"Don't ask, tell...

...I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell."
-- Charles Bukowski

I don't have the tolerance to swallow the bullshit anymore. I am terrified of the whole I have been breathing through for seven years. I am a pussy. But I endure. I get up and I go to work and I bust my brains and my boss says I am not up to this work anymore because my short term memory is scarred. I am a pussy. My exboyfriend called me a pussy once. I told him pussy was tougher than cock. He said yes. Pussy is like good tires. It stretches and flexibly spreads around the road's barriers. Pussy is the toughest mover and shaker. I am a pussy.

I am not me. I lost myself nine months? seven years ago? I am waiting for my map.

I probably drank too much tonight. Right now, I perceive a level of vision that lets me see through the trauma drama bullshit that I am supposed to live up to... that I could never live up to. Tomorrow I will face my come-uppance when I am pointed out as incapable of fulfilling my occupational requirements. I fulfilled them yesterday and I was still called a failure and they were never my calling or destiny in the first place.

I am going to hell. Thank god, I don't believe in it.

This is not where I belong. I haven't walked the road home in twenty years. Actually, I don't even remember what my house looks like. What home is. I do see my sisters of mercy on the road and I don't want to leave them. I don't want to disappoint them. And I can't find my way back home.

There's no place like home.

Suck it up, bitch. Quit being such a pussy. Go to hell. I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell.

"Look at the people. Watch them pass but don't follow them..."

I hate myself right now. I feel like Bukowski only I can't drink, so I'm unable to write poetry or get seduced by multiple women in their twenties even though I am bulging and aging, too.

Why can't I write poetry because I'm not drinking? My friend (and ex-lover or whatever) is a performance poet. He told me he quit drinking for six months once and he couldn't write even one poem. Then he said, Screw sobriety. This is pointless! And I think I agree with him.

What is the point of following all of the ragged rules of boredom and convention? I quit bartending and now I file endless reams of paperwork. Also, I have all of these stupid health problems, I weigh oodles more, I'm constantly fighting with my natural sleep cycle and I'm not getting lotsa loving. Everyone wants to fool around with the bartender/poet but nobody wants to bother with the fucking Program Coordinator. Another friend (and ex-lover or whatever) is a farmer and says this is Mother Nature messing with me so either I learn precise organization (whether or not I value it) or else I'll drown in the next flood or get strangled by red tape.

When I used to be a young hippie punk mama only using herbal remedies, I was raising my son on bar tips and spending our free time mountain climbing or soaking in the springs. Now I'm a paper file organizer, an excel budget designer, a weight gainer, decreasing in health and memory but caring for people with severe anal missle retentions and more importantly, those suffering from hearing the voices and oddly linked thoughts which doctors try to treat with pharmaceuticals. And our studies are being funded by the pharma companies, of course.

Way back in the day (1000 years ago) people like our patients might have been respected as the shaman of the tribe and although they might live in solitude a mile away from the rest of their people and although their predictions may or may not have been true, at least they valued and trusted themselves and were respected by the tribe.

The prediction of a very cold winter or the tribe needing to do battle with another living down the river may have been heard from the schizophrenic shaman's internal voices or sensed by her paranoia or perhaps even connected with her delusion. Maybe it wasn't a truly divine enlightened prediction as much as a statement of the perpetually obvious in a tone that was cryptic. Or maybe this type of future descriptive insight and understanding is brought on by a perfectly proportional brain?

Maybe enlightenment and psychosis are relational. The words psychotic and psychic are separated with nothing more than an O and T. Separated by nothing more than respecting the differences as opposed to prosecuting them or infiltrating them with chemicals (like when I drink after a bad day at work or an old man swallows viagra or those few people who are still employed take Ritalin or Concerta each morning to make it through the day).

Or maybe I just don't know what to do with myself.

(P.S., I found the picture in this post at a site called My Health Guardian.)

(P.P.S. The title is part of a line from a poem written by a lady I used to work with & for.)

