New Year's Day

It will shortly be 2007 in my neck of the woods, and it can't come soon enough for me. 2006 was one of those horrible years that are better forgotten, relegated to the dustbin of history. It has been gray and raining all day, and now it is storming outside. This seems an appropriate end for a dismal year*.

I don't really celebrate New Year'sDay as such, and haven't for many years. It is an arbitrary time and date, and signifies nothing in itself. That, and most New Year's Eve parties I've ever attended have been full of false gaiety and just not much fun. And once I got hit driving home from such an event. I'd actually rather get a good night's sleep

But that's not an option. So I'm off to Troy, to greet 2007 with family. May 2007 be better all around than 2006. If it's not, we're really in trouble!

So, Happy New Year, I guess!!

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* Yes, sanity is returning to the land, and the Democrats won the midterm elections, but we haven't taken control yet. And the madman in the White House wants to escalate the war and seems to have Iran in his sights next!

The Blue Windscreen of Death

I guess I won't be buying a new Ford vehicle any time soon, if ever. From ZDNet:

Ford Motor plans to unveil a deal with Microsoft in January that will put the software company's technology into some of the automaker's cars, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The system, to be called Sync, includes a hands-free Bluetooth wireless system and an in-vehicle operating system that eventually will be an option for the entire Ford brand lineup, the Journal said.

Especially if it ever becomes standard!

The View from Iraq

River, over at Baghdad Burning, has posted again. She runs a blog out of Iraq, and I've been reading it for years. The posts chronicle the war in Iraq and the deterioration of life for the people there since. (The posts are available in book form, too. And it's a good book, shortlisted for the Booker Prize.)

Lately, the posts have gotten few and far between. It's partly the lack of electricity, partly the lack of access to technology, but largely the lack of anything new to write - how many times can you write about the same violence and the same lack of progress?

She had a post today, writing about the upcoming execution of Saddam. She points out what many in Iraq (and around the world) believe - the trial was an exercise choreographed by Americans, for the benefit of political interests in America. If not, why change judges whenever one would let Saddam present his side? And, if not, why not hold the trial in a neutral third country, supervised by the Hague? Why NOT another Nuremberg? Why the rush to kill him before all the facts are known?


Ooops, maybe more even uncomfortable facts lurk....

But what struck me most in her most recent post was this - the utter lack of hope for the future, and the complete change in the attitude of a young, modern Iraqi towards America.

Here we come to the end of 2006 and I am sad. Not simply sad for the state of the country, but for the state of our humanity, as Iraqis. We've all lost some of the compassion and civility that I felt made us special four years ago. I take myself as an example. Nearly four years ago, I cringed every time I heard about the death of an American soldier. They were occupiers, but they were humans also and the knowledge that they were being killed in my country gave me sleepless nights. Never mind they crossed oceans to attack the country, I actually felt for them.

Had I not chronicled those feelings of agitation in this very blog, I wouldn't believe them now. Today, they simply represent numbers. 3000 Americans dead over nearly four years? Really? That's the number of dead Iraqis in less than a month. The Americans had families? Too bad. So do we. So do the corpses in the streets and the ones waiting for identification in the morgue.

Is the American soldier that died today in Anbar more important than a cousin I have who was shot last month on the night of his engagement to a woman he's wanted to marry for the last six years? I don't think so.

Just because Americans die in smaller numbers, it doesn't make them more significant, does it?

We've lost hearts and minds. Which means, simply, that we've lost. And that it's time to leave.

RIP Gerald R. Ford

President Ford's death was announced today; he died at the age of 93, as the longest-lived president. He also became our first* unelected president, after being named our first unelected vice president. He was a genuinely nice man, and the last Republican president who tried to bring Americans together instead of pitting us against each other.

Oddly enough, I just posted a small piece about my visit to the Gerald R. Ford museum a few hours before hearing the news. You can read it here. (Scroll down 2/3 of the way to the "Grand Rapids" section.) You can also view photos from my September visit here.

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* George W. Bush being the second unelected president, appointed by the Supreme Court in 2000.

Good Work, Sister!

Sandy Polishuk, a friend of mine in Oregon, has, with the NW Women's History Project, reproduced an old slideshow from the 80s into a DVD. It's an oral history production about women who worked in the shipyards doing "men's work" during WW2.


She's quite proud of it, and I found it very interesting. You can have a peek at it here.

Merry Christmas!

