REPUBLICAN PARTY, RED FROM THE START

While Republicans wail nowadays about how Marxist the Democratic party is & how they are turning the country into a socialist nation, let's take a look at the real Marxist party shall we? Who really has ties with Marx, Communism & to a degree socialist states.

The Republican lament these days is that the country is moving away from it's core values & has “lost its way” & “gone wrong.” It has “diverged” from the fiscally responsible, small government philosophy of Republican heroes like Robert Taft whom Eisenhower’s handlers finagled out of the nomination for President in 1952.

We're now told this is why today’s Republican Establishment hates Dr. Ron Paul with such a passion; that they hate him because, like Taft, he is the quintessential Republican. Patriots who say that are mistaken, of course.
The reason the Republican Establishment hates Dr. Paul is precisely that he is *not* a traditional, mainstream Republican - that his platform of freedom is an aberration. The Republican Party didn’t “go wrong,” didn’t “go left” , didn't go any direction. It has been wrong from the beginning, from the day it was founded.

From the very beginning, the Republican Party has worked without deviation for bigger, more imperial government, for higher taxes, for more wars, for more totalitarianism. From the beginning, the Republican Party has been Red. Why? In 1848, Communists rose in revolution across Europe, united by a document prepared for the purpose, entitled Manifesto of the Communist Party. It's author was the degenerate Karl Marx, whom a small gang of wealthy Communists – the League of Just Men – hired for the purpose. The Manifesto told its adherents & its victims what the Communists would do.

But the Revolution of 1848 failed. The perpetrators escaped, traveled where else but to the United States.

In 1856, the Republican Party ran its first candidate for President. By that time, the Communists from Europe had thoroughly infiltrated this country, especially the North. Many became high ranking officers in the Union Army - top government officials.

Down through the decades, Americans have wondered about the Yankee brutality in that war. Lee invaded the North, but that sublime Christian hero forbade any forays against civilians. Military genius Stonewall Jackson stood like a stone wall, routed the Yankees at Manassas, but when Barbara Frietchie insisted on flying the Yankee flag in Frederick, Maryland, rather than the Stars & Bars, that sublime Christian hero commanded, according to John Greenleaf Whittier, “‘Who touches a hair of yon gray head/dies like a dog! March on!’ he said.”

But the Yankees, invading the South, were monsters, killing, raping & destroying civilian property. In one Georgia town, some 400 women were penned up in the town square in the July heat for almost a week without food, water or access to toilets of any kind. And it got worse when the Yankees got into the liquor. Some two thousand southern women & children were then shipped north to labor as slaves.

Sherman’s scorched earth March to the Sea was a horror even the later Nazis could not equal. Why? Because the Yankees hated Negro slavery so much? There can be no doubt that the already strong Communist influence in the North, combined with that of the maniacal abolitionists, was at least one of the main reasons. Slavery was a handy excuse, an afterthought they introduced to gain propaganda traction.
In retrospect, it appears that because nothing like this had ever happened in this country before, Lee & Jackson did not fully comprehend what they were fighting. Had this really been a “Civil” War, rather than a secession, they would & could easily have seized Washington after Manassas & hanged the first "Communist President" along with the other war criminals. Instead they went home, in the mistaken belief that the defeated Yankees would leave them alone. Lee did come to understand, but too late. He said after the war that had he known at the beginning what he had since found out, he would have fought to the last man.

What was the South fighting? Alexander Hamilton was the nation’s first big government politician. Hamilton wanted a strong central government & a national bank. Vice President Aaron Burr killed Hamilton in a duel. The problem was that Burr didn’t kill him soon enough. Henry Clay inherited & expanded Hamilton’s ideas in something called the “American System,” which advocated big government subsidies for favored industries & high, ruinous tariffs, what we today call “socialism for the rich.” Clay inspired smooth talking railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln, who inherited the Red escapees from the Revolution of 1848 & became our first 'Communist' President.
All of this comes again to mind with the recent publication of Red Republicans: Marxism in the Civil War and Lincoln’s Marxists (2007) by Southern historians Walter D. Kennedy & Al Benson, Jr. Don't believe me, then read this book, because it irrefutably nails down everything I've said above & then some. Take a peek through the Red Republicans, & remember that the reason most Americans have never heard of all this is because it's the winner writing the history.

For instance, August Willich was a member of the London Communist League with Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels. Needless to say, Willich became a major general in the Union Army. Robert Rosa belonged to the New York Communist Club & was a major in the 45th New York Infantry. Brigadier general Louis Blenker of New York was a “convinced Marxist.” His 10,000 man division looted people in Virginia, inspiring the term “Blenkered.” Many of his men were fresh from European prisons. Our first Communist President knew this, but turned them loose on the people of the South.

In Red Republicans you'll learn of nine European revolutionaries convicted of treason & banished to Australia. They escaped to the united States & Canada. I took this in school so am familiar with all this. Three or four of them, with no military experience, became Union generals, joining at least three other Marx confidants who already held that rank. “Every man of the nine became a member of the Canadian Parliament, a governor of a territory or state in the Union, party leader, prime minister or attorney general.”

Many of these men, though not all, were Germans, some four thousand of whom escaped to this country. Known as Forty-Eighters, they quickly added violent abolitionism & feminism to their Communist beliefs. In Missouri, Forty-Eighter Franz Sigel became a Union general & had uniforms made for his Third Infantry Regiment that closely resembled the uniforms worn by socialist revolutionaries in Germany in 1849. Forty-Eighters who became high ranking Union commanders included Colonel Friedrich Salomon, Ninth Wisconsin, Colonel Fritz Anneke, Thirty Fourth Wisconsin & Colonel Konrad Krez, Twenty Seventh Wisconsin. Communist journalist Karl Heinzen wrote: “If you have to blow up half a continent & cause a bloodbath to destroy the party of barbarism, you should have no scruples of conscience. Anyone who would not joyously sacrifice his life for the satisfaction of exterminating a million barbarians is not a true republican.” Heinzen came to this country & supported Lincoln.

Joseph Weydemeyer had to flee Germany when the Communist Revolution failed. In London he belonged to the Communist League & was a close friend of both Marx & Engels. He came to this country in 1851, supported Lincoln, maintained his close friendship with Marx & became a Brigadier General in the Union Army. Dedicated socialist Richard Hinton had to leave England. In this country he became a Union colonel, a Radical Republican & an associate of the maniac John Brown.
So was Allan Pinkerton, who financed him. At one meeting with Brown, Pinkerton told his son: “Look well upon that man. He is greater than Napoleon & just as great as George Washington.” Yes, Pinkerton was the great detective who founded the agency that bears his name. Why didn’t you know that?