Muskrat Love

I have this gnawing suspicion that I am not living my own life. Like maybe I accidentally spliced the tape of my internal soundtrack to a copy of America's Greatest Hits and I'm walking around singing about a horse with no name and Ventura Hwy even though I hate those songs and they aren't even in my key but they stick in my head forever. In my dreams lately, I'm the only one who realizes those people gathering on the sidewalk are actually flesh-eating zombies and the Program Director insists that I bring them in for an appointment right away because they are just a little psychotic. Somehow he doesn't notice them spitting out fingernails and eyelashes. Meanwhile, my supervisor is giving away the last water in the county to these zombies who really are just waiting to snap her neck and chew on her brains and Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn't already have and there isn't even a power button on the goddamned sound system. It just gets louder and I'm almost grateful when a crackhead knocks me down and starts repeatedly stomping on my face.

And I'm working on a graduate degree in this discipline and you really can't even think about a career shift during a recession with a kid about to go off to college. So just keep kicking me in the face, crackhead, just keep kicking. Sooner or later I'll either pass out or remember another melody and then I will sing all of the notes to some sick acid rock guitar solo in a perfectly pitched wail and it will drown out all of the Sister Golden Hairs who will hold their bleeding eardrums and slip on all of the shit leaking out of their state-of-the-art septic tanks and I will not document how many days the tank has been leaking and I will not pull the records of the purchase date and I will not write down that their eardrums are bleeding nor the causality and I will not fax a picture of the event to the FDA within 24 hours. I will just laugh and scratch out all of the band America's lyrics with a leaky, puddly pen and I will never, ever initial and date those blobs of ink. I will just laugh and sing all of the acid guitar solos that used to accompany my dreams and also all of the original Tom & Jerry soundtracks louder and louder and louder until we all finally admit that life is just one great, big fat Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle -- or maybe a Quantum theory of observation -- and if we don't wise up, it's going to seem like the flesh-eating zombies are eating our brains but we still have to get up at 5:55 a.m. and go to work and think about the best way to identify an error correct or how to keep that crackhead clean once he's kicked it.

Use Your Words

The definition of socialism from the Oxford English Dictionary:

1. A theory or policy of social organization which aims at or advocates the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, property, etc., by the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all.

2. A state of society in which things are held or used in common.

When greedy Wall Street motherfuckers and soulless bankers expect the tax payers to pay their multimillion dollar bonuses (not salaries, bonuses) that is not socialism. One could correctly state that AIG received the biggest welfare check ever written in the history of the world. One could correctly call AIG and every other corporate pirates of public trusts THIEVES and TERRORISTS holding America hostage in hard times. But that does not make Obama a socialist. Get it straight. Use your words.

This endless, unaccountable handout to AIG and the continued refusal to bring Bush and Cheney up on charges (for obstructing justice, treason, war crimes, torture, etc.) DOES make Obama and his party a bunch of wimps (especially when Obama tries to "reach across the aisle" to Republicans with their never-ending mantra of tax breaks for the wealthy... FUCK BIPARTISANSHIP AND THE REPUBLICAN FORKED TONGUE IT SLID IN ON. They lost 2 elections in a row by a wide margin. Stop kissing their asses because they have no cachet. You'd be better off reaching out to the Greens and Libertarians and let's all of us together shoot that elephant dead once and for all.)



PS .... The OED is the greatest book ever written and if one insists on reading ONLY one book in their life (which I think is stupid, demented and pathological) then please, do the world a giant favor and make it the Oxford English Dictionary instead of that gory collection of ancient Hebrew myths and the re-working or the Osiris legend as told by the Holy Roman Emperor Constantine to keep an unwieldy empire in check. The OED is much more relevant and much less incendiary. Thank you for doing your part to make a better humanity.

Goodbye and Good Luck

In 5 short days it'll be like waking up in a jail cell with a bad hangover, an overwhelming sense of shame and the need to bankroll quickly and cleanly to cover court costs and attorney fees...

It'll feel almost exactly like that, except a hundred thousand times worse.

I still feel dirty... so should you.

Warning: this post oozes in a way which may make some readers uncomfortable

As far as I am concerned there aren't enough references to menstruation in this world -- good, bad or indifferent. That's why I co-wrote a play about it 15 years ago. Guys don't like to hear about it, though... I took all the boys to see a show last night and they were completely grossed out by all of the mushy sex and period references made by this particular all-female troop who enjoy discussing all of their particularly female seepages in all of their technicolor glory and divinely crass hilarity.

