Life without Texas (and the Houston Rockets?)

Since wing-nut Republicans can’t win without hanging chads and rigged electronic voting, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is talking about picking up Texas' loose marbles and marching The Lone Star State out of the Union.

And Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul is keeping the secession idea alive.

I say go for it, Texas!

With the exception of The Texas Observer, Austin City Limits, Kinky Friedman, Molly Ivins, Ralph Yarborough, Jim Hightower and a few other worthies, Texas has given this nation little more than grief.

Where to begin?

My first awareness that something was rotten in the state started on an indelible Friday. Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas. The toxicity ran right through oil-patch-caused pollution and graft, Lyndon Johnson's Southeast Asian misadventures, dozens of Texas executions to the plutocracy of George W. Bush.

So go, Texas.

But be quick about it. The Trailblazers could use a pass on the rest of the series with the Houston Rockets? Remember, it's called the NATIONAL Basketball Association.

PS: For Hightower's take on Perry, go HERE.

Shoes that fit

A confession — or maybe it’s just to purge eight years of anger.

So many times I’ve wanted to hurl my own shoes — or outrage — at George W. Bush.

I have wanted to score a direct, symbolic hit, to shatter his privileged, preppy, Texas, self-righteous, Born-Again, cynical shell.

To protect us — both of us — I have prayed to the powers, "Don’t allow me in the same room with this man!" I fear what I would do. How would I contain my dark disdain for him?

How would I stifle my rage?

I doubt I would hurl mere shoes. I would choose heavy, deep-treaded, metal-toed, big-bore hiking boots. Clod-hoppers.

Danners from Oregon.

After Egyptian TV reporter Muntader al-Zaidi threw his shoes and unleashed his tirade, I wondered what would I yell as I hurled my own.

“Here’s for your lies!” I’d scream. “Take this for your hypocrisy, ignorance, incompetence, callousness, smugness, cronyism, cynicism, contempt and arrogance. Here's for the torture, the deaths, the destruction of the planet, the inhumanity.

Take this for Rumsfeld and Cheney. Take this for your collective evil!”

Don't get me wrong. I believe there is “that of God” in everyone. I really do. I believe in non-violence. I believe in these things, but when it comes to George W. Bush, I fear my beliefs would fail me; that I would fail my beliefs. I fear that my own darkness would prevail. That my boots would become unlaced.

No, the shoes thrown in Baghdad fit me all too well.

Like Muntader al-Zaidi, I wear size 10.

Humiliation, Humility and Healing

I confess that yesterday’s post about the proposed naming a San Francisco sewage plant after George W. Bush isn’t sitting well with me.

I don’t really WANT the Oceanside Water Pollution Control plant renamed after the president. What I really want is for him to be UNworthy of such humiliation.

Let’s face it, he is abundantly worthy of it now.

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, New Orleans.

The economic mess, the massive deficit, the deceitful oil war, the wiretapping, the torture, the grotesque and growing inequality here.

The shame of our health care system, the denial of global warming, the effort to undermine Social Security, the travesty of our schools.

This is the sewage of the Bush administration, which should be planted, at every opportunity, before the president.

That’s why it is so important to ask the president at each and every press conference how he views the San Francisco ballot initiative. Does he, at long last, get it?

Certainly nothing else has gotten his attention. His blind and persistent arrogance is matched only by his towering ignorance and crushing isolation.

The sewage naming idea is humiliating for a purpose. It is a raw substitute for richly deserved impeachment. May it produce humility so we, and he, can begin to heal from the shame he has caused us.

George may get his due — do

It's almost enough to get me to move to San Francisco so I can vote there. A measure to name the city's sewage plant after George W. Bush has qualified for the November ballot.

You can read the story here.

I particularly like the line that the White House refused to comment. Utter public constipation.

The president should be asked directly about the proposal at his next press conference.

Nor should Portland be outdone by the City by the Bay. We should insist that the Portland City Council name the city's new sewage storm water overflow pipe for the president:The George W. Bush Sewage Overflow Pipe.

Write Commissioner Sam Adams. His e-mail address is: commissionersam@ci.portland.or.us

Indeed it would be fitting if every last sewage plant in the country were named after the president.

