The lies the President told in his State of the Union & his real chance for greatness

“We are winning” in Iraq. Delusion.
Reporters who’ve covered the war say it is a “blackhole.” Ok, POTUS would say they're amongst the doom and gloom naysayers. But a Pentagon report says we can’t stay long enough in Iraq to quell the insurgency; we don't have the troops or the resources (especially given what seems to me to be a runup to a new war in Iran). Bob Shrum on http://MSNBC.COM claims this war will cost $2 trillion and "we could have had free healthcare for all Americans."

9/11, the act that defines the Bush Presidency. Iraq=al Qaeda. Delusion.
No. There are places we probably should invade. Iraq shouldn't have been on the list. Are we safer than we were on 9/10/2001? A little. The obvious basket-case/nutjob/fruitcake/bull-goose loonie/mental defective will now stand a better chance of being caught up in the NSA security sweeps at the airports. And now we have added domestic spying, to some presently unknown extent, to the mix.

Gay marriage=bad. Delusion.

Stem cell research=human cloning. Delusion.

Criticizing the war=providing comfort and encouragement to the enemy. Delusion.

Most interesting of all is The President addressing our "addiction to oil." This in itself is a fantastic statement coming from a Texas oilman. One of the most spirited discussions of this occurred on Chris Matthew's Hardball. We have to break our “addiction” to foreign oil, The President said. And Matthews and the pundits compared this to the Nixon trip to China, possibly the most famous political example of casting against type.

The speculation on The President's speech focused on oil and alternative energy sources and drew comparisons to President Nixon's trip to China. Is big oil George Bush's trip to China? Is George, as a longtime oil supporter and partisan, in a singular position to crack down on and wean us from big oil? Just as the old red baiter President Richard Nixon was the only President who could have gone to China and cut a deal with the Communists?

It's pretty to think.
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Blogspot Snafu -- Blogspot has been down & may still be wheezing!

I have been unable to reach blogger/blogspot all day, and it looks like like Saturday's posts were all lost. It looks like a handful of people were able to reach the blog, but not me!.

This is the first time in 15 months I haven't posted to this blog. This just barely counts....now, I am a little gunshy about putting anything up that might disappear.

From Blogspot Saturday: "Blogspot is again experiencing problems - we are investigating."

"Update, 8PM: We have restored all of Blog*Spot, save one of our filers. This means that some blogs will still be unpublishable and inaccessible. Our engineers are continuing to work on this
problem."

"Update, 11PM: Blog*Spot servers are restarting now and connecting with the filer. All blogs should be publishable and accessible within the next 20–30 minutes."

It looks like there are still problems with the system (I can recover what was lost, more or less). But it looks like the blog templates are not working right...and other things seem awry. The blog template will not work right...the formatting is wrong, etc. I can fix that eventually, but for now, I am waiting to see what happens next. I keep losing things because I think all is well.

I have more than once written stories and poems in the blogger editor. And been burned at least once....it's playing with fire, it's almost as bad as trusting your hard disk.

I can take solace (not much) that hundreds of thousands of blogspot bloggers are all in the same boat. And all the readers--lost without the blogs. . .they might have to read a book or take a walk or go out to hear some music or something!

All that profundity lost! Somehow, the world will survive.
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The Spirit Below: meditations on the perils and pleasures of drink

I've always loved this one; I'm a sucker for the sweet, short lyric poem.


There's a Spirit above
and a spirit below;
a spirit of love
and a spirit of woe.
The Spirit above
is the spirit divine,
but the spirit below
is the spirit of wine.

Reverend John Pierpont, a poet, philosopher, and preacher of the 19th century
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The only enemy was Delusion, and her daughters whiskey gin brandy and rum.

Poet Dr. John Berryman, from his novel Recovery
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If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be, to forwsear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.

Sir John Falstaff, from Henry IV, Pt. II, Act. IV, sc. iv, allegedly authored by Willy Shakespeare
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The state must fight against the abuse of alcohol but encourage its use.

Herve Beledin, President, French Wine & Spirits Confederation
from "But will France take the cure?" New York Times December 21, 1980
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Boehner elected House Majority Leader (includes link to a pronunciation guide)

The House of Representatives Republican caucus elected Representative John A. Boehner as majority leader on Thursday, sending Tom DeLay's henchman Roy Blunt to defeat (he will remain as minority whip in the leadership), as well as beating conservative John Shadegg.