But alot of women have internalized the male squeamishness with feminine discharge -- bloody or otherwise. I was talking to a female doctor last week (and this particular conversation was the gelatinous zygote that blossomed into this post) and she actually used the phrase "...cookbooks give me the female equivalent of wood..." which confused me and I was sure that I misheard her. Then her meaning very slowly dawned on me and to clarify this bizarrely misogynistic, euphemistic turn of phrase, I said,

"Do you mean to say that cookbooks make you moist? Because the female-equivalent-of-wood would be moist."

So she rolls her eyes and scrunches up her nose and says, "....eeewww, no I wouldn't say anything that inappropriate! THAT is too much information. I just get really, really excited about cookbooks." (Yes, I swear on all that is holy that this woman is a full-fledged medical doctor.)

And right now you need to understand that sometimes I am the female equivalent of Mr. Spock and just must say the most logical yet completely ridiculously obvious thing, such as,

"But you ARE a female and the female equivalent of wood IS moist, so..."

And that was when our hapless mermaid realized that this conversation was a fruitless endeavor and that this self-described "female with wood" was not a peer but a superior on the employment foodchain, although not an acutal supervisor and so our sirena quickly disappeared like morning wood over the toilet bowl.

I did not drink the kool-aid...

I am very, very tired of being told that I have been brain-washed, or that I drank the kool-aid, or that I think Obama is a savior or that I can't decide for myself sinceI support Senator Obama for President because I think he is the best man for the job today.

First of all, the opposite of the kool-aid rumor is true. Every person who mindlessly forwards these anti-Obama, panicky, who is Barack Obama really??? emails is not thinking for themselves. All you have to do is the littlest bit of research and you can find out everything you want to know about the man.

But some people are too lazy to do research. Some people would rather forward sensational and ridiculous emails than read the facts and make a mature decision based on those facts and not on their personal fears.

Some people would rather stand silently by while election after election after election is stolen from the voters. They would rather be manipulated with and by fear than look the beast in the eye once and for all.

Some people have been drinking an awful lot of the Rove kool-aid for many, many years. And boy oh boy, that Sarah Palin just keeps ladling it out to you in non-biodegradable styrofoam cups and you just swallow, swallow, swallow as you press the forward button on your email again and and again. Forwarding sugary nonsense and plotless ghost stories like:

Is Barack Obama really a man? I've never seen his penis. Hmm... if he's really a man with nothing to hide, why doesn't he drop trow in front of the whole country on Fox news???

OR:

Did you know Barack Obama is married to a black woman??? And she has a funny name the starts with "Mi" and ends in "chelle"? Like that Beatles song??? Was she Paul's lover??? I want to see her marriage license to Barack Obama right now!!! I don't believe that they are really married because Paul McCartney wrote a song about her when she was just a little girl, so clearly she must have been married to Paul McCartney first.

And did you know that Michelle Obama graduated from college??? Two times???? Her thesis is on the google and I have a friend of a friend of an imaginary friend who saw it on the google and it said "white people are sometimes racist" and is that the kind of first lady we want representing our country at fashion shows around the world???? A wife and mother who went to college??? Can you imagine??? What for??? Where is her diploma??? What kind of uppity elite does she think she is with her college and her children and her husband and her house??? Obviously, she hates America or she would have nothing at all and like it!!! Unpatriotic elite college-educated mother!!! Let's see her birth certificate!!! I'll just be she's a robot!!!

I just don't trust that Barack Obama. I don't know what it is... I just don't trust him. I just don't trust him, I don't know what it is... Who does he think he is with his funny name??? How dare he go to college??? His mother got divorced twice!!! If he were for real and not an elite he would have wallowed in misery. How dare the child of a single mother take advantage of the educational opportunities in this country and run for President??? Who does he think he is??? He sure is uppity!!! He just doesn't know his place! Only the rich and inbred are allowed to run for president in my America! You can't trust anybody who doesn't understand that simple fact. Clearly he's a terrorist!!!

And yesterday in Tennessee, the FBI broke up a ring of skinheads who were planning on assassinating Senator Barack Obama and beheading dozens and dozens of African-American high school students. (I will not post photos of ose deluded, attention-seeking sociopaths. Here is a "rendition" of them to the left.)

