Note to my other beloved Maggie's Farm contributors: If you want to work my side of the street, you must be prepared for Roger to bring it.

Editor: Maybe you have to be an older Yankee to remember that face: the masculine Mike Dukakis, in the Big Dig, finally paying off Tip O'Neill's bar bill.

Apparently "Quinnipiac" is Algonquin for: "Not so fast, Mr. Green Pants with whales on them."

Does Bruce Jenner know Castro's raiding his wardrobe?

Maggie's Farm can neither confirm nor deny that the suspects were handcuffed to one another of their own free will.

Reuters didn't need to retouch any smoke into this one, no sirree. you can feel the heat right through the internet, can't you? But there's something not quite right with the photo... I can't quite put my finger on it.

Of course! George Bush is wearing a sailor outfit,no doubt to try to distract us from his shameful Texas Air National Guard record.

Typical Bush.

There's an awful lot of ink and pixels being spilled over the Reuters use of obviously photoshopped images, as well there should be. We've taken a crack at the absurd angle of it here as well. But...

It is interesting to read all the thousands of column inches appearing magically to eviscerate Reuters, and to see the unanimity of the analysis. I feel as though I am standing in a herd of elephants, and the blogosphere is asking me if I've seen a mouse.

The photoshopped image of Beirut burning, and the Israeli jet plane with the phony ordnance dubbed in, are not "made up." That is to say, Beirut was burning a bit, and that was an Israeli plane doing something.

So what are we looking at? Hyperbole, at the least; exaggeration for effect. As you know, this can be a sort of benign tumor - a simple lust for attention, a digital tall story more suited to the barroom than the newsroom. Or it can be yoked to a hidden purpose -the malignant cancer-propaganda.

Since Mr Hajj, and Reuters, don't seem to be in the market for airbrushing things out of their pictures, I imagine that their shenanigans mesh nicely with their worldview, and so their efforts are more to the Joe Goebbels end of the spectrum than the Paris Hilton. It's not: "look at me," it's:"will you look at that."

So what's the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room? It's not: "I'll never trust the pictures in the paper again." Why did you trust them before, exactly? That's not the problem. This is:

WHAT ABOUT THE WORDS?

You remember words don't you? They are those things that have been acoompanying those misleading pictures since before there were pictures to accompany, and the words had to try to give you the wrong impression all by themselves.

The obvious folderol with the images in question only shows that the suppliers are getting brazen. They have reported barefaced falsehoods and misrepresentation with such impunity for so long they don't feel the need to simply choose the angle they wish to portray anymore. They're not picking cherries, they're  chopping down the media cherry trees now.

The "reporting" in the media --what is said and what is written -- is every bit as "photoshopped" for effect as those pictures. Events are seen only through the prism of the desired effect. And the words are carefully chosen to achieve a desired result at the la-di-da outlets like the New York Times, and hamfistedly filigreed at the other end of the media dial, the internet. But the idea is the same: What used to be "news" is replaced with editorial. What used to be "editorial" is now the journalistic equivalent of a streetcorner rant from a deranged lunatic. And the streetcorner lunatic? He's not talking anymore. He's got an entry level job for Reuters, and AP, and the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and CBS, and TruthOut! and all the others caught red-handed every day either making stuff up and reporting it as news, or convoluting the reportage so profoundly that it no longer should qualify as even vaguely factual. And you're dreaming if you think that getting caught is going to change their outlook. They are not very very sorry they did it. They are very very sorry they got caught. The method will improve. The approach will stand.

I've been reading the news for a long time, trying to parse what the hell might have actually happened out of the subtle and not so subtle shinola. I stopped paying attention to the TV news a long time ago altogether, because my intelligence can be insulted in print faster than having the wrong pages of a bad newspaper read to me slowly by hair farmers.

Nice to see the digital age is catching up with me.

Hard hitting. That's Reuters. Getting to the bottom of things. By digging up from underneath, mostly. Well, rooting around down there, anyway. They're on no one's side - but their own. Well, them and the Green Helmet Guy, anyway.

