NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.

(March '04)

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03/07/04

 

Blast you, Hardy!

 

Whoa, the walls of this old mill are damp. Even the bricks sweat down here in the tropics. Sometimes you can almost see the beads of moisture squeezing through the cracks in the mortar, nudging their way between molecules of concrete and terra-cotta. It always finds a way, doesn't it? Water, that is. I need to get out more...

 

Well, the good admiral Gonutz (ret.), late of the Pentagon's Office of Special Pains, managed to recover from his close encounter with our somewhat anachronistic interstellar space vehicle. Funny -- it's almost as if he never even saw the bloody thing...like it was just too unexpected and out of sync with his notion of reality (kind of like all that exculpatory evidence about Iraqi WMD's). After a day or two in his bunk, the admiral brushed himself off and got right down to the business at hand -- that of launching that somewhat reluctant man-sized tuber into outer space using some primitive multi-stage rocket ship I wouldn't put used milk cartons in. Gonutz decided this was the week to put the first giant root vegetable on Mars, and...well...who are we to disappoint him?

 

Naturally, we've had to put the tuber through a battery of tests, if only for appearances sake (he has been in space with us before, after all -- don't tell the feds!). It was all the usual stuff -- you know...the rocket sled, the anti-gravity loop-o-plane, the water tank made up to look like a landing site (actually, the thing looks more like a giant aquarium... and tubey looks like a big fat piece of coral for the guppies to swim around). When it was all over, that giant root vegetable was honed to a fine edge and ready to be hoisted into the Mars rocket. His training regimen was supervised by Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who insisted on double-timing all of the tuber's calisthenics. Man! I hope he doesn't try to put us through that when it comes time for Big Green to "light that candle."

 

Was it necessary to use a crane to get the tuber into the nosecone? Probably not...that was admiral Gonutz's choice (he thinks of tubey more as cargo than anything else) and it may have had something to do with budgetary considerations (the Gonutz crew has been living pretty high on their generous federal stipend -- too high to afford a proper gantry). In any case, the crane operator lifted the man-sized tuber into the capsule and our crucifeous friend somehow managed to strap himself in with those primitive root-limbs of his. Back in the control room, we adjusted the frequency on our crystal set to pick up tubey's natural radio signal -- a steady beep...beep....beep....that would help us pinpoint him no matter where he goes. Mitch Macaphee had the headset on, and when he gave his thumbs-up, Gonutz threw the ignition switch, sending the missile into the heavens. Lift off!  The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants...  

 

Sorry. It's just so exhilarating to be part of history in the making, as opposed to history in the unmaking (which we have had some experience with). At this hour, commander tubey is high above the oit, in a 140-mile perigee orbit, as we plan the particulars of his trans-Martian insertion. As Matt pointed out to the good Admiral (before he was too tanked up to care), it isn't too late to send tubey to the lunar surface, where he can establish the first "human" colony...maybe name it after our home town, like the Monkees suggested decades ago -- Utica...city on the moon!  

 

Rollback. Haiti fell back into the hands of the old reliable band of U.S.-backed killers and political hacks this week -- the same piratical crew that has run that much abused nation for much of the last century. Constitutionally elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide was carted off against his will by the United States and France (together again!) to exile in another military-run client state, and now the overwhelming majority of Haitians who supported him face a grim and uncertain fate. This ugly episode is most certainly the product of a deliberate campaign of destabilization run by Secretary Powell and Assistant Secretary Roger Noriega (former advisor to Jesse Helms and long-time Aristide foe), as well as other ideologues in the Bush administration, though it is certainly consistent with long-term U.S. policy in Haiti since we occupied that country early in the last century. 

 

The administration is denying that this was a coup d'etat and that they had any involvement beyond that of an honest broker, helping to restore order. Of course, they're lying, as usual. They've been strangling the Aristide regime economically since 2001, on the painfully ironic pretext that the Lavalas party benefited from flawed legislative elections in 2000 (the seven senators whose seats were disputed subsequently resigned). They've been throwing money at the "opposition" through the National Endowment for Democracy and, most likely, funding the paramilitaries from intelligence agency budgets through the Dominican Republic, a neighboring U.S. client state. The Haitian paramilitary bands that crossed the border from the D.R. were armed with new M-16s, M-60s, grenade launchers, and more, easily defeating Haitian police defenders, who had only side arms, for the most part. This was an organized contra force led by a U.S. trained admirer of Pinochet and Reagan (in that order). My ass this wasn't the work of Noriega and crew. 

