Somebody here is totally whacko!

Dennis Kucinich got the attention of the media today while questioning president Bush's mental health. Kucinich, an Ohio congressman and presidential candidate, is dismissed by mainstream media as being "known for his liberal views," while noting that he "trails far behind the leading candidates in most Democratic polls."

This probably explains why his remarks on the state of Bush's mind are dismissed as "fringy", i.e., Kucinich is not taken seriously as a presidential candidate by the media precisely because such thoughts are way too "out there." (Like his advocacy for an immediate end to and withdrawal from the Iraq war.)

Kucinich's remarks today will probably gain him far more media coverage than Dr. Justin A. Frank's same question about Bush's stability in his 2004 book, "Bush on the Couch." But Dr. Frank is only a clinical psychoanalyst and professor in the Department of Psychiatry at George Washington University Medical Center.

So what did Kucinich say exactly about Bush? Well, in reference to Bush's loose use of "World War III" recently in a pep talk for war with Iran, Kucinich said, "There's something wrong. He (Bush) does not seem to understand his words have real impact."

"You cannot be a president of the United States who's wanton in his expression of violence," Kucinich said. "There's a lot of people who need care. He might be one of them. If there isn't something wrong with him, then there's something wrong with us. This, to me, is a very serious question."

Just another left-wing radical nut, or as I would suggest, perhaps someone who raises an excellent point. As Paul Levy suggests in his 2006 book "The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis," Bush's madness may be something being dreamed up in the Jungian collective unconscious of all humanity. A kind of manifestation of a mass "malignant egophrenia" epidemic that if humanity doesn't awaken from, recognize and squelch, may well lead the human race to its inevitable end - total self-annihiliation. (Which, at the moment, would seem a fitting destiny.)

So, as Kucinich suggests, if it isn't Bush who's nuts, it may be all of us. (Dada suspects it may be both Bush and mankind who are seriously fucked up. Hold on, the ride's gonna get a helluva lot bumpier!)

"I have a dream!"

Edfou, Upper Egypt by David Roberts, 1840

"When we in the West saw the ancient, yet magnificent ruins of the Middle East for the first time as they emerged from the easels of painter David Roberts, we at once knew we had to go there, to lay ruins to some more." (~an anonymous Frenchman)

~~~~~

As we are now told by Sue Pleming of Reuters, "Facing staff shortages in Iraq, the US State Department announced on Friday that diplomats would have no choice but to accept one-year postings in the hostile environment or face losing their jobs."

Dada says, "Now, if we could just demand the same of Bush, Cheney, the whole stinkin' executive branch and both damn houses of the congress to go serve a year in Baghdad (or get their asses canned), I can't begin to imagine how U.S. policy might change. If nothing else, it'd be a great year for us left behind in the U.S with D.C. sans politicians."

There Is No Time

"I find myself sometimes in a position where I think we're all just having a good time and everybody's laughing and enjoying themselves, then the next thing you know somebody bursts into tears." D. Letterman

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You know you're getting old when, attending a ground breaking ceremony for our local Humane Society's new facility yesterday morning, you're approached by one of their members who asks, "Would you like to volunteer for the annual Humane Society Christmas fund raiser?" My job, I was told, would be to play the part of Santa Claus holding cuddly animals on my lap for holiday photos. (It was then I wished--for the first time in years--I had shaved before leaving the house.)

Well, I try not to lean on You Tube too much here on the blog but, upon returning home, I found myself dancing through the house to a song playing repeatedly through the computer. It's energizing beat was just what was needed as Mrs. Dada and I did household tasks, pausing occasionally to play an ongoing game of "toss the tennis ball" to editor Sam who wasn't in the mood to help out with dusting or dishes. (And we think we're somehow smarter than the beasts?!)

But more than its driving rhythm were the lyrics that fit perfectly with my mood of anger at the present, our recent past, and my angst for a pathetic apathetic nation that finds itself being tugged into a dangerous future by a handful of nutballs determined to squeeze the goose for its last golden egg, even if it leads the whole damn planet to the brink of total annihilation.

The music is out there. Hundreds of artists have expressed themselves but the streets of America are eerily quiet. I guess you can't have a revolution while holed up in the house listening to a musician chiding you onward and one's only response is but to dance around killing dust bunnies to a driving beat.

Chores finished, I You Tubed the song. It's entitled, "There Is No Time." It's by Lou Reed. Someone added graphics.

Warming up for the Big One.

In the early days of this blog, I used to spend much time composing tomes in rant against the insanity of the Bush government. But with increasing clarity it's obvious where a small handful of madmen with the all power are leading us.

No one seems capable of stopping this psychopathic path we're on. As a result, I find less and less pleasure in words, more and more pleasure in creating images. This one's dedicated to Cheney and his latest Iran threats and sanctions. I love the colors! How do you all look in atomic reds and yellows?

Rice proves worthy white house servant.

With "blood" on her hands an in-your-face Code Pinker, Desiree Anita Ali-Fairooz, shouted "War criminal!" to secretary of state Condoleezza Rice before a house committee hearing Wednesday.

Rice, during the brief confrontation, proved deserving of the Chevron oil tanker previously bearing her name during this rare public display of her hull of steel and hold full of oil.

*************

In a parallel universe just one over from our own, I'm "Livin' La Vida Loco!"

To my many tens of thousands of readers, "Hola from Mexico!"

After nearly seven years of agonizing over the freefall of America and its leap over a cliff in late 2000, I have finally done it. I, too, have taken a plunge. Along with Mrs. Dada and my editor, Sam, we've moved the blog to another country!

Not to worry, everything will remain unchanged save for the fact Dada's Dally is now published in the back room of a small storefront out of which we sell black velvet paintings to Americans. (Our best seller at the moment is anything Brittney Spears followed, curiously, by the U.S.'s vice president, Dick Cheney, as a dominatrix dressed in black nylons and skimpy netting, standing atop a platform resembling planet Earth.)

A huge advantage to our big international relocation is we're just nine miles from our previous place and only four miles from the nearest Wal-Mart just over the border. And don't worry about all the lawlessness you hear rumors of down here in Latin America.

While I recently spent a few terrifying moments under a sidewalk display of stacked rugs in the middle of the cross fire between rival warlords battling for control of this area's illegal drug market, it was all over in less than half a minute. And, we knew where the bullets were coming from and we knew we were not the targets in this war.

That's very, very different from the wars in the "old country," where for over six years now the war on terror, the war on the middle class, the war for international domination, are liable to hit you anytime, anywhere, from any direction from anyone.

As for corruption, not to worry there either. It's just more out in the open here, where bribing a cop will sometimes get you off a hook. It's not like up north where the corruption is more subtle, where agencies supposedly looking out for public health and safety are stacked with cronies and their unqualified former college dorm mates. Where natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires are seen as just more profit opportunities and ways to bleed the treasury. Where billions of dollars for things like reconstruction of war torn places just vanish into the nether. (Maybe they go to the same place as those vanished people renditioned to god awful places, but I seriously doubt it.)

Maybe that's why down here American's second favorite black velvet paintings are those of their vice president, old what's his name?

(Side note: I've spoken to the business across the street from my shop about the chances of him changing the name of his storefront. Sadly, he flatly refuses which, I suppose, is a good metaphor, that no matter how far you go--even if it's nine miles and across an international border--you just can't escape "BUSH"!)

Burning bridges?

Just curious about something I saw/heard during the big anti-war protest demonstrations in the middle of this last September on the mall in DC that I'd been meaning to mention.

A young man was addressing the audience and pointed out to everyone that his appearance there, along with the rest of those from his generation, was proof those opposing the war was "not just a bunch old Sixties hippies!"

I had to laugh. After bellying across the floor to reclaim the cane I'd lost when falling from my chair after laughing so hard, I slithered back to my rocker and, tediously climbing back up into it, concluded, "Ah, the kid's probably just a student at George Bush's old alma mater, The Yale School of Diplomacy and Coalition Building."

Coming soon from a parallel universe....

Dada talks to Bush!

How dry I am.

Map courtesy of Jay Lawrimore/Liz Love-Brotak, NOAA/NESDIS/NCDC

Anyone buying bottled water to bathe?

Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out. Tagline from "I, Claudius"

Attribute: Wikipedia, Caligula (37–41)

Postcard from the Edge

Mr. and Mrs. Dada in the post Bush--Cheney World War III era digging for
Interstate 5 near the designated beach "safe zone." This was taken just after
Mrs. Dada uncovered a seat cushion from a '97 Coupe de Ville.

(October 28, 2008) ~ Dada says: "Hi everyone! Me and
the Mrs. are having a great time here at Torrey Pines
St. Beach just north of San Diego. Wish you were here!

(Note: While you can't tell from the photograph, we feel incredibly
safe here. That's because the entire beach is totally terrorist free!)

U.S. - Israel agree to two state solution!

Israeli - Palestinian talks
to begin in Spring, 2015

Partaking of the pie

I was wondering if anyone else enjoyed this story from last week as much as I, or if I just have a perverse sense of humor?

I'm referring to the reappearance of our missing Chevron oil tanker, the now secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who had been strangely absent from the international diplomatic stage in September. She was accompanied by our secretary of defense, Robert Gates, a former Texas university president in charge of educating our kids, now charged with overseeing their destruction.

They had gone to Russia to meet with President Putin. I think it was to be a fairly ordinary photo-op for Rice and Gates to demonstrate to us all that, on occasion, they can do diplomatic stuff . But what they got was nothing like they were expecting, I'm sure.

Putin kept the pair waiting beyond their appointed meeting time. When he did finally show up forty minutes late, he left Rice and Gates "taken aback" by his adamant opposition to their plans for missile defense systems in Eastern Europe. Lecturing them in no uncertain terms, Putin effectively handed the pair their asses on a platter.

It was amusing, and rare indeed, to see Rice and Gates on the other side of the serving line digesting a humiliating slice of humble pie. It's a pie they are used to dishing out to others, but never eating themselves. Nice to see them finally get a chance to sample what they serve.

(Photo attribute: YURI KADOBNOV / AFP, Getty Images)

Yard sale on overused graphs.

Okay, let's review one last time (I promise, never again). Here, then, is a chart of how the national debt has done under presidents Ford through our present one. (Note the first bar on the extreme left of the chart represents the national debt incurred under all thirty-seven previous presidents over 198 years.

Upon inspection, it would appear obvious the national debt fares far better under democratic administrations. You know, those "tax and spend" sons of bitches. And the same interpretation might occur to republicans able to read charts as well. And while those republicans smart enough to interpret the above are a small minority of the right, they're likely the ones reaping the huge benefits from Bush tax cuts and war profiteering. But don't expect them to endorse these data. Instead, a more likely response would be, "Yeh, but all those deficits under republican administrations--at least we didn't have to pay for 'em!"

The republicans who can't interpret graphs are folks in Kansas, Utah, my own hometown, etc. They're everywhere. You can hear 'em on your radios calling Rush and Hannity. And while they're feeling the same economic pinch as the rest of us, they'll continue to support Bush and Cheney while they and their cronies peel off their chunks of the national treasury and dump the rest of it on foreign desert sands at the expense of all Americans making sacrifices so unnoticeable as to seem like we're all getting this hubris and adventurism for nothing!

But that's not why I'm posting this chart again. It's more to do with Bush chiding democrats for proposing a budget with $22 billion dollars more than Bush will approve. (Hence, the reputation, "tax and spend" democrats.) That's total fiscal irresponsibility according to Bush. And as the most unpopular president of all time, he's grasping at this straw in hopes stupid Americans will buy the democrats' fiscal irresponsibility while ignoring Bush's gross kamakaze budget lunacy.

So what exactly has the president's skivvies so twisted and knotted; a president who has no qualms about going to congress once or twice a year for an extra $100 billion or two each time to fund his losing follies in Iraq and Afghanistan, that he's squealing to us, "Congress needs to be responsible with your money"? Well, the extra $22 billion democrats propose is for domestic programs such as education, medical research, Head Start, clean water and health care for veterans.

I know it's pretty amazing how the U.S. is able to fight two losing wars simultaneously without much apparent sacrifice from any of us. Other than those with family members dying in the Middle East or coming home physically or mentally mutilated from Bush's losing campaigns, there's few who seem to be giving up much of anything.

But on the heels of Bush's recent veto of the State's Children's Health Insurance Program and this latest vow to veto a budget that spends too much on kids, health, education, vets and the disadvantaged, the point is driven home that we are, in fact, all paying dearly for the president's pandoras.

Twenty-two billions of dollars for kids, vets, uninsured, under insured, students and the downtrodden is money that could buy Bush lots and lots of bombs to kill people, why, even start a third losing war! So, to all Americans, pause a moment to pat yourselves on the backs. You are sacrificing! Maybe not as much as those thousands who drown and some whose carcasses sat around for days decaying in a New Orleans post-Katrina sun, or those crushed or drowned during a commute over a collapsed interstate bridge, or those who've lost their jobs to Indians. But we are sacrificing. To keep us safe from terrorism, it's a small price to pay, I suppose.

Our sobering future, or making the case for celibacy!

photo courtesy of BAG news Notes

Dada note to voters: Before climbing into bed with whomever, remember who you'll wake up with in the morning. (In this case, make that the next 1,460 mornings.) The "choice" is yours! (It's what makes American "democracy" so, ahm, so uniquely American.)

Anybody for, "Please president Bush, declare the nation what it is -- an authoritarian state -- cancel the election! Bush for the next forty years!!" (Of course not, that's because we probably think the above folks offer us an alternative.)

(I found discussion on the possibility of Gore throwing his hat in the ring [after throwing in his towel in 2000] interesting, i.e., the point being made that with earlier and earlier primaries in more and more states, it's possible we'll know who the republican and democratic nominees are so far in advance of the conventions validating them next summer and the official election next November, we'll have more than sufficient time to be totally sick of both parties choices, making Gore look like the biggest savior since Jesus.)

"Lost Boys Calling"

(Dada note: Anyone who saw "The Legend of 1900" and
left as the credits began to scroll missed this great song.)

"LOST BOYS CALLING"
Roger Waters
© 1998 Sony Music Entertainment (Italy) S.p.A.

Come hold me now
I am not gone
I would not leave you here alone
In this dead calm beneath the waves
I can still hear those lost boys calling

You could not speak
You were afraid
To take the risk of being left again
And so you tipped your hat and waved and then
You turned back up the gangway of that steel tomb again

And in Mott street in July
When she hears those seabirds cry
She holds the child
The child in the man
The child that we leave behind

The spotlight fades
The boys disband
The final notes lie mute upon the sand
And in the silence of the grave
I can still hear those lost boys calling

We left them there
When they were young
The men were gone until the west was won
And now there's nothing left but time to kill
You never took us fishin' dad and now you never will

And in Mott street in July
When she hears the seabirds cry
She holds the child
The child in the man
The child that we leave behind

Of shock and awe-daciousness

Dada with his editor, Sam, doing their pre-blog warm-ups. Here, trying desperately to recapture their
capacity for shock, they once more fail (miserably), continuing "Dada's" slide into a mush mishmash.

After watching CNN, C-Spans I and II, Keith Olbermann's excellent coverage of the latest BS (Britney Spears), Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" and listening to "Air America's" informative and delightfully entertaining Rachel Maddow, recent results are always the same.

Despite all the offensive stories about Iran trying their damnest to provoke a war with Dick Cheney, lawless Blackwater run amuck, vetoed children's health care insurance, Bush assurances "we don't torture," congress (anything "congress"), wounded military against the Iraq war being labeled "phony soldiers"--despite all of that--editor Sam and I sadly report that we've lost our ability to experience shock!

One might say we've lost our groove. Not only that, we sense our capacity for outrage is numbing as well. Outrage so vital and demanded of each of us as residents of a self-proclaimed "democracy" when hearing lies from our leaders, feeling our liberties fleeting and experiencing the effects of corruption storming down upon us, drowning our future born in the financial and moral bankruptcies of today's hubris.

As a result of this, Sam and I have decided to take a day or two off. Perhaps in the interim we'll recover our ability for shock? Or maybe not. As I suspect, when really extreme events next occur, it will be too late for shock and its ensuing outrages.

So, how 'bout a walk and then some buttered popcorn? We wonder what kind of weekend Britney had?

Finally! The last blog on the "footprints of man in New Mexico" series. (Yay!)

Last March I began a series here that visited places that evidence the footprint of man as left upon the New Mexico landscape. As a species, modern mankind has enjoyed the ideal conditions of an ecological niche for his entire 120,000 years on Earth. With those sweet conditions now breaking down on many fronts, the most challenging times of Homo
sapiens' brief history lie just ahead. Times that may desperately test our ingenuity, and ultimately our civility toward one another.

I don't pretend to foresee how we will meet the dramatic changes we face but, in the context of sensing the future, I have enjoyed looking into man's basement and pondering some of the traces from his past.

In a series of five blogs over several months, I have visited everything from rock carvings of indigenous peoples who inhabited the area thousands of years before the history repeating fool heartiness of empires came along--hints of which now lie crumbling into eternity like everything that preceded them.

I saw the homage to rockets and nuclear bombs that lingers here along with a smattering of towns decaying in parts, evolving in others, as a result of those missiles and the nightmares they can deliver. All of this inspired by a three day, two night exploration of central and southern New Mexico Mrs. Dada and I took in 2002.

