Molly Ivins Can't Be Dead, Can She?

Molly Ivins has died. Please give me a day or two to take this all in. I can't even think right now.

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It is now three o'clock in the morning which means that I have had about seven hours to adjust to a world without Molly Ivins. I woke up after only a few hours of troubled sleep, thinking that it was all just a bad dream - and then reality set in. She's gone and she's not coming back. Who among us would have dreamed that our luck would ever get this bad?

There can be no debate. She was the most articulate progressive voice of the last one-hundred years. The rarest of all creatures (a goddamned liberal from Texas, Bubba!) She was a flower among the weeds. She spoke truth to power "with the bark off" as John Nance Garner, a Texan from another era, would have said. She was a national treasure. She was our Molly.

She was to our generation what Will Rogers was to his - and so much more. Rogers, for all of his fun-poking at the powers-that-be, was, in his time, a much beloved and admired figure. Before the plane crash which ended his life in August 1935, he had been lauded by all ends of the political spectrum. Not Molly Ivins! She was hated - deeply and passionately hated - by the forces of darkness. Trust me on this one, boys and girls: the only tears that will be shed tonight at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, will be tears of joy. No one - and I mean, no one - has been more on-target in exposing the lies, corruption, and utter stupidity of Washington politicians in general and this hideous administration in particular than Miss Molly. It has been said that Will Rogers never offended a soul. Molly Ivins, in contrast, offended just about everyone in power - Democratic or Republican.

When George W. Bush first announced his candidacy in 1999, it made me a tad uneasy. It was only after reading, "Shrub: The Short, Happy Political life of George W. Bush" which she co-authored with fellow Texas journalist, Lou Dubose - published over one year before the stolen election of 2000 - that I became seriously alarmed. Molly Ivins was the person who woke me up. This very blog you are reading is really her legacy. In 2003, when they wrote a follow-up called, "Bushwhacked: Life In George W. Bush's America", she said in the book's introduction, "If y'all had read the first book, we wouldn't have had to write this one!"

Oh, Lord, was she funny! As much as I loved to read her work, listening to the audio book versions was even more fun! She would read each of them with the timing and skill of a professional comedian. She once said of a corrupt and incompetent Texas politician, "If his IQ slips any lower, we'll have to water him twice a day." On one occasion she "defended" a former First Lady by saying, "It's unfair to pick on Nancy Reagan - it's irresistible but unfair." In 1980, she was fired from the New York Times for referring to an annual chicken slaughter in New Mexico as "a gang pluck." Now admit it: wouldn't you just love to have that on your resume'? Damn! The old gal was a scream!

She was the first journalist to stand up and expose to the world the unvarnished truth about this incompetent and disgusting president. From her second to last column, published on January 7th:

"What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn't supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny? Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? How did we let them fool us?"

And now, like Will Rogers, she's left us at the far too young age of sixty-two. The late, great newspaper, the Dallas Times Herald, once ran an advertising campaign which proclaimed, "Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?" She could and she did - loudly and with great courage. The only way to close this piece would be to paraphrase the writer, John O'Hara, on learning of the death of George Gershwin seventy years ago:

Molly Ivins died on January 31, 2007. But I don't have to believe it if I don't want to.

Pray for peace.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

This is from Molly's last column, 14 January 2007:

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to stop this war. Raise hell! Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know that we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to oppose Bush's proposed surge...We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'STOP IT NOW!'"

Molly Ivins
1944-2007

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SUGGESTED READING:

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Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?

and

Who Let The Dogs In?

by Molly Ivins

For more recent postings on this site, please go to the link below:

"The Rant" by Tom Degan

Molly Ivins would have approved I think.

