Forget the surge. As is not getting reported enough, reductions in violence in Iraq are not because of the surge, but rather because the violence of ethnic cleansing has been so efficient that the country is now divided into camps of the same faith--Sunni or Shiia. The drop in violence happened two months prior to the suggestion of the surge. Once again the preznit's plans were too little, too late, rather like shutting the barn door after the horse is gone. Furthermore the decrease in violence emphasizes that there is access to remove American troops from this immoral war for oil. And the preznit's lies to justify the war are still just that, lies, so there is no justification for the war, the illegal treatment of captives, and the seizure of power by the Whitehouse.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/93081/forget_the_surge%2C_violence_is_down_in_iraq_because_ethnic_cleansing_was_brutally_effective/?page=entire

Just in case you wondered who the attack dogs for John McCain are: Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has for years been a reasonable voice against the shrill pantheon of Repub Sirens, has taken up the gauntlet and is now a leader in the harsh rhetoric against Barack Obama. Reason is no longer his foundation. His job is to attack and say the talking points loudly and angrily. Likewise in the media, David Brooks at the New York Times has clearly identified Obama as the enemy of America and castigates him now in ever column. This is a departure for Brooks, who has been conservative always, but has not been on the attack until the last month or so. These two are using their past lives to attrack media attention, but their message of harshness and name calling is new and reflects their allegience to the McCain campaign.

Brooks once again reinforces the Repub talking point (attempting to make History in a Repub image) that Ronald Reagan defeated the Soviet Union in the cold war and was responsible for the disapation of the Iron Curtain. Nothing could be more bogus. The Iron Curtain crumbled from within because of generations of corruption. The Soviet Union crumbled from the sheer weight of its ridiculous task, holding its people hostage. But any one who thinks that Ronnie Reagan deploying a few missles defeated them hasn't read his history books. The Soviets lost 21 million people in WWII. Seven million died in the Siege of Stalingrad. The mighty German army met its humiliation in Russia.

They took down the wall because they changed from within. Reagan just happened to be standing there when they changed. What logic is it that congratulates, yea deifies Reagen for "winning" (one of their favorite words) the cold war, yet place no blame on Bush for 911. They have no problem blaming President Carter for the Iranian hostage crisis and the gasoline crisis of the seventies. But Bush bears no responsibility for today's problems.

Sheesh.

John McCain's chief economic advisor for the last FIFTEEN YEARS, Phil Gramm, got canned this week for calling today's economic difficulties a "mental recession" and calling America a "nation of whiners." He promtly wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal and said, that the former chief executive of AT&T, Ed Whitacre, was “probably the most exploited worker in American history” since he received only a $158 million pay package rather than the “billions” he deserved for his success in growing Southwestern Bell.

One of the most exploited workers in American history. . . and this man would be Treasury Secretary under John McCain.

My dad is a complicated man. I know less about him than I would like, but his secretiveness is part of the enigma. He opens his life in carefully measured bits and pieces, often telling you that he'll never tell you about this or that. He is gentle with animals and children, though he was not gentle with me. He misses my mother greatly these past four years. I don't know how he goes on day to day after the end of their fifty-six year marriage which ended with her death Oct. 27 of 2003. He has little shrines to her around the house and keeps the living room as she had it with her best furniture and the piano.

Dad has lasted a long time. He'll be eighty-five on September 30. He lives alone like a hermit on a woefully unkempt, sixteen-acre tract in Waycross. But he drives, half blind as he is (he had a mini-stroke on the retina of one eye years ago and can't make out anything with it). He makes his own meals. He takes care of a dog and a cat, both of whom wandered into his care. He makes his own agenda. He punches out emails and watches the weather channel on dial-up because he doesn't want the expense of DSL. He also doesn't want anyone coming to his house either, another reason not to have DSL--they have to install it. We harassed him until he bought a new fast computer--a year ago, and it still sits unconnected in his living room. He refuses to use it or it's flat screen monitor and don't ask to help him. Lord knows that he doesn't need help with anything.