I recall my earliest memories of the desert. They were delivered through the windows of the backseat of my parents '5o's something Mercury. We crossed from California to Florida one December on pre-Eisenhower interstate highways and I couldn't believe people would choose to live in such god forsaken places as the desert Southwest. Little did I know then I was seeing my future. And now I understand. But I digress.

Here then is the end of that New Mexico trip and the landscape as affected by mankind. It begins on the eve of our last day when we drove 20 miles south of our base camp in Socorro, to a place called Bosque del Apache. This proved to be the location for one of local man's more glorious landscape footprints.

Canadian snow geese enjoying the man-made marshes of the Bosque del Apache (above photo also)

How is it I include this seemingly national wildlife refuge among the evidence of man in New Mexico? Because the Bosque del Apache NWR is the creation of a cooperative effort between the federal government and local farmers to provide this rich wintering ground for tens of thousands of migratory birds.

The flight of a single bald eagle can set thousands of ducks in flight, much as our
predator president frightens flocks to fly or flee whenever he spreads his wings.

My one hesitation in highlighting it here is the fear the Bush psychopaths and his congressional rubber stamping enablers , noticing this wonderful man-made creation, might slash its funds. After all, our government-gone-mad, with the turpitude to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on whim sure as hell wouldn't hesitate to kill tens of thousands of birds if it meant redirecting the funds of this beautiful wildlife refuge for bombs to create additional millions of refugees from the wild life in Iraq. But I digress.

Here then is how it works straight from the Bosque's own words:

Bosque del Apache NWR cooperates with local farmers to grow crops for wintering waterfowl and cranes. Farmers plant alfalfa and corn, harvesting the alfalfa and leaving the corn for wildlife. The refuge staff grows corn, winter wheat, clover, and native plants as additional food.

Lowering water levels in marshes to create moist fields promotes growth of native marsh plants. Marsh management is rotated so that varied habitats are always available.

Sand hill cranes returning to their nesting grounds at day's end.

Of all the great sights and sounds enjoyed here this day, my favorite was the return of the sandhill cranes in the evening. The cacophony of swishing air from silent wings gliding earthward just 20 feet over our heads drown out the distant squawking from their marsh. It was truly enchanting and altered states of consciousness were easily attainable watching these large cranes return.

The next morning we headed towards a totally different footprint of man--the Very Large Array radio telescope 50 miles west of Socorro on the high plains of San Agustin. We had been there once or twice before but, always, when anywhere in the vicinity, we must return again because it is somehow a very mystical place.

Enigmatic Magdalena, NM

Going west from Socorro on US 60 the highway passes through Magdalena. This town intrigues me. I'm compelled to always stop and take a few pictures, maybe grab a snack at the former bank, then pharmacy, now cafe and ice cream shop. It's broad, divided, deserted Main Street with diagonal parking hints of a far busier past than its present day quiet. Driving its back streets through neighborhoods seemingly much too extensive for a mere 900 souls was enigmatic too.

I understand they've recently renovated and reopened an old hotel there. A convenience store has opened and the village is striving to resurrect itself as an art community. It is my intension to return to Magdalena again one day to spend one night. That should be time enough to discover this town's mysterious lure.

Continuing west you come to the Very Large Array, the largest radio telescope in the world. If you're unlucky, the telescope might be in a formation spread out across the plain. Hence, one's first glimpse might look something like this, with dishes spaced a mile or two apart:

One of 29 dish antennae of the VLA. This day they were spread
out over three rail tracks nearly 27 miles in diameter.

But if you're luckier, you'll catch the dishes in close communion, thus:

VLA photo by Dave Finley

And this is how we've found them two of the three visits we've made here. A small but highly educated group inhabits the small community that exists here at any one time. Occasionally you may glimpse a resident scurrying between buildings. I got the impression they haven't time to linger, to visit. I surmised that's because use of the VLA is closely allocated among thousands of scientists wanting to use this most powerful telescope so when they finally get a turn, their time is of the essence.

Mrs. Dada beside one of the large disks of the VLA. Walking in the field
among these behemoths in the middle of an alien landscape gives one an
" other worldly" sense. Certainly what goes on here is undoubtedly cosmic.

Our first visit here was our luckiest. That's because there was a strong wind raking across the Plains of San Agustin that day. As we were preparing to leave, the winds exceeded the speed limit. (I think that's around 40 mph.) At the point, the entire field of these 29 telescopes came to life and, slowly creeking in unison, returned to a vertical position. We were just fortunate to be there at that incredible moment.