AL GORE FOR PRESIDENT

Message to Al Gore: Will you ever be able to forgive me? I'm wondering - seriously wondering - If I'll ever be able to forgive myself. I can't take the old Henry Hyde route and blame my errant ways on a youthful indiscretion. No, that would be the coward's way out. I've got to be honest enough to stand up before the world and admit it: I screwed up - BIG TIME, BABY! Please, let me relate to you good people my sad and tragic story....
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[CUE MUSIC]
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In 2000, as the primary season was approaching, I was excited about the prospective candidacy of Bill Bradley. His views were much more in tune with the traditional Democratic constituency and I was of the opinion that recent years had seen the Dems move further and further away from the issues that really mattered - particularly the plight of the working and the middle classes. It soon became apparent, however, that the former New Jersey senator didn't stand a chance. Vice-President Al Gore not only had all the cash, he also had the massive weight of the Clinton White House and the Democratic National Committee behind him. Bradley's quest for the presidency was blown out of the water. I left the Democratic party at that moment. It wasn't just the nomination of Gore that left me frustrated; for a long time it had been painfully obvious that the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been creeping slowly but surely to the right. From the dawn of the so-called "Reagan Revolution", the GOP had been able to hijack America's political conversation to such a point that, by the year 2000, the word "liberal" had been transformed into an expletive. While all of this was going on, it seemed to me, the party of FDR just let it all happen.
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By 2000 it looked like the time was ripe to support the candidacy of Ralph Nader. A message needed to be sent to the country and Nader was right on the mark on every single issue. At the time it seemed like a safe, even responsible thing to do. Nader was, after all, running as a third (Green) party candidate and as luck would have it, the Republicans that year nominated the worst candidate in its history: a disgusting, half-witted little frat boy named George W. Bush. Fine, I thought, I'll support Nader. Al Gore won't even have to campaign having such an incompetent fool as his main opponent. What the heck! This will be the political equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel!
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I had forgotten to take a crucial factor into consideration: the jaw-dropping stupidity of the American people. Although the Bush Mob was able to obtain the White House by taking 57,000 African Americans of the voting rolls in the state of Florida, they wouldn't have been able to pull it off had the count not been as close as it was. As if that wasn't bad enough, the people even managed to re-elect the hideous little bastard four years later. Go figure. The headline in Britain's Daily Mirror the day after the election of 2004 put it perfectly: "HOW CAN 59,054,087 PEOPLE BE SO DUMB?" Good question! Any takers?
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Six long and depressing years of hindsight have given me a new outlook on the subject of Al Gore. A viewing of his recent documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth" (which has received two Oscar nominations), has only re-enforced my feelings: by not supporting Gore in 2000, those of us who call ourselves "liberals" - I beg your pardon....I meant "progressives" - committed one of the biggest political blunders in American history. But not for the candidacy of Ralph Nader, the Bush Mob would never have been able to steal that election and we wouldn't be in the pathetic mess we're in today. Here is the cold, hard truth: I am as responsible for the nightmare administration of George W. Bush as anyone.
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Just consider what it would mean if the Democrats nominate Al Gore in 2008 - the symbolic nature of such a move would be powerful, indeed! They would be saying to the electorate, "Now do you see what a hideous mistake it was to send a murderous little thug like Bush to Washington? You have a chance to get it right this time, America - DON'T BLOW IT!"
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Were America to send Al Gore to the White House, it would also send an important message to the rest of the world: "We realize that there are horrendous wrongs that need to be righted - and we're doing it". It'll take the United States a generation (at least) to even come close to repairing our damaged reputation within the international community of nations. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Sending the man who had the election stolen from him six years ago to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would be an important first step, indeed. Think about it.
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If and when Albert Gore of Tennessee announces his candidacy, I will immediately re-register as a Democrat just so I can vote for him in the primaries. After the debacle I had a hand in creating six years ago, it's the least I can do. The very least.
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Pray for peace.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

AFTERTHOUGHT:
It has just been announced that the great Molly Ivins, who has been battling breast cancer for some time now, is gravely ill in an Austin hospital. Please keep her in your prayers. We cannot afford to lose her. We just can't.

