The Festering Sore

Waterboard the candidates, let's get the truth, start with Rudy

2007-11-05T20:18:00.001-05:00

The next time Michael Mukasey is called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee I suggest that he be strapped to a stretcher, a rag placed in his mouth and water poured in the rag until he begins to answer completely and truthfully the questions put to him by the committee.

Now that waterboarding has become an accepted form of interrogation in these United States, I recommend that it be utilized not only with Mukasey, but with all future witnesses before committees of the congress. I think that there are subpoenas kicking around out there for Condi Rice and other executive department figures who have been less than forthcoming in past appearances, so perhaps as our favorite republican tough guy Rudy Giuliani says, we should question them aggressively.

It might be a good idea if the voting public were able to use the same technique in questioning the presidential candidates on their positions. For the rest of the debates all candidates should be wheeled in strapped to stretchers and aggressively questioned using this simulated drowning method.

Using these methods we may begin to get the truth from our "public servants" and declared wannabes.

This will not work in Atlanta however, they don't have enough water at the moment to achieve any kind of satisfactory results.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

America, Open For Business, Closed To Freedom

2007-11-02T09:51:00.000-04:00

Is there any area of our government, over the span of the last seven years, any area, in domestic or foreign policy, national defense, public welfare, the economy, name it, where the average, reasonably informed American might point to success, to signs of progress, of improvement, something, anything, to point to with satisfaction, with pride?

Yesterday I read an article by Steve Benin on the resignation of Karen Hughes from her post as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, a mouthful there, and a job for which she was as ill suited and unqualified as the man who appointed her and in which, during her two year tenure, she accomplished little, if anything.

In truth, she accomplished nothing, unless you want to count convincing large portions of the world that all Americans must be as out of touch with reality, as clueless and unthinking as their current Commander in Chief, and at that she excelled, as anyone might, having been dispatched to the Middle East with the rank of Ambassador, but without knowledge of the language, culture, history, religions, and general pet peeves of the various states and peoples of the region.

But Karen Hughes was tapped for her office for the same reasons as all Bush appointees are chosen, not for expertise or experience, not for performance or integrity in public service but for loyalty, for unwavering belief in the Messianic delusions of neo conservatism, and a willingness to march in lockstep, nah, goose step, against all who might disagree or dissent.

As I read Benin's article I had the thought that he might have written a very similar piece about nearly any federal department and the Bush appointees thereto in the last seven years. Which of the various cabinet level branches of the executive department of this country have not suffered greatly under the politically connected cronyism of the Bush/ Cheney administration?

We witnessed it at Justice, the politicization of the office of the Attorney General, the perversion of law and the resulting descent into the barbarity of denial of human rights and torture.

We saw it at Defense, where the best military minds of a generation were ignored in favor of the views of sychophantic careerists who allowed a lying Vice President and a comic opera Commander in Chief and their apparatchiks to lead them over the cliff and into the abyss of an endless and disastrous war.

We have seen time and again the incompetence, indifference and criminal neglect at "Homeland" Security and FEMA.

We have seen heads of federal departments turned into agents of electioneering, where party politics takes precedence over public welfare and the machinery and energy of the state is turned to the furtherance of private goals.

Agriculture, Interior, Commerce, Treasury and the rest are now run by the industries that they are legally bound to restrain, regulate and control in the public interest.

Executive branch departments have been stripped of many of their most dedicated, long serving professionals and replaced with Bush loyalists from business and industry, or, in many cases directly from the most favored campuses, the ivy leagues of Christian evangelism. Regulatory functions have been curtailed, enforcement budgets slashed, and inspection schedules diminished to a laughable degree in nearly every regulatory corner of the federal system.

But this, after all, was the intent, to create central government that would gladly do the bidding of the corporate structure, throw aside all restraints, all regulation and increase its profits and its power.

Nearly every day I encounter a story in the media, a story of illness, injury, death or disaster befalling unsuspecting citizens due to the inattention, incompetence, lack of inspection and failures of enforcement of existing federal laws regulating consumer products, work place safety, environmental prohibitions or other areas where purity, safety and security were once almost taken for granted.

During the last seven years we have devolved into a country whose livestock, produce and other foodstuffs are ridden with bacteria and other contaminants, whose drugs and medical services are becoming untrustworthy, whose ports and borders are dangerously porous, whose bridges and highways are collapsing, whose military is being misused and abused in continuous illegal and futile adventures on behalf of corporate America, whose jobs have largely been moved to other countries and continents, whose pensions have collapsed and whose Barbie Dolls contain enough lead to write a novella. (Or, perhaps, the last paragraph)

The real problem however, the crux of the matter and what may finally deliver us stumbling and stuttering, quavering with dread at the terminus of the road to Fascist hell is the incredible damage that has been inflicted on the American spirit, the American soul, the American psyche. I may be accused of naivete' but in my world, in my mind and in my memory there was a time when the eyes of America contained a great measure of compassion, of kindness, of simple good will.

Those days are gone. Under the current regime the eyes of America, official America, the America of the ruling oligarchy are now filled with hunger, with avarice, with an insatiable lust for resources and power, for wealth and influence. America's eyes are no longer the warm welcoming eyes of Lady Liberty but the cold calculating gaze of the largest and most dangerous predator to ever stalk the planet, a predator to be feared and distrusted, to be resisted at all costs.

The eyes of Americans, our citizens, our electorate are filled with a mixture of apathy and fear, of meekness, a cowering attitude and a shuffling posture which is all too heavily reflected in their parliament.

America, in the brief span of my lifetime and largely in the span of a single decade has devolved into a killer of humanity, a dream slayer, despoiler of freedom, a destroyer, the destroyer of America.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

The "Hitler Comparison"

2007-10-24T17:51:00.001-04:00

George Bush, Adolph Hitler, Josef Goebbels, Josef Stalin, Mengele, Heinrich Himmler,Naomi Wolf

The "Hitler comparison" should be shouted from the rooftops, as should the Goebbels comparison, the Himmler comparison, the Mengele, Stalin, Torquemada, Beelzebub comparisons and all the rest. If it struts like a Nazi, talks like Nazi, tortures like a Nazi and wages aggressive and illegal war like a Nazi... it's not a duck.

Eighteen months or so ago I wrote a post comparing Bush, Cheney and the boys from PNAC to Hitler, to the Nazi hierarchy and to the wonderful folks who gave the world kristallnacht, the terror bombings of Guernica, of London and conducted history's magnum opus of human carnage, the holocaust, the destruction of two thirds of the Jews in Europe and millions of other "undesirables."

I took a moderate amount of heat for what one local (Dayton) commenter called my "classlessness," and received a few surly EMails from people who are probably, to this day, driving around with "Bush/Cheney" bumper stickers on their Cadillac and Lexus SUVs but since I want so badly to be loved and admired, (or at least not ignored) I resolved to try to avoid using the "Hitler Comparison" after that.

I saw it used by others on the blogs and, guardedly, in the MSM, witnessed their reception of similar treatment and I realized that a taboo (see Godwin's law) had been created. "Disrespectful to the office of the President," some cried, "diminishes the horror of the holocaust and the brutality unleashed on Europe's Jews by the real Hitler," cried others, "the ultimate ad hominem attack," wrote one academic seeking to show that such comparisons were childish , demeaning to those who offered them and "kills dead," scholarly internet discussions.

As the months dragged on and the war escalated, the deaths, the casualties, the carnage mounted, the attacks on dissent increased, civil liberties began to erode and disappear, as the regulatory bureaucracy and the judiciary were stripped of independent professionals and replaced with ideological partisans, as tens of billions of dollars of American taxpayers cash simply disappeared into the black hole of "privatization" and reason itself came under constant attack, I couldn't help myself, I began to use the "Hitler Comparison" more often in my various rants.

I don't pretend to scholarship, or journalism, I'm an old carpenter, not an academic, I'm content to be a pamphleteer. As long as the feedback tells me that people are reading my electronic leaflets, not ripping them from under their wiper blades and kicking them to the curb, if I sense that they are following the links, I find a small measure of hope, not a lot, just enough to make me look forward to coffee and another batch of leafleting in the morning.

The war..s continue, and as the fervor grows for another, in Iran and more evidence of official "misdeeds," of lies, of outright criminality, of incompetence, rampant cronyism and fraud continue to seep out from under the closed doors of what has developed into the most secretive, insular, antidemocratic administration in the history of the Republic, the "Hitler comparison" has grown in my mind and, I believe, much of the public's to the point that we need to repeal the "Godwin law" and popularize the idea in the hopes that by holding up the mirror to the tyrant we may drive him from our shores. I'm serious, we need "Hitler Comparison" T shirts, by the millions.

Sunday night I watched Naomi Wolf on PBS as she was interviewed about her recent book by "guest interviewer" Viet Dinh, a former Assistant Attorney General, and principle author of the Patriot Act, greatly admired by none other than Rupert Murdoch, in other words, as ~~Adol~~ George W is wont to say, no cream puff. Ms Wolf more than held her own, after all, she knows her book and the research on which its based and defended it well against a wholly predictable neo-con cross examination.

Her book may represent, albeit in a much more scholarly and reasoned way, the ultimate in "Comparisons," (I confess I haven't yet read it) She says that she charts the closing of various previously open societies, from Hitler to Stalin to Pinochet and on to our current rapidly closing system, and finds the comparisons striking, the trends frightening, ant the peril, imminent enough to cause her to run around the country like a latter day Paul Revere shouting that the ~~redcoats~~ brown shirts are coming, while making astute "comparisons" between current and past events, motives and personalities.

It is, of course, a book tour and yes, the object is to sell the book but there is much more here, I hear a clarion call in her voice and feel truth in her message.

Would that several million people, Germans perhaps, in 1933, 34 or 35 had been possessed of the poor taste and "classlessness," had been willing to succumb to the gaucherie of loudly and publicly comparing Adolph Hitler to... well ..what the hell, lets go for it.. Adolph Hitler, I wonder what result might have ensued. Or, back in the USSR, had Russians stood up and said "hey this Stalin guy is becoming a real Hitler or maybe even a Stalin," how many of the fifty million Russian dead might have been spared, the cold war, arms race avoided, at least greatly reduced.

There is a responsibility of those who govern to speak truth to the governed, but, when they fail in that responsibility, there is a greater responsibility on the part of the governed to speak truth to power, to spit in its eye and to dethrone it as necessary to insure the continuity of the rights, freedoms and welfare of the public, for that is what finally matters, not the government, nor the corrupt interests of the criminal oligarchs that it represents.

I listened to the GOP candidates a bit the other night, a little goes a long way with these birds, and heard the words "personal responsibility" several times, a phrase which is nothing more, on Republican lips, than a code word for racism, sexism and a continuation of the war they have waged against the "lesser classes' for all of modern history.

I agree with them in this sense, it is time for a large percentage of the population to take personal responsibility for themselves, for their country, to unite in the name of freedom, in the name of economic, political and spiritual liberty, to rise up and seize control of the whole package, the big damn shebang, to wrest control from the five percent who have kept them enslaved, who have enforced ignorance and poverty and to throw aside the twenty percent who guard the prison.

It may be "classless" and a violation of "Godwin's law to "Compare" George Walker Bush, the arrogant young scion of eastern establishment wealth and power, grandson of Senators and son of Presidents, cowboy of windshields and owner of chainsaws, to the beer swilling gutter scum of the beer halls of Munich and Berlin but I'm afraid it is unavoidable, it is inescapable, obvious, and it is historically necessary.

Terrorism? 9/11? The attack on the World Trade Center was their Reichstag fire, the invasion of Iraq, comparable to the blitzkrieg into eastern Europe. They share the same motives and ideology, the same vision, they exhibit the same compassion, and wield power with the same ruthless disregard for the lives, for the welfare and dignity of common humanity.

Make no mistake, these people, the architects of the last six years of international turmoil, of domestic division, of war and death, of crushing despair and hopelessness, are Nazis, perhaps not yet in the full bloom of adulthood, not yet grown to the evil proportions of their twentieth century predecessors, but they have emerged from their larval stage and are prepared for full flight, They have all the weapons, they lack nothing, nothing, but to complete their rewriting of our laws and of course, they need those handsome uniforms.

The only thing that can prevent them from fulfilling their wretched and terrible goals of oligarchy, universal slavery and domination of the world is your voice, your derision, your hand, raised in resistance, your lips mouthing a simple no.

Hurry, I think the uniforms have been ordered.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

The President's Saturday Radio Address, Who's To Blame For London Terror Threats?

2006-08-13T12:49:00.000-04:00

My fellow Americans

After spending nearly 400 billion dollars ousting Saddam and the Taliban, eradicating al Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations and creating a Model for future Middle East Democracies in Iraq, after vastly improving the lives of the Iraqi people by turning on their electricity and water service, creating a safe and secure environment for them to pursue their lives, rebuilding their schools and hospitals and other critical infrastructure and after getting their oil flowing freely to the export markets, to enable their return to national solvency, you might think that they would be grateful.

But no, last week they returned to their old ways, proving that Iraq is still the center of the axis of evil just as Dick and Rummy and Wolfie and Me and Turd Blossom have said from the beginning.

Now this is hard work, in other words we've been working hard to defeat the haters, the evil ones, I like to call them the Islamo-fascists. The ones who hate freedom.

We have made good progress, why, some Iraqis are still scrubbing that purple ink off their thumbs and as Dick (I call him Mister President) likes to say, the insurgents were in their last throes, in other words they were like a pitcher in the sixth inning after too many fast balls, their arms were tired. Why you could go out for dinner and a movie almost anywhere in the Green Zone.

As soon as we turned our backs, as soon as we took a deep breath and a well deserved short break before we began taking our American largesse, I like to call it our Great Ship of Freedom, into the desert in Iran and give the Iranites the same opportunities we gave the Iraqis, or the Afghanians or that the Israelians are even now graciously giving to the Lebanalese, the Iraqis struck again.

Just as they did in the days and months leading up to the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11, there they are again, planning and plotting with al Qaeda to bring down dozens of our airliners over the Atlantic.

And, as some uninformed people at that time, I like to call them Democrats, tried to lay a large portion of the blame for 9/11 on the Saudis, many of the same voices are now being raised against them again, along with another of our most stalwart allies in the war on the evil ones, the Pakistanians.

When will these people understand that the Saudis are our friends, why, their fathers and grandfathers went to college with ours in Texas for God's sake, we were associates in the oil business before Saddam did his first contract killing. The Saudis learned the ins and outs of oil exploration and exploitation at the University of Texas studying the magic of the Texas Railroad Commission just as we did. I appreciate the Saudis, they work hard, they're entrepreneurs, like me and Mist... the Vice President.

And the Pakistanians, they're our closest ally in the war on terror, they've been hunting Osama and his henchmen everywhere they aren't for years, just as diligently, just as tirelessly as OJ hunts Nicole's real killer on the golf courses of Florida. They are always just one step behind him. If that guy slips, they'll be on him like a pair of wet Frye boots.

We didn't spend 400 billion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting Islamic Fascism, and building shining pillars of Arab democratic opportunity, and more hundreds of millions in Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin and a score of other good, God fearing, "Red States" protecting truck stops, skating rinks, and petting zoos, to turn around and hurl blame and insults at our friends the Saudis or the Pakistanians. America is true to our friends, in other words we're loyal to the hand that feeds us.

No, the main problem has always been Iraq, they had weapons of mass destruction and proven ties to al Qaeda, and, they tried to kill my Daddy, and now that we've managed to eliminate Saddam and insure that Iraqi oil will stay in the ground for awhile, we face still more dangers with Ahmadinejad in Iran, and his Hezbollah hirelings in Beirut, which is in Lebanon, these are countries with leaders who we know have worked closely with al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and other evil ones.

