Goodbye; Farewell; and Amen….

“Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of ‘the rat race’ is not yet final. We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear—fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer. It’s a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

The only way that democracy can be made bearable is by developing and cherishing a class of men sufficiently honest and disinterested to challenge the prevailing quacks. No such class has ever appeared in strength in the United States. Thus, the business of harassing the quacks devolves upon the newspapers. When they fail in their duty, which is usually, we are at the quacks’ mercy.

— H. L. Mencken

The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.

— Ernest Hemingway

______________________________

Well, folks – it’s over.

Yahoo 360, which was for some their first blogging experience (I’ve had a Blogger page since ’01) announced today that it was closing in mid-July, and that all content should be moved before then, or it would be lost.

I’ve mixed feelings about it all – I met a lot of really wonderful people here — won my first writing contest since college; validated the concept of a book; chewed the fat and solved the world’s problems with a lot of you. While I also met some scoundrels, they’re not memorable — those of you who followed this small part of the blogosphere, favored me with your comments and your presence, and followed me elsewhere are the one’s I’ll remember.

Thank you. Sincerely.

The Particulars:

If you want to move your blogs, there’s a “moving” link on the main page here on 360. You can either generate an archive on your own computer automatically (which you can then host on WordPress), or move everything (including your comments!) to your profile.

Right now, you can’t change the name (it’ll simply read, “My Blog”).

That’s it.

Most of you know that I now have several locations. I’m splitting my writing between three sites, with an ‘aggregator’ to help people find them all. Here’s the info:

1. If you want to ‘connect’ to me using Yahoo’s new profile-tool, you’ll need my Yahoo email address. It’s “blue_jay001@yahoo.com”.

2. I’ve continued my day-to-day communication with many of the Y/360 crowd (and some new folks, besides) at Multiply.Com (that’s where nearly everyone went.) While the site has its drawbacks (I’m doubting any of us will find anything which is exactly like 360 used to be), and while it’s aimed at the soccer-mom crowd, it suffices for a social network – I didn’t find Facebook or MySpace to be much more than a haven for teenagers and college-kids.

My Multiply account is here. Feel free to join me there for lighter fare, videos, reviews, and the like – I also use it as a ‘portal’ to my other more-serious writing.

3. My sociopolitical commentary, current-events and related writing I’m putting here. Drop by sometime and link to me (Note: You’ll need a Google ID to do so).

4. My sci-fi, alternate-history and ‘series’ writing is here, at WordPress. Again, drop by sometime!

5. You can go here, and find not only me, but a lot of other cool people we used to ‘hang’ with. Mybloglog is also a convenient aggregation point and digest for everything I’m writing.

Folks, I’m going to miss this place. I’m going to miss the comments – which in a lot of cases were better than the humble missives they complemented.

While I won’t be transferring this particular post, you’re welcome to comment here — it’ll stay for as long as it lasts.

Lastly – I know some of you are of the mind that when this ends, you won’t be looking for anything else to take its place. Please just know that, in that case, you were – and are – important to me. Try to check in sometime.

Res Ipsa Loquitor.

–Will (“Astra”)

Milestones….

Sometime last night, one of you – probably from a part of the world where it was light — pushed me over the 400,000 mark (right now, it sits at 400,004*).

It’s been a long journey – or so it seems; we’ve shared happy things and sad ones; events both large and small, and solved the world’s problems from this modest ‘stage’ in the blogosphere.

I never intended to become a ‘rock star blogger’ – I’m glad you were supportive of me through that time, and hope I kept the promise I made to never forget my readers.

I still haven’t forgotten you.

Yahoo still has me listed as one of their ‘interesting pages’ – and I’m hoping that in coming here and finding that I’ve Moved On, you won’t be disappointed.

You’ve all been incredibly good to me, you know — you’ve listened to an old fellow up on a hilltop in Portland, Oregon, who may or may not have had anything important to say.

However, it’s become abundantly clear to me that this forum is a little long in the tooth — most of you have either moved on or found other interests; my own situation has gotten busier of late, and I’m thinking that it’s time to close a curtain here, at least until they roll out Whatever Comes Next….

For those who have stumbled on this page — welcome! You’ll find some archives to read, and some things to ponder – and, because of the fine people who’ve frequented this page, the comments are in some (all right; most) cases better than the posts.

The page is open. Feel free to leave a note.

– Will

(*If any of you would like to read my comments when I hit 300,000, go here. They still apply. And again – thank you; each one of you!)

The Fourth of July – A Perspective….