A Sorry State, Indeed

If there has been one saving grace coming out of the disgusting administration of George W. Bush it has been its entertainment value. Tuesday evening's State of the Union address to the nation was no exception. Bob Herbert of the New York Times put it perfectly: the entire spectacle was "a study in government dysfunction. The audience kept mindlessly applauding - up and down like marionettes - when in fact there was nothing to applaud. The State of the union is wretched..." Which brings me back to the subject of entertainment value - the unintentional comedy, if you will. Part of the fun of watching the First Fool in action is his pathetic attempt to put a cute little smiley face on what is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most incompetent and corrupt presidency in the history of human stupidity.
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I woke up at two-thirty AM on Tuesday and as a result, by the time I arrived home at seven PM, I was exhausted to the point of giddiness. I set the VCR at the four hour speed, hit the "record" button and went to bed. I didn't have a chance to even look at the thing until late Thursday morning...
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First a little point of contention: "Some in this chamber are new to the House and the Senate and I congratulate the Democrat majority." Earth to Dubya: It's pronounced "Democratic" not "Democrat", you fucking idiot! There. I feel better already.
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The very fact that the obscenity that is at this moment being committed in Iraq wasn't mentioned until just a few seconds shy of a half an hour into a speech that lasted fifty minutes or that the plight of the people of New Orleans wasn't even mentioned at all speaks volumes. Once again, he was not the least bit shy about tying Iraq to the hideous attacks of September 11, 2001. Is there not a single person around him with the courage to tell him that the people aren't swallowing that line any longer? How does this murderous little bastard even sleep at night?
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"Ladies and gentlemen, nothing is more important in our history than for America to succeed in the Middle East, to succeed in Iraq, and to spare the American people from this danger."
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Grammatical redundancies aside, American servicemen and women would have been spared a whole lot of danger had the president of the United States not made the stupidest military blunder in history by invading Iraq in the first place. What was just as shameful were the little tricks his speechwriters used to get the Democrats to stand and applaud at places where they should have remained sitting on their hands - when he referred to the recent escalation in forces, for instance:
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"...and I ask you to support the troops in the field and those on their way."
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How clever. You could see in his eyes the look of self-satisfaction at having pulled off that little trick. Quite frankly for the entire length of it, the man must have been thinking that he was pulling off one hell of a scam. After all, such a huge percentage of the American public were naive enough to send him to Washington in the first place, why not keep the game going? The most mind-taxing thing of all is the unexplainable fact that a full one third of the country is still dumb enough to think that he's doing a good job and that electing him as the leader of the free world was a really neat idea. It just boggles the mind!
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Here are just a few more highlights from an evening that was, for all the wrong reasons, memorable:
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"Whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure"
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Yes they did, George. Your mindless incursion into a hostile Arab country was doomed to fail. A republican dominated House and Senate overwhelmingly voted for it. That is the reason we, the people, put the Democrats back in charge of things last November. You didn't get the message, did you, George? You never do.
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"We must balance the federal budget. We can do so without raising taxes."
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Oh really??? Now just how in the hell does he plan on pulling that one off? This on top of two hot wars and a possible third on the way? Is he insane?? Come to think about it, in addition to being dumber than dog shit, there is a very good argument to be made that our esteemed commander-in-chief is as crazy as a bed bug. For more on that subject, please read the book, Bush On The Couch by Dr. Justin Frank.
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"This is not the fight we entered, but this is the fight we are in."
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No argument from me there! The fight we entered was a fight to rid Saddam Hussein of a weapons of mass destruction program that every thinking person person in the United States (all twelve of us) knew wasn't there.
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"The economy is on the move."
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Words fail me. That it is "on the move" there can be little doubt. Just where it is moving to will be obvious to everyone very soon. Count on it.
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"These past five years have given us a much clearer vision of this enemy - possessed by hatred and commanded by a harsh and narrow ideology."
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There's another statement that's kind of hard to argue with. I couldn't have put it better if I tried - it describes the Bush administration as adequately as anything I've ever read!
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There wasn't really much in his robotic ramblings that could be classified as "new". What amazed me was that a lot of the so-called "pundits" were praising how well written it was. They obviously didn't see the same speech that I saw. If you happened to miss it, don't feel bad because you didn't miss much. It was just the idiotic, nonsensical rah-rahs of some drunken, half-witted frat boy giving his fraternity brothers and sisters a pep talk before the big game - a game that every bookie in town has called in favor of the opposing team.
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Call it a hunch, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Tuesday night's State of the Union address will be George W. Bush's last. By this time next year, I believe he - and Herr Cheney - will be out of office and on their way to federal prison. There are far too many smoking guns to contend with; too many calamitous scandals brewing just below the surface of this ideological cesspool to even begin to count. 2007 will be the year that the trillion dollar shithammer pulverizes the Bush White House - and everyone connected with it - into dust. The jig is up.
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Oh man, I'm just lovin' this!
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Pray for peace.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

One Never Knows, Does One?