We have the evidence. The Pre.. Dick showed it to me, in other words, I've seen it. It's being guarded by six Patriotic American Oil Company Executives around the clock. Those guys work hard, they're entrepreneurs too, and they're in Dicks office all the time.

This evidence is highly classified and locked safely in Dick Cheney's office safe next to our secret comprehensive national energy policy, and the secret plan to save social security, right there next to the secret maintenance schedule for the Alaskan Pipeline.

Dicks got all this stuff, Turd Blossom's got a lot of stuff too, I like to call it political capital, and we'll bring it out at the appropriate time, in other words, when it's timely, like in October. Heh,heh.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

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Rust Never Sleeps

2006-08-09T08:03:00.000-04:00

"Oil Company Expert" Demonstrates Use Of
"State Of The Art High Tech Equipment"
To Clean Up Oil Spill

The Alaskan Pipeline, or one of BP's feeder lines connecting to it is suddenly so rusty that it has to be shut down indefinitely, causing an instant 8% drop in US production capacity.

This fact translates into an instant and enormous revenue loss for Alaska, and:

The event will be followed by an instant double jump in gas prices and an instant double secret jump in oil company revenues.

Now, I'm not an oil expert, (Beer is my area,) I have never been fond of the flavor of "Crude Light", although I once drank some Old Milwaukee and found it somewhat reminiscent of 10w40 when served stale, at room temperature, in a dirty glass. But I digress.

We have known since the late seventies that "Rust Never Sleeps" because Neil Young warned us of the fact. I think Neil was warning us of one, or more, of the following (A) Punk Rockers (B) The Reagan Administration or (C) Patty Reagan and Patty Smith)

The oil experts weren't listening at the time though, they were busy vibrating with giddy anticipation over the coming anti- regulatory, pro business, "pillage the public treasury" policies of the arriving hordes of free market, hate government, "where's mine," rampant assed Republicanism.

I think that was about the time that construction was beginning on the Alaskan Pipeline which was approximately when this sudden rust problem began ... suddenly, twenty five or so years ago.

Experts seldom listen to anyone, not even Neil Young, partially because they are too busy expounding on their area of expertise on CNN or one of the other twenty four hour "Repeat The White House Talking Points Like A Mantra" outlets, but mostly because experts wouldn't seem very "experty" if they went around from network to network just .... listening.

This explains why "BP", which once was an acronym for "British Petroleum," until their public relations people changed it to "Beyond Petroleum," although their recent quarterly profit reports may lead the public to believe that it really means "Beyond Petroleum Jelly."

But, again, I digress. I started to say that the oil and energy experts were so preoccupied with the coming of the "Post-Great Society, Hallelujah, Cal Coolidge is Back, Land of Milk and Honey." that they didn't hear Neil's warning.

With the rise of the twenty four hour news channels the demand for talking experts in many fields became so great, and the pay so lucrative that there were almost no experts left to serve and guide crucial areas of our society, such as the energy industry, or the military, or elder statesmanship.

At this point in time, or as Yogi Berra says, "now," the problem has become so acute that we can't fight a war effectively because all the really good Generals have become Senior Military Analysts on TV.

The only Generals left are the sycophants that we often see around Bush or Rumsfeld these days, like Peter Pace, whose shameless ass kissing almost makes me ashamed to have been a Marine.

The shortage of experts problem became painfully apparent a few years ago when the LA Prosecutors Office discovered it couldn't gain a conviction in a criminal case because all the really great Lawyers (like Greta Van Susteren) were either Senior Legal Analysts on Wolf Blitzer or Bill O'Reilly's staff or consultants on one of the several dozen CSIs or LA Laws which now crowd the cable channels.

So it was, in the oil industry, that, while the corrosive forces of Rapid Arctic Pipeline Oxidation were working twenty four hours a day at their insidious task of suddenly destroying the pipeline infrastructure, most of the energy experts were busily engaged in explaining to TV audiences how oil markets work, diagramming the "Law of Supply and Demand" and finding other ways to cover up their aberrant greed and criminal behavior.

Not all of them were on TV, great numbers of these well oiled cats had been employed by the Bush Administration to make sure that the energy and oil industries, with their all the attendant environmental problems of their oil fields and refineries, pipelines and supertankers, were less regulated than, say, amateur fishermen or golf pros.

Thousands of other energy experts were hard at work in government agencies, or in the quasi private sector on the public dime, refuting Al Gore's silly ass claims about Global Warming and many more were busily searching for important evidence concerning Noah's Ark, The Shroud of Turin, and that ridiculous, on the face of it, heretical "Darwinian" nonsense.

When all the experts in an industry are completely preoccupied with things like "trees" they tend to lose sight of things like "forests," so we shouldn't be overly harsh with them for not noticing that the Alaskan Pipeline had suddenly rusted away, causing the spillage of "four or five barrels" of oil.

There were some warning signals,(aside from Neil Young's somewhat irritating, nasal, whining, social portents) which might have made them sit up and notice, like the recent, (March 2006) spillage of 267,000 barrels (that's barrels, not gallons) by the same company "BP" as in "Blowout Pipelines?" in another of its Prudhoe transit lines, which is still shutdown.

Examination of the lines in the most recent spill found that the pipeline walls had suffered losses in wall thickness of as much as 70 to 81%

BP said that this level of "corrosion-related wall thinning appeared to exceed BP criteria for continued operation."

I would think so.

Not being an expert I might have thought that the allowable limits for loss of wall thickness would be much lower, say twenty or thirty percent, at which point red flags would be raised, alarms would ring out, and teams of experts would be summoned.

I might also have thought that the 267,000 barrel spill in March would be much more reason to shut things down and fix them than the more recent spill of "four or five barrels." I was wrong, another indication that I should remember my "place" and stick to "Beer."

The only variables that I can think of that have changed since this past March are the worsening Civil War in Iraq, the onset of proxy war we have started with Iran in Lebanon, the steady drop of Republicans in the polls, and the proximity of election day. Hmmm.

But, as I'm, admittedly, not well versed in these technical matters I guess I'll just have to trust the oil people and our government that is so diligently regulating the oil industry and their activities, and fervently protecting the public interest.

When they next get together, these folks from the Bush Government and Big Oil, perhaps at their next family outing, after the potato races, and potato salad, the hob nobbing and the apple bobbing, they will attack these problems, and using all their skills, expertise, and the competence that has become a hallmark of the GW Bush Administration, they will rapidly correct them.

Yes, I'm sure of it, they will correct these problems, with all dispatch, quickly, suddenly, in fact, at the speed of .... rust.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

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Is WaPo "Sleeping Over" On K Street?

2006-08-03T20:42:00.000-04:00

In a "News" story in The Washington Post this morning
"An Estate Tax Twist Reverses Party Roles On Minimum Wage" Staff Writer Jeffrey Birnbaum leads with one of the most disingenuous paragraphs I have read in a major newspaper in awhile:

For years, organized labor has worked hard to raise the minimum wage, while business groups have campaigned to block such a change. This week in the Senate, however, the AFL-CIO is pushing to kill the wage increase while practically the entire business lobby is demanding that it pass.

Perhaps the word disingenuous isn't strong enough, in fact my departed Quaker Grandmother would have said, "why that Jeffrey is full of beans." My equally departed Grandfather would have agreed with her, but not being cut from quite the same Quaker mold as Grandma,he would have differed with her somewhat on the nature of Mr. Birnbaum's stuffing.

Either way the statement is simply untrue and Birnbaum and his employer are, or should be fully aware of the fact.

Either they are trying to follow John Stewart into the "Faux News" genre and making the attempt without benefit of Stewart's wonderful sense of humor and unique talent for satire or they are in Grandma's phrase "full of beans."

The Democrats and the AFL-CIO are not fighting against an increase in the minimum wage at all and the Republicans are not fighting for it, any more than they are fighting for anything else that doesn't directly benefit the top several percent of those they represent.

Oh the hell with it Grandma, I'm not a Quaker at all, I think the Post and Birnbaum are twisting the truth and this story is just a another sad lie.

The most cursory examination of the AFL-CIO website would have been enough to convince anyone of the organization's solid and long held stand in favor of minimum wage increases in general, and their belief in the current crying need for this particular long delayed raise for entry level workers.

The AFL-CIO has been running a series of articles this summer under the banner "America Needs A Raise." They have repeatedly called for the passage of an increase in wages in this session of congress and have repeatedly pointed out this bill as the legislative fraud that it is.

I have excerpted or linked to a couple of them here and here on my website. I have read several others and ....

(As I was writing the last sentence, my email alarm lit up with the news of yet another of the AFL-CIO's articles by the aforementioned Mike Hall. It seems that the Senate may have a cloture vote vote this evening on a motion to proceed on this issue. The AFL-CIO is calling for a vote against the bill but for the wage. Read it here.)

The fact is that the bill that was passed last week by 230 cynical, and "on the take" members of the House was a disgusting and deceitful fraud which increases the minimum wage with one hand and steals it back with the other by offering another 750 billion dollars in tax cuts and other quasi legal boondoggles to the already bloated millionaires among us. Read Mike Hall's article of August 1 on this on the AFL-CIO blog.

While you're there do a search of the site for "minimum wage" and after reading what you find reread Jeffery's lead paragraph and tell me that he is not living in the same parallel reality as the majority of the modern Republican party.

There has been no "Role Reversal." Republican's are simply trying to steal a march by passing a fraudulent wage bill before the election and make it more palatable to their multi- millionaire masters in business by allowing them to expropriate another trillion dollars or so in federal revenue over the next decade, while partially making up for the loss by stealing from the tip jar of the person who served your lunch today.

(For two related articles concerning workers and tips go here and here.)

As Lyndon Johnson used to say, They're pissin' in my boots and tellin' me it's raining."

The Democrats on the other hand want a stand alone wage bill, unburdened by giveaways to the wealthy or any of the other economy weakening sleights of hand, shell games and poison pills included in the shameful bill passed last week by 230 graft sucking thieves and liars in the House of Corporate Representatives.

There is a quotation toward the end of the article worth noting:

"Every closely held business in America today is either affected by the death tax or could be affected by it," one top business lobbyist said. "At the same time, less than 3 percent of the country's workers get paid at the minimum wage." In addition, the lobbyist said, "people in the business community understand that it is valuable to Republicans standing for election in November to demonstrate that they have compassion for folks at the lowest end of the economic ladder."

Where this K Street Fat Cat Corporate Shill gets his 3 percent figure I don't know, I suspect that the real number is easily two to three times that high, but no matter. If the number is only 3 percent that's 5 million people, people, many with families, including children, honestworking people, working for far less per year than that fat cat lobbyist quoted above or the venal, corrupt congress person he sleeps with makes in one month.

The Senate is now called upon to show that it has the simple political courage to stop this legislative flimflamery and kick this stinking cow pie out of the yard, which will leave the way open after recess, for the introduction of real legislation that if written with the intent to improve the lot of the least compensated among us will benefit millions of hard working honest Americans, and bring economic and social benefits to the rest of us.

Nothing else is acceptable. As Birnbaum correctly points out our Legislative Houses of Happy Hookers have denied an increase for nine long years. During this time inflation, the ever increasing greed of Corporate America and the economy wrecking foreign and domestic misadventures and follies of the Republican majority have eaten away at the already pathetically meager buying power of the miserly wages that millions of our working poor suffer under.

It is worth mentioning that during this time the same congressional swine have every year increased their own pay through "automatic cost of living increases" to the tune of thirty five thousand dollars above what they made nine years ago, or more than three times the current annual income at the minimum wage.

They have pulled themselves up by their own ~~bootstraps~~ Gucci Loafer Tassels to a quite comfortable figure of more than $165,000 annually. They "earn" as "public servants" about three thousand dollars more in one month than the minimum wage earner sweats for in a year.

These figures are approximate and do not include their lavish and often padded expense accounts, the best health care and pension plan the public's money can buy, the dozens of other congressional perks, and all that they are able to steal with the help of their well heeled corporate constituents and the lobbyists whose laps they dance on.

Jeffery Birnbaum and the Post are as cognizant as I am of the fact that the political poles have not reversed themselves on this issue or any other issue. They are also well aware of the role that corporate money plays in congressional politics and I'm afraid they have become too enamored of it.

Further, I believe they need to carefully examine their motives and standards, if they continue to print such transparently biased and twisted nonsense, I will have to wonder if they are waking up with their hair tousled and legs all tangled amid the filthy and fetid bed linens of the same K Street Money Masters where so many of our "public servants." find themselves on most mornings.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

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Bush In Jail, A Pet Dream

2006-07-28T23:06:00.000-04:00

The Presidency or Regency of George Bush the Lesser is nothing more or less than a vast carefully crafted criminal enterprise.

The Bush Administration and it's extended crime family has taken organized crime from the mean streets and ethnic social clubs of urban America and transferred it high above those meager environs into the steel and glass, leather and mahogany world of the American Corporate boardroom.

The scale of the criminality of the members of this nefarious organization would make the most experienced and successful Mafiosi or Asian or Russian gangster weep with wildly envious frustration.

No criminal organization in history has had the raw and overwhelming economic power, the political clout, the global reach, the enormous public relations network, the military might, the cooperation of law enforcement and the assortment of like minded corrupt compatriots in the church, the press and nearly every institution of society.

This is the "Military Industrial Complex" that Dwight Eisenhower warned against nearly half a century ago, but in that ensuing span of time it has grown into something that I doubt even Ike could have anticipated. It's a "Military Industrial Complex" on steroids.

Eisenhower wasn't the only one to provide advance warning of the rapine now being unleashed on America and the rest of the hapless world, the culprits themselves have loudly announced themselves publicly and proudly for as long as I can remember.

Get government off our backs was the clarion cry in the 64 election. The conservatives' hatred of government was equaled by their love for business, ahh the idea of a marketplace unfettered by government regulation, free from public scrutiny, allowed to operate without the threat of legal sanction, or environmental strictures, made many a Conservative of the sixties wax poetic. It was the era of Bill Buckley's sweetest dreams.

Their hatred of government was also equaled by their hatred for the people in whose name the Government was constituted. People weren't meant to rule, they have no standing, the government, if we have one at all should be run by and for business, after all they are the ones with an ownership stake in America. Wage earners should not have that kind of control.

People were only necessary as low cost labor to keep the machines turning, the trucks loaded and moving, and as consumers for the products of the company store, at compound interest, of course.

It would be self defeating to allow these same people to have any real control over the government, it would only lead to control over business.

America at the time was reawakening to it's own true values. The values which brought about a Bill of Rights in the face of bitter conservative opposition in the eighteenth century were about to finally force America, well into the twentieth century, to recognize that Black people were full citizens, and Gee, Women too, that every person was entitled to economic justice, that there was more to promoting the common good and the pursuit of happiness than hard scrabble, dog eat dog, dollar twenty five cents an hour, wage earner competition in some sweat shop.

America discovered it's conscience, it was the age of Aquarius, Pete Seeger's folksy dream.

The Republicans were put to bed in 64 but they didn't sleep, they festered, they fed in the dark on the societal schisms of Vietnam, on laughter they saw as license and sexuality they defined as sin. They fed on violence, assassinations, riots in the streets, on civil unrest on a scale that hadn't been seen since the twenties.

They rose from their slumber singing their songs of derision for the people and their government, and they sang their poison to the people, they sang a melody of racism and class war and the "Greatest Generation" sang along.

My Father's Generation turned it's back on America and elected the first criminal federal administration in my lifetime, the President who "was not a crook."

J Walter Thompson was in the White House, Pat Buchanan was in the EOB and the great Silent Majority, Hard Hat, Propaganda Machine was born.

Build for war. Sell bombs, think plastics.

It was Brown and Root's ultimate revenue stream dream.

Having enjoyed the fruits of middle class America, having lived the good life on years of well paying union jobs the "Greatest Generation" turned their back on the unions, on the party that helped to build them, on younger workers, on their own children and bought into the big Republican lie.