Reuters-They get the stories others miss --because the others don't care enough about the truth to make it up for you when you really need it.

Let's fix everything today. It should be easy. First, we'll tell the Israelis and the Palestinians and Hezbullah and Syria and Iran and all those stans to knock it off. Lebanon has nice beaches if they're not mined.

Now,let's move on to the domestic front.

Let's fix everything right away. Difficult? For some yes, but I'm exceptional. Make me emperor for a day. I promise to change only one thing. Then I'll turn it back over to the knucklehea...I mean our elected representatives.

Hmm. Change one thing, fix everything.

I've got it. Here's my edict:

No one is allowed to teach school of any kind until they are 65 years old and retired from a career, the military, or childrearing. Period.

Let's see. First of all, the quality of all instruction will improve dramatically. Teachers will no longer just parrot some Chomsky rant they learned two summers ago. They would have had to make a living for forty odd years first, and the only person that can make a living talking like that is Chomsky.

Discipline will improve with crabby old people heading the classes. They're frailer, but mean as hell. Life does that to a person.

We'll end the icky sex between the teachers and the students. Even if the viagra spam gets through the AOL filters to the elderly teachers, they'll be 30 years past getting anybody of schoolage interested. More problems solved.

Children will actually learn things again. When your next bed will be one with a lid, you have a sense of urgency about your approach. Old coots will bang those facts into those dense heads as fast as they can so as not to interrupt their afternoon naps with dolts hanging around after school. They'll all be smart by noon-time.

We'll be able to go back to paying our teachers crappy again. They'll be retired already, hopefully set for life, but in any case they won't have to worry about their Social Security checks bouncing, because the tens of millions of former teachers will be out doing something productive and paying taxes, instead of touring Europe each summer. Or else. Pay those old farts like top shelf Wal*Mart greeters, and let them clout the kids on the ear if they act up--they'll line up in droves to get the job.

You are on a horse, galloping at a constant speed. On your right side is a sharp drop-off, and on your left side is an elephant traveling at the same speed as you. Directly in front of you is a galloping kangaroo and your horse is unable to overtake it. Behind you is a lion running at the same speed as you and the Kangaroo.

What must you do to safely get out of this highly dangerous situation?

If you do not know, see answer below...................

Get your drunk ass off the merry-go-round!

"One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'."

Sir Winston Churchill

The world is in turmoil. We stand at the brink of a regional war in the mideast. Gas prices have doubled; the stock market gyrates and fluctuates at even a whiff of trouble. Apocalypse looms; contagion and misery rear their ugly heads daily. Seas rise up in anger and consume whole villages; the earth shakes and groans under the weight of its jostling billions.

What can a person do?

Why, get dressed up in a metal bikini and pose for pictures, of course; and post them all at:

Leia's Metal Bikini dotcom

Saving the universe, one Marriott Function Room at a time.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.                                                 

Mark Twain

The University of Wisconsin at Madison has, in their wisdom, hired a certain Mr. Barrett to teach a course called "Introduction to Islam." Mr. Barrett has founded an organization called: "The Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9-11 Truth." That sounds nice, if a nightmare for the caterers; people of many faiths getting together to... hey! What's this "truth" he's talking about?

''The physics of those collapses clearly could not have resulted from plane crashes and jet fuel fires with office materials.'' Barrett says jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel, and says recent tests on melted steel from the building prove his theory that it was wired to collapse, by the Government. 

  Barrett says the Bush Administration is fooling the American public with the Adolf Hitler 'Big Lie Technique'...

 Out there in Iowa...I mean Wisconsin... That's truth with a capital "T" and that spells out Trouble!

the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance, which claims the Bush administration planned the attacks to create a war between Muslims and Christians. He argues that members of the faiths must work together to overcome the belief that terrorists were to blame.

"The 9/11 lie was designed to sow hatred between the faiths," Barrett has written on the organization's Web site.

"Either we discuss the compelling evidence that 9/11 was an inside job, or there is precious little to talk about."

