Brian William's interview of an Iraq war widow: Brian, really your dewy eyed basset hound look when interviewing the wife of a soldier killed in Iraq is simply media staged. If the news conglomerates can make a buck especially off a women's tears and sadness they'll do the story. What on this earth would someone who has lost a loved one in Iraq say about Iraq? Would she/he say that they died for nothing? How many times do we the public have to hear those meaningless explanations that freedom is not free? I get that BUT Iraq had NOTHING I repeat NOTHING to do with our freedom. The invasion and occupation of Iraq was based on lies, misplaced revenge, the attainment of power, corporate money, delusional neocon politics and pure hubris. The Iraqis never attacked us or our freedom. Osama bin Laden did. Where is he? Why wasn't there an all out effort by the hugest, strongest military on planet earth used to get the REAL perpetrator? Iraq got in the way of Afghanistan where the real culprits lie. I might add the preponderance of the 9/11 attackers came from Saudi Arabia. Why didn't we attack them?

Guess what? Reality speaks. Iraq was an epic mistake and all nearly 3600 and counting have indeed died for not a thing except to put this country and the world in an even greater danger. If there was no Al Quaeda in Iraq before the war there certainly is now. I feel great empathy for that woman but if one wants to, in fact, do the right thing by all our soldiers and to show true empathy get them out of that dastardly hell called Iraq immediately. Our soldiers were commanded to invade a country which did nothing to us. They are in that country to kill because that is the military's purpose. It is NOT nation building.

My freedom feels to me to be more at risk now than directly after 9/11 when the world was with us. We now stand alone and are considered by many to be a rogue nation. What happened between 9/11 and now? George Bush took us to an unnecessary war and our soldiers went voluntarily. Our 3000 lost on 9/11 have NOT been avenged. Bin Laden is still alive crawling around a mountain somewhere with kidney dialysis machine in tow on the Pakistan border and the strongest nation on earth has done nothing about it. According to George Bush in one of his speeches he does not care!

When Bin Laden is captured or killed I could say THAT was a rational response. With all due respect to that woman who lost her husband in Iraq, so called freedom was not the rationale for going there in the first place. It was to allegedly find WMD and for other vacuous reasons. When we found no WMD all of a sudden it was about some trumped up platitude called Iraqi freedom. Attacking a nation that did not attack us is CERTAINLY not free it is damn expensive!

Thoughts on War: I saw one picture of graphic violence with respect to the latest insane Iraq mosque bombings. How can anyone steal the beauty of those mosques? They were simply gorgeous edifices constructed by the mind of man. The destruction of them is so sad and the annihilation of people even sadder. The carnage is unimaginable. It simply staggers me. I think with all the glory, all the parades and all the hoopla about war this is what war really is. It's not glory and it's not flag waiving. It is bodies ripped apart so one can barely identify that the corpse was once a human being. The man on a stretcher in an Iraqi "emergency room," the remnants of whose body I saw, was somebody's son, somebody's brother, husband or friend. The love of him has been drowned in a river of blood. His identity covered soon by the dust. Most of us who live here are lucky. We are not used to this kind of violence except if you were so unlucky to have been at Ground Zero on 9/11 or in the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. Generally speaking, we do not know the carnage that exists in Iraq except for the few who were so unlucky to be sent to that God forsaken place and are among our dead or wounded.

Then, of course, I think of Hiroshima or Nagasaki as recently I had the misfortune of seeing the graphic pictures of that too. It is unimaginable. Every day I think of the Holocaust and the ovens, the torture and death. I search for meaning where there is none. How can we do this to one another? Why? It is such a waste of humanity. Somewhere among the dead of recent wars perhaps lies a scientist, an artist, a playwright, a mathematician or a biologist who cures disease. Why do we waste life with such ease? What religion tells human beings to do this to one another? It is beyond my understanding. I simply do not know. I have been told history is written by the victors and that I believe is so. Really, though, in the end we are ALL the losers. War today, I believe, has no winners. I shake my head in disbelief and wonder if I will ever live to see the senseless violence end.

Homosexuality -- a Biological Imperative and Biblical Fallacy: In my opinion, there is no question that homosexuality, generally speaking, is biologically determined in-utero probably due to a combination of hormonal and other genetic factors. It is impossible to think that most would choose a life which is fraught with difficulty if there were not an overwhelmingly compelling nature-driven dictate orchestrating man's sexual symphony.

As man's knowledge increases I hope there will be a time when the issue of gay marriage will be moot. I trust some day the Biblical edicts which some interpret to frown upon and exact brutal punishments for homosexuality will be understood in the same context as the Biblically fallacious ideas that once believed the earth was the center of the universe. Through science and observation we absolutely know the earth is just a small part of huge universe and that it lives because it revolves around the sun. We can, therefore reject much of which is undeniably scientifically and fundamentally untrue about the Bible. Likewise, I hope, someday science will verify the fact that biology itself determines sexuality. When this happens it would be nice if the murderous behavior of all those religious fanatics who base their cruelty against homosexuals on Biblical veracity would finally see the error of their ways.

Our Prescient Founders: Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
— James Madison

Iraq the Continuing Debacle: The Bush administration has committed a foreign policy blunder of epic proportions. It has brought our country to an abyss. It is staggering how any one administration could have done so much damage to our country which was once the envy of the world. Our, country, the beacon of liberty's light where so many came to enjoy its endless possibilities seems to be on the precipice of a disaster from which we may never recover. Our enemies are now salivating at our weakness and unlike WWII we have very few allies in Europe and elsewhere we can count on for true support. The Bush administration, its cronies and political hacks have forfeited the credibility we once enjoyed.

Iraq has been an unmitigated failure promulgated by lies to the Congress and to the American people. This adventure has dismembered our military, spent our treasure and has mired us in foreign entanglements about which our prescient Founding Fathers warned. This administration has opened up a hornets nest and, in the process, squandered our best opportunity to dismantle Al Qaeda when the world was with us. How could they have done this to our nation? They have fractured the Middle East by opening up a war which could set the entire region on fire. The president has compromised our own civil liberties by dismembering our rights one by one.

President George Bush ignored the warnings before 9/11 which appeared on his desk. The Bush administration, with Cheney at the helm and Rove in the background, have committed endless illegalities and have taken this nation possibly to the brink of destruction. I really do hope prayer works because I am saying one for our nation. This is a grave and extraordinarily serious time, perhaps, even worse than the rise of the European tyrannies of the 20th century. I hope our president sleeps well. I can assure you I am not.

Movies-- "Gidget": I LOVE watching films of the 1950's which say so much. Well, they say so much about the 1950's. What a ridiculous bunch of substantively nothing some of these films were. The plots are so thin as are the women. I think when one looks at these films ... really looks at them ... one can see why there had to be a feminist movement. All the cliches apply. The women surely do not seem to have a brain in their head.

In this film Gidget's friends simply do not know what on earth will happen to poor Gidget if she doesn't have a successful summer which means getting a steady boyfriend. She cannot even return to school if that doesn't happen. Gidget, well, she just ruminates and hand wrings wondering why oh why she just does not have the right stuff. Maybe there is something "wrong" with her that she simply does not care about men. She's such a cutsey tomboy. Uh oh..Nope, not to worry, gay is not an issue. Gay is an impossibility in that era and not even eluded to even though one of her friends seems ever so lesbian to me. Worry not though, her friend who helps her dress for the loowow and listens while Gidget worries about men but says nothing, is pinned, to a guy of course. Gidget's mother reassuringly stands by and tells her everything is AOK and she will know that man when she meets him. Whew, I was SO worried.

We know, all's well that ends well and Gidget does finally get a man (Moon Doggy)in the hunky form of James Daren and, of course, remains virginal to boot. She realizes there is nothing "wrong" with her at all. She simply did not meet the "right" one. Thank God. She's saved OR thank God she saved IT! How could this ever-so bleached blond with an 18 inch waist, those platinum looks and pancake makeup whiter than white skin not meet anyone? One could never mistake her for a black woman that's for sure. Of course, in the 50's there were no blacks right? Did anyone of that era really have Gidget's hair and skin that color? If one cared to notice Gidget's eyebrows were brown! No one notices as blond, whiter than white skin, and an 18 inch waist, especially for women, are what America in the 50's wanted everyone to be.

What was her character all about? If one expects her to discuss War and Peace, Dickens, Steinbeck or even Louisa May Alcott forget it. How about she discusses James Baldwin, Alan Ginsberg or Lenny Bruce? No way. Will she talk about Jim Crow laws in the south, the Brown v. Board of Eduction Supreme Court decision or American foreign policy post WWII? I don't think so. Gidget is about worrying though. It is worrying about learning how to surf, attending loowows in the right clothes, hunky guys and Gidget's lack of attraction to men err lack of attraction to the RIGHT man. After all, this is serious stuff.

Perhaps, the film is about innocence. Innocence, though, without some reality is simply trash. That is what the Gidget films are. They are pure and simply ridiculous trash. Sandra Dee had talent however as evidenced by movies such as "Imitation of Life" and "A Summer Place." It's too bad her talent was wasted on the Gidget genre of film. Obviously, those films made money and THAT was what the Gidget films were all about. They made money because America wanted women to be like Sandra Dee. If you weren't like that then too bad--life is tough.

Oh well, I will admit watching those films is like taking a drink. It's utter escape into a life of pure fantasy and into the innocent life of a 1950's that really never was all that innocent. No, Gidget is surely not reality. For a moment, though, when I watch it, I can pretend, indeed, it is.

The Terror of TB: Everyone connected with Mr. Speaker's extreme drug resistant TB is at fault. In my opinion, the very first time Mr. Speaker was aware, initially in January after a rib injury, that he had a case of extreme drug resistant TB, a prohibitive no travel possibly quarantine order should IMMEDIATELY have been issued by our government. It should NEVER have been suggested he not travel but it should have been DEMANDED AND LEGALLY ORDERED he not travel. Where was our much touted Homeland Security? After all biological risk is said to be on their agenda. Being a lawyer, he certainly should have known he should not assume the legal (not to mention moral) risk of travel harboring a contagious disease. I don't care if he was marrying the Queen of England. He should not have traveled legally and he should not have traveled morally. Who the hell does the moral thing these days? It's every man for himself. He fits right in to our right wing leadership which does not REALLY care a wit about society as a whole but loves non-governmental intervention especially in cases of public need (but not in cases of unnecessarily bombing the hell out of other countries which did not attack us.)

This shows one, I believe, that the individual cannot be trusted to do the right thing because many care only for themselves. It is the law of self preservation. The initial medical establishment who treated Mr. Speaker is at fault and the CDC is at fault when both became informed that the TB was drug resistant. Mr. Speaker himself is culpable for not having a shred of decency to consider the other guy. Of course the border inspector in Canada who knew and thought Speaker looked "well" and let him back into the US should, without question, be fired.

Speaker failed and, most especially, our system failed. Welcome to the Age of Katrina and the Bush administration's DEemphasis of governmental responsibility. God help us. I say get this accursed administration out of our nation's highest offices fast and elect a human being with intelligence as the chief executive who will hire people of expertise to control the critical arenas of public protection. Elect a chief executive who does not simply spout platitudes about morality but one who REALLY does something to ensure the nation survives.

This president has appointed moronic cronies to the most sensitive positions caring for the public welfare. Whether it's the security of this country compromised by disease, disaster, or terrorism we need INTELLIGENT leadership in offices which have dictates over public safety. We need ACTION and not rote cranked out speeches that tout feigned action. Most especially we need this administration to be held accountable.

This TB episode, in my view, is a reflection of a higher reality just as the Katrina response was. Our country's leadership at every juncture is an utter and abominable failure. It is the WORST in history and it is humiliating that the world sees a complete nincompoop and his cronies control the nation's highest echelons of power catapulting this nation over a cliff.

Natalie Rosen
www.natalierosen.blogspot.com

"Why We Fight": I recommend highly a great documentary film in rental called "Why We Fight" made by Eugene Jarecki. This is an ever-so-precise explanation of US foreign mis-policy post WWII. The centrifugal part of the documentary centers around Dwight Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation Jan, 17, 1961 where he presciently talks about, at that time, the fledgling military industrial complex which now has become the ubiquitous military industrial complex. The very entertaining film, of course, applies to contemporary events most especially Iraq and it evolves as such. A word Eisenhower wanted to put in his address but took out was "Congressional" so he wanted to say the "military industrial *CONGRESSIONAL* complex" but opted for a more politically prudent phrase of military industrial complex. Nonetheless he was unbelievably prescient for his time, considering his life long occupation and the fact he was Republican.

The documentary did include some comments by an aged Gore Vidal albeit very briefly. I wish I saw more experts like Vidal, Howard Zinn or the provocative Noam Chomsky giving commentary on more pop cultural formats such as Hardball, Paula Zahn, Larry King or Keith Olbermann. We need some truth tellers. I have all but given up. It is a hard thing when one approaches 60 (I'm only 58!) to start realizing we are not forever. I cannot envision a world without my favorite academics and personalities. Hell, I cannot envision a world without me. It is even harder for me to realize the limits of what we will see. At 20 something my hope was endless. Now, I really do not have much. It's sad to think that way but I do. No matter how vociferous those against violence as a method of foreign policy are it never seems to really matter. Now, this behemoth is bigger than any of us. A caveat symbolizing that is today the news is Cindy Sheehan is hanging up her protest sign. She said it has cost her her health, her money and that her son Casey died for nothing. That is symbolic to me of it all.

This documentary is on DVD and has excellent commentary especially the running commentary of the filmmaker and an expert.

Memorial Day Memories: Two white haired quite elderly gentlemen wearing veterans' caps were sitting at a local supermarket with collection cans and handing out red poppies when they received a donation. I remembered vets doing that so many years ago when I was a child. These gentlemen were so sweet as they thanked and blessed me when I dropped a minuscule four quarters in their collector. I thought it a poor recompense for what they had endured. I thanked them for what they and others have given to the country and then I cried.

I was crying not only for the vets' sacrifice but also because the War in Iraq is a horrific mess and lost. I was crying for the waste of young life and because we are now considered by many to be the pariah of the world instead of its savior. When I was a child the vets with the poppies were usually WWII vets. I thought what a far cry Iraq II is from World War II. The two wars are light years apart not only in decades but are light years apart in the rationale for going to war. Iraq II has been one of the most divisive and, in my opinion, worst foreign policy blunder in US history. It has been based on catastrophic lies, incompetent mismanagement, inability to understand regional history and an absence of prescient planning. We attacked a nation which did not attack us. This war may have ultimately the most dire far reaching consequences for the US and, indeed, the world as nearly any we have waged. The argument now should be not whether we leave Iraq but how fast we should leave.

The mistake of Vietnam, I thought, was bad enough but the Iraq II venture really takes the blunder prize. In the brilliant film "Judgment at Nuremberg" one of the Germans, a former Nazi judge played by Burt Lancaster, accused of war crimes, finally admits to his complicity in the horrific Nazi atrocities. He ashamedly and ever-so-passionately asks the question "Where were we? Were we deaf, dumb, blind?"

I might ask the same thing of the people who not only conducted this war but the ones who were complicit in giving the permission slip. In the final analysis, someone put this president in office and someone voted yes giving him financial carte blanche to conduct a war under false pretenses which not many questioned. Perhaps, William Shakespeare said it best in Act I Scene II of Julius Caesar: "The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars but in ourselves."

Three Questions: MSNBC is asking three questions on their web page. I have pasted in all three and answered all three one by one individually.

First Question: What issue facing our country today is most important to you or has the greatest impact on you, your family and neighbors?

The greatest importance to our country, I believe, is its security. However, to ensure our security and to make sure the country has funding for things that matter I believe we MUST change the direction of our foreign policy. Perpetual war does NOT bring perpetual peace. It brings the threat of more war and ultimately the possible extinction of humankind as we know it. The War in Iraq, which I initially supported, became, I believe a colossal error. It showed me that the US MUST reexamine how we conduct ourselves internationally. When Ron Paul, Republican candidate, for president said it matters what America has done in the past and our historical behavior often dictates present aggressions against us he was exactly correct. Why Rudolph Giuliani never heard an analysis like that I do not understand. Real security and the real safety of our military troops and personnel comes first with an extrication from wars we cannot win through military intervention. Each war for the US after WWII has been problematic. It is a different era. We must step up security which requires funding and we must wage peace. Money going to the Iraq war -- in many cases horrendously wasted -- needs to be spent at here home. We need to develop ties internationally over decades which will HELP the people of the Middle East not bomb them into submission. Bombing does not stop terrorism it creates it. Perhaps, that money we save by NOT going to war could be redirected and spent on ameliorating the planet threat of global warming, improving healthcare, education and ultimately ensuring the welfare and the security of our people.

Second: How does it affect you, your friends or loved ones? Tell us your story, and please be specific:

I am disabled. I am constantly worried specifically about healthcare. This country, the richest on the planet, in my opinion, should have enough resources to make sure someone like I do not spend the rest of my life worrying whether I will have the money to pay for the medications I take now or may need in the future. Aging strikes everyone. Most everyone will have to face the ravages of it at some point in their life. As medicine becomes more advanced life is extended. As life is extended more medical interventions will be necessary. Healthcare is expensive and not affordable to many. Wars sap billions and ultimately trillions of dollars which could be redirected and used to help people who cannot help themselves. Those are moral values too and, in my opinion, those are the ones that count above all the others. If we cannot breath the air, if we cannot afford healthcare, if we cannot pay for medication, if children cannot get the education that is available we all, as a nation, suffer. As much as I love the value of American individualism I also believe man is a social being and needs the group to ensure his survival. Our nation must attend to the needs of its individuals when those individuals cannot do that alone.

Third: What do you think should be done to "fix" this problem?

We cannot anymore utterly waste billions conducting unnecessary, purposeless, unsupervised and careless military interventions. While there is no doubt we must spend on maximum military preparedness, we must be prudent, too, and ever-so-cautious when we use it. It must be used only as a last resort. We most especially need to elect the most intelligent, articulate and communicative leaders who possess an understanding of history and who possess the diplomatic skills to know when to use force and when not to. Huge amounts of money, which has throughout recent decades, been wasted on ineffective wars, must be spent on the betterment of mankind and not on its destruction. Only then can we as a nation begin to recapture and show to the world, as we have in the past, the true genius of our system of government and the humanity of our people.

Farewell to Falwell: The Biblical story of Exodus tells us not to be joyful when another person dies even if that person is one's enemy. As the legend tells us when the Jews saw the Red Sea swallow up their enslavers God told them not to be joyful because after all those dying were His creation too. Try as I might not to be happy that Jerry Falwell is gone I fall short. I think the evil that man did by suppressing the rights of blacks, women, homosexuals, indicting them for 9/11, his suppression of AIDS research in the Reagan years resulting in the deaths of thousands, his views against stem cell research which create so much suffering as well as his contribution to the emergence of a money-oriented Evangelical movement and corrupt Republican machine is far more important to iterate.

Some people laud him by saying he was genuine and he was what he appeared to be. To me what he appeared to be was hateful, stupid and cruel. I cannot understand why are we spending so much time talking about him? I suppose the reality of how many he influenced commands that we do. Jerry Falwell created discord. He was a fanatic. He did not attempt to erase the nation's divisions but contributed toward them. I certainly will not mourn his passing but rather hope, probably to no avail, that no one of his ilk emerges in that movement to take his place.

Frontline -- The Religious right and the keys to the White House: I detest Pat Robertson and his ilk so much that I think I may not be able to watch Bill Moyers this Friday night as he examines the influence of the religious right in the White House and beyond. I felt the same way about watching its segment on Mormonism. I watched part of it in increments.

The threat of the subrogation of the state to religion -- any religion -- is, to me, like returning to the Dark and Middle Ages. Mankind has fought long and hard to plow its way from the torturous path of kingly and papal tyranny through to the Magna Carta, on to the Renaissance, to the Reformation, Age of Reason and Age of Enlightenment only to have all those centuries hard-fought-for rights, cultural and scientific advancement rendered worthless by the institution of a George Bush presidency. Bush, a cerebrally inept and incurious man with many psychological debilitations, has with much help, attempted to return humanity to its most repressive and intellectually bankrupt past. I can barely watch it happen. Pat Robertson's flock literally taking up residence in the White House is a sort of blasphemy to me except not of the religious kind but of an intellectual variety. It is almost more than I can endure.

Of course, to close ones eyes to its occurrence is to remove oneself from perhaps having some influence to prevent the backward motion of history. When three of nearly a dozen Republican candidates actually raise their hands to indicate they do not believe in evolution reflects the catastrophic danger these people present. Perhaps the law of historical gravity will prevail and present culture will not fall on the sword of the ignorance of drunken religious bliss. Perhaps, we will be saved this time by an intellectual messiah of reason rather than be sacrificed at the alter of stupidity.

Waging Effective War and Waging Effective Peace: Jeff Jacoby in his May 9, 2007 editorial in The Globe entitled "Israel's Deadly Stupor" says Israel should maintain a constant state of war readiness and not lose its fervor because its enemies will not lose theirs. It is, I think, impossible for a state to maintain that kind of fervor for constant, perpetual and never-ending war. I am sure he will say Israel's enemies and our enemies, too, will always be in the attack mode. One part of me knows that he is right and that radical Islamic fanaticism will never give up, never not love war, and will always attempt to kill us. My other part says war is not an answer. It is too costly in blood, treasure and carries with it the potential for nuclear annihilation. War alienates rather than befriends.

What can we do? If war is the only answer then for certain it must be waged better than Olmert and most certainly better than Bush waged it. Both men have wasted life and both produced the opposite of what they set out to do. We need sagacious leadership that finds its way out of this constant state of fear and war. War has done nothing but bankrupt states and made them hated. We, in addition to being war ready, need to create an arena where religious fanaticism and anti-US propaganda does not proliferate. War plays into our enemies hands. Building bridges, finding water supplies, establishing medical facilities, building schools and the like builds friendships which eschew Islamic anti-US radicalism and propaganda. We need to wage peace but if we must turn to war we must do so through effective surgical strikes only when absolutely necessary and certainly only when effectively planned!

Letter and question to the Department of Defense: I heard a panel on CSpan discussing the American political landscape. One questioner at the end asked a very important and poignant question perhaps the most grave question of the entire discussion. He asked what the answer is to the eventual thought by some, that WWIII in the Middle East was unavoidable. One commentator said that truly this is the question that absolutely no one in the military or in our government or even outside of our government has any idea how to avoid or what to do.

I recently caught part of a segment done by Ted Koppel which centered on the role for our military OTHER than the role of warrior. That is instead of waging war, we are waging peace. His reporting centered on some rather remote villages in Africa and elsewhere where the US has made incredible humanitarian inroads by providing medical, schools, water development and other humanitarian assistance to poor people in various parts of the globe. This has given the US such a positive image in those places which it assists and even foils the attempts of terrorists to gain a foothold. It seems to me part of the problem in Middle East countries and elsewhere is the people's feeling that somehow they were left out of the success equation of the western world and used by the west for primarily the economic reason of oil. That probably I suspect has some truth. Obviously, other religious and historical issues are involved but do not you think that what I have just described is one crucially pivotal way we can avoid a doomsday scenario? There must be an answer. I believe 9/11 was avoidable and surprised even the perpetrators as to how devastating it was but, of course, hindsight is 20/20. I believe another, God forbid a million times, event could be avoided IF we can get people around the Globe not to hate us but to appreciate us. That is how we were viewed after WWII. Something after that, I think, went askew. We must get that back again and I think that humanitarian and other assistance while OF COURSE maintaining our own security is one simple rather inexpensive effective answer to the most complex and poignant question of our age.

The DC mad Madam? I don't think so. Watch 20/20 tonight: It's not the sex stupid, it's the HYPOCRISY of course! These holier than thou Republican utter hypocrites are beyond belief. How anyone could even THINK of voting for them is beyond me. They are corruption not to mention stupid ad nauseum (30% of the Republican candidates did NOT I repeat NOT believe in evolution.) Why didn't Chris Matthews ask them if they tried giving previously effective but now useless antibiotics to cure a strep throat and just why they thought that happened? Did someone ask how many believed in gravity, a round earth with the sun as its center or maybe the tooth fairy? I bet they all believe in the tooth fairy but round earth not so much. 100% think full term human beings women should die at the hands of a quack dark alley abortionist rather that terminate their own pregnancy within their own body. There must be one Republican of intellect somewhere? Where?

Republicans want abstinence for all except them. What utter garbage. Read my lips: NO ONE but NO ONE can have an easy time denying sexuality. Just ask a few thousand priests if abstinence worked for them. God, if there is one, must shake his head in utter disgust. Of course, Democrats commit their own sexual indiscretions but at least that party does not base its very foundation on sexual morality wanting to deny women control of their own body, creating the virginity police or hoping that homosexuals would just die, be sent to prison or become their kind of Christian.

The Republican party needs to think very seriously about just what morality is. How about morality being about feeding the poor and, clothing the naked and not giving no bid contracts to Halliburton? How about clean government not dedicated to running rough shod over the little guy and not giving tax breaks to billionaires? Oh yes, and how about not bombing the living hell out of countries which did not attack us? Maybe that would gain us some friends and actually prevent another 9/11. Did ja ever think of that? Somebody, I forget who .. probably me, said "a little kindness in public and foreign policy goes a long way." I hope all these Republicans who have committed sexual hypocrisy not to mention the scads of other scandals they have perpetrated within the most corrupt administration in US history, get their due. Maybe then I will REALLY believe there is a God!

Indict Rove: How much is it going to take to place Karl Rove under indictment? He is, I believe, guilty of so much wrongdoing I have lost count. He was involved in the outing of the CIA agent, the firing of the US attorneys, he conducted political business from the White House on the people's time flouting the Hatch Act. 3 million emails between him and others concerning the firing of the USA eight have been oh so conveniently lost. It is staggering.

Yet he walks free with a Cheshire smirk on his face probably laughing every night about how he gets away with everything, frustrating the attempts of those who want honest government. The accusations and suspicions are alleged every day and nothing is done. The Democrats investigate and subpoena but they are ignored by this administration. It has, I think, become a waiting game until the most corrupt, politically and morally bankrupt administration in US history is finally out of the public domain. If all the egregious things that have been done by Republicans, including a laundry list of Republican congressional scandals, were committed by a Democratic administration you KNOW there would have been hell to pay. The Republicans impeached Clinton for SO much less.

Rove is symbolic of just how low and how immoral government can go. I need my faith in government restored. I want an indictment, trial and ultimate conviction of Karl Rove and the impeachment and conviction of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Richard Cheney and George W. Bush for the highest of unconstitutional crimes including most emphatically high treason by taking this country to war under false pretenses, murdering 3300 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, destroying a country, ignoring the Geneva Conventions through torturing, suspending habeas corpus, conducting warrantless wiretaps, outing a CIA agent and depleting this country of huge amounts of its treasure. It's time to hold those accountable for the perpetration of the most heinous crimes in US history so that future presidents and administrations will know there is a limit to their power!

Wolfowitz's World: I do not understand why justice almost never prevails. How do the rich and the powerful get away with so much carnage and unethical behavior so often and in plain sight? How are they allowed with ease to run rough shod over the weak and vulnerable? Reports now are that World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz did not consult the ethics panel of the World Bank according to the panel's former chairman, Mr. Melkert, before Mr. Wolfowitz set up his girlfriend with a sweet money package and job deal even though Mr. Wolfowitz said he did consult it. Could it be that Mr. Wolfowitz is lying? Is that possible? I jest, of course. The question: is anything else possible from a man who was one of the premier architects of the biggest military catastrophe, fraud, waste of life and treasure in the history of this country. That war we now know was based on lies ... often his lies and Neocon fantasy.

Mr. Wolfowitz -- supported by the Bush administration -- is telling the World Bank that he consulted its ethics panel. Mr. Melkert former chairman of the World Bank's ethics panel says differently. Waxing chicheish, in view of Mr. Wolfowitz's past behavior, I wouldn't trust Paul Wolfowitz as far as I could throw him. I'd put my money on Mr. Melkert's ability to tell the truth.

Paul Wolfowitz yet again has committed immoral behavior. He did it vis-a-vie Iraq. Why shouldn't he do it with respect to his unethical behavior at the World Bank? Character counts. Clearly he and his ilk have little. For once, could real morality, truth and justice prevail? Paul Wolfolwitz should be fired and the World Bank should never exonerate him!

"The Children of Men" -- a review: The more I thought about "Children of Men" the more I loved it. The DVD discussion by the director and others certainly helped to get a clearer understanding of the director's intent. It is a supremely Orwellian film, bleak and violent, which had much to say about the nature of man and culture. It is a film that begs for discussion. The somewhat simple story of the film cannot be divorced from the complexity of its landscape. Each would be nothing without the other and special attention should be paid to the movie's setting.

The movie takes place in the not-too-distant future making technological chaos a part of its surroundings. It centers on the world's inability to generate children, its lack of ability to understand why and the consequences this has for the disintegration of population, culture, history and life itself. The bleak surroundings of decay are omnipresent. It is testament, I think, to what happens when constant war and anarchy prevail. Society deconstructs. In society's vain attempt to perpetuate and sustain itself through repressive force it does neither. Stability is always elusive. One social and political philosophy is like another and the only thing left for the state to do is to perpetuate its media driven lies in some withering attempt to maintain order through tyranny. No one has the answer even though some think they do. The less powerful, of course, succumb to the Darwinian forces of nature. It is dinosaurian. If one force doesn't kill there is always another right around the corner which will. There is no rhyme or reason to it all. Humanity is prostrate before forces no one can control and man is at the mercy of other men and fate itself.

This movie poses many interrogatives. What happens to human society when biological or socially catastrophic events interfere with the natural orderly progression of life? How do humans adapt and survive or can they adapt at all? What happens when chaos reigns and people are in a constant state of war and anarchy? If social conflict is perpetual are human beings inclined toward constructing a totalitarian state? Who suffers and why? Is utopia a possibility ... ever? Is there hope?

This film, I thought, was phenomenally relevant to the world in which we find ourselves. Perhaps, it is a film for all seasons as well. It could apply to Nazi Germany to Bosnia, to Lebanon, Darfur and most certainly to Iraq or, indeed, to any place which is prey to biological and other catastrophic events which give rise to chaos. The author perceptively places this film in Britain. I think this says it could apply to western culture as well IF we do not stop those forces which are brewing a perfect storm of biological catastrophe and social fracture. The very survival of life as we know it on our planet is at stake.

This film, although it is quite starkly bleak, does offer some hope through the only woman in the world who is pregnant. Amid this primordial social ooze and against all odds she attempts, with the help of one man, to save her infant’s life. One must be patient and wait to see if there is an ultimate ray of light at the end of the tunnel. I recommend this film highly to those who want entertainment through serious thought provoking art.

Fearing Fundamentalism--Frontline and the Mormons: I love Frontline and I love PBS. I must admit, however, I am undecided as to whether I want to watch its series on the Mormons. I am ardently for the separation of church and state and am an avowed skeptic of all religious and other belief systems. I find it MOST disturbing that our culture has entered a partnership with fanatical religious beliefs during the last fifty years but most especially during the last seven years. It dismays and frightens me. Mormonism and Fundamentalism walk hand in hand.

Watching this program on Mormons is not, for me, easy to do because of the political impact Mormonism has enjoyed and because it is one of the fastest growing fundamentalist-like movements in the world. Nearly 78% of Mormons in this country voted for George W. Bush, are avowed Republicans, are extraordinarily anti-homosexual and, of course, are misogynistic. In the not-too-distant past they considered blacks "children of Cain" nor could blacks or women be elders. Someone who is not Mormon could not step into a Mormon sanctuary. Someone who does not have children is not, in Mormon eyes, fulfilling his duty. In my opinion, they have held far too much sway on our political process as has all of Christian fundamentalism. It is ironic that Mormonism which suffered discrimination during its formative years in the United States has become in its recent history the most ardent advocate of the suppression of human rights, supporter of the Republican party and its casus belli.

Further, I cannot, in general, fathom the mythological belief systems people hold. It is staggering to me. The tenets of the Mormon faith are breathtakingly ridiculous. I reject all that they believe as I reject any other fundamentalist hocus pocus mythological belief. I no more could believe in Moroni the so called Mormon prophet or Christ walking on this continent as I could a messiah being born of a virgin, rising after death, walking on water or the infallibility of popes who in history often have acted so immorally. Nor could I believe in Moses parting the Red Sea or seeing burning bushes or Hebrews being spared in the killing of the first born or whether there WAS a killing of the first born or if there even were Jews enslaved by Egyptians. Other belief hierarchies raking in tons of money such Scientology are inane. The hypocrisies of Islam are legion. Parts of Hinduism want to imprison a man for planting a completely benign kiss on a woman. Many people fall hook, line and sinker for these inanities and give their hierarchies tons of money making their leaders very very rich promulgating those beliefs and in doing so gain immense power and influence.

How human beings who possess such a wonderful capacity for reason and ability for rational science could eschew that reason and the laws of physics by accepting religious phantasmagoric myths as truth, is beyond my capacity to understand. Humankind has fought long and hard to advance to the Age of the Renaissance and on to the Age of Reason. Centuries of progress could be squandered in an instant.

I believe fundamentalist religions including Mormonism is the greatest threat to mankind along side nuclear war. Fundamentalist religious beliefs, in fact, may be responsible for the very use of nuclear weaponry itself which would destroy civilization as we know it. Beliefs are about money and about power. They are about power over me.

The fact that Mormonism has donated so much money to Republican politics, supports George W. Bush and those like him, wants to deny rights to women, blacks and homosexuals, considers those who do not have children not fulfilling the law and has been for years in general against progressive politics is an anathema to me. It is their new found power I fear. If I watch Frontline's The Mormons it will, indeed, be a hard thing for me to do.

The Democratic Debate: I loved the Democratic debate. I loved every single one of the candidates. I don't care WHO wins the Democratic nomination. Absolutely any Democrat would be better than the insipid destructive fool and poor excuse we have now for a president and better than any other Republican candidate. Republicans mean more of the same old disastrous policies both foreign and domestic. They are not the party of the middle classes. They are the party of billionaires.

When will the American public wake up to what really is moral and what is not? No one's life is affected by the so called social issues except the ones who do not want to be shackled by government or religion or both. If you don't want to have homosexual sex or an abortion then don't. If you want to pray then do. Who cares. Just do not force your beliefs on anyone who does not want a subscription. We desperately need a New Day.

The Democrats were, I thought, effective last evening. They were not combative, they were civilized, unified and SMART. Finally can this country elect someone SMART? Is that too much to ask? I loved all the Democratic debaters including Mike Gravel whom I thought had the ability to, with emotion, say what we many of us feel and then some. Good for him.

I am voluntarily praying morning, noon and night that Democrats sweep in 2008 so that we can undue the horror that has fractured us over the last seven years and so that we can have a communicative intellect occupy the most powerful office on earth. The Democratic debate was great fun. I say bring em on!!