Front page dots ripe for connecting

Before they disappear into the fog of old news, here are three front-page headlines from the Wednesday, July 2nd issue of The New York Times.

Taken separately, they inform in a sporadic way. Taken together, they cast a laser-bright light on these times.

On the top right of the page:

DEEPENING CYCLE
OF JOB LOSS SEEN
LASTING INTO '09

WEAK SIGNALS PERSIST

Directly beneath it:

Stock Exchange’s Former Chief
Wins Court Battle to Keep Pay.

(The “pay” in question was $187.5 million paid to Richard A. Grasso.)

And then over to the left on the bottom of the page, this:

Helmsley, Dogs’ Best Friend,
Left Them Up to $8 Billion

(The Helmsley in question is the late hotelier, real estate magnate and convicted tax-evader Leona Helmsley. Helmsley left her own dog, "Trouble" by name, $12 million. It was Helmsley who famously said, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.")

There you have it. A journalistic snapshot of our American society on one summer’s day in 2008, the eighth year of the reign of George W. Bush.

I suppose I could throw into the mix one other story from the front page, but it is a dot harder to connect. Upper left on the page:

CHINA INSPIRED
INTERROGATIONS
AT GUANTANAMO

COMMUNIST TECHNIQUES

Military Used ’57 Study
of Steps That Led to
False Confessions

Eight crucial years — lost

My wife just returned from San Luis Obispo, which is halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles and a 15-minute drive to the cooling waters of the Pacific Ocean.

On Friday, the temperature hit an historic high of 113. Yesterday it cooled off to 108, a record for the date.

You can add those numbers to all the other evidence that the Great Warming is happening, folks.

The irony is that eight years ago this nation actually elected a leader, Al Gore, who was committed to using the power of the presidency to reverse our destructive course.

Instead, the Supreme Court gave us a cheerleader-in-chief for the oil industry, and worse, its Godfather, Dick Cheney of Halliburton.

We just lost eight critical years.

The result has been an oil cabal of deceit and destruction. Of cutting behind-closed-door deals with Big Oil over a secret “energy policy.” If invading Iraq and wasting thousands of lives and billions secure its oil wealth. (American Oil companies are on the verge of striking long-term, no-bid deals with the Iraqi government. And who will protect those oil fields?) Of coddling the oil-rich Saudi Royal regime (democracy anyone?). The House of Saud, an old Bush family oil ally, nurtured the fanatical Islamic fundamentalist movement that, in turn, spawned Al Qaeda and, well, you can see where this is going.

And the Christian Right, fixated on abortion and blinded by its own self-righteousness, twice helped Bush gain office, thereby endangering God’s entire creation.

In today’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman lays out the most recent chapter in this tragedy: the off-shore oil drilling ruse.

Want some good news? Back in San Luis Obispo, it is starting to cool. Today’s high was 94.

Where's the Rage?

Apparently Red Electric readers have had trouble posting comments. A couple of months ago I decided to screen comments, but I inadvertently set up a barrier requiring user IDs. I think I have that fixed now, so feel free to comment.

One of the responses that didn't make it through the gantlet was from a Lizi Zach, a friend and former student. Lizi lives in Berlin where, much to her relief, the Germans know that Americans are better in every way than the inhabitant of the White House.

She writes regarding my recent comment that various forms of government would have disposed of George W. Bush long ago:

"....saw your piece on Bush, The Decider. Right on.

I meet with my boss every year to go over long-term and short-term goals and if the annual ones are not met, my job is on the line. The Iowa floods are one such test for Bush. But what of Osama bin Laden? Iraq and 'mission accomplished'? As I mentioned to you on the phone a couple weeks ago: Where is the rage?"

We may not know exactly where it is, but I have a pretty good idea of when it will express itself: Nov. 4.

Time that "slips off the mind"

Two authors separated by nearly 50 years, conveyed very similar messages to me recently about our place in time, and the danger we pose to it.

The first was Thomas Friedman writing in the New York Times earlier this week about how Barack Obama is favorably perceived in the Middle East.

Friedman related how he was talking at a “Nile-side” restaurant with two Egyptian officials about Obama’s securing the Democratic nomination.

“…one of them quoted one of his children as asking: ‘Could something like this ever happen in Egypt?’ And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course, ‘no.’ It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not the other way around.”

