There was a perverse liberation attendant to breaking the last of my New Year’s resolutions.  I am resolved now to emulate the achievement-oriented  ploy of Wall Streeters, notably, revising expectations sufficiently low to beat them.  Paper profits and semantic victories, all around!

Are we still fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here?  And is that ‘cuz it would be too hard to fight them here when we are busy fighting each other?  Politicians and Pundits play on emotions FOR A LIVING.  They DO.  Like actors.  Without steady and acrimonious disagreement, if benign efficiency prevailed throughout the land, governing and reporting would have all the glamor of Certified Public Accounting.

Apropos of nothing and everything, the absence of Generally Accepted Accounting Practices translates to one big question mark — like quoting prices per, without units of measure.  Baby Boomers will recall the original not-butter commercial: It’s not NICE to fool Mother Nature.”  The Market doesn’t LIKE Uncertainty.

Uncertainty can be argued to be WORSE than bad news.  If the news turns out to be the dreaded kind, you’ve got bad news AND the high anxiety of FEARING the Bad News.  Uncertainty can be argued to be BETTER than bad news, for it spins a cocoon of Hope that maybe allows a gathering of fortitude to weather the blow of Bad News.  Alas, Uncertainty spins a cocoon of Hope in which the Uncertain might dwell indefinitely, particularly if nursed by Faith or browbeaten by Fear.  ANALYSIS PARALYSIS, which is absolutely worse than Bad News.

HOPE FOR THE BEST, PREPARE FOR THE WORST is the wisdom of Ages & Sages, yes?

I spy all KINDSA hopefulness.  Point me to preparations for the worst.

Let’s play pretend.  Pretend the Arab Uprisings are some rope-a-dope scheme to lure American Military deeper into the Middle East’s heart of darkness. Suddenly, completely unexpectedly even though fortunes are squandered on National Security, a dozen major shopping malls are blown sky-high.  WHAT’S THE PLAN?

There ISN’T one, is there?  Soft Suburbanites will largely fend for themselves, WON’T they?  Certainly the friends and families of dead Shoppers will play second fiddle, if public attention is gripped by hostage children.  Huh?  What if, as per synchronized watches, hostage situations developed in a dozen private schools an hour after the malls exploded?  Children in harm’s way will take precedence over dead Shoppers, yes?  Resentment will fester between Citizens as losses are discriminatorily recognized and protection selectively provided.

There is no plan, is there?

There is still the arrogant supposition that IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE, even though it has ALREADY happened here.  ISN’T there?  By what kinda logic are Terrorists one-trick ponies, that know only one way to terrorize America, via air travel?  It is so preposterous that Terrorists only threaten air travel as to draw cast doubt on the oh-so-lucrative Terrorist Threat.

Which is super dangerous, ‘cuz there ARE people who hate America and Americans and mean them both harm.

MORE uncertainty.

Quelle dilemma.  Uncertainty is bad for the Market Mechanism, but good for the Control Mechanism.  Have cake, or eat it?  Have cake, or eat it?  When I was a KID, I used to counter with WHAT’S THE POINT OF HAVING CAKE, IF YOU CAN’T EAT IT?  Years of life experience clarified that YOU CAN’T HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO cautions against a CHILDLIKE desire to CONSUME and then still HAVE, which is to say HAVE THINGS BOTH WAYS.

Family Values and Rampant Adultery.

Christian Principles and Perpetual War.

Austerity Measures and Official Opulence.

Air travel is wildly dangerous for Rank & File.  Air travel is perfectly safe for Officials & Executives.

Two things ARE certain.  Big Shots ARE having things both ways.  Big Shots cannot KEEP having things both ways.  Not even if We The People will keep LETTING Big Shots have things both ways can Big Shots keep having things both ways.  What part of UNSUSTAINABLE do Greedy Fucks and Scaredy Cats not understand?

And what IS Terrorism, if not an Islamic Extremist shooting American G.I.’s in the German airport?  If not an Islamic Extremist mowing down soldiers at Fort Hood?  Officials are freer and easier about labeling AMERICAN MILITIA as Extremists than they are about labeling MUSLIM SHOOTERS as Terrorists.

Lovin’ Spoonful: DID YOU EVER HAVE TO MAKE UP YOUR MIND?

