"One of the cheerfullest idiots you ever saw."

Five men stood together in the Oval Office; one is the current resident, one awaiting. As I watched the video of these Presidents, I could not help focusing on 'W.'  He was odd, but then, no news there.  He seemed uncomfortable with a Cheshire grin and odd body movements. Naturally one could easily read into these gestures: he knows he's the idiot among ther wise men.

Garrison Keillor wrote the title of this post.  He said, "And we allow the Current Occupant to leave the Mansion d'Blanc with a big grin in a couple weeks, his self-esteem apparently fully intact, imagining that his legacy will emerge golden and shining in a hundred years after all of us are deceased. He is one of the cheerfullest idiots you ever saw, a man who could burn down his own house and be happy that the patio was still standing. Had Congress impeached him, his defense would have been that he was not capable of understanding the charges."

Adolescent males and Bush have much in common.  In several earlier posts I suggest that George W. never exited adolescence. His quirky facial and body expressions smack of those awful later teen years that every adult male wishes to forget. Hormonal thinking and a thimbleful of wisdom dominated life then.  It was, clearly awful!

In less that two weeks, a fully-functioning adult male will take up residency in the 'Mansion d'Blanc.'  It will seem odd at first to Americans accustomed to the juvenile posturing of 'W' for the past eight years. We will need to reprogram our listening skills. We will have to listen to the words, for a change, because they will actually mean what they say.  We will easily follow the linguistics because he will speak in complete English sentences, syntactically accurate.  Further, we will not be distracted by odd facial gestures and semi-winks.  

In short order, though, the American citizens will recall the speeches of Bill Clinton, the elder Bush and Jimmy Carter and once again become accustomed to adult male speech patterns.  We might, ever so slowly,  even believe what the speaker is saying.

Canadians Select Leonard Cohen's Democracy

CBC Radio in Canada is asking its listeners to suggest songs by Canadian artists that would be fitting to honor Barack Obama on his Inauguration.  One that is quite high on the Canadian list is Democracy by Leonard Cohen.

The anouncer suggested that Democracy might be very fitting 'after the last 8 years of Bush.'  He was dead-on!

Republicans: Asses, Baboons, Yokels, Racketeers?

"It's just that modern Republicans are, well ... they're so darned, well ... they're just such asses. Such unmitigated baboons, ranging from clueless yokels to calculating racketeers. They got no class -- know what I mean?"

That from P. M. Carpenter on Buzzflash this morning in an essay titled, What Obama Owes to Congress.  He concludes his essay similarly:  "And then he'll learn what he conscientiously owes Republicans, the ideological baboons, yokels and racketeers who got us into this mess to begin with: Nothing."

He's right in both the description as well as the content.  On MSNBC yesterday the youngest member of Congress, a 28-year-old Republican from Peoria, a self-proclaimed 'fiscal conservative, was interviewed by Chris Matthews.  When Matthews asked the young man about the doubling of the National Debt under the Bush Administration, he quickly retorted, "But the Democrats were in control of Congress for the past two years!"

'Blaming' ought to be added to Mr. Carpenter's pejorative list. The novice Congressman received a quick retort from Matthews when told, 'But Mr. Bush never vetoed a single spending bill in all eight years of his presidency.'

My friend from Mississippi and I have often posed the rhetorical question on this blog, 'Where has the Republican Party of our youth gone?  Both he and I supported and applauded many Republicans during our young adult days.  Men like Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford, Ev Dirkson, Robert Taft...  My parents were Republicans and I recall clearly wearing my "I Like Ike" pin to school on election day, 1952.

Except for Maine, not a single Republican from New England sits in the Senate this morning and only 4 members of the House of Representatives are from the GOP.  Many good Congressmen and women swept away in the anti-Republican tidal wave of November 2008. The Republican label, pundits tell us, was poison.

Poison.  A toxic tag associated with the miscreants who were permitted free reign in the GOP for the past 20 years, poisoning everyone identified with Republican.  It is high time that the Grand Old Party cleanse itself of the asses, baboons, yokels and calculating racketeers in a grand purge.  But will it?