The phrase that stuck was, “The past always buries the future, not the other way around.”

Edward T. Hall writing in his classic “The Silent Language” in 1959 noted that in the Middle East “…it is pointless to make an appointment too far in advance, because the informal structure of their time system places everything beyond a week in a single category of ‘future,’ in which plans tend to ‘slip off their minds.’”

Hall’s point, when applied to Friedman’s, isn’t that the past buries the future. It’s that for Middle Easterners, there is effectively no future as we understand it. The future, Hall writes, is in the hands of Allah. It is not a human concern. That’s why any discussion of the future is punctuated by the cautionary phrase, “God willing.”

Friedman’s “the other way around” is, of course, the future’s destruction of the past. That is pretty good description of how American’s perceive history. Our fixation on the future, destroys our past.

Then I thought of the extreme opposite as posed by Hall. Just as there is no future in the Middle East, for many Americans there is no past.

It “slips off our minds,” to use Hall’s words.

So it was that 35 years after the debacle in Vietnam, George W. Bush, hardly a student of history (or seemingly much else) invaded Iraq.

So it was that Bush could dismiss 30 years of scientific research pointing to global warming. It "slipped off his mind" all to protect carbon-generating industries’ profits.

When, if ever, will Americans look to the future not simply from the vantage of the persistent and pressing present (at its worst it is instant gratification, immediate rewards, swift vengeance, instant credit, quick returns), but from the vantage of understanding and wisdom rooted in the past?

Unless we assume such a vantage, we will destroy, both the future and the past.

And the present, for humanity, will no longer exist.

Texas Hold 'em and Crazy Scott

I know you are as shocked — SHOCKED! — as I am about Scott McClellan’s deranged delusions about the Bush White House.

Clearly the former press secretary has been brainwashed by left-wing bloggers, as the ever-insightful Karl Rove has suggested.

Or, as the New York Times reported, “(White House officials, past and present) seemed to take their cues from Dana Perino, the current press secretary. Ms. Perino used the words ‘sad’ and ‘puzzled’ to describe the White House response, as if Mr. McClellan had undergone some kind of emotional breakdown, while making the case that if Mr. McClellan had problems with Mr. Bush, he should have raised them while in the president’s employ.”

Well exactly.

We know that the White House for the last seven years has had its windows thrown wide open to a wide diversity of opinion. All Scott needed to do was speak up. We know that the president, to say nothing of his gracious and accommodating vice president, is absolutely infatuated and intrigued by new ideas. Paragons of compassion and openness.

Call the Bush years the "New Enlightenment," if you will.

Clearly Scott has gone off his rocker. In the old Soviet Union, the Kremlin readily saw the likes of Scott for what they were — nut cases.

If is unfortunate (also “sad” and “puzzling”) that the rest of this nation largely agrees with Scott. The presidency of George W. Bush and the vice presidency of Richard Cheney are now out of favor with 72 percent of the leftist, whacko American people.

We are a nation of nut cases. The prison industry will love it. Build more cells. The rest of us can join the millions already locked away.

This from the Washington Post: “With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.”

When the rest of the nation (including crazy old Scott) is locked up, it seems only appropriate that the Bush administration should remain confined to its own separate, bubbly White House incarceration.

Let’s face it, the whole country has been in lock down for seven years. Talk about Texas Hold ‘em.

The November election will mark the greatest liberation in the nation’s history.

Coin of a Republican Realm

In case you haven't seen this, here it is.

Change we can live without.

Thanks for sharing, Arnie.

Politics dictates quick solar action here

In the current issue of The Hillsdale News, I reported that Portland school district officials and local leaders don't feel a rush to install a large photo-voltaic array of solar panels in order to supply electricity to Rieke Elementary School.

The site that the school district officials and solar consultants have in mind is on the highly visible slope just above Bertha Court (see above rendering). But some folks wonder whether that’s the best site for the industrial-looking 200 foot-by-50 foot array.

They are saying, let’s slow down and consider other sites and possibly more attractive panels.

Earlier I had reported that the installation had to be completed before the end of the year because lucrative federal tax incentives expire then. But those conferring around the table at the school district office last Wednesday were certain the feds and Congress would extend the tax incentive program for wind and solar power. There would be time for careful siting deliberation.

