Quote of the day:

"If you can be told
what you can see or read...
then it follows
that you can be told
what to say or think."

Sorry, I don't know to whom to attribute that quote to. It might have been Karl Rove. ~Dada
(Fortunately, many Americans don't have time to worry about what they can see, read, say or think.)

Dada scoops El Paso County's democratic caucus with exclusive video of yesterday's proceedings!

NOTE: El Paso, it appears, is but another microcosmic example of the national democratic presidential candidate selection process with current polls showing despite whoever emerges the victorious candidate, either would lose in a national election against John McCain. (Dada'd be curious if Bush could run again, how badly Obama or Hillary would lose in that one for, as we all know, America always gets the president it deserves.)

**********

Spring break wound down with an El Paso County democratic caucus yesterday. Perhaps you remember the March 4 Texas presidential primary? Erroneously called the Texas two-step because Texans got to vote twice, once during the day at the polls and again that night at precinct caucuses. Yesterday, local delegates from those earlier caucuses, in a huge March Madness pep rally like atmosphere, gathered again to decide the outcome of the March caucuses with another vote (the third for those still counting) to determine who they will send to Austin to vote yet again (a fourth time)!

Mrs. Dada was a delegate to the chaos, er, convention. Well, due to some problems with her precinct's credentials, she wasn't actually legitimized as a delegate until late in the day.

One of the anomalies Mrs. Dada noted in her precinct's turnout was Obama delegates who didn't show up had been suspiciously replaced with alternate delegates sporting Billary buttons!

Apparently the Clinton's were better organized to overturn the March 4th caucus results than the Obamaites.

Exclusive Dada video smuggled out of El Paso County's March 29th democratic caucus!

I managed to get a taped portion of the day long, into-the-evening, process smuggled out and am proud to be the first to post it here, a Dada exclusive! (NOTE: Any resemblance to any other historical event is strictly coincidental, yet testament to the theory "history repeats itself," I suppose.)

**********

Final result of yesterday's chaos, or grass roots democracy: Obama ended up with 7 of the 127 delegates up for grabs. There were challenges to the delegate process as conducted by El Paso County's democratic Chairman that some fear place the county's entire delegate representation at risk at the state convention later in Austin.

"Because of what he did, El Paso may not get any delegates at the state convention," state Rep. Norma Chávez, D-El Paso (and Obama supporter) said.

Quick thinking and a sudden passenger jolting evasive maneuver by a British Airways pilot on landing approach to London's Heathrow Airport last month was thought to have averted a disastrous mid-air collision with an outbound Air France jet that had just taken off. The (former) pilot, whose identity was not revealed, was (erroneously) credited with preventing a catastrophe that could have killed hundreds of people aboard the two aircraft and many more on the ground.

Spring break '08

It's been a glorious spring break. Sadly, having passed it's mid-point, it's now in retreat. But that's the nature of things, isn't it? Expansion -- contraction, birth -- death, waxing and waning, growth and entropy. So as spring break '08 races to its destiny, i.e., to fade into the collective memories of history, let's hope American hegemony follows soon. An imploding Bush economy, a Cheney Iran war may expedite the process, but such possibilities are what make the future so exciting, aren't they?

In the meantime, here's a nice video which echoes the take of a "German in USA" friend living among us here, in Amerika. I wish my German more fluent, but you don't need it to enjoy this and appreciate our very successful Amerikan culture invasion over the face of the entire Earth.

Despite the tremendous embrace of our Quarter Pounders®, Coca Cola® and Lucky Strikes®, I can't help suspect many of those global consumers are going to experience a certain schadenfreude at our American future. Who could blame them?

Thanks "German in USA"! (You know who you are.)

"So?"

I enjoyed yesterday's ABC story on the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war in an
interview featuring vice-president Dick Cheney in what Martha Raddatz called "remarkable."
Here is a small part of her interview transcript of Cheney's Iraq war.

Martha Raddatz: There are Americans who say, "It's not worth fighting."

Dick Cheney: So?