Kalyna, Fuzz and Nick on Christmas morning

Happy Christmas

(War is over if you want it)

While we, in America, prepare to celebrate Christmas with friends and family, safe and secure in our homes, others around the world are not so fortunate. And, in many cases it is our fault. Thousands continue to suffer and die because of an unprovoked war in Iraq. As they did in Viet Nam.

And as they have through all the centuries and on all continents.

At the beginning of the last century there raged a similar war with no purpose, just the Great Powers having it out one last time. The poem below was written by a soldier of that war. And the song that follows was written by John Lennon, bard of peace, at the end of our last huge military misadventure.


A Christmas Prayer
(From the Trenches)
by Cyril Winterbotham

Not yet for us may Christmas bring
Good-will to men, and peace;
In our dark sky no angels sing,
Not yet the great release
For men, when war shall cease.

So must the guns our carols make,
Our gifts must bullets be,
For us no Christmas bells shall wake;
These ruined homes shall see
No Christmas revelry.

In hardened hearts we fain would greet
The Babe at Christmas born,
But lo, He comes with pierced feet,
Wearing a crown of thorn,-
His side a spear has torn.

For tired eyes are all too dim,
Our hearts too full of pain,
Our ears too deaf to hear the hymn
Which angels sing in vain,
"The Christ is born again."

O Jesus, pitiful, draw near,
That even we may see
The Little Child who knew not fear;
Thus would we picture Thee
Unmarred by agony.

O'er death and pain triumphant yet
Bid Thou Thy harpers play,
That we may hear them, and forget
Sorrow and all dismay,
And welcome Thee to stay
With us on Christmas Day.

25,000

We have passed the 25,000 point in Iraq - 25,000 American causalties*. Almost 3000 dead, and more than 22,000 grievously injured.

We're not talking about a scratch or a few stitches here and there. Battlefield medical care and personal armor have improved to the point that many of those who would have died in wars past are surviving. But their injuries are quite serious - missing limbs, brain damage, the sorts of injuries that our servicemen and women will have to deal with for the rest of their lives. And all the while the Republican Congress, while audibly supporting the troops, keeps cutting veterans' funding.

Hypocrites.

Watch this slide show.
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*Estimates of Iraqi casualties vary. Exact numbers are unknown because the American military doesn't keep track. Medical studies in the Lancet suggest about 500,000 excess deaths since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Sound and Fury

Wrote Shakespeare in MacBeth:

"It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

So too the Baker Commission.

We now learn that it was all a ruse. Sure, those taking part thought they were actually doing something useful, but, it seems, Bush the Younger never had any intention of following their recommendations. Baker et. al. put together a plan, with all the parts depending on the others; Bush considers it a Chinese menu to pick and choose from as he likes.



Dear Leader, the last true NeoCon, will simply not accept that Iraq is lost. He still thinks that victory is just around the corner. He will not leave, because doing so would admit he was wrong, and he is NEVER wrong.


Instead he is doing his own research, calling in selected experts (those who agree with him) and, the media reports in awe, ASKING QUESTIONS. Is it so much to expect from this president that he actually asks questions? And would it have not been better to express some interest in the planning and course of the war in Iraq say THREE YEARS AGO?

And his experts seem to agree that we need one more big push, with tens of thousands more troops, and victory will be ours.


So what if thousands more die, Iraqi and American, and tens of thousands more are grievously injured. They're just poor white folks and foreigners. Not anyone that matters. Certainly not his daughters or their friends.

Rude Pundit has now dubbed Bush the Schiavo President:

And now those "key people" are also saying just how golly-gee-whiz open-minded Bush is being about the whole f&*#in' thing. Said retired General Wayne Downing, an uberscary guy in his own right, after Bush's Listening Tour (really) took him to visitin' generals, "I found him very engaged. I think he's looking for some answers." Barry McCaffrey added that Bush was listening "intently."

Thing is, we've been here before, where the wishful, the hopeful, the liars, the spinners, the hucksters have all told us that an unmoving blob of flesh is a sentient being. Said one idiot doctor about poor Terri Schiavo, "Although Terri did not demonstrate during our 90-minute visit compelling evidence of verbalization, conscious awareness or volitional behavior, yet the visitor has the distinct sense of the presence of a living human being who seems at some level to be aware of some things around her." And, really, is that protestation of consciousness any different than what McCaffrey said about the President?

Or perhaps this: "Terri Schiavo smiles. She laughs, cries and moans. Her eyes appear to follow a balloon around the room. When a cotton swab slips into her mouth, she grimaces." See? She wasn't in a persistent vegetative state. She's listening. Like when Bush promises "when I do speak to the American people, they will know that I've listened to all aspects of government."