Oh, I see. George Bush is a crazy lunatic that wants to foment war with the Muslims. Hmmm. Well, since George Bush is the President, I guess he can do that without all the genocidal urban renewal Mr Barrett figures he needs to undertake, but hey, I'm not the expert. Apparently, Mr. Barrett is. He claims to know all about the structural properties of skyscrapers, and the ramifications, if you'll pardon the term, of ramming big airplanes filled with jet fuel into them. Who are we to quibble? He's got degrees in Arabic and African Folklore. Those come in handy when you're setting rebar in concrete, no doubt.

He's  a deep thinker, Mr Barrett:

9/11 was designed by non-religious, Machievellian-Straussian cynics who believe that hatred and hostility are what move the world. By uniting for 9/11 truth we are standing up for love and compassion against their hatred. And we are standing up for astonishment and awe against their cynicism. For them, it was just a minor special effects extravaganza, put together by Hollywood specialists to manipulate audience emotion and pave the way for war—a slightly more realistic version of Wag the Dog. For them, the deaths of a few thousand people mean very little..

Astonishment and awe? I thought it was "shock and awe." And he wants to do swell things by talking about this stuff:

Kevin Barrett will discuss strategies for turning the 9/11 psychological warfare operation against its perpetrators, and using 9/11 truth as a "magic bullet" that could demilitarize the American economy, overthrow corrupt elites, turn attention and resources toward pressing environmental concerns, and usher in a new era of peace and justice.

Hmm. Magic bullets. What, no magic beans?

Now when someone tells me they want me to believe them about one thing, so they can get me to do something else, I wonder about the veracity of that thing I'm supposed to believe. Like when bums ask you for money for food. Sometimes, I hate to disappoint you, but they spend the money you give them on booze and drugs. That's just FYI; I don't want to cast aspersions on hobos by associating them with Mr Barrett.

And so if Mr. Barrett wishes to have me pay attention to his beliefs on environmental concerns and so forth, which seem, well, not germane to discussions of mass murder, and to get me to do so by accusing the President of the United States, along with large numbers of other persons in the government and military necessary to mount such an audacious scheme, I have but one question for him. Just the one.

Well, we've already explained the Cult of the Daily Kos here: Daily Kos is the Amway of Bile  And that was before we found out you weren't getting your platinum level member's card and special introductory Bushitlerburton T-shirt unless your moon was in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligned with Mars.

Well, peace won't rule the planet because you vent your spleen over and over in a chat room. It's our contention that Markos Moulitsas would be shoving food out a hole in a wall if he didn't preside over that coven of contentiousness, The Daily Kos; but what about his minions? Umm --toadies! Er, running dog lackeys, yeah, that's it! Nah, his, his, well, let's see... let's be polite: his commenters. What the hell makes them congregate together, simultaneously proclaiming they are an ascendant majority and a tiny vanguard minority, always being unfairly portrayed by the media and betrayed by shady cabals everywhere? What's their story?

Enchiridion Militis thinks he knows: They're the 2006 version of the John Birch Society.

Professional boxing used to be a sport. I guess it's become an exhibition of sorts now, like The Harlem Globetrotters or wrestling. But it used to matter. It doesn't anymore.

We like violence just fine, that's not the problem. Children playing Grand Theft Auto by the forty hour weekload wouldn't wince at gloved hands and open cuts. It's simply collapsed under its own weight. The spectacle itself became subordinate to the machinations of the promoters.

The urge to look at your fellow man and declare: "I can lick you," or to choose a champion in your stead smolders unabated. It is an elemental male imperative. And such urges do not long go unsated. If boxers won't do it anymore, we'll do it ourselves, many young males say. Anyone that has listened to their children in a garage band knows we'll do it ourselves is a two edged sword. But it points to something missing, something essential; a need unmet.

Here's the last time professional boxing really mattered; please, do not tell me about Mike Tyson: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali.  (video and music)

And don't misunderstand; it was Joe Frazier that had the heart.

     Why reject the faux socialism masquerading as Democrat activist politics these days? Because it's no damn fun.