The reaction to the Watergate scandal and the public airing of the bottomless corruption of the Nixon Agnew Crime Family brought a few brief years respite from the conservative onslaught on America, but as always the conservatives were waiting in the wings.

When next a major speaking role opened up they offered up a rapidly aging hack "B" actor whose conservative credentials included nearly tripling the size of State Government in California (although they didn't present it quite that way) and the same "Greatest Generation" that gave us Richard Nixon now gave us eight years of towering, blathering, mediocrity and homespun homilies.

Fortunately he slept through large portions of his second term. This was the era of Bonzo's wet dream.

Daddy Bush entered the White House on a carpet greased with Saudi Arabian Light Sweet Crude and proceeded to make money for fellow Bonesmen and associates all over the world but the Dictator that he helped prop up in Iraq while he played second banana to the Great Communicator reared his ugly head and in trying too hard to stay on the Saudis' good side, he got on the electorate's bad side, but he and Jim Baker had laid the cornerstone for what would become his somewhat addled son's turn at the trough, and so entered Bill Clinton.

Peace and prosperity, eight years worth, which drove the conservatives absolutely batshit, howling, moon barking insane. The rumors and lies told by conservatives about this man, the constant, concerted attempts to derail his presidency already fill a million pages.

But more than sugar plumbs danced in Billy's imagination and he decided to wreck his presidency his own damn self.

This was an era high dry cleaning expenses.

Which brings us back to the current and most blatantly criminal Presidency/Regency of all time.

The underachieving, draft dodging, little preppy snit that the Supreme Court rammed down our public throat began his career as Regent by, most probably, suborning election fraud in the State of Florida.

He went on to begin staffing federal regulatory agencies almost without fail with cronies and cronies of cronies who came directly from the industries that they were supposed to be regulating.

By the end of his first term there was not a chicken coop in the federal government that wasn't being carefully guarded by a fox.

The revenue that began to flow into Republican coffers as a direct result of this approach to staffing was phenomenal. Businesses were very grateful and they showed it the way it counts.

The more they received the more they gave and now just a few years later they virtually own the government.

Dedicated people who had spent their lives protecting the people's interests from unethical sharks in the criminal business community and those in government who aided them left government service in droves because they were prohibited from doing their jobs.

After 9/11 after ascertaining that most of the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia he decided to attack Iraq.

Hell, why not Mexico, or Paraguay, They were as deeply involved in the terrorist attacks as was Iraq and they apparently had the same quantities of WMDs.

No, it had to be Iraq, no matter what evidence had to be fabricated, the neo cons had already done the planning, the estimates were all done the contracts ready to sign, all the defense buddies were lined up at the trough, with Halliburton at the head of the line.

Oh God, the money in this deal was going to be enormous, like nothing in their lives. The death and destruction involved? Hey booby, we're talkin' billions here, American Kids dying by the thousands, maimed by the tens of thousands, driven half nuts by the hundreds of thousands? We're talking tens of billions in profits here.

Young George and his neo con mentors had to go to war in Iraq, the outcome of the 04 election would require enormous outlays of cash and the defense beast had to be appeased with lucrative contracts to keep the money flowing.

Public money going out to private interests and the rake backs coming in and filling the conservative coffers to overflowing, guaranteeing a nice long profitable war as long as they can control the public relations side of the equation "Terror, Freedom Democracy" "Fight them over there so we don't......"

The whole self serving deceitful mantra repeated over and over again. Keep the poll numbers within reason, keep the contracts flowing, just a couple more years and we'll own the whole damn country.

Tens of billions in profits, hell, maybe hundreds.

How profitable, depends on where you sit I guess, If you're the CEO of Halliburton or General Dynamics, you're sitting pretty, in clover, up to your tits in cool green, or gold or bearer bonds.

If you're a taxpayer or the grandchild of a taxpayer you've been saddled with a burden of debt that will never be paid. You will pay interest on your debt your whole life to enable these criminals to leave the table with their profit.

If you're a nineteen year old Marine who has just been cut neatly in half by someone's idea of religion or another's idea of democracy and you're facing a lifetime of under funded conservative neglect sitting in an antique wheel chair in a VA hospital, the perspective may be radically different still.

Bush and his Criminal Family, yeah, they hate government. They hate government, which is why they're so abysmally bad at it from a public point of view.

The duty of government according to these conservative thieves is to take public money and turn it to private use.

They're proud of their philosophy. They have think tanks to refine it.

I would like to see them all in handcuffs.

That's my pet dream.

In November we have a chance to defeat this carrion filth, and begin the process of putting many of them in prison for theft, murder, crimes against humanity and criminal stupidity.

Please help me fulfill my dream.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

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Election Secrets, Political Arcana, And Harry Truman In A Bottle

2006-07-24T20:45:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post this morning ran an article, "Bellwethers, Eight Issues That Will Shape The 2006 Elections" or one of a series of articles which is indicative of a coming surf tide of newsprint, virtual and otherwise, which will wash up on the shores of our collective consciousness over the next dozen or so weeks.

Predictions about the midterm election will curl whitely and proudly in the air and regularly and rhythmically slap our calm beaches until we are struck silly with predictions, expert opinions, and statistical analyses of the 06 election.

The pundits will come at us with all the passionate certitude, the almost messianic zeal, and none of the shyness of hordes of bookies and racing touts, or carnival barkers.

It won't be just from the Post, I can't be unfair to WaPo, (they do their job as well and often better than most), we will be assailed from all sides, flanked left and right and enveloped vertically and horizontally, surrounded front and rear by print media, broadcast media, both, national and international, by columnists, commentators, gossip mongers prognosticators and legions of attractively coifed and clad microphone wielding talking heads.

The famous, the unknown, the long standing and the novice all will join the 06 Autumn Election Assault from the Media Terranian Sea. They will 'splain it to us Lucy.

I heard the first shot of the invasion in the lead in to The Post coverage this morning, it sounded like this:

History suggests, and operatives in both parties agree, that Republicans are virtually certain to lose ground.

The party that holds the White House almost always loses House seats in the midterm elections held in the sixth year of a two-term presidency.

Only once in the past century has that pattern not held.

I think that in order to pump election coverage full of the proper quotient of statistical arcana, editors, during these critical election seasons, throw all the political writers /commentators into the same locked and padded room with the sports writers /casters /commentators, toss in a few dozen counter guys from auto parts chain stores, add a couple of insurance actuaries and you get:

Dammit Mel, you know as well as I do... The party that holds... almost always.... in the sixth year....with the overhead cam... on fuel injected models with men on base.... in late innings... Naugahyde bucket seats... during post season play.

And you can take that to the bank Mel!

I was forced to look this up (thank God and Gore for the Internet) The first problem I ran into was, what is the definition of a two term president; are three term prexys included? And what about those not elected to their first term, who were elected by the Grim Reaper like TR or Harry T, or those who didn't complete a second term due to a severe attack of unpopularity like RMN?

I quickly grew bored with all this research (I always do) and went and washed up ( I got some of that arcana stuff on me) and fixed my lawnmower instead.

The eight points in the Post's Bellwether article are certain to be at the center of the political discussion though, this stuff ain't Rocket Science, hell, it's barely Lawnmower Repair.

Bush Unpopularity

Corruption

Economy

Immigration

Iraq War

Republicans in the Northeast

Democrats in the Upper South

Ballot Issues

The last three threw me a little (that arcana stuff again) but for the most part this stuff is obvious.

To me there is only one issue at the center of the 06 election and the same issue will be at the center of the 08 election.

Regime Change

We need it, we deserve it, the country, the continent, no, all the continents, the world, the Earth, Middle Earth, Bilbo Baggins, the guys in the Star Wars bar scene, every one I know is clamoring for it, in this dimension and others.

Regime Change

Frankly, I really don't care how we get it, pitchforks and guillotines worked OK for the French, we could appeal to the UN or NATO. We could file a class action in the World Court. We could pray, oops they tell me that's how they got the current regime, better not pray.

Maybe we'll find a Democrat.

Maybe somewhere in one of our locally parallel dimensions Tom Paine or Tom Jefferson will hear our plaintive public call or Harry Truman will rise from his Heavenly Haberdashery to show us again what a true Democrat is and inspire and lead the charge to:

Regime change

I wouldn't mind an old fashioned regime change like our Liberal Founding Fathers pulled on the previous King George at all, and I've read in many places that Jefferson recommended a good fresh revolution when the people find themselves somehow returned to tyrannical and oppressive rule.

Considering everything though, I would much rather see the coming of the Night of the
Living Democrats, you might remember them, they used to say things like this: Publicly too:

"You know that being an American is more than a matter of where you or your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break. It is a respect for the dignity of men and women without reguard to race, creed, or color. That is our creed."

Or this on secrecy:

"Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix."

Or in describing the parties' basic differences:

The Republicans believe that the power of government should be used first of all to help the rich and the privileged in the country. With them, property, wealth, comes first. The Democrats believe that the power of government should be used to give the common man more protection and a chance to make a living. With us the people come first.

Or on international conflicts:

When Kansas and Colorado have a quarrel

over the water in the Arkansas River,

they don't call out the National Guard

in each state and declare war over it.

They bring a suit in the Supreme Court

of the United States and abide by the

decision. There isn't a reason in the

world why we can't do that internationally.

Or on why we lose elections:

When voters are given a choice between voting for a Republican,

or a Democrat who acts like a Republican,

they'll vote for the Republican every time.

That last quote is a real doozey, I wish all the current crop of "Democrats" would read and understand it, they might quit trying to be the Neo Liberal Tory and Lobbyist Open Bar and we might get some: Regime Change.

Actually, all these quotations didn't come from Democrats, they came from one Democrat, Harry S Truman and he stopped by this afternoon from his parallel dimension for a visit and a strategy session. Yes, my mind is beginning to slip a bit.

I'll be writing his advice down. I'll put in in a bottle and toss it on the net.

Tell those Tory fella's, it might just wash up on a beach near them.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

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Class Warfare2, Jane Works Overtime At "Big Flo's"

2006-07-22T23:47:00.001-04:00

I stopped by yesterday to visit my friend Jane who I wrote about a few days ago in "Class Warfare At Big Flo's Diner, Let Them Eat Hash."

I thought it was her day off. I was wrong.

It was mid afternoon on a steamy Saturday and she was ironing her uniform for work, but she poured me a beer and we sat on her front porch and talked for an hour or so about the article.

She was amazed, as was I, that so many people, hundreds, took the time to comment on our portrayal of her dilemma, and did so, for the most part, in a positive and supportive fashion.

There are a few ironies involved in this story that I didn't report as I felt that they had nothing to do with the "guts" of the story which, I believed, was the rampant and criminal exploitation of the working class, specifically, of my friend Jane, by the criminal class that is corporate America.

I suppose that the major irony, and I'm sure that many have already guessed this, is that when Jane arrived at "Big Flo's" ten years ago she was a disaffected Democrat who had become a Reagan Republican and voted for George HW Bush and would later vote for his addled progeny, Shrub.

She is open about her disdain for, and disappointment with, our minority party over the past decade and more, and at times in that period was enthusiastic about her support for Bush.

Her enthusiasm though, has steadily waned as her financial condition has weakened under the pro business anti labor policies of the administration of "Bush the Lesser."

Jane says she will probably return to the Democratic fold in this coming election as she comes full circle and accepts her new mantle as a "Disaffected Republican" ( I like that phrase, I find it ... musical, almost joyful.)

I'm sure that Jane is just one of millions of working class people who have spent a great deal of time and energy since the Reagan era, voting for people who despise and neglect them, publicly supporting policies that abuse and impoverish them, and finally gently stroking the gloved fist of the masters who beat them.

I have a feeling that this fact speaks, certainly, to a large amount of political naiveté in our electorate, but even more points to the enormous strength of the Republican, Corporate, Religious propaganda machine that with the almost limitless funds at it's disposal, successfully disseminates lie after lie in their education of ... well, Jane.

I say that to tell you this.

Jane works overtime for "Big Flo's" for free.
Yes, free, and here, as I promised, is another irony: she considers it a perk, granted to her because of her long and faithful service and her position as a team leader.

Here's how it works: The Corporation sets strict guidelines for the operation of individual locations. Through the arcane ministrations and dictates of their legion of bishop like CPAs they pass along regular fiats regarding every aspect of management to the bottom tier of the organization.

If the head CPA wizard says that food costs must not rise above 35%, or labor costs will not exceed 18% then those commandments are carved in stone tablets and placed around the neck of the individual store manager. It is holy writ from on high, and woe unto any lowly slug of a manager whose budget shows abnormally high expenditures for fried okra or dinner rolls.

But labor is another thing. States generally don't pass laws about how a restaurant spends money on food or beverage, but they do, for the good of all of us, regulate the number of hours that an employees can be required to work before they must be compensated with a premium rate of pay their efforts.

In Ohio the limit is forty hours in one week and after that the employee must be paid at their hourly rate plus one half.

In Jane's case this would make her wages of $2.36 per hour skyrocket to an astronomical and potentially, economy wrecking $3.54 per hour for every hour she works over forty.

This would be an egregious and possibly catastrophic violation of the holy writ on food costs which might turn the entire restaurant industry on it's ear and cannot be permitted.

Restaurant's must be fully staffed in order to meet the expectations of their customers or the customers will leave and become someone Else's customers. Diners tend to be picky about slow service, cold food and other un niceties affecting their dining out experience.

Restaurants also experience a high volume of employee turn over (one wonders why) and there are vacation schedules and illnesses, family emergencies, broken cars, dogs swallowing car keys, plain old garden variety hangovers or sometimes just a lack of interest in reporting for such a crummy job and well ...even ... lies, anyway, a great variety of reasons why employees call off work.

But someone must be there to serve the fried okra and the dinner rolls to an ever voracious public, hence on many a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, when Jane's compliment of weekly hours has been filled, when clocking any additional time will require paying her over time, her phone rings with a request to fill in for Marie or Rose or Belle or Jerry and she dutifully irons a uniform, cancels whatever plans she had for her day off and reports in, to cover the hole in the battle lines of the fried okra frontier.

"Big Flo's," is of course, filled with gratitude at this selfless exhibition of dedication and loyalty and happily reciprocates by paying her ... nothing.

Nothing ...... Nothing and no/100s. Zippola.

Were she to be paid, her pay would have to be at the rate of time and a half because the extra shift puts her over forty hours for the week.

To pay her over time would threaten the holy writ regarding labor as a percentage of overhead, violate that entire relevant chapter of the gospel according to CPAs and possibly throw the entire food service industry into turmoil, at the least, certainly, manager's heads would roll all the way to the district level.

No, the only sound business solution, and the only fair way to handle this and not threaten the sanctity of the bottom line is for Jane to work for free, to come in, cover the shift, not clock in, not receive compensation from a company of over twenty five thousand employees, to work for tips only, and she does it at least twice a month, because, "I need the extra money."

You know the drill, the car needs a new battery, behind on the gas bill, a Grand child's birthday, saving a few bucks for Christmas, whatever.

In addition, she also knows that to refuse or to complain might cause her to lose her position as "Team Leader" and have her hours cut back to twenty four as well as suffer an hourly reduction which might just be the difference between her small but comfortable apartment in a nice area or some hellhole in subsidized low income housing.

That old "Big Flo's," they're a "family" oriented company and pride themselves on their old fashioned American values of God and Country, of loyalty, dedication and hard work. Why. many of it's executives are Christian men who sit in the front rows of their churches.

Well, a couple of years back a few employees (commies no doubt, hell, probably even liberals) sued "Big Flo's" for violations of the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act specifically for the kind of criminal behavior described above.
Given the nature of our pointy headed activist court system poor old "Big Flo's" was forced to settle, for millions. No criminal charges, no admission of guilt, no public scorn or ridicule, our pointy headed courts aren't that pointy headed.