As a Graham Cracker Too Long in Milk

I am as a graham cracker too long in milk when I read or hear more stories of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Apparently we Americans are not able to grasp the deep seated, well-taught hatred that tribes in that part of the world hold. Perhaps one needs to have lived there to 'appreciate' the hate. Neither culture, not the Israeli nor Palestinian, are relevant in the 21st century. They are cemented in their historical roots, historic hate, and neither is wise enough to see a differing path other than killing.

Yet here we Americans are, sucked into this ancient tribal affair through an unnaturally resolute relationship with Israel. Obviously the Israeli propagandists are much more effective than the Palestinians in shaping our foreign policy. I wonder if that same lopsided patronage will continue throughout the Obama Administration.

One of the most perplexing comments that flowed from the mouths of many Americans after the 9-11 attacks was this: 'Why do they hate us so?' Obviously these Americans had not been paying attention to the American foreign policy in the past half-century. The subject 'they' of the phrase obviously referred to Muslims or Arabs. It is patently clear to those of us who pay attention to foreign affairs that our policy has been clearly viewed as unbalanced in the Arab/Muslim world. Perhaps that is why 'they' hate us.

Here we are in the 11 day of an assault on Gaza, an assault with American-supplied bombs and logistics, killing hundreds of Palestinians while our president says only that it was the fault of Hamas. Israeli and American flags are burned together on the streets of the Arab and Muslim countries all over the world. They know. They have known for years. They know why they hate us.

Time to Pull Out of Afghanistan Too

While Obama is removing our troops from George Bush's idiotic preemptive invasion of Iraq, he should send them home rather than to Afghanistan.  It seems clear to me that there is little to be gained from the loss of more blood and treasure in the mountains of Afghanistan.  The Europeans are painfully lukewarm to sending their men and women there and we should follow that example for a change.  Emiliano Zapata, the great Mexican liberator. once said, 'I'm not the savior of the world!' when he was asked to extend his campaign even farther. We are not the savior of the world either.

Columnist Bob Herbert writes today, "The government we are supporting in Afghanistan is a fetid hothouse of corruption, a government of gangsters and weasels whose customary salute is the upturned palm."  No kidding.  Apparently the Bush Administration was too naive to understand trivial realities such as that.  Who could have known?

“Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.”

Herbert suggests and I agree that President Obama ought to go before the cameras and tell the American citizens exactly why sending more of our men and women to Afghanistan will make us more safe back home.  Isn't it time to fix America?  Surely we Americans ought to be afforded a bit of narcissism and look after our own.  Enough with playing world policeman.  It's time to play a home game for a change.

Surprise Visitor On this January Day

While coming in from the garage a bit ago, I heard a very summery bird call.  It was a robin, whose song is etched into my childhood memory of  warm summer evenings at dusk.  Sure enough, a pair of robins, looking for food or scraps for nest-building, decended into my yard.  What an uplifting sight for northern Ohio in early January.

A naturalist friend of mine told me that many robins go into the deep woods during the winter rather than flying South.  Apparently this pair journeyed out for a bit of adventure.  Whatever the reason, it perks up an otherwise dull winter's day.

Bigoted Fundamentalists Encourage Gay-Hate Murders

A local teacher, raised in the Toledo area, was murdered in Las Vegas just before Christmas. He was buried here Saturday. He was found dead in his home Dec. 22. Two brothers, ages 17 and 18, one reportedly a student of the teacher, were arrested on charges of murder, burglary and robbery, the Las Vegas Sun reported. He was a Western Michigan University graduate and a choir director for about five years in Hopkins Public Schools, a small rural village north of Kalamazoo, before leaving in 2006 to teach in Nevada. The teacher was gay.

Fundamentalist Christians preach and teach a strong anti-gay agenda. They assert moral authority from God to denounce the homosexual life-style.  Many use the biblical term, abomination, to describe the wrath of God on those who are gay or lesbian.  Fundamentalists would like to amend the Constitution to deny rights to homosexual Americans.  In fact, they work hard, in the right-wing of the GOP, to enact such legislation and they have a political network upon which to rely for help, resources and lobbying.  Ohio pastor Rod Parsley and McCain-supporter John Hagee are two such politically active fundamentalists who work very hard to push the anti-gay agenda among the 'faithful.'

Here in Toledo a local Christian Fundamentalist blogger has much the same agenda.  She came to my attention when I read her letter to the editor that she wrote to the Toledo Blade in early 2007 which bashed the gay life-style with the scriptural references about the laws of God.  The other day I read a comment by her stating, "The issue about homosexuality is that we are being asked to approve a sin in the name of tolerance. I have to go with the Bible on this one; political correctness which calls us to justify sin itself in the name of tolerance is wrong-headed. A sign of the last days: calling good evil, and evil, good."

Today she wrote, "It's just as bigoted to blame Christianity and Christians for murder of a homosexual --as to hate homosexuals. When you blame the Christians, calling them bigots because they believe the Bible that homosexual acts are sins, you foment hatred for them which makes YOU less tolerant than Christians."

An amazing spin.  I do not blame CHRISTIANS. There are millions of Christians throughout this nation who embrace gays and lesbians and welcome them into their congregations.  There are many gay and lesbian ministers and even bishops in the Christian churches. I do not blame Christians: I blame Fundamentalist Christians for the bigotry and hate-filled sermons.

Fundamentalists like these are in total denial that they have any guilt for promoting the anti-homosexual agenda.  Not only promoting it, but publishing letters to a newspaper and posts on blogs her own blog and comments like these on the blogs of others all around this nation.

What gives Fundamentalists the right of bigotry?  Is it justified to lift some passages from an ancient text written by a nomadic desert tribe to deride and degrade a set of American citizens?  What kind of 'god' would condone this hateful bigotry? 

A Thought From Tim Fuller

Tim Fuller posted this on the TPM Cafe'  He has his own website as well.

His Only Begotten Son

December 26, 2008, 2:01PM

I apologize to the faithful for my affront to the insanity of their religious beliefs, but I can't really get all excited about God supposedly sacrificing his only begotten son on our behalf.  Why not?   God can have as many sons as he wishes.  He's omnipotent.  He could have saved the first one if he had wanted to and he could create as many more as his heart desires. Forgive me if I lack the empathy towards God that such a show of 'devotion' supposedly inspires.  God can't really consider himself THAT lonely since we are all regarded as his children.

Is there a qualified Christian apologist who has rationalized an 'answer' to that conundrum?

Parents of the soldiers killed in Iraq don't have the requisite omnipotent powers to replace their missing loved ones.   Those are the people I really grieve for.

America's Ship of State Has Hit the Iceberg

Igor N. Panarin, Russian commentator, professor, dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats and former KBG agent, predicts that the United States will break up into 4 smaller chunks by 2010.  The map at right is the supposed new grouping of the states.  [link]

 Professor Panarin predicts  that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

Russia, of course, would rejoice at this demise of the United States and would rise to take its place as the number one superpower.  Putin surely has been watching how this nation has fallen from its once-powerful perch during the past 7 years.  Surely he is privately gloating at the damage George Bush has done to America's reputation in the world.

Although I doubt that the U.S. will break-up, our nation has been dealt a glancing blow across its bow and the Russian Navy is awaiting, just beyond the foggy waters.  Putin along with bin Laden are quite pleased with how George Bush has piloted the Ship of State during these past 8 years.  It has hit the iceberg.

Four Presidents Gather with Obama at White House

George Bush has invited his father, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama to the White House this Wednesday.  Wow, what a bold move by the current president!  No doubt, Bush Sr. will be on edge throughout the meeting.  Why?  Because he is the father of the worst president ever.  What must he be thinking as these other, quite competent men, sit around the table discussing the presidency.

We recall the father crying openly at his other son, Jeb's, retirement from his governorship of Florida.  Many suggested that the father knew tha tthe wrong son followed him into office.  Will the father be able to control his emotions during this meeting?  That will be interesting to watch.