Tannishblog

In the specialty world of Cutting Horses, the clone wars are heating up. And you thought that was just cinematic science fiction.

From Washington Post.

This is just too stupid to tolerate:

Bush said that Saddam was a tyrant and used violence to exacerbate sectarian divisions to keep himself in power, and that as a result, deep tensions persist to this day.

“The enemies of a free Iraq are employing the same tactics Saddam used, killing and terrorizing the Iraqi people in an effort to foment sectarian division,” Bush said.

This is from the mouth and empty mind of a man who watched as thousands of poor blacks in this country lost their livelihoods to a hurricane, who just this week backed a crack-down of thousands of Hispanics who have families in the U.S.

Talk about sectarian divisions!

This man has done more than any man in recent memory to splinter the executive branch into a deadlock. His partisan attack politics and his blatant disinterest in any view outside his own has fractured our government nearly to a standstill. These days it’s big news that the house or the senate actually passes legislation! Witness today’s headline about the so-called lobby reforms.

Now our “uniter – not divider” president is speaking out like a child: “It’s not my fault, it’s all his fault…” Can’t you hear the plaintive whine in this voice? Pathetic. But Iraq is tired of the Warmonger, and wants the U.S. to stop interfering in their affairs. Imagine that - the ungrateful wretches.

Bushie can’t even end his speechifying without a boilerplate mention of WMD’s or the standard comment about how withdrawing troops creates a safe haven for terrorists, as if they don’t already have full reign of Iraq. Someone should study him and classify a whole new pathology of reality-cognition impairment.

That would be a worthy doctoral thesis.

We came, we saw and we conquered. We told you to take your newly broken country, freed from the tyranny of a dictator we once supported, and make of it what you will – so long as you do it our way. We will decide your next leader as we have done for the last one. The one you currently pick is a partisan hack, and will not be tolerated. He only represents some of your people, not all. Although you have struggled amid the ruin to form a government time and again, we cannot accept the direction you are taking.

Take some advice from your “Liberator”, (a national leader who surrounds himself with partisan hacks, representing only some of his citizens - less every month) who knows your best interests better than you: Do not keep the man in charge. Replace him. We don’t like him, and we’re patrolling you country, not you. Remember Fallujah.

While we force your frog march toward Democracy in Our Own Image, we reserve the right to tell you how it will play out. After three years, we can firmly assert we own you. Do not mock us, or we will again unleash our Phantom Fury. Our army of Christian Soldiers will pound you weak nation into the sand and make glass out of you. Never forget: our God is a jealous god – and he wants your oil for his faithful. We will deliver; and pity the fool who says different.

Amen.

BBC reports Iraqi blogger “Riverbend” and Baghdad Burning is one of 19 nominees for a prize for non-fiction. The winner will be announced on June 14.

I visit Baghdad Burning frequently, awaiting sporadic posts. No doubt, electricity is equally intermittent where she lives. This past Saturday’s post is a poignant reminder of false promises and failed tactics in the destruction of all she once knew after three years of bloodshed.

I don’t think anyone imagined three years ago that things could be quite this bad today. The last few weeks have been ridden with tension. I’m so tired of it all- we’re all tired.Three years and the electricity is worse than ever. The security situation has gone from bad to worse. The country feels like it’s on the brink of chaos once more- but a pre-planned, pre-fabricated chaos being led by religious militias and zealots.

Sounds like Red-State/ Blue-State mentality to me. How long before Americans draw lined in the dirt and extricate themselves to chosen enclaves? I’m also inclined to believe that not all of her “zealots” whom are supposedly benefiting by Iraqi chaos are natives of Iraq.

I’m sitting here trying to think what makes this year, 2006, so much worse than 2005 or 2004. It’s not the outward differences- things such as electricity, water, dilapidated buildings, broken streets and ugly concrete security walls. Those things are disturbing, but they are fixable. Iraqis have proved again and again that countries can be rebuilt. No- it’s not the obvious that fills us with foreboding.The real fear is the mentality of so many people lately- the rift that seems to have worked it’s way through the very heart of the country, dividing people. It’s disheartening to talk to acquaintances- sophisticated, civilized people- and hear how Sunnis are like this, and Shia are like that… To watch people pick up their things to move to “Sunni neighborhoods” or “Shia neighborhoods”. How did this happen?

I read constantly analyses mostly written by foreigners or Iraqis who’ve been abroad for decades talking about how there was always a divide between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq (which, ironically, only becomes apparent when you’re not actually living amongst Iraqis they claim)… but how under a dictator, nobody saw it or nobody wanted to see it. That is simply not true- if there was a divide, it was between the fanatics on both ends. The extreme Shia and extreme Sunnis. Most people simply didn’t go around making friends or socializing with neighbors based on their sect. People didn’t care- you could ask that question, but everyone would look at you like you were silly and rude.