No one is allowed to discuss the settlement though. By corporate fiat, managers are forbidden from discussing it with the help and the help is forbidden from asking management about the settlement.

They have however provided claim forms that employees can send in to corporate if they want to share in the award for claims for unpaid overtime or other abuses.

Jane showed me her claim form, she's had it for a year, I don't think she's going to file, she depends on her job, to stay alive, in America.

The phone still rings on Saturday or Sunday and Jane, ever loyal, ever diligent still covers the battle lines in the okra wars.

For Tips only.

We have had, I believe, eighteen years of Republican administrations out of the twenty six years that have passed since Reagan was elected.
For the past twelve we have faced almost total control by the most thoroughly corrupt governmental and corporate structure that, to my knowledge, has ever existed in this country.

To make matters worse, much worse, our minority party has spent a great deal of it's time and squandered it's political capital trying to appear to be the Tories go Litely, but with better cocktail parties.

The end result is that my friend Jane and millions of others like her are standing in line for minimum wage, or less. Or nothing.

Or tips.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

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Class Warfare2, Jane Works Overtime At "Big Flo's"

2006-07-22T23:47:00.000-04:00

Class Warfare At Big Flo's Diner, Let Them Eat Hash

2006-07-21T08:15:00.000-04:00

The minimum wage battle continues, with unions and workers fighting for an entry level raise for honest American workers that has been denied for nearly a decade while the dispassionate empty suits of business, their lackeys in local and national Chambers of Commerce, and the evil lick spittle minions they have purchased wholesale in our government at all levels, make pious pronouncements about the "marketplace" and the peril of allowing the government to regulate wages.

In the meantime, I've been talking to my friend, Jane.

Jane is a hardworking person, a decent, honest, American citizen, whose children are grown and now, divorced, has found herself forced to stay in the workplace to support the cost of her health insurance.

Jane has worked in the service sector as a Server in various restaurants for many years. As I say, she has a good work ethic and goes in every day, works hard, hustles and takes care of her customers, many of whom are regulars and patronize the restaurant in large part due her friendly attitude and the good service she provides.

The company that Jane works for is a large one with more than twenty five thousand employees working all over the country in various restaurant enterprises as well as other areas of the industry. (This ain't Ma and Pa Kettle's Corner Choke and Chew.) They are a very successful company and make a lot of money. A whole, big, heaping lot of money.

Their upper management is exceptionally well compensated and middle management is able to live very comfortably. The individual managers make a decent living, but, being at the bottom of the management food chain, they are often taken advantage of with long hours, chronic micro-management and the ever present threat of uncertainty in their continued employment.

And then there's Jane. Jane worked thirty five hours last week, from four in the afternoon until closing time, which is usually around eleven in the evening. She works five shifts a week, bustling around performing all the functions expected of her by a demanding management and an often more demanding clientele. She does her job as a Server well, with an easy grace and earns decent tips. (Note the word decent.) (Also note the word earns)

Jane manages, on the tips she brings home after taxes, to support herself in a small apartment, drive the twenty five mile round trip to work in an older model used car of somewhat questionable reliability, and rise each day to iron a fresh uniform to do it all again. She has worked for this particular company for ten years.

For the services she provides to the company, let's just call them "Big Flo's Diner and Steam Table Amalgamated International Restaurant Barons and Bloated Plutocrat Chop House" they pay Jane two dollars and thirty six cents an hour. That's $2.36 per hour and Jane is a "Team Leader," the others on her team,, the "Team Members" make $2.13 per hour.

Let that settle a minute.

Thirty five hours at $2.36 per hour comes to $82.60. for a week's worth of work, five days, thirty five hours, hustling through the rushes, being gracious to all, waiting tables, dealing with kitchen screw ups, correcting mistakes, being a diplomat, for ironing five uniforms, for buying gas at nearly $3.00 per gallon and driving one hundred and twenty five miles back and forth to work every week ...... $82.60.

That is all it costs the company, ("Big Flo's") to have her available, to have her show up every day with her friendly personality, her ability to make customers feel comfortable and well treated five out of seven days a week .... $82.60

From the princely sum which "Big Flo's" pays her, the Government of the United States extracts it's Federal Withholding Tax and Social Security, the State of Ohio puts it's gentle grasp on it's due, and the City of Dayton, Ohio takes their cut.
She invests part of the remainder in a 401K (Her portfolio would not impress you) and also pays her health insurance. (Nor would her medical plan)
When she takes her check to the bank every week she makes out a deposit slip for $13.00 and change, and not much change.

The Congress of the United States recently accepted another cost of living increase which brought their annual compensation to something over $165,000. They have received these increases with clockwork regularity for the last eight years. In all, over this period, they have granted themselves cost of living raises of over $35,000. The aggregate sum of their annual cost of living increases during this period is close to the median income for an American family of four. And we're talking about one venal, blow dried, charlatan bastard in a lunch stained power tie with martini breath, cheese in his teeth and his hand in America's pocket.

That, amount, $35,000, is more than the total Jane has been paid by "Big Flo's" in over eight years or 20,000 days. But who's counting?

I am.

Lee Raymond of Exxon Mobil fame, (infamy in some quarters) who is possibly the ugliest and most hideously bloated of all of our current crop of wretched American plutocrats and robber barons is reported to have been compensated at the rate of $144,000 a day over the last ten years.

On one Casual Friday Lee Raymond came to work, probably around mid morning, left early for a Friday afternoon round of golf with a foursome of like minded criminals and made more money than Jane has been paid by "Big Flo" in her entire career as a Server.

Jane would probably have to work six months to pay the greens fees.

For every dollar of excess profit that this company and the myriad of American businesses of the same ilk salts away, for every dollar of executive bonus, for every outlandish perquisite and privilege, there is a dollar missing from the pay envelope of an honest hardworking and decent person like Jane.

Minimum wage hell, Fair wage, Living wage, anything less amounts to the same serfdom that brought these disgusting one per centers their wealth, power, and ultimate political control in the first place.

It is time for class warfare all right, it has been waged from the top, and upon the bottom economic tiers of society for most of human history.

It is past time for a reversal, for labor to stand and demand, no, to seize it's due and unpaid wages.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

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Can You Hear Me Now?

2006-07-16T18:57:00.000-04:00

Can You Hear Me Now?

For the last couple of years whenever the Chowder Head portrayed above has appeared on my TV screen I have instantly reached for the mute button on my TV remote.

I simply cannot stand the sound of the fraudulent bastard's voice anymore, and, having heard and read enough of him during the first few years after his torturous and calamitous appearance on the national scene, I know full well that he will not speak one word of truth nor provide even the smallest morsel of important information.

At this point I am all too aware that he will offer nothing to enlighten or edify, nothing that will come close to inspiration or even mild interest, so I have formed a firm habit of hitting the mute button whenever I see his smirking face invade my screen.

Twice in the last week I made the mistake of not reaching for the remote when this, our current court appointed resident of what now passes for the White House, has appeared on the TV screen.

I've been somewhat distracted recently by the incessant attacks of my new kitten, who seems to have declared a personal jihad against my feet. I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time and attention warding off his feline forays and lightning raids against my lower digits.

Being distracted I forgot the remote and heard my least favorite grinning idiot make several references to a pig at a press conference in Stralsund, Germany. In his repeated attempts to divert the focus away from his lack of knowledge and preparation, he instead drew attention to his thoroughly sophomoric sense of humor a half dozen times with references to the boar that was being roasted for dinner.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel looked like she'd rather be anywhere else, while our national embarrassment avoided serious questions and played his arrogant and foolish game.

The second instance when I had our "National Sum Of All Morons" inflicted on me in the last few days was another press conference which was held before the beginning of the G8 conference in Russia with Vladimir Putin, whose KGB soul the Bush has experienced to it's very depths.

I listened to him hem and haw, appreciate this person and that event, mention the bits and pieces that (supposedly) he and Putin had talked about and how much hard work it was, and stutter and stammer over material that he had no knowledge of nor any obvious interest in.

I felt like I was watching an errant seventh grader give an oral report on a book that he hadn't opened. Embarrassing for everyone concerned.

This guy is the original empty suit. It isn't that the Emperor is naked, no, in our case his keepers are dressing him all right, just like old J Fred Muggs, right down to the bicycle, the red tie, and the goofy helmet. The problem is that there's no Emperor there, the guy is a wraith, a figment of some neocon publicist's imagination.

They might as well use a dressmaker's dummy accessorized with a cowboy hat and a pair of boots smeared with imported French horse crap. I now finally and fully see the essence of what Gary Trudeau has been drawing these last five years. All hat, no cattle.

There is no substance in this person, no seriousness, no real qualities of character, no honesty, no compassion, no courage, no.....just ....no. His glaringly obvious ignorance and incompetence precede him with such clamorous fanfare that they are only slightly shielded by his colossal arrogance.

Natalie Maines got in trouble a couple of years back by expressing her embarrassment at being from the same state as the Lesser of Two Georges. Hell I've only driven through Texas twice in my life and I'm embarrassed, what's more I was born in Connecticut, which is cause for great groaning pangs of abject humiliation.

Friends thought me strange when, while sitting in my living room they watched me shut the sound off to protect myself from being further inflicted with the abuse of the constant stream of utter banalities and non sequiturs that emanate from the grinning countenance of this, our decider, der grossly addled administrator und would be Fuhrer.

Wall Street Journal commentator Jonah Goldberg takes Democrats to task in my local Sunday paper this morning for what he calls the Bush hatred "that drives, or poisons almost everything in liberal politics now."

Sorry Jonah, it's just that there's nothing there to love, and, since there's nothing there at all but a grinning, chicken hawk, fraudulent cowboy wraith who has been used by the wealthy and powerful in their latest attempt to destroy America, I am left with "Bush hatred," which is less, I suspect, a hatred of the man, than it is a hatred of the very idea that such a complete and harmful fraud, such a giant bunco flim flam, at the same time as absurd as it is exceedingly dangerous, could have been perpetrated on my country and, indeed, on the whole damn world.

But, as this is still what's left of America, I don't have to listen to the pathetic, lying, criminal son of a bitch.

Gimme the remote. Go away cat.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

Technorati Profile

As Long As You Have Your Health, Mow The Lawn

2006-07-10T21:40:00.000-04:00

I want to report to you on today's rare but regularly scheduled meeting of the Bar stool Academy of Science which holds it's sessions from 3:00 to 5:00 on days that end with the letter Y.

From three to five may seem to most to be somewhat longer than the average hour, and most would be right, if they have failed to allow for relativistic effects (Relativistic effects of time fully explained) and the size of the gas tank on my lawn mower.

Actually, due to some ongoing health problems, back, knees, lungs, heart, vascular system, pesky things really, chronic arthritic pain, shortness of breath and chest pains being, perhaps the peskiest, but I digress. Due to these health limitations my bride insists that I not mow the lawn and that I curtail my daily cosmological investigations and consultations with the usual suspects at the pool hall, which is where this august gathering is held.

When I prepared to leave for my daily seminar earlier today the bride objected and stated that the beers and the smoke in the atmosphere of the Academy meeting room might be deleterious to my health. Actually she said:

"That Damn pool hall will end up killing you"

I objected back that my dogged and devoted pursuit of the secrets of the natural and social world was critically important and worth the risk of a few beers (the scientific community around here tips a a few jars) and the short term inhalation of the hearty yet, somewhat viscous, pool room vapors. Her reply:

"Well, if you're feeling that frisky, mow the lawn before you go kill yourself on a bar stool."

Somewhere in that single, simple, declarative sentence, I believe, lies the key to unlocking the ancient and arcane secrets of the logical processes of the mind of the fairest gender.

Just seconds ago she was worried that sitting on a bar stool in the somewhat noxious atmosphere of the pool hall would bring about my demise, and now she insists that before I pursue the first dangerous activity, I must take the much greater risk of pushing a lawn mower in the hot sun, on a high pollution day, in my somewhat weakened condition. I fired an answering broadside in her direction:

"OK Honey"

I suspect that she fears that the limited strains of the first activity might only bring about a debilitating stroke and she'd end up wiping apple sauce off my chin for the next several years, whereas with the addition of the second and much more strenuous activity I might go out with one great, dramatic, fully insured gasp of surprise at the capriciousness of fate. Like gardening with Brando. Marlon Gardens?

Ah well, I did not come to this battle without years of training and preparation and I am ready for her.

I went to the back yard and got the mower from it's shelter, checked the oil, filled it with fresh gas, fired the internal combustion beastie to life and made a pass around the yard until my breathing began to labor.

Enough, I had done my part on this day to insure domestic tranquility.

I pushed the mower behind the garage, out of sight of the house, but well within hearing range, and left it running there, and, somehow, feeling years younger, I strolled, light of heart, the several blocks to the pool hall.

I reflected on the fact that the oversize gas tank on this mower had been worth the extra expense. I estimated that I had two hours at fast idle until my little friend ran out of fossil fuel and my game would be discovered.

The local scholars were in full swing when I entered the smoky, yet hallowed hall of timeless wisdom and dissolution and, as Vicky the Beer Goddess brought me a longneck, Mike the Painter asked what had delayed me.

"I'm mowing the lawn" was my reply.

Mike reflected for a moment, or maybe left us for one of his "vacations in catatonia" and after a minute he said:

"Bob, I know a little about your medical situation and I don't think that you should be mowing the lawn, especially on a day like this."

"I know Mike," I said, "but I feel that I need to hold up my end around the house, health problems or not." Dripping, Nay, oozing martyrdom.

Did I feel guilty about this charade? Not so far. In fact, I was reveling in my juvenile deceptions. and after a couple of beers I returned to the house, but, as I came up the alley I noticed that things were awfully quiet, "too quiet." as they say in the thrillers.

Had "my little friend" run out of fuel? Had my subterfuge been discovered?

I skulked across the yard and got halfway to the garage before I realized that the lawn had been freshly mowed and the mower had been returned to it's place under the shed roof.

"What the hell" had barely crossed my lips when my neighbor, Steve and his wife Kim, hailed me from two houses away.

They explained that they had stopped by to mow for me and found the mower running and figured that I had forgotten it momentarily and gone to the house to take a break.

I managed to thank them and stammer out a lame explanation and went inside. My bride looked up from her book and asked.

"Any problems from mowing, do you feel Ok?" Who was at the pool hall?

"Just the usual suspects, I answered, "no, I feel fine, no problem."

Later, feeling lucky for not getting busted and thankful for having such good neighbors I reflected on my crimes and as I searched for some small sign of contrition in my twisted soul, it dawned on me that I need to buy a snow blower.

With an over sized gas tank.

Thanks Steve and Kim, for living in my world, and even better, in my neighborhood.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

Dropping Knowledge? Knowledge Droppings?

2006-07-02T10:48:00.000-04:00

If you could gather one hundred or so of the best minds on the planet and serve them a list of questions compiled from "ordinary people" all over the world what might you expect from such a gathering?

We may find out soon because according to the emails I've been receiving from a group called "dropping knowledge" just such a meeting is in the works:

On September 9, 2006, 112 scientists, social entrepreneurs, philosophers, writers, artists and activists from around the world will come together in Berlin, Germany, as guests of dropping knowledge. Seated around a vast round-table in the heart of the city, these remarkable individuals, renowned for the creative, social and humanistic impact of their work, will engage with 100 questions from the global public. These questions, selected by dropping knowledge's founders and ambassadors from the many thousands generated by our "What's Your Question?" campaign, will reflect the topics of greatest concern to the global public, emphasize under-reported issues and engage key themes endorsed by dropping knowledge in 2006.

