Keep Abortion Legal

I'm with Atrios. I wish Democrats, and especially Democratic women, didn't have such an aversion to the word
"abortion." They're always talking about some abstract "right to choose."

Right to choose what? Coke of Pepsi?

It's abortion that Republicans and social conservatives have been using as a political football for 40 years, and abortion that every woman needs to claim as an absolute and uncompromisable option she has a right to when circumstances she determines warrant it.

So this Obama ad Atrios quotes is on target: “Let me tell you: If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, the lives and health of women will be put at risk. That's why this election is so important,” says the nurse-practitioner who narrates Obama’s ad. “John McCain's out of touch with women today. McCain wants to take away our right to choose. That's what women need to understand. That's how high the stakes are.”

An announcer then claims that “as president, John McCain will make abortion illegal,” before playing an exchange on "Meet the Press" in which McCain told moderator Tim Russert that he favors “a constitutional amendment to ban all abortions.”

“We can't let John McCain take away our right to choose. We can't let him take us back,” says the ad.

Non-Conventional Responses

We've already digested the announcement from yesterday that neither Bush nor Cheney will attend their party's convention. They let out something to the effect that they'd be too busy responding to the hurricane to go.

Of course, the exact nature of this response remained a mystery.

Partly to dispel this mystery, the White House web site yesterday published photos of Bush dealing with the crisis. This is some pretty weird shit.

The best photo shows the president striking a stiff pose, holding an antique, twentieth-century telephone with a curly cord in one hand and a large, red folder marked "Classified" in the other. Presumably, this designation of the folder's contents indicates that the administration's response to Hurricane Gustav is a closely-guarded secret. In fact, it's so secret that even the administration itself doesn't know what it is.

Assuming there's something in that folder besides blank sheets of paper or random pages from the recycling basket, the classification might indicate, as Paul Krugman suggests in his column today in the New York Times, that the administration is about to declare a Global War on Weather.

This is just too strange, really. I see stuff like this and any more I can't even recognize the country I'm living in. It's too unfamiliar. But then, we've only been living under this form of government we're experiencing now less than a decade, and we're not used to it yet.

You may have noticed I did not provide a hyperlink for the Krugman column. It was late when I wrote this, and I wanted to go to bed. So if you're one of those people who needs to improve your browsing skills, your assignment for today is to find your own way to Paul Krugman's Monday piece in the New York Times.

Uhhh...

Ever wondered why democracy works so well?

If you need any further evidence that we have the best system of government in the world, look no further than YouTube.

And if you still have any doubts, try teaching high school civics or history for a few years. That will erase them for sure.

"Ok, Diane, what was a Panzer division?"

"I don't know -- I don't speak Italian."

(Real conversation -- I was there.)

Rust Belt Reverie

Moloch, whose factories
Dream and croak in the fog...
--Allen Ginsberg
"Howl"

I remember the smoke and the steam and the dirt,
And the muscular steelmen in white tee shirts,
Who through danger, for wages and overtime pay
Made steel in the factory every day.

A sky made of lead and the whiskey poured brown
Had to make do for color in dirty Youngstown;
Poles and Italians, and Croats and jews
Hunkered each in their enclaves and prayed in their pews.

The shrieks of rail cars by a river of rust
Rang into a sky raining soot and black dust;
The wind would blow cinders that stuck in your eye
Till late summer storms came to wash out the sky.

The grimy brick schoolhouse, that poor spinsters' prison,
It was there that I entered the hallways of wisdom.
And there, like a green, pale, and tender young weed
Growing out of an ash pile, learned how to read.

'Tis the Season

It's now the silly season, and I've resolved to stop writing about politics until November, probably two or three times. But I just wanted to say one more thing before I actually do so. Then I'll change the subject.

I'm happy and grateful that Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, even if he doesn't win. Just the fact that he was nominated shows that this country has made progress in the last 60 years, and that the U.S. isn't totally hopeless, weak, and stupid.

This nomination means a lot to many, many people, black and white.

On the other hand, even if he gains the White House, I doubt that Obama would or could ever rock the ship of state by challenging the Empire of the Pentagon, Inc., or the war machine's stranglehold on this country's resources, or Americans' sense of entitlement and specialness, or our refusal to join the human race and stop acting like we own the world, despite his soothing words and good intentions.

He's shown way too much willingness to adapt to the demands of the status quo to make any real changes in that direction.

But at least we got something positive out of this silly season. A black man is running for president, and I for one am grateful for what progress we've made, and I'll not cry about what we're not getting. We'll have to join the human race and say "no" to nuclear madness another year.

