The Shoes of Wrath

Four-year-old breaks into
toy store at 3:00 a.m
to play with toys.

By now everyone must have seen the shoe throwing incident at least a hundred times, and it has been analyzed and discussed ad nauseam. No one seems to have focused on what I heard Bush say, which I thought was revealing. I think I heard him say, “I don’t know what his beef was. It must have been weird.” How could Bush not know what his beef was? Does he really believe he is a hero in the eyes of Iraqis? Similarly, whatever his beef was, why would it have been weird? It would seem to me to be perfectly obvious what his beef was, and it was not in the least bit weird. He even said, I believe, this is for the women and children (you have killed). And even when it was explained to Bush that throwing your shoes at someone in Iraq is considered the ultimate insult, Bush said he didn’t feel insulted. Now that is weird.

In the excitement about Obama’s election, the transition, the auto bailout fiasco, and who the cabinet and the new Senators will be, everyone seems to have lost sight of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. This has been likened to some of the worst of the apartheid events in South Africa. The U.N. has condemned it (but, like, who listens to the U.N. these days). The U.S., of course, is complicit in this illegal and horrible attempt by the Israelis to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza because they have the audacity to lob a few primitive missiles, mostly harmlessly, into Israel. So the Israelis have decided to punish all million and half Palestinians they have trapped in Gaza. They refuse to even let U.N. sponsored goods into that beleaquered place, have turned off their power supply and other necessities, refuse to let in reporters so the world would know of this atrocity, and so on. No one, least of all the U.S., seems willing to intervene in this clearly criminal treatment of Gaza. There is something very wrong with human beings that just stand by and watch this cruelty. And when you realize that Hamas is the legally elected government in Gaza, chosen in an election sponsored by the U.S. and others, the hypocrisy is inescapable. The election didn’t turn out as we wanted so we label Hamas as terrorists and refuse to support them. Democracy in action.

Most everyone seems to agree that we do not have enough troops in Afghanistan to “win,” whatever that is supposed to mean. So the solution is going to be to send in another 20,000 troops. This is clearly not going to be enough to “win” either. So will we send in another 20,000, and then another 20,000, and then as many as we sent to Vietnam? Short of perhaps an army of a million or more, equipped with all the latest stuff, and maybe even more than that, we are never going to “win” in Afghanistan. I think we should try a different strategy.

The Republicans continue their attempt to find some inappropriate relationship between Obama and the crazy Governor of Illinois, even though it is pretty obvious now that no such relationship exists. Attorney General Fitzpatrick asked Obama to not release his report on this for another week (a report that exonerates Obama and his staff), thus giving the Republicans more time to spread their slanderous accusations through their media empire. It’s like a Whitewater maneuver all over again. Even John McCain has suggested this is a time for cooperation to help solve all the many problems we are facing, but partisanship is so deeply embedded in his party they will not be persuaded. This is just further proof that most Republicans don’t care a whit for the country, only what’s good for them and their wealthy corporate benefactors. I don’t think they’ll be getting many votes out of Michigan for a very long time. They are being brought down by their own apparently endless greed.

LKBIQ:
There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.
There is no greater guilt than discontentment.
And there is no greater disaster than greed.
Lao-tzu

TILT:
After the assassination of Caesar, Brutus and Cassius were forced to leave Rome. Mark Antony took control.