Recently, a person theretofore unknown to me insinuated into an introductory email exchange a quote that was ALSO theretofore unknown to me.  Insofar as acquisition of the quote for my RELIABLE SOURCES OF REASON & SENTIMENT arsenal was the highlight of our brief encounter, I have been looking for an opportunity to USE it.  To pass it on, and to indelibly imprint the lowlights of the encounter.

Walter Wellesley a.k.a. Red Smith, Sports Columnist: “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

Ain’t it the fuckin’ truth?

That is what kinda AUTOMATICALLY comes outta my mouth: AIN’T IT THE FUCKIN’ TRUTH.  I don’t know where the cussing comes from, insofar as swearing was surely not allowed in the ol’ Formative Years — not at home, not at school.  Having both raised and BEEN a kid, I realize that a thing’s prohibition is “cause” enough to DO it — but that doesn’t explain the learning curve.  Teachers were not prevalent. How, from whom, when did I start cussing so…fluidly?  One might say UNCONTROLLABLY.

MANY a Baby Boomer will corroborate that yesteryear Moms did not merely THREATEN to wash mouths out with soap.

I DO cop to having Political Tourette’s.  I mean, shit FLIES outta my mouth.  A Faux Libertarian prick, fella who went by G-Wohl, resorted to calling that analogy INSENSITIVE in light of supposedly having struggled with Tourette’s…and in light of losing the argument in which we were engaged.  Literally,  I call bullshit on both counts.  I believe he never struggled with Tourette’s and that he could care LESS about protecting delicate sensibilities.  I mention it ‘cuz there are people who are LYING THROUGH THEIR FUCKIN’ TEETH.

But it is CUSSING, not lying, that is conveniently bleep-out unacceptable in the oh-so-lucrative Opinion Industry.

Ongoing war?  Fine.  Hardcore porn?  Fine.  Reckless gambling?  Fine.  Alcohol Abuse?  Fine.  Rampant Corruption?  Fine.  But cussing in the public discourse?  NIET!!  We have our standards.  Civility is the watchword.  No need to swear.

If there is no need to swear, it follows that even more intense outbursts of temper are COMPLETELY outta the question.

Douglas Adams, British Writer: “We have normality.  I repeat, we have normality.  Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.”

Public SERVANTS — many of them Millionaires, many of them trading on offices — tell overtaxed, alternately overworked or underemployed people to SUCK UP HARD TIMES as though they had not a thing in the world to DO with these BEING hard times.  Cliches are cliches with cause.  Truly, TO ADD INSULT TO INJURY, they legislate unto themselves both automatic raises and diplomatic immunity.

They aren’t “just” well paid.  They are EXTREMELY well paid.  Why would they change?  If YOU were making lotsa money doing things the way YOU were doing them, would YOU do them differently?  Y’know, to be more FAIR?  Unless you were FORCED to change or afraid NOT to change, would you facilitate change that diminishes YOUR slice of the pie and increases the share of Others?  Mightn’t you be, at best, like the Millionaires For Higher Taxes…who champion not the independence conferred by adequate wages, but more Noblesse Oblige.

BIG fan of a Reality Base, right here.  The road to hell is paved with good intentions?  Good Intentions, thy other name is Wishful Thinking.  In addition to KUM-BAY-YAH and MICHAEL ROW THE BOAT ASHORE and PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON, Baby Boomers will recall:

I’VE HAD IT UP TO HERE.

DON’T MAKE ME COME IN THERE.

I’M COUNTING TO TEN.  (THREE, for shorter fuse.)

I DON’T CARE WHO STARTED IT.

Anger gets kinduva a bad rap.  It’s dangerous, to be sure, and it DOES want careful management.  But Anger sometimes serves an important purpose — like a heads up, like a flashing light, like a red flag.  There is no such thing as Perfectionism Lite but, as with cholesterol, there IS the good kinda Anger.

I mention it ‘cuz PISSED very often has a close personal relationship with ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

Opinion Makers are working overtime to persuade Citizens that MAD IS BAD.  It has been my experience that NOT getting mad when there is CAUSE to be mad falls under “THE APPALLING SILENCE OF GOOD PEOPLE”.

“Like yesterday,” I can hear Janis Joplin’s raspy anguished voice wailing FREEDOM IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE.  ”Clear as a bell.”