     They're all just cranks standing on the corner screaming at the traffic and holding placards that read: "The Werld Will End Yesterday." They're always crabby and narrow and in a huff. And they invest every one of their damp farts with the authority of a press release. It' s a sad thing when they display their female armpit hair gone gray as they hold their "Scooter Libby is the Anti-Christ" placards over their heads. Sakes, lighten up.

     It's the "facists" (Their spelling; what's with the spelling? they've been to college for nine years) and the old fashioned Democrats that are having all the fun. We're smoking big cigars and telling jokes and drinking good booze and doting on our children and avoiding headaches by staying out of Post Modern Art museums and Eminem concerts. And a deer hunter knows infinitely more about nature than some PETA fanatic that's never been anywhere not served by a subway, handing out misspelled screeds outside a KFC.

     Those "evildoers" are just that, doers; doing real things and having real fun while you Che Shirt snivelers mewl 24/7 that Bush is Hitler and Rove is Goebbels and Bill Gates is Satan and Wal*Mart is Hades and Crude oil is brimstone-- and get this: Al Gore is smart. Put a sock in it, Muffie and Biff. You're forever in the audience, and at the wrong show, to boot.

     You know who's funny? Mark Steyn is funny. It's easy to be funny, when he's making fun of you:

Herewith, "A Call To Celebrities To Conserve":1) Instead of using your air-conditioning system on hot summer days, why not have Barbra and her current husband, actor James Brolin, over for lunch? Ask James how his movie career's going. You'll soon notice the sudden chill in the room!

2) Recycle! Those old breast implants you had taken out? Pop them in the freezer and you'll find they make excellent cold compresses on humid afternoons!

3) In the evenings, cut down on your energy usage by keeping the room as dim as possible. An easy way to do this is to invite Alec Baldwin and Julia Roberts round to discuss politics.

Read the whole thing here.

IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...

[The Wealthy Congressman] "Representative Patrick Kennedy has pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of prescription drugs last month in an early morning car crash near the Capitol.  

Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat who is a member of one of the nation's most famous political families, was sentenced on Tuesday in District of Columbia Superior Court to court- ordered drug treatment, a year of probation and a $350 fine. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to drop charges of reckless driving and failure to display a driving permit."     

[The Poor Window Washer]    " High-rise window washer Christopher Guay spent 20 hours in jail waiting for his wife to raise the $1,040 the state demanded to free him after he struck and killed a sea gull he says repeatedly dive-bombed at him as he was attempting to clean office windows. "

... it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity...

[The Wealthy Congressman] "Kennedy denied that and insisted he had not consumed alcohol before the accident. He said he had gone home after work that evening and had taken the sleeping pill Ambien and an anti- nausea medication, Phenergan.

Medical experts called his explanation plausible. Ambien's prescribing information warns about the possibility of hallucinations and strange behavior."

 [The Window Washer]  "Guay said he was working 12 stories up atop 185 Devonshire St. about 8:30 a.m. Friday when he was set upon by three sea gulls protecting a rooftop nest. 

    “They’d sit up about 20 feet, then dive in,” he said. “They hit me twice in the head.”

    Guay said he moved to an attached roof at 161 Devonshire St., but the gulls followed. He eventually started swinging a broken broom handle, hoping to scare them off and give himself time to slip over the building’s edge and out of the birds’ sight.

    “I’d been doing it all day, fending them off,” he said. “It was working until I made my last drop . . . When I swung I wasn’t aiming. I didn’t mean to hit it. It flew right into the broom stick. I knew it was dead.” 

    Office workers witnessing the 3:30 p.m. strike called the MSPCA, which responded with one of the agency’s 11 police officers. 

    “I don’t blame them at all for calling,” Guay said. “If I saw someone on the roof swinging at a bird I’d do the exact same thing.”

    But he said he does have a problem with the by-the-book MSPCA cop.

    “He wasn’t buying my story at all,” Guay said. “He didn’t listen to a word I said. He said to me ‘So you like killing birds?’ Am I supposed to stand there and let the gull whack me in the head? I had to do something.” "

 ...it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...