In Kansas, mass murderer Brown enjoyed the support of wealthy Yankees (the Secret Six). August Bondi & Charles Kaiser, who worked with Brown there, were Forty Eighters.

What about Marx himself? Marx fled to England, where he is buried. He became the European correspondent for socialist Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, whose Managing Editor, Charles Dana, was a Communist. Dana hired Marx as a foreign correspondent. Marx wrote often of his kinship with the new Republican Party. Dana’s generosity to Marx kept that scumbag alive. Remember that Marx never worked a day to support his family, but did find time to knock up their maid. Dana later became Assistant Secretary of War. All these people were in place when our first 'Communist' President was elected on the Republican ticket in 1860 & provoked Lincoln’s Communist War to Destroy the Union.

The GOP Convention of 1860 took place in Chicago, a flaming center of German Communism. Many such Reds were delegates, including Johann Bernhard Stallo & Frederick Hassaurek from Ohio & Heinrich Bornstein from Missouri, a very good friend of Marx. Socialist Carl Schurz was a delegate from Wisconsin. To guarantee German support in Illinois, Lincoln secretly bought the Illinois Staats Anzieger. After the election he awarded the editor a consular post.

Socialist Friedrich Kapp was editor of the New Yorker-Abendzeitung. He wrote propaganda for the new Republican Party & helped mightily to deliver the German-American vote to Lincoln. With other Forty-Eighters, he was an elector for Lincoln in 1860. Remember, these are just a few examples. You really need to read the book. I can't possibly give any more than an essence of its content here.

Keep in mind too that slavery, for these Communists, was just an afterthought, a tool. Before the War for Independence, it was the Southern colonies that petitioned the King to stop importing slaves into the South. Did you know that Jefferson tried to include in the Declaration of Independence a complaint against the King because his government had forbidden the colonies to end the slave trade? Jefferson’s language was deleted to avoid giving offense to New England, which was making buckets of money trading slaves. Did you also know that if slavery was what the South fought to defend, all it had to do was stay in the Union? Lincoln made clear that he would defend slavery & would not free slaves owned by a man in a state within the Union: [quote]“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”[unquote]

Remember that the Emancipation Proclamation came well into the war. It was a propaganda stunt that freed only the slaves in areas controlled by the Confederacy; in other words, none. Meanwhile, prominent abolitionist Robert E. Lee, the first man Lincoln offered command of the Union Army, had freed his family’s slaves long before the war. So, what were the Communists who came here after? Republican Senator John Sherman, brother of the monster who Marched to the Sea, advised his fellow senators to “nationalize as much as possible [making] men love their country before their states. All private interests, all local interests, all banking interests, the interests of individuals, everything, should be subordinate now to the interests of the Government.”

Germany was a decentralized collection of independent states. The goal of the Forty Eighters there was a “united, indivisible republic” in which those states would be dissolved. Land & private industry would be confiscated. The government would be transformed into a Socialist dictatorship. These are the ideas the Forty Eighters came to implement here. By the way, that is what Hitler did in the 1930s. That is what the fleeing Communists found so attractive in Lincoln.

So, again, the Republican Party did not “go wrong.” It was rotten from the start. It has never been anything else but red. The characterization of Republican states as “red states” is quite appropriate. What do these revelations mean to us? Again, Dr. Paul is an aberration. He is not a “traditional Republican.” A “traditional Republican” stands for high taxes, imperial government & perpetual war. Pretty much what we've seen so far.

This is Your Brain on Music – the science of human obsession

It is funny how I initially came upon this book. Myself, along with a group of friends were sitting around talking one afternoon about how we eventually all seem to get stuck or trapped in our own generations music.I immediately thought about myself and questioned if there was perhaps a piece of generational gene that I’d not inherited, because I had definitely not stayed with my generations’ music. As new music is released I have moved along with it and embraced it. Perhaps it was because, for most of my life I have been a musician.

Or maybe it was because I could hear the recycled riffs and shared melody from past compositions that bridged the music from the past to the present. But it was that thought that led me to Googling the question “Why do we love our own generations’ music best?”And that search eventually led me to this book.

This is Your Brain on Music is pretty hard book to argue. Written by multi-hatted Daniel Levitin, you have to accept that the man knows where he’s coming from. Among the non-music related things he’s worked at professionally are a diverse and somewhat eclectic list of jobs. He worked as an automobile mechanic and as a graphic designer - a typographer, a chauffeur, product manager, data analyst, dishwasher, computer operator, television repairman, fry cook, standup comedian, door-to-door salesman, camp counselor and wood stove salesman.

Then in his thirties he returned to school and studied cognitive psychology/cognitive science, first at Stanford University (he received his B.A. in 1992 with honors and highest university distinction) and then the University of Oregon where he received his M.Sc. (1993) and Ph.D. (1996). He completed post-doctoral fellowships at Paul Allen's Silicon Valley think-tank Interval Research, at the Stanford University Medical School, and at the University of California, Berkeley.

He has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Dartmouth College and Oregon Health Sciences University. As a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in music perception and cognition, he is credited with fundamentally changing the way that scientists think about auditory memory, showing that long-term memory preserves many of the details of perceptual experience that previous theorists regarded as lost during the encoding process, and with drawing attention to the role of cerebellum in music listening, including tracking the beat and distinguishing familiar from unfamiliar music.

He has worked with the likes of the Grateful Dead, Santana, Steely Dan, Chris Isaak, Joe Satriani – just the beginnings of a very lengthy list of musicians. He has won awards from the Sundance Film Festival and Venice Film Festivals, and returning to university in the 70’s.

On the sound effects side of things he worked at A Broun Sound in San Rafael, California, building speaker cabinets for The Grateful Dead, for whom he later worked as a consulting record producer. He was invited and became one of the golden ears used in the first Dolby AC audio compression tests, a precursor to mp3 audio compression.

I know one of the first things out of people’s mouths is to wonder how dry this book is. Admittedly, the first part is a bit, but it’s by no means something that would put you to sleep. Not by a long shot.

Daniel writes in the introduction:

“By better understanding what music is and where it comes from, we may be able to better understand our motives, fears, desires, memories and even communication in the broadest sense. Is music listening more along the lines of eating when you’re hungry, and thus satisfying an urge? Or is it more like seeing a beautiful sunset or getting a backrub, which triggers sensory pleasure systems in the brain? Why do people seem to get stuck in their musical tastes as they grow older and cease experimenting with new music? This is the story of how brains and music evolved --- what music can teach us about the brain, what the brain can teach us about music, and what both can teach us about ourselves”

You will find that Daniel can tell a very good story. He imparts many in this book and you begin to wish you could have been a fly on a lot of walls during some of the times he tells about. You also come to understand yourself a little better and understand about things such as ear worms, that which makes songs stick in our heads for much too long sometimes. He tells about finger snapping and toe tapping and how they differ from each other. And he tells about meeting and working with John R Pierce who had also been noted for his work while serving as vice president of research at Bell Labs in New Jersey. He relates how Pierce asks him to explain rock and roll music to him, something Pierce had never paid attention to and didn’t understand.

