and routinely violated nearly every principle of Muslim life had suddenly become a defender of Islam.

Yet with Saddam's regime relegated to history, the danger is that Iraqis and other Arabs will see a common enemy in the Americans who destroyed him, and keep fighting to end their occupation of Iraq.

© 2003 Knight-Ridder

SADDAM DAMMIT

After two days of All-Saddam All-The-Time, I have only three observations:

1) In all of the TV footage of Iraqi citizens celebrating the capture, I saw no women. Not a one.

2)This is the worst news I've heard since the economy was picking up a little. Oh it's good news for the Iraqi people who have feared his return; and it's good news in general for the world, to diminish such a cruel man.

But just as there never was the slightest doubt that the mighty US military would quickly vanquish the Iraqi government and army (and so what?), we knew Saddam would eventually be captured.

I hoped it would either be bungled or happen after the election. Hey, it's situational ethics. But paranoia is just having all the facts. Is it possible the capture--and the forthcoming trial--were planned, timed and staged to help win the election? There's no doubt that the evils of Saddam will be exposed in the trial, that it and the horrors that he inflicted on Iraqis will be frontpage news all over the world. This can and will be used to support and justify Bush's actions.

The rightwing's money and propaganda machines, well-honed after twenty five years of dedicated thinktank activity and laserbeam focus, have already made Bush more formidable an opponent in 2004 than many of us have been willing to admit. Even with the perfect Democratic candidate, even with all Bush's obvious vulnerabilities, even with all of the lies and calumnies of this administration regarding this war and just about everything else, even with tens of millions disgusted with this presidency, even with the blatant attacks on the Bill of Rights and civil liberties in general, even with insane deficits that further the neocon goal of bankrupting the government so it can't afford social programs, even with the dismantling of enviromental protection and medical security, even with the fact that we are far less safe than we were before the empire-building wag-the-dog neocon dream of invading Iraq came true --oh, we could type for another hour--even with all this, it will be a tough battle.

But planned, or lucky break for Bush, the capture happens now, and so far it's not bungled. (I have hope.) There's no denying the boost this gives Bush in the campaign. It's the buzz.

The trial may also further expose the long dark history of complicity with and support of this regime by America--but not Bush's America, and his machine will make good use of that; and Bush has already prepped the way for this by acknowledging past American support of undemocratic (what an understatement) regimes in a recent speech.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have not found the magic bullet in their campaigns, and their sniping at each other is not useful. With this news, are they going to need some divine intervention to beat the Axis of Evil?

It's worrisome, but it just means we have to redouble our efforts, be yet even smarter, and speak out even louder about all the egregious actions of the Bush usurpers. There is simply no other choice.

3) So we shaved the guy. We showed him being inspected for lice, throat examined, etc, but still there were doubts this was Hussein-baby. How come we didn't see him being shaved? And how come that's all the video we saw, anyway? That's the most newsworthy and interesting?

IT'S WINTER--RETURN TO FLORIDA

A friend sent this link to a video about Katherine Harris and the Florida voter list scrubbing in 2000. It's good.

http://www.ericblumrich.com/gta.html

MISERABLE FAILURE

Some clever geek has provided us with a bit of fun. Google the phrase "miserable failure" and the first link on the page will be...well, you'll see.

The third link is a Gephardt page that leads off with his quote from the 9/4 presidential debate: "This president is a miserable failure on foreign policy and on the economy and he's got to be replaced." Here's the link to that page: http://www.amiserablefailure.com/plugin/template/gephardt/220/*

The second link--at least as of today--is a great Atlantic Monthly article by Jack Beatty inspired by that phrase. "Will Bush be re-elected? Only if voters wittingly ignore his long list of failures while in office," begins the piece. It's so good that I'm reprinting it here, but the web page is http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/polipro/pp2003-09-24.htm:

"With one phrase Dick Gephardt has defined the issue to be decided next November. Can a "miserable failure" of a president win re-election? Bush's victory would testify to a civic failure more dangerous to the American future than any policies implemented or continued during a second Bush term. A majority would have demonstrated that democratic accountability is finished. That you can fail in everything and still be re-elected president.

