Tannishblog

We got rid of the echo chambers of congress, but we still have Georgie flying solo for the next two years. Should be fun. Especially in light of his latest pronouncement during his current tour of Republics formerly Owned by the Soviet Union. As reported by the NY Times, Mr. Bush is prepping his Iraqi puppet for a new role as scapegoat.

Foreshadowing his message to Mr. Maliki, he said he would press the Iraqi prime minister to lay out a strategy for stopping the killings.

“My questions to him will be: ‘What do we need to do to succeed? What is your strategy in dealing with the sectarian violence?’ ” Mr. Bush said. “I will assure him that we will continue to pursue Al Qaeda to make sure that they do not establish a safe haven in Iraq.”

Really. The What’s Your Strategy game is supposed to mask the US Iraq strategy that’s been AWOL since the beginning? What kind of fools does he take us for?

That’s rhetorical, friends.

But if I were to answer, I might have to take notice of how Mr. Bush refuses to utter the words "civil war," even after NBC decided at last to label the "conflict" rightly.

NBC News said Monday that its reporters and anchors would begin referring to the ongoing sectarian strife in Iraq as a "civil war," a move that reflects the news media’s use of increasingly stark language to characterize the escalating violence gripping the country.

NBC’s decision, which came after a particularly deadly series of retaliatory attacks in Baghdad, makes it the first television network to officially adopt the term "civil war," a description the Bush administration has resisted.

Although our Decider-in Chief says Iraq is still insurgent, the media goes ahead and makes it an official Civil War ™. Never mind the media has been using the phrase for the past two months. Now that the election’s over and the Democrats have emerged from the Phoenix’s ashes of defeat, one news outlet has a sudden case of gumption. Bully!

And if I were to answer to how foolish our President believes we are, I would notice his phraseology during his denouncement of a possible thinning US presence in Iraq. According the the same NT Times report, he vowed not to withdraw troops "until the mission is complete."

Wait a minute! Is he now saying his mission is NOT accomplished?

I was asked today about why I left Christianity. I didn’t have to think too hard on it, but I remembered to apologize in advance if I inadvertently offended while answering.

I left my family’s heritage as Northern European Lutherans as a teen when the pastor read what I later recognized as a canned sermon against the peace sign. this was circa 1973, the heyday of Vietnam protesting and not too far removed from the summer of love, 1967. Much of hippydom was still in the air then. Yet my Pastor, to who I’m supposed to look for spiritual wisdom, was delivering a political diatribe cloaked in religiosity toward a growing political movement of the day: the peace sign was a "broken cross turned upside down" which by it’s very existence denoted an anti-Christian sentiment. It was to be shunned and all good Christians should disassociate from any connection to the hated symbol.

I remember leaving the church that hot Sunday shaking my head. I was still too green to shout "Bullshit!" yet what I was feeling was in line with such outbursts. I decided then that the church was not the place for me. I never went back.

These days I can flesh out my feelings through retrospection. What keeps me away from the church is a tendency I see to preach hatred, intolerance and blind acceptance to the "flock." As Galileo aptly stated: " I find it hard to countenance that the very God that bestowed upon us the gifts of intellect and reason should want us to forego their use." Indeed.

This trend toward isolationism and intolerance has been played out in recent years in politics after 1994 when the Christian Coalition became the Republican Majority Congress. Since then we have seen hate, white supremacy, and intolerance drive an entire political framework with special emphasis on foreign policy. We’ll be cleaning up this mess for decades.

On a smaller scale, we can see how Christians sometimes attack each other. CNN reports today how one homeowner in a Denver subdivision is being fined $25 a day for a peace-sign shaped Christmas wreath on her house. What the article hasn’t the balls to note, I will infer here: The subdivision is all white. They are mostly Christians of the protestant variety, i.e. Methodists or Baptists. Most drive late model SUV’s or pickups. Most hail from smaller communities. The report did mention that some were military families.

Racial profiling? Stereotyping? You bet! I’m using the same twisted logic used against this neighbor of theirs. A peace sign as a symbol of Satan! Get a life! I freely admit a hole in my tolerance toward Christians. I’ve been accused of this and it’s true: I cannot abide when good people spend most of their spiritual energy thinking about Satan’s Worldly Evil ™, and not the actual teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Religion is about becoming better people, not about closing one’s mind and becoming nasty. Those who forget that are lost sheep indeed.

Democrats.com is pounding the impeachment drum. AfterDowningStreet.org is clambering for a reason to exist. Together, they are trying to turn December 10 from Human Rights Day into Impeachment Day. Check it out here.

While I’m all for giving the buggers their due, for forcing accountability up the bung holes of government, the time for impeachment is past. There simply is not enough time left in G. Warmonger Bush’s presidency to pull it off. It would take at least a year to gather all the information and prep it for litigation. There’s quite a bit out there. Just sifting through all his crimes to parse out the strongest arguments would take months. By then we’d have only a year left to affect the impeachment - or less, perhaps. We’d be cutting things thin enough for the remaining Republicans to shuffle their feet a bit and, before we know it, the dude’s back at the ranch, smirk and all.

No. Impeachment is not an option. But there’s more than one way to skin a fat cat.  I’d like to wait until the perps are out of office, then try them for war crimes. We can practice on Rummy. Are their statutes of limitation to human rights abuses? For war profiteering? I’m sure the Geneva conventions revisionism is prime fodder for litigious inclinations. On top of that, let’s sue the war profiteers, then give the money to military families adversely affected by Our National Sham(e). Let them that got us into this pay for the right to use American blood to leverage personal profit.

Sue them. Try them. Lock them up. See what their money buys them in prison.

Thanksgiving dinner wound down last night, and conversation resumed. A comment was made about cigarette smokers and soon we began discussing the ways various municipalities were using laws to curb smoking in public places. The overall tone was of acceptance. We are all non-smokers.

I piped up in my usual devil’s advocate, buck the trend style, that as a former puffer, I felt the trend was discriminatory. Americans are free to kill themselves if that’s what they want. The rebuttal (weak, I thought) was of the dangers second-hand smoke. Being the host, I felt unusual restraint and let the conversation turn. What I wanted to point out is how free non-smokers are to not frequent establishments that smokers prefer, to not associate with others who smoke if the habit is bothersome.

I wanted to point out that Americans need to get back to a culture of acceptance, inclusiveness and compassion of others. We’ve lost whatever meager gains we’ve made over the past fifty years toward a society modeled after a core belief in religious freedoms and the attendant mentality of acceptance of diversity. (Placeholder for deleted political dig.) As a Buddhist, I feel we need to remember the teachings of our founders during this weekend of National Pride.

Remember the "Great Melting Pot ™?" I’ve often quipped it’s more like a chunky stew, but lately it seems more like and oil-and-water mix. We need to get back to basics, get back to a compassionate, people-centric world of open minds, open hearts, and the understanding that others will do what we wish they wouldn’t - and that’s alright, too.

What do pharmaceutical companies have against Americans? I ask this after reading a NY Times article highlighting the battle footing and lobbyist purchasing going on by drug companies in preparation for the anticipated attempt at rolling back the 2003 Medicare law. That’s the one the Republicans let drug companies dictate wherein the government isn’t allowed to shop as any consumer would and bargain for low prices on drugs for Medicare patients.

Drug makers have not set a budget for their campaign. They and their trade groups already spend some $100 million a year on lobbying in Washington.

“We have new political realities to attend to,” Mr. Tauzin said in an interview after the board meeting. “We and our allies will do everything we can to defend the Medicare drug benefit, to get out the message that it is working.”

How many people would be served by that same amount of money? One one hand, that’s chump change for the industry, on the other, people most likely to need affordable government-assisted health care, could be expected to earn much less than that over their entire working careers. It seems altruism, a possible side effect of providing new technology to the medical industry, is poor business. In America, I remind you, business is paramount.

There will be a fight. Many Democrats have run and won on the topic of out of this world health care costs.

But Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, who hopes to head the health subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said price negotiations for Medicare were his priority.

“The 2003 Medicare law was essentially written by the drug industry,” Mr. Pallone said in an interview. “That’s why you don’t have negotiated prices. Republican policies have served special interests like the pharmaceutical industry, and the American taxpayer is paying the price.”

Never mind the fact that if enough poor Americans die from lack of affordable medicine, their profits would suffer some. Did I say that? Then there is the Karmic angle:

Drug lobbyists say they want to work with the new Democratic majority, but that will not be easy. In its campaign contributions, the pharmaceutical industry has overwhelmingly favored Republicans over Democrats. Drug companies infuriated many Democrats in 2003, when they worked closely with Republicans to create the Medicare drug benefit, in a process from which Democrats were largely excluded.

Just another example of a money-first philosophy as exemplified by Republican thinkers. The All-mighty they sometimes refer to is not found in heaven, it is the Almighty Dollar they worship.

Make sure you rest up today and eat plenty of protein tonight. Come midnight Black Friday begins. No, the stock market won’t crash. This year at midnight several shopping center management companies plan to beat Wal-Mart to the punch by opening malls at midnight.

It was inevitable that corporate greed succumb to such madness. Likewise some less introspective Americans will validate the move by shopping all night after stuffing themselves past the point of sleeping. Wal-Mart, being the epitome of American values, is fast becoming the first retail monopoly ever, and the hundreds of companies affected by the behemoth are going to spend a long sleepless month watching the numbers.

What is at stake here is not just lining of company bank vaults. In my eyes, after working for two decades in retail, I see Wal-Mart as a beast that will - if unchallenged - ultimately destroy the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the retail and manufacturing industries. The irony is many of these people are shopping at Wal-Mart, unable to see what’s coming. Being relatively low income workers themselves, they focus on the one thing that works for the company: under-cutting competitors pricing. Needing to save money, they help to ensure a cataclysmic implosion of retailing nation wide. No. I’m not exaggerating.

Wal-Mart is a predator. That’s how it does business. Sam Walton was very shrewd to envision a business model that, to date, hasn’t been beat. Like many businessmen, his concern was not to better the lives of Americans by offering them less expensive goods, but to make money. In that, he excelled. But is money the end-all of business? Do the means justify the ends? What will happen if all those displaced retail employees find themselves forced by the job market to apply and work for Wal-Mart? Everyone knows that the company pays little and workers enjoy almost no benefits, while being forced to work schedules that may conflict with their ability to raise families.

Business, as all human ventures, is about people. Money should be viewed as a perk, a reward for servicing people. But that Victorian concept has no place in our economics-is-everything philosophy of markets. Wal-Mart is not alone in this type of thinking, but it is the best at it, the most ruthless in it’s pursuit of money over humanity. That type of thinking may help our economy (which, even while ignored by our current political focus on warfare, running idle, still grows somewhat), but it does nothing for the people. Please keep this in mind as you partake in the Annual Retail Feeding Frenzy.

The Year of Our Lord ™, 2006, is winding down and already the ubiquitous "Top 10" lists are emerging. As this year may be remember by some as "the year of political sea change," the big story is the past election. CNET has its take on the ten worst political mishaps of the year. Poly-Sci majors take notes.

Oh, it's been a memorable year!

I came late to the realm of American politics. Like most of my generation’s lost souls of middle class mediocrity, drugs and other gratuitous pursuits were more important. Such was the mind set of youth in the seventies and eighties: Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll. All that changed for me in 1999 with my first look at George W. Bush’s infamous smirk. Immediate antipathy. The ascendancy of the humanitarian-impaired Bush Dynasty is a by-product of willful political ignorance of people like me. America still suffers that disease. A wide swath of the population turns it’s back on a broken political system in disgust, thereby ensuring continuity of our electoral dysfunction. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle.

One thing I’ve learned in my crash course in American spin-doctoring, is that one party rule is bad for America. In the Democratic post-mid-term euphoria, I’ve already heard rallying talk of getting a Democrat in the oval office, thereby completing the coin flip and having the other party rule all branches of government. I cannot suspend disbelief enough to think this would be any better than what we have just corrected. I’m convinced that the Democrats and an organization are just as corrupt as the Republicans, that when given the ropes our Progressives will as surely hang themselves as the Regressive party has done.

No. A functioning government is one that is forever at it’s own throat, eternally vying for gain in a volatile struggle of debate and (dare I say it) compromise. (As a side note, I believe that 2007 will be the year our congress will actually work again.) We need the bickering, the whining, and all other symptoms of a dynamic-yet-polar, barely civil consensus to disagree vociferously. That is how the American system works.

That is why I will seriously consider our emerging candidates carefully - even the Republicans.

No Friday Night Zen this week. Our daughter was performing in her high school’s jazz band last night. A long and enjoyable concert. She impressed me with what she’s learned the only a half year. Being a failed rock musician, I’m especially tickled at her new skills on the electric bass. (note to self: sort that thought under "Living Vicariously.")

They practice a lot, asking much out of the kids. Niles North Fine Arts Department has a reputation to uphold in the fine arts department, and they take their ambitions out on the students. The students rise to the occasion consistently and last night was no exception. While not quite a polished performance, it was impressive. Mostly the sound tech crew needs work. I’m confident all will be resolved for the next performance.

So my Zen lesson was to support the consequences of my actions in the form of supporting my offspring and the community I choose to live in. Also to ponder the amazing capacity of humanity to pursue non-violent expression and to build community. How refreshing!

What does ideology cost? Who pays the tab? We hear much about the thousands of US soldiers who gave their lives for an ideal, the tens of thousands who made it home damaged to find no funding for their after-care. We hear of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian collateral casualties. These numbers are tossed about, but do we really comprehend them?

The cost of war cannot be fathomed by quoting tallies. They can only be seen by investigating any one life affected by the Iraq war. Iraq Veterans Against the War has a moving article entitled The Pain of War, which brings the loss of one soldier into sharp focus. If you read this and are not moved by it, go see a psychiatrist.