Pierce requested that Levitin come up with six rock and roll songs that he felt would capture the essence of rock and roll. No easy feat! Levitin’s offerings were

1. “Long Tall Sally” – Little Richard
2. “Roll Over Beethoven” – The Beatles
3. “All along the Watchtower” – Jimi Hendrix
4. “Wonderful Tonight” – Eric Clapton
5. “Little Red Corvette” – Prince
6. “Anarchy in the U.K.” - the Sex Pistols.

This list alone has you going over in your head which six songs would you have picked? And if any one of yours is among the ones he picked?

This book surprised me because I thought I’d pretty much had a full understanding of the impact music had on my brain. But he opened whole new thoughts about that by bringing a scientific perspective to it. I caution that this book does not read like a text book, but it does talk about research on how the brain processes music and discusses things like pitch, timbre, rhythm, loudness and harmony and how they affect the human body.

If you have any interest in music whatsoever, I think this should be a book on your MUST READ list.

Living With Kitty - Times Three

Oh yeah! Times this by three & you have my mornings! I suspect it even might include a bat, which might explain the pounding headaches some mornings.

This is a wonderful little piece of work entitled 'Wake Up Cat' and was done by the English animator Simon Tofield. Mr. Tofield works for an animation company called Tandem Films. This film won Best Comedy at the British Animation Awards. I just fell in love with it, hitting so close to home as it does.

Also the evening ritual...or afternoon, or morning or mid morning or...well I think you have the picture - the program you want to see comes at a time that just isn't appropriate for kitty.



And then of course there's the "let me in situation", which in Simon's video, the kitty actually does cross the threshold and come in. At our house, that's rarely the case. At out house they pat and paw, stretch and rub against the glass, mewing plaintively until someone takes pity and puts down whatever they're doing to goes to let them in. At which time kitty looks at us as if we're totally daft then turns and walks in the other direction. I think they are programmed to do these things. .




We used to have a kitty by the name of Dobie. Dobie wasn't allowed 'outside' outside, but was allowed in our screened-in porch. And 95% of the time, this was the best of both worlds for him...a place to enjoy the breeze and smell the smells, occasionally chasing an insect who was unfortunate enough to think the screened-in porch was a great safe place to take up residence. Dobie lived for those moments and was quite happy in his inside outdoors - until some human had to go to the outside 'outside' and mow the lawn or rake the leaves. This was unacceptable behavior! Leaving him behind while they walked in the grass? Gack, no!




















He needed to work out some deal here so he was included in the excursion. First was the caterwaul. Well, that didn't work! All the human did was move further away from the screen so he wasn't heard! There needed to be some way of attracting attention. Running up and down the screen? Well that worked when we were tiny but resulted only in getting hollered at as he got larger...something about 'don't rip the screen, bad boy!' or something like that.




Okay, so tears in the screen weren't acceptable - humans have so many rules - 95% of them inane. So how about a pluck? He would pick-pick on the screen to get our attention and if that didn't work he would stand on his head. A fella's gotta do what a fella's gotta do.

I sure miss you, Dobie. You were truly one of a kind. I think of all those times I told you to be a good boy and get down off that screen and I would suck it all back right now for just one hour more with you. RIP my beauty. Having just four short years to share with you was not nearly enough time. I hope there are plastic springs in heaven and angels who know how to play 'fetchies'.

Losing respect really hurts

In the space of two weeks I have lost respect of not one but two women I have long admired, and for reasons I never would have expected. All having to do with race and people of color.
The women I am referring to are Whoopie Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey.

First Whoopie.
How thrilled I was when I learned she was going to be joining The View? After the recent rash of controversy caused for the show by Rosy O'Donnell, I mistakenly thought Whoopie would be the intelligent and light-hearted addition they needed to continue into their eleventh season with some freshness. So how shocked and disappointed I was when I heard Whoopie defending Michael Vick in his recent dog-fighting scandal.

"He's from the South, from the Deep South. This is part of his cultural upbringing. For a lot of people, dogs are sport. Instead of just saying (Vick) is a beast and he's a monster, this is a kid who comes from a culture where this is not questioned."

Whoopie, Whoopie, Whoopie! You mean like Jeff Saturday, born in Georgia or Peyton Manning born about as deep in the south as you're gonna get - New Orleans, Louisiana. ...would you be so quick to condone them too if they'd broken the law? Or is your compassion for Vick more to do with his color? That's a terrible accusation I make, but I'm left with no other explanation for what you've done.
Whoopie subsequently defended herself the next day, explaining that she was attempting to explain Vick's actions from a cultural view, but was in no way condoning his actions. ~*back pedal*~

Dog fighting and cock fighting are cultural in some countries, yes, unfortunately they are. But here in the USA they are not. It doesn't matter if you're Chinese, Irish, Greek or African American, if you are born in this country and you live in this country, you abide by the laws of this country. There are no exceptions because you are a certain color or you don't know the law. It is up to you as a citizen to learn the laws - ignorance of them does not except you.

Dog fighting is a felony in this country!

There is no dark side to Vick being charged with this crime, only shock and disgust! And to imply like so many other black people do that he is being made a victim because he is a person of color just breaks my heart coming from you. I would expect any person with scruples or a hint of ethics to see that and not make excuses and alibis for him.

Thankfully Joy Behar took immediate issue with Whoopies comments and asked her, "What part of the country is this? How about dog torturing and dog murdering?"

Her comments were also denounced by Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, who noted that dogfighting is outlawed in all 50 states and is considered a felony in all but two, Idaho and Wyoming. How long will it take now before we hear someone accuse Behar and Pacelle of making a victim out of Whoopie? I have a sad feeling that someone is out there ready to do that too.

And Oprah - Oprah endorsing Obama. We've long known that Oprah is a king maker but now she's moved on to something a little different. I will leave you to say what that is, but after listening to her from as far back as 1984 say that it's criminal that more women aren't elected to office in this country and chastising the women of her audience for not doing enough to make that happen, she herself has an opportunity to do just that now and doesn't. Why is that do you suppose?
Furthermore, though she hasn’t had other candidates on her show to my knowledge, she did invite and had Obama and his wife. Not only that, but she then holds an extravagant bash with 1,500 guests on Saturday evening. As she introducing Obama's wife, Michelle, (who was wearing a dress by Chicago designer Maria Pinto), Oprah called her the "first lady."