You can preside over the most catastrophic failure of intelligence and national defense in history. Can fire no one associated with this fatal chain of blunders and bureaucratic buck-passing. Can oppose an inquest into September 11 for more than a year until pressure from the relatives of those killed on that day becomes politically toxic. Can name Henry Kissinger, that mortician of truth, to head the independent commission you finally accede to. You can start an unnecessary war that kills hundreds of Americans and as many as 7,000 Iraqi civilians—adjusted for the difference in population, the equivalent of 80,000 Americans. Can occupy Iraq without a plan to restore traffic lights, much less order. Can make American soldiers targets in a war of attrition conducted by snipers, assassins, and planters of remote-control bombs—and taunt the murderers of our young men to "bring it on." Can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on nation building—and pass the bill to America's children. (Asked to consider rescinding your tax cut for the top one percent of taxpayers for one year in order to fund the $87 billion you requested from Congress to pay for the occupation of Iraq, your Vice President said no; that would slow growth.) You can lose more jobs than any other President since Hoover. You can cut cops and after-school programs and Pell Grants and housing allowances for the poor to give tax cuts to millionaires. You can wreck the nation's finances, running up the largest deficit in history. You can permit 17,000 power plants to increase their health-endangering pollution of the air. You can lower the prestige of the United States in every country of the world by your unilateral conduct of foreign policy and puerile "you're either with us or against us" rhetoric. Above all, you can lie the country into war and your lies can be exposed—and, if a majority prefers ignorance to civic responsibility, you can still be reelected.

Even Republicans must be capable of applying a cost-benefit analysis to this record of miserable failure. Their tax cuts on one side, the burden of Bush-begotten debt on their children on the other. And surely even Republicans breathe the air befouled by those power plants. I have it on good authority that the conservatives in the party do as well. Surely they must question the judgment of a President who proposes to turn Iraq into what James Fallows calls "the fifty-first state" in order to bring democracy to the Middle East—the kind of do-gooder fantasy conservatives have long ridiculed in liberals.

But the election won't be decided by Republicans and conservatives. Most will sacrifice independent judgment to ideology or party and vote for Bush. No, swing voters will pick the next President. They vote the man not the party, character not ideology. Many voted for Bush in 2000 because they liked him better than Al Gore—applying the standards of product acceptability to a job that entrusts its holder with the power to blow up the planet. Well, do they still "like" Bush? I fear many do. After all, he has spared them the embarrassment of having to discuss sex with their children. Swing voters like Bush's "image" as a strong leader, a CNN pundit claims. Are they incapable of looking behind that image and seeing the weak President who stayed away from the White House on September 11 because his Vice President said it was not safe for him to be there and whose PR people lied to cover up his failure of leadership? John F. Kennedy, as R. W. Apple wrote on the front page of The New York Times on September 12, remained in the White House throughout the Cuban missile crisis knowing that it would be hit in any nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

The Founders feared that the republic would succumb to corruption without republican citizenship—without citizens who could transcend privatism and hold elected officials to account, demanding probity and competence, and judging their performance against both the clamorous necessities of the time and the mute claims of posterity. They made property a criterion for voting because it secured a measure of economic independence. Property-less wage laborers, they feared, would vote as their employers instructed them to. The extension of democracy to those who could not rise to the responsibilities of republican freedom would corrupt the republic—hasten its decay into oligarchy or mob rule.

For all their worldliness the Founders were naïve to regard property as a shield of incorruptibility or the property-less as inherently corruptible. Their core insight, however, remains valid. A republic can be corrupted at the top and bottom, by leaders and led. The re-election of George W. Bush would signal that a kind of corruption had set in among the led. Our miserable failure as republican citizens would match his as President."

THE PLEDGE

The Pledge:

We hold this truth to be self-evident:

Having George W. Bush as President has been and will continue to be a disaster.

We will not let our partisanship towards any particular candidate for President cause us to lose sight of this basic truth. As such, we pledge ourselves not to become enablers of any campaign designed to divide us in our struggle to remove Bush from power. We pledge that no more will we be:

Tools of those who would disrupt the Anybody-But-Bush movement.

Partisans who would rather bring down the other guy's candidate than find reason to elevate our own.

Dupes who will automatically assume that anything negative about the other guy's candidate is more likely to be true than the negative things said about our guy.

Fools who lose sight of the ultimate goal: the defeat of George W. Bush on November 2nd, 2004.

We will uphold this pledge to the best of our ability.

We will encourage others to do the same.

This we do solemnly swear.

Signed, your blog host
Arthur Cohen

You can sign the pledge at:
http://interestingtimes.blogspot.com/pledge.htm

DEAN ELECTABLE?

Nicholas Kristof, NY Times columnist, summed up his concerns that the Democratic party was doomed if it nominated Dean: "Many Democrats so despise President Bush that they don't appreciate what a strong candidate he will be in November, and they don't grasp how poorly Mr. Dean is likely to fare in battleground states," he said.