Hey Democrats!

Can we talk for a minute or two? Just as I predicted a month and a half ago when I composed a little ditty on this very site called, "No Time For Democratic Timidity" (26 November), a lot of you folks are starting to appear weak in the knees. After twelve long years in exile, you finally got power - real, tangible power, baby! - and you don't want to blow a good thing by showing (Dare I say it?) political courage - Oh, perish the thought, my dears! The buzz around DC these days is that you don't want to cut off funding for this disgusting and obscene war because you'll be "perceived" as not supporting the troops. Yeah, I know, I know, perception is everything in Washington - no argument from me there - but so is hindsight. A year from now, it will be obvious to everyone (Who knows? Maybe even that fucking idiot in the White House) that cutting off the financing of the war in Iraq was the right thing to do. It might even translate into votes in November of '08! As the late, great Fats Waller once famously observed, "One never knows, does one"?

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That's right, Dems! The time has come for you to show some guts! What do they call it? Intestinal fortitude? Yeah! That's it! You remember the old song Bert Lahr sang in the Wizard of Oz, don't you? Sure ya do! "What makes the muskrat guard his Musk? Courage". In an interview with Diane Sawyer to be broadcast later this morning on ABC News, Nancy Pelosi said that the Dems plan on passing a "non-binding resolution" opposing the First Fool's decision ("I'm the decider") to send another 21,500 American kids into this quagmire. Whaat??? That's not courage! That's political expediency! C'mon, folks! Do the right thing! This war is, for all intents and purposes, over. It's lost! Anyone not watching Fox News figured that out a long time ago. The only reason the Bush Mob is keeping it going is so they can hand it off to the next (read: Democratic) administration on January 20, 2009. When that happens - OH, BROTHER! - it will automatically become your war. It will forever be known as Mr. Biden's war - or Mr. Edward's war - or Mr. Obama's war or - Heaven help us all - Mrs. Clinton's war. Now you don't want that to happen, do you? Ah! I didn't think so.

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The Sunnis and the Shiites and the Kurds will continue to kill each other in horific numbers regardless of whether or not America continues its mindless, stupid occupation. Of all of the ironies too numerous to mention, the biggest irony is the one that no one has mentioned thus far: Saddam Hussein's regime, as awful as it was, was in reality a strategic necessity. He held Iran at bay and kept inner-ethnic feuds (some of them dating back centuries) from erupting within his own country - and no one in the Bush White House was smart enough to figure that out. Ha! Ha! Ha! Isn't that a rip? Who would have thunk it? Are you laughing yet?

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I hate to keep rubbing this in your face Nancy, but over three-thousand American kids and half a million Iraqi men women and little children have been murdered as a result of this fiasco. You could end it today if you wanted to. That's why we, the people, sent a Democratic majority to the Congress in the first place. The ball is in your court, my dear.

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And here's another thing you can do: please STOP referring to it as "funding" the war, OK? The word "funding" conjures up images of the Children's Aid Fund. It makes people positively teary-eyed! Here's my idea: from this day forward, don't call it "funding", call it "financing". Whoooaaa! Now there's a word with some seriously evil connotations - particularly in parts of the so-called "Bible Belt." When the knuckleheads in the mega-churches hear the word, "financing" or "financier", they immediately think of "elitist" northern Jewish bankers in custom-made, thousand dollar suits. "It's jist a buncha dang New York Jew lawyers keepin' this thing goin', Bubbah! Ah tell ya, it's a dang conspiracy"! It just doesn't get any weirder than that! As I said before, perception is everything.