Reality Check, Part I

In 1964 the Democrat Lyndon Johnson ran against Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Johnson was the incumbent, having assumed the office at the time of John F. Kennedy's assassination.

In one particularly effective television ad, Johnson strongly implied that Goldwater was a war lover who might foolishly and recklessly involve the nation in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

Following the election, in 1965, Johnson plunged the country into the Vietnam War, a stupid and pointless conflict for which a rational explanation has never been given. During the Vietnam War's first four years most of the country's gold reserves were spent, forcing President Richard Nixon to take the U.S. dollar off the gold standard in 1969.

For today's extended reality check, see Dennisperrin.blogspot.com.

Bo Ring

All people on the blogs want to talk about today is this unknown woman McCain was forced by his staff into choosing for a running mate.

Nobody knows much about her, and the more I read the more I have to conclude there's not much to know.

He wanted Lieberman. He was willing to settle for that other guy -- Pawlenty. And he ends up taking somebody from Alaska who was chosen only because she's the opposite of him, i.e., young and female.

This is about as much fun and about as useful as watching paint dry.

The Final Insult

Several threads have gone up at Beliefnet lately with the common theme that the U.S. economy is improving, that we are better off now economically thanks to Bush than we were before, that the hardship many Americans now suffer is "psychological," and we need to stop whining, and instead should feel grateful for all that's been done with us.

This morning's Paul Krugman column in the New York times effectively demolishes these evasions and fantasies, which can now take their rightful place alongside other rich works of the human imagination such as The Da Vinci Code and The Celestine Prophesy. Krugman cites simple, straightforward U.S. Census Bureau information which shows that adjusted for inflation, median household income in the U.S. declined by $1175 a year between 2000 and 2007, while during that same time median household expenses increased by $4655.

And that's not even counting the worst year, 2008, when the poo hit the air conditioner.

On top of this, last week one of McCain's "health policy" advisors, a certain John Goodman, added insult to injury by declaring that there's no such thing as citizens with no health insurance in this country, because uninsured people who are hurt or sick can always go to the emergency room.

The McCain camp reacted quickly. Responding to inquiries from a reporter at the blog Talking Points Memo, "First, the McCain camp denied that Goodman was an advisor. Then, after being confronted with evidence to the contrary, they went on to issue what amounts to a non-denial denial and a repudiation of Goodman's emergency room statement."

But the neocon message had already been delivered, and it was just this: "We got ours -- so why don't you go get yours? You want some? Screw you, go get your own."

How about you, Mr. Goodman? If you step on a nail in your back yard or get an ear infection, do you go to the emergency room? I thought not.

In my not-so-short life I haven't been this grossly insulted too many times. And what Mr. Goodman said, this McCain campaign non-advisor advisor, insults millions more just like me.

It's the last insult we ever need to take from this crew. I hope they're careful that the door doesn't hit 'em in the ass on their way out.

The Democrats, via Obama's speech last night, implied that they plan re-allocate some of the resources currently being hogged by the Empire of the Pentagon, Inc., and redirect them to the service of the health and well-being of the country's citizens. God help them if they fail to do so.

Autobio, Part II

I decided to overcome depression by taking advantage of what's sure to be SF's warmest day of the year so far and doing the nostalgia walk. I try to do a version of it once for every month-long stay in San Francisco. So about 10:00 it was off to the "N" Car stop and the short ride under Market Street to Montgomery station.

For once I was glad to be alone. I usually do this with someone, but that defeats the purpose because you give all your attention to the other person (or people) and don't attend to business, i.e., reviving ancient memories and using them to draw inferences about the present.

I started at Number One Montgomery Street, where I worked for a few months in early 1969, as a temp in a bank, filing the annual reports they got from other companies and routing mail. At the time Julie and I were living with another couple on upper Montgomery, so home-to-work-to home was a ten-minute downhill walk in the morning and a fifteen-minute climb in the afternoon. Except today it was about a half-hour climb, because now I'm an old man with emphysema rather than a young, bulletproof idiot able to sit at a desk all day smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, then scramble effortlessly up a 45-degree grade at five in the afternoon.

I still made it though, but at the top couldn't figure out what house we'd lived in. I think it was the one right at the top of the stairs, at Union Street. It was owned by Melvin Belli, the famous attorney who defended Jack Ruby in Dallas and shit a pile of little green nickels on TV when he couldn't get him off. And Belli's people evicted us and our housemates Barbara and Larry, I remember that.