He states that Dean is unelectable for three reasons, as supported by a recent Pew poll where Bush beat Dean, 52 percent to 41 percent:
1) Geographaphy. Instead of being a good old boy that can win the south or at least the Reagan democrats, as the last three democratic presidents apparently did--Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. "Not another Michael Dukakis," he says.
2) Style. "Angry bluster rouses the party faithful, but it frightens centrists... today's liberal disgust could [help Bush]by leading to a nominee like Mr. Dean, who warms the hearts of the party's core but leaves others cold.
3) Biography. "Mr. Dean may be the one Democrat who is even more blue-blooded than Mr. Bush...Mr. Dean doesn't even pretend to be particularly religious, and that's a major political weakness in the battleground states.

He also described the [confederate flag episode] as a 'huge contretemps,' and I seriously doubt that anybody who publicly uses the word "contretemps" can ever be elected president.

Is that just a clever remark, or a good point?

They're all good points. Decrying the fact that those points are legitimate does no good. It's the state of the union.

But it's still bothersome that Democrats and liberals are repeating this particular zeitgeist over and over again--Dean can't beat bush--since that only helps reinforce that conclusion in the minds of the public and helps create a self-fulfilling prophecy. One can't help think there is a more than a bit of arrogance in these kinds of commentaries themselves.

Nonetheless they will continue, and continue to undermine Dean all the way.

On the other hand, Kristof reminds us of a poignant Adlai Stevenson anecdote.

After one of Stevenson's typically brilliant campaign speeches, someone shouted out to Stevenson from the crowd that he had the votes of all thinking Americans.

Stevenson shouted back, saying that wasn't enough: "I need a majority!"

KERRY'S F-WORD

The media blatherers are having fun today about Kerry's F-Word.

The AP reports today that when asked in a Rolling Stone interview about the success of rival candidate Howard Dean, whose antiwar message has resounded with supporters, Kerry responded: ''When I voted for the war, I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything?' Sure. Did I expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did.''

The expletive drew a rebuke from White House, which suggested an apology might be in order. ''That's beneath John Kerry,'' the president's chief of staff, Andrew Card, said on CNN's ''Late Edition.'' ''I'm very disappointed that he would use that kind of language,'' Card said. ''I'm hoping that he's apologizing at least to himself, because that's not the John Kerry that I know.''

During the 2000 presidential campaign, then-candidate Bush called Adam Clymer of the New York Times a "major league asshole". Unlike Kerry's profanity, this was a profane direct insult to an adversary for which no apology was ever issued.

Let's also note some great historical lines from Dubya:

Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out.
-George W. Bush, March 2002, as reported in Time.

You no-good fucking son of a bitch, I will never fucking forget what
you wrote.
-George W. Bush, to journalist Al Hunt in front of his 4-year old
daugher, 1987.

"Pussy."
-George W. Bush, 1988, in response to a question about what he and
his father are talking about when they're not talking politics.

This White House has problems with some H-words: Humility, of which it has none, and Hypocrisy, of which it has an infinite supply.

But there is a real problem over an F-word in Kerry's campaign. It's Failure. Next year, will we be saying about his campaign, "he fucked it up?"

OH LIGHTEN UP!

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent
life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none
of it has tried to contact us.
--Bill Watterson

Then-Senator John Ashcroft, in a response five years ago
to the FBI's intent to examine internet financial
transactions and personal email "all in the name
of national security: "Why should we grant government
the Orwellian capability to listen at will and in real
time to our communications across the web? The right
to protection from unlawful searches is an
indivisible American value."

BONO OH NO

Irish rock star and AIDS advocate Bono on Wednesday at an interview at the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington, D.C., said he was "infuriated" that Congress has not yet passed the fiscal year 2004 omnibus spending bill that includes funding for President Bush's global AIDS initiative, Reuters/Yahoo! News reports (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 12/3).

Bono, you putz. Are you paying attention? Is this giving aid and comfort to the enemy?

There's plenty of reasons why this bill should be stalled or killed.

Environmental? Check this out: http://www.registerguard.com/news/2003/02/17/ed.edit.envirobush.0217.html

Overtime pay?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1807-2003Nov20.html

Fairness?
"However, the vast majority of lawmakers who voted for the spending package did not know it included these pet projects and special interest favors. That is because at the behest of GOP leaders the House waived an internal rule that required lawmakers to have at least three days to review the spending package before voting on it.

Rep. Jeff Flake, a conservative Republican from Arizona, condemned his own leadership for scheduling a vote on the omnibus spending bill only a few hours after they made it available to members.

“ It’s the ugliest thing I’ve seen,” he said shortly before 338 of his colleagues voted for it. “The ugliest part is in the report which we won’t see for a few days. We can’t even get a copy of it yet.”

