Evolution Inaction

Man (this, of course, refers to the collective scientific "Man", not necessarily the straight, white variety) is the highest form of animal life on this planet. We have achieved a position of total domination over all other animal life that we know exists. We turn other animals into companions, into pets, into workers, into food. We have even taken to teaching some of them. We have been able to teach any number of animals that if they put this item into this particular spot, hit that particular button they can be rewarded with treats.

We've come a long way, there's no question about it. We should be proud that we've reached heights never before seen on this world. There is no one in the world who could take any of that away from any of us.

Just keep reminding yourself about that the next time you stop at a vending machine.

And another thing.....

Ok, apparently I wasn't quite done with this topic...but let's look at this from a slightly different angle: the "Why" of this whole thing. Today, this amendment failed in conference committee, not even making it to the floor of the senate for a vote. This came as a surprise to no one, not even the amendment's sponsors. Everyone involved knew that there was little to no chance of this ever making it out of either branch of congress, much less get out to be ratified by the states, so why do it? Because it's an election year, and they want to stir up their base? sure. Because Bush's poll numbers have been in the cellar lately, and they needed something to show his "leadership"? sure. Because they desperately want to get our attention off of secret surveillance, Iraq, Afghanistan, recent corruption disclosures, Valerie Plame, immigration, ballooning gas prices, shrinking middle classes, etc, etc, ad nauseum? sure.

But that's not all that's really at work here. As the fundamental Christian right has gained momentum, there has been a growing trend to try and legislate morality. And don't be fooled; I don't care what they say for their little sound bites, their version of "morality" is absolutely what is being put forth here. Ask anybody who supports this type of thing and the reasons they will give you is that it is simply "wrong" for homosexuals to be together. Ask them why, and you will invariably be told that it's "because the Bible says so". These are the very same people who scream the loudest that we are out to save the world for democracy (and we'll kick anybody's ass who gets in our way) and who beat their breasts the most when somebody else's religion is propped up in a government. Well, ok, maybe not just anybody's religion; maybe just Muslims. Can you imagine the screaming if someone proposed legislation for this country based on Islamic law?

When did it become the government's job to tell us what is morally correct? It is not the government's place to tell us what the color of our lives should be. They have no right to tell us what to say, what to think, how to set up our households and they certainly have no right to tell us who we can fall in love with and marry. The current administration and congressional leadership are no longer representative of a government "of the people and for the people". They have twisted this into a government "of the elite, and for whoever the hell they choose". Amazingly, they seem to keep choosing the people with the most money and who will be most likely to keep them in power, and damn any hypocrisy along the way.

Bill Frist is Stoopid.....

Our fearless leader, our beloved president George Bush back-pedaled from his stance of last week where he had stated that he was "open to the possibility of an amendment" banning gay marriage, to actively pushing a senator to introduce a proposed amendment to the constitution doing just that. Bill Frist, that man of impeccable judgement (remember Terry Schiavo?) was only too happy to oblige, stating that “Marriage between one man and one woman does a better job protecting children better than any other institution humankind has devised. As such, marriage as an institution should be protected, not redefined.” really, now.

Let's ignore the bad grammar for a second and take two examples of relationships that I'm familiar with. In the first, a girl in her teens gets knocked up by her even younger boyfriend. He actually sticks around to "do the right thing" and they get married, try to raise the child together. This is an abysmal failure, to no one's surprise. They wind up divorcing within two years and virtually tear the child apart over the years, because they don't figure out how to speak to each other without screaming for a very, very long time. On the other hand, you have two men, who have been in a committed relationship for five years already, and decide to adopt. They adopt a little girl who grows up in a household with nothing but loving people. Are you seriously going to believe that somehow or other this gay couple is a *threat* to children?

Who do these people think they are that they can try and tell us that the first relationship has more validity and is in fact, *better* than the other? This is bullshit of the highest order. All you need to do is to look at recent statistics on divorce rates, and spend a little bit of time to look at the causes of these trends. *There* is your threat to "Family Values". I know that this will come as a huge shock to fundamental conservatives everywhere, but I would be willing to bet that very, very few of these break-ups had anything to do with a gay man or lesbian woman.

This is absolutely nothing but an attempt to bolster shrub's poll numbers, stir up the masses, and distract the public with something shiny from all of the rest of the crap that's been going on lately. Even the supporters of this amendment freely admit that it will not pass. What an inordinate waste of time and resources on something which by all rights, should be a non-issue! Why should we care if two loving people decide to valididate their feelings towards one another? How can people not see the parallels between this and how inter-racial marriages were looked on not so very long ago? How could adding stability, any type of stability, in this insanely unstable world, be damaging to anyone, much less our children?

Nobody can get very far from that quote from Forest Gump "stupid is as stupid does" (insert thick southern accent here): Bill Frist and George Bush qualify on this one. The fact that this is even being *debated* is just plain stupid.

Much Ado About ..... FISA

By this time, everyone who doesn't live under a rock has heard about the wiretapping and data mining operations of the NSA. President Bush has doggedly stuck to the line through these recent controversies that at no time have they operated outside of the law. The worst part about this whole thing is that it looks like he is right. (yes, I know it's a first: I think that shrub is right about something).

The irony, of course, is that when FISA was first enacted back in 1978, it was meant as a curb to the abuses of power of intelligence gathering agencies (detailed in the Church Committee Report) which grew through the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements in the sixties and culminated with the revelations of the Watergate break-in and subsequent scandal.