I have been asked by email on several occasions to supply a question for the consideration of this august body, the idea is a bit intimidating as I'm not sure who they are. From the website they put up in concert with another group called "Allianz" I learned the following:

dropping knowledge is an intercultural platform for social change, open to every citizen of the world. Sustained by a global network of individuals, institutions, corporations and NGOs, dropping knowledge is committed to heightening social awareness, encouraging multiple perspectives, fostering a global dialog and inspiring real-world initiatives.

I'm not sure what that statement means but it sounds vaguely like corporatese for saying nothing at all which is what you'd expect of someone speaking from multiple perspectives.

Multiple perspectives? I get a little dizzy just thinking about it, reminds me a little of an experience I had when I went to an op-art exhibit after a two chili dog lunch. The only real world initiative inspired by that was a social awareness that I badly need a barf bag.

I don't mean to make light of this project because someone is spending an enormous amount of time, energy and great piles of money to bring all these sage personages together.

With offices in Berlin, New York and San Francisco, dropping knowledge operates as an international non-governmental organization with 100 percent stakeholder perspective. A public resource, it cannot be owned and is freely accessible to all, for all time.

One cynical question would be; who's paying the bills for all these offices and what about the giant table they intend to sit at:

33 metres in diameter, 103 in circumference, the Table of Free Voices incorporates a camera and microphone into each of its 112 places, allowing the complete responses of every Nominee to be recorded and catalogued as an individually searchable audiovisual portrait. The seed-material of dropping knowledge's online Archive, the estimated 672 hours of content generated at the Table will be transcribed, translated into multiple languages and made freely accessible over the Internet.

How do they know in advance that it's going to take 672 hours to answer a bunch of questions they haven't seen yet unless they're using the same techniques Dick Cheney used to get us embroiled in a Civil War in Iraq. Dick starts with the answers and works backwards, but I digress.

I'm a cabinetmaker by trade and I guess one question I'd like to ask is who do I need to see to put in a bid on building that table? I could retire on that baby. That's a big damn table.

From what I've been able to glean from the limited information offered, the central focus of this project is environmental. The website mentions such things as global warming, pollution, renewable energy and a litany of other issues that need to be addressed. That is all to the good and asking for questions from the audience is always a good idea, as they say:

Asking questions is fundamental to the practice of dropping knowledge. There is no better way to initiate a dialogue than with a question, no better way to challenge conventional thinking, discover new viewpoints and stimulate fresh ideas. To promote the practice of questioning, dropping knowledge has launched an international Internet, print and TV-based "What's Your Question?" outreach campaign, encouraging individuals, communities and organizations around the globe to submit the questions that matter to them to our website. Every day one question is visualized on the front page of our site as a 'daily question ad' to be downloaded, linked to other sites and emailed across the globe.

Well, I guess I've already asked a few questions, haven't I?

Who are these guys?
Who's financing the project?
Who are the 112 geniuses that will be seated at the "table of free voices?"
How did they arrive at 672 hours to answer a question I have yet to ask?
How do I get in a bid on the big damn table job?
Is Dick Cheney involved in this? At any level? Promise?

Seriously it would be wonderful if the smartest guys in the world could sit down in September at the mother of all conference tables and answer the questions that would

End the human slaughter of war
End the human misery of hunger
End the human degradation of poverty
End the abuses of human rights in all countries
End the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy
End the wanton destruction of human habitat, the Earth.

That would be the most successful, indeed the mother of all pointy headed seminars.

I'm going to encourage our readers at Worldwide Sawdust to send these guys some more questions. To ask your question visit their website at droppingknowledge.org.

Don't forget to ask about Cheney.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

Steve Miller, American Hero, Dies At 86

2006-06-29T18:03:00.000-04:00

I wrote a short piece a week or so ago in response to Tony Snow's ridiculous comparison of the Iraq war and the Battle of the Bulge in WWll. In that story I mentioned my friend Steve who landed at Normandy and fought through France, Belgium and into Germany.

Steve Miller died this past Saturday the 24th of June 2006.

I lost a friend, his family lost a great treasure and America lost a piece of her soul.

Steve was born in Celina Ohio on September 17, 1919. He grew up in that small town Ohio farming community and came to Dayton as a young man in the thirties seeking work in the local plants which were already gearing up the arsenal of democracy for the gathering storm in Europe and the Pacific.

I'm working from my memories of many conversations with Steve at the local VFW and the details are sketchy but I believe he joined the Army a couple of years before the outbreak of war and trained in Texas where he met Ike, his future bride and the woman he loved and treasured until and beyond her death a few years ago.

When D Day arrived Steve was a Sergeant and at the ripe old age of twenty six one of the elder statesmen of his outfit, the 173rd Field Artillery in which he commanded "Old Glory" a "Long Tom," a 155mm howitzer atop a Sherman tank one of the most effective weapons in the American arsenal in Europe. Over the last ten years he shared with me many pictures of "Old Glory" and it's young crew, his buddies, with whom he shared the next seven months of unbelievable hardship and trauma, of pain and sadness, of filth and degradation and death. Of war.

As he described it the 173rd was a "bastard outfit" pieced together from parts of others and throughout the campaign assigned at various times to the command of many different divisions. Several years ago I tracked his outfit using order of battle documents from the US Army found it phenomenal how many times the 173rd changed commands and locations, was scurried here and there in support of various units in the insane and desperate scramble of total war.

From DDay through St Lo and the fighting around Caen across France and into the bitterly cold and merciless horror of the Ardennes, St Vith and Malmedy and Bastogne this man and so many others of his generation were tested in ways that most people will never be able to imagine. Through the forests of Belgium and across the Rhine into Germany he fought for his life and those of his crew until the second of his tanks was shot out from under him and he received wounds which would keep him in military hospitals for most of the next year.

I have a picture on my computer of Steve recieving the Silver Star from Lt General Walt Gerow in January of 1945 just weeks before the engagement which ended his war.

No Rambo here, no John Wayne or Chuck Norris, just a small tough unassuming Ohio kid. No boastful, chest thumping, high fiving movie hero. A young faithful, honest, determined American kid.

Just a man who did his duty as he saw it and gave every bit of service that he was capable of to his comrades in arms, to "Ike" his bride of more than a half century, his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and to those who were fortunate enough to know and call him friend.

We will bury Steve Miller today in a grave at the Dayton National Cemetery in the company of nearly thirty thousand of his brothers, where his wife Ike has waited these last several years. I know that they will rejoice at being joined together again and forever. I am glad for them both.

I will miss the light of amusement and friendship in his eyes and the quiet noble dignity that was central to who he was as a man.

I have lost a friend, his family has lost a great treasure and America has lost a piece of her soul.

Here's to you Steve.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

The Do Nothing Congress, Offering Non Solutions To Non Existent Problems

2006-06-26T18:50:00.000-04:00

The Republican controlled US Senate, after weeks of focusing it's august attentions on such critical issues as gay marriage and the repeal of the estate tax is about to take up what some feel is another burning issue that requires the immediate attention of a country currently embroiled in two wars in which our citizens are being slaughtered daily, deeply in debt to foreign interests, under the grip of rising unemployment, crime, poverty, and lacking even basic health care for more than 35 million of it's people. The burning issue du jour is the desecration of Old Glory.

There were three, (3), THREE, instances of flag desecration in this country last year says the Citizens Flag Alliance (CFA), a group that, according to their web site consists of over 140 national organizations who are tirelessly working (providing campaign contributions) to stop this tidal wave (3) of flag desecration that is sweeping the nation. Three (3) instances and that's just this year, so far, up to right now. As of today, three.

I recognized many of the organizations listed on their web site, I even belong to one of them. I belong to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, but the VFW didn't consult me before announcing their support for this thoroughly misguided and potentially repressive attempt to amend the Constitution of the United States in order to address a non existent problem.

Another name featured on their web site is former Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham who I'm sure is continuing his patriotic pursuits from his prison cell. I'm amazed that our Reps and Sens have time to spare from their busy schedules. I'm not sure what's closer to Duke's heart , Old Glory, Jesus, or the piles of tax free greenbacks he amassed while performing his patriotic public service in the US Congress.

Senate Majority Weasel, Bill Frist, is pushing this issue hard in an attempt to unite his wacky conservative base before the mid term election in November. Apparently it's very important to the Barking Moon Bat Wing of the Republican party to announce where it stands on non existent problems and offer legislative non solutions to them to as further proof of it's incompetence in performing it's duties of government in an election year. After the wars, the economy, the energy crises, the rampant political corruption of the last six years, no additional proof is required.

A non solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

The amendment:

"The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States".

Notice, if you will, that this amendment does not make desecration of the Flag illegal, it simply says that congress shall have the power to prohibit such acts.

A Red herring, and in a moment of candor the Majority Weasel himself let this slip:

The flag is a symbol of the Constitution, he said. "If we can recapture the flag, we can begin the march to recapture our Constitution" against court decisions that take away the rights of Americans to own property, pray, post the Ten Commandments and nativity scenes, say the Pledge of Allegiance and define marriage......

I love the smell of witches burning in the morning.

I served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam in the sixties, the idea of flag burning is abhorrent to me and I am not one who worries over much about symbolism.

I've never witnessed a flag burning or other act of desecration against Old Glory and I'm approaching sixty two years on this planet, I have seen such acts performed on television but ninety nine percent of those instances took place abroad, in places, and among people who don't seem to have the same respect for America as I do, or the kind of respect for America and it's institutions shown by, say, Randy Cunningham.

Our Majority Weasel, who supports his bumbling President so strongly on Iraq and accuses the Democrats of a cut and run mentality has two sons at just the right age for service in Iraq or Afghanistan where Daddy is all too willing to serve up the offspring of other Americans on his altar of oil. I would have much more confidence in his good faith if he had a child serving in harms way but in this matter he, along with many in his party, and I'm sorry to say, in my own, is able to ignore the symbolism of the lack of service of his family but is overwhelmed by the symbolism of the burning of Old Glory.

Frauds, Flimflam Men, Charlatans all, with nothing to serve at the public table but Red Herring.

On the fifteenth of June Medal of Honor recipient Bob Kerrey had this to say about the proposed amendment:

Unfortunately, enthusiasm for this amendment appears to have grown even as flag-burning incidents have vanished as a means of political protest. The last time I saw an image of the U.S. flag being desecrated in this way was nearly 20 years ago, when the court issued its decision. Thus this amendment — never appropriate in the oldest democracy on earth — has become even less necessary. But necessity is not always the mother of legislation.

And this:

If our First Amendment is altered to permit laws to be passed prohibiting flag desecration, would we like to see our police powers used to arrest an angry mother who burns a flag? Or a brother in arms whose disillusionment leads him to defile this symbol of the nation? I hope the answer is no. I hope we are strong enough to tolerate such rare and wrenching moments. I hope our desire for calm and quiet does not make it a crime for any to demonstrate in such a fashion. In truth, if I know anything about the spirit of our compatriots, some Americans might even choose to burn their flag in protest of such a law.

And finally this:

Real patriotism cannot be coerced. Our freedom to speak was attacked — not our flag. The former, not the latter, needs the protection of our Constitution and our laws.

In yesterday's Washington post there was a letter to the editor from Brooks Minnick a military retiree with 21 years on active duty:

It's ironic, when we are battling repressive nations, cultures and religions that would seek to undermine and destroy all that we stand for, that we would demonstrate weakness in our own moral character by seeking to impose repressions of our own.
Whether over Fort McHenry in Baltimore, a battlefield in Gettysburg, a rocky hill on Iwo Jima or a desert outpost in the Middle East, the flag has always flown in proud defiance. When someone burns or desecrates one, there will always be another to rise and fly in its place, and very likely a patriot with even stronger resolve to hold it higher.

Last week I read an article posted on My Left Wing by teacherken in which he writes:

Lest any reader think the confrontation I request is not important, I want to you think seriously of the consequences. The proposed amendment would be the first constitutional limitation of the First Amendment rights which are so basic to our system. That amendment begins with our religious liberties because the Founders understood how religion could be used to suppress liberty, because they knew the recent history not only of England and the Continent, but also of the early settlement of this nation. The other four freedoms of the First Amendment are essential guarantees that we need in order to fully function as "we the people" - the true sovereigns of this nation. Restrict our political rights and we will cease to live in a democratic republic.

As the above entry would indicate I don't do scholarship, I piss and moan, sometimes effectively sometimes not so much, therefore I'll give the final word on this to teacherken at My Left Wing. Please read his article, linked below, carefully.
Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust
I draw a line in the sand. Will you stand with me?

The Sum Of All Pain, It's A Number Tony

2006-06-21T10:55:00.000-04:00

The names of twenty five hundred young men and women have been erased from the chalkboard of life by the merchants of pain and death in our government.

They were erased from the list of the living by the hands of arrogant men wielding erasers soaked in the blood of tens of thousands of others who were maimed and wounded and tens of thousands of Iraqis whose deaths they will not dignify by counting or even mentioning.

It's a number, another irritating milestone that they hope falls on Friday so that the press flap will dissipate over the weekend.

Bush's mouthpiece Tony Snow was asked last week:

American deaths in Iraq have reached 2,500. Is there any response or reaction from the President on that?

Tony Snow: It's a number, and every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks people want something. The President would like the war to be over now. Everybody would like the war to be over now. And the one thing that we saw in Iraq this week is further testimony to the quality of the men and the women who are doing that, and the dedication and determination to try to ensure that the people of Iraq really do live in a free, effective democracy of their own creation and design.

What is the number Tony? What are we counting, the dead, the injured, the lost limbs, the ruined minds, the destroyed lives?

Are we counting the grief, the pain the sorrow created by the death and maiming of so many of our sons and daughters?

Add in the parents and grandparents, the mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters and friends of those you erase. Their children Tony. Their children.

Listen to their keening sobs, the somber intonations at grave sides, the sad steady wailing of those who mourn.

The number grows doesn't it Tony? If you count the pain and sorrow, the number grows. If you count the tears of loss, the hopes and dreams shattered, the children orphaned.

The grief that has been visited upon these families will forever be a central part of their lives. I don't know what multiple or factor to use to find the number of people harmed by the deaths of our children.

Do you have a calculator Tony? Does it do exponents? You will need them as the number grows.

You and your smirking little Master are immune from the grief and suffering of course, as the criminal architects of war always are.

While you play your pathetic games of power, using the lives of our children like tokens in a board game all that matters is the score. It's a number Tony.

You risk nothing, you set up the game and take a piece of every hand that is dealt, You and your criminal friends reap the profits and you play without risk.

American deaths in Iraq have reached 2,500. Is there any response or reaction from the President on that?

Tony Snow: It's a number, and every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks people want something.

Was he told about the benchmark, the President?

Tony Snow: I don't know. I'm sure he will hear about it.

I'm sure too Tony, some one will trouble the grinning little ass with this pesky milestone and I'm sure that when this life is over, you and he and the entire criminal gang for whom you now speak will hear about it forever.

I believe in a merciful and just God and I believe that he hears ever scream of anguish, feels the wetness of every tear, the loneliness of every orphaned child, and because God is just I'm sure that he will ask you to share in listening to these screams of pain and rage, to feel the terrible loss and suffer the endless sorrow of the mournful symphony of human misery which you have helped to write and conduct.

It's a number Tony but only God has a calculator that can handle the infinite, the eternal.

That is how long you will be required to listen to your magnum opus Tony.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

Omar Khayyam

Enjoy the music.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

Snowjob Offers Bilge About "The Bulge" And Iraq

2006-06-19T12:27:00.000-04:00

White House Bilgemeister Tony Snow while appearing on one of Sunday's talk shows on CNN and trying to goose the Presidents ratings, compared the Battle of the Bulge to Iraq.

"The president understands people's impatience — not impatience but how a war can wear on a nation," said Snowjob "He understands that. If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, 'Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?' But you cannot conduct a war based on polls."