Three blocks down I took a trip along Broadway, now a scene of nearly total desolation. All the joints at street level are either closed or about to, and looking up to the second and third stories I realized there are still flophouses in North Beach. I lived in just such a dreadful, filthy place when my parents pushed me out of the ancestral home in Marin County, in 1966. I didn't know how to take care of myself and became dirty, malnourished, and a little bit insane.

When Julie and I picked each other up we were at 67 Fresno Alley, right behind Broadway. It also now looks like a slum, and has been obviously broken into so many times that it no longer presents even the appearance of a secured dwelling. It looked a lot better even just a couple of years ago.

Julie and I first hooked up in 1968. There was a war going on, and Hubert Humphrey the Democrat was running against Richard Nixon, following a tumultuous and shocking series of civil disturbances on the streets of Chicago during the Democratic convention. However, there was no point to voting for either, since both candidates and both parties were creatures of the War Machine, and both parroted its silly rationalizations justifying the war it was waging at the time.

Nothing has changed. Life is a zero-sum game.

I went by City Lights Books because I wanted to go there specifically and buy a copy of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl." This is, I think, the second time I've done that.

Ginsberg asks: "What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?"

The Whore Rides a Monster

The latest McCain attack ad was predictable enough. It goes after Obama for not being a tough guy, characterizing him as a wimp, unwilling to do what needs to be done to protect the Empire of the Pentagon, Inc. from jihadist dangers and the perversions of the Persians.

Assuming that Obama actually said what the ad claims he did -- that Iran is a "tiny" country which offers "no threat to the United States or Israel," the only part I find to disagree with is the "tiny."

The McCain video, of course, thumps away monotonously on the usual lie -- that Iran is threatening us with a nuclear weapon she doesn't have, which she is about to acquire by way of a nuclear weapons development program which she likewise doesn't have, as we were informed last year by the Empire of the Pentagon's very own intelligence services.

However, cheerleaders for imperium and the spoil of free oil for everybody never let the truth stand in the way of a useful grudge and a possible war. Iran makes for a particularly useful object lesson, because its history shows what happens when one of the Empire of the Pentagon's prize possessions manages to stage a successful revolution and slip out of the Beast's claws. That, and the fact that the movement now known as "jihadism" began there, is Iran's real crime, not their supposed ability to drop a big one on us or on Tel Aviv, as the fantasy cooked up in feverish and overheated imperialist brains would have it.

Those who would grasp the levers of Empire never forget anything, and they never learn anything.

Tim LaHaye, I'm sure, would disagree, but watching the McCain attack ad this morning I was reminded of the passage in "Revelation" in which a whore is riding a beast with seven heads and ten horns. I haven't read LaHaye's take on this powerful image, but if his interpretation is literal, which I suspect, he misses the point. Writing in about 95 CE from the rock called Patmos whence he had been banished by the Emperor, John may have been describing the first seven emperors (Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius called Caligula, Claudius, Nero, and after the turmoil of 68-69, Vespasian and his son Titus, and Domitian) and the ten main possessions of the Empire: Africa, Egypt, Cappadocia, Asia, Greece, Britain, Gaul, Germania, Hispalia (Spain), and Italy. Of course I'm guessing, since there's no way of knowing exactly what John of Patmos had in mind.

But he was certainly writing about the Empire, and in a way, describing all empires, which are all founded on the universal instinct, so productive of bloodshed and tears, to dominate and control others. For their own good, of course.

Some of our instincts enhance our survival; others are sent straight from hell, and work from within for our destruction. The instinct which causes subjects who used to be citizens to chant "USA -- Number One!" and causes a whore like McCain to ride the beast is one of the latter.

The Empire of the Pentagon, Inc., as no longer a country, but a for-profit enterprise. As long as we're an empire, we will never be a democracy.

He Stumbled to the Podium

The consensus is that Hillary's speech just now was the greatest speech I never heard.

True, I didn't hear it, but I know what I'm supposed to think of it. I've been tipped off by the Associated Press:

The packed convention floor became a sea of white "Hillary" signs as the New York senator strode to the podium, and thousands of Democrats cheered as she took a pre-speech sip of water.

She drinks water and the crowd goes nuts! What would they do if she took a shot of Jack Daniels?

Please note the story says she "strode to the podium." That's what Eisenhower always did when he was running in 1952, as written up in Time Magazine. He "strode" to the podium, whereas the Democrat, Adlai Stevenson always "ambled." It made Stevenson sound like the missing link.

I remember that even though I was only eight years old at the time. I remember my Dad calling my Mom's attention to it, and they had a giggle over silly Henry Luce and his mag. That was at a very early stage of my political education.

I'll be watching closely to see what verb the A.P. chooses to describe Obama's perambulation to the podium when he arrives to accept the nomination. The verb the writer chooses will communicate to us how we're supposed to feel about it, and him.

I believe that after you plus the New Yorker and minus Fox News, there is a single, unified, mass media narrative.

And I'll see out takes from Hillary's speech on Youtube tomorrow. I'll just watch the juicy parts.

Difference Between the 2

Dennis Perrin has let go another scorching anti-Democrat screed from Denver, or "Demver" as he calls it. But even he admits he got emotional in 1980 when Kennedy spoke as he stood up to oppose Carter.

So did I. Kennedy, who is now fading quickly, was the last of the generation of Democrats truly committed to actual social change. No more like him are being made, nor ever will be.

To keep this very simple, people keep saying to me, "You've got to admit they're (Democrats) better than the Republicans." And I do admit it. They're obviously better.

At least they're not fascists. That's about the nicest thing I can think of to say about them. And how much better are they, really? Are they better enough?

I compared the Clinton administration to the one we're still suffering from. Clinton didn't run an endless war, but he had an on-again off-again bombing of Iraq going on most of the time he was in office. How many civilians, I wonder, died in that years-long, casual dropping of explosives? Also, to keep his cred with the war machine, Clinton took advantage of the opportunity to put on a splendid little war in Kosovo, "to stop the atrocities," as it were, although some political observers such as Chomsky believe Clinton's war there was the cause of atrocities rather than the result of them.

Bush's budget for the Pentagon this year is $455.5 billion -- the highest it's ever been, and that's not even counting the $200 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's the most ever except for 1968, when the war machine's tab was somewhat over 460 billion in 2004 dollars. The smallest Clinton era defense budget was $315.8 billion. That's better.

So if I do the calculation 315.8/455.5, it yields .6933, which tells me that the Democrats will spend about 70 percent as much as Republicans on wars and maintaining the Empire of the Pentagon. Doing the math, that means the Democrats are about 30 percent better than the Republicans.

Other than that, they're just as tiresome and silly to listen to, and Barack Obama is already rolling up his sleeve with the intention of keeping a war going in Afghanistan for a good long time.

Not good enough, I'm afraid. The Democrats are less overtly bloodthirsty and jingoistic than Republicans, slightly more inclined to social programs to address societal ills, and certainly not as ridiculous in their assertions of manly virtue and moral superiority, but nonetheless unacceptable.

When it comes to war, the Democrats are kind of like the kid who wanted to "just do it until I have to wear glasses."

We need to overturn the status quo, not live with it. The solution to our problems is not to be a nice, tame liberal, then vote for Bush's war. That's hypocrisy, and all the posturing at the Democratic convention is just too much monkey business for me to be involved with.

Big Blog Attack

Amazing Grease

Dennis Perrin, the former comedy-writer, now a professional fire-eating radical and author of the anti-Democratic-Party broadside "Savage Mules," writes of sitting at a red light in his home state of Michigan a couple days ago with a lone driver in the lane next to his who appeared about ready to pee his pants.

He's heavy-set, balding, wearing a teal shirt and loosened dark tie. His big hairy hands are pounding the wheel. He's looking back and forth, as if seeking an opening. The light remains red. Finally, he can't take it anymore, hits the gas and runs the light. A couple of cars stop and honk, but the guy flies past them. Maybe he's having a heart attack, I thought, or has to use the can. A minute or so after this, the light is green, and I push ahead, Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" shaking my dash. I must have been going faster than I thought, for suddenly the guy's car is just ahead of me. He slows, flips his left turn signal, then pulls into a McDonald's drive-through.

I'm sure Dennis remembers, as I do, that back in the 70's that was called a "Big Mac Attack."

Two-Dimensional Candidate

Meanwhile, everybody's favorite political cartoonist, Tom Tomorrow (Okay, so he's not Assrocket's favorite cartoonist) is at the awesome and very unique Democratic convention in Denver, where he has posted a picture of himself posing with Barack Obama, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Senator Benzadrina

Writing at Jonathan Schwarz's blog, "Tiny Revolution" the mathematician Bernard Chazelle exhibits the same disdain for the Democrats' pick for the VP spot as seems to infect radical extreme left-wing anti-war pacifist terrorist sympathizers all over the flippin' net. So the guy voted "Aye" on Bush's war resolution five years ago. Can't an honest legislator make an honest mistake once in a while?