Now here's how this was s'posed to have worked: what had everyone in a tizzy at the time was that the FBI and CIA had been off doing pretty much whatever they wanted for years, and sometimes even acting as the president's personal police force, with no real oversight whatsoever. The passage of FISA and the creation of the FISC was supposed to provide a level of judicial oversight, which would in turn report in full to Congress. Voila! Problem solved. This was the theory. The reality has been somewhat different. It seems that congress gave itself a congratulatory pat on the back for fixing a very broken horse long after the last smoldering remnants of the barn had disappeared, and promptly forgot about the court except for when they received their lengthy annual reports. Such as this one:


Office of the Attorney General
Washington, DC 20530
March 5, 1986

Honorable George Bush
President of the Senate
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Mr. Vice President:

This report is submitted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, Title 50, United States Code, Section 1807.

During calendar year 1985, 587 applications were made for orders and extensions of orders approving electronic surveillance under the Act. The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued orders for all 587 applications granting authority to the Government for the requested electronic surveillances. No orders were entered which modified or denied the requested authority.

Sincerely,

Edwin Meese III
Attorney General


That's the whole report. That's the entirety of the oversight given to this court. That is the extent of the interest that congress has shown in this system for almost 30 years. And before anyone screams, yes, the reports have gotten longer. The report for 2005, issued on April 28, 2006 was actually a full page in length. A whole lot more words, not very much more information. (to view all of the reports, and several other interesting documents visit http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/ ).

Now, let me be clear on something; I am not against wiretaps in general. There are many instances when they are absolutely essential for law enforcement and/or intelligence gathering missions. However, I am very much against the idea of letting the organizations that are out there working away for "our protection" being allowed to do whatever they wish to whomever they wish. We are probably not to that point yet, but how far away are we really? There is a vanishingly small number of people who are making all of the decisions on these points, and the ultimate decision lies in the hands of seven judges. Seven judges appointed to a seven year tenure by one person, the chief justice of the United States. Given the tenures of former chief justices William Rehnquist and his predecessor Warren Burger, this means that for the entire history of the FISC, it's membership has been solely decided by two men. The problem in this lies in definition. Who is it that is declaring what is so sensitive to national security that the country could be put at risk for it's disclosure? Right now, most, if not all, of these decisions are being made within the Bush administration, and they have recently made noises about prosecuting reporters for TREASON for disclosing any sensitive information at all. From what I have seen, there have been little or no disclosures which truly threatened our security, but quite a few that have been embarassing to the administration.

The entire point of having three distinct branches of government is to provide a series of checks and balances to keep any one branch from becoming too powerful and overwhelming the others. For quite some time now, congress has been abdicating its responsibilities on this front, *especially* since 9/11. Not long after the attacks in 2001, it was declared that the United States was in a state of "war" against an enemy defined as "terrorism". Not against Al Queada, or the Talibani-led government of Afghanistan which had directly funded and abetted these attacks, but a war against a vaguely defined act. During this state of "war", congress told the president that he was pretty much free to do whatever the hell he pleased. He has done so, and this has led directly to the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, the founding of at least two secret military prison camps, the wiretap programs, the kidnapping of foreign nationals and the investigation of numerous peaceful and legal domestic protest groups. This is the stuff that we have found out about, almost certainly not the only or worst of what's been going on. By the strict definition of law, every single one of these acts has been "legal". I believe they have also been morally and fundamentally *wrong*.

Intransigent Means

Intransigent Means

{ Prelude }

witch-glow paints my palms

cupped around the dancing flame

my lips hungrily kissing

on my own death

dragged into my lungs

making itself home

exhaling a noxious cloud

sent heavenward

quickly dispersed

changed into something foreign

and unrecognizable

solid to gas

ash

left in its

place

{ Andante }

caladiums

turn translucent

when backlit

by porch light

night street life

framed by the non light

of the new moon

all beautiy is beheld

in memories

only exist

in memories

all our lives

spent remembering

the constantly disappearing

Now.

{ Adagio}

reality

is nothing

a scrolling memoir

of perception

reality

is programmed into us

by parents, friends,

society

by television.

Madness

is disagreeing

with what

we

have been

Told.

{ Postlude }

word-play

as (sort of)

foreplay

for the inevitable

fucking

of my mind

a kind of madness

disagreement

with the status quo

the patterns

etched

outside of stone

weathering my life

collecting time

keeping my soul

Alive.

Two Questions

What could be more important than the questions of "what if..." and "why?" How can you live a full and productive life without thinking periodically about "what if I had actually asked that really amazing girl out back when I was in college? What would have happened, how different would life be today?" Or... "what if I *hadn't* asked out that girl that wound up being not so amazing, but somehow transformed into a psycho-bitch ex-wife?" Think about it... what if an asteroid hadn't hit the Earth 65 million years ago, give or take a month or two? What if Socrates had never been born? What if guys named Mohammed or Jesus or Siddhartha had never walked the earth, learned to speak? What if the Gnostics or god forbid the Cathars had won out against the Catholics? what if the European powers had not taken part in institutionalized slavery? what if Hitler had won the war back in the 40's? Everywhere you turn it seems that you are coming up against the smallest chances that have created the world we are in today. Synchronicity on steroids.

On the other side, the question of "why". This one's gotten kinda a bad rap over the years. Too many parents being pestered by too many persistent rugrats. But kids have got it right in a lot of ways. They ask the questions which *should* be asked, the ones that get to the heart of the matter, that lead to actual real understanding. Is it necessary to understand why the sky is blue or grass is green? not really, not in a big way. I've never been offered a job because I know that the scattering and diffusion of light particles causes the blue coloring of the sky or that chlorophyl makes the grass look green, but I've never lost that desire simply to know, to *understand*.

These two questions, and this desire to understand the important things about what is going on in this world today are the entire reason for this blog. To quote from the X-Files, "the truth is out there"; I'm just interested in actually trying to *find* it.