The German counter offensive in the Ardennes in World War ll was among the largest battles in the history of warfare. Three German armies, nearly thirty divisions counter attacked allied forces in the middle of December during the coldest winter in European history.

The struggle for life, death and supremacy over the ensuing six weeks was beyond epic, the carnage and suffering of the combatants was enormous, their valor and intrepidity was awe inspiring.

The facts, and any comparisons to be based on them would be better taken from John Kline of the 106 Infantry Division, a participant in one of the most epic battles in the history of war not some blow dried Chickenhawk like Tony Snow.

· The coldest, snowiest weather "in memory" in the Ardennes Forest on the German/Belgium border.
· Over a million men, 500,000 Germans, 600,000 Americans (more than fought at Gettysburg) and 55,000 British.
· 3 German armies, 10 corps, the equivalent of 29 divisions.
· 3 American armies, 6 corps, the equivalent of 31 divisions.
· The equivalent of 3 British divisions as well as contingents of Belgian, Canadian and French troops.
· 100,000 German casualties, killed, wounded or captured.
· 81,000 American casualties, including 23,554 captured and 19,000 killed.
· 1,400 British casualties 200 killed.
· 800 tanks lost on each side, 1,000 German aircraft.
· The Malmedy Massacre, where 86 American soldiers were murdered, was the worst atrocity committed against American troops during the course of the war in Europe.
· My division, the 106th Infantry Division, average age of 22 years, suffered 564 killed in action, 1,246 wounded and 7,001 missing in action at the end of the offensive. Most of these casualties occurred within the first three days of battle, when two of the division’s three regiments was forced to surrender.
· In it's entirety, the "Battle of the Bulge," was the worst battle- in terms of losses - to the American Forces in WWII.

I have a close friend named Steve who lives a few blocks from me with whom I share an occasional beer. Steve is eighty six now and fought his way from the beaches of Normandy through the frozen forests of the Ardennes until he had his second tank shot out from under him and spent the next year in military hospitals.

I have a picture of Steve receiving a Silver Star for valor from Lt General Walt Gerow.

When this so called President and his ass kissing minions say that they understand anything about war they insult my friend Steve and every one of us who served and are serving under arms. They know nothing of war and they exhibit their ignorance, arrogance, incompetence and complete lack of leadership on a daily basis.

Comparing this battle to Iraq is beyond ridiculous, the only valid comparison which could be made by any reasonable person would be the valor and sacrifice of our forces in both struggles. Of course we know that reasonable people have been lacking in the White House and around the President these last several years.

Comparing the support or lack of it by the people at home is equally absurd and flies in the face of historical fact. The efforts of our forces in World War ll were supported with near unanimity by Americans at home, as was our entry into the war itself. The reasons for going to war were clear to nearly everyone as they were based on facts and dire necessity and not a pack of neo con lies.

Support for American efforts in the war by other nations was also profound and our struggle won the respect of our allies and eventually our foes alike. Again, no comparison, as Bush and his band of dilettante hacks have squandered that respect on an ash heap of conceit and hubris.

There is absolutely nothing to compare the Ardennes campaign with anything about the war in Iraq, well perhaps two things, the gunfire and the screams of the wounded and dying sound much the same and the discordant clanging of the outrageous lies of Josef Goebbels and Tony Snow are in perfect harmony.

Now there's a valid comparison.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

Snouts In The Trough, The American Congress At Work

2006-06-16T11:22:00.000-04:00

They took a pay raise this week while ignoring the flames of two wars in the middle east, and the decline in respect, indeed, the growing distrust for America all over the world.

They accepted a pay raise of over three thousand dollars a year per do nothing congressperson while ignoring the joblessness, the stagnant wages and the economic deprivation of their constituents.

They used a cheap trick to put a few grand in their already overstuffed pockets while ignoring millions Americans without health care.

While they were stuffing thirty additional hundred dollar bills in their Louis Vuitton wallets, Americans who have waited over six years for this cynical and corrupt administration to come up with a coherent energy policy were canceling vacations due to high fuel prices.

Gay marriage and flag burning, phony expressions of support for our armed forces and bribery, greed and graft, this is what occupies the herd of criminal swine in Congress, and reelection, always reelection.

They work fewer days than professional athletes and are already paid much more than an overwhelming majority of the people they purport to "serve" but in order to prove to us that "Public Service" is "Self Service" they just added another $3300 bucks to their personal budgets while telling Americans that belts must be tightened and budgets cut for such things as education and health care for veterans.

This raise comes during a time of record low approval ratings for members of this Parliament of Sloth and Avarice, when almost everyone that I come in contact with has long ago lost all respect for these blow dried frauds.

They pull this trick year after year, making their own lives more comfortable at public expense while wages for average Americans steadily decline. Over thirty five million Americans currently live below the federal poverty level while they enrich themselves at the public trough, sell America to the highest corporate bidder and give us sanctimonious speeches about values.

The median family income in this country has been in decline for years and now hovers somewhere around $40,000 for a family... a family. Our Congress just raised it’s pay to $168,500 or over four times what his average constituents family currently lives on. This is without accounting for the fact that they have the best health care and retirement systems that the public can provide them, innumerable perks and goodies and the aforementioned proceeds from whatever illegal scams they can cook up with their corporate cronies.

Our collection of elected civic whores really have it good and looking at them makes me want to run for something myself..... the door perhaps, or a barf bag.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

The Torture Of America

2006-06-12T20:44:00.000-04:00

My America, at least the America of my birth, does not resort to the use of torture. We were taught that fact in public schools, American public schools, schools in which we learned old fashioned American values about family and fairness, values like the presumption of innocence, due process, respect for the law and the rights of man.

Others might resort to using torture, Hitler and his evil Nazi worshipers, Stalin, with his Gulags and purges, Mao and the People's reeducation camps. Torture, in those days, was for others, the Pinochets, the Batistas, the Perons, the Idi Amins of the world, torture was not an American thing.

Torture was a tool used by our primitive and unenlightened forbears, to extract information, or to punish their enemies, information, which more often than not, was useless, as the information extracted was contrived in the desperate mind of someone whose only thought was to stop the pain, to say anything, confess to any crime, implicate any person, even those he loved to make the pain stop.

We were taught of the Nuremberg Tribunals at the close of World War Two and of the unbelievably bestial behavior of the Nazis in their death camps, of the brutalization of an entire generation of human beings, of wholesale torture and the wanton slaughter of millions that followed.

We were taught that "following orders" was no excuse for participating in, or ignoring the use of methods like torture or reprisal killings, as some orders were unlawful and it was our responsibility to know the difference. We executed many in Germany and Japan who were found to have violated conventions that we and other like thinking nations had established as fundamental rules of human conduct. We imprisoned many more than we executed.

I reached adulthood believing that America had evolved to a point of ethical leadership in a world that had been horribly scarred by those who used torture and terror, who used fear and death as instruments of State policy. I took pride in my belief that we, America, as a nation had risen above such inhuman behavior and had learned to operate on an elevated plateau of conduct. In short I grew to believe that my country could claim to be among the most civilized of nations.

At the age of twenty my youthful naiveté was tested by an all expenses paid trip to Vietnam. I discovered in the process of that experience that much of the negativity being reported about my country was true, the reports of Phoenix programs and other secret and not so secret efforts of my government turned my youthful naiveté into full blown distrust of the American government and it's intelligence and military apparatus.

After Vietnam we went from one fiasco to another for the same fraudulent reasons, in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and on through Grenada and Panama misspending the flower of our youth, aiding in the brutalization of the poor and politically disenfranchised of other nations and trashing American integrity on remote and largely secret battlefields, in an effort to prop up corrupt dictatorships supported by even more corrupt American corporations.

By the time that George Bush the younger was appointed to serve as regent by the judicial minions of corporate America our government was fully in the control of the plutocrats and oiligarchs, for whom conscience, compassion and national honor had become nothing more than pathetically sad, liberal, loser jokes.

Enough.

America is not about torture.

Not my America. Not this land of my birth. Not the country that I volunteered to serve when called to service by an idealistic young President.

I have friends who have said to me recently and a government that has told me repeatedly that we can no longer follow the rules because our enemies do not follow the rules, and I say to them all: Bullshit!

I have friends who have said to me recently and a government that has told me repeatedly that everything changed after 9/11, and I say to them all: Bullshit!

One terrorist act or a thousand does not change fifty thousand years of human development, of philosophy and religion, of right and wrong of love and beauty and art.

There is only one America and it is the one that was held up to me by my Parents and Grandparents, by my teachers and my government as a beacon of freedom and justice, honor and integrity, honesty, compassion and justice.

I will permit no other America to exist on this Earth, nor should you.

Repeat after me:

America does not torture.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

November 2006 Want Ads

2006-06-10T12:21:00.000-04:00

Help Wanted:

If you are an American citizen with skills and expertise in any field relevant to the operation of the legislative, judicial or executive branches of the American government Uncle Sam wants you.

The People are currently seeking men and women with talent and competence in any area who are willing to work forty eight weeks a year at the People's business, keep their hands out of the cookie jar and themselves out of the beds of those who would corrupt the government to serve their own interests.

If you have a belief in the ability of the American people to govern themselves effectively under the Constitution of the United States without the corrosive and corruptive involvement of corporate criminals, opportunistic religious maniacs, sycophantic bureaucrats and military industrial complex madmen you may fit the bill.

If you can make it your goal while in the People’s employment to work diligently toward the material betterment of the lives, living conditions and general welfare of all of the people of the United States while insisting on the respectful and helpful treatment of those who reside elsewhere you will be headed in the right direction.

Successful applicants may come from any background or trade whether soldier, sailor, plumber or beautician, driver, mason, barber, artist or carpenter. They will be reasonably presentable in appearance, possess good communications skills, be possessed of an innate good humor and an ability to work well with others of sometimes differing backgrounds and viewpoints. They will be serious about the People’s work but never too serious about themselves.

Lack of education and the price of your clothing will not be an impediment to employment, a lack dignity, honesty, integrity, common sense, and respect for the inalienable rights of other human beings will.

Charlatans, bunko men, liars, lobbyists, racketeers and most lawyers, MBAs, CEOs and other criminals need not apply. (We are currently overstaffed at those positions.)

All interested parties please apply to the American people in November.

Incumbency will not be considered an asset.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

Travels With Congress

2006-06-07T19:41:00.000-04:00

Oh the toil, the drudgery. It's a difficult, demanding, grueling and thankless lot that falls on the shoulders of our poor overworked Senators, Congressmen and their diligent staffers. Travel here, junket there, cramped seats in corporate jets, expensive booze, four star hotels, an endless grinding cycle of golf and spas, dinner and massages, speeches and shopping and hookers, oh weariness, the hookers.

Aspen and Paris, London and Hawaii the responsibilities of their high powered servitude carry our poor beleaguered Reps and Sens and their harried minions to the four corners of the Earth in their tireless efforts on our behalf.

Off to Sidney to sell the wares of a defense contractor who donated to the last election campaign or the Bahamas on behalf of a software giant whose contributions are especially impressive.

A half hour of speaking and an interminable twenty minute meeting with boring cabinet ministers before playing one of the most challenging eighteen holes of ones political career.

The public asks much of the valiant men and women who serve in the halls of power and they deliver. So much graft, so little time.

In a study released this week by the Center for Public Integrity Jim Morris reports:

WASHINGTON, June 5, 2006 — Over a 5½-year period ending in 2005, members of Congress and their aides took at least 23,000 trips — valued at almost $50 million — financed by private sponsors, many of them corporations, trade associations and nonprofit groups with business on Capitol Hill

While some of these trips might qualify as legitimate fact-finding missions, the purpose of others is less clear.

A nine-month analysis of congressional disclosure forms for travel from January 2000 through June 2005 done by the Center for Public Integrity, American Public Media and Northwestern University's Medill News Service turned up thousands of costly excursions — at least 200 trips to Paris, 150 to Hawaii and 140 to Italy.

Congressional travelers gave speeches in Scotland, attended meetings in Australia and toured nuclear facilities in Spain. They pondered welfare reform in Scottsdale, Ariz., and the future of Social Security at a Colorado ski resort, according to the forms.

Some trips seem to have been little more than pricey vacations — often taken in the company of spouses or other relatives — wrapped around speeches or seminars.

Twenty three thousand trips in five years at a cost of fifty million bucks comes to something like 380 trips per month at an average cost of $2175. These people are incredible, they spend more time packing and unpacking than the comics and strippers of vaudeville. Heroic is the word that springs to mind, and selfless, yes definitely selfless.

Mr. Morris continues:

The analysis found many apparent violations of ethics rules. Disclosure forms show, for example, that at least 90 trips, valued at about $145,000, were sponsored or co-sponsored by firms registered to lobby the federal government. Ethics rules do not allow lobbyists to pay for congressional travel.

The forms show that about 2,300 trips cost $5,000 or more. At least 500 cost $10,000 or more, 16 cost $25,000 or more, and the cost of one exceeded $30,000. There were $500-a-night hotel rooms, $25,000 corporate jet rides and other extravagant perks. Almost three-quarters of all trips were taken by aides, who often influence how their bosses vote, negotiate in committee and interact with other government officials. All told, the travelers were away from Washington for a minimum of 81,000 days — a combined 222 years.

According to the forms, every bit of this travel was necessary.

Shame on those who call this a "Do Nothing Congress," shame.

While the performance of Congress as a group is unarguably impressive there are individual heroics that stand out, take Tom DeLay.

In terms of private travel dollars spent, the office of Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who resigned as House majority leader in January after being indicted on charges of violating campaign finance laws, appears to have eclipsed all others. Records reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity show that DeLay and his staffers accepted about a half-million dollars in trips during the 5½-year study period, although the office of Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, was only about $8,000 behind.

These men stand out like shining beacons of public service and selfless effort who have placed the bar so high that all lesser mortals must stand in awe, they truly have set an example for the next generation of public servants that will be difficult to match.

Their effort over this long five years of dangerous climbs to the highest peaks in Aspen and tortuous treks through the perils and pitfalls of the Champs Elysees have been admirably non partisan with Democrats and Republicans each shouldering their share of the enormous travel burden placed upon them by an ever demanding public.

There have been some misguided "reformers" who have called for an end to what they have termed "excessive and unethical travel on behalf of private interests" but well meaning though they may be their efforts have failed. Even Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert called for a ban on privately sponsored travel, as he said back in January:

"I know fact-finding trips are important," the speaker said. "This body considers legislation that affects people that cannot always travel to Washington to petition their government. Private travel has been abused by some, and I believe we need to put an end to it."

In it's report the Center for Public Integrity stated that

"Hastert's staff took the most trips and had the highest tab of any congressional office," taking over 200 trips worth more than $350,000 over a five-year period. The groups looked at U.S. senators and their staffs as well, but indicated that House members were far more inclined to use the privately-funded travel.

John Boehner of Ohio, travels frequently and during the five year period of the study was on the road for over five months carrying his share of the workload to the tune of $160,000 worth of privately sponsored trips. He was brought in as majority leader as a reformer but he recognizes the critical need for congressional junkets and for our congresspeople to educate themselves thoroughly about such places as Belaggios in Las Vegas.

This report was a real eye opener for me and until I read it I was terribly unaware of the sacrifices being made on our behalf by these intrepid Senators and Congress Persons. The services they render, whether performed in the steaming jungles of the Cayman Islands or on the primitive paths of Rome or London are something that every American can take pride in.

Now that the realities have been made clear to me I urge everyone to take pen or keyboard in hand and contact your Senator or Congressman and offer your profound and heartfelt thanks for the their undying devotion to the people's business.

We need to let them know how we feel.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

When You Clean A Filthy House, Begin With The Ceiling

2006-06-02T15:18:00.000-04:00

I am personally concerned and enraged about the reports coming out of Haditha and Ishaqi regarding massacres by US troops.