Not really, of course.  It doesn’t really feel like yesterday that I heard “Me and Bobby McGee” and it doesn’t actually factually sound as clear as a bell, but “you know what I mean.”

I love that song, and I am much intrigued by the posse of Music Makers that lived hard and died young in the tumultuous period that has since been sanitized and shelved as “The Sixties.”  However, comma, FREEDOM IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE is a Sound Byte.  It sounds good enough to “ring true,” but it is NOT true.

Freedom is NOT just another word for Nothing Left To Lose.  There are enough people articulating soulfully about the significance of Liberty and the even greater significance of our throwing it away with both hands, what can I add?  Seriously.  Suffice it to say that FREEDOM, sprawling and incredible, is pretty much the exact OPPOSITE of the unbearable conditions and bleak impotence that encourages NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE recklessness to fester in minds trained to keep their hatred to themselves.

Freedom and Nothing Left To Lose are day-and-night different, when you get right down to it.  Freedom speaks directly to having meaningful options, whereas Nothing Left To Lose speaks directly to shit circumstances and NO options.

I suggest that Free is ALSO different from Freedom.  Free is different from Freedom DIFFERENTLY than Freedom is different from Nothing Left To Lose, but Free is DEFINITELY different from Freedom.

To quote Barack Obama plagiarizing Deval Patrick, WORDS MATTER.  But words matter MUCH LESS than actions matter.  Words matter MUCH LESS than states of actual being matter.  We can hail Freedom til the cows come home, but that does not magically make us FREE.

Theory versus Reality.  ”Book smart and life stupid,” to quote my formidable father.

FREE WILL is essential in the FAITH paradigm.  If one believes because one has no CHOICE but to believe, if one tows the line because one is FORCED to tow the line, where is the glory to God?  And what the hell kinda God IS that?  I think I go not far out on a limb in suggesting that Free Will is AT LEAST as consequential in the NON Believer paradigm.  Intuitively, absent belief in Divinity and subservience to Divine Order, the MORE SO would individuals demand to be FREE to chart their OWN courses as best as THEY see fit, through vagaries and vulgarities that frankly and frequently defy both Reason and Justice.

Freedom is the stuff of Intellectualization.

Actually being free is the stuff of Improvisation, Innovation and Application.

Freedom is a good read, and a better speech.

Actually being free is hard work, but a better job.

Taking cues from Wall Street and Money Men, why WOULDN’T I replay an angle that has already worked?  I am still ahead of Plan. WITHOUT swindling people or otherwise trafficking in misery, I might add.  Still bearing Wall Street and Money Men in mind, I GET IT that I cannot repeat and repeat the Tardiness Technique and REMAIN  ahead, or apace, or even in ballpark of Plan.

I have ANOTHER plan for THAT.  To narrow the gap between due dates and completion dates, I shall do my part by writing 1000 words first thing in the morning.  Well … not FIRST first, but before anything else.  Well … not before ANYTHING else, but before the stuff that makes 1000 words not first.

Starting tomorrow, which is great.  Except tomorrow is 3000 words.  Which is NOT great.  But which IS doable.

PATRICK HENRY:  I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.

If this blog entry would be a Reader’s first acquaintance with me, I am thinking they would be kinda LOST.  Who CARES?  Do not both the Governors and the Governed of nations large and small, old and new, consequential and quaint, give the appearance of being LOST?  Can so many Englismen and Non-Englishmen be wrong?

“Though they come to scoff, they may stay to pray.”  I’m not sure that is the exact quote.  And I’m not sure whether it comes from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, or whether the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous borrowed it from elsewhere without attribution.  Bill Wilson DID do some of that, with all due respect.

And there is a LOTTA respect due to Bill Wilson ( a lotta lotta lotta lotta respect, if I get in a Word Count pinch) and, in my opinion, even more due to Dr. Bob.  But I didn’t think that’s where I was going with this entry.  I glanced at the title while I was typing that last sentence (equivalent to walking and chewing gum at the same time), whereupon I realize “Tempting Folly” could absolutely be a piece on Recovery.

DON’T TEASE THE DISEASE, I wuz told once upon a time.  By a man who is now dead.  

But the Folly I alluded to tempting is that of monkeying with WHEN I write 1000 words per day.  It is a slippery slope between writing past “the bell” of midnight and “publishing” dated but largely blank entries for completion later.  In the Lucy Ricardo penniless-for-decades paradigm, I could find myself needing to write 50,000 words in a weekend to be back not so much ON as back in RANGE of The Plan.  