Somehow, those violent skinheads just didn't trust the good American people and their lying, stupid emails to keep Obama out of the Oval Office, so they stockpiled their firearms and decided to take out the next generation of possibly uppity dark-skinned elites for good measure.

And somewhere in Dubai, Karl Rove types another email while veiled belly dancers serve him tea...

Dear Congress,

Thank you for passing the Bailout Bill with 58 more yeas than Monday. It's been a productive week for you and it always comforts me so much to see Congress lay down like Bush's bitches again and again. Tell me, did it hurt when you had your spines surgically removed in order to keep your Congressional seats? Do you expect to still have jobs on November 4th?

Yes, my friends, Congress passed the Bailout Bill, which means we, the people are up shit creek without a paddle. We will be footing this bill. We will have to keep working until we are very, very old....

...but the good news is that all of the filthy, rich people on Wall Street won't be losing any money. In fact, Congress voted today to fix all of their problems by giving them more money than we've spent on the war and occupation of Iraq since March 2003. Yes, my friends, the Bush family's oil addiction and grudge against Saddam Hussein is officially cheaper than the unregulated, greedy hubris of Wall Street and the Banking industry.

But, let's show some compassion... those CEOs have problems, too. For example, some lost their jobs. Alan Fisher was released from WaMu (woo-hoo!) just 18 days after collecting an $18.5 million sign-on bonus. Alan Fuld is probably unhirable after driving Lehman Brothers into the sub-basement, and all he got after 30 years of service was $500 million dollars.

That's why Henry Paulson (Bush's appointed Treasury Secretary) had to make sure his former employer (Goldman Sachs) was one of the biggest beneficiaries of this Bailout Bill. That's why Congress had to pass this bill -- because we all know that if Bush doesn't get his way, elections get stolen, the terrorists win, things blow up and people die. Seriously.

So can you blame Congress for giving all of our money to fix Wall Street when the market no longer fixed itself? Well, yes... you can and I do. But the truth is that the Executive Office Cabal has everyone so bullied, terrified and tortured that we can't even pass a motion to impeach them. So in this country you might get impeached for having oral sex, but not for treason.

Everybody, be cool! This is a robbery! It's another heist engineered by the wickedest men this planet has ever seen. Are we surpirsed that Congress has once again chickened out and handed our wallets over to the man with the gun pointed to our collective temple? We shouldn't be. "Your money or your life!" Given that choice, please, take my money. As Jesus said, Give to Ceaser what is Ceaser's... hmmmm... I wonder WWJD today....

This post is dedicated to my brilliant sister Meander. She knows why.

Voter Fraud Watch Redux

Remember November 2000? In Florida, where W's brother just happened to be governor, all of those ballots marked Gore had to be thrown out and in violation of the US Constitution, the Supreme Court dubbed W. "the Decider".

What about 2004? When the Department of Justice engaged in vote caging, and used dubious tactics to bar deployed military personnel and minorities and lower income people from voting. That, coupled with the votes lost due to "technical problems" in Ohio, points to yet another presidential election stolen by BushCo.

Now it's 2008 and BushCo's fat cat friends don't want to give up their lucrative, thieving ways -- and dammit, McCain is old and it is his turn to be President. So in Michigan, the Republicans are once again attempting to use vote caging -- by using foreclosure lists to prevent hard hit Michigan citizens from voting.

Can you imagine the scene at the polls???

Hard-Working, Laid-Off, Tax-Paying Citizen Ruined By BushCo ("Citizen"): I'm John Q. Public. May I please have my ballot?

Heartless, Greedy, Unpatriotic Asshole GOP Election Judge ("Unpatriotic GOP Asshole"): Let me see... hmmmm.... I'm very sorry, Mr. Public. You won't be voting today.

Citizen: What do you mean? I've been coming to this polling place for 20 years!

Unpatriotic GOP Asshole: Yes. But you are no longer a homeowner in this area. You lost your home. You can't pay your bills. You don't get to vote.