We'll have a party for him soon to celebrate the milestone of his age, but he shows no signs of not continuing on his merry way until he's at least 100.

Going to see the Mikado tonight. Remember that the first production of Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan is the subject of the movie Topsy Turvey. For many reasons, TT is one of my favorite movies, but primarily because of how it deals with so many aspects of production. As a producer myself, I am well acquainted with the jealousies, inequities, the skills, the personalities involved with putting on a musical performance. I'll be thinking of those things as we watch--lines, pitch and rhythm, costumes, manner of inflection, egos, conducting, back ups to the primary singers, opening the house, costumes for the ticket takers, ushers, choreography, props, seamstresses, wigmakers, make-up artists, movement backstage, stagehands, sets, painters, the audience and their response, the feelings of the composer and librettist (not in this case for they are long away from us), the people related to the players and how they feel about the performances.

Before we hear Mikado there are many photos to take at the Southern Living Idea House this morning, and along the Blue Ridge Parkway this afternoon. Accomodations were impossible in Brevard, but we finally managed something not very grand.

Today we bought a treasure as we often do on our travels. All 'round our house are examples of our trips, watercolors from Kill Devil Hills, chalk drawings from NYC and SF, photos, a quilt, and furniture from the Amish country, pottery from New Orleans, now a platter from Highlands, phabulous photos of Yosemite. Here is a photo from Tallulah Gorge. You gotta love the Nikon D-200 which grabbed this shot without a flash in a woefully underlighted setting. Getting some other wonderful pictures too.

Watergate was small potatoes compared with the criminal activities of the Bush administration. I know it is a challenge to read a long article from the New York Times, but you owe it to yourself to review this material.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/opinion/13rich.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print

It appears to me that George Bush and Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others are probably guilty of war crimes. The question becomes, will the Democrats have the guts to go after them when if they get in power after the election. Certainly the FBI and Justice Departments will come back to doing the business they are supposed to do instead of being a wing of the tsarist Repubs.

You won't be sorry if you read the entire article. The government has put so much focus on Iraq that Al Qaida is once again in position to strike at America. Why trillions in Iraq and in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Al Qaida lives and breathes, we aren't going after the bad guys. Ugh.

"Elite." You are going to hear that a lot during the next few months. The democratic party is led by New England elitists (leftist, communists, socialists). "Harvard" is a big scarey word. We went to Harvard while in Boston a few years ago. It was like college, but bigger. Huge buildings. Beautiful campus. I tried to walk into the Library, but alas, no ID, no admittance, not even to walk around. Lots of tourists I guess. I'm depressed that people who have college degrees (journalists, republican politicians) would use education as a wedge issue. They always talk about getting vouchers for the children to go to private, religious, creationist, no sex education, all-white, all the same economic class, schools, so they can get the "proper" education at a government subsidized cost, but even assuming that that is a good thing (gag, wretch), apparently they would also warn you about that child going on to college where the liberal professors might turn their little pliable minds into socialists and make them "elitists." Apparently if you struggle and grow up in a single parent household, earn your way to college and get into Harvard, you are not living the American dream, rather YOU ARE AN EVIL ELITIST.

Ask every mom and dad in America if they would like it if their kid grew up and went to Harvard. See how many would cower back and say "Ooooo. Noooo! Not that." They'd all say, "Wow! My little Johnnie. My little Susie."

In the future, when you read the word "elitist" in the paper, just substitute the word, college-educated.

We had a cool July 4th with parties on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th. We had a group of seniors and college freshmen over on the 3rd for burgers, went to the golf cart parade the next morning and over to the park for fabulous fireworks right over our heads that night (with Amanda and her children), and down to Barnesville to the mountain for dinner and more explosions on the 5th.

"Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn't commit."

Muhammad Nazirul


Taken from a caption on the national geographic "your shot" web page

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808

If waterboarding is not torture . . . nothing is torture.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/89686/?ses=e918a4e8abdaec17ee7764e3fc376f33

The top ten worst moments of the Bush presidency.

From today's New York Times

China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.
The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.