The incentives have started a boom in alternative energy projects, which have zero carbon emissions in a world of warming hurt.

What politician in his or her right mind wouldn’t continue the tax incentive program?

Quite a few, starting with Congress and Bush administration energy officials, according to Thomas Friedman’s column in today’s New York Times. The government is stuck in the same short-term, quick-fix mind set demonstrated by presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton, writes Friedman.

Both candidates are advocating a federal gas tax vacation this summer, which will only contribute to the carbon spewing.

Enough with the Band-Aids already. As Friedman reminds us, we have a global problem on our hands.

In Hillsdale, intransigence in Washington, D.C. means forging ahead here. Like it or not, we need to move on the solar project under tight, politically dictated time constraints.

The result may not be pretty aesthetically, but by promising to provide 60 percent of Rieke’s energy without polluting the environment, this project has other, more important, attractions.

Disgraceful!

For some time now I’ve been searching for a word on this side of outright obscenity to describe the Bush administration.

No single word captures it: not aloof, arrogant, deceitful, self-serving, hypocritical, self-righteous, corrupt, secretive, insensitive or inhumane.

What word to capture Abu Ghraib, torture, waterboarding, wire-tappings, renditions, lies, ineptitude, tax cuts for the wealthy, war profiteering, cronyism, posturing, stonewalling and fear mongering?

Then yesterday I think I found the word. Or to be exact, it was handed to me by a most unlikely source.

Here it is in context in a New York Times story:

NEW ORLEANS — Senator John McCain took direct aim at the Bush administration on Thursday as he stood in the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and declared that “never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way that it was handled.”

The Bush presidency in its entirety, not just in its callous mishandling of Katrina, has been, in a single word, a “disgrace.”

Gerald Ford proclaimed on the day Richard Nixon left office that “our long national nightmare” had ended.

To assure us that the disgrace of Bush-Cheney will end next January, McCain, Clinton and Obama should agree that this administration has been a disgrace — to the nation, to its people, to humanity, and, yes, to the planet.

I know it is likely too much to hope for, but to help the healing, those who voted for George W. Bush, starting with McCain, could begin with an apology.

In apologizing, McCain might see the wisdom in abandoning his own major positions, which so far mimic those of the Bush administration.

McCain, who so aptly spoke of disgrace in New Orleans, should see that his own stances are no less disgraceful.

Options for a Hedge Hog

Ever since writing about John Paulson, the hedge fund manager who made $3.7 billion (with a “b”) last year, I’ve been noticing how $3 billion or $4 billion gets mentioned in the news.

Every time I see the number, I think, “Hey, that’s about what Paulson made last year!”

So today the $3 billion number cropped up not once but twice in the front section of The Oregonian. No, it wasn’t in the front page stories headlined “Confessed killer’s words set him free,” “DA says DNA links suspect to Wilberger,” or “Hey, Kids! It’s good to jump off the bed.” (And they call this a NEWSpaper?)

No, the first mention of $3 billion was on page A5. Headline: “Older people’s memory problems tied to incontinence drugs.” Now there’s news a few million of us can use. It's good news for me, I guess. At least I know my memory problems — I have a few — don’t result from incontinence drugs — yet.

So here’s the $3 billion reference: “U.S. sales of prescription drugs to treat urinary problems topped $3 billion in 2007, according to IMS Health, which tracks drug sales.” The story goes on to say that bladder control is a problem for about one in 10 people age 65 or older.

There you have it — Paulson could keep an entire generation out of diapers and still have $700 million left over for his own modest needs (more on those later).

Second reference, page A7 (If I ran the Oregonian’s, this one would easily bump anything the editors put on today’s front page). Headline, “Study: 300,000 veterans suffer war-related mental problems.” Here’s where Paulson’s $3.7 billion annual take might help. Third paragraph: “Beyond the personal trauma experienced by these (300,000 returning) troops, the problems are costing the country $3.1 billion a year in medical care, lost productivity and suicide, (the) RAND (corp.) estimates.

Paulson, who contributes regularly to hawkish Republican candidates, could pick up those costs and still have $600 million left over.

How about it John? How about helping the traumatized casualties from W's oil war?

Or perhaps you have something better to do with $3.1 billion.

Nosing around on the web last night, I got a sense of what that might be.