[The Wealthy Congressman] "The police said his eyes appeared watery and his speech slurred. He was not given a sobriety test and was driven home by the police, leading to complaints of special treatment."

[The Poor Window Washer] " “The (Boston) cops in the transport told me, ‘This is ridiculous. We didn’t want to take you in, but the MSPCA cop made the call,’ ” Guay said of his brief chat with Boston officers while shackled in the back of a prisoner-transport truck.

... we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way...

[The Wealthy Congressman] "Last week, back from a monthlong treatment program for drug dependency at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, he said he looked forward to resuming his duties, but would need a support group to deal with his bipolar disorder and tendency toward addiction."

[The Poor Window Washer] "The beleaguered window washer arrested for killing a gull that he said tormented him for hours atop a downtown high rise got his first bit of good news since the bird fell dead. He landed another job. "

   - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

[The Wealthy Congressman] "He was accompanied in court by Representative Jim Ramstad, a Republican from Minnesota whom Kennedy identified as his sponsor. Ramstad described himself as a recovering alcoholic of 25 years, having experienced his own "similar wake-up call" in July 1981."

"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing."

Mark Twain

The dailykos is the Amway of Bile.

If you're unfamiliar with the multi level marketing approach, you're lucky. It's exemplified by Amway. Amway's often emulated approach to making money for its primary investors is by selling motivational and instructional marketing materials to an ever increasing pool of participants in a pyramidal formulation. Somewhere down the line someone's supposed to buy something besides marketing materials, but that someone never seems to show up.

For those of you lucky enough not to know what the dailykos is, it's the exemplar of a stripe of endless vitriol masquerading as political action that infests the blogosphere at the far left hand margin of the internet world. What do they think? Democrats are too Republican for them, is the short answer, if there is an answer; their message generally is encapsulated by Brando's dopey answer to "What are you rebelling against?" in The Wild One. "Whaddya got?" asked Brando in return, never answering the question, but nonetheless saying a lot.

Never Answer The Question But Say A Lot should be on the masthead atop lots of websites, dailykos especially. The sentiment's the same, even if the average kos denizen has more of an air of Mr. Limpet than Marlon Brando about them; I bet one real biker could clear the room at the Yearlykos convention they're having this weekend in two minutes flat.

They're throwing this little Multi Level Snark Marketing rah rah get-together in that perfect pyramid scheme hideout: Las Vegas, Nevada. They're getting together to earnestly massage one another's sense of importance and well-being and purpose, while they're milked for donations and fees, and then sold t-shirts and tschotschkes and bumper stickers and myriad other assorted piffle. Then they'll be thoroughly and generally farmed for massive donations of their remaining money and their time, in perpetuity -- like a kind of indulgence or tithe.

Their time is worthless enough, I guess, as it is spent in a kind of 24/7 alternate reality, a mirror image of real activity. They support quixotic candidates as a kind of kabuki political theater. The US military acts; they try to hamstring it, all the while holding their nose and claiming to support it. Their political opponents do things; they say they are against what is being done, or that it doesn't count anyway because their evil opponents did it for the wrong reasons. If unemployment drops from 4.6% to 4.5%, it means that we've all been forced to take crummy jobs that no one would want. If it goes to 4.7%, well, see-- there's no jobs for anyone. If it stays the same-- see? Another quagmire. Every day is 1931, in Vietnam circa 1969, to a koskid.

There is an expression for a force from nowhere that swoops in inexplicably and saves the day: deus ex machina; literally, God from the machine. The cadres of the Amway of Bile rely on the reverse -- the devil will come out of anything, no matter how benign, productive, wholesome, or innocuous, and that devil will allow them to hate that which is objectively good, while simultaneously allowing them to preen morally. Give me Beelzebub from the Machine, they fervently pray; defeat me, and concurrently absolve me of guilt in my defeat.  

We don't lose elections, they tell themselves; they are stolen. We argue; you smear. We have facts, our opponents hatch machiavellian plots to misinform. Our opponents are too stupid to understand the TRUTH, and simultaneously so wily and clever they can't be defeated by logic.