Wouldn’t you love to see that guest list? I do know that Stevie Wonder performed at the do and Chris Rock and yup! Whoopi too, were both in attendance. We can only speculate…

I hope no one takes me wrong with this post though I have no doubt it's about to happen. But I stand by my convictions and I can live with peoples criticisms.. I admire Barack Obama very much and this really has little to do with his running for office - or him personally. He is a very pleasant and articulate man and he may well be the next president - the first black president this country has seen. I love the prospect of something like that happening. But this post has little to do with that. It has to do with hypocrisies and people’s motives and how they can be upset by accusations of racism against them yet perpetuate it with their actions.

Ladies, you really have let me down.

iDon't get it! Our tech obsession

What is our obsession with technology? I try so hard to understand it. I love my computer as well as my iPod – I even love my Blackberry. I adore my Husqvarna electronic sewing machine. But would I ever…EVER have slept outside a store in the rain to buy them? Um, no.
In the past, concert tickets, yes. But not for something that will be available AND cheaper in the months to come…no!

The iPhone on its release day was priced from $500.00 to $750.00 & this is a phone that’s based on slower, 2G, or second-generation, wireless phone technology with a limited memory of 4 or 8 gigabytes - far less than the 30 to 80 GB in full-size iPods. But ~*shiver*~ it seems there are people who will still camp outside a store to be the first…is that what it is? And did they do their homework and find out what they’d be waiting for? Did they weigh the worth of trading their mattress for a lawn chair or bedroll on concrete for one night?

What is it exactly that would make people willing to do this? Being the first to have one? Even though it may be inferior to its successors? Already word is out that there’s a major hurdle to overcome wit the iPhone: e-mail. The way that Apple’s set up its e-mail servers is incompatible with many corporate systems. Therefore, users may not be able to access work e-mail. Companies could change policies if enough top execs became iPhone puppets, but for most of us, don't hold your breath.

Alright, back to it's assets, or lack thereof - it doesn't do games, so you can rule that out. It does just about everything else, but not games.
Okay so, use it as a phone…uhuh! Kind of a waste, isn’t it? You can't type in names to quickly bring up someone from the contact list. Voicemail is listed with the caller's name or number, sort of like e-mail. And the cheapest service plan costs $60 a month for 450 daytime minutes -- relatively expensive, since you're paying for unlimited data use. Getting 1,350 minutes costs $100 a month.

Okay, okay, so how about taking pictures then? It has a 2-megapixel camera which isn’t bad. But phones that are designed for serious photo taking also record video and have higher resolutions. As an example, the new Nokia N95 has a 5-megapixel sensor and a Zeiss lens.
Okay then, how about aiding the frequent flyer? Will this benefit him overseas then? Possibly, but it's not really ideal for that either. Sure, it work overseas, but only at AT&T's roaming rates. You’re better to have a world phone that has been "unlocked" by the carrier, so you have the option to use a local number and pay local rates.

Could it be entertainment then? I dunno about that either…Windows Mobile phones like T-Mobile Wing are already give you all that very nicely. And the recently released Black Berry, the Curve), plays music through a standard stereo headphone jack and has a built-in camera too.

So what is the attraction to sleeping on the street overnight in the rain, to pay $500.00 or more for something that you can buy 2 months from now on a sunny afternoon? Or waiting for the glitches to be ironed out by others?


Cheaper than the others? Nope! It's sure not that either. This first-generation iPhone is likely to be followed by something much better. One that’ll use a faster cellular broadband network and have more memory. Why not wait til Apple makes an upgraded iPhone, which will be smack the current model to $299 or so.
Yeah, this first iPhone will maybe be up-gradable, but would still require a trip back to the Apple store to do it.

Please help me understand if you’re one of those that did that the night before the release of the iPhone. It’s almost frightening to see the lack of individual thinking anymore. Like watching electronic brain control. Announce on television that a new gadget or gizmo is going on sale at a particular date and time and it draws tech freak humans like a magnet. They even had an outfit in San Francisco called "Over Here, Jerks!" ready to release a wild animal or do some other stunt that caused lines of iPhone buyers to disperse. The plan was to have everybody in line run away, except for the company's client, who'll be first up for service.

Alright, so this was San Francisco, but still. Not any sillier than what all these people are doing in front of the stores either, is it?

We Are The Machine...

Remember in the 50's how we all worried about someones finger hovering over the 'war button' and a simple hiccup or a sneeze launching us into war once more? The panic button that would send a bomb off to decimate another land?

It's a whole lot more likely to happen now with our busy little fingers having access to the world as we're able to reach across the globe and tempers flare. If you were fearful of one panic button, think about billions of buttons being out there! They're called 'the keyboard'.

The Machine



On the other hand, - if you'll allow me that pun - we also have the capacity to stop it. To not allow others to fully control our thoughts any longer. Using intelligent and wisdom from history, we can make our government truly ours. As it was meant to be.

History will show that the greatest single mistake the Bush war machine made was to underestimate the impact of the Internet. They didn't understand the Internet or the Internet culture, its sociology, and most important, how access to the Internet transformed Americans from mere accepters of broadcast information into active and critical participants in the information process. They waved off Internet news sources as just hobbies run by computer geeks for other computer geeks to tap into. Nothing to worry about! Blogs were not mainstream media, we were told by mainstream media.

Bush and the NeoCons didn't really know what to do about the Internet anyway, so wishful thinking made it unimportant. That was their critical error, because while the polls kept showing more people were still getting their news from TV than from their computers, the margin kept getting smaller.

And their polls didn't reflect the fact that those people watching TV news were not as mentally involved with the information flow as Internet users are. While fewer in numbers, people who were getting their news from the Internet were more involved with the news they gathered...after all they sought it out and they talked with others they knew who did not have Internet feeds. 'Each one teach one' thrives in practice.

So all of a sudden, the outdated mechanism of "what government says, the people think" is busted. Kaput! The mainstream TV networks have lost their monopoly on the flow of information. The public can decide for itself what is, in fact, newsworthy. The high ground in the war for the minds of America had shifted to the Internet, and the government of the US is losing that war. As we learn there are things happening in the world and at home that mainstream TV news is not telling us, we begin to turn to our computers more and more.

The government and mainstream media took many avenues to scare us away from the computers - ah, that fear factor! Worked for them in the past - could work again. They employed public relations to dump obvious misinformation onto the internet in hopes of besmirching it's credibility. But unlike television, the Internet allows readers to recognize immediately the false information for what it is by cross referencing news carried from other sources. Once again we have not been given credit for being able to think outside their parameters.