This from a 2005 New York Times story about the super-rich snapping up mansions on Manhattan:

“Another mansion with a new owner and a renovation plan is the 20,000-square-foot former Town Club on East 86th Street, which was sold last February for $14.7 million to John Paulson, a money manager. The property has a swimming pool in the basement and portraits of the 12 Caesars overlooking the stairway in the main hall, according to Mr. Pennoyer, who was consulted on the renovation.

“Paula Del Nunzio, the broker at Brown Harris Stevens who sold the mansion, said the family plans to keep the swimming pool. She wasn't sure about the Caesars, which have frames decorated with swags and oxen heads.”

I could find no follow-up story about how Paulson, no doubt soaking in his basement swimming pool, made the tough decision about whether to get rid of the Caesars, swags and oxen heads, but I’m sure he did the right thing — Caesar-wise.

In a sea of white

When I was 17 in the late ‘50s, Tubby Clayton, then an old Anglican priest, who had ministered to British soldiers in the grim trenches of the First World War, took me and a small contingent of young Americans on a pilgrimage to the military graves of northern France.

Each summer Tubby would return to the cemeteries with a different group of young Americans whom he had organized to volunteer in the settlement houses of poor London neighborhoods.

Tubby, who was in his 70s at the time of our visit to the endless, orderly rows of white tombstones, led us directly to the graves of the men he had known and ministered to.

As we stood next to each small headstone, he shared memories. Occasionally his voice cracked. He’d dab away a tear, then pause to gather himself. The pain of war — his shared pain — crowded around our little group as we stood in the thickened silence in the rolling sea of white.

I was reminded of that tableau as I stood at the PSU campus on Sunday amidst thousands of small flags marking the deaths that have resulted from the Bush/Cheney Oil War in Iraq.

The PSU exhibit ends on March 20, but, of course, the five-year-old war grinds on, its toll ever mounting. Somewhere, family and friends visit not miniature flags, but graves of the dead, of men, women and children swept away by folly and power, hatred and greed.

And like Tubby, a half century ago in France, the visitors are robbed of words by their tears and pain.

Speaking of Change

Change, a vital concept, is in danger of becoming a hollow gong in the 2008 political campaign.

Before the meaning is hammered out of it, it’s worth looking at what kind of changes we are talking about — and not talking about in 2008.

I’m thinking of three.

One is so obvious that no one states it outright.

After eight miserable years, at long last, we will be changing the government of this country. It can only be for the better. George W. Bush, certainly the worst president within living memory, can take his bubble world back to the Crawford ranch and practice pronouncing “nuclear.” Cheney can go quail hunting with sacrificial friends. The only change that won’t happen, and isn’t happening, is among the self-righteous, power-mad conservative elite who put these two in power. They are without shame.

That John McCain would stoop so low as to seek their support ought to be reason enough to ensure his defeat.

The second change is the one heralded by the Obama campaign slogan. If Obama makes it to the White House, which seems likely, we will have a president bred and imbued with an international world view. Other nations and peoples will no longer be seen as objects of exploitation. This nation's leadership and people will no longer see themselves as entitled and superior. Because of that change, we at last may shift our resources from bullying to building, both at home and abroad.

From such humility may emerge a new confidence in American ideals that are lived rather than ritually celebrated. No longer will our leaders trample on our rights while they mouth praise in pledges of allegiance from flag-draped podiums.

We may no longer merely hold these American truths to be self-evident; we may actually infuse our lives with them.

Imagine.

This election will go a long way to revealing to Americans what they are and have been from before the nation's founding — a multi-racial society. We may be able to free ourselves of the grip of what George Orwell called the “smelly little orthodoxies” and the hateful dogmas of zealots, sexists and bigots.

The change that is happening as I write this — as the votes in the “Potomac primaries” are counted — is the re-engagement of youth in politics. My great fear for several years has been that we have been losing an entire generation to a media fantasy world. Males in particular seemed at risk, and they may still be, as college admissions suggest. I’d like to know the demographics of the youth who are suddenly so engaged in this year’s campaign. Hillary Clinton may lose her race, but my guess is that this election is producing thousands of young Hillarys, who just so happen to be working for Barack Obama.

Those are the major changes that Obama ’s campaign signals.