Martha Raddatz: "So?" You don't care what the American people think?

Dick Cheney:  No I think you cannot be, ahm, blown off course by fluctuations  
in the public opinion poll.

What a fine example of government no longer responsive to, nor caring a damn
about, its citizen's wants or needs.

Examples of such arrogance abound. Last month I wrote about the final hearing by
the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's (TECQ) unpopular decision to
allow one of El Paso's historically absolute worst polluters, ASARCO, to reopen its
copper smelting operation within our city's limits. Texas, with a reputation as one of the
nation's most polluted states, upheld itself as "The Pay Toilet for Industry" with that
decision by its very shills of industry, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality!

But El Paso is still fighting. They have filed a legal appeal to the TCEQ to reconsider
their decision. (I'm not holding my breath for any different outcome.)

And just as El Paso has challenged the poisoning of its air by the reopening of the ASARCO
smelter, it has now denied the federal government access to easement land to construct a
new taller, meaner border wall between itself and our Mexican neighbors living in Juarez.

Such challenges by El Paso create legal entanglements that are often expensive, drawn out
affairs. Some El Pasoans question the wisdom of the city expending money to fight pollution.

I heard this same argument by TV station's  KVIA News. As El Paso's local ABC affiliate, KVIA
was questioning the city's  efforts to halt the border wall by asking how much are we willing to
pay to defy the powers that be?

I think the more likely question asked should be, how much are we willing not to pay so as
to allow the powers that be to continue to take us into trumped up bogus wars or pollute our
environment and our lungs, to sacrifice the health of communities, construct expensive and
ineffective border barrier boondoggles against the public's will, etc. so those in power won't
be "blown off course by fluctuations in public opinion polls."

We already have the governments we can't afford. To just lay back and take it because to
challenge them is going to cost us as one local TV news station suggests will be far more
expensive for us all in the long run. Dada thinks It's time to stop taking what they're cramming
down our throats and start shoving it up their asses!

Am I the only passenger having a hot flash?

Mitsubishi will unveil its entry vehicle, the iMiEV (love those catchy names!) in the New York International Auto Show this week, joining Toyota and General Motors in the all-electric car market. The iMiEV is capable of traveling 80 miles between recharges.

Some auto manufacturers, however, have been reluctant to develop an electric vehicle that relies on lithium-ion batteries which have been known to overheat in laptop computers and cellphones, fearing the three by five foot batteries employed in autos could pose a much, much greater hazard for users.

But Mitsubishi reassured potential buyers from any danger of overheating batteries by saying its manufacturer is already installing such batteries in Boeing 787 jets.

$t. Patty's Day, 2008. Drinking the green, hemorrhaging the green.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! As we look forward to drinking green beer later today, the Federal Reserve is bleeding green after cutting its emergency lending rate to financial houses over the weekend to try to prevent a total collapse of the system. This is ahead of tomorrow's Fed action when a further interest rate cut of 1/2-1% is expected. I don't know how much further the Fed can continue to cut interest rates to salvage this fiasco before they'll have to pay us to borrow this shit!

It may soon be cheaper to hang $50 bills of General Grant in your den than what Home Depot wants for wall paper. Imagine just a week ago when investor's Bear Stearnes stock closed at over $68/share, $30/share last Friday, and is now going for $3.76 as I type this. But remember, economists are still debating if we're in a recession yet as the entire U.S. financial system is teetering on the edge of total collapse!

Which brings me to the point of sharing some pictures of a trip through the small community of Orogrande, New Mexico recently. I was extremely impressed by what I saw there and didn't know whether to feel badly for its residents or envy them. Perhaps if/when the economy's collapse finally comes, they won't realize it so much as the rest of us. The pictures will explain why.

Work at home business. (Business closed, home crumbling.)

Great fixer-upper but sadly, this one's not for sale!

One of the finer structures in town, built of solid rock. TV antenna

on the left points towards town (El Paso, about 40 miles away. )

Mine tours and Bar-B-Que. When money becomes worthless, people will
still be able to enjoy a great bar-b-que after digging for precious metal
from the (now closed, soon to reopen) mine to pay for dinner.

