Getting Up To Speed

Yahoo headline: Bush calls Democrats' Iraq timetable 'political theater'.

And he knows political theater if anyone does. (Mission Accomplished, Turkey Day in Iraq, Secret Flight to Turkey Day, Scripted Town Hall Meetings, Bring 'Em On, and on and on and on.)

After spending nine months in México and several more back in the U.S. without blogging, I was getting used to floating above the continuing madness. Because it truly is madness. There's nothing sane about the world.

So much has happened in the meantime - beginning with the Katrina disaster down to the federal justice purge (media headlines these days are either surge or purge) and (for me) the anti-climactic conviction of Scooter Libby for lying to an investigator. Karl Rove lied too. To the same investigator. In the same investigation. I don't see him in jail.

Well, anyway...

Too much has happened for me to try to go back and recover it all, but at the same time, nothing has changed. So the game goes on.

I recently listened to Molly Ivins' last public speech, and she had some good advice for the Colorado audience she addressed: Don't lose your sense of humor. Molly will be missed. While things are crumbling around us, I sometimes (less and less frequently) get down in the muck and mire and heaviness, but I remember the ancient Egyptian admonition about not getting to heaven unless Anubis weighs your heart on the scale and finds it to be lighter than a feather. I used to think that meant that you had a pure heart - only the good make it to heaven, right? But there's no need to make that interpretation. Light is light. Light-hearted. A heavy heart traps you in Hell.

Of course, it's no doubt a lot easier to be light-hearted for people with some financial security. And who don't have a kid in Iraq.

And, speaking of Hell...

That's a picture of my new neighbor on the other side of the island.

I recently moved from Columbia, Missouri, to Galveston, just south of Texas (as a Texan liberal who lives here on the island described it). That's Halliburton on the north side of the channel between me and the mainland.

There's a lot of poverty in Galveston. Demographically, the minority populations are just barely a minority. There also seems to be some resentment of the Katrina victims who came and stayed. I guess even the poor don't want the poorer around.

But Galveston was once the richest city in Texas, before that other great storm that drowned over 6,000 people and wiped most of Galveston right off the earth. It has a glorious history, still some of the old mansions, and a lot of charm. Not to mention, Gulf tides, palmetto palms, and sea gulls. And pelicans. And dolphins.

But I wanted to talk about Halliburton moving its headquarters to Dubai. Remember Dubai? That place that can't be trusted to manage our seaports? They're Arabs, remember? Even the Right-Wingers didn't like that one.

Halliburton, the company making a killing, so to speak, in Iraq from U.S. taxpayer dollars. Take the money and run.

Skipping a segue....I might be able to come up with one, but this post is long and I need a break. So do you....

Bernie Sanders wonders why the gaping chasm between the few haves and the multitude of have-nots isn't a topic of discussion in this country. Probably because the media owners and the "journalists" aren't homeless. And neither are the people being targeted by the advertisers. Recently I heard a couple of reports on Democracy Now! giving the following figures: in 1980, the average CEO of a corporation made 4 times the amount paid to its hourly-wage-earners, whereas now, the amount is 300 times. Now that's growth.

And those are the ones that are doing it legally.

Blogger made a lot of nice changes since I stopped posting, and I'm trying to catch up to the format. The label function (at the end of each post) is nice for tracking topics, but since it didn't exist in the first years of YWA, I have to go back through each post and add labels. It's a tedious process. So far, I've gotten 100 posts labeled. Only 5,800 more to go.

And, lastly, the French government has opened up all its UFO files to the public. Have at 'em - if you can get through the crowd.

Okay, that's it for bridging the gap. Just like those White House crooks, Nixon and Bush. 18 minutes. 18 days. Mine's 18 months. Don't expect a document dump.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.