Finally, there’s the change that no candidate seems willing to talk about in this election year. Al Gore might call it “inconvenient.” It is certainly inevitable. It is a change dictated by a planet in rapid flux. Humans call it “global warming,” but if the eons-old planet could speak, it would call it simply more “global changing.”

If we humans are to survive, we must change how we live. For Americans, it means rethinking our values, particularly our materialistic, consumptive values. Oil is not the only addiction we must beat. We are addicted to nationalism in an age of global communication and interdependency. We are addicted to individualism to the detriment of community and others in need. We are addicted to our own false sense of superiority both as human beings and as Americans.

If we and our fellow humans are to survive, we must change both radically and fast.

The times require a leader both willing and capable to inspire us to make these “inconvenient” changes.

A growing number of Americans are coming to believe that Barack Obama may be, just may be, that leader.

One year to go: The Agony and The Ecstacy

The good news is that we have just one more year of George Bush and Dick Cheney. The bad news is that we have an entire year left of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

One test of how bad they are is how good they make the presidential candidates look. I mean ALL the presidential candidates, right down to Rudy "9/11" Giuliani, as creepy as he is.

Just imagine, every last one of these presidential aspirants has worked hard enough to learn how to pronounce "nuclear." I've often wondered whether a president who cares so little about saying the word cares enough to know that nuclear weapons are, like, the ones that could know, incinerate the planet, including Texas.

It just feels so cozy and comfortable to have alert, articulate and intelligent people running for the highest office in the land. Sure, some of their ideas are crazy and they occasionally screw up, but at least you don't get the feeling that they have just emerged bleary-eyed from some dynastic cocoon and are looking to pick a fight.

These candidates, compared to Bush and Cheney, all seem so, well — ADULT.

One year to go. Keep your fingers crossed.

Revisiting Strunk and White

Re-reading “The Elements of Style” is like visiting with an old friend after a long, long absence.

All the endearing qualities, all the old bonds, come rushing back.

And, with the passage of the years, there’s so much to talk about with authors William Strunk and E.B. White. So much to be reminded of. That includes their assurance that it’s all right to end a sentence with a preposition — especially if it saves you from writing, “So much of which to be reminded.”

The book reminded me of how much I’ve wanted to share with kindred spirits my revulsion for the ubiquitous “robust.” Whom better than Strunk and White?

If there was ever a “Bush-ite” word, it is “robust.” It almost comes branded with the black mark of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. The word is all posture and no substance. “Mission Accomplished” was, and is, “robust.”

What kind of bust has Iraq been? A RO-BUST!

So it was that Strunk and White singled out “thrust,” which displays its own phoney muscle-flexing. To quote from page 61 of the third edition: “This showy noun, suggestive of power, hinting of sex, is the darling of executives, politicos and speech writers. Use it sparingly. Save it for specific applications.”

Exactly, and likewise with “robust.”

“The Elements of Style” is one gem after another.

One of my favorite passages explains how Lincoln got away with “Four score and seven years ago.”

I mean, REALLY! Talk about over-written.

And yet he did it, and White in the book’s concluding section, titled “An Approach to Style,” nails down why.

Noting that Lincoln was “flirting with disaster” when he wrote the phrase, White continues:

The president could have got into his sentence with plain “eighty-seven” — a saving of two words and less of a strain on the listeners’ powers of multiplication. But Lincoln’s ear must have told him to go ahead with four score and seven. By doing so, he achieved cadence while skirting the edge of fanciness. Suppose he had blundered over the line and written, “In the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and seventy-six.” His speech would have sustained a heavy blow. Or suppose he had settled on “eighty-seven.” In that case he would have got into his introductory sentence too quickly; the timing would have been bad.”

Lincoln’s choice of a beginning ensured that, contrary to what he said that day, we will long remember his short speech at the hallowed Gettysburg battleground.

Strunk and White’s well-chosen words have the same effect. We will long remember “The Elements of Style.”

George W. Bush's self-subjection to "non-torture"

George W. Bush has now flatly declared, “This government does not torture people.”

There are several ways to respond to the president.

This president and his government are, metaphorically at the least, torturing America. He and his administration are torturing our Constitution, twisting it beyond recognition.