We now have a collective memory outside government control. Mainstream news sources too, have become aware that they can no longer avoid reporting the unpleasant news stories, without their avoidance itself becoming news on our blogs. As a result, blogs now drive the mainstream news. The mainstream media have been maneuvered into having to make a choice between continuing to support the agenda of their owners/handlers, or saving what is left of their credibility by running the stories that the public will be aware of anyway through the Internet.

The internet and blogging may save the world...who knew? What started as a way of learning about the world, ends up teaching us about ourselves.
A round of applause please. Now, go and responsibly change the world.

How I spend my Memorial Days

Signe Wilkinson cartoon©
Another Memorial Day and remind me again what it is we are fighting for?

Y’know, I can recall when I was really small, both my grandfather and my uncle reminiscing about the wars they’d fought in. It was easy to see that the experience, even to that very day, had left them with a mix of feelings. Proud yes, but very sad at the loss of friends and others in their fleet and platoon. As they sifted through their old dog-eared photos, it was not unusual to see them wipe a tear away. My grandfather and his men fought to rid the world of fascism. Both he and my uncle were, at different times, a part of the Second World War and the Korean War.
Of course they justified it all by saying that it was the ‘price of freedom’.

On Memorial Day we would go to watch the parade, and us kids would wave our flags and watch the assorted politicians lay wreaths on the assorted monuments in front of the assorted dignitaries about the city. All very somber & not just a little heart-wrenching ceremonies as I thought about those noble men who had given their lives so that I could be safe in my home. Even as a preschooler I felt so indebted to these men who had done this, so I could live to grow up in a free world. Though I may not have understood everything I was honoring that day, I did have a vivid picture in my mind of a brave young soldier facing down an enemy and shooting him dead. I, like so many, justified this by saying it had to be that way – him or me - cost of peace – I’m surprised my visions didn't have a patriotic soundtrack to accompany them.

Fast forward to the mid 60's. Operation Rolling Thunder and Vietnam. More prices of peace paid there in Vietnam, as well as Cambodia, Iran, Lebanon, Grenada, El Salvador, Panama, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan and now again Iraq. Has anyone figured out yet why two million Americans had to partake in ‘Nam? Worse, more than 58,000 Americans and another 304,000 wounded – for what? Did any of those soldiers facing down “the enemy” have a gripe with the enemy? No. They had no quarrel with the people who were trying to kill them. Neither did the enemy for that matter, both sides being victim of patriotic rhetoric trotted out from their governing houses to the media and subsequently a population of listeners. In any of the war footage sent back, did you see the brave politicians fighting in the rice fields of Vietnam? And reported deaths – anyone hear of a lot of higher-up generals dying while in combat there?

Those soldiers were fighting and dying simply because powerful people who would never have to face death in battle told them it was their duty to die. And we all bow our heads and nod sagely. Maybe if we’d been able to see graphically what that ‘price was’. Not the romantic hoopla war movie, but the real deal? Maybe each evening when the news shows the loss of life in Iraq for that day, instead of showing a fresh young face all decked out in dress uniform, they should show a photo of the kid after he was killed. Maybe then people will have a real picture of the price extracted. And realize that real guns shatter people's skulls and spread their brains on the ground like seeping grey pudding, and the bullets rip their insides to shreds and leave them screaming for their Moms. Those war guns kill families and leave children fatherless or motherless, or a more long term injury - having to live with their visions and demons they bring back with them. Not a pretty picture, is it? The truth so many times isn't.

So here we are again today, fighting to save lives. Whose? Four years ago we were fed more war mongering fodder and told we had to send our guys back to war again because Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a direct and immediate threat to our lives; to the peace and security of our country. Blah, blah. They’re coming to get us again so we have to get them first…blah, blah. Four years later, 3,200 more young Americans are dead, and 30,000 more have been wounded. I don't want to even think about the innocent lives lost in all of this muscle flexing. The "collateral damage" count.

We all know, if we’re honest with ourselves that is, that we went to war based on a lie. And now instead of saving more lives, Mr. Bush asks us to be patient; Congress diddles around over nonbinding resolutions and it seems once more there will be no end to this.

These soldiers in Iraq today are dying for the same reason the men and women in Vietnam did – arrogant government power brokers that are either too ignorant or too cowardly to separate the rhetoric of patriotism from the real essence of patriotism. Why should we really worry about terrorists taking American lives? Our own government is doing a bang-up job of that for us! Our soldiers die because of a Hollywood fantasy version of the ‘noble fight’ and it has been repeatedly trotted out to us by war mongering leaders. And on this Memorial Day we again honor those heroes who can’t be a part of it. They are no longer alive to share anything with us.

I think if we really want to honor our fallen heroes properly, we need to try a little harder to keep any more of them from falling in the first place. We might try to be less gullible and ready to believe classical oratory when politicians and generals tell us the next war is necessary. We might take a moment to consider that the ones who start these wars for peace are seldom the ones who take part in any of the killing - or any of the dying.



**I would also like to thank Signe Wilkinson for the use of her insightful cartoon.

Acting out to violent levels...

The most heinous example of acting out has once again occurred. This time by a gun-wielding young killer, Seung-Hui Cho. A very troubled and violent young person as we’ve also come to learn, who was acting out in the most criminal of ways. This time, though, the aberration cost thirty-three people their lives, thirty two of which were innocent victims doubling the loss of life of one previous episode.

To further the hurt, he chose to send his message just four days before the eighth anniversary of that other disaster; the Columbine High School bloodbath. That ‘acting out’ episode resulted in the massacre of thirteen kids in Jefferson County, Colorado back in April 20, 1999.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold decided they too, needed to make a voilent statement to the world. And like Seung-Hui Cho, they were willing to give their lives to make it.

Now I realize the obvious blame will fall to gun control, or lack of gun control in this country and I am certainly not going to minimize that fault here. The US is looked on globally as getting it so terribly wrong when it comes to that issue and we deserve every criticism that falls upon us for that. But that’s another topic for another time perhaps.

Too long have we heard the slogan “Guns don't kill people, people kill people.” My answer to that is ‘yes, people with guns'. One of the biggest supporters of guns and the NRA slogan was one Dimebag Darrell, the guitarist for Damageplan and Pantera. Ironically, he was killed during a 2004 shooting spree at a Columbus, Ohio, nightclub. With him went five other people including the gunman. He was 38.
I have a slogan for you NRA; ‘live by the gun, die by the gun.’ Unfortunately, those that don’t live by the gun are all too frequently killed too.