Citizen: I lost my home because the factory where I've been working for the last 25 years moved to China. My heating bill tripled and my daughter developed leukemia from drinking polluted water. Now we rent an apartment in this precinct with another family. It's crowded, but at least our kids didn't have to change schools. Now, please hand me my ballot. Besides, property ownership is not a voting requirement. Does the GOP even know how to spell constitution anymore? (authors note: please see Constitutional Amendments 14, 15, 19, 24 and 26.)

Unpatriotic GOP Asshole: I am so sorry you've had such a hard time, but that hard time is precisely why you CAN'T vote. We simply don't trust that you will continue to be a loyal Republican and if we think you won't vote for McCain, you lose your right to vote.

And the Democrats, in a surprising and long overdue display of chutzpah, ARE ACTUALLY CHALLENGING THIS BEFORE THEY LOSE ANOTHER ELECTION. The Democratic National Committee is taking the GOP to court in Michigan and in Ohio, their Secretary of State has stricken the dubious vote caging policies put in place before the election in 2004 by her Republican predecessor.

Ohio Republicans are crying foul -- because today's Republican policy makers see a level playing field as a threat to their continued looting and tyranny. It is the only thing they see clearly these days. However, 2 Ohio "voters" are now suing Ohio for not weighting their votes more heavily, by throwing out the votes of others. Ohio Republicans are also attempting to challenge voters via foreclosure listings. Boy, those Republicans really put country first! Not! Actually, Republicans are trying to prevent homeless citizens (whose numbers have greatly increased during BushCo's tenure) from voting at all anywhere in the country. Now THAT'S compassionate conservatism and good, old fashioned patriotism. Sure, sure, sure!!!

Go, Obama, go! We're from Chicago and you can't trick us, you GOPpy, crappy, pansy, crybaby neocons. We INVENTED voter fraud back when your great-granddaddies were still getting pantsed at Andover and we reformed ourselves long before John McCain took bribes from Charles Keating during the Savings and Loan Scandal.

We are on to you crooks and you aren't getting away with it this time.

Just in case you thought this would be a free election

In St. Paul, Minnesota -- where everybody is nice! -- they are arresting journalists and bloggers who are trying to cover the Republican National Convention, including Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Maybe you would like to sign the petition, requesting that Nice St. Paul, Minn., nicely respect the constitution and a free press. Go here.

Also, please note that while you had to tune in to PBS last week to watch the Democratic Convention, all of the big 3 networks are broadcasting hour-long edited versions of the Republican Convention, including most of the bigger speeches.

(Like the one where W. remembers to say 9/11 for the eighty gazillion bajillionth time, and tangentially compares "the angry left" to the Vietcong who tortured McCain at the Hanoi Hilton. Yeah, you bet your flat ass I'm angry, W.)

And some of the things you might have missed watching the convention on ABC, CBS or NBC, included Big, Bad Barbara Bush of the Beautiful Brain laughing when hearing about the deaths of 13 people during a bridge collapse in Minnesota last year and Papa H.W. checking his watch while Laura rambled through her Halcyion high, smile plastered firmly to her stepford face.

Hurricanes - R - Us!!! -Greedy Oil Party

Bosoms O'Cleavage

Inspired by Twit accusing me of being a man and Nigel posting a photo of himself, here is a reasonably recent picture of me.

I am making a weird face because my mother -- whom I affectionately refer to as the mamarazzi, because of her penchant for jumping out of bushes in order to take unflattering pictures of people who can't find their shoes and are obviously very busy finishing up the party preparations about 15 minutes after the guests were supposed to have arrived -- has distracted me from important rushing around business to capture my awkwardness for posterity.

I kid, Ma. (kinda)

Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad!!!

...You'll notice that what they have in common

is between the legs.

Is this why wars are fought?
Enemy territory, no man's

land, to be entered furtively,

fenced, owned but never surely,

scene of these desperate forays

at midnight, captures

and sticky murders, doctors' rubber gloves

greasy with blood, flesh made inert, the surge

of your own uneasy power.

This is no museum.

Who invented the word love?

-- Margaret Atwood, A Women's Issue

*****

Among the many things I do at work are diagnositc interviews. One of these is the SCID, a two to four hour structured clinical interview of the DSM IV. Yes, I work in psychiatry and whatever your feelings are about that, know that I do not just expect people to spill all of the crevices of their brain onto my pieces of paper. I give them a neutral, compassionate, reasonably consequence-free place to dump the crevices of their brain. (We do research, so no identifying personal information gets attached to these interviews.)

However, the diagnostic part of the interview is not the point I'm trying to make at the moment.

In the course of dumping the crevices of their brains, people will naturally tell you all about the dramatic peaks and (mostly) valleys that comprise their lives. I figure I have administered about one hundred SCIDs with women so far. And of those one hundred women, at least seventy of them report sexual abuse. As in assault or molestation, and rape.  Most of those seventy have serious mental health problems stemming from that rape or sexual assault or what-the-fuck-ever-it-gets-called. The law is very fond of specific gradations of how hard and deep a woman was fucked against her will, but is unable to make those subtle distinctions when it comes to other things like socio-economics or Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Al-Queda. That pisses me off a whole lot; so much so that I can only seem to use expletives to begin to describe to you the breadth and depth of my anger.

Aaahhh, my anger... I just finished reading the Tomato Rodriguez Trilogy by Erika Lopez. In book two, Tomato talks about getting really down with her anger, but not in the touchy-feely-talk-about-your-problems way. Rather, Tomato recommends painting it in red and decorating it with sequins and THAT is HOW MOTHERFUCKING SPARKLY RED RUBY SLIPPERS ANGRY I AM right now.

Because, you see one of the things we girls talked about over cigarettes during all of those group visits to the ladies room and also the endless high school pajama parties was all of the times everyone was raped. Or assaulted. Or pushed against a wall and felt up. Or pinned down in a tent by your boyfriend's best friend with halitosis. Or creeped out by a totally pervy teacher/ uncle/ cousin/ priest whom you made a point of never being alone with again because of his hairy, scary hugs. And then he added insult to injury by making you watch Beverly Hills Cop or an Arnold Schwarzenegger film festival or Die Hard or somesuch stupid shit.*

The other interesting-but-always-found-to-be-true-as-well thing La Lopez pointed out via Tomato R. was how acting slutty kind of prevents sexual assaults. Well, not exactly. Acting kind of slutty maybe prevents actual rapes, because by subtracting the innocent factor, Joe Blow will sometimes leave you alone. It might not turn him on. Of course, by acting slutty to save yourself, most of the time you're just pretending that the inevitable is consensual and thereby saving your psyche a bruise or two. But so what? Who cares if the line between raped and slut is only in your own mind? All's fair in love and war and it's a thin line between love and hate and whatever gets you through the night, babydoll.

You know, like pretending you didn't give a shit when smelly old men would help themselves to a handful of your ass while your arms were full of the beers they just ordered for all of their buddies. So you stomped on the toe of their boot really hard but that toe was steeled, so they laughed at you and even though your ass and the arch of your foot were throbbing with pain, you smiled big and pretty because THEN the joke was on them sorta kinda and anyway they told you that you had a pretty smile and you swallowed the bile in your throat and kept smiling while you pocketed your tip and prayed for closing time and ate more carbs in the quest to gain some fatty armor.

Oh gentle (male) readers, did you laugh, too? Did you believe your buddy (the one you would never leave alone with your sister) when he told you how that girl asked for it? Did you shun him? Or do you still have uncomfortable conversations with him in which you pretend everything is okay? Did you validate a rape with strict adherence to guy code?

Only you can civilize each other.

Only you can shame rapists.

Only you...

The Greatest American Hero...

... is Dennis Kucinich. He has been ridiculed in the media for being short, but Dennis Kucinich deserves applause and more importantly, support for standing up in Congress and reading the heinous crimes of George W Bush out loud. It's a long list, but this barely scratches the surface of his misdeeds.

For those of you in the US -- it was broadcast live on C-Span, but I am sure that no other major US news outlet will even mention it -- that's the kind of censorship we've been living with. So please take the time to read them and call your Congressman urging them to support Kucinich's articles of impeachment.

If we don't impeach Bush, our country will never recover from this consistent abuse of power by the Executive Branch, no matter who the next President is.

Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment as read on the House Floor (obtained from the Belfast Telegraph. So much for a free press -- and shame on you, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Washington Post, etc., etc., etc.)

Article I
Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq

Article II
Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression

Article III
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War

Article IV
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States

Article V
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression

Article VI
Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114

Article VII
Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.

