Loose ends.

Just a couple of observations or comments to start the day before a real blog comes along. First of all, I caught CNN's Daryn Kagan yesterday reporting on students cutting classes to demonstrate against immigration reform as proposed in House bill 4437 which would make all undocumented immigrants felons and make it a crime for priests, nuns, health care workers and other social workers to offer help to undocumented immigrants.

Kagan questioned the efforts of these high school kids saying something like, wouldn't it be better if, instead of out marching, they were all back in school getting an education?

Yep, this from a Stanford University graduate. It's alumni like her who demean that institution's stellar reputation as one of America's great universities and leads one to ponder how folks like her, along with our Oil Tanker Secretary of State Rice, ever got through the tough Stanford University admission standards.

Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, in contrast, featured interviews with some of those students cutting classes to protest and I was extremely impressed with their awareness of the issue. Daryn Kagan would have been well served to catch a bit of those kids on Democracy Now! Of course, Amy Goodman is more of a serious reporter of news in contrast to Kagan who appears more in the mold of corporate jello journalism.

I think many of those kids skipping classes to protest were learning far more than sitting in some classroom for civics. They were learning it by living it! It was reassuring for the future of America to see high school kids actively participating on issues important to them. Maybe because it directly affects them. Maybe they'll all be deported under the new law.

Then America can get back to what it does best. Sleeping.

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We all know the difficulty president Bush has with one of the features of democracy as shown in the presidential election of 2000. If the outcome is unacceptable, scrap the democracy and just seize the power. Well, from an article appearing in the UK's "The Independent" it appears the Iraqi democracy Bush has granted that nation is grating on him there as well.

Seems Bush doesn't like Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister of that country. As a result, Bush has written the leader of the Shi'ite Alliance, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, "asking" someone else be nominated to serve as prime minister. Of course, the irony of that is lost on Americans who have given a couple thousand lives of loved ones for the "Iraqi democracy". After all, Americans who have abrogated their very own democracy, have little interest or empathy for budding new Third World ones.

But the significance of Bush's meddling gall in theirs is not lost on the Iraqis, however. They are pissed. Very pissed. (Their big mistake being they probably believed Bush's propaganda to U.S. citizens about spreading democracy and freedom to their nation, making them as delusionary as Bush.)

Rather than Bush strongly "suggesting" al-Jaafari be replaced per Bush's wishes, I think it might be more expedient, using Bush's *supreme omnipotence*, if he consider more expeditious means of carrying out his wishes, i.e., it may be time Bush thought about invading Iraq, of sending the U.S. military into that country to depose al-Jaafari. After all, it worked beautifully once. Why not again?

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Finally, I had to laugh at a story on NPR yesterday regarding senator Joseph Lieberman's reelection effort. Labeled as Bush-lite by many democrats, he is being challenged for his democratic seat in the senate by an anti-war democrat.

But here is the irony for all proud democrats. Democratic leadership would prefer Lieberman not be challenged in the primary for his senate seat. Why? Because the democratic leadership considers his seat secured if Lieberman is the candidate. Here, I'll say that again, democratic leadership considers Lieberman as good as reelected if he is NOT challenged by an anti-war democrat in the primary.

So here we have a Bush-lite republican (who adamantly denies he's a Bush bootlicker!) that the democratic leadership wants reelected (as a democrat that has garnered praise from republicans!). Sigh.

Such is the state of the democratic party today. I think it would be another nice lesson for democrats if Lieberman is the democratic candidate in Novermber. And he loses! I guess I've no patience for Bush's "opposition party". A party whose leadership thinks it's "too soon" to censure Bush as suggested by one of their own and supported by only two other democratic senators.