I grew up in a Christian neighborhood. There, I learned racial slurs against Italians, Poles, and most especially Jews. I had never met a Jew, but I learned to dislike them (I later married one; we’re raising our daughter Jewish). I never clearly understood such behavior. That the Irish-Americans would debase others of European descent, fellow Christians and Caucasians, seemed weird to the young Tannish. Perhaps that was why I had so much trouble fitting in socially, that I didn’t parrot my peers or take odd behavior at face value.

In my limited experience, this is how Christians act. Demeaning others is part of how the Irish Catholics and the German-Scandinavian Lutherans are raised. No wonder our Born-Again evangelical president starts a war against brown people. This is just a natural progression of his upbringing. Not tolerance, no quarter.

I can’t wait until 2008.

Yesterday’s protests serve as a reminder that the “Age of the White Man” is over. No longer can a group of racist white guys mandate a change in this country and make it stick without question. Long gone are the days of American ethnic cleansing, desegregation, and bigotry: Good riddance.

The Bush administration doesn’t seem to know this. Even as they promote a Hispanic Supreme Court justice, as they watch a black freshman senator from Illinois take the spotlight, they still deny that “people of color” form a significant portion of the nation, and that portion is growing. White affluent people live in a self-made cocoon formed of their insecurities, of their enclave suburban or small-town boundaries, of their white man’s church mentality. These sons and daughters of privilege are clearly out of touch with America as it is today.

While the conservatives and the white Christians try to regress this country back to a previous era, the world progresses toward unity, inclusiveness and the reality that Caucasians make up a small sub-category of humanity.

Where does it state in our constitution that the founding ideals of this great nation are intended only for European immigrants? Who claims that progress and economic growth can occur without change in society? How can anyone believe that global acceptance of Democracy can progress while any one demographic oppresses another to any degree?

The Bush administration has finally hit a nerve with Americans. As thousands take to the streets in peaceful protest there may be thousands more who are willing to accept a regime change in America, who will not speak out until their votes are counted. We have seen that war and mismanagement, deficits and disaster combined cannot alienate Americans and future Americans as fast as trying to take away their right to live here, their right to choose where on this planet they want to raise a family, to seek happiness and prosperity.

This may very well be the nail on the coffin of the Bush administration. It’s about time…

I like this line: “One horseman shy of an apocalypse.” I’ve been feeling that for years, a sense of imminent doom. Washington Post’s Dana Millbank bid us all a Happy Doomsday.

She only touches on a couple topics, no doubt the recent meeting she has covered, but the list of portents is growing. CNN talks about the Alaskan pipeline. Bush passes the buck on troop reduction to his successor. I could go on and on…

I know this blog is quite negative. I too often point out what I feel is wrong with our nation, our world, western culture… people in general. I do this in a spirit of hope, however weak, that my words inspire someone to improve their relation to their world. We all need to treat others better, to bring a renewed sense of integrity, honesty and commitment to fellow humans into our actions, words and thoughts. No one lives in a vacuum, indeed, we’re all intimately connected. To ignore this, as we have been doing for centuries, is exactly how we are now arguably at the brink of destruction.

Whether you believe in the Second Coming or not, can’t you feel the impending doom of mankind? If you dare to look, it’s all around us. Calm you mind and observe, you’ll see. Let this be a call to self improvement. Only by changing ourselves, can we change the world.

Something light for my work-addled brain tonight. NY Times has an interesting article about a song we all know…

“In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the loin sleeps tonight…”

Sing it with me:”A-wimoweh A-wimoweh A-wimoweh A-wimoweh…”

As it happens the rights to the song were bought for, well, a song. Music companies repackaged it as artists reworked it, all the while the survivors of the songwriter earned nothing. Now, after 60 years, the family gets paid back. Read about it.

I was just sitting here minding my own business, doing my nightly blogging run, when all of a sudden my computer locked up (gasp!). I had a Washington Post article about our administration’s group hallucinations loading, choice fodder for tannishblog, when the cursor froze. Upon pressing the reset button, I watch carefully as my computer goes through its post routine:

DETECTING IDE DRIVES…

That’s where it stopped. Two minutes passed as I stared at the screen hoping against hope that the lines upon it would start moving again. No such luck. Reset again; same results.

At this time I start cataloging in my head all the photos, music, and documents I’ve collected on this machine. Before you ask – no, I don’t have a backup set. This computer doesn’t have a RAID array, either. With a resigned sigh, I unplug the beast; take it to my workstation in the basement, and start tearing it down. As an enthusiast, I have inherited many of my friends’ old machines, of which I still have many loose pieces. I plug in an old 6.5GB drive and fire the sucker up. It boots fine. For good measure, I try another older and smaller drive: This one still has WIN95 on it, which boots quick and easy.

