Banana Republican
I picked up the trial version of Adobe's inDesignCS desktop publishing program and have been re-familiarizing myself with DTP, as I'm going to be doing some work on the side using it. Anyway, I was screwing around with it and I came up with the following, just for shits and grins...

Open Thread: Show 85
Listen here. Comment below. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention!

"Bitter"
One of the things I get sick and tired of hearing from the assholes on the right is that I, and people like me, are just "bitter" about the way things are going. Bitter about George W. Bush and the Republicans running the agenda. Bitter about Al Gore and John Kerry. Bitter, bitter, bitter.

Let me say this straight out: I'm not "bitter". "Bitter" is a term the right wing uses to trivialize how I and others feel about what's going on. Would Germans who were appalled at what was going on in Poland be considered simply "bitter" because the Weimar Republic they supported, depsite its failings, fell? Despite the military success of the Nazis inPoland and France, many Germans saw impending disaster for their country, and they were right. I feel the same thing, I'm afraid the USA is going to go down big time, only the righties are so busy being full of themselves they can't see it.

"Bitter" is how you feel after your sports team loses a close game to a controversial call by the umpire. "Bitter" is how you feel after you get publicly dumped by someone you cared about. "Bitter" is how you feel when a co-worker gets a promotion you felt you deserved. "Bitter" is how the right-wingers felt for years, as they watched liberal policies turn this country into an economic powerhouse and disprove everything they ever believed in. But now that they have grabbed power, they're in gloat mode and feel like they can do anything they damn well please, and for the moment they're right. But if what Tip O'Neill said was true, that Democrats made people rich enough to vote Republican, then it's also true that Republicans will eventually make people poor enough to vote Democratic. The only question is how long before enough people say "that's it!" and put an end to it.

No, what I feel, what so many other people feel, is much more intense than mere bitterness. It's a combination of a lot of things: incredulity at some of the remarkably stupid things that people like Rush and O'Reilly say, and even more that so many people listen to them and believe them. It's horror at what's happening in Iraq and that we might try the same thing on Iran and others. It's despair that we will never be able to make enough money to support ourselves because the kinds of jobs that used to be the backbone of the country are being sold off to the lowest bidder, and that our once-great nation is going to be wiped out because of greed and arrogance. And finallt, it's frustration at knowing how powerless we seem to be to stop it all. Like I said before, I'm inadequate to the task.

But even as I was thinking about this, I was contemplating what my life has been like for the last month. I lost my job just before Christmas and am now back on unemployment. Last time I lost my job, I was depressed and lackluster. But not now. One of the first things I did after I got let go was to go to thrift stores and get myself some new dress clothes. You'd be surprised at what you can get at a thrift store these days. I laid out about a hundred bucks for four pairs of pants, three dress shirts, two jackets and three ties. I've never worn a full suit before, and it really surprised me how good I looked: clothes don't generally sit on me well. I've also been doing a lot of work around the house, work that went untended because I was too tired to do it while I was working my job. As I told my wife, organizing my closet is just a symptom of me starting to organize my life. I'm calm and unworried about the prospects for the future. I have no reason to feel the way I do, but I do.

Sooner or later the pendulum will swing back, and it's the right-wingers who will feel "bitter". In fact, if some of the things I have read about the protests at the inauguratio are true, the righties are already starting to feel bitter. Even with all the power in the world, they still feel like they're getting the short end of the stick, and they will, because their kind of hubris is impossible to sustain. And yes, they will be "bitter" because even though their precious politicians will get taken out of power, they'll be better able to support themselves because liberal policies make working conditions better. They'll do just fine, and more power to them as far as I'm concerned. They can be bitter all they want, as long as it's a long and prosperous bitterness.

Blood

From the BBC via Kos:

US soldiers in Iraq approach a car after opening fire when it failed to stop at a checkpoint. Despite warning shots it continued to drive towards their dusk patrol in Tal Afar on 18 January. Inside the car were an Iraqi family of seven. The mother and father were killed but their five children in the backseat survived, one with a non-life threatening wound. As the children get out of the car one of them screams, her hands covered in blood.

The injured child is given first-aid by a US soldier, as is his sister, before being taken to a local hospital.

A US military statement said troops trying to stop the car used hand signals and fired warning shots before firing directly at the car, killing the driver and front seat passenger.

This was a horrible situation. How old are those children? Three? Five? Can you imagine what their lives will be like now, with their parents dead? I feel almost as bad for the soldiers, who I'm sure would rather be with their own families right now. While there are undoubtedly some in the military who are treating these people as untermenschen, I have no doubt that many of these soldiers feel as I do, that these are people not much different than we are: a different language and culture, certainly, but just people who want to work and earn money and support their families as best they can. That's all most of us are, after all.

