Tying down loose ends

And who might that be?

This past week Mrs. Dada was solicited via a MoveOn political action group to participate in their campaign to knock on "a million doors for peace" and talk to voters about Iraq. The idea is to enlist people across the nation to go out on Saturday 20th and talk to their neighbors about ending that war.

Before signing up, however, Mrs. Dada wrote them asking, "If asked for the name of a candidate who might prevail upon the Washington powers that be to bring an end to the Iraq war, whose name might she respond with?" She is still waiting a reply.

And Dada wonders if four years from now this group might have to repeat their ambitious effort to end the war in Afghani- and Paki- stan?

Ooh, could you sing for me too?

Yesterday afternoon while in the middle of a Scrabble game with Mrs. Dada, we were interrupted by Charles Gibson interviewing our next vice president(?), Sarah Palin. Her repeated obfuscation served up in her answers to Gibson's questions were annoying at the least, scarier than hell at the most.

We learned she didn't know what the Bush Doctrine is. But we also discovered you can actually see Russia from someplace in western Alaska which, right after her visit to Canada is sufficient experience to validate her foreign affairs expertise, hence, to blow the shit out of Iran on behalf of the Israelis.

(NOTICE: Dada can see Juarez from El Paso and, should McCain win the election, please note I plan to vie for the ambassadorship to Mexico at the least, or the State Department's chargés d'affaires of all of Latin America at most.)

The deeper Gibson and Palin got into the interview, the more and more I found myself thinking of Britney Spears and her sweet yet very dangerous political naiveté. Maybe my confusion was why I was expecting Palin to grace us with a few bars of "Hit Me Baby One More Time."

Curious side note: After the interview, we resumed our Scrabble game and Mrs. Dada immediately hit me with an 8 letter word: n-a-i-v-e-t-é!

Hmm, synchronicity? I think not!

It's Friday! Time for another government "weekend surprise"?

Well, after last Friday night's government surprise, i.e., to take control of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to the tune of untold tens of billions more dollars to American tax payers, I'm wondering if this might be the Friday (after everyone goes home distracted with plans for their weekends, of course) that the government jumps in to bail out Lehman Brothers? (Dada's not sure how many more of these bailouts he, we, can afford but apparently when it comes to saving fat greedy cat's asses, money is no object for me, for you.)

Seems there are a couple of interested buyers in the market for drowning-in-debt Lehman -- like Bank of America for one. The only thing needed to dissolve Lehman's insolvency is some guarantee from the government they'll bail out whoever decides to buy the dying beast if that decision turns out to be a very, very bad idea.

As Dada is learning, when it comes to rescuing folks in trouble, American taxpayers find totally unacceptable witnessing helpless, drowning crapitalists, yet don't share that same compassion for their own sinking masses in crises (of whom we are all a part).

Your hard-earned tax dollars at work? (Or, "Sex, Lies and Videotape"?)

Kevin Moloney for The New York Times

Office of the Minerals Management Service outside Denver. “A culture of substance abuse and promiscuity”

Best place in America to work? (Free work place tickets to major concerts, sporting events, paint ball, golf,
all-you-can a.) drink alcohol, b.) smoke marijuana, c.) snort cocaine...and much, much more! During work hours!

Dada, perhaps out of his own self-naivetés, likes to believe if Americans really knew more about the workings of government, its lies, the truths being secreted away from the public in files forever marked with 'national security' or 'above top secret' designations, the corruptions engaged in at so many levels of the greatest "democracy on Earth," there would be a tremendous coming together of most Americans, right and left, in outrage of just how this country conducts itself on our behalf.

OK, I confess, my middle name is Polyanna, I live at an undisclosed address somewhere in the middle of a place called "Wonderland" and I overestimate American's capacity to be outraged, much less come together to do something about it.

That's why it's probably best the major mainstream media are downplaying the story of the scandal at the Interior Department because it's obviously just another hard working agency staffed with Americans just like us working their asses off, day in, day out, trying to make an honest living like the rest of us.

After all, what would be the incentive to get up and go to work in jobs that so many of us find tedious, unchallenging and under-rewarding if we didn't have those little surprise rewards like free tickets to concerts and sporting events, drunken parties with all the free booze, weed and cocaine your heart desires to look forward to while working? Ooh, and don't forget the wonderful, expensive gifts, financial bonuses and those exciting and surprising sexual trysts with oil and gas industry reps, or your own workplace subordinates.

No wonder Americans don't give a shit what their government representatives are doing on their behalves while at work. Americans are doing the same at their own workplaces I guess. So much for the myth of the drudgery of work.