Here's a great fixer-upper that can be had reasonably - only if you act soon! With
the U.S. Dollar becoming more worthless by the day, the price demanded by seller rises
exponentially. (He may agree, in lieu of dollars, to accept Home Depot wallpaper instead.)

Orogrande has its own post office (on left)!

Home schooling, which will become increasingly more popular in America
with the collapse of the education system and no money for teachers, has been
in vogue in Orogrande for years after the school closed down some decades ago.

The center of town, the My Place Bar, Tavern and Beer, Liquor Package Store.
Having been in business for more than 40 years, the future looks bright as resi-
dents will undoubtedly try to drown out memories of a once prosperous America.

But for today, here's wishing all a very Happy Saint Patrick's where green is the color of the day in pub beers we'll drink and the dollars Wall Street's bleeding.

Guess who's coming to dinner!

Road to remoteness - Marfa, Texas. (photo by Thomas Mundt)

Last evening was an interesting experience. Invited to an old girlfriend's of Mrs. Dada's from the late 60's for dinner, we were told to expect to meet "Peter," a friend of our host. Having heard a little about Peter, I was looking forward to the evening.

You see, Peter was described to us as a kind of Ted Kaczynski -- without the violence. Kaczynski, as you may remember, was better known as the Unabomber for targeting universities and airlines with his homemade explosives in a kind of rant against technology and the world it had created.

(What follows is the obligatory disclaimer. Anyone familiar with the early anti-Iraq-war advocates will remember the incessant need they felt to say, "Of course, we all know what a horrific person Sadam Hussein was" as they proceeded to denounce the war against him and his nation.)

Disclaimer: While I've never advocated wreaking harm against people and destruction of property to exclaim one's philosophy, one has to wonder if the Unabomber wasn't perhaps just more awake, more lucid, than most Americans, and it manifested in some sort of perverse way. End of disclaimer.

That aside, I was curious to meet this Peter fellow who had been presented to us in this vein--sans the violence, of course.

As it turned out, Peter is an American originally from the upper midwest. Peter reminded me a lot of Tom Hanks, the way Hanks would have turned out were he more handsome. Peter teaches college here in El Paso. But he lives over the border in Juarez, Mexico. The reasons are multi-faceted we were told: The $100/mo. rent he pays saves him several hundreds of dollars he would otherwise pay on this side of the border; being submerged in the culture of Mexico, it's much easier for him to maintain his Spanish language skills; and without a car he gets much exercise walking across the border while dodging crossfires in the ongoing Juarez drug war gun battles.

Peter doesn't own a car. Doesn't want one. As a result, his day begins very early as he crosses the international bridge on foot where he catches often unreliable El Paso buses known to break down regularly. His commute allows for such disruptions in his daily itinerary.

It was an interesting evening. We talked of many things. One of those things being movies. Having no cable or satellite connections in Juarez, Peter was surprisingly up on the most current of movies. That's because he can buy pirated copies of them from street vendors there for a buck something.

It turned out we enjoy many of the same type movies, especially those filmed in the area depicting border life and issues. Among them, "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" were discussed, without much of the fanfare of the critics. Other notable movies from the area mentioned included "Giant" (1956) and "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" (2005).

And so, with spring break coming up in a week, where does a person who had been compared to the technological society hating Unabomber want to go? Not Palm Springs or Fort Lauderdale. Not even Padre Island, TX. No, Peter is heading out for ten days to the U.S. - Mexico border area of Big Bend, Texas. To get away. To recharge his sanity. It's right on the border with Mexico where the aforementioned movies were made.

Any seasoned reader of Dada's Dally is familiar with my repeated claim El Paso is as far east as I wish to go in Texas. Whenever getting out of town for a few days, my inclination has always been to go north (to New Mexico) or west (as in the Pacific Northwest). But now I'm having second thoughts. I thinking far west Texas might be an area worthy of exploration.

