I must have been sleeping in 7th grade civics class…
To wit:
“There shall be oversight of or law passed constraining the Vice President of the United States – as long as his name is Dick Cheney – from allowing him to do or say whatever the hell he wants.”
Darn, I really must of slept like a baby when that part of the Constitution was read.
Watch it and Weep:
Filed under Chastise Man, George Bush, Politics, Things That Make Me Cranky by 
If you really wanted to help, you’d go run your foundation. I don’t like you as much as I used to. In case you care…
(By the way, could you not wave that bony finger in my face?)
Shaddup Already!
Filed under Chastise Man, News, Politics, Things That Make Me Cranky by
And that’s just in his own congressional district. (California District 8, Nancy Pelosi – yikes! A San Franicsco Liberal!!).
Maybe we don’t need 19,045 music and arts teachers in this one district, but in California it seems we’re more and more hard-pressed to see to educating our children at all, let alone in the arts. And don’t think music and arts isn’t important. Without music programs (and an excellent teacher) in his school many years ago, Chastise Man could easily have pursued a life of crime. (who knows?)
But what of other issues?
With the $1.3 billion my congressional district has spent on the war in Iraq to date, there could have been 135 new elementary schools built, staffed with 19,363 new teachers to educate the children in those schools, 503,943 of those children could have health care, or 161,260 more Head Start organization for those children to go to. Seems like we could have blanketed the district with education with plenty left over for other districts (who, of course, could have blanketed their districts… Hell, America could have actually lived up to Bush’s rhetoric of “no child left behind”)
Ah, but what about national security, the “hotbed of terrorism” the “central battlefield on the war on terror”; keeping America safe from those who would do us harm and all that?
My $1.3 billion would have put in place 17,027 Port Container Inspectors, or 24,085 public safety officers.
Our dependence on foreign oil? $1.3 billion from district 8 would have built 2,402,036 homes with renewable energy. That’s two million, four hundred two thousand, eighty five homes – from the tax bill thus far for the Iraq war from one congressional district.
Health care? 554,874 more people with health care.
Affordable housing? 4,035 more units…
I think the point is clear.
Obviously America is much better off after five years of war in Iraq, our kids are better educated, our streets and ports are safer, we’re well on the way to kicking our “addiction to oil”, the less fortunate have affordable housing, and we all have access to health care.
Not.
Happy April Fools from Chastise Man. In the time it’s taken you to read this happy post, America has spent nearly a half-million more dollars on the war in Iraq.
click here to learn more
Filed under Chastise Man, George Bush, Politics, Things That Make Me Cranky, War, War in Iraq by
When an interviewer recently stated that two-thirds of the American public feel the war in Iraq has not been worth the cost, Cheney replied:
So indeed.
Just in case anyone thought the vice-president might care just a little what those for whom he serves think and feel – he doesn’t – never has, never will.
Lucky for us, the clock is ticking (just take a look at the sidebar on the right… tick, tick, tick)
Filed under Chastise Man, People, Politics, Things That Make Me Cranky, War in Iraq by
The Musical:
The Time: May 1st 2003
The Place: USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of San Diego; Iraq
US Army Pfc. Jesse Givens died in Iraq in the service of his country on the first of May, 2003, in his 34th year. He wrote this letter to his wife Melissa, his five year-old son Dakota (nicknamed ‘Toad’) and his unborn child Carson (nicknamed ‘Bean’). He asked Melissa not to open the envelope unless he was killed. ‘Please, only read it if I don’t come home,’ he wrote. ‘Please put it away and hopefully you will never have to read it.’
Andrew Garland, baritone
Lee Hoiby, composer and pianist
Filed under Chastise Man, George Bush, Things That Make Me Cranky, War, War in Iraq by
Where does the mind of George Bush end and that of Fox News begin? (It’s a trick question – implying that either is in possesion of one – or, to be fair, is using the one they possess)
Get your Bush Countdown Clock and count the days
Filed under Chastise Man, George Bush, News, Politics, Things That Make Me Cranky by
Character is much easier kept than recovered.
-Thomas Paine
Good ol’ Thomas Paine is always ready with a good quote, and this one comes to mind when considering the recent bruha-ha over Canada’s manual for diplomats-in-training –
What do Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Syria have in common with the USA?
Torture, baby.
I know from my jury experience, when I helped decide the fate of a man who cut-up and killed his father with a dull kitchen knife (and I’m going easy on the details), defining torture isn’t always easy or as it would seem. I have no doubt that what Jan did to his dad was indeed tortuous, but not legally torture. So the jury acquitted him of the charge of torture, opting instead for murder. It’s about intent. Jan intended to kill his father, not torture him.
It may be apples and oranges, comparing penal law with international law. But what if actions do, in fact, satisfy the legal definition – and intent – for torture? Dick and George may commit their own personal torture on the language in their attempts to justify those actions and nullify the law, but they cannot change the essence of what it means to torture someone.
On the other hand, does the US really belong on the same list with all those other countries so well known for their skill in torture? Say, for instance, the same countries to which send “detainees” in a process mysteriously called extraordinary rendition?
Well, there is that. At least one poor guy was innocent – and Canadian.
So after we’re done being indignant and outraged, it might be a good idea to check the arrogance and reflect a bit on what, if any, our own actions have in the situation we now find ourselves…
And then I woke up: Dick Cheney and George Bush were still president and Canada said it was sorry.
Filed under Chastise Man, George Bush, News, Politics, Things That Make Me Cranky by
There are so many reasons to hate New Years Eve. Even before I had to work them, I never really liked it. It either meant that I would soon be returning to school after the Christmas holiday, or attending some party that would most likely not come to any sort of satisfying end or rewarding experience. There’s something decidedly melancholy about New Years Eve.