“America is a whorehouse where the revolutionary ideals of your forefathers are bartered and sold on the altar of capitalism.”

— Cmdte. Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (“Che”); to the United Nations (1961)

No. This isn’t going to be fun. If you want fun, go here.

I don’t suppose I have to tell you that America is in a mess. I wonder, however, if you know just how bad that mess happens to be.

In 2000, the dollar was worth more – 25% more – than it is today. Put another way, if you’re making $20.00 an hour, and your salary hasn’t changed, you are now making $15.00 in real purchasing power – and the cost of everything has gone up, not down, which has further eroded your buying power.

This erosion of our currency is mainly due to the practice started by the Neocons in the ‘80’s.

Saint Reagan (I use his Neocon reverential here) began the practice of ‘supply-side economics’ – in other words, he made a bet with the nation’s treasury that if he cut real tax rates, the ‘trickle down’ effect of giving all that money back would create a stronger economic base – and hence generate the taxes through economic growth.

Problem is, it didn’t work out that way.

What really happened was this – and it’s an altogether too scary rendition of the final years of the Roman Empire.

(Constantine, and then Diocletian, tried similar measures – what happened was that financial power wound up in the hands of a few – in the outlying provinces, individual landowners were far more powerful than the Imperium; having raised their own armies, levied their own taxes, and rather taken matters-in-hand themselves – hastening the demise of the Imperial economy and leading in turn to feudalism).

The wealthy (to whom most of these tax-breaks went) squirreled it away in places where the government couldn’t touch it. As a result, the ‘trickle down’ effect didn’t work – jobs weren’t created; taxes weren’t created – money was put in places where taxes couldn’t reach it (can’t blame anything but human-nature here) – and the people who had benefited before (people whose services were cut in the name of ‘supply side theory’) just had to make-do.

I learned this one first-hand when I buried my father, a war-veteran, in 1984. Cutbacks in the V.A. made it necessary that I fund a good portion of my father’s funeral out of my own pocket – seems that some of the cutbacks were aimed at that part of the V.A.’s budget which took care of burying veterans.

With the tax-revenues gone, the only thing the Reaganites could do was to quietly go about ‘printing’ money – only what they did, rather than engage in the process directly, was to sell bonds first to the Arab nations; then to the Chinese.

This process continued on Bush the First’s watch; then Clinton’s – and the press has really cranked up to speed under Bush the Second.

Shrubby has done his work well – instead of shoring up our currency against the ravages of inflation, he went and did something else – he bought us a shiny new war.

Now, we’re in a bad way. The shit-train has finally pulled into the station – or, as Hunter Thompson once said, “…the chickens are coming home to roost; only they’re really mutant buzzards bent on eating us alive….”

If we’d only paid attention to things and shored up our currency’s value, gasoline would be somewhere between $2.25-2.90/gallon – because oil is valued in dollars – and that primarily due to the perceived stability of the American currency.

Here’s a wake-up call: The dollar isn’t stable any more, and the clock is ticking. The Euro has proven out to be a far more stable currency, and it’s only a matter of time before the oil-producing nations begin to view America as a liability.

(You can get another lesson here – I like Becky’s approach to the topic; I wish she’d use some different illustrations, which some of you – myself included – find in questionable taste; however, if you can get past that, her logic and facts are sound).

Next, we come to our civil liberties.

I’ve written about all of this recently here. The first time I published this piece, I was told my over 20% of my readership that I was ‘giving aid and comfort to the enemy’ (which proved, as far as I was concerned, the abysmal state of American education). That alone should cause some fear and loathing, but no matter.

We now have a president who learned a vital l
esson from FDR – if you can’t get your way with Congress, start writing Executive Orders.

FDR’s most-infamous was #9066 – the one which ordered all persons of Japanese ancestry interned. This, of course, led the way for largely white landowners to confiscate their property – and while we officially ‘apologized’ some decades later and offered token remuneration, the damage had already been done, in spades.

If Reagan, Clinton, and both Bushes make LBJ look like a tightwad-by-comparison, then Bush the Second makes FDR look like a boy-scout – and Lincoln’s revocation of habeus corpus during the Civil War an administrative detail.

You can read my article here – but in recap, we now have:

• The Patriot Act – allowing broad-reaching wiretapping and other surveillance.

• The Military Commissions Act – allowing non citizens and citizens alike to be interned in military-run camps outside the reach of American law (Gitmo and the like).