Terri Schiavo or the President on Iraq? Sure, everyone can say they saw him move, react, follow the balloon, but in the end he's just rotting away with a brainless smile on his face.

Support Our Troops

Putting a magnetic ribbon on your car or truck isn't enough. Sure, Wal-Mart and some manufacturers in China made a profit, and you feel good "Supporting Our Troops," but how does it actually help our troops?

It doesn't. And veterans of the Iraq war and past wars really do need your help.

Veterans Administration (VA) budget cuts in recent years have left many of our nation's veterans at VA hospitals without the means to call their families over the holidays. These long distance calls are generally not covered by the VA, and many vets just don't have the financial resources to call all their loved ones.

So Working Assets, Veterans for Peace, CODEPINK, Iraq Veterans Against the War and Gold Star Families for Peace have teamed up on a project to thank our veterans by sending them phone cards loaded with 125 minutes of domestic long-distance calling time. We'll purchase these cards and deliver them to VA Medical Facilities all over the country on December 18th. (If you want to join in delivering the cards to a VA hospital near you, just click on the link you'll see after making your gift.)

$10 will cover the cost of phone cards for three veterans. $20 will buy six phone cards. $33 will buy ten cards. $100 will buy phone cards for 30 veterans to call home over the holidays. 100% of your gift will go directly to buying phone cards -- so please give as generously as you can.


Support the veterans who've served our country by sending them a phone card so they can call their loved ones over the holidays.

Here's the link.

Help our troops. Not Chinese businessmen and the Walton family:

More Christmas Cheer

I took a series of photos this past Thanksgiving of Kalyna, Nick and Maria decked out in Santa and elf gear, hoping to get a few good shots that Laurie and my Mom could use for their Christmas cards. This is not the shot they chose, but I like it.

Santa Baby

....or, rather a baby Santa. My friend Jane sent me a bunch of photos from Australia. She took her son Jonathan to work with her one day, and this is what the staff did to him. He seems to be having a good time, though!

Santayana

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-George Santayana, 1905

Click on the cartoon to enlarge it

Tree Update

The tree is up, but no lights or decorations yet. My Dad and I trimmed two feet off of it today, including a row of lower branches, and set it up in the living room. It was much easier to do this year, as I had it bagged at the tree farm. It came in through the doors easily, and didn't scratch the walls or knock anything over. Setting it up was easy, too.

Once the tree was in place an relatively straight (I can't fight nature, and the trunk is a bit crooked), I cut off the netting and watched the branches pop out. They still stick up a bit. Then Mom and I trimmed out all the dead branches. It looks lovely, with lots of small pine cones still on the branches.

Wiring and lights are scheduled to go in beginning Tuesday.....

Still Lying

One of the members of the eminent Iraq Study Group is former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She was on one of the NPR talk shows yesterday discussing the group's deliberations and recommendations. She strongly defended the group's work, although I am not sure what her expertise is on the subject of Iraq.

One of the callers made an interesting point, that Bush was now being bailed out by the same people who put him into office in the first place - James Baker and Sandra Day O'Connor.


She immediately sprang to her own defense. She denied that it was her fault that Bush was president, mumbling something about several cases before the court, and then pronouncing triumphantly "besides, the media groups did three recounts, and all of them showed Bush to be the winner."

Liar.

The recounts showed no such thing. They finally concluded long after the coronation, and the results were released after 9-11. To help preserve American unity in troubled times, the press decided to hide that fact that the man who had lost the popular vote had probably also lost the electoral college vote, and probably was not the legitimate president.

The Supreme Court had intervened in a state matter, contrary to previous precedent, and changed the course of our history. They installed Bush, despite an unsigned decision (which was designated as NOT being precedent for any later decisions), despite the law and despite the will of the American people.

Why?


Because they know better what's good for America (and their stock portfolios) than does the "rabble."

Only, once again, they're wrong.

How many more American servicemen and Iraqi civilians need to pay for their mistakes?

ISG Report

We can all breathe a sigh of relief - the Iraq Study Group has issued its report, and we are all saved!

Well, no, not really. I mean, what did we expect? As Charles Pierce said

I (have) grown tired of the MacGyver Theory Of Washington Politics -- the notion that, if we just pluck out of David Broder's moth-eaten Rolodex the people with the most gray mold on their careers, they will all get together and build a solution out of two coconut shells and a handful of magic beans.

He laments ...