The blood on that little girl's hands is the blood of her parents. But it's not on her hands only. It's on the hands of George W. Bush and his entire administration, who used our fear and our anger out of what happened on 9/11/2001 (which was brought about, in great part, by their own incompetence, or worse, their complicity by way of allowing the attack to go through) to bolster them politically, as the Nazis did after the Reichstag burned down. The blood is on the hands of the leadership of the Republican Party and their financial backers, who see these people (and working class people like us) as nothing more than fodder for their own profit. It's also on the hands of the leadership of the Democratic Party, who are more concerned with their own personal ambitions than they are in the ideals that this nation was founded on. It's on the hands of the people who actively supported, and continue to support, these politicians and this illegal, hateful war. And it's on my hands, too, because even though I was (and still am) against this war and the direction this government has taken from the time Bush took his place in the White House, as a citizen of this country I share the responsibility for what goes on in its name.

My words here mean nothing. They will be read by few and soon be forgotten. I am inadequate to the task, having no power to influence these events. But that doesn't lessen my anger at what is happening, or the shame I feel, to be even an unwilling part of all of this. I hope that in the future the human race will regain its sanity and realize how stupid and wasteful all of this is, and that they will look back and forgive us for being too weak to prevent it. That hope is all I have.

Johnny Carson 1925 - 2005
You kids out there probably never saw him, but he was one of the most influential men on television. Millions of Americans ended their days by watching him. Letterman and Leno are pale imitations at best, the same with all the others. Johnny defined the media. He talked to his guests rather than yelled at them. He made us feel comfortable watching him, not angry. He didn't feel the need to put other people down to build himself up. He was a class act, and we'll miss him.

Obituary

Open Thread: Show 84
Listen here. Comment below. Insert your own facetious remark here.

Crime Pays
Frank Rich writes:

The latest chapter unfolding in Texas during that pre-inaugural week in January was broadcast on the evening news almost exclusively in brief, mechanical summary, when it was broadcast at all. But it's not as if it lacked drama; it was "Judgment at Nuremberg" turned upside down. Specialist Graner's defense lawyer, Guy Womack, explained it this way in his closing courtroom statement: "In Nuremberg, it was the generals being prosecuted. We were going after the order-givers. Here the government is going after the order-takers." As T. R. Reid reported in The Washington Post, the trial's judge, Col. James L. Pohl of the Army, "refused to allow witnesses to discuss which officers were aware of events in cellblock One-Alpha, or what orders they had given." While Mr. Womack's client, the ringleader of the abuses seen in the Abu Ghraib photographs, deserved everything that was coming to him and then some, there have yet to be any criminal charges leveled against any of the prison's officers, let alone anyone higher up in the chain of command.

At the same time as this trial was going on, we had the confirmation hearing of soon-to-be Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was instrumental in the Bush administration's rationalizations for the use of torture, and we're currently in the process of confirming Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State, who made Saddam Hussein's spitballs seem like the ultimate doomsday machine. That no WMD's were ever found is moot, it doesn't matter to the neocons and corporatists who started this war, it doesn't matter to the cultists that are the GOP's most rabid supporters, it doesn't even matter to those who are only barely paying attention to what's going on, who only watch a little bit of TV news, or worse, Fox's outright propaganda. The end result is clear: Crime Pays.

Torture is a criminal act. Spec. Garner was one of the hired goons that carried out the orders, but his orders came from the very top. They came from Mr. Gonzales, who found a way to rationalize its use, they came from Mr. Rumsfeld, who was looking for evidence of a link between Saddam and Osama (which didn't exist) and was willing to do anything to get it, they came from Mr. Bush, who likely issued an executive order that approved the use of torture: at the very least this administration has created an atmosphere that has no regard for the rule of law at all. Might Makes Right. Crime Pays.

And naturally, here we have the classic CEO/corporate mentality at work: blame the workers, promote the executives. Mr. Gonzales gets a promotion. Ms. Rice gets a promotion. Mr. Bush gets another four years. And Spec. Garner will get jail time. In their minds, the only crime Spec. Garner committed was not being powerful enough to avoid prosecution.

Open Thread: Shows 82 and 83
Listen here. Comment below. No fingers, no fingerprints.

What's Going On
Regular readers will notice that there haven't been any new posts in a few days. You would think that, being unemployed, I would have a little more time to work on the blog or the radio show. Unfortunately, the reverse is more often true; looking for work can be the hardest job you can have. Plus, now that I am free in the evenings, I am able to participate in political events that I wasn't able to when I was working at Siemens. In the last week I have attended three such events: a meeting of Georgia For Democracy, a meeting of the Dekalb County Democratic Party, and a meeting that featured a speech and Q&A session with Gov. Howard Dean. Today I'm going to a meeting about election reform. Busy, busy, busy.

Yes, it sounds like a lot of time away from job searching, but of course it's all going on in the evening when I can't do that, and it's also a good way to network, maybe I'll get a job or two out of it. It's also a good way to line up interviews for the show. I'll keep you all posted as to what's happening. New show on Sunday, I promise.