And then it was time to return to Socorro for our second night there. Tomorrow we would return home. But back east of Magdalena, I took a few moments for a few pictures of an abandoned roadside business returning to nature. We had passed it earlier in the day, but it was too good to forgo. This time I would stop.

One of those curious old deserted places that dot the roadsides of America.

The sign on top of the center building reads "Water Canyon Lodge." Beneath it in the glass windows reads "Cafe -- Grill" and below that, inscribed in hand, "Yard Sale." I imagined as business declined here, "Pizza To-Go" may have been added. Then "Video Rentals" and perhaps even a barbershop or "Shoe Repair While U Wait." None, however, helped postpone the inevitability of decline, failure, and return to Nature.

As I strolled around snapping photos, the old truck out front began to bother me. What if it belonged to someone inside? What if, instead of being deserted, it wasn't? What if my curiosity was annoying whoever was there?

"What if, whoever's in there has the character and morality of our vice-president, Dick Cheney, or his "boss", little "Fart Boy, pull-my-finger" George Bush? Suddenly a creepy feeling overtook me and I got an ominous sense about this place. Here in the middle of no where, Big Dick or Little Bush would think nothing of blowing Mrs. Dada and me away and dumping our bodies in the arroyo out back. It was time to get the hell out of there.

Our beautiful couple of days were coming to an end. And eeriness of our last stop here at the Water Canyon Lodge was perhaps a fitting portent of the world to which we would return tomorrow.

(Photos by Dada unless otherwise credited.)

Why I don't blog political sh*t anymore (or, note to our fighting men and women in Iraq).

So, I'm working on my little wrap-up of a New Mexico travel blog started several months ago. Been working on it off and on all day. But it becomes hard to focus when Olbermann's "Countdown" comes on. From what I gathered from the TV in the next room, I'd just like to reiterate why I don't blog on political bullshit anymore.

To our servicemen in Iraq:

If you're pinning your hopes on getting out of Iraq on republicans, expect to be there indefinitely.

If, on the other hand, your hopes of getting out of Iraq is in the hands of democrats, don't expect them to consider it until next spring when they can better exploit you and the war for the '08 election. This is particularly true among the "top tier" candidates, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards who confess you could be going back and forth to Iraq until 2013--at the very least.

I'd like to tell you what the "bottom tier" of candidates advocate, but I can't. That's because they're bottom tier and been rendered meaningless by the media. They don't have a prayer in hell anyway, so why waste time on 'em?

Finally, if while in Iraq you should get wounded--no matter how severely injured, please know if you speak out against the war upon your return home, you're a "phony soldier" according to Rush Limbaugh (whose opinions we should all respect highly in light of his exemplary military service during Vietnam).

Such audacious remarks have been attacked by senate majority leader, Harry Reid, calling such words, "so beyond the pale of decency that it cannot be left alone."

Reid went on to add of Limbaugh's remark, "I can't help but wonder how my Republican colleagues would have reacted...if a well-known Democratic radio personality had used the same insulting line of attack against troops who support the war."

And so it goes. You in Iraq have your war while republicans and democrats back home have theirs. Try to hang in there and remember, no republicans and democrats--despite their endless war of words--are dying. While many of you in Iraq are.

Varying degrees of brain cage light bulb brightnesses

I don't watch Oprah Winfrey. Ever. Really. I don't know why I feel compelled to disclaim that. Probably for the same reason everyone who was against the Iraq war always had to begin with the disclaimer, "We all know what a bad asshole of a man Saddam is but...." then went on to explain why attacking Iraq was a bad idea.

Anyway, I have a TIVOless wife who checks for upcoming programs on TV. She spotted Michael Moore was scheduled to be on Oprah's one day late last week. Her show was to be on health care in America. A definite must see, I thought.

I will always go out of my way to catch Moore. But news of his appearance on Oprah's came less than 24 hours after I learned some shocking news about Moore. That was when my wife's latest issue of her PETA magazine arrived.

It was there we read Moore's rant against animal rights activists where he declared the movement "makes me want to kick my dog." The magazine goes on to say, "He once sent a crew of people to protest outside PETA's headquarters, complete with signs reading, 'You are wasting your lives' while unforgivably dragging a group of hot miserable animals along with them."

Oprah's 60 minute program on U.S. healthcare was excellent. Michael Moore did not disappoint. But it's all relative, I suppose.

I suspect we may all be here on a journey for greater enlightment. May you, I, and Michael Moore not waste our time or miss the opportunity!


My editor Sam. Let's all "go kick our dogs!" M. Moore sentiment