Dennis Hopper, for Ameriprise Financial: YOU GOTTA HAVE A PLAN.

Dennis Hopper is dead, too.  A Plan will only get you so far.

What IS our plan?  The people’s, I mean.  The plan of Ruling Elite seems pretty straightforward: CONTROL THE WORLD BY CONTROLLING THE WEALTH.  But the Controlled, my Comrades, do WE have a plan?  ’Cuz here’s something I know about Bullies: They are not sweet-talked, reasoned, pleaded, prodded, begged, bullshitted, cajoled, coaxed, nagged, needled, wheedled, whined or waited out of being Bullies.  And HERE’S something I know about Power: Unless it is an orderly passing of the baton, heavy on ORDER, no one gives up power without a fight.

Houston, we have a problem.

Beginning with our refusal to admit we have a problem.  DENIAL features big in Addiction.  No lie, America needs a 12-step program.

Full circle, back to Recovery.  And tempting Folly.

Funnily enough, while writing ABOUT not getting carried away with Tardiness Techniques, I neglected to publish the mock FILL IN THE BLANK LATER post that corresponds with the date that passed an hour ago.  LOL.  Full circle, back to MAN PLANS, GOD LAUGHS.

Sooo … FOLLY, it is.  In blessedly short order, I prove to myself that fancy footwork to MAKE UP having FALLEN OFF the Plan is not worth  the aggravation.  Stick to the plan, or change it and stick to THAT.  That’s my advice to me.

In THE POWER OF NOW, Eckhart Tolle mildly nails a liberating Truth: Unpleasantries fall into two categories, those with which we MUST deal and those with which we need NOT deal.  Beating myself up for falling off my own goal is unpleasant, unnecessary and counterproductive.

So THERE.  I am ending this post on 730 words, and skipping a day altogether.  

Sue me.

BEGINNING an entry with an Intermission is novel, dontcha think?

You betcha, Bright Ideas R Us.  Lacking in execution but — forget surplus, how Quaker — a TREASURE TROVE of brainstorms.  

I have mentioned that I am looking for My People.  Having GOT the Recovery Circuit Hard Knock lesson about TERMINAL UNIQUENESS, I know that, after all the politically correct yada yada due respect to each of us being as idiosyncratically perfect as snowflakes, I am not the only one of me limping shellshocked in a country a scarcely recognize.

MY People will recall an I LOVE LUCY episode wherein Lucy borrows so far forward on future Household Allowance that even if she abruptly stopped spending, groceries included, she would be penniless for decades hence.  A veritable LIFETIME in one marriage.  

America has a similarly HAIR-BRAINED philosophy toward Budgeting, WITHOUT delivering cockamamie but successful remedies that provide comedy to the Audience and reconciliation to the Players.  My brainiac brother-in-law with the Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering once said I have the engineering sense of Lucy Ricardo … AFTER I correctly submitted that, those two pieces of plastic being the same high-gloss finish, maybe THIS goes HERE, then when THAT presses this, THIS presses the OTHER thing.  I took it as begrudging praise.

America is NOT delivering.  Not comedy.  Not reconciliation.  Nuthin’ but RECORD PROFITS FOR THE FEW.  That’s our stock in trade.  Big Wigs and Bravado, we got surpluses of THOSE.

I am less and less inclined to invest my Time and Skillz in the crafting of thoughtful essays on Important Subjects.  One afternoon surfing the Internet confirms that we’ve got a surplus of THOSE, too.  In the same way that I cannot be the only person wandering around AGHAST at the wreckage that Americans are being ORDERED to suck up while the PERPETRATORS of the wreckage uninterruptedly live the High Life, I cannot be the only person who is able to identify and articulate Problems and Solutions.  

Ruling Elite do not apprehend a NEED for Solutions.  They are making lots and lots and lots and lots of money.  They enjoy lots and lots and lots and lots of perquisites.  They are buffered by lots and lots and lots and lots of security.  Unless they are complete morons or providentially unlucky, they are ABOVE THE FRAY for the balance of their lifetimes.  Ditto, their thankless and arrogant Trust Fund Progeny.  Being godlessly oblivious to the welfare of any but themselves and their own, WHAT, pray tell, is the Problem?

Let them eat low-fat, high-fiber, organic fruit-and-grain muffin tops warmed in an energy-saver microwave made in China.  Sheesh.

I unapologetically admit that adding lots of AND LOTS well serves my immediate agenda of cranking out 1000 words in one hour, but that is not WHY I included lots of AND LOTS.  I add and add and add and add quantifiers because THE NUMBERS ARE GARGANTUAN.

Virtual Paupers shifted from prattling in Millions to prattling in BILLIONS and, I swear to God, WITHOUT blaspheming, I’m not persuaded that half of ‘em know the fuckin’ difference.  One MILLION one-dollar bills placed end-to-end stretches from roughly Washington DC to, ironically, Philadelphia.  One BILLION one-dollar bills end-to-end placed end to end WRAPS AROUND THE WORLD NEARLY FOUR TIMES.

One million seconds is less than 12 days.  One billion seconds is more than 31 YEARS.  One trillion seconds is pushing 32,000 YEARS.  http://is.gd/2d8yty

Vive la différence!

Do I sound ANGRY?  Nearly 500 words in 20 minutes, yeah, I’m PISSED.

And you should be, too.

Howard Beale, NETWORK: http://is.gd/2Szqi9

We all know things are bad — worse than bad – they’re crazy.

It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.”

Well, I’m not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad.

You’ve gotta say, “I’m a human being, goddammit! My life has value!”

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE. 

I unapologetically admit that printing 222 words of the not-famous-enough speech well serves my immediate agenda of cranking out 1000 words in one hour, but that is not WHY I included them.  If it were, I would have included the OTHER 114 words of the speech.

I include a portion of the not-famous-enough speech because I know how often I do not “click through” on links.  When I am not writing, driving &/or shuffling Stuff, I am reading online.  Not books, like I did all my life, but online — where it’s harder on the eyes and harder on the psyche.  I GET IT that there are only so many hours in a day and only so many words, opinions, news flashes, ideas, insults, proposals, criticisms, events, eulogies and injustices that anyone can process.

Holly Hunter, as “new” Divorcee, watching news while eating solitary teevee dinner, not at a table but at a counter: What do they expect me to DO with all this information?

And THAT, my friends, is where I can REALLY start cranking out words: OFFICIAL OUTRAGEOUSNESS & OFFICIAL OBLIVIOUSNESS.  

I cannot be the only person whose neck hairs raised every time John McCain overused that insincere address.  I am on record: JOHN McCAIN IS NOT MY FRIEND. Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who YOU are. 

THEY — the uber rich, mega powerful, largely invisible, thoroughly protected Powers That Be — do not expect, indeed do not WANT us to do anything with Information.  THEY will do the Information Parlaying around here … but thanks for playing. 

THEY — lackey officials, men behind curtains, powers behind thrones — require only that we spend programmatically, work tirelessly, and obey timidly.  If we will “only” do that , THEY are good-to-go.  Nobody dissent, nobody gets hurt.  CAPISCE?

BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID:  Who ARE those guys?
copyright 2011 Implausible Endeavors LLC

WAR! Huh! Good God y’all, what is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!  Say it again…
War I despise
‘Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears in thousands of mothers’ eyes
When their sons go out to fight and lose their lives.

– Edwin Starr, WAR

Well there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die!

Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box.

– Joe McDonald, COUNTRY JOE & THE FISH

Sixties music ROCKED.  Sixties anti-war music ESPECIALLY rocked.  Those of us who wore uniforms in parochial schools in the Sixties could pretty much only listen to Sixties Rock on the sly.  Like late at night, or when we were ROUTINELY LEFT IN CARS WHILE MOMS “DASHED” INTO STORES, PERHAPS TO “LOOK AT PATTERNS.”  Being fierce about the safety of my OWN kid, I once asked someone who was also raised in Menlo Park whether HER mother left her and HER siblings in THEIR car.  Without two seconds of hesitation, she said ARE YOU KIDDING?  I GREW UP IN DRAGER’S  PARKING LOT.  Good times, good times.  

Not SO good, truth be told, but SUBSTANTIALLY better than THESE times.

HERE’S how sheltered, from the evils of rock & roll & counter-culturalism.  My older brother had a secret drum set.  Not SECRET, secret.  My formidable father KNEW that my rebellious brother HAD it.  My mother would not have DARED to allow my rebellious brother to acquire, even with his own money, a drum set without my formidable father’s permission.