Article VIII
Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter

Article IX
Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor

Article X
Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes

Article XI
Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq

Article XII
Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation's Natural Resources

Article XIIII
Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries

Article XIV
Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency

Article XV
Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq

Article XVI
Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors

Article XVII
Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives

Article XVIII
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy

Article XIX
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to " Black Sites" Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture

Article XX
Imprisoning Children

Article XXI
Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government

Article XXII
Creating Secret Laws

Article XXIII
Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act

Article XXIV
Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment

Article XXV
Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens

Article XXVI
Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements

Article XXVII
Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply

Article XXVIII
Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice

Article XXIX
Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Article XXX
Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare

Article XXXI
Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency

Article XXXII
Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change

Article XXXIII
Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911.

Article XXXIV
Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001

Article XXXV
Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders

A Little Advice....

If you are an employed, housed American white man over the age of 30 and below the age of retirement and you have your health and your freedom and at least 3 people who love you and you aren't clinically depressed:

Quit yer bellyaching!!!

Nobody wants to hear about how sad or unhappy you are all of the time -- or about your miniscule little problems (which really aren't problems) like paying off your credit cards or the price of tea in China.

Cultivating your garden of angst is no longer fashionable. If you don't have a lover or a partner or a child, it is probably because you are an egocentric fool.

Quit complaining. At your age this pessimistic ennui is very unattractive. You sound like a wimp. You probably are a wimp. You are probably damaged goods, as well, so you should try to be a little more cheerful -- or at the very least, try to grow a sense of humor about yourself.

Poof!!! Be gone!!!

Jim Piculas was a substitute teacher in Land'OLakes, Florida. One day he stood in front of a classroom in which he was subbing and performed a magic trick. He made a toothpick disappear and reappear.

One of the students went home and told his parents about the magic trick. The parents called the school to complain. It seems that they didn't like Piculas practicing "wizardry" in class. So the school administration called Piculas and told him to come in for a chat.

Piculas was let go from the Land O' Lakes School District. The official reason for his dissmissal was not following curriculum. Of course, this was probably just a good example of administrative CYA.

My question is: for how long must we continue pandering to the lowest common denominator? A man lost his job because of parents who thump their bibles but can't be bothered to read a dictionary. If they had opened up their dictionaries, they might have read the following definitions listed under "trick":

• A ludicrous or grotesque act done for fun and amusement.


• An illusory feat; considered magical by naive observers.

I think "naive" is too kind an adjective to describe the parents screaming "wizardry" in Central Florida. The word that comes to my mind starts with a "d" and ends with an umbass. But then again, I can't actually recall hearing the term "wizardry" in this context. Is it something from the Harry Potter series, or perhaps from the Malleus Maleficarum, the handbook of the Inquisition? So since I do believe in consulting a dictionary, I went back to Webster's. Here is the lone entry under wizardry:

• Exceptional creative ability.

Well, now I understand. Piculas wasn't fired for doing a magic trick -- he was fired for being creative. And no one wants to see teachers (especially substitute teachers) encouraging creativity.

That's just not part of the curriculum.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

This audacity of theirs is not new.



Oh, Dick!!! I Want To Ream You!!!

Cheney, Cheney, Cheney

Mine own ravenous vampire

My Midas zombie king!!!

Go and run far away.

Just run and run and run

Take your lead heart

and your thirst and your hunger

To lie, to sneer, to kill

I caress your lily white hands

Soft as the Pillsbury Doughboy

You are soft as the Pillsbury Doughboy

Because you are old and impotent

And this is why you kill children

And this is why you kill mothers

And this is why you plunge drills

Deep into the earth's core

Because you are impotent

And so we all shall suffer

Your hanging flag

And your long shotgun

Your long, long shotgun

For you are not a man.

But you are from Wyoming

And know the glacier

Of inadequacy.

And so you kill babies

And so you kill Americans

And so you kill Iraqis

And so you kill everyone

You shoot your friends

You rape civilization

You rape the constitution

With your lily-white hands

And your limp Dick Cheney

In Hell you will be spread

Shot and speared and reamed,

Dick -- 9 times in 9 places

Forever and ever again and again...

