Things that spring, unbidden, into my head

Well, here it is almost 10 days into the Obama presidency and he has not been impeached--will wonders never cease. Between the forged birth certificate from HI; the deliberately botched oath of office (which was repeated, in secret--except for the reporters that were there), and the whole "Beyonce" thing, I would say that any credible news organization (Cue "FoxNEWS" music) will have more than enough ammo to bring down this "uppitelitistofascist". I hate to have to say this, because it seems so patently obvious to me, but this is not the time to stop worrying about the marginalized fuckheads who elected Bush to two terms. Some suggest that we should engage the members of the GOP who are reasonable. Sure, go ahead and do that. In the meantime do not let the asshats that equate Obama with the anti-KKKrist get a pass. Fuck "Kiss and make up". I wanta do a Norquist on the crazy bastards.

Delousing the White House

There has been a fair amount of rather dispiriting news over he last several weeks. Among other items, the nearly three week rampage by the zionists in Gaza, leaving destruction, death and hundreds or thousands of newly minted jihadists for Hamas and Al Queada to use as willing tools. There has also been a disturbing trend on the part of the democratic leadership in congress to say that now is not the time to investigate Bushco's eight year abuse of the powers of the presidency or to seek out and punish those guilty of crimes in that regard. Despite these and other items I remain hopeful that today's inauguration of President Barack Obama will signal the beginning of a return to something like sane foreign and domestic policy in this nation. One can only hope.

MLK, Freedom, democracy and FGF.

Next monday is MLK Day and the inauguration is in the same week? I'm surprised that the WH didn't try to move one or the other. I'm gonna try embedding these videos, if not at least the links. I guess it's gonna be the links. U2's "Pride" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56mjwycKuXA&feature=related Leonard Cohen's, "Democracy" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OETwbVBPI1U and "Everybody Knows" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h27HRNm_r4U Well, maybe it ain't FGF for you, but it will sure as hell feel good when Bush has been consigned to the dustbin of history. Fuck Bush.

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.

It's fixin' to get cold here in Oswego. The cold weather that's been freezing the mid-west is due to arrive here late today or early tomorrow. I'm doing what I can to keep my incoming water supply from freezing (I'm building a 5 x 10 room in that corner of the cellar) and stuffing more skwerls into any gaps I can still see daylight through. I had dinner with friends last evening who offered me a place to sleep if things got too frigid here. I'll be okay. I was listening to NPR a bit ago and there was a piece on "Tell Me More" about the jailing and deportation of undocumented immigrants. It focused on Central Falls, R.I. It becomes apparent, listening to the reporter speaking, that the major issue in jailing and deporting these folks is that it provides federal monies to the state of R.I. which in turn gives the monies to the folks who run the facilities. It's disgusting that this is happening. We have a big ICE presence here in Oswego, but they don't seem to do a hell of a lot. All of this stuff got me to thinking about the homeless. I've spent several years of my life living in some pretty strange situations, but I've never been on the street. I CAN imagine not having someplace to call "home", but I've never experienced that situation where there is, literally, no place to lay down that is at least out of the weather. Surely we can do better than this.

Abstinence only works--NOT!

I don't have a lot of time to play with this at the moment, but the latest figures on teens having babies is showing an upward trend. This link: http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/HOLD-RELEASE-UNTIL-830-AM-graphic-shows-teen-birth-rate/photo//090107/480/a1b8bc26badc48b892e2bed09c70df19//s:/ap/20090107/ap_on_he_me/med_teen_births is to just one of several stories out there, I'm sure. Of course the KKKristianreich is saying that the reason for the upturn is because of the fact that kids are still being taught about contraceptives. Sounds like bullshit to me, but then all of their other religiopalaver IS bullshit, so why would this be any different? People, kids especially, are gonna have sex, no matter what. If you keep them dumb, the barefoot and pregnant part are the other two legs of the KKKristian Population Outtacontrol Quiverful Program. I gotta run, more rant later.

a good profile, demo; now turn and face the camera--and hold the sign up so's we can read the numbers!

I think this will be short. I am still somewhat incapacitated from a fall on New Year's Eve (not attributable to alcohol--damn the luck!) and have been spending the last few days trying to make some sort of order out of the 200G or so of photo files that I had on 4 separate hard drives. I was able to pick up a 250G Seagate Free Agent (my bro works in HD development there and he said I made a good score at $52.50). I've been moving files from the other hard drives and deleting the extraneous document copies, etc.,. I just wonder how much of the stuff that I keep on my "box" is attributable to a desire to save records and how much is attributable to the familial "packrat" gene. My dear mother used to keep a daily journal of what she did, where she went, how much she spent and so forth. She kept it longhand (beautiful cursive script) in steno notebooks. I have no idea how many of the things she went through but I do know that, for her, to throw anything away was next to impossible. I gave her a set of salt and pepper shakers in 1970 (I got them while stationed in Germany) and when I was eating dinner at her house one day, several years later, asked if she still had them. "Oh, yes," she said, "I treasure them." I asked where they were. She told me that she kept them with her fine china (she had a set of Spode and another of Limoges, IIRC) which she also, NEVER USED! She thought they were far too valuable to ever be entrusted to the grubby mitts of her brood. The summer before she passed, while I was home on a visit she told me that she had been putting things aside and told me the salt & pepper set was in a box with my name on it. I told her that I appreciated the gesture but that I woud prefer she give them to one of my siblings as I would simply lose them. She was okay with that. She also had a package for me, in a large manila envelope. It included photos of her and my dad on her wedding day, photos of my dad in India--and his unit patch, done on leather--from his days in the USAAF during WWII, my natal photo (from St. Joe's hospital), various photos of me and my older and younger siblings, my class photos from every year I'd had one taken, my AF photos and every single birthday card, letter and postcard I had ever sent her. It was not anything like the sort of pile that several of my siblings had, but I was astonished that she had kept everything for so many years. I still pull out that envelope from time to time and I feel her presence in those moments. Several years ago I wrote a song, "Kodak Moment" about the experience of viewing those photos and the memories that they awakened. I will share it one of these days when I have the time, energy and requisite knowledge to record it and put it up on this blog or elsewhere. Well, I guess it was not as short a post as I was thinking it would be.