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There is a limited window of opportunity here, kiddies. Get out while the getting's good. The Bush Mob's argument is that if America bails out of Iraq now, the place will erupt into chaos....umm....yeah....In case you haven't noticed, that country is beyond chaotic - we're talkin' full blown holocaust here; a holocaust engendered and nurtured by this nightmare of an administration. We can only hope and pray that, in a matter of time, Iraq will be able to heal it self. It's a long shot but there is no other viable option - none.

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George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld - and the tsunami of human excrement that comprises this despicable administration - opened up the gates of hell when they went into Iraq almost four years ago. Only God knows whether or not we would have been able to save the Iraqi people from themselves, but at least we'll be able to save them from us. That's reason enough to leave.

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Pray for peace.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

Mike Levine 1952-2007

"Savor each breath and blessing. Remember the time you laughed so hard, jumped so high, held so tight. Remember the hour when you watched the scarlet sky fold to night. Remember the holy moment you touched the tiny fingers of birth."

Mike Levine

The people of Counties Orange, Ulster, Sullivan - and all points here and there - are reeling this morning. With the sudden passing over the weekend of the great journalist, Mike Levine, we've lost what can only be described as a regional treasure. When I first got the news early Monday morning, I experienced the same feeling in my gut that any of us would get when we receive the dreaded news that an old and cherished friend has left our world unexpectedly. It took me a minute or two to take it all in.
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Mike was a guy, raised in the Inwood section of New York City, who relocated to our area (roughly an hour or so north of Manhattan) in the early 1980s to become a reporter and columnist for our paper, the Middletown, NY Times Herald-Record - the same paper where the legendary Hunter S. Thompson launched his career back in 1959. For a quarter of a century he was the voice of the people of Orange County. He was the man who championed the poor and dispossessed. He was a writer's writer, who lived by the axiom of every journalist worth his or her weight in ink, going all the way back to Upton Sinclair one-hundred years ago: to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
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"When there are big shots to chop down with a wise crack, I don't blink. That's part of my job. I know I don't have a corner on the truth. But when I find I've swung the ax at those without power, I want to find another line of work. Because the part of my job I love best is to tell your stories. I want to tell them with the dignity and respect they deserve."
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When I first started reading him so many years ago, on first sight I naturally came to the conclusion that he was a nationally syndicated columnist - he was that good! Then I realized that he was writing for my local newspaper, writing about people who I knew personally and issues that directly affected me! I remember saying to someone at the time, "You mean to tell me that this guy actually walks amongst us???" I first met him in the early eighties on the corner of East Main and North Streets in Middletown. Forever after, the few times I had the good fortune to encounter him, I used to walk on air that he would remember my name - I admired the man that much.
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Yes, I knew Mike Levine personally - but that's really no big claim to fame - most of the population of Orange County knew Mike Levine personally. He was everyone's close, personal friend. His column was an oasis of wisdom, humor and good old-fashioned journalistic muckraking, in the best sense of that word. As Record reporter, Chris McKenna said in tribute yesterday, "Everyone who ever worked for Mike knows he was a relentless champion of journalism with heart. How sad that it was his own heart that failed him."
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"Making homemade soup for a disabled and lonely neighbor. Concern about a stranger driving home safely. Returning a blank, signed check to its worried owner....In the end, these small and private acts of decency may save our world."
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He was the heart and soul of the Hudson Valley. He gave us an articulate, compassionate voice that would otherwise have been drowned out by the forces of darkness and despair. That he no longer walks in our midst is too sad to even contemplate. We can only thank God that he was with us for the time he was, short as that time might have been. The planet Earth is a little more habitable because, for almost fifty-five years, Mike Levine called this place home.
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Pray for peace.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net
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"That we are part of one another - laughing, loving, losing each other in the endless universe of fire and ice and darkness and finding each other again, a union of souls and stardust. The wonder is not that we die, but that we ever were."
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To read more of the archival writings of this great and good man, please click on: http://www.recordonline.com/

For more recent postings on this site please go here:

"The Rant" by Tom Degan

A New Way Backward

George W. Bush's address to the nation last night from the library of the White House was incredible. Not in the way that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was an incredible album; or in the way that Citizen Kane was an incredible film; or in the way that For Whom The Bell Tolls was an incredible novel - I mean that it was utterly lacking in credibility. Everyone was describing it as the most important address in this awful president's life. So much of its text had been released in advance to the media that I found myself at times reciting the words in unison with him (which was loads of fun, by the way!) Anyone who expected him to offer a new, rational way forward was severely disappointed. As for the rest - those of us who are all-too-familiar with the incompetence and utter stupidity of this nightmare of an administration, those of us who haven't relied on FOX News and the New York Post for our information during the last six years - those of us who have been paying attention - we weren't surprised at all.

In an excellent piece written yesterday in the New York Daily News, Mike Lupica stated the inarguable:

"This is all about the men and women running one of the worst and weakest administrations in American history trying to save face now. And the soldier from upstate New York [who was interviewed for the piece] - who went over there with his 9/11 ideals the way so many of them did that first summer, in a period when Bush and Vice President Cheney and then-Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld started losing a war they told the world they were winning in a breeze - does not want to go back and get blown up by some road side bomb for that".

In his pathetic speech to the nation last night, the First Fool said, "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me." Read that to mean, I'm going to be man enough to take the blame for the mistakes of others. It was a mistake to trust the judgement of the Iraqi government (such as it) and allow them to have a say in military tactics. It was a mistake to listen to the advise of Rumsfeld and go into the country with so small an army. It was a mistake to let the Shiites execute Saddam Hussein on a high Muslim holy day - and on and on and on. What he did not say - and what has been obvious to every thinking person on the planet earth for almost four years now - was that it was a mistake - a tragic, dreadful blunder of historic proportions - to invade Iraq to begin with. That mistake was Bush's and Bush's alone. Don't hold your breath waiting for that admission.

And now he plans on sending another twenty thousand-plus kids into this holocaust he's created???

"Fetch me that gin, son, 'fore I tan your hide!"

It won't work. Any hope of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people (and it was never more than the slimmest of hopes in the first place) was squandered long ago. The Democrats must be made aware that we're watching their every move. We, the people, gave them control of the House and Senate for one primary reason: to end this obscene war. On Sunday morning, Joe Biden actually said on Meet The Press that he believed defunding the war would be "unconstitutional". Might someone explain to him that the main function of the legislative branch of our government is to provide oversight on the executive? As a matter of fact, it's mandated. If he continues to utter such nonsense, he might as well kiss his presidential aspirations goodbye.

The time has come to show a little political courage, folks! The longer the Dems let this thing drag on, the harder it will be for them in 2008 - and I'm not talking about the general election - I'm talking about the primaries. One of the most pathetic players in all of this has been Hillary Clinton. Late in the day, after she had thoroughly tested the political winds, she finally came out against escalation. That's showing real political courage, alright! If the Democratic Party is foolish enough to give her the nomination next year, they'll deserve everything that happens to them. At least it's obvious that Ted Kennedy (God bless him) has read his late brother's 1956 Pulitzer Prize winning book. I strongly suggest they all do so.

The unnamed soldier interviewed by Lupica for yesterday's Daily News piece bluntly told him, "You want to put me back in uniform and march me back into Baghdad, then you've got to do better than our President has in telling me why, telling me what this month's plan is, what our goals really are. Because those have never been defined, not for the people on the ground, and for that I don't believe I can continue to support this lunacy."

Indeed. Who among us can rationally continue to support this lunacy?

Pray for peace.

Tom Degan

Goshen, NY

tomdegan@frontiernet.net

Good Luck To The 110th

The 110th Congress was sworn in this week. They've got a lot of work ahead of them - with little exception more work than any newly elected legislative body in two-hundred and eighteen years. It's up to them now to put a stop to what is beyond a shadow of a doubt the most incompetent, corrupt and murderous administration in American history. There will be investigations into what the real motivations were behind the invasion of Iraq and the obscene war profiteering of the GOP-connected corporations that followed. There will be testimony from within the CIA and State Department as to what evidence was available to the Bush Mob with regard to Iraq's fabled weapons of mass destruction program and - more importantly - what evidence was ignored. They will look into the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and why, sixteen months after the fact, the city of New Orleans has barely begun its recovery. There will also be inquiries into the White House's ten-thumbed handling of the American economy and the long-term effect their horrific mismanagement of it will have on generations yet unborn. In short, if the 110th Congress does its job - and does it correctly - by the summer, the overwhelming majority of the American people will be demanding the impeachment and prosecution of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney for high crimes and misdemeanors.

If the Republicans are smart (yes, I know what you're thinking - just hear me out), they'll start looking within their pathetic midst for another Gerry Ford. If they're smart [PAUSE FOR EXTREME GIGGLES], they'll demand that Dick Cheney resign immediately for "reasons of poor health". The brand new speaker of the House of Representatives is now a bona fide liberal from San Fransisco and a woman at that! (Oh, Heaven help them!). One needn't be a political science prodigy to conclude that the prospect of a President Nancy Pelosi is their worst nightmare and - let's face some serious facts here, folks - Cheney is up to his ears in too many felonies to adequately count. For their own good, they had better start searching for his replacement - NOW.

Here's something the Democrats need to know: the American electorate didn't put them in power in order that they win re-election the next time around. Every poll shows that the main reason we sent them to Washington, above all, was to put an end to the war in Iraq. Some of them have been hinting that they plan on letting Bush stew in the juices of this nasty tasting soup he's concocted for purely political reasons. The belief being that the more Bush wallows in the holocaust he's created in Iraq, the easier it will be for them in '08 - That would be the worst thing they could possibly do. People are dying - a half a million of them have already been slaughtered for no reason at all. Over three-thousand Americans have died in vain. If it is allowed to continue, by this time next year, the body count might very well be double that amount. An escalation at this point (as the administration has been hinting at) would not merely be counterproductive, it would be a bloodbath. It didn't work forty years ago in Viet Nam and it's not going to work now. Keeping this war going for political reasons would be as obscene as the war itself. And don't forget this pertinent fact: the only reason Bush plans on letting this war go on, is so he can hand it off to the next administration - an administration he knows damned well will be Democratic.
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Even as I write these words, a joint press conference, conducted by John McCain and Joe Lieberman, is being re-broadcast on C-SPAN; McCain is complaining that the Democrats are now asking for "a plan B" with regards to Iraq. As God is my witness, he's actually demanding that the democrats put forward their plan! He just asked the question: "What's their plan B"?....Umm.... Senator McCain? It's the president who makes war policy, not the congress - a tiny technicality I thought you might want to know about. When you have a free moment, have a little peek at the Constitution - just a thought. To McCain's right, Lieberman is warning whoever will listen that America's standing in the world will be irreparably damaged if we lose in Iraq....

IF?? HELLO???

This war was lost the day George W. Bush made the stupidest military blunder since Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 by "preemptively" attacking a sovereign nation that was a threat to no one but itself. This war is lost - it's over. Anyone who stupidly believes that this endless quagmire is a winnable situation has been watching too much FOX News. The fact is this: Any moral authority - real or imagined - that the United States possessed after the hideous attacks of September 11, 2001 has been squandered - it's gone forever, kiddies! Even the Democratic president who will be elected in 2008 is not going to change that fact. And maybe it's just as well. Any nation foolish enough to elect as its leader the likes of our current commander-in-chief should never be trusted again.
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As a result of the damage done to this once-great nation by a disgusting, half-witted little thug named George W. Bush, the next twenty-five years will be remembered as the time that America redefined itself. We must go back to the core values that were so eloquently articulated by Abraham Lincoln on the fields of Gettysburg on a somber November afternoon one-hundred and forty-three years ago: a "government of the people, by the people, for the people". We're doomed otherwise. Father Abraham's vision of this country is now in danger of perishing from the earth.
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Don't pray for American victory in Iraq. Pray for God's will. Pray for peace.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net