Bad Moon Rising

Politics
Friday in February. The bad news from Washingotn continues. The President's budget cuts food stamp assistance for at least 300,000. This saves a few million dollars. He also ends tax rules for those above 200K that will save them at least $19,000 each. This will cost the budget $60 billion dollars. So austerity comes, only to the poor. And the rich get richer and richer.

So this man is the xtian president? I wonder what the Rabbi Yeshua would say about this document (the budget). Is there any defense for this? Will he tell us that the rich having all the money is best for us because they will make new jobs? Like they have during his first term? What would Jesus say?

This man is a dangerous man, doing dangerous things. Soon the military will begin to truly fall apart, as those forced by stop/loss orders to serve beyond their terms become the bitter, pissed-off soldiers that we had in Vietnam. They will return to the states, carrying their burden for the rest of their lives. We've seen it before.

Iraq will continue to fall apart. Cole tells us that the early returns (and early, only in the Floridian sense) have the Kurds doing well in the province that Kirkuk is in and that they would have be part of the Kurdistan province. The only trouble with that is that the Shia's really don't want it to happen, the area being an oil center. And during Saddam Hussein's tenure as ruler he moved thousands of Shi'ites to Kirkuk to displace the Kurds. Sort of like William of Orange and Northern Ireland, if you get my drift. Can we all say 'civil war'?

And this country will continue to destroy its weakest citizens. And to hang onto power the President and his boys will start throwing people into jail as "security risks in the war on terrorism." That's already why you don't see any Abby Hoffmans out there. I fear for my friend Ted's son, who is an activist in Virginia and has a public profile.

I remember the sixties. I remember the FBI and the culture that attacked anyone who offered a critical opinion. Gary Davidson said to me recently (from Thailand where he is better off than we are) that we thought Nixon was bad, but this guy is far worse. There is no doubt that is true. Nixon was just corrupted by power. These guys have harnessed fundamentalist religion and done it at a time when the world could be steered into a far greater, wider conflict.

Bush is a dangerous, evil man. If you voted for him you share in all that he has done and all he will do. Ignorance is no excuse. The best we can hope for now is the ameican public coming to understand the evil it has wrought with this government.

Food
I fried up a free range chicken last night for dinner. Had a nice salad with boston butter lettuce, avocado, french blue cheese, and pear. Piper ate the chicken like it was the greatest thing she had ever had. My dad, Don, loved his fried chicken. If my mother cooked it any other way he would say that she had "ruined" it. She would get pissed off.

Paige is coming for the weekend tomorrow. Dan is doing a book signing at Pages for All Ages I hope we get to. There is always much to do. Every day I ask the Lady for Her Mercy. And so far She has given it to me. I know though that eventually we must all pass through the veil and come to the greater world and see ourselves as we truly are. I struggle to achieve that honesty in this life.

I have no fear of death or dying, but I have responsibilities here, so I hope to hold it off for another twenty or so years. It is a complicated subject. When I was younger I had a very bad relationship with the ending of the physical life. Part of my Kerouac trip. Now I can see how it can be a relief for many people. Not just of the physical deterioration, but of the difficulty of living in the truth and dealing with all the other creatures that inhabit this plane of existence.

Love & Mercy to All of You.