I’m sorry NRA, but it’s all too damn easy for crazies to get their hands on guns in this country, in spite of your ridiculous argument in support of firearms. Log on and surf to Top 100 Gun Sites. Candystores for killers. You're saying there is no reason to 'control' this? Or at the very least make honest attempts to? How far could Cho have gotten if he’d had to strangle those thirty-two people? Or stabbed them? Or put poisonous gas in the air system? Or whatever other methods of murder he’d had to resort to?

My grievance here goes beyond that, however. One picture of an angry twenty-three year old with guns in both hands should be message enough, to the NRA, to the legislators as well as to families and friends alike who see the signs of rage and distress in these individuals and do nothing. In almost every instance, when a situation such as this occurs, we get a history of the person. And in almost every case, the person was or still is being treated for emotional issues. Psychiatrists have perhaps examined these people and agreed that there is a violence problem but done nothing beyond ‘writing them up’.
Letting them walk out of a doctors office or a guidence counselors office to go and purchase a gun…or guns, and go on murderous rampages.

Could the killings at Virginia Tech been prevented if more teachers and students complained about Seung-Hui Cho’s bizarre behavior and his violent writings?

Lucinda Roy, a co-director of the school’s creative writing program at Virginia Tech, taught Cho in 2005. She was concerned about his behavior even back then. He wore sunglasses to class and a cap pulled low over his eyes and she was very concerned over the violent themes in his writings. She also was worried for her own safety because Cho took cellphone pictures of her in class.

When she notified authorities about these things however, she was told there would be too many legal hurdles. Police told her they couldn’t act since the writing wasn’t explicit enough and he didn’t threaten a specific person. Maybe their hands were legally tired, but couldn’t campus administration have intervened somehow, for example asking for a psych evaluation because he was a threat to himself and others.

Another of Cho’s writing professors brought his work to Roy’s attention. In one play, a teen character accused his stepfather of molesting him. The same character killed his father. In another play, the teens talked about stalking and killing a math teacher who sexually molested them.
Click on the links below the read the plays. WARNING: the plays contain profanity and scenes with disturbing content.

- Read Play #1: 'Richard McBeef'

- Read Play #2: 'Mr. Brownstone'

Are you telling me that the person or persons who read these two plays wasn't responsible in any way for the events that unfolded on April 16th?

Or did the law drop the ball? Under federal law, Cho should have been prohibited from buying a gun after a Virginia court declared him to be a danger to himself in late 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment, a state official and several legal experts said Friday. Federal law prohibits anyone who has been "adjudicated as a mental defective," as well as those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from purchasing a gun. Cho's ability to buy two guns despite his history has cast new attention on the adequacy of background checks that scrutinize potential gun purchasers.
If you say they are faultless, then explain to me why all of these killing rampages past and present have happened in gun-free zones? Good question, no?

So who is at fault exactly? Well, we all are. The families who don’t acknowledge there is a problem; the friends who don’t want to ‘snitch’ and may well pay with their own lives for their honor among friends, the school system who doesn’t follow up on kids with known issues, and the gun culture who misuses excerpts of the second amendment to justify arming themselves.

The Second Amendment is among the most misunderstood provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

“That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and their own State, or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them, unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military shall be kept under strict subordination to and be governed by the civil power.”

The legal precedents are far from clear in that amendment. They are also pathetically sparse, at best. There was an article in the Yale Law Journal a few years ago entitled "The Embarrassing Second Amendment." suggesting a reluctance on the part of the courts and the legal community generally to deal with our issues today. In almost every other aspect of law the Bill of Rights has been broadly construed to restrain the states as well as the federal government. Few today would argue that states should abolish the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. Yet many are prepared to do nothing on the second, on the grounds that the framers were sage and knowledgeable men. Perhaps they were, I’ve no doubt this is true.

But let’s not forget that those same men penned that slavery was fine too, even owning some themselves. Yet today we are appalled at the very thought of someone being held in bondage. Slavery was bad, and the constitution as written permitted it, and a duly ratified amendment was required to put the matter right. These men who are responsible for the Bill of Rights were living in a different time. And their rulings and implemented amendments back then have brought us to today. No, they could not have foreseen the urban violence on the scale we have today. But if they’d had a crystal ball to gaze into, do you think they would have written those murky words back then? Or at least quite as obscurely? Since you don't hunt elk with a hand gun, or quail with an assault rifle, I think they could have done a much better job of passing this into one of the laws of the land.

Dragging out that old chestnut “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” You don’t arm yourself against an armed person; you implement stronger laws that make it much harder for criminals to arm themselves, thereby making the world a safer place for all. Gun supporters have suggested that the students should have all had guns to protect themselves. With other armed & frightened students at the scene, that opens the potential for three times the carnage! With early unsubstantiated reports that morning that the shooter was a middle-eastern Islamic student, there is every possibility that an innocent person could have been shot in the atmosphere of hysteria. Even if other armed students on campus had correctly identified the shooter, there is no guarantee that they might not have shot one another or killed many innocent others by frightened accidental firing.

I go back to my initial point in saying many there were to blame for what happened that day. Cho was for the most part ignored. He made people uncomfortable or in the case of his roommate, found him mildly amusing; but that was it!
And don't you find something terribly wrong with the fact that all of these mass shootings have occurred in gun-free zones? I know the gun supporters will wag their finger & say "SEE? Controlling guns doesn't work."
That’s not control; that’s sheer wisdom.

Which is why I don't blame that one thing for what happened at Virginia Tech.
This kid, with smoldering hatred & violent thoughts, was let go on about his life there & it eventually led to this. No-one really got to *know* what was going on in this persons head. It's one thing for the prof to say she saw something wrong & suggest counsellings; it's totally another to follow up & make sure he got it!

The hidden Abuses

The Hidden Abuses - help for the emotionally beaten

We tune in to the news every day or leaf through magazines and find articles about men who’ve physically maimed their wives and children - broken their bones or left them bloody and covered with bruises or worse, stabbed, strangled, or shot them to death. Neighbors and co-workers say they're nice guys, really pleasant, friendly guys who are just a treat to work beside, guys who will go that extra mile to lend a hand, who always wave when leaving for work in the morning and talk over the fence about how much they love their families.

This is awful stuff and just all too common in today’s world. That’s physical abuse. You read books about it and you see it in movies. We even have laws now that try to protect victims from being victimized again - restraining orders and things of that nature. This is the abuse that you can actually see.

But what about the other abuses? How do we protect others and ourselves against these? These abuses that kill the spirit and rob the body so that there's nothing left but an empty shell? I’m referring of course to verbal, emotional, and mental abuse. In some respects it can be worse than physical abuse. These are the abuses you can’t get a doctor to bandage and make heal. Unlike a bone, it won’t knit and get better. You can’t get it stitched and wait for it to heal.