• Proclamation 7463 (a ‘Proclamation’ is different from an Executive Order, but carries most of the same weight) – this one allows for the President alone – not Congress – to freeze military pay-grades, retirements, and to deploy troops for the duration of a conflict – as defined by the President. (Note to everyone: This is dictatorship. Just sayin’….)

• Executive Order 13438 – this one allows the President to declare anyone, citizen or not, a ‘threat to the stabilization of Iraq’, and seize their person and property.

• Directive 51 (a ‘Presidential Directive’ also carries much the same weight as an Executive Order) – this one allows the President to take complete control (‘guidance for continuity’) using, among other things, the entire U.S. military for direct intervention in the event of a ‘national emergency’ or ‘catastrophe’. (You guessed it – the President now has the power to decide when – and what – those events entail or are defined).

Sum it all up – -and we have a dictatorship.

Or, if you prefer, an Imperium much like Rome – -the Senate still has ‘power’, but the Emperor is in charge – and if you have any question, please do step out of line so he can make an example of you to prove it.

The Emperor has taken away your rights as a citizen. He’s debased your currency. He’s spent your birthright. He’s mortgaged your future to the highest bidder.

To date, no one has sufficiently pointed out that he has no clothes. That’s up to us.

I’ll leave you with another quote; this time from a man named Thomas Jefferson:

“A little revolution every now and again is a good thing.”

Happy Fourth of July….

–“Astra”

For Stephannie and Mike….

Stephannie White

One of the things which makes the ‘net a wonderful place is that you can actually ‘meet’ people from all over the world. In my case, it’s enabled me to learn more about other parts of the planet than I’d ever learn otherwise – from the eyes of people who are living there.

Occasionally, we learn things which uplift us – stories of great courage; other times, we learn happy things – a wedding; a birth, or other great news from our online ‘friends’.

Then again, sometimes we learn of tragedy.

Unfortunately, this is one of those. Bear with me.

In early ’07, Stephannie White (‘Steph’ being her online name, and how most of us here on the ‘net know her) asked me to add her to my friends-list. I was happy to do so; she was an ex-pat living in Korea with her then-almost-13-year-old son; she was an instructor at a university in Korea, having moved there some four years earlier.

Mike (on the right) and friend

Reading about her life was genuinely fun. She wrote about the culture; how she taught; the things she and her son did on the weekends. It became obvious to me that she was not only a good Mom, but the kind of best-friend a boy that age needed.

Single motherhood isn’t a cakewalk – but Stephannie was making a go of it, and in a country where the language could be bewildering at best.

Her son, Mike, made friends easily and adapted well to a life which included a lot of travel. He was smart, happy, and had a ready smile. Built like a football-player with the good-nature of a kid from the south, he was without doubt the center of Stephannie’s life.

On May 10^th this year, Mike died.

The actual cause is highly suspicious. While the ‘official’ word is that that cause was natural, his age (14), his robust health and complete lack of physical problems points to another cause.

I’d ask you to do three things here.

First, I’d ask that you write a note to the American Embassy in Seoul. Secondly, I’d ask that you write the Korean Ambassador to the U.S., and ask that a complete and impartial investigation be allowed/conducted in Mike’s case (there’s an email address at the bottom of the page).

Lastly, I’d ask you to drop by Steph’s website, and show her a little love.

She needs it right now.

Best,

–“Astra”

The Swan-Song of the American Century….

Whose head this is I think I know
The idiot, from the village, though
He will not see me stopping here
To smoke the poppies there below

He can’t pronounce it ‘nu-cle-ar’
But with the help of medicine
We make the situation clear
As change begets a change this year.

So, with the help of surgeons’ hand
An operation, clear and grand
McCain, you see, he’s not quite dead
As Bush’s brain goes in his head.

The cloning’s done, and done quite deep.
But he has promises to keep.
And miles to go before he sleeps.
And miles to go before he sleeps.

“The Cloning of Bush in John McCain” — WDN; ©2008
(with sincere apologies to the memory of Robert Frost)

Folks, it’s over.

The American Century ended, for all practical purposes, with the announcement today of the conclusion of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for President.

It’s not that I was a Hillary supporter – far from it – but Obama’s all-but-guaranteed nomination means a square-off between the Lesser of Two Evils – a panderer from the senate, or a clone of G.W. Bush, soon to be late of the White House with eight full years of nonsense-passing-for-policy under his belt; said predations on the freedom, pocketbook, and persons of the American People now ready to be duly whitewashed by his likely successor.

Let’s look at the history of Neoconservatism.