A New York Times article provides guidance to pronouncing Boehner's name. Unfortunately, it is not pronounced the way many of us had hoped.
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Poem: the sun plays its red song

The sun plays its red song
On mountains blueing in the dusk
And climbs into someone's yellow horizon

A pale flare in the east
Setting off roosters and alarms
And coaxing the dew from grassblades

The comic palm trees sway
Like Oldenberg matchsticks
Flaming with sodium light

Day for night
Tricked by the electric eyes
of Berkeley

Senor Deadline
Has never seemed
So far away.
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Poem: Litany

This is a poem I started in 1982. I finished it once (badly), but never published it anywhere, except in a music program. The composer Dell Wade, set it to music once and performed it with (I think) a soprano and a chamber orchestra (I have a cassette somewhere). My friend Frances Hayden translated it into spanish (Litania).

When I started this, I was fascinated (as I still am) by Christopher Smart's fantastic call and response litany Jubilate Agno. Now that I am finishing a book of poems, I have resurrected a few of those old nuggets. After decades maturing, most of them went straight to the trashcan, but about fifteen or so were successfully (and success in this instance, is of, course, debatable, and you, the poor, hapless reader must decide on your own) resurrected, seriously rewritten, and offered up, as Rod Serling would say, for your inspection.


Litany

Let us cut the poets loose
For the earth is trenched with their wanderings
For they trample the blood-waged borders
For their steps bisect old steps

Let them find their way
For they wage tense inner century wars
For they need permission
For they could scribe heartlines

Let them do what they will
For they remember to remember
For they share the common air
For their peopled hearts waltz

Let them praise the little lamb
For the wolf has already been sung
For God said I Am That I Am
For we have arrived at the year two grand

Let them dream of a song to leave
For they brood about the blank beside their birthyear in books
For the trees don't last forever
For the oysters refuse to sing.
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1982-2006

Democratic frontrunner Senator Clinton mugs for the camera at State of the Union?

Yahoo! News Photo

The most popular photo from last night's State of the Union? As it turns out, Senator Clinton makes Yahoo's "Most Emailed Photos" list with this one.
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Cindy Sheehan arrested at President's speech

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom, formerly known as Operation Shock and Awe, but better known as The War In Iraq, was arrested and removed from the House gallery shortly before President Bush's State of the Union address Tuesday, according to The Capitol Police.

Sheehan, invited to the speech by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D- Calif., was charged with demonstrating in the Capitol building, said Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider. Schneider said Sheehan had worn a T-shirt with an anti-war slogan to the speech and covered it up until she took her seat.

Sheehan was hauled away in cuffs from the Capitol to police headquarters a few blocks away. Sheehan would be released on her own recognizance, according to the heat.

The photo of Cindy Sheehan on this page is not from her protest last night, but is an All This Is That file photo from 2005.
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Poem: The Developers

Dusk has always been
My favorite time of day

When the earth relaxes
And says OK

You f***ers can quit beating
On me for a while

But sequestered away
In boardrooms offices and labs

They work overtime on classified plots
To pave the ocean and blow up heaven.
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Index to Jack Brummet poems appearing in all this is that:
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2005/12/index-to-jack-brummet-poems-on-all.html

Poem: A raindrop's life

A raindrop is born
In a cloud
And returns like a salmon

How it got there is another story
A droplet latches onto a nuclei
Of smoke salt or dust

And bumps into other droplets
Over and over and over
Coalescing a million times

Gravity pulls the raindrop down
To strike water or earth
And one day it evaporates

A raindrop is born
In a cloud
And returns like a salmon.
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Word Verification Sucks

I keep running hot and cold with word verification. I turned it on in the fall, when blogs were just beginning to be hammered by the splogs, or spamming blogs. As soon as I posted an article, the spammers arrived. Then things start to quiet down. I turn verification off. And the spammers sneak in, and not just to new posts, but reaching back into comments a year old, they add their new ones.

Shoes. Increased semen production. Cars cheap! Boner enhancers. "you have a great blog. You're really making things happen. Check out my blog at...." People selling acreage on the moon. Jewelry. Books. Oxycontin and Vicoden over the internet! (hmmm!). Teddy bears. Steaks Fed-exed! Sex pictures of M.I.L.F.s in action! Real estate! Nekkid girls! Nekkid boys! Horse sex!

I turn it off and get complacent again. Until the post I just created about something (reasonably) serious is spammed with another Exciting Offer! And I turn it on again. It's a war of attrition. I want people to comment, and they, like me, find word verification irritating. . .especially if you're a marginal typist and it takes at least two (or more!) tries to pass the word verification challenge. . .
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State of the Union Satire worth a look

Check out this excellent impression of President Bush and his upcoming State of the Union speech performed by James Adomian. It goes over the top, but there are a lot of gems in there.
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