After spraying all the cat hair and dust bunnies out of it with compressed air (I know…), I take a chance and hook up the original drive. At this point, I’m already resigned to shelling out a hundred or so in a new drive and mourning the loss of precious data. I envision myself cramming until midnight to load software and tweak the machine until it purrs.

Then the stupid thing boots like it’s supposed to. If it had a face, it would be smirking at me.

Now I begin my overdue archiving project. How should I do this: burn a bunch of CDs and try to keep them organized, or take one of the old hard drives, hook it up to the second IDE port and copy the file onto it? The first is safer and much slower than the second option. I think I’ll do both for extra safety. And start shopping for a new, larger disk – just in case.

I have to ask. I know I’ll seem like an idiot - not for the first time, though: What good is a spending ceiling if you raise it any time you want? From Washinton Post:

It was the fourth debt-ceiling increase in the past five years, after boosts of $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003 and $800 billion in 2004. The statutory debt limit has now risen by more than $3 trillion since Bush took office.

I vaguely recall some campaign rhetoric about our “CEO President” running an oil company into the ground. It’s one thing to have been an officer of a corporation, it’s an entirely different matter is that same company was successful. One one level at least, the government must run like a company, or a household, using sound financial strategies to maximize spending potential. This administration can only maximize spending - there is no potential, it seems, outside of the potential of fiscal collapse.

“This should be a wake-up call for every member of the Senate, every member of Congress, and a wake-up call for the president of the United States,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee. “The question is: Are we staying on this course to keep running up the debt, debt on top of debt, increasingly financed by foreigners, or are we going to change course?”

It wont be. Our President is “Resoloot.” Have I mentioned that before?

The bright side, if there is one, is not all Republicans voted for raising the ceiling:

“Congress must stop hiding wasteful spending under the American flag,” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Tex.), one of several Republicans who voted against the final bill.

Amen, Jeb. Nice to hear that from a Texan these days. It’s a welcome sign of the times.

President Bush is about to restate his Terror Strategy. In an overdue document mandated by law, Our warmonger-in-chief will assert his idiocy of strategy and his ignorance of diplomacy by making pre-emptive strikes a central tenet of US strategic priorities.

In his revised version, Bush offers no second thoughts about the preemption policy, saying it “remains the same” and defending it as necessary for a country in the “early years of a long struggle” akin to the Cold War. In a nod to critics in Europe, the document places a greater emphasis on working with allies and declares diplomacy to be “our strong preference” in tackling the threat of weapons of mass destruction.

“If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self defense, we do not rule out use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack,” the document continues. “When the consequences of an attack with WMD are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize.”

The damn fool wants to take over the world, forcing the changes he deems necessary. Is there a better example of megalomaniac intentions? By fighting phantom WMDs he turns our entire military loose on the innocent of the world. In effect America becomes the world’s largest Weapon of Mass Destruction imaginable.

Some security specialists criticized the continued commitment to preemption. “Preemption is and always will be a potentially useful tool, but it’s not something you want to trot out and throw in everybody’s face,” said Harlan Ullman, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “To have a strategy on preemption and make it central is a huge error.”

Some experts disagree, but that won’t matter: our Fool on the Hill is “Resoloot.” that means he’s stubborn, arrogant and stupid. All at once. But he’s not alone, there are more fools backing him up: From Thomas Donnelly, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has written on the 2002 strategy:

“We have to understand preemption — it’s not going to be simply a preemptive strike,” he said. “That’s not the end of the exercise but the beginning of the exercise.”

The document, released today to three newspapers, has the gall to list our next targets:

Without saying what action would be taken against them, the strategy singles out seven nations as prime examples of “despotic systems” — North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Burma and Zimbabwe. Iran and North Korea receive particular attention because of their nuclear programs, and the strategy vows in both cases “to take all necessary measures” to protect the United States against them.

“We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran,” the document says, echoing a statement made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week. It recommits to efforts with European allies to pressure Tehran to give up any aspirations of nuclear weapons, then adds ominously: “This diplomatic effort must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided.”

These people have to be stopped before the whole globe erupts in conflict. I can almost envision the posters from the Minister of Propaganda: Smiling white folks waving out of their luxury SUV, tooling down a sunlit road somewhere in the American southwest. Plenty of oil for every American. All we have to do is subjugate the rest of the world - piece of cake!

Step right up, folks! World War Three coming soon to a theatre near you. Brought to you by the United States. God Bless America!