What is being reported, if true, is absolutely reprehensible and heads should roll. Those responsible should face Courts Martial and, if convicted, serve appropriate prison sentences.

I have no idea of the facts of what actually transpired in the incidents being reported and my reading of the US and International press has brought me no closer to any conclusion, so like everyone else I will have to await the outcome of the official investigations by both the US Navy and the Iraqi Government.

Having said that I must point out that the members of our armed forces look very much like the rest of the population of this country and whatever percentage of Americans are idiots or criminals is probably about the same in the military.

It should surprise absolutely no one that we have some psychopaths in uniform as it should be no shock to learn that there are idiots, liars and thieves at the top of many of our public and private institutions.

If we take a moment to recall we may remember that our smirking little so called Commander in Chief sent these young troops to fight a war based on a series of distortions, misrepresentations and outright goddam lies, so when they start passing out prison time to der Volk at the bottom of the military food chain let's not forget the Gorings and Rumsfelds, the Himmlers and Wolfowitzes, the Heydrichs and the Cheneys, right up to and including the Great Cowboy Decider himself.

Don't forget the filthy bastards who sent these kids to war.

A sizable number of the fat, venal, ass kissing Gauleiters in the Congress should be required to face the tribunals of justice as well as the spiritual descendants of Albert Speer who run our war industry and profit so hugely from it.

These criminals are directly to blame for the death, maiming, and dislocation of every human being involved in this hideous fiasco and they should all be held accountable right along with the private soldiers alleged to be involved in these incidents.

This government, this ugly, arrogant, self righteous neocon chicken hawk nightmare is the worst embarrassment in American history and should be removed from office.

I urge everyone to pay close attention to these events and loudly demand that accountability for war crimes go right to the top where illegal preemptive wars based on criminal lies and motivated by a lust for power, oil and money have become American foreign policy.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

The Da Vinci Code A Work Of FICTION

2006-05-31T19:18:00.000-04:00

Can you find the hidden clues in this famous painting and uncover the infamous Waldo?

I've always been a voracious reader, as far back as I can remember I felt a powerful need to read. My Mom was a tireless reader of popular novels and mysteries and my Dad was a "Great Books" reader so I grew up in the presence of books and their availability probably had a lot to do with my love of reading.

When I was five and six years old I lived half a city block from a branch library and my grandfather would take me in hand to check out a book every week or so. I remember reading the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam at the age of nine and devouring everything I found interesting in my elementary school library. I read everything, books, newspapers, cereal boxes, reading became my escape, reading became almost obsessive.

By the midpoint in High School my reading habits actually had a negative affect on my academic life as I would skip school quite often and spend the day at the Main Library in downtown Dayton lost in whatever I could find in the stacks. School bored me to tears but every book was a new adventure and the library became my refuge from school.

I point this out not to blow my intellectual horn or to lay claim to some vast storehouse of knowledge because I doubt that I've retained even a small percentage of what appeared on the pages that I've had my nose stuck in all these years. No, I point this out to assure the public that although I've been a lifelong unsupervised addictive reader I've miraculously come through the experience relatively unscathed.

I have somehow been left unharmed by the written word, although I've consumed works by tyrants like Hitler and Mao, Saints like Augustine and Francis, and inveterate scoundrels, poltroons as well as a few self proclaimed geniuses. I've read dime novels and thirty dollar best sellers, Bibles and weighty tomes, history and biography, science and pornography and through it all I have managed to avoid insanity, incarceration and the loss of my immortal soul, or so I believed until recently.

It was an article in USA today that caused me to question whether my life of undisciplined consumption of the written word has sown the seeds of eternal damnation in my soul.

To wit:
"Code" not benign
By Ted Baehr in USA Today May 18

A few pundits are arguing that Christians should read the bestselling book The Da Vinci Code and see the movie to "engage the culture" and as a tool for evangelism.
By that argument, we should encourage people to read other popular, but infamous, works: Chinese dictator Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, or The Communist Manifesto. Or, why not Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic diatribe popular in Muslim circles?
It would be wonderful to believe Christians can argue the facts to Dan Brown's hate-filled, fictitious attack on Jesus Christ, Christianity, the Bible, Christians and history. The truth is, however, that many people have not read a Bible or understood their faith sufficiently to counter the story's intricacies.
Does the average person know what Gnostic Gospels are? Are people familiar with the Catholic group Opus Dei? What is the answer when Christians are asked whether Jesus married Mary Magdalene? Did they have children? Has the church hidden important facts from the faithful? These are just some of the complex issues discussed in The Da Vinci Code Although it is fiction, it contains enough references to history to make Christians question their beliefs.
The slanderous distortions and falsehoods are as dangerous as they are numerous. The movie threatens to strike another massive blow to people's understanding and knowledge of God, Christianity and history.
Although the movie waters down the novel's anti-Christian attacks and virulent paganism, it promotes the book and contains enough falsehoods and scurrilous conjecture to distort the truth about Jesus Christ and increase prejudice against Christians.
So, what should Christians do?
Direct churches and individuals to sound books, websites and other resources to help them understand the issues. Sign the petition on www.movieguide.org expressing concern over the movie. But, most of all, don't see the movie, especially the first week of release. If you have to go to a movie, however, go see another one instead.
Dr. Ted Baehr is chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission and founder of Movieguide.org.

Now this has me a bit worried, not that my Christian beliefs are in danger, the sanctimony and hypocrisy of the Church and many of it's most vocal faithful destroyed any connection I might have with them many years ago. No, I am concerned that all these dangerous words and concepts and ideas may be rattling around inside me and creating some great cancer in my soul that would cause me to question the moral authority of such learned and pious men as Mr. Baehr.

I looked up his website and found that he is tirelessly at work in his "ministry" (annual subscription $40 US) protecting us from unwholesome books and movies by reviewing them and applying a ratings system which ranges from Good, Wholesome through Extreme Caution to Abhorrent. The Da Vinci Code received the Abhorrent rating, the movie that is, the book rated no better in the review I read on the site.

I read the book myself two or three years ago and found it to be a "good read" one of those pot boilers that will keep you in an easy chair through a long afternoon and evening and wishing for one more chapter. A "good read" nothing more, an enjoyable work of fiction, nothing earthshaking, nothing that I would ever imagine would cause the controversy and hand wringing that has arisen among some in the Christian community.

As for the movie, I haven't seen it and probably won't until it comes out on television. The last movie that I saw in a theater was "Cape Fear" with De Niro about fifteen years ago. I don't go to theaters because they won't let me sit around in my underwear and drink beer. So I can't say much about the film but old Ted Baehr thinks it's pretty dangerous and I guess that should be good enough for me.

This flap reminds me a little of the Dan Quayle "Murphy Brown" nonsense back in the eighties. I'm not sure what it is about the "family values" people or the "Christian thought police" that enables them to spot these grave dangers to my soul long before I ever notice them but they sure are good at it.

It's also very comforting that they have illuminated the moral pathway so brightly for us, and so carefully identified all the traps and pitfalls along the way that we can follow it without stumbling, with our eyes shut, even in fact, with our heads implanted deeply in the sand.

My life is surely enriched by those like Mr. Baehr who work so diligently to keep me safe from heresy and apostasy, from the blaspheming free thinkers and their dangerous ideas, from these writers of fictional filth and wanton historical speculation.

Fortunately I'm not a member of Baehr's Christian flock or herd or I might take offense at what some might see as a terribly paternalistic attitude toward the faithful and a shameful disdain of their intelligence and ability to think for themselves.

What is so frightening to these folks about a work of fiction is a mystery to me unless they fear fiction because they have always been afraid that they have based their entire lives on a work of fiction. I just don't know.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

A Democrat on the Redneck Riviera: From Public Life to Private Business

2006-05-28T13:29:00.000-04:00

A Democrat on the Redneck Riviera: From Public Life to Private Business

The Mother Of All Public Airings Of The Dirty Skivvies

2006-05-25T20:28:00.000-04:00

I read the news today Oh Boy, and then I noticed that a good cross section of the top tier of American society, the movers, the shakers, the big money makers in government, business, and the religion game, the very pillars of our community, were in prison, under investigation or actually indicted, awaiting trial or out on appeal, on the prison bus or trapped underneath two large convicts named Leroy and Bubba and I sat back for a moment and smiled somewhat wistfully.

A bittersweet moment and a brief smile because I immediately recognized that what I was looking at was a surface tremor, an advance ripple before the onset of the exposure of a tidal wave of corruption, of civic rot, of a great molting of the fraudulent upper crust, of theft and graft and mendacity in public affairs that this country hasn't overturned since Tammany Hall.

If we begin with Abramoff and Delay, Bob Taft and Bob Ney, William Jefferson and Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and if you're willing to bear with me I'll go on through Bush and Cheney and Scooter the Libby, and an unholy litany of the names of those who have deceived and betrayed brutalized and dismayed their detractors and their supporters alike but I'll drop the wistful smile and not play games with what is a deadly serious subject involving the future of our Republic.

Those who now stand before the bar of justice or behind the bars of justice do not stand alone, and like all rats they crave company and they will in time, deliver up the names of their spiritual compatriots and coconspirators in order to lessen their punishments and their prison sentences, hence the groundswell that presages the coming tsunami of cleansing of the halls of government, of business, of religion and all the other institutions they have dragged with them into the realm of public distrust.

This is a great opportunity for America in general and Democrats in particular to answer with the "Mother Of All Public Airings Of The Dirty Skivvies." It is time to clean our public house and to do so loudly, publicly and unashamedly, without mercy or apology before our countrymen, before the world and before our creator. This is an opportunity for a symbolic historical sequel to the tossing of the moneylenders from the temple. The Gods themselves exult in our good fortune and stand in line for tickets to ride and to watch.

Democrats do not wait, do not falter, this day, this very day begin to cleanse your ranks of the filth, of the rot, of all those unworthy to serve the public trust. You know them well, you have ignored and protected and excused them far too long, and they have held us back like a great sea anchor, made from the mainsail of our Ship of State and torn from it's proud and proper place flying high and boldly before the winds of history.

Take the lead Democrats and do it this day, the gods and the people wait and watch.

I bought a ticket myself.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

Petrol Pirates And Hundred Dollar Hookers

2006-05-24T10:17:00.000-04:00

Will someone please try to explain to me why the plan being proposed by Republicans and a few misguided Democrats to offer $100 rebates to, as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said, " help ease the pain that they're feeling at the pump," is not simply another major taxpayer subsidy to Big Oil?

These are federal dollars that have been gouged from our pockets by an unholy alliance of Big Oil and laissez faire Republican Government. Now, rather than institute conservation measures or put our dollars to work developing other fuel sources we are asked to borrow more money from the treasury to further enrich the already obscenely bloated oiligarchs of the corporate criminal world.

Since gas has risen in recent months it makes sense to drive less, not more. We need self imposed conservation measures on our gas guzzling culture, and quickly. If increased demand is what is encouraging the international petroleum pirates to stick their hands ever deeper in our pockets, we need to reduce our consumption not borrow money to assist them in their theft. If we drive ten percent less we will put less money in these bastard’s pockets, if we reduce our highway speed by ten percent we will put money in our own pockets and help to reduce the carnage on our highways. If we have a federal government that is too corrupt to take the lead on energy as I believe they are it is up to the citizenry to take the lead.

A return to some of the measures used in the past such as a national speed limit and real tax incentives for energy savings would bring about instant results. A national program aimed at reducing individual consumption is required. There is a great amount that each individual can do to conserve energy through the application of simple common sense and it is time to encourage the public to pay attention and turn off the lights.

I don’t think that finding solutions to the "energy crises" requires great thinkers or rocket scientists, instead I believe, that short term solutions are right under our noses and involve common sense and conservation and that long term solutions will involve using the economic leverage of the taxpaying and energy consuming public to force these oil giants to invest in more responsible methods of supplying kilowatts and miles per gallon.

I find it absurd that the Congress would think that we are a nation of hundred dollar hookers, so short sighted as to sell the economic and environmental future of our country as if we were taking out a second mortgage to purchase some unnecessary extravagance. John Stewart pointed out last week that a Democratic Congresswoman wanted to raise the ante to $500 which at least makes us higher class hookers, but hookers nonetheless.

If the revenue were coming directly from the pockets of the oil industry in the form of fines or other sanctions for their criminality, and involved no future penalties for the consumer I would applaud it and gladly accept the return of some of my money, however, such is not the case. From my point of view this is a major boondoggle for the oil criminals and a net loser for the taxpaying and driving public.

The only real power we have is to say no by driving less, slowing down, and voting out of office those "public servants" who collude with the criminal corporate class in this country.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

New Federal Ombudsman To Oversee Congress

2006-05-19T18:47:00.000-04:00

I gassed up this morning and it cost me over three bucks a gallon, on the way home I stopped at the store for a loaf of bread which cost me $1.39 for the same loaf of crappy white sandwich bread I paid $.99 for a month ago.

I pulled into the driveway, got the morning paper out of the bushes where it's easier to throw apparently than on the actual porch and learned that Afghanistan was blowing up again, the intelligence community was about to move in to my spare room, four more of our soldiers and several dozen Iraqis were killed in the endless insanity in that beleaguered country, the stock market took a two hundred point dive, and the Senate Judiciary committee had retreated into a private closet to pass an amendment to the constitution of the United States of America banning Gay marriage.

I have never been a fan of decadent and despotic dictators but Nero at least provided music while Rome burned around him. These stupid bastards are playing futile symbolic board games in the capital's hidden chambers while the republic descends into ruin

This "do nothing but give the appearance of doing something Congress" should be ashamed of themselves. The vote for this absolutely asinine amendment was, predictably, straight down party lines and the esteemed chairman Arlen Specter who had been on the record as saying he is totally opposed to it, snuck his pathetic group of Republican lickspittles into a private room to avoid public scrutiny and in a vote of ten to eight approved the measure that would be the first amendment to the constitution making discrimination the law of the land.

In a sickeningly sad political sop to the far right's "my religion WILL be your religion crowd" these ten spineless Republicans capitulated before the Dobsens, Falwells, and Robertsons and sent this shameful and embarrassing measure before the full Senate as early as June 5.

It has NO chance of passing the full Senate as it has NO chance of passing the full House of Representatives and exactly the same mathematical probabilities of being ratified by the States.

I don't think that I've made myself heard on this issue. I don't give a big fat rat's ass about the sanctity of the institution of marriage. I've been married twice and neither of these arrangements were sanctified or holy, and both failed because of my and my spouses' individual human shortcomings, as do about half of all other marriages in the country, including those among members of the Senate the House and the ever so pious far right, nut wing, bible thumping, clergy who so desperately want to ram their fraudulent religious beliefs down the public throat.

I get so sick of this symbol over substance nonsense from these over paid, under worked, pampered to death public officials that I have recurring fantasies of stalking the halls of Washington, Buford Pusser style, swinging my axe handle of righteous indignation and caving in the collective crania of approximately half the population of our public buildings.

Two gay people living in peaceful human concert and protected by a legal document which acknowledges the existence of a mutually recognized contractual bond between them threatens nobody. Threatens Nobody.

I would like to establish a new Congressional watchdog agency to oversee these field hands and make sure that they are hard at work diligently going about the people’s business and sticking to the real job of making the country run well, in peace and prosperity for the benefit of every one. I don’t know yet what to call the agency or what kind of uniforms they will wear but I do know that they will all be issued axe handles.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

Aardwolf? Speaking Truth To Power?