(the) reverential coverage of the Iraq Study Group and its hunt for the pony in the pile. For example, where was the instant and withering contempt from our courtier political press over the presence on the ISG of a useless old vampire like Edwin Meese, who started his career calling for detention camps to be set up to house student demonstrators at Berkeley, and ended it, two steps ahead of the law, by giving the Iran-Contra crowd just enough time to shred what they needed to shred?

And, anyway, what in the name of Christ's sweet strawberry preserves does Edwin Meese know about Iraq? Why not just hire him to re-wire the space shuttle and design the new levees in Louisiana while he's at it? County commissioners go to jail for putting their idiot nephews on county road crews, but, on the bloodiest question of the past 30 years, supposedly educated people wait with their tongues hanging out for a viable solution to emerge from what appears to be the Petrified Forest, and nobody points out the absurdity that's sitting right there, listening to its arteries harden.

As I heard mentioned elsewhere, the "bi-partisan" study group, which was noted for being staffed largely by people who knew nothing about the situation in Iraq, was filled with those who "ran the gamut of thinking the war in Iraq was a good idea, to those who thought it was a really great idea". As Senator Feingold pointed out, the only people not represented in the group or those giving testimony to the group were those of us who were against the war from the start. You know, those of us who got it right. As he said on Olbermann:

The fact is this commission was composed apparently entirely of people who did not have the judgment to oppose this Iraq war in the first place, and did not have the judgment to realize it was not a wise move in the fight against terrorism. So that's who is doing this report.

Then I looked at the list of who testified before them. There is virtually no one who opposed the war in the first place. Virtually no one who has been really calling for a different strategy that goes for a global approach to the war on terrorism.

So this is really a Washington inside job and it shows not in the description of what's happened - that's fairly accurate - but it shows in the recommendations. It's been called a classic Washington compromise that does not do the job of extricating us from Iraq in a way that we can deal with the issues in Southeast Asia, in Afghanistan, and in Somalia which are every bit as important as what is happening in Iraq. This report does not do the job and it's because it was not composed of a real representative group of Americans who believe what the American people showed in the election, which is that it's time for us to have a timetable to bring the troops out of Iraq.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or something like that. After all, in Bushworld, incompetence is its own reward.

The Eyes Have It

I never trusted Putin - anyone who rose through the ranks of the KGB would always be suspect in my eyes, if not evil incarnate.

But Bush, that brilliant appraiser of character, thought otherwise. He knew he could trust "Pooty-Poot", because he looked into his eyes and saw his soul. Really.

That's not what the rest of us saw.

Putin values criticism and freedom of speech as much as dear leader does. But he takes a much more pro-active course.

Alexander Litvinenko, and ex-KGB agent, died in London recently of polonium poisoning. He had been a vocal critic of Putin, and a supporter of Anna Politskaya, a journalist who was exposing the genocidal crimes Russia was committing in Chechnya*. He was not the first. According to the AP, many Kremlin critics have fled Russia or been imprisoned during Putin's time in office, and a few have been killed or died mysterious deaths.

October 7th, 2006: Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of the war in Chechnya who exposed human rights abuses by Russian and Kremlin-backed Chechen authorities, is fatally shot in her apartment building. No suspects have been arrested, and Putin has suggested Russians seeking refuge from Russian law enforcement abroad could have been behind it.

Feb. 13th, 2004: Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a former separatist president of Chechnya, is killed when a bomb blows his car apart as he leaves a mosque with his son in Qatar. Russian security services deny involvement, but two Russian intelligence agents are convicted in Qatar and later returned to Russia, where authorities suggest they are set free.

July 3rd, 2003: Yuri Shchekochikhin, a liberal lawmaker and journalist who investigated high-level corruption for Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya's newspaper, dies after a brief, mysterious ailment that causes him to loose his hair and suffer severe skin problems. Colleagues claim he was poisoned and that his autopsy was not released to relatives.

April 17th, 2003: Sergei Yushenkov, a liberal lawmaker and vocal critic of Putin, the Federal Security Service and the war in Chechnya, is gunned down in Moscow in a killing colleagues called an attack on democratic ideals. Mikhail Kodanyov, chairman a rival branch of his Liberal Russia party backed by self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, is convicted ordering the slaying and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

As Stalin once famously said, "No man, no problem." Putin seems to have taken this teaching to heart.

Аnd this list does not includeUkrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, who was poisoned with dioxin during the 2004 campaign (he was running against the Kremlin's candidate and leading), nor Yegar Gaidar, former Russian PM and opponent of Putin's, who was hospitalized recently with unknown poisoning.

And those are just the ones we know about.

