Tu ba or not tu ba

Our dad was very musical and I remember growing up how enthusiastic he was about music. He had this hi-fi system that had the speakers up in the wall in stereo back when that was really a still new cool technology.
He would put on earphones and sing the "harmony line" or hum along while the rest of the family sat in horror and amazement at the horrific sounds that emanated. Then he would pull off the phones and say "what? Have you never heard harmony before?" We of course had heard harmony before but it never sounded like what he was doing.
We were encouraged to play instruments. No we were expected to play a musical instrument.
Stew played the trombone because he really like the 101 trombones song.
He was really good. He got honors and Dad was really proud of him.
I played French Horn but I was only able to jam. I didn't like any of the music we were reading and so I just played what sounded good to my ear.
I was only able to hang on in band for a year and a half.
Stew on the other hand got really good and at some point the band leader (Mr. Cannon) asked him to play Tuba because no one was doing it and there was no one else good enough to pick it up and make it sound good.
I remember he won superior awards every year for like four years in a row on the Tuba.
We were all really proud of him.

So I was wrong to say that he is a single issue voter. He is Very Pro-Tuba...

W says it so it Must be True

I listened to Bush in his address this morning.

He was being very testy and seemed really offended that anyone was suggesting that he was a lame duck. He wanted to make it clear that he was still going to get his way.

He did acknowledge that there was a slight "push back" from some Senators who were trying to resist his policies.

What seems surprising to me is that he seems to think that if he keeps repeating something over repeatedly it will become true.

You saw this as a child on the playground when someone would make up a story and keep on repeating it. They would repeat it until people also began to repeat it and then it was true. Only it wasn't true. It was just a story that everybody decided to believe.

It seems to me that W likes to do this. Like with the War on Terror. He keeps saying that we are in Iraq to make us safe from terror and terror related individuals.
He says that there is a crisis with Social Security. He says that he is making the Air more breathable and the water cleaner. He says that there were no abuses of prisoners in Gitmo.
He says these things even though the evidence does not support his position.

The people in Guantanamo are the most evil freedom haters anywhere on the planet.
They would slit your baby's throat in front of you if only they could get close enough to do it.
They fear and hate Democracy and want to destroy all of us good Americans.

He has to say this because to say that, "well yes we have detained dudes who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and we don't really know if they know anyone involved with terrorism much less involved themselves in terrorism but we are going to keep them isolated and prevent any reconciliation between our suspicions and the truth because we can and because we need to have a prison full of terrorists to make it look good back home" would be to admit that the whole thing was a trumped up sham designed to fill pockets with slush money not to bring Democracy to Iraq.

People believe it because they need to believe that the President is honest and forthright. We all want to believe that our leader is not a man who is serving his own interests but fulfilling the role of representative leader for the country.

So it is easy to get away with the scam.

His political machine is already discrediting the media, so that anything they report contrary to his version of the truth is trounced as being "liberal hate speech" and he has succeeded in drawing a link between Iraq and the attacks on New York. There is no connection there, just like there are no W'sMD in Iraq. That was the purported reason for the invasion, remember? Spreading Democracy and removing a brutal dictator was not the reason we were given for going to war in Iraq. Do ya'll remember?
Nobody remembers and if they do they either don't care or think that we should go f^#ng get that oil and send those camel jockeys back to their sand holes 'cause we are 'Mericans and we are right.

I find it interesting that in war game simulations that the good guy's are always Blue and the bad side is always Red.
So the Red states won the election.

Interesting parallel.
I wish there were more people who didn't believe anything Bus said just because he is the President.
I wish more people immediately questioned what he said and looked to see who stood to gain from his actions.

He said that he believed in Diplomacy. W said that diplomacy took a long time and that we had to give North Korea a lot of time for this diplomacy to work.

Where was that logic back when he was looking at invading Iraq?

Can anybody explain how this man can be viewed as principled and moral?

This one is for Bear

So Bear and I have been having a dialectic regarding my status as a liberal over at Jeff's site Ponytailed Conservative.

I wanted to take up the topic here on my turf.