It's probably about as remote as one can get from everything in the state of Texas. And you never know, as isolated as it is, while walking the streets of Marfa you might run into Tommy Lee Jones, Daniel Day-Lewis or James Dean. Or perhaps, even more exciting, a Unabomber type character on spring break from university. "Without the violence, of course."

"We've only just begun!" (Karen Carpenter)

From the AssociatedPress comes the following story this Friday afternoon:

"NEW YORK (AP) - Bear Stearns Cos., one of the most venerable names on
Wall Street, turned to a rival bank and the federal government for a
last-minute bailout Friday to prevent it from collapsing. The Federal
Reserve responded swiftly to pleas from Bear Stearns that its coffers
had "significantly deteriorated" within a 24 hour period as rumors about
the bank's situation fueled the Wall Street version of a run on the bank. 
Central bankers tapped a rarely used Depression-era provision to provide
loans, and said they were ready to provide extra resources to combat an
erosion of confidence in America's biggest financial institutions."

When president Bush  recognizes the economy's "going through a tough time"
one better start to worry. That's what he admitted for the second time this
week. Today he confessed it to The Economic Club of New York. For Bush to
be telling an economic club that, it must be a little like parents listening
to their 14 year old confess he stole the family credit cards, borrowed the
family sedan, maxed out those cards and wrecked the car!

(As the Bush article points out, "Economic worries have replaced the Iraq war
as the No. 1 concern of voters in this presidential election year." Dada note:
Like there's NO connection, right?)

Have you picked out which bridge you're going to live under yet? If not, this
weekend might be a good time to start scouting around.

Bobbing in the ripples

I recently heard the analogy of a rock thrown into a pond and the resulting ripples spreading their effects of that particular event in all directions, such that the future is affected by something that happened in the past. But the purveyor of this idea suggested ripples of events that have yet not happened, events of the future, also send out ripples in all directions which affect all of us here, in the present. I found the thought intriguing.

While few of us can foresee the future save for a small number of precognitively gifted, I wouldn't find surprising the idea that many of us unknowingly have the ability to sense the future's influence upon us now.

Unwittingly, living in the present, in the present, always in the present, we forever straddle that precise place where past and future collide. And perhaps because we are standing upon that very impact point, I sense an increasing degree of negative energy comprising the country's ethos in the present as well as our future.

Maybe it's just coincidence that Mrs. Dada and I each had a rare, yet horrific, nightmare a day or two apart just recently. Or maybe not. Maybe it's that sense of ripples from future events we're sensing?

Certainly, recent past events like 9/11, the resultant wars, and growing national debt weigh on the psyches of us all. The effects of rising oil/gas prices and the bursting housing bubble are ongoing events that will get worse. Several days before finally admitting his economy was in trouble, president Bush denied it was because of his wars.

"I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs…because we’re buying equipment, and people are working," Bush responded to a question by reporter Ann Curry. Because of the wars, Americans are busy building bombs and ordnance used to destroy shit much of which in the process itself gets destroyed, creating a need to replace/build more in an endless cycle of Bush prosperity for people fortunate enough to be engaged in America's death industries .

"This economy is down because we built too many houses," was the economist Bush's conclusion for his sagging economy. If anything, the war was helping it stay afloat he assured.

These are ripples from recent past events, just as daily news reveals more ripples like flying in jets with cracked fuselages for which the FAA and Southwest Airlines exchange finger pointing; or clinics reusing needles in Nevada, spreading hepatitis-C under the FDA's nose; or an excellent story about Remote Area Medical (RAM), an American relief organization originally created to airlift medical supplies and personnel into remote areas of the world but decided many uninsured and underinsured in desperate need of medical care exist right here in America, such that RAM spent a weekend in Knoxville, TN providing free healthcare to poor Americans but had to turn away about 1/4 of those who showed up, so overwhelming was the demand.

While these past events weigh heavily upon us, I am left wondering about ripples from the future contributing to the dreariness hanging over Americans that may have caused my and Mrs. Dada's recent nightmares. After 7+ years of Bush, the country is obviously being dismantled. By gross incompetence or by intention I can't say, but I have my suspicions and I suspect this past as well as the future may be contributing to American's growing sense of gloom.

Perhaps a war with Iran is among those signals in the ripples lapping at us from the future. News of Navy Admiral William Fallon's resignation as head of the military's Central Command (and chief antagonist of Bush's aggressive tactics towards Iran) was a necessity if the Iran war was to be successfully launched. Or perhaps not. Maybe this wasn't a ripple from the future if we're to accept Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' reassurance to us all that Fallon's resignation was no signal Bush is preparing to attack anew, again, in the Middle East. Maybe our dreams were just that. Simply nightmares of a future that won't happen.

Somehow, I'm not too self-assured.

********

Why I now support water boarding.

This past weekend while a coalition of local groups were holding a Circle of Peace here locally to remind all this is the end of the fifth year of war against Iraq, president Bush was unceremoniously vetoing a bill passed by congress that would have prohibited further water boarding and other coercive techniques used by the CIA to interrogate suspected terrorists.

Suddenly realizing the value of using such extreme techniques of torture as an information gathering tool to glean intel from terrorists, I now support the president in his veto of that bill. That's because of the lingering questions that have been bouncing off the walls of my brain for years that, to date, have no answers. It is my hope that by maintaining these torture procedures we may one day get the answers to those questions.

Here are but a few of them:

• Why was the August, 2001 President's Daily Brief warning of imminent terrorist attacks in the U.S. using commercial airliners ignored?
• Why on September 11th, after learning the second World Trade Center tower had been hit by a plane, did the president continue to sit reading "My Pet Goat" with a classroom of second graders for seven minutes afterwards, twitching nervously in his seat with the goofiest expression on his face, as people in NYC were jumping to their deaths from the 100th floors of those buildings as the better of their only two options?
• Why did the president refuse to testify before a senate 9/11 committee regarding the events of that day under oath?
• And why did he refuse to testify alone before that senate committee investigating 9/11; why did he need to do it in the presence of his vice president, Dick Cheney?

Until such time these questions can be asked under the right conditions of the right terrorist, they will continue bouncing around inside my brain. And their answers, sadly, forever blowing in the wind.

A Circle of Peace

photo by KFOX-TV

On Saturday afternoon from 2-4:00 p.m., I attended a local Circle of Peace. Put on by a coalition of El Paso groups, it commemorated those Americans and Iraqis who have suffered and died as a result of our war there the past five years.

I don't remember why it was celebrated a week earlier than the actual fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, but I do know it wasn't out of fear the war would be over within the next week before its actual anniversary date.

SFC Medina (ret.) shown here standing proudly (on left) in his army uniform he hadn't worn
in 40 years! Veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars, Sgt. Medina described vividly the often
gut wrenching memory of his war experiences. (Dada photo)

In what turned out to be a beautiful afternoon in Memorial Park, over 100 people listened to a number of impressive guest speakers including present and past war's veterans. Speeches were given, poetry recited, music played and sung.

Placing candles in the names of fallen soldiers to make a peace symbol (Dada photo)

One of the highlights of the afternoon was the reading of the names of fallen soldiers from our local Fort Bliss as a candle was lit for each and placed into a peace circle over which taps was played.

There were protesters against those gathered in observance of the war's fifth anniversary. Shown below are two of a crowd that ultimately swelled to three as they closely observed the Circle of Peace proceedings from a grassy knoll overlooking the gathering.

photo by KFOX-TV

Mrs. Dada, who worked as a member of the planners for this event, went up to welcome the protesters to the peace gathering but reported the gentlemen pictured as quite aggressive. Gathering he came looking for war not peace, Mrs. Dada bade them a pleasant afternoon and excused herself.

One of the signs presented by the protesters reminded all in attendance that they were not in Berkeley. It seemed a bit superfluous. (I was pretty certain no one in attendance Saturday mistook El Paso for Berkeley.)