Watch out for Tsar Vlad - that's not holiday cheer he is offering!


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* Chechnya is Putin's Iraq. He started a war there to assure electoral success; he won the election, but the Chechnyan and Russian people have suffered from the never-ending conflict since.

Evolution Shmevolution

Studio 61 had a great skit in one of its early shows called "Evolution Shmevolution," about a (fake) game show in which representatives of every crazy right-wing religious group got to sound off on evolution. Quite funny.


Not so funny is reality. Going beyond the wildest dreams of crazy school boards all over the US, the Pentecostal churches of Kenya are demanding huge changes to the National Museum of Kenya.

Kenya - where the Leaky family has worked for several generations - has the finest collection of early hominid fossils in the world.

The museum's collections include the most complete skeleton yet found of Homo erectus, the 1.7-million-year-old Turkana Boy unearthed by Leakey's team in 1984 near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.

Turkana boy

The museum also holds bones from several specimens of Australopithecus anamensis, believed to be the first hominid to walk upright, four million years ago. Together the artifacts amount to the clearest record yet discovered of the origins of Homo sapiens.

They are the pride of the national museum. So what do the pentecostals want?

Leaders of Kenya's Pentecostal congregation, with six million adherents, want the human fossils de-emphasized.

"The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact," said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, head of the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya, the Christ is the Answer Ministries.

"Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory," the bishop said.

Adam with a dinosaur

Bishop Adoyo said all the country's churches would unite to force the museum to change its focus when it reopens after eighteen months of renovations in June 2007. "We will write to them, we will call them, we will make sure our people know about this, and we will see what we can do to make our voice known," he said.

Luckily, Richard Leaky is fighting them. Leakey termed these comments outrageous.

Calling members of the Pentecostal church fundamentalists, Leakey added: "Their theories are far, far from the mainstream on this. They cannot be allowed to meddle with what is the world's leading collection of these types of fossils."

The Museum is trying to placate both sides:

For its part, the museum sounded like it was trying to walk a tightrope. It said it was in a "tricky situation" in trying to redesign its exhibition space for all kinds of visitors. "We have a responsibility to present all our artifacts in the best way that we can so that everyone who sees them can gain a full understanding of their significance," said Ali Chege, public relations manager for the National Museums of Kenya. "But things can get tricky when you have religious beliefs on one side, and intellectuals, scientists, or researchers on the other, saying the opposite."

Scientists do not meddle with religion, telling religionists what to think or how to worship. Why can't they return the favor?

The War on Xmas, Part Whatever

The war began early this year. Right wing pundits couldn't wait for the Thanksgiving turkey to cool and the Lions to lose, as they had traditionally in the past, to launch the first salvos. They began their anti-anti-Christmas screeds before Halloween this year.

And it is easy to understand why. After all, we secular humanists forced the cancellation of Christmas last year. Remember?

Or perhaps not. O'Reilly's ratings are tanking, and those of the righties are not-so-great. The electorate gave the right a whupping this November 7, and not just at the polls. So a new cause needs to be found to galvanize the crazy righties (aka the Taliban wing of the Republican party).

So War on Christmas it is.

St. O'Reilly thinking of loofas....

No New Texans

Bush 41 had it almost right:

Helping the Truly Needy

(poster by Austin Cline by way of Jesus' General)

....the poor executives in the pharmaceutical industry can't make their big bonuses unless we pony up the cash for our overpriced medications.

I'm looking forward to some serious reforms of Medicare Part D (prescription coverage) by the new Democratic congress. The entire plan, as drafted by the Republican congress, was a giveaway to corporate America, namely the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Rather than running the prescription plan itself, as it does successfully and cheaply with Medicaid and the VA, our government has added many layers of administration and inefficiency by farming it out to private for-profit carriers.

As it stands now, consumers and the government have no rights or leverage, and big Pharma and the insurance industry have it all. The government can't negotiate prices (unlike the VA and Medicaid, and most other governments in the world), guaranteeing that we are paying the highest prices possible. Consumers, once they choose a plan, are locked in, but the coverage isn't. Carriers can change the drugs they cover or don't at any time.

It's happened to my Dad. He and my Uncle spent hours picking the right plan, one that would cover all of his very expensive medications, and the less expensive ones, too. And it did, initially. A few months later something went awry - plans merged, and his coverage was changed. Guess what? No more coverage for the expensive drugs, sorry, but that's how it goes. He's still paying the premiums, but not getting anything back, really.

Bait and switch.

In the business world that's considered dishonest and a crime.

In the insurance industry it's just standard operating procedure.