I know I haven't mentioned it in awhile, so in case you've forgotten (you wish!) George W. Bush is a bloodthirsty motherfucker and a baby-eating asshole.

He just pocket-vetoed (the chicken-shit, sneaky form of presidential veto) probably the only military expenditure he has ever refused. Congress and the Senate passed legislation that would increase the pay and benefits of Vets. Bush didn't think they really needed a raise or a dental plan, so he let the bill expire. (Greedy baby-eating, earth-raping, soulless antichrist!)

Way to support the troops there, W!!! When you look in the mirror, do you even see a reflection?

On a brighter note, Iowa had record turnouts for the presidential primary caucuses and our Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama won with a resonably significant lead.

~

Go, Obama, go!!!

~

It's hard to come to terms with the fact that I am not going to be supporting a woman, but frankly I'm pretty pissed off at Hillary's voting record regarding American military intervention and she didn't vote against the Patriot Act and -- let's be honest -- while a million brazilian times better than W, putting the Clinton's back in the White House would be just so much more business as usual.

I like Edwards, too, however I feel his message is very close to Obama's, but Edwards lacks Obama's charisma. Also, Obama is from Chicago -- it wouldn't hurt to have a local man running the show.

~

And finally, white men have been in charge for a couple of thousand years. I'm over it. Move along, please.

If You Value the Family Jewels...

...then you should never stab a Taurus in the back. Have fun sewing up those injuries Dr. Matador. That will teach you to goad the bull.

Fearless, Foolish Frivolity

I haven't completely lost consciousness. I am not sticking my head in the sand, but I have had to adjust perspective. You see, bad shit is happening because of my country and I am ashamed and sickened and saddened...and...and...

But what else can I say about that?

I still pay attention and contact my representatives and yell, scream, coerce and debate. But really, what else can I say about that. I feel like Cassandra screaming into a hurricane. Very, very bad shit is happening because of and within my country -- and I don't presume to compare the wussy miseries occurring within to the tragic blood-letting without, but the voodoo hoodoo hippie dilletante in me knows it's all connected like some global geopolitical version of reflexology. Just remember; we did not elect that sick, fascist fuck twice and that did not change any outcomes.

All of that being said anyway...frivolity...

I've decided to adopt the bullshit hoodoo voodoo hippie dilletante perspective of giving energy to that which is good and denying energy to that which really needed to disappear 8 years ago. I intend to project joy, gratitude, love and luck like some demented karmic Pollyanna in hopes that maybe THAT will work a little better than the bitching and testifying. That's probably a messed-up wrong-headed approach to generating joy, gratitude, love and luck, but I'm going to let form follow function in this case.

So:
Here's to all of the love we make, break and take. Here's to the attending pain it comes with which reminds you love is bigger than sweetness and more love and luck to those who are too chicken to love and too candy-assed to get hurt.

Here's to the woods and all of those who protect them, as well as those who enjoy them.

Here's to being one lucky woman because I have so many I love, not to mention the greatest kid in the world.

Here's to my fat ass which keeps me warm and is an excellent, portable, ergonomic cushion.

Here's to the whiskey which fertilized this bullshit post.

Here's to getting kissed so deep, sweet and well the arches of your feet break out in a sweat.

And here's to you. Thanks for stopping by.

Bush Is Not Our President

"Because, Mr. Bush, in the seven years of your nightmare presidency, this whole string of events has been transformed.

"From its beginning as the most neglectful protection ever of the lives and safety of the American people ... into the most efficient and cynical exploitation of tragedy for political gain in this country's history ... and, then, to the giddying prospect that you could do what the military fanatics did in Japan in the 1930s and remake a nation into a fascist state so efficient and so self-sustaining that the fascism would be nearly invisible.

"But at last this frightful plan is ending with an unexpected crash, the shocking reality that no matter how thoroughly you might try to extinguish them, Mr. Bush, how thoroughly you tried to brand disagreement as disloyalty, Mr. Bush, there are still people like Daniel Levin who believe in the United States of America as true freedom, where we are better, not because of schemes and wars, but because of dreams and morals.

"And ultimately these men, these patriots, will defeat you and they will return this country to its righteous standards, and to its rightful owners, the people. "

Keith Olberman 11/05/07