Because verbal, emotional, and mental abuse is invisible, they don’t get swathed with bandages and treated with ointments. These abuses chip away at the very essence of a person and there are no laws to protect against it. Sometimes, too many times, even family members aren’t aware it’s happening because the abuser is a very gifted liar as well.

The person who is suffering from verbal abuse is not so easily recognized. She is the one who doesn’t want to say anything for fear of rocking the boat. She’s already learned from experience that to be forthcoming in any way will result in a verbal tirade she can’t emotionally handle.

She will make phone calls to explain why they haven’t gone to a party or why they are begging off a dinner engagement. She makes excuses to others for the embarrassing moments, telling friends that he’s just tired and not normally like that.

The friends readily accept this because they’ve seen what a swell guy he is.
That’s because verbal abuse is for all intents invisible. It goes on in private – behind closed doors. Out in the open, he’s Mr. Congeniality -- friendly and supportive to everyone -- but get him home alone with his wife and he is Mr. Hyde. He’s critical even of things that don’t exist; in fact, many times he creates things to be critical of. She forgot something he’d told her (he hadn’t). She’d put something of his away where he couldn’t find it and then forgotten where it was, (he himself put the item away). All these things were expertly invented to whittle away at the woman’s self-confidence. Then once it reaches a breaking point, he tells her he was joking and accuses her of being overly sensitive.

Slowly, these things sink in and she begins to question herself and worries that maybe that’s the case. Not being able to talk with anyone about it, she has no way of knowing if he’s right. He has her exactly where he wants her! Now he can manipulate and control. Whether she doesn’t work outside of the home and has some freedom, or a wage of her own, she is doomed! He is in full control of her entire existence.

It is at this time when he will start phase two: she is not going to get anyone to believe her because he’s already paved the way for family and friends to side with him. She is unreasonable. She is impossible to live with and he is the poor victim of all this. He is in full Mr. Wonderful mode - that poor guy with the difficult wife. From that point, she’s not in much of a position to even hope for help. When she weakly tries fighting back she’s a mean b!tch! Everyone sees her as unappreciative of his efforts to give her a good life. Everybody knows how much he does for her and how she’s not in the least grateful. Everyone knows this because that’s another road he’s paved. They readily take everything at face value and this is what has to change.

There is help. There are people who have been through this and they know the steps. Once a victim can even question for a moment what she's been led to believe about herself, this is a monstrous step to recovery. This takes some intervention from family and friends. Yes, there is great irony in that, because those that seem to have abandoned them really haven't. Like the victim, they've only been misdirected from the truth. That needs to be turned around. They can be brought to see what is taking place. It takes some close observation on the part of extended family and friends and some help learning not to take everything at face value.

There are some books which help step the abused through the first stages of getting help. Two I might suggest are Verbal Abuse: Survivors Speak Out by Patricia Evans.
Also by Ms. Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How To Respond

Both of these books are only a start in the right direction. But "The longest journey begins with but a single step".

Another excellent source of help are the online sites. Finding message boards and kindred spirits goes far in giving the abused person what she needs to fight back. Verbal Abuse is one site with numerous links for those seeking help.
Also, MentalHelp.net another excellent site in which to find support and advice.

Maybe, just maybe the day will come when these crippling abuses will garner as much attention as the other more obvious ones, then friends and family won't have to be taught how to look for it.

Without venturing to take that step, we are sentenced to forever remaining in bad places.

One-upmanship or “I’m better than you are”

I choose a picture of The White Goddess Tara here because she is the goddess of compassion for others. At her right hand is the conventional truth, positioned in the perfection of charity and her left hand symbolizes the absolute truth and protection from terror. Her right foot is stretched out and is the abandonment of all defects, and her left foot is drawn back to symbolize the understanding of qualities.

I relate to her in many respects because I was affected on my left side and her postures suggest my own. A protecting of the left and strength on the right.
To Tibetans she is known as The Faithful One, The Fierce Protectoress.
The Celts called their "Great Goddess" Tara. Two of her animals are the Owl and the Raven, her gem is the emerald (my birthstone) and she likes all colors, but especially white and green.

In Native American legends, she is known as the "Star Woman". The Cheyenne people tell of Star woman who fell from the heavens to the earth and out of her body all essential food grew. And the Druids called her their mother goddess.

Her name is thought to be the root of the word Tor, which is a mound of earth or hillock imbued with spiritual energy or connection to the spirit world. Tara embodies the feminine strengths of great caring and compassion, the ability to endure stressful and even terrifying moments. An ancient saga of Finland said to be 5 million years old speaks of Tar, the women of wisdom. An ancient tribe of indigenous peoples in the South American jungles call to their goddess, Tarahumara.
Legends and myths of every culture praise She Who Brings Forth Life, She Who Is The Embodiment Of Wisdom, The Great Compassionate Mother, The Star Of Heaven. She has been called by many names, she has been revealed in many forms.

Yes, that was a long road taken to get to what I wanted to say about one-upmanship and our lack of communication skills today. You notice I don't have any loss of words at all, much to many people's chagrin.
But I found myself in a situation yesterday that got me thinking about the way we interact verbally with one another. I had helped to rescue a kitten for a neighbor and after the kitten was safely nestled in her arms, she thanked me profusely for the rescue and also for not relating a tale beginning with “That’s almost as bad as…” When I asked her what she meant, she asked me had I never noticed how people always say they’ve had worse things happen to them than you have? This was the first time I’d met someone else who was bothered by this term.

I have occasionally noticed this pattern in speech before and while it’s sometimes humorous, more often than not it will be annoying. Only after she reminded me though, did I stop to analyze why we do it.

I can understand when you are telling a person you had an unexpected expense that was tough to deal with and they reply that they can relate, then go on to tell you of their most recent unexpected outlay. That, I think is their way of saying they have been through what you’re going through. Another phrase is of course “Bin there!”

But what I’m really talking about is the one-upmanship or ‘I’m better than you are’ meaning behind that phrase, almost as bad.
“Oh yeah, that’s almost as bad as….”

Now, there may be times when indeed, my experience might not have been as bad as one they’ve been through, but even in that case, isn’t it still wrong to begin dialog with someone in that way?

Case in point; some time back I had two friends who were going through some awful stuff. My one friend had just lost her 19 year old son to suicide. He shot himself full of heroin and offed himself right in front of his kid brother. I don’t think I have to tell anyone how devastating that would be for both brother and mother.
At the very same time, within that same week in fact, my neighbors’ 20 year old son was sent to Iraq; into Baghdad with the bombing and fighting going on there. She too, was beside herself with worry for her son. She wasn’t dealing well with her only son now being the target of gunfire and bombs. I had been spending most of my time shuttling back and forth between these friends, trying to be supportive and help in any way I could. Time on the computer was minimal to none.