In the 1960’s, America ‘suffered’ under the onerous burden of 17-cent-per-gallon gasoline; the fact that fully 60% of the world’s goods were manufactured here in the U.S., and had the benefit of plenty of disposable income. American society underwent an explosion of creativity – both ethnically and socially, American music, art, film, and other creative media saw a creative period like none other in its history.

Liberalism, the movement from the 1920’s which culminated in the three Roosevelt administrations and the sociopolitical movement which followed through the Kennedy administration, espoused the establishment of a ‘safety net’ for the social fabric, an experiment with socialized medicine (Medicare and Medicaid), as well as other acts which formed Roosevelt’s “New Deal” and Johnson’s “War on Poverty”.

The ‘vital center’ (a term coined by Arthur Schlesinger) was the concept that Liberalism was America’s sole intellectual – and hence, educational – tradition. This was echoed by classic Conservatives such as Barry Goldwater, who held with many Liberal traditions such as caring for the less-fortunate and guaranteeing personal liberty.

The leftward drift of the Democratic party in the late ‘60’s and early 70’s, as embodied by the candidacy of George McGovern in 1972 against the right-wing conservative Richard Nixon, who was running then for his second term, created disillusion within the Democratic party and a seemingly-paradoxical shift to the right (political scientists make much of the ‘pendulum swings’ in politics; while it’s beyond the purview of this post to discuss that in any detail, it makes for a helluva discussion).

The swan-song of intellectual Liberalism in America was the candidacy and presidency of Jimmy Carter. He admittedly created a double standard regarding his human-rights policies, which allowed for a ‘bye’ given to some Communist regimes, while enacting sanctions against others with whom America either had little trade or which had little influence over the U.S., economically. The further disillusion created by the Carter administration drove some classic Liberals “over the fence” to the right-wing of American politics, and set the stage for the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

The chart, below, is probably the most single-damning evidence of the damage caused by the Neoconservative movement.

While decrying Liberals for a ‘tax and spend’ mentality, the Neoconservatives did something far worse. Let’s look at the facts:

1. In 1980, the tax-rate on an income of $10
0,000 was approximately 50%. Reagan, in a widely-celebrated move labeled “voodoo economics” by some, he proposed halving the tax rates – which he did, and which hold true today: The average tax-rate for a $100,000/yearly income is around 25-28%, depending upon deductions, which can reduce it to around 15-17% or lower.

2. In 1980 (per the chart, below), the real run-up in the national debt began. We might ask, “How can this be, because trade should balance, or nearly so?” You’d be right at the elementary level – a ‘trade deficit’ is largely artificial, as the difference has to be made up with currency. The only question is where the money originates.

In the case of the Reagan administration – and most administrations afterward, including Clinton and G.W. Bush – the source is borrowed money – which is why the national debt is now so high.

(Oops. Sorry. That sound you just heard? Those were the pet-theories of a lot of Republicans, hitting the wall at Mach-1. It was the sound of a paradigm, shifting without a clutch. I’m sorry if I just skewered a fantasy with a few ugly facts, but we should all realize sooner than later that the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, and there’s a huge shit-train that’s about to pull into the station, economically-speaking – and the Republicans, along with their Neoconservative cronies, aren’t our friends.)

The miracle of borrowed money enabled America to listen to the pandering of the Neocons while lowering real tax rates and seeing gasoline drop to under a dollar a gallon in 1985. (Demand-pull inflation as well as cost-push inflation had driven the price of fuel from seventeen cents per gallon in 1965 to over a dollar a gallon in 1983.)

You’ve read the chart – and you’ve seen the run-up, and where it started. I also don’t have to tell you who took office in the early ‘80’s – and it wasn’t a Democrat.

With further apologies to my Republican-aligned friends, Mr. Obama isn’t going to ‘effect change by taking it from your pocket’ – that’s a cheap shot, created by Neoconservative P.R.-flacks and policy wonks who’d have you believe that money-laundering (cutting taxes and borrowing the difference from the Chinese) is preferable to cutting our belts, paying our bills, and curing our economic woes by creating wealth.

It’s 2008. Inflation – both kinds – is back. The Neocon’s money-laundering scheme has finally caught up with us. The new president is going to have to do some things to deal with the problem – but we have two choices: A president who’ll tell the Great Unwashed what they want to hear (Obama); or a president who’ll give us Four More Years of the Same Thing (McCain).

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, and we don’t have a lot of time left to fix the friggin’ problem.