So for the record back when Clinton was still president and America was thriving and prosperous I was really not that active politically. I was living a bohemian life here in Oregon, out on the coast range on the lovely Wilson river.
I worked on a fishing boat and when I wasn't fishing I was tending bar at the Rogue Pub.
I really didn't think about a divided America. I was thinking that we spent too much money on weapons of mass destruction, cut down old growth forests too much and were generally arrogant and wasteful as a nation.
Then George W came along with his aspirations for being the president and the talk of conservative vs. Liberal began to become a heated topic. All things liberal were evil and associated with weakness and communism while conservative was equated to strength , integrity, patriotism and the American way.
I watched in horror as platitudes rolled off of W's tongue and he captivated people with rhetoric based in fear and arrogance...
He made claims to be a uniter and consensus builder but what I saw from his work in Texas was a man who was bent on having his way regardless of what was good for the state much less the individual.
He sent people to die and mocked their pleas for clemency and mercy while professing a dedication to the sanctity of life. He claimed to be a Christian and to take his instructions directly from god. Yet his actions indicated a man who was self interested in gaining power and keeping it at any cost. His strategy, calculated and methodical, driven by Carl Rove the disciple of Lee Atwater began to unfold.
He pandered to the religious evangelical Christians, mocked those who spoke of living a simple peaceful life as being weak and painted himself as a "Washington outsider" not corrupted by the political machine which he sought to change forever.
I began to see the divisions among my friends and family.
Single issue thinkers (like my brother who thinks only of taxes) could identify with his simple messages and the butchery of once elegant dialogue of political speakers. He gave us "misunderestimated, and religiousity" while playing a gun totin redneck who won't take no guff from nobody.
His outsider country boy act was enough to fool a lot of people. His single minded desire to end taxation also weighed in to accomplish the mission of taking power in Washington.
His mockery of the Clinton administration fueled the fire of those who were still pissed that Clinton had gotten away with getting a blow job.
He was ready to divide the country so that with very little manipulation he would be guaranteed a victory.
Then my brother started blogging.
I missed my brother since we had not had a close relationship for decades as he seemed (still does) unable to get it together enough to visit me even though I had been living in Oregon for over a decade. I started blogging too as a way to communicate with him easily and at a low cost.
SO what to call my blog? That was a doozie.
I settled on liberal treehugger as a sarcastic poke at him. In my introduction I pointed out a few things that I loved about Oregon. I also made a point that the definitions being bandied about these days didn't really fit.
I thought that people who were calling themselves "conservatives" were very liberal thinking when it came to the use of the Federal government.
I thought that the people being called "liberals" (by the republicans) were the ones who were interested in maintaining democracy and ensuring the role of the Federal government as a protector and advocate of the citizens of America.
I looked into it and found that the Republican party was a very liberal party when it came to the use of Federal power relating to what went into ones body or mind and the use of the military to create massive spending of taxpayer dollars.
The liberals on the other hand wanted the Fed's out of the bedroom out of our heads and wanted to use the power of the federal government to force a level playing field when it came to matters of finance.
So really there are no liberals or conservatives. It is all shades of varying color. I did not (and I still do not) see a blue side and a red side. I saw purple everywhere.
People who opposed the war also were adamant about restricting abortions. People who wanted to blow up Iraq also wanted to smoke and grow pot without the fed's kicking down their door.
People who believe that there is only one true god wanted a clear separation of church and state.
We were all over the place.
So I decided I'd be the 'liberal treehugger' and try to point out just how mislabeled everyone is these days.
Despite all the efforts to show these discrepancies there are still people who refuse to read and hear what I'm saying and only focus on the title of my blog.
For the 100th time I am against Bush and his policies.
I am however very much for America. I support the men and women who are fighting the unjust possibly unlawful war in Iraq, though I would choose a different path for America than Bush has chosen.
That does not mean that I do not care for the people who are stuck doing their duty. It does mean that I feel obligated to stir it up and make people talk about it.
I do not think that I have all the answers but neither I think does Bush.
I would call for a smaller Federal government. I would ask that individuals not pay more in taxes than corporations. I would expect that we as a society would be able to recognize when we are on an unsustainable course that we get off that course and find a different way to exist so that we are not sticking to the path of despair.
I wonder do you think I'm a liberal because I don't like Bush?

WHY!!!!!

Did I decide to slide into third?!

Now I was safe all the way but was it worth a broken leg?

Nope
Not at all.

More Distortions by W the President

So I'm watching the stem cell debate with interest, since I know several people who are affected by disease who may benefit from this type of research.
I hear Bush telling an audience that he does not believe in wasting life in the interest of saving it.

Why then have we sent thousands of people to die in Iraq?