But to be fair, the president doesn’t mean “torture” in that way. He means literal torture — inflicting extreme physical and mental pain and anguish on prisoners as punishment or as coercion.

Extreme pain and anguish is what torture victims feel and experience.

In order for the president to understand whether his government is truly torturing people, he might voluntarily step outside his presidential bubble and subject himself to whatever American agents are doing to, or ordering to be done to, prisoners here and abroad.

This should be no idle, purposeless exercise. Since the start of the Bush administration, the American people, through Congress, have demanded and been denied information from George W. Bush about the workings of our government under his administration.

So we might use his voluntary submission to “severe interrogation” to extract it. Presumably, if the methods used aren’t coercive and punishing. he will remain steadfast in his silence.

What sort of interrogation will it take to find the truth about the make-up of his and Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force back in 2001, about whether those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were utter fabrications from the outset, about the administration’s denial of scientific evidence and utter refusal to acknowledge global warming, about rigging voting in Florida in 2000, about suppressing the vote in Ohio in 2004 ….

In the course of the “severe” interrogation, the inquisitors might ask whether the president really, truly his administration does not torture.

Further, let the president’s “non-torturing” be conducted in public and be televised. Commercial space might be sold to help pay off our war debts (anything to protect those tax cuts for the rich.)

With a huge, world-wide audience attracted to the broadcast, the ad revenues should be in the millions, possibly billions. DVD sales would add more millions to the total.

When the president’s experience of this non-torture is over and he’s had a chance to shower, get caught up on his sleep, change his clothes, and recuperate at the ranch, he should be asked again about whether his government tortures.

Because the people of the world will have witnessed his experience, they can decide for themselves whether he is telling the truth.

A "Christian" government's "severe interrogation"

If it is true, as a pandering John McCain asserted recently, that this is a “Christian nation” that is best governed by a Christian, then America is giving Christianity a bad name.

The besmirching has been going on quite a while. Think of “Christian” America’s record regarding native peoples, African slaves, African-Americans, Chinese workers, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the dropping of atom bombs on civilian populations, capital punishment, My Lai, Abu Ghraib, the environmental destruction of the planet ….

The list goes on and on and on.

Our virtuous “Christian” governance, if that is what it is, is as current as today’s headline.

The so-called Christian government of this so-called Christian nation, which is led by a so-called Christian president, is treating its enemies, to say nothing of innocent civilians, in a most un-Christ-like way.

Memo

To: George W. Bush
From: Jesus Christ

LOVE YOUR ENEMY

When is the last time you, regardless of your faith, showed your love for fellow human beings by slapping them in the head, holding them naked for hours in a frigid cell, denying them sleep for days and nights by battering them with thundering rock music, by manacling them in stress positions, or by waterboarding them? The latter creates the sensation of being drowned.

Christian nation? Christian government? Christian president?

Get real.

Let’s just forget the sanctimonious religious invocations and, to the best of our ability, do what is right and just and, yes, even compassionate. If we do that, we have the right to expect and, if need be, invite and even demand the same of our "enemies."

Media observation: The headline on the front page of today’s Oregonian reads, “U.S. secretly OK’d severe interrogations.”

“Severe interrogations”?

The lead to the story clearly refers to “torture” and brutality — a long way from “severe interrogations.”

On rare occasions under deadline stress, my interviews with reluctant sources (often paid PR “spokespersons”) could be described as “severe interrogations.”

No, save "severe" for the weather forecast. Severe storms, severe rains, severe winds.

Today’s headline reminds me of when the Oregonian uncritically passed on Neil Goldschmidt’s characterization of his relationship with a 14-year-old as fact in the following headline: GOLDSCHMIDT CONFESSES '70s AFFAIR WITH GIRL, 14.

I suppose readers should expect a front page that describes statutory rape as an “affair” to transform torture into “severe interrogation.”

The news is so much nicer that way — in this “Christian nation.”

The President as Quagmire

We think of quagmires as places, ensnaring traps such as Vietnam and, of course, Iraq — and perhaps the entire Middle East.

The fact is that this country's quagmire is not a place, but a man, George W. Bush.

We are torso-deep in the devastating muck and ooze of Bush and his venal. power-mad administration — and we are going down fast.

As the original quagmire metaphor suggests, the answer is to drain the swamp.

In a word, impeach.