(I just learned that McCain’s ‘economic advisor’ is none other than Carly Fiorina. For those of you who don’t know who she is, she virtually dismantled Hewlett-Packard, getting herself ousted by the board of directors for her ill-thought and poorly-executed merger of Compaq with HP. Putting her in charge of the economy would be like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse — a little research will convince you that her brand of ‘leadership’ is not only divisive, but destructive. Will someone wake me when this is over?)

The Part(ies) Over — Part II…..

Well, the Libertarian Party had their convention over the weekend, the party hopefuls were sorted out, the delegates voted – and Bob Barr is the new nominee for President.

I’m disappointed.

Barack Obama is the likely new President — I believe the American public has had a snootfull of having their rights trampled by the likes of Bush and Co; (he entered office with $1.25/gal gasoline and no enemies; he’ll leave office with $4.00-4.50/gal. a likelihood, having created more enemies than we can possibly ever kill off, and with the Constitution – that ‘goddamned piece of paper’ – a shambles).

I’ll vote for Ron Paul in November — Obama is still pandering to the Cubans in Florida (he can’t seem to figure he can get elected without them); the likes of Al Sharpton, and anyone else who’ll get him some votes – and as for Hillary, while her likelihood of a nomination is moot, I think enough people remember the first Clinton administration – Travelgate, Whitewater, Blowjobgate, and all the ‘friends’ who committed suicide or died under mysterious circumstances – to trust her with the keys to the asylum.

We’ve done a splendid job, yet again, of turning the election of the free-world’s leadership into another tawdry popularity-contest.

No need to worry.

With things as they are, it won’t be long before China and Saudi Arabia own us outright, and we become cheap labor for the up-and-coming gazillionaires and megabusinesses of Asia and the Middle East.

Think Great Britain – in 1918.

Me? I’ll still promote the concept of democracy — voting for a candidate, rather than against someone else — but I imagine that this idea, just like so many others I have, are a thing of the past….

Until later….

The Part(ies) Over….

Friday, Ron Paul announced he would ‘soon wind down’ his candidacy for President.

Ron has a storied past. He ran for President in 1988 against Bush the First as a Libertarian (he got my vote then); he’s since represented his district in Texas for a couple of decades, and has with his departure left a hole the size of the national debt in the hopes and dreams of many of us who wanted a standard-bearer to help us Take Our Country Back.

The five potential candidates who have offered themselves under the Libertarian banner look like Ralph Nader by comparison.

Paul is the Real Deal.

He’s got the sense. He’s got the experience. He’s beholden to no one. People take him seriously – but not seriously enough to run as a Republican, which party is in-thrall to the Neocons, and most likely will be for the near term, at the very least.

On the other hand, the five Libertarian candidates (the party will hold its convention in Denver later this month) simply cannot be taken seriously.

One wants to move the UN to Somalia. Another idolizes “Jimmy the Greek” (the notorious bookmaker). Another would legalize all drugs and abolish the DEA.

I’ve got a radical idea, folks.

How about Ron Paul again, this time as a Libertarian?

(If you think this is a good idea, go the Libertarians’ website and suggest it as a poll. Also, go here – it’s Ron Paul’s website – and suggest he put his hat in the ring.

I’d vote for him – especially considering the competition – from all parties.

A Pause For Station-Identification….

(Here’s some weekend-viewing, along with a little commentary – I ran this around a year ago — and if anything, it’s more cogent now. Enjoy….)

Sorry, folks, but I’m going to rant a bit here.

Y’see, I’m a bit irritated — more than a bit, actually – with the fact that (according to those Gallup polls I posted a day or so ago), most of the American population could care less about the way the country is run, and would actually sacrifice some or all of their civil-liberties in order to fight this amorphous-blob the government calls ‘terrorism’.

Guess what. They have.

And, they’re dragging the rest of us along – to the point where if we want to live in a truly free country from now on, we have the option of leaving – or staying put and trying to fix what a majority of us no longer seem to want – the right to speak our minds.

Office-worker and mill-worker; educated professional and tradesman – it’s all the same. Speak out = Run the risk of a labor camp. It’s all there — the military has the plans; our President just issued the directive and executive-order over the past two months.

Everything’s in place.

Further, we now have a shadow-military, beholden to no one, operating all over the world (but with concentration in Afghanistan and Iraq). They’re exempt from prosecution for any crime committed on their watch:

_____________________________________

_____________________________________

(Blackwater Corporation – documentary video)

“We have become a monster in the eyes of the whole world – a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you.”