The US doesn't win wars; anyone we beat wasn't worth defeating. We were on the wrong side anyway. We're not prosperous; we're slaves to money. Well fed? It's a conspiracy to make us fat. Long lived? Social Security's going broke. Good news? Karl Rove planted it to trick us. I will log on to dailykos, and he will tell me why everything --no matter how good it manifestly might be -- is bad, and tell me how I can blame it on The Other. And we will chant it together.

People who prey on such people -- the people looking for meaning where there is none -- know exactly how to appeal to their desires and manipulate them.

First, there will be lots of "information." There will be brochures and websites and teach-ins and workshops and group motivations and seminars and sign up sheets and stickers and petitions that will live in file cabinets forever like trolls. There will be torrents and cataracts and deluges of words -- cut and paste tsunamis.

Then there will be slogans. And not just slogans, but everything reduced to slogans of the Sukarno or Mugabe or Goldstein variety: simultaneously vapid and wretched, a kind of accusation lodged in a bad pun or non-sequitur; unanswerable because it is essentially meaningless, and yet it encompasses an entire wordlview.

And when all else fails, they'll claim that a cataclysmic end to the world is nigh, like some disheveled disturbed prophet on the streetcorner, simultaneously cadging change. Their opinions are that important and prescient -- the very future of the universe depends on their misspelled keystroked rants. Come to our meeting. We have some literature for you to look at. It's fun to try to guess who at the meeting isn't a plant, after your eyes glaze over from all the motivational brochures.

When someone screams "I'm Somebody," and that person is manifestly nobody, just like we all are, it's not worth the effort to argue with them. When your toddler shows you the first turd he made in the bowl, and tells you he wants to bronze it because it's a faerie house, you flush the bowl and pat them on the head, you don't tell them there are no faeries. What do you tell an adult, whose car is covered in Kucinich for President bumper stickers, wearing a "Bush is Hitler" shirt, when he tells you he's "Against War?" That's nice, you'd say, if you were kind; those mean fellow citizens of yours that absolutely adore war are everywhere, and if not for you and your bumper sticker, we'd be invading Canada for their maple syrup right now, I bet! Then you'd roll your eyes and cast a knowing look towards the other adults. 

Or if you were Kos, you'd sign them up, and yoke them to your mission; your mission to have a mission.

Would you like a Bush is Hitler shirt in red? All the Platinum members are wearing them. Black is so 2004. Don't forget to double click the links on my webpage. I get paid for clickthroughs.

I'm somebody, Markos Moulitsas, the head of dailykos crows; you can be somebody too, if you can get enough of your friends to say so. I did.

The appeal of the multi level marketer is the appeal that works with the child: You can have the trappings of the adult life; you can talk adult talk and go to adult places and get adult things. Other adults will talk to you. But only the child could believe that if I have ten dollars, and you have ten dollars, and we give each other our ten dollars ten times, we'll both have one hundred dollars.

The Amway of Bile says: if you say Bush is Hitler, and I say Bush is Hitler, and we say it to each other 50 million times, we'll have 100 million votes and we'll be winners.

You'll be winners. Yes, yes you will. Now run along and play.

Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose—as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to snivelling and giggles.   Joseph Conrad

Yes, it certainly is. Al Gore used a euphemism for playing fast and loose with the truth, and the estimable Dr. Joy Bliss called him on it. To all my Fark friends, I send you back to the dictionary, where you can find all sorts of words for stressing important things, like: reiterate, and stress; accent; accentuate; belabor; dwell on; feature; harp on; headline; italicize; emphasize; play up; point up; repeat; rub in; spotlight; underline; underscore.

Those are words used by people NOT trying to give a false impression to create a panic they can capitalize on politically, and seeking to innoculate themselves from future criticism by making their bona fides in the good intention department to excuse their ambivalence about accuracy and proportion.  

The antonym for these words is relax, by the way; sound advice.

Do we at Maggies Farm... ahem... over represent the Environmental Carbon Cavilling Cavalier's love for everpresent looming armageddon and false alarmism, as characterized by Mr. Gore? You tell me:

Greenpeace's fill-in-the-blank public relations meltdown

Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.