It was ungracious, terms-laden permission . . . INCLUDING that my father was never to see the drum seat OR hear it.  Between 4 and 6, Monday through Friday, the drum set was established in the middle of the living room, the stereo was cranked and my brother was in heaven.  Then the drum set was disassembled and stored away in a bedroom closet – ALL of  it, outta sight.  The stereo was turned down, and the offending music yanked from the spindle &/or the radio station being returned to patriarchal position.  

Needless to say, my formidable father did not spring for drum INSTRUCTION for my rebellious brother.  My rebellious brother,  having spent what was for a Teenager a large sum on the drum set, had few funds available to buy ALBUMS or 45′s.  Remember those?  This combination, absence of instruction and scarcity of funds, resulted in the same select songs being played (and drummed along to, karaoke-style) a mind-etching number of times.  

Forward troubles Illinois, lock the front door, oh boy!
Look at all the happy creatures dancing on the lawn!
Bother me tomorrow, today I buy no sorrow.
Doo doo doo, lookin’ out my back door.

– Credence Clearwater Revival

It simply isn’t possible to forget that a drum set is still set up in the middle of the living room of a family of seven.  It is not only possible to FORGET, it is possible to REPEATEDLY forget about the the volume and any radio station change.  QUITE a surprise for everyone when, and after, my formidable father turned on what he expected to be Easy Listening, only to be blasted by Stairway to Heaven or Inagodadavida.

Bye bye, Miss American Pie.  Take your Chevy to the levy and get a haircut.  Oh yes you WILL go to Viet Nam.  Oh no I WON’T.  Yes you will.  NO I WON’T.  Cut your hair.  It’s MY hair.  It’s my HOUSE.

Hoak in DRIVING MISS DAISY:  “Things changin’, but they ain’t change all dat much.” 

We had chores, how quaint is THAT?  Were it not my obligation to biweekly dust the house of the family of seven, it is hard to know when I would have learned about the Viet Nam war.  ’Cuz it wadn’t on the Catholic Curriculum, I can tell you that.  BEING Catholic, “naturally,” I did not dust AROUND things.  I took things OFF the surfaces on which they set, and dusted UNDER them as well.  There is no way too difficult or degree too thorough — it’s a Catholic thing.  Except when it isn’t.

It was taking the magazines off the magazine table that made me realize what it meant to be at war in Viet Nam.  SUNSET Magazine and LIFE Magazine, and some boring financial periodicals.  This particular Saturday, the “COVER OF LIFE” was full, like a yearbook page, of thumbnail pictures of young men and BOYS who had lately died in Viet Nam. Rows and rows and rows of them.

I’ll be honest with you, at THAT moment, I was at LEAST as overwhelmed by the sense that Adults had been HIDING something important from me than by a sense of grief for the fallen, none of whom I knew.  I STILL don’t know the Young ‘Uns AND KIDS who are being packed off to kill or be killed, but now I have RAISED a child.  While still APPALLED by the dishonesty, duplicity and disingenuousness of “Authorities,” I am no longer shocked.  They have lost the Element of Surprise.

Now I’m PISSED.  

People who have been elevated over others — MOST of whom have never worn the uniform — are ABUSING THEIR POWER and, in the process, they are landing DEATH SENTENCES on thousands and thousands of the children into which thousands and thousands of parents have INVESTED the very best of themselves and their resources.  THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE REGRETS TO INFORM YOU…

My rebellious brother would NOT have gone to Viet Nam even if the war hadn’t FINALLY ended.  Bum knee.  

We didn’t WIN in Viet Nam.  The war ENDED.

We didn’t WIN in Korea. The war ENDED.

We didn’t WIN in Iraq.  The war ENDED.

ENDING the war in Afghanistan is the EXACT next thing we should do.

ENDING the war in Afghanistan will not only save many many lives.  ENDING the war in Afghanistan will not only prevent lots and lots of devastation.  ENDING the war in Afghanistan would allow us FOR ONCE to recognize our debt CEILING for what it is: THE INFLEXIBLE TOP.  The only way to go higher is to take your reckless ass out on the roof.

At which point, I suspect you will find that a truly spooky number of Americans will join me in urging you to JUMP.