— Hunter S. Thompson, writer

I write and post this rather fearfully, because the functionality of government has led us to a sorry pass. Today, we’re in a position where speaking out could quite literally land us in a new American Gulag – and the only difference is that when our sentence is done, we won’t land in the tender embrace of friends and family who see that the government is wrong – we’ll likely land back in an environment where the hostility of that 52% of Americans who believe that the government is right holds sway over everything. No job. No housing. Non-persons.

If that doesn’t sound like Stalinism, I don’t know what does.

This next piece of film might change your mind about elections, also. While I’m still going to vote, and while I still believe that if enough of us get busy and work, our votes will still count – the time may be fast approaching (if it isn’t already here) where we’re powerless to do anything about the powers-that-be:

________________________________________

________________________________________

(Electronic Voting – documentary video)

We live in a nation where the government can create the news.

Case in point. David Broncaccio of NPR, one of the last true reporters in America, did a piece on the election in Florida, where he brought up several of the points in the last video.

He’s a reliable, non-fringe source of news — and his piece has only aired once, with little or no commentary from other sources.

Let’s look at why.

Most of the board-members of NPR are either corporate sponsors with close ties to the government, or government appointees. Tell the truth = Lose your funding.

Fox? O’Reilly is a government shill, telling people what the powers-that-be want them to hear. Spend five minutes listening to an overseas news broadcast on the same topics, and you’ll come away with the same inevitable conclusion.

Folks, we’re being spoon-fed the same Kool-Aid, over and over. Fortunately, it’s our choice to accept it, or no.

“We are watching a poorly-staged rendition of Wag The Dog, interpreted for the morbily stupid and performed by the criminally insane.”

— Jules Carlysle; author/writer/commentator

____________________________________

____________________________________

(“Be Careful What You Say” – Documentary Video)

“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

— Hermann Goering; Reichsmarshall [1933-1945]; at Nuremberg

__________________________________

It’s true, folks.

Be careful of what you say.

So, what’s to do?

Admittedly, the situation looks pretty bleak. We have little or no control over what the powers-that-be are doing right now – and it appears as if the new Congress has pulled impeachment off the table like a plate of bad hors d’oeuvres.

I’m going to suggest something simple, yet impolite: Start talking about it.

Yep. Those of you who grew up with the mistaken idea that ‘talking about politics isn’t polite’ – bring it up as table-conversation at the next neighborhood event or friends-gathering. Chew the fat. Doesn’t matter if you know everything, or not — between you, you’ll find that the free exchange of ideas is the most powerful tool you have.

Remember Margaret Mead, the world-reknowned anthropologist: ” A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” You have a chance here, and it’s yours to lose.

Make it count.

An Open Note To My Friends….

I just finished reading the comments on my last blog.

I love you guys. Really.

Blogging And The Like — Part II

(No photo – none needed)

I guess I struck a nerve with my last post on the quality of blogging in general. It’s probably unnecessary, but I thought I’d clarify a few things.

First, I didn’t pay any particular attention to what I did when I killed off my Multiply site — but apparently more than a few folks thought it was uncalled-for to do so. A couple of folks sent me offlines about it; there’s evidently been some talk over on Multiply about my actions.

Really – I didn’t think it would be taken one way or another — and honestly, it didn’t appear as if anyone was reading, so I really didn’t think I’d be missed.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, we all write for a reason — and not even Mother Theresa was completely altruistic (she got something out of what she did, even if she didn’t get paid). I’ve never believed in paid-blogging, even though several folks have suggested I do so.

In the end, killing my Multiply site was more an act of personal humility than petulance; more a “Well; no one’s reading — no point in going on”, rather than a “Gee, I’ll take my marbles and go home!”

Really. It wasn’t intended to hurt anyone – it was just apparent that no one was reading.

Second, I didn’t want anyone to think that (for one moment) I believed this forum was any more drivel-free than Multiply. What I meant was this — I miss the old days here. A piece on weightier topics would not only get fifteen or more comments — but the commenters would write one of their own, and the process continued — there was a critical mass of thought here which has all but disappeared, and I miss it.

That critical mass never seemed to happen over on Multiply, and it’s fast fading from any social networking site – I suppose I’m saying that it was of and for a time – and that time is done.

That’s why I killed my blog.

Never meant to upset anyone over it. Or make anyone wonder – or anything else.

It was just time to move on.

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In the end, I don’t expect (and never have) anyone to ‘kiss my ass’, or anything else — and I’m sorry some folks interpreted my actions in that manner.

(The future? I don’t know. Looks like we won’t get anything workable here until late this year — and truth to tell, it just may not be worth the wait. We’ll see….)