Like Jonathan, I am having trouble containing my excitement about Joe Biden. I heard on NPR that, unlike Obama, Biden knows where the bathrooms are in the White House.

That's very exciting news. But... how would NPR know? Did Neal Conan or Robert Siegel actually ask Biden to count, locate, and describe the White House urinals? Did they ask him whether he made use of the facilities and, if so, why? If the president calls you into his office to share with you his latest plan to carpet-bomb a poor Muslim country, do you go "Hold that B-52 thought just a sec, Mr President, where's the restroom?" Wouldn't that say something significant about your ability to lead? If you can't plan ahead to use the bathroom before meeting the president, why should I believe you can plan the reconstruction of a nation after you've annihilated it? I read that Napoleon lost at Waterloo because he had a bad case of hemorrhoids (think about it: if not for hemorrhoids, you'd all be speaking French.) A politician's intimate knowledge of White House plumbing should be cause for worry not reassurance. Trust NPR to miss that.

If you think my fears are ill-founded, check this out.

Six months before the invasion of Iraq, four US senators asked the CIA to produce a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq's WMDs. Ten days after the report came out, Biden joined the majority of the Senate in authorizing war.

Biden read the report and saw immediately that the White House was peddling major-league crapola.

"I did read it, and that's why I took issue from the very beginning, as you'll recall, from the very beginning, saying that what they were saying was not accurate."

So, what ya gonna do when you're a legislator who realizes the executive is feeding you a line of bullshit? You give 'em what they want anyway, if you value your status and rank in the D.C. pecking order.

Chazelle doesn't say this, but I will: Biden's hypocrisy isn't entirely his fault; it simply shows what's happened to the checks-and-balances form of government that's described in that archaic document, the U.S. Constitution.

If you want to play ball in that town, you got to defer to the real power, or get left on the bench.

That's just one of the reasons I have almost no interest in politics this political season. I find political activity in the U.S. as it's presently incarnated, and in other countries with similar forms of government such as, for example, El Salvador, profoundly uninteresting.

Old and In the Way

Old and in the way, that's what I heard them say
They used to heed the words he said, but that was yesterday.
--David Grisman
"Old and In the Way"

There are a lot of older people who are alone and lonely. They seem to have a hard time hooking up with each other, for some reason.

You run into them all over the internet and see them in the streets and cafes -- solitary souls in their 50's, 60's, and 70's who have experienced an unexpected divorce or the sudden death of a spouse.

Sometimes I think they're mostly people who never planned on being alone. They find themselves unmarried, unemployed, without many close friends, and often with no one interested in paying the least attention to them. In many cases this isolation enters their lives suddenly, and without warning.

Most of them have children, but the children are busy with active, married lives of their own.

Victor Hugo wrote in "Les Miserables," "The misery of a child interests a mother, the misery of a young man interests a young woman, the misery of an old person interests no one."

Anton Chekhov wrote in "Gooseberries" that no matter how happy we are, "sooner or later life will show its claws."

That's What I Like About the South

A McClatchey News Service story based on a poll of the eleven southern states shows that McCain has a big lead there.

Anybody remember Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy?" The Republican presidential candidates have been living off it since 1968.

That's forty years, my friends.

And, the further into the South you go, the larger McCain's lead grows, the poll of likely voters in 11 Southern states shows.

Likely voters in the Deep South — those in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina — preferred McCain by a 25-point margin, 56 percent to 31 percent.

Sounds about right to me.

That's because they don't like evolution down there. Everywhere else in the country, evolution is a fact, but in the Deep South it's the missing ingredient.

Keep in mind, however, I'm writing this in San Francisco.

Staggering and Stumbling from Stagflation

"Stagflation" is a term the media aren't using right now, even though it's back. An A.P. story at Yahoo is calling it "dueling economic cross-currents." Anyway, stagflation or dueling banjos or whatever you want to call it is the economic news right now.

Stagflation is the synonymous occurrence of rising prices and rising unemployment. According the economics textbooks I studied as a kid, that couldn't happen. If there was low employment and weak economic activity, prices were supposed to go down because there would be too many unsold goods and services and competition would be stiffer.

Both in the 80's and now, the "flation" part of stagflation is driven by rapidly rising commodities prices. Especially oil prices.

Ben Bernanke doesn't use that 80's word either, but that's what he was talking about today.

"Although we have seen improved functioning in some markets, the financial storm that reached gale force" around this time last year "has not yet subsided, and its effects on the broader economy are becoming apparent in the form of softening economic activity and rising unemployment," Bernanke said in a speech to a high-profile economics conference...

(snip)

The Fed, he said, would monitor the situation closely and will "act as necessary" to make sure that inflation doesn't get out of hand.

The economic news today was good though. The stock market went up almost 200 poohs, and the price of oil dropped six bucks, after it had risen six bucks yesterday. Menza menza. As long as they're selling beans at Safe-a-way, I'll be all right. A little gassy perhaps, but doin' O.K.

Another Fine Mess

OK, the price of crude oil has jumped up to $122 this morning because a bunch of neocon cowboys with guns who happen to be running this country are messing around in Eastern Europe and pulling Putin's chain.

We really don't want to mess with the Russian bear. He's not only dangerous when provoked, but he's also at present the world's biggest oil producer.

I wonder when we're going wake up and realize we can't live with this neocon belligerence. It has too much of a negative effect on our daily lives, and causes real people real pain.

There's an election this year. The Republican in the race would simply continue the same mindless, destructive, belligerent policies that are wrecking the economy, making us enemies all over the world, and messing up people's personal lives.

Why do we worry so much about what other people are doing instead of what WE'RE doing.
__________________

la Ultima de Lavanderia

Norberto Longo was the ruler of Costa Mierda. He had been for as long as anyone, himself included, could remember.

He was only 13 when his father met a violent end, assassinated by revolutionaries of the Partido de las Morsas y los Carpinteros. That had been 75 years ago, when the presidential palace was still a split-level ranch house, and things moved a lot slower in Costa Mierda and her capital city, Cerrote Amarillo. Still Norberto had ruled with an iron hand from the very beginning, even though he was not much more than a little kid. Finding himself having to survive among the piranhas, he became a shark.

He once kicked a guy in the penis.

Checking In

It was foggy and misty and cloudy and very, very humid this morning; about 70 degrees. Altogether, a great morning for a walk.

I decided to go to Golden Gate Park, where there's free admission to the Japanese Tea Garden on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays between 9:00 and 10:00 in the morning, like I usually do. I like to check in with the Buddha a couple times a week.

I first went there and saw him in, I think, about 1965. He hasn't changed much since then. He's still about three times life size, and made of bronze. He was cast in Japan in 1790 and brought to his present location in 1949, where he's sat with his back to the goldfish pond, facing a bamboo grove ever since. Through wars, presidents, booms and depressions he's sat there with his unchanging expression.

The tea garden was already old in 1949, when the Buddha sat down in it. It was laid out in 1894, and a Japanese family called Hagiwara was brought over to tend it. Besides taking care of the garden, They lived in it until 1942, when they were sent to a concentration camp, never to return to the tranquil spot they called home for almost 50 years.

The Buddha sits in the garden with his enigmatic half smile and his eyelids almost, but not quite closed. His big face is serene, mirroring the tranquility of the place. His left hand appears to be making the barest hint of a gesture we interpret as obscene. Maybe that's for what we did to the Hagiwaras.

Rice Puffs

Condoleezza Ricepuffs was in Poland today, inking the new "defense" treaty with the Polish heads of government while sniffing and puffing at the Russians.

Rice dismissed blustery comments from Russian leaders who say Warsaw’s hosting of 10 U.S. interceptor missiles just 115 miles from Russia’s westernmost frontier opens the country up to attack.

Such comments "border on the bizarre frankly," Rice said, speaking to reporters traveling with her in Warsaw.

"When you threaten Poland, you perhaps forget that it is not 1988," Rice said. "It’s 2008 and the United States has a ... firm treaty guarantee to defend Poland’s territory as if it was the territory of the United States. So it’s probably not wise to throw these threats around."

Oh, boy.

But, she's right about one thing: it's not 1988. What she hasn't figured out is that it's 1962.

Anybody remember the Cuban missile crisis? A Russian missile installation in Cuba?

I don't think Khrushchev was ever clueless enough to say that the Kennedy administration's reflexive escalation of the threat of war over his missiles being parked on our doorstep "border on the bizarre, frankly."

Does this woman ever listen to how ridiculous she sounds? It does not border on the bizarre, Frank Lee.

This has been another installment of that ongoing comedy routine in the form of a question, "Just how gullible and/or dishonest and/or hypocritical can Americans be?"