I thought the whole thing was designed as a way to "protect" Americans from an attack that was imminent and would be devastating.

Does anyone remember the mushroom cloud warning that Condi and Dick were passing off as a justification for the invasion?
Or the unsubstantiated accounts of yellow cake uranium that Iraq was trying to acquire from Nigeria? A CIA agent was outed by the White House over that little "distortion" of the truth, no uproar about how that compromised National security... Yet it is a liberal media. Right...

They told us that in order to save lives we would have to sacrifice a few brave soldiers. They were protecting us all back at home from the imminent threat that Saddam posed to us.

Note to you Conservative haters out there, this topic is not about what Saddam did while in power. It is about what Bush says, and then does. As in Bush saying in the debate with Al Gore, "I don't think we should get involved in Nation building" and then taking us to war, er not exactly war, that is why the Geneva Conventions do not apply. Right?
Don't forget that the CIA put Saddam into power as their go to guy.
That is the reason that Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand and gave him all the chemical weapons. He was our best buddy. So this is not about how evil Saddam was. Granted he was a butcher and had little regard for human or civil rights. Still he was our tool in the Middle East.

So how can you reconcile sending people to die under the guise of "protecting the homeland" but refuse to allow medical waste to be turned into a means to cure devastating diseases?

Please explain...

For the Record

I wanted to say for the record,
Jeff is not an idiot.

I was acting from an emotional place that defied rationality and reason.
He is very smart as anyone who looks into his blog:
Jeff's site">can see for themselves.

I do think that I made a point of calling him smart. The idiot comment really only applied to his attitude of suppressing dissenting views and open discussion.
I think it is idiotic to say to the world that your opinion is the only one that is allowed.
Now to defend him, it is his site.
He can do whatever he wants.
I would just say that if one wished to keep dissenting opinions from being posted then turning off the ability to comment is really the only way to do it besides censoring the comments after the dissenter posts them.
I like to get at a more granular version of the truth as it is seen. I am one of those people who do not believe that any issue is polarized and absolute.
The more we discuss and pose rhetorical questions the more opportunity we have to enhance our perspective.

So Pony Tailed Conservative, I'm posting here an apology for the idiot comment. Thank you for the challenge and I'll really do my best to prove that this is not just a meaningless post.

Pony Tailed Conservative Can't Deal

With anyone on his site expressing a dissenting viewpoint...

I think it is an excellent parallel in the current debate in the Senate.

Instead of listening to a different view that is held by a large number of people, because it differs or contradicts what he believes and espouses, he has to remove it.

He says it was off topic. I think that connecting the little things that happen around us to the big picture involves moving away from the topic sometimes.
I doubt that it was so much "off topic" as it was that he really didn't have an intelligent retort.
Well things are different here at MY site.

Please feel free to discuss items that are of importance to you here at MY blog.

If you disagree I want to hear about it. I will listen and try to understand where you are coming from.
If I can't understand we can study and debate the issues until we either see where the other is coming from or agree that we have an impasse and will never be able to gain the perspective. Then we can move on. I will not remove or deny you the right to express yourself.
Thank you all for visiting. You make my little experiment in journalism so much more fun an experience than it would be if I mandated all the content.
I still think the Gitmo guards flushed the Koran and Newsweek had it right.
Who takes the Defense Departments word on anything anyway???
Jeff you are a very smart idiot.

Have to Post Quickly! We are getting shut down!

So I know it's been a while.
I've seen a lot of Liberal and Neo-Con crap since my last post. MMMMM Giant Fairy Shrimp!
Seriously though, Bush sucks. Kevin is in a War zone for no good reason. I've never met the guy but I sure a shell don't want him to find a bullet or fragment in a personal place in or near his body.
He says it is all good though. He's doing his duty. I admire that. He is a good man.

Still I think it was all based on lies. Saddam was no more of a threat than North Korea.
Why are we not there?
Why do they actually have atomic weapons with missles that can hit the USA but we ignore them?
Makes no sense.

Then I read my brothers blog (getstewed)
he is totally brainwashed and has lost all ability to think rationally. He seems to get all his "facts" from Ann Colture and Rush Limbaugh.
Never mind that Rush is hopped up on synthetic heroin.....
Just try to make the world a better place.
Plant a tree,
adopt a stray,
take mass transit,
reduce,
Reuse,
Recycle

So there,
less than two minutes and no editing...