Unless you’re drunk, then it’s really just pathetic.
But I digress.
As it turns out, for about half of my adult life, I’ve found myself sitting behind a sound console in the first hours of a new year, babysitting a CD (and even a tape back in the day) of dance music. (Talk about melancholy!)
The kind of dance music that makes me want to commit some form of violence, as I feel the music itself does to the inside of my head:
BA-BOOM, BA-BOOM, BA-BOOM, BA-BOOM
It makes me want to BA-BOOM on something. I hate it.
But it is my job, and I grudgingly appreciate that it means something to others – indeed some can even discern the subtle differences in the BA-BOOM – so I insure that the kick, snare, and hi-hat are easily heard, sit back, and put in my ear plugs.
In any case, by this time in the evening, I have spent the past 12 hours rehearsing, tweaking cues, and running shows, culminating with the final New Years Eve “tag” to the world’s longest running musical revue called Beach Blanket Babylon. In a heavily programmed, repetitive gig like anything associated with the term longest running, it’s the kind of seat-of-your pants extravaganza that only an experienced sound mixer like myself can pull off year after year.
That’s right – my ego gets a little BA-BOOM!
That is until the short, blond twenty-something woman in her high-heels and little red party dress staggers over to the me as I sit behind my $20,000 digital live sound mixing console and interrupts a conversation with my sweetheart to ask, in a slightly condescending tone – as if to make clear her dissatisfaction with what she perceives as my particular choice of BA-BOOM – “Are you the DJ?”
No, I’m not the DJ.
And Happy New Year to you too.
BA-BOOM.
Filed under Chastise Man, The Soundman Chronicles, Things That Make Me Cranky by
Seven years ago today, December 12, 2000, the Supreme Court saw fit to forgo the continuation of the recount and probable tampering of the vote in Florida, handing the presidency to George W. Bush.
Al Gore had won popular election, and forever will remain serious questions regarding voter caging and suppression in Florida (and elsewhere).
Seven years ago – it seems like decades – George Bush said he’d be a “uniter, not a divider”.
Things went downhill from there:
Filed under Chastise Man, George Bush, News, Politics, Things That Make Me Cranky by
“The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice–and always has been.”
-Mark Twain
The Red Friday emails aren’t new. It’s been going around for awhile. The idea is that all God-fearing (preferably a protestant God, even better if there’s some of that evangelical fire-in-the-belly fervor added to it), patriotic, real Americans that love this country and support our troops show that patriotism and support for troops through fashion. Specifically by wearing the color red on Fridays, like some sort of badge that identifies yourself as part of the group.
The choice presented in the Red on Fridays idea is simple. Either do it or admit you aren’t patriotic, you don’t support the troops, and you hate America.
So did you wear red last Friday? (Which ironically enough, was “black Friday” the day that people wait for hours in a line for admission into a store that opens at 4AM to allow all real Americans adequate opportunity to consume as much as they possibly can; even while they have yet to fully digest the enormous turkey dinner from the day before. Gobble, gobble.)
But I digress.
Couched in the simple-minded, emotionally charged rhetoric of what I am to think and how I am to act in order to properly display my patriotism and “support for the troops” denies me my own facility to think and feel for myself. What better way to separate the saved from the damned, the believers from the non-believers, the patriots from the traitors, the conservatives from the liberals?
A variation on this particular email sent to me recently by a well-meaning yet misguided acquaintance added a tear-jerker of a story. Complete with selfless young soldiers, lonely wives, and little girls that missed their fathers. I will take whomever originally wrote the touching story of Courtney and the sobbing masses at the Atlanta airport on their word that this chain of events actually happened.
It is, indeed, a touching human story. One that has been repeated, in one form or another, as long as war has ravaged society. To paint this particular act of humanity as uniquely American is to not only misunderstand what it means to be uniquely American, but what it is to be simply human.
Nationalistic fervor is not new. It is the domain of monarchs, despots, communists and fascists. It knows no idealogical affiliation and takes no moral high ground.
To blindly subscribe to it is the worst way to support our troops, it is the worst way to “love America”, and it forsakes what men throughout the nation’s history have fought and died for: Freedom of thought, the pursuit of ideas, and the nurturing of the creative human spirit.
It is fine to demonstrate support for our troops serving all over the world, and especially those in the line of fire. All too often, as in the case of the “Wear Red on Friday” phenomenon, it seems to me as a bit of a ruse. Maybe some are well meaning in the gesture, perhaps many. But it is too easily manipulated into something else. Instilling fear where there should be courage, division where there should be community, and intolerance where there should be acceptance.
For those not directly involved in the conflict, that do not have a friend or relative serving in the military, there are better ways to actually support the troops. Here’s one, and another, and one more.
So go ahead and wear red next Friday. It’s a free country. For now.
But don’t fool yourself that you’re really doing anything that supports the troops, is particularly patriotic, or shows an extraordinary love, or even knowledge of, the principles of America. It takes more than a red shirt, is all I’m sayin’.
Yeah sure, I probably sound mighty smug and sanctimonious to all you folks laying out your red shirts for next Friday.
Get over it.
At the very least, let’s consider that the idea of a “Sea of red across America” as a gesture in support of troops in a war zone as just a little bit off.
Better to have a Sea of Blue. Blue was the color of Lincoln’s army that held the nation together in a war that literally almost tore the country in two. It’s the color of the two great oceans that touch our shores. It’s the color of progress, and the color that binds the fifty stars together as one nation.
Now that’s what this country really needs.
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself, News, Politics, Things That Make Me Cranky, War, War in Iraq by
