"The lunatics are running the asylum"

Or is it the idiots are running the TV station.

Andy, we hardly knew thee

You just gotta watch this video of Amherst's award of an honorary doctorate to Andrew Card, former Chief of Staff to George W. Bush. I wonder--could it be?--that such displays will confront any of the other Bush minions who might someday receive such honorariums? Wouldn't it be terrific, for example, to see Condi "get hers" from the University of Denver? (In case you didn't know, that's where she got her Ph.D. Yeah, no kidding: DU, which is pronounced, duh. I realize the previous makes me a Stanford/Georgetown/Harvard snob, but I really have trouble calling Condi Dr. Rice.)

The waiting game

According to Arianna Huffington (she's not a seasoned reporter, I know, but in this case her story is plausible) Senators Obama and Clinton were playing chicken with their respective votes on the Iraq-funding bill, each waiting until the other voted, but Obama gave in first, voting against the Bush-blank-check authority, followed quickly by Hillary, also voting No.

Arianna chastises the one senator, Clinton, for being a "finger-in-the-wind" politician, but I ask this: Wouldn't it be nice if at least one of the two had marched into the Senate chamber eager--demanding--to cast the first negative vote on the measure?

Just asking.

Saint Sheehan

Cindy, I understand--and I wish you well. And peace.

A week of carnage

During the period of 5/21 to 5/28, a total of 42 US troops have been killed in Iraq, the deadliest week since the occupation began.

What's worth a thousand words?

A graphic.

Don't bother

to read this report about our new plan to "win" in Iraq. It's a tediously written piece of propaganda, recycled concepts, mushy language, that leads to the same result: nothing but the same old, same old. The report, as well as the plan itself, has one admirable feature: a breathlessness, a childlike whizziness of exposition that makes everything seem new and fresh, when indeed it's old and failed.

And--to add fuel to my fire--nowhere in the piece do the reporters point out how old, how re-hashed, how failed, these suppposedly "new" approaches are. So once again and still, the MSM reports as news that which isn't, and spouts as doctrine that which is but cover.

(A personal aside: Back in the Watergate days, I, along with a huge segment of US youth, aspired to be journalists. Now, I sure don't value that profession much, and neither do many Americans. I wonder why?)

Whither Erik, whither Iraq?

I'm off for about a week, visiting with Stanford alums in the Lake Tahoe area. Meanwhile, check out this lengthy AP article about al Sadr's plans and prospects in Iraq. The result of our costly efforts in that country could well turn out to be the replacement of a secular dictator with a religious fanatic.

Wonderful.

I hate to say I told you so

...but...

Got a minute?

Or maybe an hour? Check out this pdf. item from the Government Accountability Office, a report to Congress about progress in Iraq. (To save you some minutes, I suggest you click to page 39, a chart showing the number of attacks on US troops, Iraqi troops and Iraqi civilians. The "surge" has reduced the number of attacks down to the level they were in the hellish days of last summer.) Good for you, W. You're a real winner.

A date that will live in irony

Congress is presently considering, and may soon pass, a bill to try to stem the tide of illegal aliens coming into our country, after decades of being unable to control our borders. Does anyone see the irony in our repeated demands that Iran and Syria "control their borders," much of which, like our southern border, consists of miles of open desert?

A new low

According to daily pollster Rasmussen Reports, Bush's approval rating today (5/19) has hit a new low for his presidency, 34%. This drop from the high thirties coincides with, and is caused by according to Rasmussen, Bush's plumping for an immigration bill that isn't just punitive. In other words, Bush's support erodes a few points every time he even feints in the direction of some kind of decency. (I think the "compromise" bill is a travesty, but that's fodder for a later post.)

Tells you a lot about the crazies who make up the "somewhat approve" bunch: They're obviously so far right that they drop away the minute Bush deviates one iota from their mean-spirited, ugly view of the world.

Uh oh...

You read it here first. Or maybe second.

Gaviota lives!

At long, long last I have in hand--physcially in my hand (except I've put it down in order to type this post)--Gaviota, the self-published novel that I started writing a decade ago. It has been a long journey, much of it trying to find an agent and bigtime publisher (spent a year with one agent, only to have the single offer of publication we received turn to naught after months of maybe's). So I decided, what the hell, self-publish. Save a tree, get a solid book in hand, worth more than two leafy manuscripts in the box. And so forth.

Sooo--Gaviota may be found at the publisher's website, http://www.iUniverse.com/bookstore, where (if you're so inclined) it may also be purchased in hard-copy trade paperback form or as an ebook. It's also available in hard-copy at www.Amazon.com.

My own website, www.erikodowd.com, which is presently under construction, will soon contain additional information about Gaviota.

This is kinda fun!

It Just Doesn't Matter

Iraq? Impeachment? The "war on terr'r"? Life, death, taxes? In view of the eventual fate of Earth, the Solar System--even our galaxy, The Milky Way, when it eventually collides with the "nearby" galaxy Andromeda--nothing temporal (by our human standards of time) seems to matter. We'll all be dead, long dead, as will all of our successors, as will every page of every history book, all videos and hard drives, everything. There'll be no trace of our existence.

My reaction? Relief. Yours?

Remember Dr. Strangelove?

In that movie, the civilian US president, played by Peter Sellers, was trying to constrain the crazies--military and intelligent types, played (also) by Sellers, George C. Scott and Sterling Hayden--from war with the USSR. Now, according to this alarming report about Bush/Cheney's war-mongering actions against Iran, it is the military, in the person of an admiral in the US navy, that's trying "to put the crazies back in the box." A must-read, and if verified, a must-impeach.

Heroes

This couple, by their tiny actions, are American heroes. I've lately found myself in positions of imminent arrest because of anti-war activities and I know how dry the mouth gets, how the pulse spikes, how drained is the blood from the limbs. It's scary, truly, to face arrest even for a small crime.

So these two Menonites? Hurrah.

Ouch!

At the end of this video clip (you may have to watch a brief ad first) an impassioned woman parliamentarian pleads with the US not to withdraw and abandon Iraq to its chaos, since, she says, we caused it by drawing al Qaida to Iraq. Her appeal not only has logical consistency, it tugged at my conscience, too. I hate when that happens.

Come September?

We're told that September is a make-or-break deadline for Bush's surge, but I think it may come earlier. If, as scheduled, the Iraqi parliament takes its two-month summer recess starting in July without resolving the "benchmark" legislative logjams over proposed constitutional amendments, power sharing and an "oil law," even US Republicans will jump off Bush's ship of state.

Corporate takeover of everything?

This article describes an emerging phenomenon: privatization of public infrastructure. The reasons for it--providing ready cash for strapped local governments, reducing costs of upkeep and labor and thus lowering local taxes--seem so attractive to governments that the trend feels irrestible. The results, however, are appalling, as detailed in the article. Once all highways and bridges are owned by GM or Burger King or by blind trusts of investors (including, likely, foreigners) can our colleges be far behind? UCLA renamed FedEx U (or UPSU?), the Washington Huskies becoming the Starbucks, the Berkeley campus changed to Nike U?