 

One need only think back to April 2002 and Venezuela to recognize this particular strategy. With Reagan-era retreads populating the Bush foreign policy establishment, Washington's proxies in Latin America are making a concerted effort to rollback any marginal gains realized by Latin America's poor majority. Right now in Haiti, while U.S. Marines secure Port au Prince to establish a sense of "normalcy" within eyeshot of the more expensive hotels, Guy Phillipe's men are busily brutalizing the poor communities where U.S. journalists seldom bother to venture, killing, intimidating, and generally laying the groundwork for their return to power. Even "Baby Doc" Duvalier mused to the corporate press about returning to his beloved homeland, now that FRAPH is making Haiti more congenial to plutocratic rule. 

 

Check out some of the reports at DemocracyNow! and this week's lead story at Black Commentator, as well as sites linked to these independent information sources. Then call the frat-boy-in-chief and tell him this is unacceptable, before they move on to Venezuela, Brazil, and elsewhere. 

 

luv u,

 

jp

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03/14/04

 

Ho-ho!

 

I'll have another quarter pound of chocolate Resen, Mrs. Mugilawati. No bag please...just put it in the bowling trophy, as usual. Is that a new unicycle you're riding? Sweet. Looks like our recent economic troubles have yet to darken your ledger. Oh, excuse me...I appear to have company.

 

Greetings from deep in the heart of Sri Lanka. I was just trying to get a little shopping done in the midst of what has been a pretty grueling schedule back at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our drafty old adopted home and the nerve center of what will soon be recognized the world over as the vanguard unit of Dubya's bold new space program. Many of you will recall last week's exciting launch of "the first man-sized tuber in space" -- yes, that is our man-sized tuber (never mind that he's been in space before on our last interplanetary tour). Much as I had my doubts about that ramshackle rocket, it did do what rockets do when the fateful moment arrived. So to celebrate, it's Resen for everyone. (So there's Resen to celebrate.....heh......heh............heh....)

 

With the tin-can spacecraft in a "parking" orbit high above us, we gathered the sharpest knives in the Big Green drawer to work out tubey's best route to the odiferous red planet. Admiral Gonutz (ret.), our commander on loan from the gods of the Pentagon, was all for the straight line approach, which he illustrated with a smear of ash from his cigar on the solar system chart. Our chief mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee shook his head. "Moving target," he told the stalwart admiral, and the old sea dog made a barking sound. He pulled his long sword out of its rusty scabbard and plunged it deep into the drawing of Mars. "That'll hold 'er!" spake the admiral. Mitch shrugged. It seemed an elegant solution. 

 

All the time we were talking, in the background could be heard the steady "pock....pock....pock...." of the man-sized tuber's natural radio source, the brittle sound emitting from a shabby schoolhouse PA speaker high on the wall. It was obvious that our trusty space legume was still out there and awaiting our decision...but communicating with him was a near impossibility. For one thing, tubey is nearly totally non-verbal, despite his somewhat gregarious nature. For another, the radio transceiver in that trash-can capsule was on the blink, so there was no way to get instructions up to him. This was a problem, since we needed the man-sized tuber to hit the booster ignition switch with one of his rudimentary root-appendages (doesn't matter which one). We puzzled over the problem until Trevor James Constable had one of his frequent flashes of inspiration. Why not use the First Australians bonfire method that worked so well on John Glenn? 

 

That evening, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was dispatched to build an enormous bonfire in the recently de-mined patch of waste ground between the mill and our neighbor Gung-Ho's compound. When it was good and roaring, Trevor James Constable focused the full force of his patented orgone generating device on the center of the flame, sending softball-sized sparks high into the troposphere. (It was a wondrous sight to behold). He keyed the handset microphone wired to his invention and barked a simple command: "Ground control to major tuber! Ground control to major tuber! Press the red button. Press the red button." The sparks began to spiral and collide in an almost hypnotic fashion, their glow shifting around the spectrum like an enormous 60s-vintage aluminum Christmas tree with a rotating color wheel on its base. (Yes, it was that awesome.) The check was clearly in the mail.

 

Back at mission control (the old lathe room at the Cheney Hammer Mill), the telemetric indicators showed an extended burn on the tuber's main thruster rocket. This was good. The big boy was clearly on his way, and there was a lot of hooting and hand-clapping and high-fiving and victory dancing and six-gun shooting and other gratuitous demonstrations of mindless joy in that room as word was passed around. Later that evening, somewhat inexplicably, a drunken mob of tuber fans rampaged through the village, smashing windows, overturning cars and setting shops on fire in celebration of the root vegetable's successful trans-Martian insertion. (Jeezus...I hate to think what they'll do when he actually lands on Mars...). 

 

Excuse me...I've got to rescue my trophy-full of Resen from the encroaching flames. Talk to you later.

 

Feith & Chum. When those bombs went off in Madrid this week killing a sickening number of people, I thought about what reporter Robert Fisk had said after some incident in Iraq where Italian troops were targeted. He wondered when it might be Britain's turn, since it too (like Italy) was a close ally of Dubya in his war on Iraq. Now there's a Spanish 9-11 (3-11) like the Aussie 9-11 in Bali. Seems a particularly cruel coincidence in as much as something like 90% of the Spanish public was against the war in Iraq (I think perhaps Aznar and a few ex-fascists were the only ones on board with junior). 

 

Such lopsided vox populi means little to Bush and his crew, for all their noxious emissions about this thing they call "democratic principles". Whether or not they were directly behind the overthrow of Aristide (as seems extremely likely), they certainly behaved congenially toward the ouster of a president whose undisputed election was supported by 90% of Haitians. Once again, Bush has aligned us with this narrow sector whose grasp on power relies on thwarting the will of the majority through intimidation and other less subtle means. (In this sense, Dubya is very supportive of minorities.)  His administration's palpable contempt for anything that resembles democracy in any meaningful way reflects their own tenuous leadership status, fueled by organized discouragement of voters in key states and $100,000 "Pioneers" like crony Roland Betts who have provided Bush with more than $160 million so far to spend in an uncontested primary season. Dubya's strategy is clear -- choke the airwaves in the swing states with ads that blur the issues, compound the lies, and praise Bush for his most stunning failures, like his administration's historic blunder on 9-11, letting the hijacking plot sail past him while he was on his month-long vacation in Crawford, working hard on his now-forgotten "anti-gossip" initiative. 

 

Bush gets away with appearing "strong on security issues" because the press gives him a free pass and his party controls all three branches of government. Objectively, their policies are a total failure...for the majority of us who aren't rich and well-connected, that is. No point in going through the full litany on Iraq -- you've heard it here before. I'll just mention, case in point, that fraudster Ahmed Chalabi's organization is now receiving $340,000 for intelligence gathering in Iraq. Yes, this is the same Chalabi who provided probably most of the bogus WMD and Iraq-Al Qaeda connection "intelligence" used by the snot-nosed Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans at DOD to press for war. Has there ever been a more specious set of claims...or a more obviously unreliable character as Chalabi? So...why is he rewarded with $4 million a year from our hip pockets? Services rendered, yesterday, today and in the future, when he will likely have some hand in ruling Iraq. Lies and fabrications they were, but useful ones to the fanatics who run our government. That's why Chalabi gets the big bucks, and his buddies (like A. Huda Farouki) get lucrative Pentagon contracts they can't fulfill, and Chalabi's nephew Salem gets to open the Baghdad branch of Feith's Israel-based law firm. If ours were a truly open society with a functioning independent press, these stories would be on the front pages and in the committee rooms of Congress...and these clowns would be out on the street. 

 

Instead, we grit our teeth until November. For two more Americans in Iraq today, that day of reckoning comes shamefully too late, if it comes at all. 

 

luv u,

 

jp

 

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03/21/04

 

Good morning, Vienna....

 

Hmm...is that you again? It must be the weekend. How did that happen so quickly? I'll tell you, the weeks are just flipping by like cells in an animated cartoon. Makes my head spin...or maybe my head is staying still while the rest of me spins around with this out-of-control planet we live on. This may be as good a time as any to change planets. 

 

I've been spending a good bit of my time this week in the game room at the Cheney Hammer Mill, playing ping pong with Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and generally fucking off as we wait to hear news of the first man-sized tuber in space. That intrepid root vegetable, nurtured from a bulb by Matt's steady hand, should be approaching the nasty red planet as we speak, its luminous disc filling the viewing port of his tiny space capsule. Soon his retro/landing rockets should fire automatically and his craft begin its descent through the wispy atmosphere of that strange and odiferous world. Fun like a party. 

 

Our erstwhile Pentagon retainer admiral Hermann Von Gonutz (ret.) seems satisfied with the progress we've seen, even though the sum total of our knowledge of the tuber's voyage consists of that strange bleeping sound his internal radio source emits and some pretty crummy telemetric data (which, quite frankly, I think is just discarded tape from the admiral's stock ticker. He's got his eye on the Carlyle Group this week -- smart sailor). Our tracking system could hardly be more primitive -- Mitch Macaphee puts the tuber's "bleep" through a sound analyzer and he makes a considered determination (aka wild guess) as to how far he's traveled based on how much more faint the signal becomes over time. He thinks he's got it narrowed down to the nearest 10 million miles....and, of course, I'm somewhat astounded that there are 10 million miles between us and Mars. (Even more, I'm told.) That's the great thing about the music business -- you never stop learning. 

 

Over at "mission control," they've given up on trying to make the radio work and Trevor James Constable reports that tubey is too far out for the enhanced bonfire communications method we used when he was in orbit. This could be a problem, though it's probably just as well that news of his landing doesn't become generally known. Last week, as you may recall, revelers reduced our village to rubble in joyous celebration of the tuber's successful attainment of escape velocity (not commonly considered grist for ecstasy in most quarters). I fear that any more good news may result in the Cheney Hammer Mill being razed to the ground. (Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? Razed to the ground. What is it, underground now?)  So no news is good news, friends. (Actually, some of the local Visigoths were good enough to send us a picture postcard with a candid shot of one of their strategy meetings in advance of a sports-related rampage. Funny...they look like such a benign bunch of chaps.) 

 

While I've been playing ping pong, Matt and John have been busily preparing for an anticipated rescue mission to recover the man-sized tuber from the surface of Mars. Naturally, to do so would be a serious breach of space program protocol, since the craft we would be using (the replica Jupiter two) is far beyond anything dreamt of by modern science, and Gonutz (ret.) is just not supposed to know about it. (He did see it that one time, but I think he considers it one of his more colorful alcohol-induced hallucinations.) My Big Green colleagues think we can scoop up the tuber and be back before the admiral even notices we're gone. We could slip away after he's rolled into his rough-hewn nautical hammock and put the lights out. Might even have enough time to squeeze in a gig at one of our regular tour stops on the red planet. (Or at least stop in at one of those famous Martian truck stops -- you know, the ones that serve those vein-stuffing cheesy meatloaf slices. Mmmmmmmmmm-boy.)

 

Downloadable Brain. As some of you may already know, we've been posting mp3's of our recordings right here at www.BigGreenHits.com (also www.BigGreenRecords.com, incidentally) for some weeks now, including our most recent release, The President's Brain (is Missing). So far, there have been over 100 free downloads of that little number -- you could be next! Check out our free downloads on our Get CD/MP3 page, where you can also order copies of our discs, if you like round things that make noise. (I know I do.)

 

Year One. Some pretty impressive lapses of memory emanating from the administration about their somewhat erratic behavior one year ago as they decided to unleash their world's mightiest military against (yet another) virtually defenseless nation. As brother Matt says, you can be pretty certain a country has no weapons of mass destruction if we're eager to invade it. I won't even bother to detail the ludicrous Manichean rhetoric that Karl Rove gave Dubya to recite on the stump this week -- you've heard it all before (wid us or agin' us). Perhaps most cynical was his comments about wounded service people being anxious to get back to Iraq and rejoin the fight -- on a day when another couple of U.S. soldiers gave their lives for this criminal adventure of his. No shame at all. The man is just an empty suit. 

 

Also making what should be a laughingstock out of himself on this first anniversary of the Iraq invasion was Donald Rumsfeld, whose sheer mendacity was illustrated quite effectively on one interview show, a performance helpfully posted for your review at moveon.org. Not that he'll be in any way held accountable for his lies. Neither will the execrable Colin Powell, who was duly dissed by Arab journalists this week after one of their number was killed by the U.S. military. With congress solidly in the hands of the Republican party's fanatical right wing, there is no accountability, no oversight, no check on their power. As such, the administration's tactics are remarkably bold and unvarnished. The Medicare prescription benefit legislation is a good case in point -- industry lobbyists craft the legislation, the administration produces and circulates bogus "news" reports praising it, they suppress accurate information about its costs, they ram it through the house using threats, apparent bribery, and other pressure tactics in an unprecedented 3-hour roll call vote...Victory! 

 

Now the administration and the congressional Republicans have the temerity to term the Spanish election "appeasement" and "a victory for Al Qaida," in the wake of those devastating train bombings. Meanwhile, they've done everything they can to ensure that terror bombings of this type will continue to increase. Remarkable moral cowardice on display here in America. What the new Spanish leader has said reflects the will of his people -- it's a brave, principled stand in the face of a global hegemon that's totally out of control. If all our sham leaders can do in response is sit around on their flaccid backsides and trot out that old, tired, irrelevant comparison to Chamberlain, then I would expect further defections from this splendid little war...real soon.

 

WWJD -- Who Would Jesus Disembowel? Reacting to an unfavorable review of his asinine quasi-religious sado-porn film, Mel Gibson said he would like to have columnist Frank Rich's intestines on a stick. Now there's some bona-fide old time religion for you.     

 

luv u,

 

jp

 

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03/28/04

 

Roger that, cap com.

 

Docility base here...the tuber has landed. Not just any old root vegetable, but the very same man-sized tuber we sent hurtling (or high-jumping) through the cosmos some weeks back on a Quixotic journey to Mars, our nearest neighbor in space (not!). Light the Empire State Building an amusing shade of red and get the ticker tape ready...we've got a big, cruciferous hero on our hands!

 

Okay -- "hero" is a bit strong. In point of fact, tubey didn't want to go on this outer space adventure (and after having had a good look at his ramshackle space craft, I don't hardly blame him, pardner.) But as some of you may remember, events chose tubey rather than the other way 'round. It was his natural endowments that made him ideal for the job...and I'm not referring to reproductive anatomy, but rather his internal radio source and a husk that can withstand 12 atmospheres of pressure and temperatures of absolute zero and lower. No, he didn't go kicking and screaming. At least, not screaming. And like Don Knotts (the reluctant astronaut) he somehow managed to get peanut butter in the computer tape reels. So a hero ain't nothing but a sandwich around here, okay?

 

Confirmation of tuber-touchdown came from none other than Trevor James Constable, who had picked up the tuber's signal on his orgone generating device. He was doing one of his routine sweeps of the heavens, searching for evidence of the "alien intelligences of the UFOs," when he found himself in contact with the unit tubey. Trevor James received several brief text messages from our intrepid space traveler that indicated his arrival on the surface of Mars. Printed out on ticker tape (see paragraph one), they read as follows:

 

    capsule down....rock bottom.

    engines off....

    check cabin....pressure. 

 

Then, a few moments later, Trevor James received this intriguing communiqué: 

 

    so arid here. 

 

Though it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the implications of all this, we brought these messages to Mitch Macaphee (a rocket scientist), who confirmed our layman's impression that the man-sized tuber had indeed embarked on an extra-vehicular activity, possibly involving some kind of solar powered rover conveyance concocted by a CAD draftsman somewhere in cyberspace (or possibly not). Admiral Gonutz (ret.), our representative from the Bush administration, needed to be informed of this milestone immediately. 

 

Over the past week or so, Gonutz had developed a passion for ping-pong. I think it was because he saw Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and I play game after game during the long days of the man-sized tuber's interplanetary journey. Now the admiral (ret.) was monopolizing all of Marvin's time and energy, pressing him into endless volleys at all hours of the day and night, bragging that he could beat our robot friend with his back turned to the table, etc. In this near catatonic state, the only way to get a message through to the admiral was by writing it on the surface of a ping pong ball with a grease pencil and having Marvin bat the sucker at him. Before we attempted this, however, it occurred to one of us (John) that we could have Marvin keep the old man occupied while we slip off in our illicit split-level space craft and retrieve that man-sized tuber before some evil Martian fate should befall him. Sounds like a plan!

 

As I write these lines, we are zipping Mars-ward at 40% light velocity, Mitch Macaphee at the controls of our replica Jupiter 2, Trevor James manning the forward sensor array, keeping us fast on the tuber's radio source signal -- an insistent bleep...bleep...bleep that grows louder with every passing parsec. What will we find at the end of this journey? Will tubey be alive and well? Will he have "gone native" and taken root in the rocky Martian loam? Will Tina Wesson of Survivor ever find the treehouse of her dreams? Tune in next week...same Big Green time....same BigGreenHits.com.

 

Demento Does Dubya. Thanks to the efforts of Big Green friend and tireless animal rights activist Pat Fish, our song The President's Brain (is Missing) was played on Dr. Demento's nationally syndicated radio show last Sunday (March 21), right after the Three Stooges' "Alphabet Song" (excellent placement!). If you'd like a free MP3 of this election-year number or the full-blown CD version (with 3 bonus tracks), go to our Get CD/MP3 page. To request repeat plays of Big Green's President's Brain on the Dr.'s show, submit your request at http://www.clamhead.com/drdrequest.php today, or email the good doctor.  

 

Loyalty. It's hard to know what to make of former anti-terrorism "czar" Richard Clarke, the most recent of several Bush Administration figures to go public with plausible tales of duplicity at the highest levels of this malodorous presidency. To a greater extent than usual, the press seems to take him seriously, largely because he "served under four presidents" as has been observed frequently, and that he was something of a hawk. It's interesting that with all the discussion this week about missed opportunities to off bin Laden and otherwise decapitate Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, no one troubled themselves to consider either the morality or the efficacy of such a strategy. I know, I know...I probably go farther than most in distrusting the resort to overwhelming military force...inevitably too many people get mangled, most of whom have done nothing more than commit the sin of living their lives in geographical proximity to "high value" targets. Our "tomahawk" cruise missiles and other technologies of death destroy innocents every bit as unjustly as bin Laden's hijacked 747's, not to mention a good deal more frequently.  

 

Then there's the strategy question. I imagine there are those in the administration who may actually believe that pulling an Ann Coulter on these folks (invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to crew-cut christianity) will prompt the followers of bin Laden to merely throw up their hands and slink home, kicking pebbles and muttering oaths all the way. Personally, I think the Wolfowitzes of the world want us to buy that idea, even if they don't truly buy it themselves. There's good reason not to. For instance, anyone who thinks Israel's assassination of wheelchair-bound Sheik Ahmed Yassin will stop Hamas suicide attacks is inhaling a bit too deeply on the power bong. Certainly Sharon and his club-fisted generals know that this action will cost many Israeli lives -- they obviously don't give a shit. Like our own leaders, their careers have been built on this eagerness to exercise the military option....it's a formula for their personal success, after all. 

 

That's what this pointless muscle-flexing is all about. Did Bob "chicken shack" Kerry or anyone on that useless 9-11 commission ever suggest that maybe we should have removed our symbolic contingent of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia years ago, since their primary function appears to have been that of providing an attractive target for terror-bombings and a general provocation for extremism? I know it's considered tantamount to treason to explore how our actions as a nation (obsession with middle east oil, single-handed support for the 37-year old Israel/Palestine stalemate, etc.) may have contributed to terrorism in general and 9/11 in particular, but it is that very proscription that should tell us this is where we should look for answers...because they don't want us to look there. In any case, you can count on two things from this administration -- that they will go to any length to cover their political ass...and that they will deliver enormous payback on those who prove disloyal. They're probably looking over Dick Clarke's career, personal life, family acquaintances, pet gerbil, etc., with a microscope at this very moment...and that's with knee-jerk columnists like Chuck Krauthammer already doing their smear job for them. 

 

Speaking of loyalty, Dubya took an hour off from fundraising to present his annual laugh-a-minute slide show to the National Correspondent's dinner this week, with flip references to the vain search for WMD's in Iraq. This appears to be a big joke for Bush, and all of those overpaid scribblers (with the exception of the Nation's David Corn) were yukking it up right along with him, even though this "joke" has cost thousands of lives unnecessarily and established a disastrous precedent for unilateral intervention. Great bunch of chums. I wonder if they're laughing in Baghdad...

 

luv u,

 

jp

 

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