winter.. early.. dark, icy, and freezing butt cold

Spending most of november trying to write the novel, not getting much done, and now it is time to hit the road again for the holiday season of shows. Where has that non-dimensional dimension of time gone???

Sparking up the thought machine today was a bit of midnight pondering. If one were to assume that the Iraqi insurgents were simply terrorists out to get the US out of Iraq, wouldn't it make sense, in all sorts of ways, if they simply went dark. Cutting off all such actions, letting the winds whisper some stillness in the freezing winter, the US would find itself without resistance and go home. Logic and strategic thinking would dictate that path---well only if the insurgents really were what our government says they are. But they are not.

No, what we have in Iraq is a reformed government full of Iranian mullahs, militia forces, ayatollah bureaucrats, revolutionary guards---all of whom are Shia's bent on destroying the presence of Sunni's throughout the region. The US has no business of course turning Iraq over to Iran, if we again were to believe the US in its critique of Iranian goals for the dominion over the region's resources. But this is not the case. Rather our PNAC Straussian policy creators have found a way to keep US forces on the ground ostensibly to protect the oil, but more so to balance w/ Israel the anti-china, anti-russian idealism of the Shias. If we help Iran now, they will help us against China later, or so the straw goes. Unfortunately, the Shias and Sunnis have been at each others throats for 1500 years and will continue to be so.

Our war mongers chose a path, stepped into the camel dung, and are now incapable of believing that they are losing on every front. We can't win a war we never intended to fight. We can't claim victory when the civil war will go on for another millenia. We can't save Israel from Iranian nuclear development, because we have given them all of Iraq's oil already. We can't keep China and Russia from beginning to dominate the region's resources, because we have no more money. We are screwed..

can we really save lives?

Just a quick note, as i get back finally to blogging.

In conjunction with the Alito "campaigns" and the various cancer charities et al, i have noticed the consistent use of something i find deeply errant; that is the premise upon which the pro-life and the pro-pharma/ health system forces are based: "Save a Life". As a lifeguard who argued that calling the association of lifeguards lifesaving was philosophically absurd, i still find myself appalled at this notion that we humans have the capacity to save lives. We may have the capacity to save species through avoiding behaviors that produce and increase extinctions of them (which of course we never seem to be able to act upon) but there is as yet no possible way in which humans can keep a living human from dying. We can only prolong life by our actions. We can extend it some time with lesser or greater degrees of suffering for one and/or many, but we cannot in any sense of the word keep a human being alive indefinitely. Saving a life means keeping it from ending, and that we cannot do. We all die, we all must die, we all will die and not one bit of technology or pharmacology or intentional spiritual prayer will keep that from happening. Death is fundamental to life. Without death we would not understand the relationship we have with time and the space in which we find our dependence upon interrelated constructs and species and matter.

It is important that we begin to share this message with people. When pro-lifers argue that we cannot kill fetuses because it is taking a life, that is philosophically wrong. Life kills life, life is death postponed. They might be more successful if they argued that ending a life now fails to prolong its possible successes and failures. Cancer fighting advocates need to remind people that we aren't saving the lives of people who develop cancer, merely prolonging the time before their inevitable death. Alleviation of suffering maybe, but not the alleviation of death. We need to teach our children that the only true knowledge that they can rely upon about the world and their relationship to it is that they will die, that that relationship will cease. Then life can be more fully lived. Lifeguards don't save people from dying, they merely act in ways to change the pattern of the life moving inextricably towards death.

tókha sandefur????

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"The failure of the reform measures in California’s election last night has brought out a lot of negative punditry, some of it good. On the way to work this morning, in between the car accidents, I was listening to Armstrong And Getty (the only morning show in Sacramento worth a damn), and they were making the amusing but accurate point that California is a lot like a beautiful, kind, good woman who just happens to be insane, and every few weeks comes at you with an axe. You try hard to be kind and make her well, but at some point, many people are just going to leave. I don’t agree with those who think Schwarzenegger was naive about California politics. People including Dan Walters—the only great journalist left in California—contend that he was just overly optimistic and thought that he didn’t have to go out and push for these measures."

Novel writing is going painfully slow, and i am far behind. I just couldn't pass up this opportunity to point out further evidence that tim sandefur, in his own words, is nothing so much more than a far right conservative. He may feign his allegiance to objectivist libertarianism, and speaks oft at Federalist Society meetings, but deep in the core of his being is another good Goebbels type fascist waiting until he assumes the political power he feels he righteously deserves. For the record Armstrong and Getty are cheap imitations of Hannity and Combes, begging to move up the Fox News/ Clear Channel food chain. They will make horrendously ugly statements, filled with outright lies, innuendo, deceipt etc. and if called on them, even within a five minute period, will claim that they didn't say what they just said. It is tawdry and vile. And for Timmy to claim his wonder in them is really disheartening but all too expected. Likewise with Walters who would love to be O'Reilly or even Tierney of the NYT, but is a pseudo-intellect used to synchophantic adoration of those conservatives in power. His reports distort and deceive, his book is truly a nightmare. Yet Tim, think Monty Python here, loves them and adores them. It could be no more obvious. It is a shame the others on the Positive Liberty website have to put up with him.

National Novel Writing Month

November is for NaNoWriMo so i won't be posting anything here most of the month. I will however make the effort when something so horribly vile stirs my passions. Thus, i feel i need to comment on what should have made for great TV, but didn't. Putting the Senate on double secret probation for a day needed to make so much more of the impact than it did. The lies compiled upon lies spewed by the GOP leadership needed to be attacked at each and very single moment that they were stated. Frist's comments alone should have immediately inspired parody and satire, not just among the comedians, but among the reporters present. If ever he was feeling emotionally wounded, wouldn't it have been when the SEC asked the Justice Department to conduct a separate investigation of his financial dealings. Or for him to say that Reid hijacked the Senate, it could have created the great demographic of the GOP rigging pieces of legislation, usurping this or that power to get their way or no way, and so many many more instances of GOP mismanagement of the Senate and the country. At least Rockefeller pointed out Robert's lies and hypocritical grandstanding, but where was the MSM to point out the truth and the facts. These guys are vile and despicable human beings, corrupt beyond any measure in the history of the planet, and determined to move forward with their fascist agenda no matter what happens.