"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.

But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.

We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."

Had Greenpeace been hacked by a nuke-loving Bush fan? Or was this proof of Greenpeace fear-mongering?

The aghast Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, said a colleague was making a joke by inserting the language in a draft that was then mistakenly released.

"Given the seriousness of the issue at hand, I don't even think it's funny," Smith said.

The final version did not mention Armageddon. It just warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns.

(From Monday's Philadelphia Enquirer Thanks to a Chequer Board of Nights and Days for the link)

Would it look any different, really, if it said:

FILL IN OVER-REPRESENTATION HERE ?

Bob is 65! But ageless and timeless.

Once upon a time you dressed so fine; didn't you?   (video, with Lennon - neither sober in the least)

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine,
Alive as you or me,
Tearing through these quarters
In the utmost misery,
With a blanket underneath his arm
And a coat of solid gold,
Searching for the very souls
Whom already have been sold.

"Arise, arise," he cried so loud,
In a voice without restraint,
"Come out, ye gifted kings and queens
And hear my sad complaint.
No martyr is among ye now
Whom you can call your own,
So go on your way accordingly
But know you're not alone."

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine,
Alive with fiery breath,
And I dreamed I was amongst the ones
That put him out to death.
Oh, I awoke in anger,
So alone and terrified,
I put my fingers against the glass
And bowed my head and cried.

("I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" words and music by Bob Dylan 1968 Dwarf Music)

Sometimes you come across people you don't understand very well. Your mind doesn't work like theirs does. The muse that whispers in their ear is different than any other.

Many see work like his, and wonder why anyone would ever make something like that. Others might wonder why it had never occurred to somebody before. Maybe it did, and they thought: That's nuts. I can't do that.

It's not the Sistine Chapel Ceiling. It's not Art, or Science, or Boatbuilding, or Engineering, or any thing else in particular.

It's just captivating, all by itself.

The world is often a harsh and violent place. We argue and tussle over things great and small; but every once in a while someone like Livio de Marchi shows up, and injects a little whimsy in the proceedings, just for the love of it, just for fun.

Visit his virtual museum, and see all the cures for the world's ills he sculpts from wood in Venice, Italy.

He didn't cure cancer, but he sure cured Monday.

So Moussaui gets life. There's a ill-considered meme racing around the internet that since he said he preferred death, life in prison was the worse punishment.

Prefers death? He said he preferred death. That's not the same thing. Many men have the nerve to pitch themselves out of planes. Who can say if they are prepared to hit the ground? Bluster is not courage. He was perhaps willing to die on his own terms. But on ours? I doubt it.

We should not care one whit what Moussaui or his ilk say they prefer anyway. Our society allows for the execution of those convicted of heinous crimes. What crimes could be more heinous, than to contemplate and participate in mass murder, and fervently pray for the deaths of those you could not kill yourself?

Moussaui dared you to kill him. He and his kind will understand only that we didn't have the nerve to do it. He'll be perfectly happy in his solitary jail, offering his life up as a kind of prayer, just as he offered it up before, praying all day, every day, for the deaths of those that spared him.

"There is in Islam a paradox which is perhaps a permanent menace. The great creed born in the desert creates a kind of ecstasy out of the very emptiness of its own land, and even, one may say, out of the emptiness of its own theology. It affirms, with no little sublimity, something that is not merely the singleness but rather the solitude of God. There is the same extreme simplification in the solitary figure of the Prophet; and yet this isolation perpetually reacts into its own opposite. A void is made in the heart of Islam which has to be filled up again and again by a mere repetition of the revolution that founded it. There are no sacraments; the only thing that can happen is a sort of apocalypse, as unique as the end of the world; so the apocalypse can only be repeated and the world end again and again. There are no priests; and yet this equality can only breed a multitude of lawless prophets almost as numerous as priests. The very dogma that there is only one Mahomet produces an endless procession of Mahomets."      G.K.Chesterton

Portion of painting by Washington Allston--Elijah in the Desert --from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA