fun with the bastards

There rarely has been a name so fitting as Peter King's is, the New York Republican and Representative is all in a tizzy because the New York Times published a story about terror networks, banking and the United States Government once again spying on everybody without all the hassles of following the law.

Really, everywhere you look hardly anybody likes democracy anymore. We prefer instead the tyrannies of suspician, fear, hatred and stereotype. You can't even burn a flag anymore without everybody acting like you've just gone on and declared jihad or had a homosexual marriage or something. P. King, brought out the tiresome ax of the New York Times as Liberal Elite Agenda Setters but don't you know sir, that job belongs to Kos now and already people are making money on that front. Nah, this was just good old fashioned journalism with the added caveat that the New York Times let the government know what it was doing. Well, Peter King wants the Government to sue.

After all it's a war.

A war of our own making, but a war regardless. Oh sure, if some flag-non-burner came across this somehow he might fidget and fuss and talk about 9/11 but that's like talking about the Bears chances at a Cubs game.

I'm all for containment when we talk about nut-bars on the Korean peninsula because I've seen Japan and liked it, why have it nuked twice? As well, it's always nice to make nice with China before this becomes a cluster-fuck with a barbie-lovin' scotch-swillin' dictator involved who actually HAS atomic capabilities (and that sounds so '50s: "atomic capabilities" that I just want to sit here and think about ray guns and zombies for a minute), one way to do that might be to ask them to help set some limits before Seattle is buying bottled water and digging shelters, and then maybe, enforce them? It's easy to be for active diplomacy, even if it festers, falters or perhaps fails; in working the diplomacy the successful diplomat is working with others as well, many who are sane, and it helps build things like cohesion, unity, things that tend to create actions based not on abstractions and desires of a reality-to-be, but actual reality, and occasionally, however rarely, actual facts.

But we've pissed away our democracy (no pun intended Mr. King), and the vultures of the Government are out there looking to turn people's heads this way and that way and any way away from things that might matter even a little - little things like governance, corruption, greed and classism. This is a government at war with the poor and at war with the idea that government has any role to play but as the footservants and ushers of wealth.

It's all very good for Warren Buffet to leave us some money, to be distributed in an approved manner to the poor who will still be poor, and that's better than nothing, I think, but, like that guy in the 1790s who was richer than everybody else in Virginia, who freed his slaves, it didn't suddenly make the Washingtons, the Jeffersons, or anybody else for that manner start suddenly releasing their slaves, it's the rare pharoah after all, who lets people go, don't expect the Abramoffs, Skillings and other assorted bastards suddenly friendly caretakers of the poor. They're too busy taking us for all we're worth.

Anyway, I was just annoyed, it's humid again in New York, which is kind of like saying it's New York, and the trains are a pain in the ass lately, but no more so than usual, except there was a cranberry bottle rolling around the car today filled with piss and, one hopes, a little vinegar.