2006-05-19T08:42:00.000-04:00

Michael Hayden Speaking Truth

To Truth Lover Rick Santorum AP Photo/Dennis Cook

During his testmony before the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday Michael Hayden promised to "speak truth to power," and said that he and the intelligence community had learned the lessons of Iraq. Washington Post

In fact this President and his inner circle of chronic ass kissers can't handle the truth as is pointed out by Ken Silverstein in Harpers yesterday. I strongly suggest the the committee members have a chat with the CIA's Gerry Meyers and Charlie Allen if they want the real skinny on speaking "truth to power." Read this article and follw the links: “Fairy Tales” (Harpers.org)

This, by the way, is an Aardwolf and what this little guy from South Africa has to do with the intelligence game in Baghdad is way above my pay grade. I had to look up the word aardwolf so I thought I'd share the picture.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

Public Citizen's Tyson Slocum on Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report

2006-05-17T14:35:00.000-04:00

I really enjoy the "phony news shows" on Comedy Central. I've been watching John Stewart for a couple years and when Stephen Colbert spun off with his Colbert report I really appreciated the nightly bitch slap he represented to the "Wing Nut News" broadcasts and the Unfair and Unbalanced Nitwits like O'Reilly and Hannity.

A good deal of what transpires on both Stewart and Colbert's shows is far from phony, and mixed in with the humor and satirical treatments of the day's events are often found pearls of information not seen in the main stream media.

Such was the case last night with the appearance of Public Citizen's Tyson Slocum. In promos from Public Citizen it was mentioned that Slocum had five points that he wanted to make with his appearance about Big Oil. Slocum's five points:

1. Record-high prices paid by consumers have fueled the $342.4 billion in profits enjoyed by the major oil companies since Bush has been president.

2. We'll never be able to produce our way to lower prices, because America is already the third-largest producer of oil in the world. The United States produces more oil every day than Iran, Kuwait and Qatar combined. The problem is that we consume more oil than any other country; every day, we use one of every four barrels of oil consumed in the world.

3. On average, it costs a company like ExxonMobil about $20 to extract a barrel of oil in Nigeria, Alaska or elsewhere. The company then sells it to American consumers for $70 a barrel.

4. A new income tax on these windfall profits could be dedicated to funding clean energy fuels, renewable energy, energy efficiency and increased investment in mass transit.

5. Strengthening fuel economy standards will make new cars more efficient, allowing them to use less gasoline. Improving fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon over the next decade will reduce our oil consumption by one-third.

Slocum managed to make his points heard with engaging good humor, even through the equally good natured spoofery which is Colbert's stock in trade.

I don't know how many billions of tax payer furnished dollars have been dumped into the black hole of Dick Cheney's Leave no Oiligarch Behind Energy Policy but I'm sure that you will not find these five points mentioned.

With all the tens of billions in subsidies given by our Governmental den of thieves to our private den of thieves all that has been accomplished is the fleecing of the taxpayer, the maiming of the working class, and the near destruction of the American economy.

All the while the bloated plutocrats have prated on about the complexities of global markets and the difficulties in the refining process and other transparent obfuscations.

There are simple solutions to energy, to health care, and to a myriad of other problems and in these five simple statements Slocum, with Colbert's comic guidance managed to shine a light toward the simplicity of the approach required.

Somehow, I think we've been overpaying our governmental officials and all the consultants and think tanks that they hire on our dime. Why not just turn Comedy Central into another publicly funded channel?

They made more sense on energy policy in a few minutes of television last night than this crooked administration has made in six and a half years.

The show repeats tonight at 8:30 EST.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

Happy Birthday To Hizzoner da Mayor

2006-05-15T14:47:00.000-04:00

Union Stockyards.. Chicago 1899

City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

from "Chicago" by

Carl Sandburg 1916

I moved to Chicago in 1971 at the age of 27 at a point in my life where I was becoming aware that thirty was rapidly approaching on my personal horizon and beginning to have serious doubts about the '60s adage "Never trust anyone over thirty."

The city and the country were winding down from the riots of the late sixties, and winding up for more escalation in Vietnam, and, in the resultant protest movement. America had suffered enormous trauma since the assassination of John Kennedy and was ramping up for more to come in the Watergate scandal and the first resignation of a US President in history.

Richard J Daley was in the sixteenth year of his twenty one year reign as Mayor of the "City of the Big Shoulders." This was the man or at least, one of them about whom the paranoid adage "Never trust anyone over thirty" had been written.

This was "The Man," "Hizzoner da Mayor," or the as he was dubbed by Pulitzer Prize winner Mike Royko in his 1971 best seller, simply, "Boss."

This was the Mayor we loved to hate.

I had left San Francisco after four years during which I had grown weary of what I felt at the time was that city's insufferable provincialism. Chicago turned out to be a much larger provence than the "City by the Bay" but a province nonetheless and one long ruled by the "Boss."

"Even the Lord had skeptical members of His party"

Richard Daley

Richard Daley was born and raised on Chicago's sprawling south side in 1902 . He became Mayor in 1955 of a city that in the words of one ward heeler "ain't ready for reform yet" and in the closing words of Roykos' book "And in 1970, like it or not, it wasn't getting any." Daley was perhaps, the last of the big time "machine politicians."

During his long tenure as Mayor, Daley ruled with a heavy hand which was never more evident than during the Democratic convention and police riots in 1968 and the ensuing investigations and trials to follow. After the city was chosen as the site of the convention Daley put the city's more than 10,000 police on 12 hour shifts and called up nealy 15,000 troops from the Army and National guard.

One wag noted at the time that Daley fielded more troops for the convention than Washington had commanded in wresting the Colonies from British control.

The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder.

Richard Daley

During the ensuing riots hundreds were beaten and injured by police during what was termed the "Battle of Michigan Avenue" while the whole spectacle was filmed by an eager press as "the whole world" watched on live television. A government study would later place blame on the police but Daley vehemently disagreed and in a gesture so typical of Hizzoner gave the police a pay raise.

By most accounts Daley was personally honest but enormously forgiving of venality and corruption in those who ran the city and Chicago Democratic politics for him in his city on the take.

As anyone who lived there at the time can attest, myself included, traffic and other minor offences were more often than not settled with a ten or twenty dollar gratuity for the officer at the scene rather than a trip downtown. The corruption was widespread and operated at all levels including many of the city's aldermen, police officials and judges.

Daley who died in office in 1976 remained defiant and unapologetic to the end. As Mike Royko described in a 1973 column:

Several theories have arisen as to what Mayor Daley really meant a few days ago when he said:
"If they don't like it, they can kiss my ass."
On the surface, it appeared that the mayor was merely admonishing those who would dare question the royal favors he has bestowed upon his sons, Prince Curly, Prince Larry, and Prince Moe.
But it can be a mistake to accept the superficial meaning of anything the mayor says.
The mayor can be a subtle man. And as Earl Bush, his press secretary, once put it after the mayor was quoted correctly:
"Don't print what he said. Print what he meant."
So many observers believe the true meaning of the mayor's remarkable kissing invitation may be more than skin deep.
One theory is that he would like to become sort of the Blarney Stone of Chicago.
As the stone's legend goes, if a person kisses Ireland's famous Blarney Stone, which actually exists, he will be endowed with the gift of oratory.
And City Hall insiders have long known that the kind of kiss Daley suggested can result in the gift of wealth.

from What's Behind Daley's Words?

by Mike Royko February 16, 1973

If Richard Daley were alive today he'd be 104 years old and I'm sure just as unapolojetic about himself and his city as he was thirty years ago at the time of his death.

Or as Sandburg put it ninety years ago:

......so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

For many of us at the time Hizzoner was the Mayor we loved to hate, but from this vantage point he was also one of the most memorable characters of an incredible era and all I can say now is, Happy Birthday Boss.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

Voice of America

2006-05-12T09:15:00.000-04:00

I am an American citizen born in this country, raised and schooled here and a veteran of military service.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of any terrorist group, network, religious sect or social clique which advocates the use of terror or violence against anyone in any country at any time, for any reason.

I have read and understand the Constitution of these United States as amended and am familiar with prevailing law and custom in my country.

The unconscionable, illegal and extra legal tactics being employed by what is clearly a rogue administration, no longer under the control of the citizens of this country must be resisted by all Americans who are concerned with fundamental human rights and liberties.

I will be secure from governmental scrutiny in my home, private affairs and communications until and unless the government can show probable cause before a legally elected or appointed judge or magistrate that I have performed some act of word or deed that would require such scrutiny to protect the common interests of the American people.

I will expect that the government will follow the law in all respects and afford every citizen, indeed every person, the guarantees of liberty and privacy common to our American history and culture.

If I find that my security, my basic liberty to live a life free of unwarranted governmental intrusion is threatened by some neo Stalinist or facist administration or any other criminal gang, be they private or public, I will be forced to reconsider many of my core scruples and remove these gloves.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

The Persistence Of Controversy

2006-05-11T17:20:00.000-04:00

We've all used the expression, "Time flies when you're having a good time" or "Where did the summer go" or "It seems like just yesterday..."

For some reason the subject of time and its increasingly rapid flow came up at the Pool Hall yesterday. If you knew the cast of characters in this particular saloon you'd understand why time would be a concern, as most of us are either wasting it, frittering it away, unconcerned with it or running out of it.

The Pool Hall is Belmont Billiards in Dayton, Ohio one of the oldest businesses in the area and the smoky ancient den where I misspent a great deal of my youth and intend to misspend a good chunk of my Golden Years, which brings me, rather neatly, back to "Time."

Time, it seems to me, passes more rapidly with the passing of time, that is, it seems to, and on that I have a consensus of yesterday's group of local wits at the bar of wisdom.

Remember when you were eight years old and school years were eternal or summers seemed to stretch forever into the sultriness of early September when another painfully eternal school year would begin?

Back then, at eight or ten, "soon" was never soon enough and "wait till tomorrow" was a life sentence of anticipation. Monday through Friday dragged by in a boring sequence of school days, unfairly early bedtimes and dinners that were never ready until you were "starved to death," while weekends flashed by in the length of time light takes to cross the nucleus of a hydrogen atom. As a kid, time was definitely relative to your personal wants needs and desires of the moment.

Einstein taught us new ways of looking at time as we viewed the physical world and described in "thought experiments" that brought headaches to my young head, the relative nature of time and probably inspired Dali's whimsical painting above. Einstein was a very smart guy, a regular Einstein as a matter of fact and he might have grown up to be a rocket scientist had he paid more attention in school.

Richard Feynman, another physicist who frittered a lot of time away playing bongo drums (or he might have been a rocket scientist as well) actually described that time could go backwards which got him a Nobel Prize and made my headache a lot worse.

Anyway back at the Pool Hall, during yesterday's typically stimulating conversation, the passage of time was the subject of the hour with all the wits bemoaning the fact that the years seem to pass more quickly every year. We decided that time has increased its velocity as we have lost our own which I suppose has some relativistic expanation but really doesn’t explain why it takes me half the morning to put my socks on.

Mike the Painter, who I suspect, has spent a great deal of time pondering this issue (most of us thought that he simply went catatonic after a couple of shots) opined, wait, no one uses the word opined at the Pool Hall, I meant, piped up, that time seems to go faster because it does go faster.

He was instantly challenged by the rest of the Barstool Academy of Science who felt that time has one speed and it moves at the speed of ... Time. We batted that around for awhile and someone else looked at his watch and said that every minute took the same number of seconds and therefore Mike the Painter had to be full of.... scientific confusion and at that point the controversy became intense. Actually controversy is another word that doesn't get much usage at the Pool Hall, we just say bullshit.

Well, Mike the Painter reflected quietly over his beer, or nodded off for bit while the firestorm of dissenting opinion raged around him and Vicki the Beer Goddess brought us another round of liquid conversational stimulation in the interest of scientific research and at last Mike the Painter said, Time passes faster as you grow older because a year is an ever decreasing fraction of your total experience of life."

This brought about a stunned silence as we sipped our beers and shots and pondered the weight of his words and waited for Vicki the Beer Goddess to bring the aspirin bottle as we all seemed to have become afflicted with headaches.

He continued, "Think about it, when you're ten, a year is a tenth of your total life, ten percent of all your experience happened in the last year, but now that you're sixty a year is only one sixtieth of your total experience of time so it doesn't just seem to go faster, it does go faster, relative to your age."

Well I had a roaring ice cream headache at this point and a vision popped into my mind of calendar pages turning rapidly, madly flipping by, as in an old Jimmy Stewart movie and the whole concept was beginning to piss me off and the rest of the local scientific community didn’t look terribly thrilled either.

I guess Mike the Painter sensed that his audience had grown surly and he finished his beer and left as the rest of us nursed our drinks and the discussion turned to baseball and the group headache began to subside.

After a few minutes I said that I thought that Mike the Painter might be onto something with his theory of time but Bruber pointed out that Mike the Painter was a painter for crissakes, not a rocket scientist and Scooter the Dozer Driver said that Mike the Painter was just full of controversy.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

Alice In America

2006-05-11T04:03:00.000-04:00

My Golly, where to begin?
Let's start with a Secretary of Defense who uses the expression "my golly," or "gee willikers." I did a Yahoo search for this term and Donald Rumsfeld's name was in the first ten results. Jumpin' Jehosephat who is writing this script, Lewis Carroll?
What rabbit hole have we entered, what twisted hall of mirrors are we trapped in and how do we come down from this psychedelic trip that we seem to be on.
My golly, the buzz I'm hearing and reading is that we're going to war. Yes, I know, we already have two wars going, but they are so unfulfilling aren't they, bogged down as we are, three years after we accomplished our mission in Afghanistan and made Kabul nearly safe for the foreign press and killed or captured most of a deck of cards in Iraq and hired Halliburton to build us a house of cards which is falling down around us.
Don't you draw the queen of diamonds, boy She'll beat you if she's ableThe queen of hearts is always your best bet
Our criminally insane President and his Vice Madman along with a large percentage of the senior inmates of this carnival administration are poised to go to war with Iran, Russia, China and anyone else who dares to stand in the way of their delusional lust for power, religious dominion and corporate control of the world's resources.
The signs are clear, Cheney's carefully crafted and threatening insults hurled so harshly in Vilnius, Condi's blithely arrogant dismissal of Ahmadnejad's apparent overture, no, there will be no diplomatic solution, the Oracle has spoken. The Gods of greed once again call man to war.
The rumbling of thunder in the distance presages the rapidly advancing storm. The flashes of lightning, now low on the horizon, will soon be overhead and upon us. The time to take shelter is now.
But wait. There is no shelter from this storm, just as the world was nearly consumed sixty years ago by an unelected band of self styled saviors of Der Volk, another group has risen to bring about their own version of the twelve year Reich.
Will they succeed in their criminal designs as they nearly did in the years before my birth? There is nothing in my tea leaves or the bones I cast on my table that give me an answer.
I know that they have an open field to run on and only limited resistance in sight, just as the Nazis in the thirties. There are no military powers capable of withstanding their onslaught, no statesmen who will stand and raise voices of truth against them. The Fourth Estate is in their palm although they make great pretense otherwise.
And so begins another bestial assault on the history of mankind, just as it began in the years before my life, when weak and frightened men said nothing and cowered in the face of the mad brutality of the black clad minions of another popular movement for the enrichment of self.
All were complicit in the carnage that ensued. Every nation in Europe and Asia, in Africa and the Americas in every land and ocean there was no respite to be found from the terrible trauma of war. Millions died, tens of millions died, perhaps sixty millions died and hundreds of millions more were maimed and brutalized and thousands of millions more remember.
At the heart, at the very center, of this darkness was a virulent strain of evil men who cared only for their own advancement, and now, their spiritual decendents have returned to haunt us with their horror once again.
I am but one but I'm not alone, and I tell you
I tell you this, America, I love you, land of my fathers, of my birth, I tell you that I know your heart, I know the light that the idea of you lit in my soul. I know that you are being misused and trampled by those who despise you and I will not remain silent.
I will soothe your fever with a voice of truth and remove your lust for death. I will stand against this madness with a retarding hand and a simple no will pass my lips.
Bob Higgins