“ They waived the rule giving us three days to look at it,” he added."

And on and on. Bono: Your brain--don't leave home without it.

Rumsfeld wins British ‘Foot in Mouth’ prize

This award, which was first given in 1993, is for a truly baffling comment.
The 2003 winner is United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for comments in a press briefing.

“REPORTS THAT say something hasn’t happened are interesting to me, because as we know, there are known unknowns; there are things we know we know,” Rumsfeld told the briefing. "We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

John Lister, spokesman for the campaign which strives to have public information delivered in clear, straightforward English, said, “We think we know what he means. But we don’t know if we really know.”
Rumsfeld, whose boss President Bush is often singled out by language critics for his sometimes unusual use of English, took the booby prize ahead of a bizarre effort from actor-turned politician Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman,” was the odd statement from the new California governor.
Previous holders of the award include U.S. actress Alicia Silverstone and British chancellor Gordon Brown. Last year’s winner was actor Richard Gere.

Here's the list of prior winners:

2002: Actor Richard Gere who said: 'I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe and somebody said I was a snake, I'd think 'No, actually I am a giraffe.''

2001: Artist Tracey Emin, who explained 'When it comes to words I have a uniqueness that I find almost impossible in terms of art - and it's my words that actually make my art quite unique.'

2000: Hollywood star Alicia Silverstone for her comments quoted in the Sunday Telegraph.

'I think that [the film] 'Clueless' was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it's true lightness.'

1999: Former England manager Glenn Hoddle. When asked by Trevor McDonald to explain his controversial comments on people with disabilities, he said:

'I do not believe that. At this moment in time, if that changes in years to come I don't know, but what happens here today and changes as we go along that is part of life's learning and part of your inner beliefs. But at this moment in time I did not say them things and at the end of the day I want to put that on record because it has hurt people.'

1998: Cardiff MP Rhodri Morgan. In an interview with BBC Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman he was asked if he would like to be the labour leader of the new Welsh Assembly. Rhodri replied 'Does a one-legged duck swim in circles?'. After a long puzzled pause Jeremy asked Rhodri if that was Welsh for yes!

1997: Nick Underwood of Teletubbies Marketing explained that 'in life, there are all colours and the Teletubbies are a reflection of that. There are no nationalities in the Teletubbies - they are techno-babies, but they are supposed to reflect life in that sense.'

1996: No winner.

1995: No winner.

1994: Dr Gordon Brown MP for his 'New Economics' speech. He covered 'ideas which stress the growing importance of international co-operation and new theories of economic sovereignty across a wide range of areas, macro-economics, trade, the environment, the growth of post neo-classical endogenous growth theory and the symbiotic relationships between government and investment in people and infrastructures - a new understanding of how labour markets really work and constructive debate over the meaning and implications of competitiveness at the level of individuals, the firm or the nation and the role of government in fashioning modern industrial policies which focus on nurturing competitiveness.'

1993: Former England cricket boss, Ted Dexter.

Ted desperately tried to explain away another England defeat at the hands of the Australians by saying 'Maybe we are in the wrong sign. Maybe Venus is in the wrong juxtaposition with something else. I don't know.'

(Although we did not yet have a Foot in Mouth award at the 1991 ceremony, we made a special mention of a quote by United States Vice President Dan Quayle.

'We offer the party as a big tent. How we do that (recognise the big tent philosophy) with the platform, the preamble to the platform or whatnot, that remains to be seen. But that message will have to be articulated with great clarity.')

STOP CONDEMNING POLITICIANS WHO DIDN'T FIGHT IN VIETNAM

Robert Fisk is only the most recent columnist to condemn George Bush for not fighting in Vietnam. In a recent column for The Independent, referring to Bush's not attending funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, he wrote:

"...But of course President Bush, our hero in the "war on terror", won't be attending their funerals. The man who declined to serve his nation in Vietnam but has sent 146,000 young Americans into the biggest rat's nest in the Middle East doesn't do funerals."

Now look, I like Fisk as much as I like most progressive columnists, and usually agree with him--or he agrees with me.

But let's get over using Vietnam against assholes like Bush.

I have friends who fought in Vietnam, and whom I respect. I had friends who died there. And I had friends who were brutalized by fighting there and were never the same.

But I have many more friends who like myself did not and would not fight that unholy war, and we have no regrets. For many of us, it was the more honorable thing to do--to reject this false war. For some of us, it was--and still is--good enough to have said no way. Whether it was out of pacifism, deep conscience, social or political protest, or just a common recognition that this wasn't WW2 and no way was I gonna die in a jungle for no apparent reason, all were honorable choices.

It was NOT dishonorable to avoid the draft, to do everything in one's power to not end up as cannon fodder for the McNamaras, the Johnsons, the Nixons, and the other fomentors of that atrocity. It doesn't necessarily make one a hero for resisting or avoiding--George Bush is a perfect example--but it's disgraceful and disgusting in 2003 to criticize anyone who chose that path.

And we do not accept responsibility for the fact that, as talking heads on TV seem fond of posing to candidates who did not serve, "others died in your place, how do you feel about that?" (you dirty draft dodger) That's a disgusting trap, that question. How do we feel? Of course we feel awful that over 50,000 kids died in combat, and maybe almost as many afterwards by suicide, OD, or related disease, abandoned by the government that caused their pain. Every sentient being does.

But how dare anyone try to make that our fault, we who did as much as we could to end that shameful war--and finally did. Those who are responsible are the ones who conned these innocent kids into thinking they were serving their country, and upholding the ideals of democracy. Those who are responsible are the ones asking those ignorant questions.

So let's stop using fighting in Vietnam as a litmus test. George Bush is still a scumbag, a liar and a hypocrite, but not because he didn't fight in Vietnam.

THE NEWS, THE CHURCH, AND THE POROUS CONDOMS

I tell ya, it's pretty hard these days not to sound Anti-Catholic. There's plenty to codemn the church hierarchy for, and for which I feel no hesitation or guilt, but heretofore I didn't want to condemn the followers of the church. It's too creepy to do that, given the rise of anti-Semitism in the world today.

But one has to take a stand. There is no longer any option. Passively following ignorant leadership of any faith or religious group is--well, its time is up. You're either part of the solution or part of the problem. If Jews with brains (a subset I aspire to belong to) don't roundly condemn Ariel Sharon and all his sycophantic morons, and the idiot Orthodox fundamentalists in the settlements, then they are culpable. If Protestants with brains (hey, don't they run the country?) don't condemn the Anglican-Episcopal bigots, the Falwells, the Robertsons, the rest of the scum that hides behind religion the same way the Taliban and Bin Laden do, then they are culpable. And finally, if Catholics with brains don't condemn the Pope and his minions for the recent insanely ignorant and dangerous comments regarding condoms and AIDS (let alone their obsessive reactionary attacks on gays, even if obviously designed to distract us from the priestly scandals), then they too are culpable.

So for all the culpable and the few who aren't, here's a letter I wrote to the Boston Globe today. The Globe did well in investigating and reporting the pedophilia and coverups, but lately seems to have become a PR mouthpiece for the Church in its crusade against diversity.


Dear Editor,

There are some things that are irrefutable and unambiguous.

Global warming is one such fact. The Bush administration’s refusal to acknowledge it is not surprising, but no less unacceptable. Great harm will ensue, but mostly in the future, invisible to us now and thus easier to dismiss.

Another fact is that condoms prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. No one with any shred of credibility or conscience disputes this fact. No one, apparently, except the Catholic Church. The Church claims that the latex is porous to HIV, rendering them useless, and further that condoms lead to promiscuity—therefore no one should use them, and good Catholics, especially those with influence must openly fight against their use, to the point of changing public policy.

To what end? This may support their long-standing doctrine against contraception, but great harm also ensues. In this case the harm is death and suffering—not just to Catholics but to whole societies devastated by AIDS, and not in the future, but today, and extremely visible.

So it should be inconceivable that a major religious institution would advocate a policy that, given the facts, is tantamount to manslaughter.

Clearly it isn’t. Instead of filling the front page of this newspaper with every wag-the-dog utterance of the Church self-righteously condemning same-sex marriage or homosexuality, thus granting authority and legitimacy in a secular forum where none should exist, this paper and others ought to be shouting in 30-point type about a much more egregious aspect of this institution’s advocacy—one that, if successful, will lead to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. One that many consider to be as criminal, if not more so, than the centuries of tacitly sanctioned priestly malfeasance from which the Church is trying its best to distract us.

We are sacrificing the lives of our soldiers in Afghanistan fighting “foreign” religious primitivism that inflicts the most horrible fates on the innocent, especially women, while we shrug at the policies of one of our own religious institutions that would do the same.

That’s what’s inconceivable.

Sincerely,
Arthur Cohen

I WON'T MAKE A PUN, OR VERSE.

An interesting radio show on poet Philip Larkin referred to the following light-hearted and uplifting poem.

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.



And while we're waxing on, waxing off poetic, here's a slam-dunk:

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off or unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.