As far as any differences in their support of the troops and ours, that was minor, i.e., while the 100+ participants in the Circle of Peace support the end of the war and expedient and safe return of American troops, these protesters advocate the continued deaths and maiming of American soldiers and innocent Iraqis in an endless war based on lies, thus illustrating the different ways one can support troops, I suppose.

Voting: It does matter!

My one frustration with Ellen DeGeneres is that she isn't more political publicly. That's also a reason I hold her in such high esteem, i.e., she spares us from her politics. But the following YouTube from Ellen's show made me as proud of her as I've ever been.

Here then is Ellen reminding us, especially this election year, we all need to be very politically alert for whom we cast our votes.

Winner of 2008 election accidentally leaked!

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Getting up for Obama

The deeper we get into the political season, the quieter I tend to become. There are occasions when in the presence of good company and wine, my whining becomes less controlled and provocations of others 'green lights' me to express my own. (Like they matter or anyone really cares.)

But politics inevitably wearies me. With Earth's population above six and a half billion, political opinions are like penises, i.e., every man has, or eventually grows, one. Okay, bad analogy but with things political it's a man's world and, sadly, for those women successful enough to share in the fine art of ruling the masses, it is most often requisite they emulate their male counterparts by growing strong political opinions and using the highly evolved tactics of skillful diplomacy laced with the machismo of implied threats and subtle consequences like isolation, sanctions, bombs and/or total annihilation.

This past Friday evening at the invitation of Border Explorer, a regular albeit it too infrequent commenter here at the Dally, Mrs. Dada and I attended a pleasant open house gathering at a wonderfully conceived Casa Puente in the heart of Old El Paso. Casa Puente is "a living space for border immersion groups, focusing on the issues of global economics and immigration...that share in the common goals of working for a more just and peaceful world."

I should preface what I'm about to say with a flashback to Tuesday, July 27, 2004 first. That's the evening at the opening of the Democratic National Convention the keynote speaker delivered an arousing speech that provoked orgasmic media comments of him being *presidential material*.

The way the media played this speaker up that night made my skin crawl. Here this young man, not yet even elected to the U.S. Senate seat he was pursuing that same election season, was being put in the White House by the media! A somewhat premature climax to that speaker's pep talk I thought. I'm speaking of Barack Obama from Illinois, of course.

I got a strange feeling that night Americans were being greased for the future. This particular past Friday evening I witnessed how really slick it's manifesting. That's because one of the highlights of our gathering at Casa Puente was a mock caucus in preparation for this coming Tuesday's Texas primary.

During the ensuing discussion, I was overwhelmed by the support Obama was getting. I got the impression the KOOL-AID® had definitely been spiked with VIAGRA ®, so willing to stand up for the junior senator from Illinois was the vast majority of those present.

I wish I could share the enthusiasm. As long as the only viable choices the system allows us are, "So-So" and "Worse", I suppose it's great people can get excited and aroused over that. Sure, road kill scraped off a highway's shoulder would make a better president than what America's had to endure these past 7+ years, but is that what's giving so many irrational exuberance for an Obama (or worse, McCain!)--that anyone or any thing is better than Bush?

There are a few who remain a little more sober, or realistic (or somber?) about long-on-hope, short-on-specifics Obama. Matt Gonzalez, a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, said this past week after studying Obama's senate voting record in, The Obama Craze: Count Me Out, "Obama has fallen into a dangerous pattern of capitulation"...(i.e., "pandering to win votes")..."that he cannot reconcile with his growing popularity as an agent of change."

Don't misunderstand, I am hopeful Obama can live up to all the wonderful expectations of change he's been feeding us should he gain the White House. But I'm also skeptical. Maybe that's because I haven't washed it down with the VIAGRA ® laced KOOL-AID® everyone's so high on.

All I'm wishing for is a little time to sober up from this Obama orgy of promised change. After all, as the best selling dysfunction curing pharmaceutical warns, if your state of arousal lasts longer than four hours, you should probably consult your physician -- immediately!