Teachers' Lounge

Impeach somebody!

There's a scene in The Sand Pebbles which, for me, illustrates the lack of Congressional backbone regarding George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Alberto Gonzales.

Jake Holman's friend, Po-han, a coolie trained by Holman to run the gunboat's engine, is being tortured. Strung up on the shoreline by an angry Chinese mob, he screams in agony for someone to shoot him. Unable to save his friend, Holman pleads for American intervention. Captain Collins warns Holman not to interfere with events because he fears an international incident if Americans intervene.

Captain Collins (warning Holman not to take any action): Holman, I'll have you shot as a mutineer!

Jake Holman (in frustration): Well shoot something!

There's quite enough blame to go around (alternate link) for allowing these three madmen to get away with torture and murder in the name of the American people. I accept my share for not doing more (besides writing personal diatribes like this one) to bring these people down.

Today I'm going to find someone to print up some tee shirts for me. They're going to be orange with black stenciling that reads, Impeach somebody! Hell, it's a start.

Update - Undead Threads at 1230 South Solano in Las Cruces is ordering up a dozen shirts (that's the smallest order they take). Aaron, the owner, will call me in a few days with a proof to see whether I like the fonts he comes up with. Shirts will be ready in two to three weeks.

Cost me $111.41 - I figure that's a small price to pay to keep my sanity in an America gone nuts.

Update on the update - Cindy Sheehan's most recent column, which has been picked up by Michael Moore, is a good one. It's a good one because, instead of simply throwing out terms like fascist necons (as she frequently does), she chows down to the bone... who the hell is paying for the crap we see on TV? Bravo, lady. You've touched a nerve.

Meanwhile, here in the Land of Enchantment, I'm about ready to quit the martyr business. School begins in a couple of weeks. Time to focus. I'll wear my tee shirt and carry on best I can. I believe that, barring another catastrophic attack on U.S. soil, Bush and company are headed for the big dark. (If there is a major attack in the U.S., all bets are off.)

Update - The Founders Had an Idea for Handling Alberto Gonzales

Hubris in, nightmare out

In a much-quoted 2004 New York Times Magazine article, journalist Ron Suskind described a 2002 conversation with a senior Bush advisor - widely assumed to be Karl Rove - who added an extra gloss to Kristol's aphorism, making it clear that "reality" can mean different things to different people.

    As Suskind relates the story: "The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

"Thanks to U.S. policies, Al Qaeda has become the vast global threat the administration imagined it to be in 2001." Big dark coming soon