So when my daughter emailed me asking me how come I hadn’t been emailing her as much, I told her what I’d been doing that past week and went on to tell her about my two friends and their misfortunes. I said that the mother who had lost her son was just now beginning to deal with the loss, but the other mother was still fighting to push away the thoughts that she may have to face a loss of a child. That was being made harder by recurring nightly dreams, terrible dreams with sounds of bombs going off.

To that, my daughter came back with “Oh that’s almost as bad as what I’m going through myself this morning. I can certainly relate to the sound of bombs bursting all around you because I’ve been sitting here listening to my upstairs neighbor mow the lawn. And I have to listen to this every Saturday morning”
Hello? Say what?? Are we on the same wavelength here at all?

Alright, so noise isn’t pleasant. I’m the first one to be irked by drive-by shakers & a neighbors barking dog from dawn to dusk. I‘m not crazy about listening to lawn mowers either. But to compare, or say your misery is worse than that of a mother with a son at war & what that son is going through, is pretty egotistical & self absorbed. Did she stop to think about the situation at all before she responded? Do others? Or is this where the ‘One-upmanship’ comes into play? No matter what others are going through, it’s never going to be as bad as the stuff that’s going on in their lives.

I think if we‘re honest with ourselves, we realize that all we think and say, (and do), to one degree or another, is tainted with selfishness. That's not necessarily a bad thing. If we don't think about ourselves in some situations, no-one else will. This is a part of that, but taken to the extreme. If you look up the word one-upmanship, the dictionary’s pretty blunt. It is “the practice of, or skill in, seizing an advantage or gaining superiority over others.” Perhaps that is why that phrase begins so many sentences?
If it weren’t so overused these days, I want to say to people like my daughter “It’s not always about you.” And add to all those others that use the term, 'Sorry Buckaroo, but sometimes it's not about you at all!!' Sometimes others simply do have a much harder lot in life than you.

Try showing some empathy. Empathy is putting yourself into another's shoes, or at least trying to. Not immediately pointing out that your shoes are better, or tighter, or more worn. And you're really much poorer and can't afford any more.

On the other hand, maybe I just have way too much time to think.

Puffing on Polonium

An alarming article from the New York Times recently, revealed yet more to concern us...or should. When the former K.G.B. agent Alexander V. Litvinenko was found to have been poisoned by radioactive polonium 210 last week, there was one group that must have been particularly horrified: the tobacco industry.

The industry has been aware at least since the 1960s that cigarettes contain significant levels of polonium.

How much polonium is in tobacco? In 1968, the American Tobacco Company began a secret research effort to find out. Using precision analytic techniques, the researchers found that smokers inhale an average of about .04 picocuries of polonium 210 per cigarette.

Is it therefore really correct to say, as Britain’s Health Protection Agency did this week, that the risk of having been exposed to this substance remains low? That statement might be true for whatever particular supplies were used to poison Mr. Litvinenko, but consider also this: London’s smokers (and those Londoners exposed to secondhand smoke), taken as a group, probably inhale more polonium 210 on any given day than the former spy ingested with his sushi.

The tobacco industry of course doesn’t like to have attention drawn to the more exotic poisons in tobacco smoke. Arsenic, cyanide and nicotine, bad enough. But radiation? As more people learn more about the secrets hidden in the golden leaf, it may become harder for the industry to align itself with candy and coffee — and harder to maintain, as we often hear in litigation, that the dangers of tobacco have long been “common knowledge.” I suspect that even some of our more enlightened smokers will be surprised to learn that cigarette smoke is radioactive, and that these odd fears spilling from a poisoned K.G.B. man may be molehills compared with our really big cancer mountains.

The BIG question

As I listen to my dear friend of many years explain why he's taken up smoking again, I endeavor to make any sense out of what he's telling me. He tells me that it's really a number of things that have brought him back to this habit; his financial worries, his tension at work, his always feeling ill & having to go to see his doctor for tests all the time. I sort these things in my head & wonder which part of all this is 'fixed' by taking up smoking again. Smoking certainly doesn't take away financial problems. As far as I know anyway, they haven't yet started paying us to smoke. And I don't know what a pack of cigarettes is in other countries like Canada or England, but I know here in the US it's approx. $2.50 & in California I think somewhere around $4.00. There's also a ballot measure in California calling for a 300% increase in the tobacco tax in an attempt to make it too expensive for people to light up. That'll sure alleviate financial woes for smokers.

And even though this strategy hasn't shown it works in other states toward slowing smokers or cigarette sales down, you can bet it's only a matter of time before they impliment it.
Then it's created a black market & smuggling problems; an incentive for criminal organizations (terrorist groups included) to have this avenue for crime. Which in turn becomes an even bigger burden on an already over-burdened law enforcement agency.
Just something else for smokers to stress over, huh? Even though they've created the problem with their addiction much the same as the drug user has.

But I digress...
My friend says he's always feeling awful. Well yes, I can see where lighting up a cigarette first thing upon waking is going to just make him feel so much better! Dragging in that wonderful carcinogen-packed smoke is going to add years to his life I'm sure. And if by some stroke it didn't remove years, the quality of those years would be extraordinary, wouldn't it? Just think what he has to look forward to. Aside from the spat of different cancers and lung diseases, & those other peachy problems we have drummed into our heads daily (if we're listening) there is also hair loss, cataracts, depletion of vitamins A & C, wrinkling, tooth decay, osteoporosis, stomach ulcers, psoriasis, deformed sperm (leading to questionable offspring) Buergers Disease, not to mention those lovely yellow-brown teeth & fingers. Only your best friend would tell you this baby, but you're no joy to be around & you really stink too!

What makes it even more of a mystery to me is that my friend already has been scared in the past when they found an unexplained shadow in his throat. This scared him so much the day he got that phone call. All his friends gathered around & assured him that things would be fine; he had an advantage now because he was smart enough not to smoke!

Well, strike that 'cuz he does now!

I look at my friend & he is no longer a boy...not even a teen. He is a man in his mid forties. A seemingly intelligent individual. I say seemingly because with all that we know now & with all that he's been scared with, he still dips into his meager funds & buys something that will reduce the quality of his life even further than it is.

When I was growing up, smoking was what you did. It was your passage into adulthood. You crossed that invisible childhood line...puberty came & went & you did the 'grown up' things. That's not to say they were smart things; only that they were what we saw our parents & our parents friends doing. As well as all those very cool characters in our favorite films.

At 40, this shouldn't have any impact on our conciousness. Or at least one would hope. I so wish I could fathom the rationale behind this choice. Maybe once I was privy to the principle, I could reach some understanding of this inane practice.