you knew this was coming, right?

now playing: kathleen edwards, "lone wolf"



"....they sell us the president, the same way they sell us our clothes and our cars
they sell us everything from youth to religion the same time they sell us our wars
i want to know who the men in the shadows are
i want to hear somebody asking them why
they can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
but they're never the ones to fight or to die...."

jackson browne, "lives in the balance"


what with everyone else being largely unable to talk about much else the past 24 hours, i'd almost rather say absolutely nothing about yesterday's events...

...but we all know better than that.

perhaps the most in-my-face indication of the extent to which we as a nation have bought into the lies we've been sold was the means by which i got the news yesterday.

i came downstairs to find my daughter and her sleepover guest, april, sitting on the sofa, watching tv. april chimed in first.

"hey, they caught haddam."

jayda rolled her eyes and corrected her, and april relented.

"saddam, haddam, whatever. whoever the guy was that bombed the twin towers."

now, it should be pointed out that april does not ride the small bus to school, and she isn't being raised by wolves, but she had absolutely no clue. later yesterday evening, we all sat down and watched bowling for columbine together...i sat on the sofa with jayda and dylan, both of whom were watching the movie intensely, but i was watching april on and off, and didn't see too much going on there...maybe she thought it was fiction, maybe she just wasn't really interested - either way, i don't think it hit a nerve.

but she was mighty stoked that they caught haddam.

i just hope that we don't get too caught up in celebrating - because this is far from over.

anyone whos' capable of adding two and two has to know, by virtue of how they found him, that he wasn't at the helm of the insurgency.

the insurgency in iraq is borne out of human nature.

think about it - if you were sitting at your kitchen table, minding your own business, and a horde of camoflauge-clad rifle toters came stompin' in and proceeded to tell you how you were going to conduct yourself from that point forward...now, let's just say that you're not the timid type, and you decide that you're not gonna go along - would you consider yourself an "insurgent"? if, after your entire world as you knew it were being rearranged for you, and you took a couple of shots at the people responsible, would you consider yourself the aggressor, or would you consider the aforementioned camoflauged individual the aggressor?

more americans will die in iraq, convinced as they draw their last breath that they're doing the right thing.


you heard it here first.


you may now return to watching trista and ryan's wedding.


********************************

a good friend of mine wrote me over the weekend, and said:

"When am I going to see you persecute Democrats in your journals who are equally if not more guilty of same shit you accuse Republicans?"

now, nik has been affiliated with the libertarian party for as long as i've known him, and i've always admired that (among many other things) about him. nik is as passionate about his politics as i am, and i dig that.

i can also see where one would assume that i empathize with the "dems", based on a lot of what i've written here - but the truth is, i have a pretty serious laundry list of gripes where they're concerned as well...the biggest being (of late) that the entire party seems obsessed with what i call "chameleonism". everyone is bustin' their balls trying to appear as republican as they possibly can.

who does this benefit, exactly?

in my mind, this is a problem that can be traced back to dubya's fathers' presidential campaign - during which he singlehandedly turned the word "liberal" into a swearword, to be whispered in corners and never said aloud. actually, i don't know who is more to blame - bush sr. for doing thus, or dukakis for actually acting ashamed of being liberal and denying it for the entire early part of his campaign. now, years later, somehow being "liberal" translates to "unelectable".

of course, this is all the "liberal media's fault."

do you remember who you first heard that phrase from? i do.

rush limbaugh.

now, who better to champion the fight against a liberal bias in the media than a right-wing talk show host who's heard every fucking day on over 600 radio stations?

now, stop and ask yourself - since the demise of the most recent outing by phil donahue, how many mainstream liberal news outlets can you name?

it's cool. i'll wait.

still thinking?

come back and start reading again when you give up.....



that's what i thought.

now, you can easily flip on the TV and see bill o'reilly or sean hannity (bonus link) or ann coulter or michael savage...

where are all the purveyors of this so-called "liberal media"?

i sure as hell don't know. it's all i can do to find a streaming radio station that carries anything even remotely left-leaning.

but i bet you hear someone, somewhere, decrying all the woes of the nation as being the fault of the "liberal media" every time you turn around, simply because janeane garofalo or mike farrell happen to show up on fox news for a nice lashing about the buttocks by whichever hothead happens to be on at a given time.



i think that this is, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, a confusing time to be an american.

that is, for those with the sense to be confused. as for the rest of Beavis Nation....


uuuuuuhhhhhhh.....relax, dude.